First Edition: March 19, 2018
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
Kaiser Health News:
With Some Republican Support, Virginia Edges Closer To Medicaid Expansion
Virginia is among 18 states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. But this year, the state legislature is closer to enacting expansion than it has been in the past, and the issue will be the sticking point as the legislature goes into a special session next month to hash out its budget. Republican Del. Barry Knight from the Virginia Beach area calls it “the 800-pound gorilla in the room.” He’s one of more than a dozen Republicans who voted to include Medicaid expansion in the House budget — along with a work requirement — this year. (Pauly, 3/16)
Kaiser Health News:
Docs Worry There’s ‘Nowhere To Send’ New And Expectant Moms With Depression
Lawmakers in California will begin debate next month on a bill that would require doctors to screen new moms for mental health problems — once while they’re pregnant and again after they give birth. But many obstetricians and pediatricians bristle at the idea, saying they are afraid to screen new moms for depression and anxiety. “What are you going to do with those people who screen positive?” said Dr. Laura Sirott, an OB-GYN who practices in Pasadena. “Some providers have nowhere to send them.” (Dembosky, 3,19)
Politico:
AIDS Researcher Favored To Be Next CDC Chief
Robert Redfield, an HIV/AIDS expert at the University of Maryland Medical Center, is being vetted by the Trump administration to run the CDC, five individuals with knowledge of the situation tell POLITICO. Redfield emerged this week as the favored choice to replace former CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald, who resigned in late January after POLITICO reported she had traded tobacco, drug and food stocks while heading the public health agency. (Diamond, 3/16)
The New York Times:
AIDS Researcher Top Candidate To Lead The C.D.C.
A formal announcement about the candidate, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, could come as early as Tuesday, once the vetting has been finished, said an administration official with knowledge of the appointment, who was not authorized to speak publicly. The review process is likely to be thorough. President Trump’s first C.D.C. director, Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, resigned in January after about six months amid reports that she held investments in tobacco and health care companies that posed potential conflicts of interest. (Kaplan, 3/17)
The Washington Post:
Top Candidate To Lead CDC Is An HIV/AIDS Researcher
The CDC director’s job has been vacant since Jan. 31, when former Georgia public health commissioner Brenda Fitzgerald resigned after serving only half a year. She was unable to divest from “complex financial interests” in a “definitive time period,” according to a statement from the Health and Human Services Department. Fitzgerald had also purchased shares in a tobacco company shortly after becoming CDC director. HHS Secretary Alex Azar accepted her resignation two days after he was sworn in. (Sun, 3/16)
The Associated Press:
Shutdown Looming, Congress And White House Seek Budget Deal
Congressional leaders and the White House are pressing to strike an accord on a $1.3 trillion catchall spending bill, though disputes remain over immigration, abortion and a massive rail project that pits President Donald Trump against his most powerful Democratic adversary. An agreement by Monday would pave the way for a House vote on Wednesday. Action is needed by midnight Friday to avert another government shutdown. (3/19)
Politico:
Obamacare Insurers Just Had Their Best Year Ever — Despite Trump
Obamacare is no longer busting the bank for insurers. After three years of financial bloodletting under the law — and despite constant repeal threats and efforts by the Trump administration to dismantle it — many of the remaining insurers made money on individual health plans for the first time last year, according to a POLITICO analysis of financial filings for 29 regional Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, often the dominant player in their markets. (Demko, 3/17)
The Washington Post:
Former FDA Commissioners Say Right-To-Try Bills Could Endanger ‘Vulnerable Patients’
Four former commissioners of the Food and Drug Administration are expressing opposition to congressional “right to try” legislation, just as Republican House leaders prepare to bring a bill up for another vote a week after it failed to pass. The legislation is designed to allow seriously ill patients to bypass the FDA to get access to experimental treatments. The former agency commissioners, in a joint statement provided to The Washington Post, criticize both House and Senate proposals. (McGinley, 3/18)
The New York Times:
Louise Slaughter, 88, 16-Term Liberal Congresswoman, Is Dead
Louise M. Slaughter, a liberal Democrat who represented an upstate New York district in Congress for more than three decades, pushing to protect health privacy and abortion rights and playing a key role in the passage of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, died on Friday in Washington. She was 88 and in the midst of her 16th term in the House. In announcing her death, at George Washington University Hospital, her chief of staff, Liam Fitzsimmons, said Ms. Slaughter had sustained an injury last week at her home in Washington. (Fried, 3/16)
Reuters:
Louise Slaughter, Longtime Progressive New York Congresswoman, Dies At 88
"Congresswoman Slaughter embodied the very best of the American spirit and ideals," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said. "With her passing, the Congressional community has lost a beloved leader and a cherished friend." (Mitchell and Cornwell, 3/16)
