First Edition: August 7, 2017
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
The Washington Post:
The First Affordable Care Act Enrollment Season Of The Trump Era Is Still A Mystery
As the fate of the Affordable Care Act dangled dramatically in the Senate last month, the Trump administration abruptly canceled contracts with two companies that have helped thousands of Americans in 18 cities find health plans under the law. The suspension of the $22 million contracts, which ends enrollment fairs and insurance sign-ups in public libraries, is one of the few public signs of how an administration eager to kill the law will run the ACA’s approaching fifth enrollment season. (Goldstein and Winfield Cunningham, 8/6)
Politico:
GOP Efforts To Stabilize Obamacare Markets Might Come Too Late
Republicans now say they want to stabilize the distressed Obamacare markets for 2018, but it may be too late. Insurers have warned for months that they need certainty from Washington in order to decide where they will sell Obamacare plans and how much to charge. But after months of fruitless repeal efforts and growing unease over White House threats about pulling funding and undermining the law, the damage may be done. Lawmakers can’t simply flip a bipartisan switch and pass a stabilization plan, particularly since they won’t return to Washington for a month. (Demko, 8/4)
The Associated Press:
McConnell To Consider Bipartisan Plan To Pay Health Insurers
A week after an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act failed, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he'd consider a bipartisan effort to continue payments to insurers to avert a costly rattling of health insurance markets. McConnell told reporters Saturday there is "still a chance" the Senate could revive the measure to repeal and replace "Obamacare," but he acknowledged the window for that is rapidly closing. (8/5)
Politico:
Tax Writers See Peril In Trump's Obamacare Persistence
Republicans acknowledge that the aggressive timeline they have set up for overhauling the tax code this fall leaves them little room for error. There could be one problem with that: Obamacare isn’t going away. ... That’s left key Senate tax writers frustrated that there’s potentially another issue to take precious time away from their tax reform efforts. (Becker and Lorenzo, 8/7)
The Associated Press:
Trump's Role Shifts To Caretaker As Health Repeal Stalls
With Republicans unable to advance a health care bill in Congress, President Donald Trump's administration may find itself in an awkward role as caretaker of the Affordable Care Act, which he still promises to repeal and replace. The Constitution says presidents "shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed." So as long as former President Barack Obama's law is on the books, that doesn't seem to leave much choice for Trump, even if he considers the law to be "a disaster." (8/7)
The Wall Street Journal:
Congressional Recess, Full Plate Keep The Heat On GOP Lawmakers
Congressional Republicans plan to use the next four weeks away from Washington making a public case for a sweeping rewrite of the tax code, an ambitious legislative undertaking they hope will heal divisions that opened when the party’s signature health-care bill collapsed. But at home in their districts, they face pressures that could make it hard to focus on taxes. Many of their constituents and party activists blame Congress, more than President Donald Trump, for the health-care stalemate and are pressing them to find a resolution. And before they can do anything, lawmakers face a load of time-sensitive fiscal business: hashing out a budget, funding the government and raising the federal debt limit. (Hughes and Hook, 8/6)
The Wall Street Journal:
Susan Collins Talks Health Care At Camp Kotok
Health insurance reform isn’t dead yet, said U.S. Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who cast one of the three pivotal GOP “no” votes that defeated her party’s efforts to repeal Obamacare. About a dozen Senators from both parties have met for three private dinners to talk about a potential compromise, Ms. Collins said Aug. 4 at Camp Kotok, an annual gathering in northern Maine of investors, asset managers and economists hosted by David Kotok. (Loder, 8/5)
The Associated Press:
Gov. LePage Stands By Criticism Of Senators Over Health Vote
Gov. Paul LePage said on Friday he is standing by an op-ed he wrote that slammed his state's two U.S. senators despite criticism from former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell. Mitchell, a Democrat who served as majority leader from 1989 to 1995, issued a rare public political statement Thursday in which he said Republican Sen. Susan Collins and independent Sen. Angus King were right to vote against a proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act. (8/4)
