First Edition: May 6, 2019
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
Kaiser Health News:
A Boat Crushed His Face, Then Plastic Surgeons Hit Him With $167,000 In Bills
Bob Ensor didn’t see the boom swinging violently toward him as he cleaned a sailboat in dry dock on a spring day two years ago. But he heard the crack as it hit him in the face. He was transported by ambulance to an in-network hospital near his home in Middletown, N.J., where initial X-rays showed his nose was broken as were several bones of his left eye socket. The emergency physician summoned the on-call plastic surgeon, who admitted him to the hospital and scheduled him for surgery the next day. (Andrews, 5/6)
Kaiser Health News:
FDA To End Program That Hid Millions Of Reports On Faulty Medical Devices
The Food and Drug Administration announced it is shutting down its controversial “alternative summary reporting” program and ending its decades-long practice of allowing medical device makers to conceal millions of reports of harm and malfunctions from the general public. The agency said it will open past records to the public within weeks. (Jewett, 5/3)
California Healthline:
The Long And Winding Road To Mental Health Care For Your Kid
For several months last spring and summer, my teen daughter, Caroline, experienced near-daily bouts of depression and debilitating panic attacks. During those episodes, she became extremely agitated, sobbing uncontrollably and aggressively rebuffing my attempts to comfort or reason with her. My daughter was in a dark place, and I was worried. But I have excellent health insurance, and I thought that would help me find a good therapist. (Wolfson, 5/3)
The Hill:
Booker: I Support Medicare For All, But I'm A 'Pragmatist'
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on Sunday said he supports the progressive "Medicare for All" health care plan, but noted that he is a "pragmatist" who is interested in looking for more "immediate" reforms to the system. "I stand by supporting 'Medicare for All' but I’m also that pragmatist," Booker, a 2020 presidential candidate, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." "I’m going to find the immediate things that we can do. I’m telling you right now we’re not going to pull health insurance from 150 million Americans that have private insurance, who like their insurance." (Birnbaum, 5/5)
Politico:
Booker Backs 'Medicare For All' But Pledges 'Pragmatist' Approach
Booker's comments underscore the tensions playing out in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary between progressives pushing sweeping economic proposals and moderates saying that more incremental moves will be necessary if the party wins back executive power in Washington. Booker is one of several 2020 contenders co-sponsoring the Medicare for All bill introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). That legislation would expand government-run health coverage and shrink private health insurance. Sanders is polling ahead of most other Democrats running for president. (Warmbrodt, 5/5)
Politico:
Anti-Abortion Clinics Caught In Tumult Over Trump Family Planning Rules
A faith-based chain of clinics that won $5.1 million federal family planning funds by positioning itself as an alternative to Planned Parenthood now unexpectedly finds itself faced with the prospect of offering contraception and counseling that includes discussing abortion — activities antithetical to its very existence. The nonprofit Obria Group received the Title X grant in March as a sweeping Trump administration revamp of the program was churning forward. New rules would, among other things, bar health providers in the program from offering or referring patients for abortions — a restriction critics call a "gag rule." Since then, a series of federal court injunctions have frozen the changes, prompting abortion-rights groups to demand Obria comply with existing standards. (Colliver, 5/3)
Reuters:
Trump Administration Proposal Would Make It Easier To Deport Immigrants Who Use Public Benefits
The Trump administration is considering reversing long-standing policy to make it easier to deport U.S. legal permanent residents who have used public benefits, part of an effort to restrict immigration by low-income people. A Department of Justice draft regulation, seen by Reuters, dramatically expands the category of people who could be subject to deportation on the grounds that they use benefits. Currently, those legal permanent residents who are declared to be a "public charge," or primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, can be deported - but in practice, this is very rare. (Torbati, 5/3)
The Associated Press:
Ex-Trump Aide On Board Of Company That Detains Migrant Kids
