Widespread Google Outage Hits Services With "Intermittent Failures"

 Google Cloud is experiencing widespread outages late this afternoon, according to the outage-tracking website Downdetector.com.

While Google has yet to issue an official statement, users on X have begun reporting disruptions across multiple services:

Based on Downdetector reports, the following Google services appear to be affected:

Google Search

• Google Gemini

• Gmail

• YouTube

• Google Maps

• Google Drive

• Google Nest

• Google Meet

• Google Cloud

Other outages include:

• Amazon AWS

• Discord

• Snapchat

• Cloudflare

Cloudflare System Status page reads: "We are seeing a number of services suffer intermittent failures. We are continuing to investigate this and we will update this list as we assess the impact on a per-service level." 

*Developing... 

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/widespread-google-outage-hits-services-intermittent-failures

Senators To Propose Ban On Big Pharma Ads As TV Networks Stand To Get Wrecked

 Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, both independents, on Thursday will introduce legislation that would ban pharmaceutical companies from promoting prescription drugs directly to consumers - including through television, radio, print, digital platforms, and social media, the WSJ reports.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said when running for president he planned to ban pharmaceutical ads from TV. Photo: Lev Radin/Zuma Press

The proposal would mark a sweeping shift in the U.S. advertising landscape, where pharmaceutical companies are among the largest spenders. Prescription drug brands accounted for roughly 13 percent of all ad spending on linear television in 2025, totaling approximately $2.18 billion so far this year, according to iSpot data. In 2024, the industry spent $3.4 billion on traditional TV ads between January and August alone, according to ad-tracking data.

“The American people don’t want to see misleading and deceptive prescription drug ads on television,” Sanders said in a statement. “They want us to take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry and ban these bogus ads.”

The legislation follows longstanding criticism from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has repeatedly called for a ban on prescription drug advertising. While running for president, Mr. Kennedy said he would issue an executive order removing pharmaceutical ads from television, citing overmedication and industry influence on news coverage.

‘The American people don’t want to see misleading and deceptive prescription drug ads on television,’ Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a statement. Photo: piroschka van de wouw/Reuters

“We’re one of only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers,” Mr. Kennedy said in a video posted to X. “Everybody agrees it’s a bad idea.”

The United States and New Zealand are currently the only countries that permit direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug ads.

Mr. Sanders and Mr. King, who each voted against Mr. Kennedy’s confirmation, have long expressed skepticism of consumer drug marketing. In February, Mr. King introduced a bill that would prohibit pharmaceutical advertising in the first three years following a drug’s approval.

Other lawmakers from both parties have taken similar steps. In May, Senators Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, and Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, introduced legislation to eliminate tax deductions for pharmaceutical consumer advertising.

Since 1997, when the Food and Drug Administration relaxed disclosure requirements for DTC ads, pharmaceutical companies have increasingly leaned on consumer advertising to drive demand. Under current rules, companies need only disclose a drug’s “most important” risks during commercials.

The result has been a media environment saturated with pharmaceutical messaging. Drug ads made up 24.4 percent of all advertising minutes on evening news broadcasts across major networks — including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and NBC — through May of this year, according iSpot. On CBS Evening News, pharmaceutical companies appeared in more than 70 percent of commercial breaks, per Kantar Media.

The industry has defended the practice. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a leading trade group, points to its “guiding principles,” arguing that direct‑to‑consumer ads increase disease awareness, encourage patients to seek treatment, and prompt conversations with doctors.

Any move to ban pharmaceutical advertising could face legal challenges under the First Amendment’s protections for commercial speech.

Still, Mr. Sanders and Mr. King maintain their efforts are necessary to push back against what they describe as an overcommercialized influence on public health messaging.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/senators-propose-ban-big-pharma-ads

Penn Secures $500 Million in Lines of Credit as It Faces Federal Funding Hit

 

The trustees of the University of Pennsylvania secured lines of credit totaling $500 million as Ivy League schools continue to face federal funding pressures from the Trump administration.

The university entered into three separate agreements earlier this month, according to regulatory filings. The names of the banks as well as the interest rates were redacted in regulatory filings with the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board. A spokesperson for the school did not respond to emails or a phone call requesting comment.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-12/penn-secures-500-million-in-lines-of-credit-amid-federal-hits

Trump Administration Orders 500,000 Immigrants to Leave the US

 

Immigrants admitted to the US from a Biden-era parole program for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have begun receiving notices of termination urging them to depart the US.

Participants in the “CHNV” parole program were also told that their employment authorization is revoked effective immediately in email messages from the Department of Homeland Security, the agency said Thursday.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-12/dhs-tells-half-a-million-immigrant-parolees-to-leave-country

Data Centers Pose Threat to Electric Grids, US Regulator Says

 

Big data centers connecting to power grids is now one of the greatest near-term risks to reliability, according to a rare warning by the US agency charged with overseeing the sector.