USA Today:
Troops At Risk For Suicide Not Getting Needed Care, Report Finds
Pentagon health care providers failed to perform critical follow-up for many troops diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome who also were at high risk for suicide, according to a new study released Monday by the RAND Corp. Just 30% of troops with depression and 54% with PTSD received appropriate care after they were deemed at risk of harming themselves. The report, commissioned by the Pentagon, looked at the cases of 39,000 troops who had been diagnosed in 2013 with depression, PTSD or both conditions. USA TODAY received an advance copy of the report. (Brook, 8/7)
The Washington Post:
FDA To Step Up Targeting Of Fentanyl, Other Synthetic Opioids At Postal Facilities
The Food and Drug Administration is strengthening efforts to detect opioids illegally entering the country through the mail, reflecting heightened concerns about the flood of synthetic fentanyl and similar drugs being shipped from China and elsewhere. Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, in internal remarks to a group of senior managers Thursday, said he was deploying about three dozen employees to international mail facilities run by the U.S. Postal Service to help detect and analyze suspicious packages, as well as to the FDA’s cybercrime and forensic-chemistry units. (McGinley, 8/4)
The Washington Post:
Maryland Fentanyl Deaths Surge Again In First Quarter Of 2017
The number of Maryland deaths related to fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid, surged in the first quarter of 2017, more than doubling from the first quarter of 2016, and making up the majority of drug-related overdose deaths in the state. Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene reported Friday that fentanyl-overdose fatalities jumped to 372 from January through March, up from 157 during the same period in 2016. Fentanyl and a related additive, carfentanil, which are increasingly common nationwide, can be 50 or 100 times more powerful than heroin. (Chason, 8/5)
The Associated Press:
Convicted ‘Pharma Bro’ Has An Image Problem, Lawyer Concedes
Martin Shkreli, the eccentric former pharmaceutical CEO notorious for a price-gouging scandal and for his snide “Pharma Bro” persona on social media, was convicted Friday on federal charges he deceived investors in a pair of failed hedge funds. A Brooklyn jury deliberated five days before finding Shkreli guilty on three of eight counts. He had been charged with securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. (Hays and Neumeister, 8/4)
The New York Times:
Gene Editing For ‘Designer Babies’? Highly Unlikely, Scientists Say
Now that science is a big step closer to being able to fiddle with the genes of a human embryo, is it time to panic? Could embryo editing spiral out of control, allowing parents to custom-order a baby with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s imagination or Usain Bolt’s speed? (Belluck, 8/4)
The New York Times:
Can Gene Editing Actually Do That?
This week, scientists reported that they had successfully edited harmful mutations out of genes in human embryos. It’s just the latest in a string of gene editing firsts facilitated by a system called Crispr-Cas9, which has enabled scientists, entrepreneurs -- even middle school students -- to snip, insert and delete genetic material with unprecedented precision and ease. (Murphy, 8/4)
The Associated Press:
California Speaker Recall Effort Reflects Democratic Tension
Democrats control every lever of power in California state government, and free from worrying about major losses to Republicans, they’re training fire instead on each other. The latest example is a recall effort against Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a strong progressive now targeted by party activists upset that he derailed a bill seeking government-funded health care for all. (8/5)
Reuters:
Illinois Fights Potential Hike In Disabled Care Funding
Illinois fought on Friday against a potential court order it contends could cost the state, which just ended an unprecedented budget impasse, as much as an additional $1 billion annually to care for developmentally disabled people. In arguments before U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, advocates for disabled people living outside of institutions said Illinois is violating a federal consent decree by failing to provide required services due to insufficient funding. (Pierog, 8/4)
Los Angeles Times:
What We Know About California's Largest Toxic Cleanup: Thousands Of L.A. County Homes Tainted With Lead