The Wall Street Journal:
New York Rep. Louise Slaughter Dies
In 2007, Ms. Slaughter became the first woman to chair the Rules panel, where she helped shepherd Democratic bills through the House, including the Affordable Care Act, which was enacted in 2010. She wrote an early version of the Stock Act, which banned members from trading stocks based on nonpublic, market-moving information they learned while serving in Congress. The law was enacted in 2012. (Andrews, 3/16)
The Associated Press:
Trump Opioid Plan Includes Death Penalty For Traffickers
President Donald Trump’s plan to combat opioid drug addiction nationwide calls for stiffer penalties for drug traffickers, including the death penalty where appropriate under current law. That from a top administration official. It’s a fate for drug dealers that Trump, who aims to be seen as tough on crime, has been highlighting publicly in recent weeks. (Superville, 3/19)
The Washington Post:
Trump Administration To Seek Stiffer Penalties Against Drug Dealers, Reduce Opioid Prescribing
Administration officials said Sunday that the measures are part of a three-pronged approach to fighting the opioid epidemic, which killed tens of thousands of people in 2016. The White House said it aims to reduce the demand for opioids by slowing overprescribing, cutting off the supply of illicit drugs and helping those who are addicted. “The opioid crisis is viewed by us at the White House as a nonpartisan problem searching for a bipartisan solution,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said. (Zezima, 3/18)
The Wall Street Journal:
Trump’s Opioid Battle Plan Includes Seeking More Death-Penalty Prosecutions
Other elements of the strategy, the White House said, would include a fresh public-awareness campaign about drug abuse, a research-and-development partnership between the National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical companies into opioid prescription alternatives, tougher sentences for fentanyl traffickers, and screening of all prison inmates for opioid addiction. But it is the death penalty proposal that is likely to dominate discussion of the package. (Radnofsky, 3/18)
Politico:
White House Tweaks Plan To Seek Death Penalty As Part Of Opioid Response
“The Department of Justice will seek the death penalty against drug traffickers when appropriate under current law,” said Andrew Bremberg, the White House’s director of the Domestic Policy Council. White House officials referred follow-up questions to DOJ. An earlier version of the plan, obtained by POLITICO last week, would have called for the death penalty in some cases involving drug dealers, too. (Diamond, 3/18)
The New York Times:
5 Doctors Are Charged With Taking Kickbacks For Fentanyl Prescriptions
In March of 2013, Gordon Freedman, a doctor on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, fielded a request from a regional sales manager for the manufacturer of Subsys, a spray form of the highly addictive painkiller fentanyl. Dr. Freedman was already a top prescriber of Subsys and also one of the company’s paid promotional speakers. Now the sales manager was telling him the company, Insys Therapeutics, would increase the amount of money it was paying him and asked that he increase the number of new patients he was prescribing Subsys. (Weiser and Thomas, 3/16)
The Associated Press:
Q&A: Holding Drugmakers Accountable for the Opioid Crisis
Hundreds of communities in the U.S. are suing the makers and distributors of opioid painkillers, arguing that the companies should help pay the enormous costs of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history. Since 2000, more than 340,000 Americans have died from overdoses of opioids, which include prescription painkillers and illegal drugs like heroin. The financial toll has been estimated at $500 billion in 2015, according to the latest White House figures, which include deaths, health care, lost productivity and criminal justice costs. (Perrone, 3/18)
The New York Times:
Palliative Care Film Challenges Stereotypes About Opioids
“Hippocratic,” a documentary about the life of Dr. M.R. Rajagopal, India’s leading advocate of palliative care, is now touring the United States — a country where attitudes toward pain relief have changed because of the overdose epidemic. Dr. Rajagopal’s chief message — and that of the film — is that the essence of care for the dying is simple compassion. His inspiration came from Mahatma Gandhi, said Dr. Rajagopal, who in 2014 won a global award from Human Rights Watch for his activism. (McNeil, 3/16)
The Associated Press:
Report: Abortion Is Safe But Barriers Reduce Quality Of Care
Abortions in the U.S. are very safe but getting one without facing delays and false medical information depends on where women live, says a broad examination of the nation's abortion services. Friday's report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine shows abortion increasingly is performed early in pregnancy, when it's safest. The risk of maternal death is higher from tonsillectomies, colonoscopies and childbirth, according to the independent panel, which advises the government on scientific issues. (Neergaard, 3/16)
The Washington Post:
5 Interesting Findings About U.S. Abortions From A New Report On The Current Science
“In many states, regulations have created barriers to safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable abortion services,” they write. “The regulations often prohibit qualified providers from providing services, misinform women of the risks of the procedures they are considering, overrule women’s and clinician’s medical decision-making, or require medically unnecessary services and delays in care.” (Cha, 3/16)
Los Angeles Times:
The National Academies Take A Hard Look At The Safety And Quality Of Abortion Care In The U.S.
