First Edition: June 6, 2018
Kaiser Health News:
Price Check On Drug Ads: Would Revealing Costs Help Patients Control Spending?
President Donald Trump wants to control spending on drugs. One of his big ideas: include prices in advertisements, just like warnings about side effects. That’s not as simple as it sounds. Apart from legal questions about whether the Food and Drug Administration has the authority to require pricing in ads, other uncertainties arise. For example, what is the right number to use? (Appleby and Lupkin, 6/5)
Kaiser Health News:
Medicare Financial Outlook Worsens
A senior government official briefing reporters attributed the worsened outlook for Medicare to several factors that are reducing funding and increasing spending. He said the trustees projected lower wages for several years, which will mean lower payroll taxes, which help fund the program. The recent tax cut passed by Congress would also result in fewer Social Security taxes paid into the hospital trust fund, as some higher-income seniors pay taxes on their Social Security benefits. The aging population is also putting pressure on the program’s finances. (Galewitz, 6/5)
The New York Times:
Medicare’s Trust Fund Is Set To Run Out In 8 Years. Social Security, 16.
The financial outlook for Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund deteriorated in the last year, and Social Security still faces serious long-term financial problems, the Trump administration said on Tuesday. The projections are the first from the administration since President Trump signed a $1.5 trillion tax cut into law in December. They show no sign that a burst of economic growth will significantly improve the finances of the government’s largest entitlement programs. (Pear, 6/5)
The Associated Press:
Trustees Report Warns Medicare Finances Worsening
The report from program trustees says Medicare will become insolvent in 2026 — three years earlier than previously forecast. Its giant trust fund for inpatient care won't be able to fully cover projected medical bills starting at that point. The report says Social Security will become insolvent in 2034 — no change from the projection last year. The warning serves as a reminder of major issues still languishing while Washington plunges deeper into partisan strife. Because of the deterioration in Medicare's finances, officials said the Trump administration will be required by law to send Congress a plan next year to address the problems, after the president's budget is submitted. (Alonso-Zaldivar and Taylor, 6/5)
USA Today:
Medicare, Social Security Face Money Challenges, Affordable Care Act
Trustees said the trust fund for hospital expenses is not sufficiently financed over the next decade. That's in part due to lower payroll taxes because of lower wages and lower Social Security benefit taxes, the trustees said. Spending was also projected to be somewhat higher than last year’s estimates due to legislative changes that led to higher hospital and Medicare Advantage payments. (O'Donnell and Alltucker, 6/5)
The Washington Post:
A Crucial Medicare Trust Fund Will Run Out Three Years Earlier Than Predicted, New Report Says
Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, called on Congress to embrace Medicare proposals in President Trump’s budget, saying that they “would strengthen the integrity of the Medicare program.” Along with strategies to try to slow spending on prescription drugs, one proposal would shift responsibility for uncompensated care payments from the Medicare program to the Treasury. The annual reckoning of the stability of the nation’s two largest entitlement programs amplifies earlier warnings that both are unsustainable over time. It also urges Congress to revise the programs to ward off the shortfalls soon to “minimize adverse impacts” on the tens of millions of elderly and other vulnerable people who rely on the government help. (Goldstein, 6/5)
The Wall Street Journal:
Social Security Expected To Dip Into Its Reserves This Year
The nation’s aging population is boosting the costs of Social Security and Medicare, while revenue gains lag due to slower growth in the economy and the labor force. About 61.5 million people receive retirement or disability benefits from Social Security and 58.4 million receive Medicare. (Harrison, 6/5)
Politico:
Medicare To Go Broke Three Years Earlier Than Expected, Trustees Say
President Donald Trump has avoided major changes to Medicare or Social Security after promising not to cut them during the campaign. Trump has argued a growing economy would forestall cuts to the programs, but today’s report underscored the financial challenges facing the nation‘s entitlements as more baby boomers reach eligibility age. The Medicare trust fund only pays for Part A, which covers hospitalizations. The other main pieces of the program, covering physician visits, outpatient services and prescription drugs, are paid for primarily with general fund revenues. (Demko, 6/5)
Modern Healthcare:
Insurers Downplay Mandate Repeal's Effect, But Still Raise Premiums
