First Edition: Oct. 6, 2021
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
KHN:
Major Insurers Running Billions Of Dollars Behind On Payments To Hospitals And Doctors
Anthem Blue Cross, the country’s second-biggest health insurance company, is behind on billions of dollars in payments owed to hospitals and doctors because of onerous new reimbursement rules, computer problems and mishandled claims, say hospital officials in multiple states. Anthem, like other big insurers, is using the covid-19 crisis as cover to institute “egregious” policies that harm patients and pinch hospital finances, said Molly Smith, group vice president at the American Hospital Association. “There’s this sense of ‘Everyone’s distracted. We can get this through,’” she said. (Hancock, 10/6)
KHN:
Needle Exchanges Are Targeted By Eco-Rooted Lawsuits. A New California Law Will Stop That
For more than 30 years, public health officials and nonprofits in California have provided clean hypodermic needles to people who use them to inject drugs. For nearly that entire time, opponents have accused the free needle programs of promoting drug use and homelessness. But recently, opponents have deployed a novel strategy to shut them down: using environmental regulations to sue over needle waste. They argue that contaminated needles pollute parks and waterways — and their lawsuits have succeeded across the state. A bill signed Monday by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom will thwart that tactic. (Bluth, 10/6)
KHN:
California Vaccine Mandate Extends To Aides For People With Disabilities
Workers in adult and senior care facilities and in-home aides have been added to the list of California health workers who must be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. Those who work directly with people with disabilities — such as employees paid through the state’s regional center network, aides contracted by agencies, and in-home support service workers who don’t live with the person they assist — are now included in the vaccine mandate. This new group must be fully vaccinated by Nov. 30. (Fortier, 10/6)
AP:
In Budget Turning Point, Biden Conceding Smaller Price Tag
President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats’ push for a 10-year, $3.5 trillion package of social and environmental initiatives has reached a turning point, with the president repeatedly conceding that the measure will be considerably smaller and pivotal lawmakers flashing potential signs of flexibility. In virtual meetings Monday and Tuesday with small groups of House Democrats, Biden said he reluctantly expected the legislation’s final version to weigh in between $1.9 trillion and $2.3 trillion, a Democrat familiar with the sessions said Tuesday. He told them he didn’t think he could do better than that, the person said, reflecting demands from some of the party’s more conservative lawmakers. (Fram, 10/6)
The New York Times:
Biden Scales Back His Agenda In Hopes Of Bringing Moderates Onboard
President Biden and Democratic leaders in Congress in recent days have slashed their ambitions for a major expansion of America’s social safety net to a package worth $2.3 trillion or less, which will force hard choices about how to scale back a proposal that the president hopes will be transformational. The figure is substantially less than Mr. Biden’s earlier plan, which called for $3.5 trillion in new spending and tax cuts to spur a generational expansion of government in Americans’ lives, including efforts to fight climate change and child poverty, increase access to education and help American companies compete with China. (Tankersley and Cochrane, 10/5)
The New York Times:
Biden Calls Curbing Filibuster To Raise Debt Limit ‘A Real Possibility’
President Biden said on Tuesday that Democrats are considering a change to Senate filibuster rules to bypass a Republican blockade over raising the debt limit, which has set the United States on a collision course with a government default. “Oh, I think that’s a real possibility,” Mr. Biden said when asked if Democrats were considering the last-resort route, which would involve making an exception to allow for a debt ceiling bill to pass with a simple majority instead of the usual 60 votes needed. (Rogers, 10/5)
The Wall Street Journal:
Facebook Whistleblower’s Testimony Builds Momentum For Tougher Tech Laws
Facebook Inc. whistleblower Frances Haugen testified to Congress Tuesday on internal documents showing harms from the company’s products—from teenagers’ mental-health problems to poisoned political debate—adding fuel to efforts to pass tougher regulations on Big Tech. The documents gathered by Ms. Haugen, which provided the foundation for The Wall Street Journal’s Facebook Files series, show how the company’s moderation rules favor elites; how its algorithms foster discord; and how drug cartels and human traffickers use its services openly. (McKinnon and Tracy, 10/5)
Politico:
What Congress Learned From The Facebook Whistleblower