By this fall, California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control plans to begin removing lead-tainted soil from 2,500 residential properties near the shuttered Exide Technologies battery recycling plant in Vernon. The cleanup — the largest of its kind in California history — spans seven southeast Los Angeles County neighborhoods, where plant operations have threatened the health of an estimated 100,000 people. (Barboza and Poston, 8/6)
NPR:
South Texas Launches New Effort To Diagnose And Treat Tuberculosis
At San Antonio's largest homeless shelter, huge fans cool off the temporary residents. The courtyard can get crowded. One of the hundreds of nightly boarders is James Harrison. "I lost my apartment and had nowhere else to go," he explains. Like most people at Haven for Hope, Harrison, who is 55, doesn't plan on staying long. But while he's here, he's taking advantage of some free medical testing — a screening for dormant tuberculosis. (Rigby, 8/4)
NPR:
Better, Cheaper Alzheimer's Tests In The Works
Efforts to develop a treatment that stalls the memory-robbing devastation of Alzheimer's disease have so far been unsuccessful, but scientists are making strides in another important area: the development of better tests to tell who has the condition. Their aim is to develop more accurate, cheaper and less invasive tests to detect the biological markers of Alzheimer's-induced changes in the brain. (Wang, 8/4)
The Wall Street Journal:
Big Tobacco’s Next Big Thing? Tobacco
Big Tobacco is working on its next act, as cigarette sales decline around the world and once-breakneck growth from the first wave of e-cigarettes fades. Three of the world’s biggest tobacco firms are rolling out new, electronic tobacco-heating devices they say are healthier alternatives to traditional smoking, but feel more like puffing on a real cigarette. That is a sensation many smokers complain is missing from the wide array of electronic cigarettes currently on the market. (Chaudhuri, 8/6)
The Washington Post:
Kids With Ongoing Inexplicable Pain May Have Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. There Are Treatments
Angie Friesen didn’t think much of it when her sixth-grade daughter, Annelise, told her she’d hit her elbow on a desk at school. It wasn’t until about a week later, when Annelise complained of pain from her elbow down to her hand, that the mother of four took her daughter to the family doctor for an X-ray. Nothing was broken. (Vander Schaaff, 8/6)
The Washington Post:
How Talking To Yourself Can Help Scientists Understand The Brain
Do you talk to yourself? Don’t sweat it: Scientists say you’re not alone. And the ways in which you chatter to yourself, both in your head and out loud, are changing what neuroscientists know about the human brain. Writing in Scientific American, psychologist Charles Fernyhough reveals why we’re our best conversational partners. Scientists have only recently learned how to study self-talk — and it’s opening up exciting new avenues of research. (Blakemore, 8/5)
Los Angeles Times:
Rich And Powerful Figures Will Set USC Course In Wake Of Scandal, From Behind Closed Doors
How USC handles one of the biggest scandals in its history will be decided behind closed doors by a small group of wealthy and powerful people. Composed of 57 voting members, USC’s board of trustees includes noted philanthropists, accomplished alumni, Hollywood insiders and industrial tycoons. ... It is this elite group that is overseeing the investigation into how the university handled the case of former medical school dean Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito. The Times reported last month that Puliafito, while leading USC’s Keck School of Medicine, partied with a circle of addicts, prostitutes and other criminals who said he used drugs with them, including on campus. (Kohli, Parvini, Hamilton and Elmahrek, 8/6)
The Associated Press:
Doctor Told To Stop Marketing 3-Person Baby Technique
U.S. regulators on Friday warned a New York fertility doctor to stop marketing an experimental procedure that uses DNA from three people — a mother, a father and an egg donor — to avoid certain genetic diseases. The doctor, John Zhang, used the technique to help a Jordanian couple have a baby boy last year. (Johnson, 8/4)
The Associated Press:
Nurse Pleads Guilty To Secretly Filming Female Patients
Authorities say a Pennsylvania nurse has pleaded guilty to secretly filming unclothed female patients as they underwent medical procedures. Bucks County prosecutors say 45-year-old James Close admitted Friday that he videotaped the women, including a 17-year-old girl, during dermatology treatments at Penn Medicine in Yardley. (8/4)