• District of Columbia: The Supreme Court on Thursday voted 5-4 to reject a national settlement with Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin. In the settlement, the company's owners, the Sackler family, agreed to pay $6 billion to settle any opioid-related claims, but only if they'd receive impunity in future civil cases. In the decision, written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the majority of justices said the bankruptcy didn't have the authority to release the company's owners from liability through the settlement. However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a dissenting opinion that the "decision is wrong on the law and devastating for more than 100,000 opioid victims and their families." Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined Kavanaugh's dissent. According to NBC News, the Supreme Court's decisions mean that settlement discussions will have to begin again, and there's a possibility that no deal will be reached. Edward Neiger, a lawyer who represents over 60,000 overdose victims, called the court's decision a major setback. "The Purdue plan was a victim-centered plan that would provide billions of dollars to the states to be used exclusively to abate the opioid crisis and $750 million for victims of the crisis, so that they could begin to rebuild their lives," Neiger said. "As a result of the senseless three-year crusade by the government against the plan, thousands of people died of overdose, and today's decision will lead to more needless overdose deaths." (Sherman, Associated Press, 6/27; VanSickle, New York Times, 6/27; Hurley, NBC News, 6/27; Jansen/Groppe, USA Today, 6/27)
• Maryland: CMS on Wednesday issued a proposed rule that would reduce Medicare payments for home health agencies by 1.7% for 2025. The payment update includes a 2.5% cut, offset by a 0.6% fixed-dollar loss cut, as well as a 3.6% spending cut due to the Patient-Driven Groupings Model. CMS also proposed adding four new data collection items focused on social determinants of health to the Quality Reporting Program, as well as a health equity update to the home health valued-based purchasing program. So far, several industry organizations have pushed back on the proposed pay cuts. "The 2025 proposed version of Medicare home health payment rates shows the ongoing and predictable rate reductions impacting home health agencies since the beginning of the new payment model in 2020," said Bill Dombi, CEO of the National Association of Home Care. "That decline is solely due to a fatally flawed budget neutrality methodology that CMS employed to arrive at the rate adjustments." (Early, Modern Healthcare, 6/26; AHA News, 6/26)
• Texas: According to a new study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, millions fewer people may need to use statins based on changes in a new risk model from the American Heart Association (AHA). In the study, researchers analyzed data from 3,785 adults between the ages of 40 and 75 who took part in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey between January 2017 and March 2020. Participants' 10-year risk of artery-narrowing cardiovascular disease was calculated using AHA's Predicting Risk of cardiovascular disease EVENTs (PREVENT) equations from 2023. This data was then compared to risk estimates using AHA's 2023 Pooled Cohort Equations (PCE), which current statin prescription guidelines are based on. Overall, the researchers found that 4% of people had a 10-year risk of developing cardiovascular disease based on the 2023 PREVENT model, compared to 8% previously predicted by the 2013 PCE model. This decrease could mean that the number of adults recommended statins could drop from 45.4 million to 28.3 million. According to STAT, AHA's updated risk model could lead to new guidelines for prescribing statins, but the current guidelines have not yet been recalibrated. "Analyses are underway," said Chiadi Ndumele, chair of the AHA's CKM Scientific Advisory Group. "Guidelines will have to consider whether and how to update recommendations to include PREVENT risk thresholds to guide clinical decision making." (Cooney, STAT, 6/10)

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