Even health insurers that don't expect many of their plan members to drop insurance coverage after the individual mandate penalty is zeroed out still may have to raise individual market premiums in 2019 as their payments from the ACA's risk adjustment program change thanks to the mandate loss. Buffalo, N.Y.-based insurer Independent Health doesn't expect a large number of its 5,000 ACA exchange members to drop their coverage when the individual mandate penalty is effectively repealed starting in 2019. Its population skews older and sicker, and most members need their insurance coverage. Its average member is about 49 years old, and about half receive federal premium subsidies. (Livingston, 6/5)
The Associated Press:
Republican Advances In California Primary With Trump's Help
John Cox, a Republican business owner who has tried and failed for nearly two decades to win elected office, snagged a spot in the November runoff for California governor with the help of President Donald Trump, but that support could hurt him in the winner-take-all race with Democrat Gavin Newsom. Cox got about a quarter of the votes counted so far in Tuesday's election to easily outdistance former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for second to Newsom, who won by a comfortable margin. Cox had been struggling to break clear of fellow Republican Travis Allen until Trump tweeted his endorsement two weeks ago — 273 characters that rallied the president's fans but set up a hyper-partisan battle with Newsom. (Cooper, 6/6)
The New York Times:
Gavin Newsom And John Cox To Compete In California Election For Governor
“It looks like voters will have a real choice this November — between a governor who is going to stand up to Donald Trump and a foot soldier in his war on California,” Mr. Newsom told hundreds of supporters at a San Francisco nightclub, as he pledged to push for guaranteed health care for all and “a Marshall Plan for affordable housing.” Mr. Cox, speaking to friends and donors in San Diego, continually painted Mr. Newsom as “part of the status quo” and knocked the Democrat's attacks on Mr. Trump. (Nagourney and Burns, 6/6)
The Associated Press:
Walker Emphasizes Health Insurance Plan In Latest Ad
Gov. Scott Walker's latest television ad released Tuesday features a doctor touting the Republican's support for a plan to stabilize the health insurance market but ignores his yearslong attempt to undercut the federal law designed to broaden access to insurance coverage. Democrats accuse Walker of being a hypocrite for supporting the plan to stabilize insurance markets after he's spent years trying to repeal the federal health care law championed by President Barack Obama. (Bauer, 6/5)
Reuters:
Voters In Opioid-Plagued Districts Demand Solutions From Candidates
Voters in this struggling Rust Belt region in upstate New York, backed Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, hoping he could help turn back a relentless tide of factory and business closures. But the starkest symptom of decline there - an opioid epidemic that has claimed the lives of hundreds in and around the city of Binghamton - rages on, and voters are demanding that candidates for public office address the loss of life. (Gibson, 6/5)
The Hill:
Senate Panel Schedules Vote On Controversial Drug Pricing Bill
The Senate Judiciary Committee announced Tuesday that is is moving ahead this week on a controversial bill aimed at lowering drug prices. The bill, known as the Creates Act, seeks to crack down on drug companies using tactics to delay the introduction of cheaper generic drugs onto the market. It has been stalled for months amid intense opposition from pharmaceutical companies, despite being sponsored by members of both parties. (Sullivan, 6/5)
Stat:
Momentum Grows To Resurrect Bill Aimed At Bringing Generics To Market
Part of that momentum comes as branded drug makers, who had initially pushed back on the legislation, have relaxed their outright opposition to the measure, according to lobbyists both for branded drug makers and for other industries that support the legislation. Increasingly, they believe some version of the bill could offset the costs associated with another policy they hope to achieve soon: a change to the formula associated with costs for Medicare beneficiaries who reach the so-called “donut hole” of prescription drug coverage. (Mershon, 6/5)
Stat:
A New Cost-Shifting Maneuver Is Causing Average Net Prices For Drugs To Fall
The growing use of copay accumulators — a new weapon against widely used but controversial copay assistance cards that drug makers distribute to consumers — is causing average net prices for medicines to fall, according to a new analysis. In the first quarter of 2018, net prices after concessions made by drug makers declined 5.6 percent, compared with a 1.7 percent drop in the corresponding quarter a year ago. This occurred even though increases in average wholesale — or list — prices more or less held steady at 6.2 percent versus 6.8 percent in the first quarter of 2017, according to Sector & Sovereign Research, which tracks the pharmaceutical industry. (Silverman, 6/5)
Stat:
Axovant Makes A Bet On Gene Therapy. Is Wall Street Ready To Forgive?