A whistleblower’s disclosures about Facebook’s impact on children may have finally given Congress something it has lacked: bipartisan resolve to tighten Washington’s grip on Silicon Valley. Lawmakers have said this kind of thing before. But Tuesday brought an unusual show of unanimous support across party lines as lawmakers linked arms to hear former Facebook employee Frances Haugen detail the ways in which she says the social media giant knowingly pushes and profits off products that harm children. (Levine, 10/5)
The New York Times:
The Key Takeaways From Frances Haugen’s Facebook Testimony
At one point, Ms. Haugen suggested something even more radical: Increasing the minimum age for any person using social media to 17 years old from 13 years old. (Frankel, 10/5)
Bloomberg:
Facebook's Zuckerberg Responds To Whistleblower Claims On Profits Priority
Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg addressed a recent series of negative stories about the company for the first time by saying accusations that it puts profit over user safety are “just not true.” “It’s difficult to see coverage that misrepresents our work and our motives. At the most basic level, I think most of us just don’t recognize the false picture of the company that is being painted,” he wrote in a note to employees on Tuesday that he also posted publicly. It came shortly after whistle-blower Frances Haugen, a former employee, testified in a Senate hearing about her experience there and internal research she said showed the company prioritized profit while stoking division. Haugen appeared on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, saying Facebook routinely made decisions that put business interests ahead of user safety. (Wagner, 10/6)
The Washington Post:
Texas Abortion Doctor Allan Braid Sues In Illinois To Stop Six-Week Ban
An abortion provider in Texas took the unusual step Tuesday of asking a federal judge in another state to declare unconstitutional the six-week-ban on the procedure that took effect last month in Texas. Lawyers for Dr. Alan Braid, a San Antonio physician who acknowledged performing an abortion after the state’s legal limit, wants a judge in Illinois to block three lawsuits filed against him under the ban, which has halted almost all abortions in the nation’s second-most-populous state. (Marimow, 10/5)
AP:
Opponents Of Texas Ban On Most Abortions Expand Challenges
Opponents of a new Texas ban on most abortions filed a lawsuit in Illinois on Tuesday after weeks of being thwarted by courts elsewhere in their efforts to block the nation’s most restrictive abortion law. The latest legal challenge came as the Biden administration waited for a federal judge in Austin, Texas, to rule on a request to halt the law known as Senate Bill 8, which bans abortions in Texas once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks. A hearing was held Friday but there was no timetable on a decision. (10/5)
Politico:
Biden’s New Health Challenge: Find Another Francis Collins
National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins was that rare Washington figure whose clout transcended presidential administrations and frequent power shifts in Congress — more so during a public health crisis. Now, the Biden administration needs to find a Collins clone. (Owermohle and Wilson, 10/5)
Axios:
J&J Asks FDA To Approve COVID-19 Booster Shots
Johnson & Johnson said Tuesday it asked the Food and Drug Administration to approve a booster shot of its one-dose COVID-19 vaccine for people 18 years and older. The company last month released data from a global study on the efficacy of a booster shot for its vaccine, which showed that the protection offered by its coronavirus vaccine was strengthened by a second dose. (Knutson, 10/5)
The Atlantic:
What Is A Booster Shot, Really? We Need A Better Name
The word booster kicked off the pandemic benign and simple, a chipper concept most people linked to things such as morale and rockets. Then, at the start of 2021, the word began to undergo a renaissance. By summer’s end, booster was a common fixture of headlines and Twitter trends; it was suddenly tethered tightly to words such as shot, vaccine, and immunity online, as experts and nonexperts alike clamored for the more, more, more promise of extra protection against SARS-CoV-2. According to Elena Semino, a linguist at Lancaster University, in the United Kingdom, English-language news reports now deploy the word booster about 20 times more often than they did in pre-COVID times. (Wu, 10/5)
ABC News:
Florida Trying To Block Money Biden Sent To School Districts Fined For Mask Mandates
Days after the Biden administration reimbursed two Florida school districts whose board members lost their salaries for mandating masks for students, the state's top education official is trying to strip the districts of the money. In a series of memoranda, Florida Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran recommended Monday that the Florida Board of Education, which meets Thursday, withhold "state funds in an amount equal to any federal grant funds awarded" to districts that defy Gov. Ron DeSantis' ban on school mask requirements. (McDuffie, 10/5)
