From Washington, DC,

• Roll Call reports,
  • “The Senate adopted a fiscal 2025 budget blueprint early Saturday mostly along party lines after a debate that began the night before, teeing up the House for a climactic final vote next week.
  • “Republicans beat back numerous amendments en route to adopting the measure on a 51-48 vote. 
  • “Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted “no” as he’s long promised due to the resolution’s allowance for raising the statutory debt limit by up to $5 trillion.
  • “Maine’s Susan Collins was the other GOP “no” vote, having earlier expressed concerns about potential Medicaid cuts later in the reconciliation process but not saying how she’ll vote. Collins is up for reelection in 2026 in a Democratic-leaning state.
  • “No Democrats voted for it.:
• and
  • ​”Speaker Mike Johnson and his GOP leadership team on Saturday sought to tamp down a brewing revolt on the budget resolution that emerged even before the Senate adopted the plan in the wee hours and gained steam later in the morning.
  • “Johnson and the rest of the top four House Republican leaders sent a letter to the rank and file ahead of next week’s House vote on the Senate-revised budget blueprint assuring them that they will not accept watered-down spending cuts in the eventual filibuster-proof reconciliation bill the process is intended to unlock.
  • “We have and will continue to make it clear in all discussions with the Senate and the White House that —in order to secure House passage — the final reconciliation bill must include historic spending reductions while protecting essential programs,” the letter says.
  • “The leadership comments come after key figures in the conference, including House Budget Chairman Jodey C. Arrington, R-Texas; Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, the Freedom Caucus policy chair, all expressed opposition to the Senate budget plan.” * * *
  • “The House GOP leadership letter Saturday * * * [laid] out a process they say will lead to a pre-negotiated settlement between the two chambers. 
  • “The reconciliation bill “must be drafted using a collaborative process that results in a single product that both chambers can pass, and President [Donald] Trump can sign into law,” the leadership wrote. “We have made it clear the House will NOT accept nor participate in an ‘us versus them’ process resulting in a take it or leave it proposition from the Senate.”
  • “The letter goes on to say that immediately after adopting the budget, House and Senate committees “will begin preparing together their respective titles of the reconciliation bill to be marked up in the next work period.”
  • ‘The process House GOP leaders laid out appears to follow what Democrats and then-President Joe Biden employed during the 117th Congress when they enacted two reconciliation bills. Both of those packages went through committee markups in the House, but not in the Senate; but senators were able to make their voices heard through amendment “vote-a-ramas” in that chamber.”

• The Senate and the House of Representatives will be in session this week for Committee business and floor voting.

• On April 9, 2025, at 10 am, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a “business meeting to consider the nominations of Scott Kupor, of California, to be Director of the Office of Personnel Management for a term of four years, and Eric Matthew Ueland, of Virginia, to be Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget.”
  
• Federal News Network offers an interview with Kevin Moss about “the benefits and caveats to having both Medicare and FEHB. While enrolling in Medicare with FEHB coverage may seem like duplicating benefits, it can provide cost savings.”

From the public health and medical research front,

• The Wall Street Journal reports,
  • A second child who was diagnosed with measles has died in Texas, marking another death in a growing measles outbreak that has so far sickened hundreds of people, hospitalized dozens and spread to nearby states. 
  • The school-age child was being treated for measles-related complications at UMC Health System in Lubbock, Texas, said the health system’s spokesman, Aaron Davis. The child, who died Thursday, wasn’t vaccinated, didn’t have any known underlying health conditions and died of “measles pulmonary failure,” according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
  • “This unfortunate event underscores the importance of vaccination,” Davis said. * * *
  • “Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. traveled to Gaines County, Texas, the center of the measles outbreak, to console the two families who have lost children, he said in a post on X.” 

• STAT News adds,
  • “Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Sunday that “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” his most direct statement yet on the issue, following the death of a second child of the condition in the outbreak in West Texas.” 