If you bet $100 on Axovant Sciences nine months ago, you’re down 93 bucks. But the biotech company best known for a blowup rivaling bitcoin wants a second chance, and on Wednesday is unveiling new management and a new drug it believes can win investors back over. Axovant, founded by biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, is pivoting to gene therapy. The company paid $30 million up front for a one-time treatment Axovant believes could change the lives of patients with Parkinson’s disease. (Garde, 6/6)
CQ:
House Appropriators Back Extra $1.1 Billion For Veterans Care
House Republicans late Tuesday signaled that they were open to putting at least $1.1 billion more into veterans health care funding when the chamber takes up a three-bill "minibus" spending package this week. It’s not clear whether the GOP is planning to cut other programs to offset the increase, which would address an unanticipated shortfall in 2019 after the passage of a major overhaul of private care access for veterans (S 2372). President Donald Trump is expected to sign that bill on Wednesday. (Mejdrich, 6/5)
Stat:
FDA Targets Websites Illegally Marketing Opioids
The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday morning outlined a framework for cracking down on illegal opioid sales on the internet. Hours later, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb delivered results: a list of nine online operators, running a combined 53 websites, to which it had sent formal warnings for having engaged in illegal marketing and sales of highly controlled opioid painkillers. “The FDA is taking additional steps to protect U.S. consumers from illicit opioids by targeting the websites that illegally market them and other illicit drugs,” Gottlieb said in a statement. “The internet is virtually awash in illegal narcotics and we’re going to be taking new steps to work with legitimate internet firms to voluntarily crack down on these sales.” (Facher and Swetlitz, 6/5)
The Hill:
FDA Cracks Down On Online Sales Of Unapproved Opioids
The FDA warned 53 websites Tuesday that they must stop "illegally marketing potentially dangerous, unapproved and misbranded versions of opioid medications," including tramadol and oxycodone. "The internet is virtually awash in illegal narcotics and we’re going to be taking new steps to work with legitimate internet firms to voluntarily crack down on these sales," FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. Gottlieb warned that it will take action against firms whose websites "deliberately break the law." (Hellmann, 6/5)
The Associated Press:
White House Drops Plan To Cut Ebola Funding
Seeking to revive a $15 billion plan to pare back spending that has languished on Capitol Hill, the White House on Tuesday dropped a proposal to cut $252 million in leftover funding to fight the Ebola virus in Africa. The move came as President Donald Trump took to Twitter to pitch the package of spending cuts, which still faces an uphill struggle in Congress. "The HISTORIC Rescissions Package we've proposed would cut $15,000,000,000 in Wasteful Spending! We are getting our government back on track," Trump tweeted. (Taylor, 6/5)
The Hill:
White House Walks Back Proposal To Cut Ebola Funds
The proposal was part of a broader package the Trump administration sent to Congress last month aimed at rescinding $15 billion in unspent funding Congress appropriated years ago. But public health groups and Democrats raised an uproar, pointing at the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that has killed 27 people. The $252 million is all that's left from the $5.4 billion in emergency funding appropriated in 2015. (Hellmann, 6/5)
Reuters:
U.S. Sets Up Task Force Over Unexplained Diplomatic Health Incidents
The United States has set up a task force to help coordinate a response to unexplained health problems affecting a number of U.S. diplomats and their relatives in Cuba and China, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement on Tuesday. The group, set up on May 23, will handle "identification and treatment of affected personnel and family members, investigation and risk mitigation, messaging, and diplomatic outreach" for the 25 U.S. government workers and family members confirmed to have been affected so far, the statement said. (Heavey and Landay, 6/5)
The Associated Press:
From Shrieks In Bucket To Laughs, Brazil Zika Baby Improves