Former White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly has joined the board of the conglomerate that operates the largest facility for migrant children in the country, the company announced Friday. Caliburn International's CEO James Van Dusen confirmed the appointment of the former Trump cabinet member in a news release. (Gomez Licon, 5/3)
Reuters:
Former Trump Staff Chief Kelly Joins Board Of Migrant Shelter Operator
Caliburn owns Comprehensive Health Services Inc, a private, for-profit company that runs a facility for unaccompanied migrant children in Homestead, Florida, some 35 miles south of Miami. The site became a heated topic of debate, as immigration advocates and Democratic legislators complained many traumatized children who fled violence and poverty in their home countries were held in the institutionalized setting for too long before being released to sponsoring families who could better care for them. (5/3)
The Wall Street Journal:
In Reversal, NIH To Allow Doctors To Speak To Investigators
The leadership of the National Institutes of Health has reversed course and will allow two senior doctors to speak with federal investigators regarding patient-safety issues in a nationwide trial of treatment for the bloodstream infection sepsis. The NIH, the U.S. government’s premier health-research agency, has been blocking the two critical-care doctors from speaking with government investigators about safety issues in the study of 2,320 patients. The NIH’s stance, which has led to a dispute with dozens of its senior researchers over medical freedom of speech, was detailed by The Wall Street Journal earlier this week. An NIH spokeswoman said Friday the NIH has reversed its position. (Burton, 5/3)
Politico:
Tennessee Will Ask Trump To OK First Medicaid Block Grant
Tennessee is charging ahead to become the first state in the nation to ask the Trump administration for Medicaid funding in a lump sum — a radical overhaul of the entitlement program that critics warn could force major cutbacks in health coverage for low-income people. State Republican lawmakers on Thursday, emboldened by the Trump administration’s promise to provide states with more flexibility to run their Medicaid programs, approved legislation requiring Tennessee to submit a Medicaid block grant plan to the federal government within six months. The legislation now goes to Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who will sign the bill, a spokesperson said. (Pradhan, 5/3)
The Associated Press:
GOP Thwarts Governor's Push To Expand Medicaid In Kansas
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly's effort to expand Medicaid in Kansas this year died Saturday when enough moderate Republicans bowed to the wishes of the GOP-controlled Legislature's conservative leaders and ended an impasse that had tied up the state budget. The House voted 79-45 in favor of an $18.4 billion spending blueprint for state government for the budget year beginning in July. Democrats and moderate Republicans held the budget hostage Friday and much of Saturday, hoping to force the Senate to vote on an expansion plan passed by the House and favored by Kelly. (Hanna, 5/4)
The Associated Press:
Medicaid Expansion Backers In Kansas Block Next State Budget
Kansas lawmakers who support expanding Medicaid blocked passage of the next state budget Friday in a high-stakes standoff designed to force the Legislature's conservative Republican leaders to allow an expansion plan backed by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Kelly's election last year raised hopes that Kansas would join 36 other states that have expanded Medicaid or seen voters pass ballot initiatives. (Hanna, 5/3)
The Associated Press:
Iowa Governor Signs Bill Limiting Funds For Sex-Reassignment
Gov. Kim Reynolds has signed a budget bill that prohibits the use of Medicaid funding to pay for sex-reassignment surgery. The Republican governor signed the Health and Human Services funding bill on Friday and opted not to issue a line item veto of the ban on public funding for such surgeries. Conservative Republicans added the prohibition in the closing days of the Legislature, saying it was a response to a recent Iowa Supreme Court decision that said the state couldn't deny two transgender women Medicaid coverage for sex-reassignment surgery. (5/3)
The Washington Post:
Spotlight Shifts To Johnson & Johnson As First Major Opioid Trial Nears In Oklahoma
Johnson & Johnson, one of the world’s largest health-care conglomerates, nurtures a family-friendly image as it sells Band-Aids and baby shampoo, soaps and skin creams. “We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community as well,” reads a sentence in the company credo, written in 1943 by Robert Wood Johnson, a member of the company’s founding family. But, by connecting it to an epidemic that has ravaged the country for two decades, Oklahoma’s attorney general plans to expose another side of the company when the first major state trial of the opioid era begins later this month. (Bernstein, 5/4)