The roughly 200-page report on the safety and quality of abortion care could provide guidance to policymakers and medical practitioners looking for ways to best serve patients' needs. (Khan, 3/16)
NPR:
Abortion in U.S. Is Safe, According To Report By National Academies
"I would say the main takeaway is that abortions that are provided in the United States are safe and effective," says Ned Calonge, the co-chair of the committee that wrote the study. He is an associate professor of family medicine and epidemiology at the University of Colorado and CEO of The Colorado Trust. Calonge says the researchers found that about 90 percent of all abortions happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. And complications for all abortions are "rare," the report says. (Kodjak, 3/16)
The Associated Press:
Judge Upholds Mississippi Mandate On Doctors Who Do Abortion
A federal judge is upholding part of a Mississippi law that says doctors who perform abortions must be board-certified or board-eligible in obstetrics and gynecology. The 2012 law also says doctors doing abortions must have hospital admitting privileges. However, U.S. District Judge Dan Jordan blocked Mississippi from enforcing that portion of the law in 2012 after the state's only abortion clinic sued. (3/16)
Stat:
What Will Become Of The Man Who Helped Build Theranos?
Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani is a virtual ghost — despite serving nearly seven years in the No. 2 position at the blood-testing startup that turned out to be too good to be true. While the black-turtleneck-clad [Elizabeh] Holmes graced magazine covers and spoke before adoring crowds, Balwani, her former boyfriend, stayed in the shadows. He has almost no internet presence, and the only verifiable photo that STAT could find of him was a grainy image from his 1988 college yearbook. Now, he’s at the center of a legal showdown that could tear open a new chapter in a scandal that has rocked the business world and captivated the public imagination. And it could set up a daytime-TV legal defense: My ex-girlfriend duped me. (Robbins, Garde and Feuerstein, 3/19)
The New York Times:
Federal Agency Courted Alcohol Industry To Fund Study On Benefits Of Moderate Drinking
It was going to be a study that could change the American diet, a huge clinical trial that might well deliver all the medical evidence needed to recommend a daily alcoholic drink as part of a healthy lifestyle. That was how two prominent scientists and a senior federal health official pitched the project during a presentation at the luxurious Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2014. And the audience members who were being asked to help pay for the $100 million study seemed receptive: They were all liquor company executives. (Rabin, 3/17)
The Washington Post:
Colorectal Cancer Month Draws Attention To Deadly And Silent Disease
Pop quiz: What’s the third most common cancer?If you’re stumped, you’re not alone. The answer is colorectal cancer, a type of cancer that can be silent. Yet it’s the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. March is Colorectal Cancer Month, so it’s a good time to brush up on your knowledge about symptoms and screenings. (Blakemore, 3/18)
The Wall Street Journal:
Sulston’s Work On Lowly Worm Led To Major Role In Mapping Human Genome
The nematode worm known as C. elegans is only a millimeter long and leads what appears to be a fairly dull existence. It eats bacteria, wriggles around and reaches adulthood in three days. “It consists basically of two tubes, one inside the other,” the English biologist John Sulston wrote in a memoir. Although some colleagues thought he was wasting time, Dr. Sulston for years spent up to eight hours a day peering through microscopes at these worms. His findings on the genetics of worms won him a Nobel Prize for physiology in 2002. (Hagerty, 3/16)
NPR:
Marijuana's Secondhand Smoke Poses Risks To Heart And Lungs
The inspiration arrived in a haze at a Paul McCartney concert a few years ago in San Francisco. "People in front of me started lighting up and then other people started lighting up," says Matthew Springer, a biologist and professor in the division of cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco. "And for a few naive split seconds I was thinking to myself, 'Hey, they can't smoke in AT&T Park! I'm sure that's not allowed.' And then I realized that it was all marijuana." (Ortega-Welch, 3/19)
The New York Times:
The Struggle To Build A Massive ‘Biobank’ Of Patient Data