It's 3:30 a.m., and Jose Wesley Campos giggles nonstop as his mother plays with the toddler's thick glasses while preparing to take him to a doctor's appointment three hours away. "Sometimes, it is as if he swallowed a clown," said his mother, Solange Ferreira. That is a stark contrast from a few years ago, when Jose, who was born with an abnormally small head amid an outbreak of the Zika virus in northeast Brazil, would shriek uncontrollably. Desperate, Ferreira would calm the boy by putting him in a bucket of water. (6/6)
The Associated Press:
Some Brazil 'Zika Kids' Try School, Others Fight To Survive
On Tuesdays, 18-month-old Joaquim Santos spends an hour sitting by himself in a corner of a special needs classroom in this small city in northeast Brazil, one of the country's poorest regions and one hit hard by the Zika virus. Two harried teachers look on as other toddlers play around Joaquim, who has severe developmental delays after being born with a small head. As limited as Joaquim is in the early education classroom, his family and doctors say he is lucky to be there. (6/6)
The Associated Press:
A Look At Zika And Its Link To Microcephaly
Three years ago, Brazil experienced a major Zika outbreak that led to the revelation that the virus can cause severe birth defects in babies whose mothers were infected during pregnancy. Here's a look at what scientists know today about Zika and its effect on developing fetuses. (6/6)
Stat:
Genealogy Site MyHeritage Says 92 Million User Accounts Compromised
MyHeritage, one of the nation’s most popular online genealogy sites, said a security breach had affected the email addresses and hashed passwords of 92 million users, raising concerns about the security of more sensitive data that the company collects. The website allows users to create family trees, search historical records, and look for possible relatives. It also operates MyHeritage DNA, a genetic testing service that lets users to send in their spit and have their genetic information analyzed. (Thielking, 6/5)
The Hill:
Top Health Lawmakers Voice Concern About HHS's Implementation Of Cyber Law
A bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers are raising concerns about how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is implementing a cyber law that aims to boost security by providing digital threat data. In a letter on Tuesday, the top lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee pressed HHS Secretary Alex Azar to provide more information about executing the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA). (Beavers, 6/5)
Los Angeles Times:
Designer Kate Spade's Death Renews Conversation About Mental Health Awareness
The death of Kate Spade has renewed discussions of mental health awareness, with celebrities mourning the fashion designer’s death with missives about depression and suicide prevention. Spade, whose colorful handbags, bold prints and cheerful sayings once dominated American fashion, was found dead on Tuesday in her New York apartment in an apparent suicide, according to the Associated Press. A former accessories editor at the now-defunct magazine Mademoiselle, Spade founded her fashion label in 1993 with her husband, Andy, who was involved with his own fashion label, Jack Spade, and now has the branding venture, Partners & Spade. (Saad and Paniogue, 6/5)
The New York Times:
A Promising Cancer Treatment Made Patients Worse, Not Better
Drugs that activate the immune system to fight cancer have brought remarkable recoveries to many people in recent years. But one of those drugs seems to have had the opposite effect on three patients with an uncommon blood cancer who were taking part in a study. After a single treatment, their disease quickly became much worse, doctors reported in a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine. (Grady, 6/5)
NPR:
ASCO: Less Can Be More For Cancer Treatment
For many years, the death rate from cancer climbed steadily, and the focus of big cancer meetings was the quest for better treatments to bring malignancies under control. Cancer death rates have been falling in recent decades, and that's allowed researchers to ask another important question: Are some people getting too much treatment for their cancers? The answer, from the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago these past few days, is an emphatic yes. (Harris, 6/5)
The New York Times:
Do You Have The Right Stuff To Be A Stool Donor?