NPR:
A Federal Court Ruling May Nudge More Jails And Prisons To Offer Addiction Meds
This week, a federal appeals court addressed the right to treatment for an inmate who suffers from opioid addiction, a move that legal advocates say could have wide repercussions. The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston ruled that a rural Maine jail must provide Brenda Smith with medication for her opioid use disorder. One of her attorneys, Emma Bond, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Maine, says the new ruling has the potential to create a "big signal" for jails across the country and combat the social barriers preventing incarcerated people from receiving treatment. (Arnold, 5/4)
The New York Times:
A Pregnant Woman Avoids Transit, Parents Battle In Court And Other Tales Of Measles Anxiety
A 40-year-old pregnant woman who fears catching measles on the New York City subway walks eight miles round trip from her home in Brooklyn to her job in Manhattan. Two New Jersey parents who don’t agree about vaccines and are now getting divorced have asked a judge to make a ruling on if their children should be vaccinated. As measles cases in the United States have risen to 700, affecting 22 states, Americans who are fearful the disease will reach them are taking strong measures to defend themselves. (Moore, 5/3)
The Wall Street Journal:
What Can Stop The Measles Outbreak? Officials Lean On An Unlikely Band Of Locals
To fight the biggest measles outbreak in the U.S. in more than a quarter-century, public-health officials have tried robocalls, vaccination audits, vaccination orders and $1,000 fines. This is the standard playbook and it hasn’t worked to stop the disease’s spread. Now, officials are increasingly counting on an informal network of community groups, religious leaders and local medical practitioners. Blima Marcus, a 34-year-old oncology nurse practitioner, is working to counter antivaccination messages that have taken root in New York City’s insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities where measles has spread. (McKay and West, 5/5)
Reuters:
U.S. Doctors Use Medical Records To Fight Measles Outbreak
U.S. doctors are tapping into their electronic medical records to identify unvaccinated patients and potentially infected individuals to help contain the worst U.S. measles outbreak in 25 years. New York's NYU Langone Health network of hospitals and medical offices treats patients from both Rockland County and Brooklyn, two epicenters of the outbreak. It has built alerts into its electronic medical records system to notify doctors and nurses that a patient lives in an outbreak area, based on their Zip code. (Steenhuysen, 5/5)
Reuters:
AIDS Drugs Prevent Sexual Transmission Of HIV In Gay Men
A European study of nearly 1,000 gay male couples who had sex without condoms – where one partner had HIV and was taking antiretroviral drugs to suppress it - has found the treatment can prevent sexual transmission of the virus. After eight years of follow-up of the so-called serodifferent couples, the study found no cases at all of HIV transmission within couples. (5/3)
The New York Times:
Doctors, Is It O.K. If We Talk About Why Finger-Wagging Isn’t Working?
Doctors give a lot of very good advice. Over the years, my primary care doctors have suggested better eating habits, more exercise, improved sleep hygiene, not carrying such a heavy shoulder bag, even exercises to improve my posture. The problem is, I am not sure I have ever made any changes in my behavior as a direct result. That would not come as a surprise to Ken Resnicow, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. “Finger-wagging doesn’t work,” he said. (Klass, 5/6)
The New York Times:
When Travelers Bring Skin Infections Back As Souvenirs
A 5-year-old girl was brought to the emergency room at Evelina London Children’s Hospital with itchy, rather unsightly sores on both legs. She had recently returned from a weekslong trip to Sierra Leone, and the lesions, which first appeared three weeks into her stay there, had become larger and ulcerated. Diagnosis: cutaneous diphtheria, a disease rarely seen in many industrialized countries, including Britain and the United States, where most children are protected by the diphtheria toxoid vaccine, DTaP, and a booster shot of the tetanus-diphtheria-pertussis vaccine, Tdap. (Brody, 5/6)
The Washington Post:
Is Autism A Medical Condition Or Just A Difference? The Question Is Causing A Vitriolic Divide.