The sprawling campuses responsible for AI and cryptocurrency mining are being developed at a faster pace than the power plants and transmission lines needed to support them, “resulting in lower system stability,” said the North American Electric Reliability Corp. in a report Thursday. That’s because data centers require tremendous amounts of power at unpredictable intervals, and are also sensitive to swings in grid voltage — making them a major wild card in a electricity system that’s unprepared for such energy use.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-12/data-centers-pose-threat-to-electric-grids-says-us-regulator

MedPAC Calls for Higher Medicare Doc Payments Based on Healthcare Inflation Rate

 Medicare physician pay should be increased yearly, with the increase based on the Medicare Economic Index (MEI), a measure of healthcare inflation, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) said in a report to Congress

opens in a new tab or window released on Thursday.

"In our March 2025 reportopens in a new tab or window to the Congress, the commission recommended that the Congress, for 2026, replace current-law updates for PFS [physician fee schedule] services with a single update equal to MEI minus 1 percentage point," the report noted. "That recommendation applies only to one year -- 2026." For future years, "the commission recommends replacing the current-law updates to the PFS with an annual update based on a portion of the growth in the MEI, such as MEI minus 1 percentage point, based on the historical evidence suggesting that updates of full MEI have not been necessary to maintain beneficiary access to care."

"This recommendation would automatically adjust to changes in inflation, improve predictability for clinicians, beneficiaries, and policymakers, be simpler to administer, and balance beneficiary access with beneficiary and taxpayer financial burden," the authors wrote.

At a press briefing for reporters Wednesday, MedPAC executive director Paul Masi, MPP, said that their recommendation is based on several factors, including how hard it is for Medicare beneficiaries to find doctors who take Medicare. "For many years, the commission has found that [physician] access has been as good as or better than that of privately insured patients," he said. "At the same time, growth and clinicians input costs exceeded payment updates under the fee schedule by an average of about 1 percentage point per year, from 2001 to 2020, which suggests that full MEI updates have not been necessary to maintain Medicare beneficiaries' access to care."

"Looking ahead, however, clinicians input costs are expected to exceed current law upgrades by between 1.5 to 2 percentage points, which is more than the 1-percentage-point historical average," he continued.

Asked by MedPage Today to elaborate on this further, Masi said that in addition to its survey of access to physicians, "we also look at other data reporting the rates that clinicians accept private insurance relative to the rates that clinicians accept Medicare, and those also are both high and comparable. And then we also looked at information such as claims data under the physician fee schedule, where we showed Medicare beneficiary utilization of care continued to increase."

MedPage Today also asked Masi for his thoughts on the recent discussion at the American Medical Association (AMA) annual meetingopens in a new tab or window about whether the AMA should issue guidance for physicians who want to opt out of taking Medicare. "We don't have any response to that specific observation, but appreciate you sharing that," he said. "I would say the commission does track opt-out rates as best we can with the data we have, and we have seen that they remain relatively low, but that's certainly something we will continue to track."

The commissioners also said that they have concerns about the adequacy of the relative value units (RVUs) used to calculate updates to the Medicare physician fee schedule. "The commission recommends that the Congress direct the [Health and Human Services] secretary to further improve the accuracy of relative values for clinician services by collecting and using timely, objective data that reflect the cost of delivering care," the report says, adding that the share of total RVUs allocated to clinician work, practice expenses, and malpractice insurance is based on cost data from 2006.

Other areas discussed in the report include:

Supplemental benefits in Medicare Advantage. These benefits, which are not covered by Medicare, include items such as reduced cost sharing for Part A and Part B services, enhanced Part D drug benefits, and other benefits such as dental, vision, or hearing services (non-Medicare services). MedPAC found that this year, Medicare paid Medicare Advantage plans approximately $86 billion to provide supplemental benefits, up from $21 billion in 2018. However, "relatively little is known about their use and associated costs," according to the report. "Better information could be used to help beneficiaries navigate the options available to them and could help policymakers identify ways of making the program work more efficiently."

Part D prescription drug plans in fee-for-service Medicare. Four trends are raising concerns among the commissioners about the long-term stability of the Part D marketplace. These include the fact that fee-for-service Part D premiums have tended to be higher than those for Part D Medicare Advantage plans, and that the fee-for-service Part D plans (PDPs) have been more likely to incur losses. "The commission plans to continue to assess the drivers of differences in average risk-standardized costs between Medicare Advantage Part D plans and PDPs, and monitor the availability of PDPs," according to the report.

Beneficiary cost-sharing for services provided by critical access hospitals (CAHs). Medicare pays CAHs -- which have 25 or fewer acute-care beds -- on a "cost-plus" basis, which is different from larger hospitals, which get paid under a prospective payment system. For most outpatient services, fee-for-service Medicare enrollees who use CAHs are charged a 20% copay, which can get expensive depending on the hospital. "The commission recommends that CAH coinsurance for outpatient services received by fee-for-service beneficiaries be set at 20% of the payment amount (rather than 20% of charges) and be subject to a cap per service equal to the inpatient deductible," the report said. "This change would protect beneficiaries from excessive amounts of coinsurance and would make CAH cost-sharing more consistent with Medicare cost-sharing for outpatient services in other hospitals."