Wanted: fecal matter from healthy adults with a regular constitution and a good heart. Screening is rigorous. Reimbursement is modest but can add up for those willing to make daily donations of waste that would otherwise be flushed away. Fecal transplants are being used increasingly to treat Clostridium difficile, an often intractable and debilitating bacterial infection. The potential for expanding the therapeutic applications of fecal transplants sent Canadian researchers on a quest to pinpoint what precisely motivates stool donors and how they might recruit more volunteers. (Rabin, 6/5)
NPR:
A Clinic Creating 3-Parent-Babies In Ukraine Stirs Controversy
In a clinic on a side street in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, doctors are doing something that, as far as is publicly known, is being done nowhere else in the world: Using DNA from three different people to create babies for women who are infertile. "If you can help these families to achieve their own babies, why it must be forbidden?" Valery Zukin, director of the Nadiya Clinic, asks as he peers over his glasses. "It is a dream to want to have a genetic connection with a baby." (Stein, 6/6)
The New York Times:
Weight Training May Help To Ease Or Prevent Depression
Lifting weights might also lift moods, according to an important new review of dozens of studies about strength training and depression. It finds that resistance exercise often substantially reduces people’s gloom, no matter how melancholy they feel at first, or how often — or seldom — they actually get to the gym and lift. There already is considerable evidence that exercise, in general, can help to both stave off and treat depression. A large-scale 2016 review that involved more than a million people, for instance, concluded that being physically fit substantially reduces the risk that someone will develop clinical depression. Other studies and reviews have found that exercise also can reduce symptoms of depression in people who have been given diagnoses of the condition. (Reynolds, 6/6)
The Associated Press:
Transgender Librarian Files Suit Over Alaska Health Policy
A transgender woman filed a discrimination lawsuit Tuesday against the state of Alaska, saying she was denied coverage for medically necessary surgical treatment. The federal lawsuit, filed on behalf of Jennifer Fletcher, claimed the state health insurance plan excludes coverage for surgical treatment for gender dysphoria. (6/5)
The Associated Press:
Mom Who Starved Autistic Son Sentenced To 11 Years In Prison
A Connecticut mother who withheld food from her autistic teenage son until he died weighing just 84 pounds was sentenced Tuesday to 11 years in prison. Katiria Tirado, 34, of Hartford, was also sentenced to five years of probation by a judge who said the mother "failed to provide her son with the basics necessary for life." (6/5)
The Associated Press:
Florida Judge Lifts Stay On Smokable Medical Marijuana
Floridians allowed to use medical marijuana are one step closer to being able to smoke it. Leon County circuit court Judge Karen Gievers on Tuesday lifted a stay on her May 25 ruling that the Florida Legislature's provision banning smokable medical marijuana is unconstitutional. The state's Department of Health had filed an appeal of Gievers' ruling, which automatically put it on hold. Attorney John Morgan and two patients with terminal illnesses then filed an appeal of that stay. (6/5)
The Washington Post:
Windell Boutté: Georgia Doctor Who Rapped And Danced During Plastic Surgeries Was Negligent, Lawsuits Say
Icilma Cornelius was weeks away from her wedding in 2016 when she visited a gleaming brick medical office atop a hill in suburban Atlanta, home of the practice of Windell Davis Boutté, a dermatologist who describes herself as a “nationally and internationally known” cosmetic surgeon. Cornelius, then 54, had gone in to inquire about Botox and other anti-aging facial fillers, according to court documents. But while there, Boutté and the staff reportedly persuaded Cornelius to return for several cosmetic surgeries before her nuptials: A standard panniculectomy would remove fat and skin from her lower abdomen, and “SmartLipo,” a type of laser liposuction, would remove fat from her upper abdomen, love handles, bra roll, lower back and upper third of her buttocks. (Wang, 6/5)