This year, London’s Southwark Playhouse announced the cast of a new play, “All in a Row.” It was instantly clear this would not be a typical family drama. The play unfolds the night before social services separates a boy named Laurence from his family. Unlike the other three characters, Laurence, a nonverbal autistic and sometimes aggressive 11-year-old, would be portrayed by a child-size puppet. When the play opened, a reviewer for the Guardian newspaper awarded it four stars, saying it had “warmth and truth.” On Twitter and beyond, theatergoers also offered praise. (Opar, 5/5)
Stat:
Scientists See Hope In Rare Disease Drug Wall Street Has Doubted
It’s called the clinical global impressions of improvement, or CGI-I, and it’s a seven-point scale doctors use to score whether patients are generally improving. According to Ovid, that makes it ideal for a disease like Angelman, in which patients’ symptoms can dramatically vary in both type and severity. One may struggle to sleep but be able to walk; another might be virtually immobile but have some speech skills. (Garde, 5/6)
NPR:
With Alzheimer's Drugs Still Elusive, Scientists Now Look Beyond Amyloid
Scientists are setting a new course in their quest to treat Alzheimer's disease. The shift comes out of necessity. A series of expensive failures with experimental drugs aimed at a toxic protein called amyloid-beta have led to a change in approach. The most recent disappointment came in March, when drugmaker Biogen and its partner Eisai announced they were halting two large clinical trials of an amyloid drug called aducanumab. (Hamilton, 5/3)
NPR:
Many Genes Contribute To Obesity, So Devising A DNA Test Is Difficult
Scientists who recently announced an experimental genetic test that can help predict obesity got immediate pushback from other researchers, who wonder whether it is really useful. The story behind this back-and-forth is, at its core, a question of when it's worth diving deep into DNA databanks when there's no obvious way to put that information into use. The basic facts are not in dispute. Human behavior and our obesity-promoting environment have led to a surge in this condition over the past few decades. Today about 40% of American adults are obese and even more are overweight. (Harris, 5/6)
The Washington Post:
How Palliative Care Is Helping Cancer Patients
When Tori Geib learned she had terminal metastatic breast cancer in 2016 on the week of her 30th birthday, she was automatically booked to see a palliative care coach at Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center in Columbus. There, in addition to receiving a targeted therapy pill to slow the spread of the cancer, she was offered a host of services that she says shaped her quality of life for the next three years: acupuncture, pastoral comfort, nutrition advice and pain expertise to control her nausea and back pain because the cancer had spread to her spine. She also saw a mental health counselor who helped her come to terms with the brutality of her diagnosis. (Richards, 5/6)
The Washington Post:
Microbes Called Extremophiles Might Combat Superbugs, Biowarfare Agents
In early 2001, Joe Ng boarded a ship in the Azores to collect samples of mud. It wasn’t just any old boat: It was the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, the 401-foot Russian research vessel used by filmmaker James Cameron to help capture deep-sea footage for the blockbuster film “Titanic.” And it wasn’t just any kind of mud: It was samples from a hydrothermal vent field thousands of feet below the Atlantic Ocean’s surface where some of the world’s tiniest and toughest organisms flourished. The $50,000 ticket bought Ng, a molecular biologist, roughly two weeks at sea. Afterward, Ng traveled back to Huntsville, Ala., with an insulated lunch cooler stuffed with plastic sandwich bags of mud. Back in his lab, he occasionally subjected these “extremophiles” — a word derived from Latin (extreme) and Greek (love) — to various tests. (Blau, 5/5)
NPR:
Survive Life's Deepest Stresses With These 8 Skills
Feel like you're living under a rain cloud? Life not going your way? Lots of us have a bit of Eeyore's angst and gloom. But here's the good news (sorry to be so cheery): You can be taught to have a more positive attitude. And — if you work at it — a positive outlook can lead to less anxiety and depression. The latest evidence comes from a new study of caregivers — all of whom had the stressful job of taking care of a loved one with dementia. The study found that following a five-week course, participants' depression scores decreased by 16 percent and their anxiety scores decreased by 14 percent. The findings were published in the current issue of Health Psychology. (Aubrey, 5/5)
The New York Times:
Dr. Ruth Says ‘Make Time’ For Sex. Millennials, She’s Looking At You.
