Just a few weeks after President Donald Trump’s December promise that prescription drug prices would plummet "fast and furious," Patricia Brown checked into a California clinic for an infusion of Merck & Co.'s blockbuster cancer drug, Keytruda.
When the bill arrived, the clinic's charge for a 400 milligram dose dominated the page: $162,567.74.
Brown, an accomplished cook battling lung cancer, owed about $2,000.
But the six-figure charges to Brown and her insurance company show how quickly prices for cutting-edge medical treatments can balloon in the U.S. health care system. Someone has to pay: An employer, taxpayers, or regular people whose insurance premiums go up and up.
The price of Keytruda for Americans starts high and often heads higher. Merck lists Brown’s dose at an already steep $24,000. Then, depending on the insurer, the health care provider and any number of middlemen, prices can rise.
How Merck keeps prices for its blockbuster cancer drug sky high
Trump reopens Greenland fight as NATO summit kicks off
President Trump renewed his call for the United States to have control of Greenland soon after arriving in Turkey for the NATO summit, reopening a fight that badly frayed relations with allies earlier this year.
“Greenland doesn’t help Denmark, Denmark doesn’t spend money to really help Greenland, but it’s an important part for the United States,” Trump said during a bilateral meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Greenland is a self-governing, semiautonomous territory owned by Denmark. Trump has repeatedly argued that U.S. control over Greenland is necessary for global security and countering Russian and Chinese threats in the Arctic.
“That should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark,” he said. “And when they wouldn’t go along with it, and with all the money we spend to help them with Russia — we don’t have to spend any money.”
Judge blocks Trump DOJ's subpoena of 2020 Georgia election worker info
In a blow to President Donald Trump's efforts to investigate the 2020 presidential election, a federal judge quashed a grand jury subpoena July 7 seeking information on 2020 election workers from Atlanta's Fulton County.
"The breadth of the Grand Jury Subpoena ... is staggering," targeting personal identifying information for "thousands of employees and volunteers," wrote Judge William M. Ray II, who was appointed by Trump to the federal bench in 2018.
More...A series of audits, recounts and court cases have failed to produce evidence that would support Trump's assertions that Joe Biden beat him through widespread fraud, but Trump has continued to promote his unsubstantiated claims.More...
"The breadth of the Grand Jury Subpoena ... is staggering," targeting personal identifying information for "thousands of employees and volunteers," wrote Judge William M. Ray II, who was appointed by Trump to the federal bench in 2018.
The West must act to save Dr Hussam Abu Safiya from being killed by Israel
On 1 May 2024, I met Palestinian paediatrician and director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, in Gaza.
Two years later, he is at imminent risk of being killed in Israel’s notorious Nitzan Prison, after being held captive for more than 550 days.
On that day in May 2024, our ambulance crew joined a small UN convoy to travel to the north of Gaza. We had been granted a brief window to drop a Norwegian medical team at Al Awda Hospital, and then transfer patients from Kamal Adwan to the south of Gaza where they were to await evacuation.
At Al Awda we saw the signs of Israel’s repeated targeting of the hospital. The walls were pock-marked with high-calibre bullet holes. A gaping cavity remained between the third and fourth floors, caused by an Israeli strike on the hospital in November 2023 that killed three doctors and a patient companion.
We reached Kamal Adwan Hospital well after midday. Israeli soldiers had delayed us at a checkpoint at Netzarim for almost three hours, which meant we had very little time to identify and safely transfer the patients on our list.
Israel's death towers: Gaza civilians killed by remote attacks during ceasefire
Less than two weeks before his daughter’s wedding, Khalil al-Masri set out with his eldest son to complete what should have been one of the family's happiest final preparations: paying for and confirming the reservation of the wedding dress she had chosen at a shop in Gaza City’s Rimal neighbourhood.
With the reservation confirmed, the two stopped at a nearby sweet shop to celebrate, where they met two friends. As they sat together at a table outside the shop, a live bullet pierced Masri’s head, leaving him unconscious as his son and friends watched in horror.
The 43-year-old father of seven was rushed to the al-Shifa Hospital, but he succumbed to his wounds the following day, on 14 June.
“The wedding was turned into a funeral.”
The incident, captured by a surveillance camera at the entrance to the shop, is not an isolated case.
More...
Ballistic Missiles Hit Kyiv, Region: 26 Dead, Dozens Injured as Rescuers Search Rubble
Russia launched a ballistic missile attack on Kyiv and the region early Monday, July 6, killing at least 26 people and injuring 100 more.
“Once again, Putin ‘vanquished’ ordinary residential buildings,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote in a Telegram post announcing the latest casualty numbers Monday evening.
The head of the Kyiv City Military Administration (KMVA), Timur Tkachenko, said emergency crews were responding to more than 20 impact sites across the city.
“The most difficult situation is in the Darnytskyi and Podilskyi districts, where the Russians directly hit residential high-rise buildings,” Tkachenko wrote on Telegram.
In the Podilskyi district, a residential building was partially destroyed between the seventh and ninth floors, leaving people trapped under the rubble. Another 21-story apartment building suffered structural damage between the third and fourth floors after being struck by debris.
Conservative fight against license renewals for ABC stations heats up
A group of prominent conservative organizations has petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to deny license renewal requests from the eight local television stations owned and operated by ABC, accusing the network of political, racial and sexual bias and supporting the Chinese communist party.
The petitions come after the commission, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, took the nearly unprecedented step of requiring the network, a frequent recipient of attacks from Donald Trump, to apply several years early to maintain its ability to broadcast in markets around the country.
While Carr has said the early license renewal process stems from an FCC investigation into ABC’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, petitioners are free to include a variety of grievances against the network and concerns about whether ABC is operating in the public interest.
Trump denied latest bid to delay $5.8m judgment payment to E Jean Carroll
Donald Trump’s latest attempt to delay payment of a $5.8m judgment for defaming a magazine columnist whom a jury determined he sexually abused has been emphatically rejected by a federal court judge.
In a single-sentence 4 July order, US district Judge Lewis Kaplan denied the president’s request for more time to pay the civil judgment owed to E Jean Carroll, who was awarded the damages after a New York jury concluded that Trump sexually abused her in 1996 – then defamed her after she publicly described the attack in 2019.
Trump’s move came days after the US supreme court, without explanation or reasoning, turned down his demand to review the jury’s 2023 verdict.
In a subsequent filing to Kaplan, the judge overseeing the case, Trump’s attorneys referred to how his former lead counsel, Justin Smith, had been confirmed to a federal judgeship in June on the president’s nomination. New lead counsel Josh Halpern therefore needed more time “to become completely familiar with the facts and procedural circumstances”, Trump’s attorneys contended.
Platner ‘taking the time to reflect on the best path forward’ in Maine Senate race after assault allegation
Maine Senate Democratic candidate Graham Platner on Monday said his campaign is “taking the time to reflect on the best path forward,” just minutes after Politico published a story in which a woman who previously dated the oyster farmer alleged he had sexually assaulted her.
“I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious and false allegations against me. Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically false,” Platner said in the two-minute video posted online.
Politico earlier on Monday reported that a woman Platner previously dated, Jenny Racicot, told the news outlet that Platner had forced her to have sex with him while he was intoxicated in 2021.
Platner vehemently denied accusations of sexual assault to Politico in his video.
The Hill has not independently verified the accusations. The Platner campaign did not respond to The Hill’s request for comment regarding the Politico story.
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