Radically different
When Ben Sasse, a former U.S. senator (R-Neb.), learned he had metastatic pancreatic cancer, he quickly chose action over comfort. Whatever he could do to save his life, for as long as he could, he wanted to try it. Perhaps his only option, doctors told him, was to enroll in a clinical trial.
“If we were to have much of a chance of living longer than the three to four months they were giving us at that point, we were going to need to get into an aggressive trial,” Sasse told STAT last month.
Nature Medicine, Published online: 13 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-026-04382-x
Author Correction: Real-time surveillance system for patient deterioration: a pragmatic cluster-randomized controlled trial
In a bid toward greater transparency, the Food and Drug Administration sent reminder letters to more than 2,200 companies and researchers that they are required to report clinical trial results to a federal government database or they may face fines.
FDA officials disclosed that an internal analysis found results were not submitted for nearly 30% of studies that were “highly likely” to fall under mandatory reporting requirements. The agency also noted that the letters were sent to companies and researchers associated with more than 3,000 registered trials, some of which were publicly funded.
In explaining its move, the regulator acknowledged a long-standing complaint from researchers who have argued that without access to specific data, trial results cannot be easily duplicated, which inhibits greater understanding of how medicines might work. They also contend this can adversely affect treatment decisions and health care costs.
A federal judge has tossed one of the four pending civil lawsuits against HaloMD, a company that represents providers in No Surprises Act arbitration cases.
The ruling, which grants HaloMD’s motion to dismiss, represents a major win for the Texas-based middleman, which quickly rose to become the number one user of the federal arbitration process in the first half of 2025. The judge found that Anthem Blue Cross of California’s lawsuit failed to establish a legal basis for invalidating HaloMD’s arbitration wins against the company.
Lawsuits from four Blue Cross Blue Shield plans alleged that many of the disputes in which HaloMD prevailed weren’t actually eligible for arbitration. The lawsuits claimed to reveal a costly side effect of the process: Providers could potentially game the system to extract more money from health insurers for out-of-network services than they got before the surprise billing law passed.