People didn’t talk much about sex in the 1980s — at least not openly. So when a pint-size former Israeli sniper with a thick German accent began saying things like “premature ejaculation” and enter “from behind” on local radio — and later, television — people listened (closely). Dr. Ruth banned the word “frigid” on her show. She schooled Conan O’Brien on why “blue balls” was sexist — it’s a phrase for which there is no female equivalent — and suggested they create a companion term for women: “blue lips.” “It never caught on,” she said this week. (Bennett, 5/3)
The New York Times:
F.D.A. Approves The First Vaccine For Dengue Fever, But Limits Its Use
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first vaccine for dengue, Dengvaxia, but placed significant restrictions on its use because the vaccine has been shown to put some people at heightened risk for a severe form of the disease. In clearing the vaccine, the agency acknowledged the serious public health benefit of slowing a disease that affects hundreds of millions of people around the world. The decision may also help a struggling product whose use has stalled because of concerns over its possible risks. (Thomas, 5/3)
The New York Times:
Half Of People Miss Benefits Of Statins
Statin drugs like Lipitor and Crestor significantly reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease, rigorous studies have shown. But a “real-world” analysis published in Heart suggests that in practice about half of patients do not benefit from them. British researchers studied 165,411 patients free of cardiovascular disease who started statin therapy between 1990 and 2016. They measured their LDL levels (the “bad” cholesterol) before the study began and again after 24 months, and then followed them for an average of six years. (Bakalar, 5/3)
The Associated Press:
Ebola Deaths Top 1,000 In Congo Amid Clinic Attacks
More than 1,000 people have died from Ebola in eastern Congo since August, the country’s health minister said on Friday, the second-worst outbreak of the disease in history behind the West African one in 2014-16 that killed more than 11,300. The toll came as hostility toward health workers continued to hamper efforts to contain the virus. Health Minister Oly Ilunga said that four deaths in the outbreak’s center, Katwa, had helped push the death toll to 1,008. Two more deaths were reported in the city of Butembo. The outbreak was declared almost nine months ago. (5/4)
The Associated Press:
Health Officials: Arizona Sees Surge Of Hepatitis A Cases
Arizona is seeing a surge in hepatitis A cases, mostly in the Tucson area but also in metro Phoenix, health officials say. The outbreak of the viral disease that affects the liver began in November and cases have continued to rise since then despite efforts to step up vaccinations. The Arizona Republic reports the outbreak could take months to rein in. (5/5)
The Associated Press:
Judge Says Alabama Failed To Protect Prisoners From Suicide
After 15 inmate suicides in 15 months, a federal judge ruled Saturday that Alabama is putting prisoners in danger by failing to provide adequate suicide-prevention measures. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson wrote that there are "severe and systemic inadequacies" in the Alabama Department of Corrections' care of inmates and the facts behind recent suicides show that unconstitutional conditions persist in state prisons. (5/4)
The Associated Press:
Judge Rejects 6-Month Timeout In Major Flint Water Case
A judge on Friday rejected a six-month freeze in the involuntary manslaughter case of Michigan's former health director, who is accused of failing to timely warn the public about a Legionnaires' disease outbreak during the Flint water crisis. A new team of prosecutors said it needed more time to assess and collect evidence after learning about 23 boxes of records in a state basement. But Judge Joseph Farah said the discovery has no practical impact on his next step in the case. (5/3)