Congress and health care: Stopping opioid overdoses

The top news stories in medicine this week.

If Medicare cuts surgeon pay, it does not follow that Medicare should also cut reimbursement for primary care.

Prescription abandonment climbs sharply as out-of-pocket costs rise, and prior authorization delays push more patients away. Showing cost and coverage at the point of prescribing could change whether patients ever start therapy.

Physicians have embraced ambient documentation faster than almost any technology before it. But every note it writes carries your signature, and lawyers, auditors and patients are starting to read those notes closely.

Prior authorization, step therapy and shifting coverage rules keep patients from obesity drugs with proven benefits, an endocrinologist argues — and the long-term savings make the case for broader access.

A critical flaw in the code behind most websites and a breach at one of the nation's largest lab companies landed in the same week. Here's what physicians should check, ask and tell patients now.

HFMA proposes ‘Declaration on Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability’ as physicians and patients feel the squeeze.

An AI system that simulates a panel of physicians reached the correct diagnosis in about 80% of test cases, compared with 36% to 47% for generalist physicians, though researchers caution the results come from a controlled, text-only benchmark rather than real-world practice.