This spring, the National Institutes of Health will start recruiting participants for one of the most ambitious medical projects ever envisioned. The goal is to find one million people in the United States, from all walks of life and all racial and ethnic groups, who are willing to have their genomes sequenced, and to provide their medical records and regular blood samples. (Kolata, 3/19)
Los Angeles Times:
Erasing Stephen Hawking's Disability Erases An Important Part Of Who He Was
In the days since Stephen Hawking's death, obituaries have described him as being "confined" or "chained" to a wheelchair, as someone who "overcame" his disability and succeeded in spite of it. None of those things are true. Stephen Hawking had a disability, and Stephen Hawking used a wheelchair. His work was possible because of those things, not in spite of them. (Roy, 3/16)
The New York Times:
Take This App and Call Me in the Morning
Health tech companies are making a big push to digitize medicine, introducing novel tools like digital pills that track when patients take their drugs and smart spoons that can automatically adjust to hand tremors.Now they want some patients to get prescription treatments from the app store as well. Later this year, doctors treating patients addicted to substances like cocaine and amphetamines will be able to prescribe Reset, an app that gives patients lessons to help them modify their behavior. The Food and Drug Administration cleared it in September as the first mobile medical app to help treat substance-use disorders. (Singer, 3/18)
The Washington Post:
Alexander Disease Afflicts Their Little Boy, And A Family Fights Back
Laura and Josh Ledbetter know they have only have a few years left, at the most, until their 5-year-old son, Grayson, dies. A year ago, Grayson was diagnosed with Alexander disease, an extremely rare type of leukodystrophy that destroys the white matter that protects the nerve fibers in the brain, resulting in debilitating mental and physical delays, and in most cases, death by age 10. It’s a disease so rare that only about 500 cases have been reported since 1949. (Moss, 3/17)
The Washington Post:
Can A 1-Year-Old Reason Like A Scientist? Yes, New Research Concludes.
In intriguing research, a team of scientists may have discovered the earliest age at which a person can reason logically: 12 months .For decades, psychologists have considered language a necessary and essential indicator of inferential thinking — the complex ability to “read between the lines,” to reason one’s way to a correct interpretation of an event when the evidence is not obvious. As recently as 2014, experiments by prominent developmental psychologists suggested such thinking began between 3 and 5 years of age. (Nutt, 3/17)
The Washington Post:
Swallowing Hurt, Her Digestion Was Bad, And Doctors Didn't Know Why
Jill Sherrill stepped on the scale at her gym and blanched. Her weight had slipped, again. In the previous 10 months, Sherrill, who is 5-foot-5, had lost 22 pounds without trying. Her friends had urged her to consult her doctor about worsening digestive problems, but for a variety of reasons Sherrill had opted to treat herself. But on that day in August 2015, the reading — 112 pounds — “scared me to death. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I’m dying,’ ” she recalled. (Boodman, 3/17)
The New York Times:
Astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly Are Still Identical Twins, Despite What You May Have Read
After a flurry of similar news coverage was widely shared this week, NASA put out a statement on Thursday to set things straight: Mark Kelly and Scott Kelly are just as much twins as they were before Scott went to space. “Scott’s DNA did not fundamentally change,” the space agency said. “What researchers did observe are changes in gene expression, which is how your body reacts to your environment. This likely is within the range for humans under stress, such as mountain climbing or SCUBA diving.” (Victor, 3/16)
Los Angeles Times:
Faced With Complaints Of Filth And Blight, L.A. Cracks Down On Overnight RV Parking. Now, The Homeless Are Scrambling
For a while, Vincent Neill and his family parked their weathered RVs on a stretch of roadway in Canoga Park, where the kids had friends down the street. But then business owners began to complain, he said. So Neill, his wife and their seven children relocated their caravan of vehicles to a Chatsworth manufacturing zone. (Reyes, 3/15)