• The Washington Post informs us,
  • Brandy Ellis [, a 49-year-old insurance compliance consultant] calls herself a cyborg.
  • Two small electrodes — thin metal wires — implanted deep inside her brain lead under her skin to a battery pack in her chest. Pulsing about 130 times a second, the deep brain stimulation (DBS) device, a kind of pacemaker, energizes an area that scientists say is key in regulating moods. * * *
  • “DBS is one of several emerging, high-tech therapeutic approaches — a.k.a. electroceuticals — that proponents say are extending psychiatry’s ability to help millions of patients. Increasingly over the past 20 years, testimonials to the potential of treatments that modulate brain functioning, such as DBS, transcranial magnetic stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation and, most recently, focused ultrasound, have been fueling new hope, despite considerable expense and hardship for patients, and mixed evidence of their effectiveness.
  • “Emory University neurologist and psychiatrist Patricio Riva Posse, one of Ellis’s therapists, describes the new trends — combined with ever more sophisticated brain-scanning technologies and new optimism about psychedelic drugs such as ketamine and psilocybin — as explosive progress.”

• Per Medscape,
  • This patient case [discussed in the article] is a prime example of how, in some instances, losing weight with glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists can impact muscle mass. To combat this health risk, more clinicians are now emphasizing on fat loss vs weight loss in patients taking GLP-1s. Weight loss refers to the overall decrease in weight from the body, which can include fat, muscle, and water, whereas fat loss refers only to the reduction of fat from the body.

From the U.S. healthcare business front,

• BioPharma Dive provides us with an “M&A recap: Big pharma starts the year mostly avoiding billion-dollar deals. Big-ticket biotech buyouts have become scarce in recent months. U.S. policy upheaval threatens to keep it that way.”

• Here is a link to Optum Rx’s Winter 2025 report on notable new drugs.

• Per MedTech Dive,
  • “Eargo and Hearx have merged to create the over-the-counter hearing aid company LXE Hearing, the companies said Monday.
  • “Hearx, the maker of Lexie hearing aids, and Eargo competed for the OTC hearing aid market that the Food and Drug Administration created through the publication of a final rule in 2022. 
  • “Patient Square Capital, which took Eargo private in 2024, has invested $100 million in the combined company. LXE said the investment reflects confidence in the direct-to-patient hearing market.”

• HR Dive relates,
  • “The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has reached a settlement in two pregnancy discrimination cases and filed a new lawsuit on a third, the agency announced Thursday in a series of media releases.
  • “In the first settlement, an assisted living facility paid $20,000 to resolve allegations that it refused to schedule and then fired a temporary worker upon learning she was pregnant. In the second, a plant nursery paid $40,000 to resolve allegations it did not allow a worker to return after maternity leave. EEOC’s newly filed lawsuit alleged an employer refused to allow a worker with a high-risk pregnancy to work remotely to limit her exposure to COVID-19.  
  • “The actions highlight the agency’s continued interest in enforcing the relatively new Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. However, Acting Chair Andrea Lucas has expressed her opposition to aspects of the agency’s final rule, which was passed in April 2024.”

From the artificial intelligence front,

• The Washington Post reports,
  • “In 2017, Ezekiel Emanuel, a well-known oncologist and health policy commentator, said radiologists would soon be out of work thanks to machine learning.
  • “That hasn’t happened, but although artificial intelligence isn’t replacing radiologists, it has significantly changed their field.
  • “More than three-quarters of the AI software cleared by the Food and Drug Administration for medical use is designed to support radiology practice, says Curtis Langlotz, a radiology professor at Stanford University and president of the Radiological Society of North America’s board of directors.
  • “Radiology is leading the way in the development and implementation of AI in clinical practice,” he adds. But AI isn’t reducing the need for human input.
  • “AI is not a better kind of intelligence, it’s just a different kind of intelligence,” Langlotz says. “A human plus a machine is better than either one alone. I would say that has been true since I began studying AI in the 1980s, and it continues to be true today.”