The June report is one of two reports that MedPAC sends to Congress each year; the other one is released in March.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/medicare/116028

Legal Fight Over the Telehealth Clinics Helping Women Defy Abortion Bans

 Every month, thousands of women thwart abortion bans in their home states by turning to telehealth clinics willing to prescribe pregnancy-ending drugs online and ship them anywhere in the country.

Whether this is legal, though, is a matter of debate. Two legal cases involving a New York doctoropens in a new tab or window could wind up testing the shield laws some states have passed to protect telehealth providers who ship abortion pills nationwide.

Margaret Carpenter, MD, faces a felony chargeopens in a new tab or window in Louisiana for supplying abortion medication through the mail to a pregnant teen in that state. The patient's mother also faces criminal charges. A Texas judge fined the same physicianopens in a new tab or window $100,000 after the state accused her of prescribing abortion medication for a woman near Dallas.

So far, the prosecution hasn't progressed thanks to New York's shield law, which has protected Carpenter from extradition to Louisiana. But other telehealth centers operating in states with similar legal protections for abortion providers are watching closely.

"We have great legal counsel who have advised us that what we are doing is legal," said Angel Foster, MD, co-founder of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, which is among a handful of telehealth providers that facilitate abortions from afar in states with bans.

As more states consider enacting shield laws or expanding existing ones, whether one state can shield providers from liability for breaking another state's laws around abortion is still an unsettled area of law.

Erik Baptist, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which opposes abortion, said shield laws violate a constitutional requirement that states respect the laws and legal judgments of other states.

"What these shield law states are doing are undermining the prerogative of these pro-life states to implement and enforce pro-life laws," said Baptist, director of the group's Center for Life. "And so I think the Supreme Court ultimately will want to take this."

"That is inherently a challenge with shield laws and telehealth," said Carmel Shachar, faculty director of the Health Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School. "At a certain point, for the purposes of abortion bans, the courts will need to decide: Do we treat a telehealth abortion as happening within the state of the provider or within the state of the patient?"

Abortion Pills Sent to Your Home

Decades ago, the FDA approved the use of two prescription medicines -- mifepristone and misoprostol -- to terminate pregnancies.

But it wasn't until 2023 that telehealth abortions across states became more popular, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wadeopens in a new tab or window in 2022.

The Society of Family Planningopens in a new tab or window, which supports abortion rights, said that between April and June 2024 there were an average of 7,700 telehealth abortions performed each month in states that either ban abortion totally or after 6 weeks of pregnancy.

The prescribing process at telehealth clinics varies by provider, but usually takes place entirely online, with the patient answering a series of health-related questions and consent forms.

At some telehealth clinics, medical providers don't come face-to-face with patients, even via videoconferencing, and patients don't necessarily know the prescriber's name unless requested.

For instance, when Foster's clinic, also known as The MAP, puts pills in the mail, only the name of the practice appears on the label, as allowed under the Massachusetts shield law. If patients have follow-up questions, they can talk or text the doctor working that day, but may not know that doctor's name either.

Pills can arrive in less than a week.

"This has been the safety net, post-Dobbs, of allowing people who don't have the ability to travel out of state to get abortion care," said Greer Donley, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and abortion law expert.

When dealing with medications not related to abortion, doctors are often able to write prescriptions for patients in other states. However, in most states, if the patient is located within its borders, the doctor must have a license issued by that state, according to Mei Wa Kwong, executive director of the Center for Connected Health Policy.

States With Shield Laws

Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., currently have shield laws protecting abortion providers.

Of those, eight have specific provisions protecting them from criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits even if the patient is in another state, according to the nonprofit research organization KFF. They include California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

Louisiana's request to extradite Carpenter hit a roadblock when New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) rejected it, citing the state's shield law. (A county clerk also cited the shield law as he refused to file the civil judgmentopens in a new tab or window from Texas.)

"These are not doctors providing healthcare. They are drug dealers," Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill told state lawmakers as she promoted a bill that would expand who can sue and be sued in abortion medication cases. "They are violating our laws. They are sending illegal medications for purposes of procuring abortions that are illegal in our state."

Clinics Say They Will Keep Prescribing

Julie Kay, the executive director of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, the nationwide organization co-founded by Carpenter, said providers won't be "bullied and intimidated" into ceasing operations.

Other telehealth abortion providers said they also won't be deterred by legal threats.

"I have been working in this field for 25 years and this is part of the work," said Rebecca Gomperts, MD, PhD, founder and director of Aid Access, an abortion pill supplier. "It's something that we all anticipated would happen," she said of the legal challenges.

A doctor who is part of A Safe Choice, a network of California-based physicians that prescribes abortion pills to women in all 50 states, told the Associated Press he believes he is protected by the state's shield law, but is also taking precautions.

"I'm not going to be traveling outside of California for a very long time," said the doctor, who spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wanted to protect his identity for safety reasons.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/practicemanagement/telehealth/116032