ABC News:
Arizona Can't Use COVID Money For Anti-Mask Grants, Feds Say
The Biden administration on Tuesday ordered Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to stop using the state’s federal pandemic funding on a pair of new education grants that can only be directed to schools without mask mandates. In a letter to Ducey, the Treasury Department said the grant programs are “not a permissible use” of the federal funding. It’s the latest attempt by the Biden administration to push back against Republican governors who have opposed mask mandates and otherwise sought to use federal pandemic funding to advance their own agendas. (Binkley, 10/5)
AP:
Idaho Governor, Lieutenant Spar Over COVID-19 Vaccine
With Idaho Gov. Brad Little out of the state on Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin issued an executive order involving COVID-19 vaccines. Oh no you don’t, said Little, who promised to rescind it in quick order. The maneuvering of Idaho’s top leaders came while Little was in Texas meeting with nine other Republican governors over concerns on how President Joe Biden is handling border issues. McGeachin, a far-right Republican, is running for governor. In Idaho, the governor and lieutenant governor don’t run on the same ticket. (Ridler, 10/6)
The Washington Post:
Children Covid Case Rates Now Exceed Adults Across America
A pandemic that first ravaged nursing homes is, today, more likely to rage through school lunchrooms. Children are still far less likely to become dangerously ill than older people, but with so many becoming infected, pediatric hospitalizations have spiked in the last few weeks. Since the start of the pandemic, more than 5.7 million children have been infected, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. More than 540 Americans up to the age of 18 have died, federal data show. (Meckler and Keating, 10/5)
The Washington Post:
Hospital System Says It Will Deny Transplants To The Unvaccinated In ‘Almost All Situations’
A Colorado-based health system says it is denying organ transplants to patients not vaccinated against the coronavirus in “almost all situations,” citing studies that show these patients are much more likely to die if they get covid-19. The policy illustrates the growing costs of being unvaccinated and wades into deeply controversial territory — the use of immunization status to decide who gets limited medical care. The mere idea of prioritizing the vaccinated for rationed health resources has drawn intense backlash, as overwhelmingly unvaccinated covid-19 patients push some hospitals to adopt “crisis standards of care,” in which health systems can prioritize patients for scarce resources based largely on their likelihood of survival. (Knowles, 10/5)
CBS News:
Louisiana Health System Charging Workers $200 For Unvaccinated Spouses
It could pay to encourage your spouse to become vaccinated against COVID-19, especially as the financial cost of refusing to get the jab rises. Ochsner Health, the largest nonprofit health care system in Louisiana, announced it will charge workers an additional $200 per month to insure their unvaccinated spouses or partners covered by the hospital group's insurance policies, citing the high cost of caring for and treating patients with COVID-19. (Cerullo, 10/4)
Fox Business:
Kaiser Permanente Suspends More Than 2,200 Workers For Ignoring Vaccine Mandate
Kaiser Permanente has suspended more than 2,200 employees who have not yet gotten vaccinated, according to reports. The workers, who make up between 1% and 2% of the health care company’s nationwide workforce, have been placed on unpaid administrative leave, according to FOX 2 in the Bay Area. The company announced the vaccine mandate in August and said this week that employees will have until Dec. 1 to get the vaccine or they could be fired. (Stimson, 10/6)
Detroit Free Press:
400 Henry Ford Health Workers Quit Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate
About 400 workers have walked off the job at Henry Ford Health System rather than take a required COVID-19 vaccine, the Detroit-based hospital system said Tuesday. Another 1,900 workers, however, got exemptions from the health system’s vaccine requirement. The workers who have left comprise about 1% of the workforce of 33,000 people, said Bob Riney, chief operating officer for the five-hospital chain. (Erb, Jordan Shamus and Wells, 10/5)
AP:
Colorado Healthcare System Fires 119 Unvaccinated Workers
The University of Colorado’s health system fired 119 employees for not adhering to their vaccine requirement without a religious or medical exemption. That accounts for less than 0.5% of the company’s of their 26,500 employees around the state, said UCHealth spokesperson Dan Weaver. UCHealth employees had until Oct. 1 to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or apply and receive an exemption. Among those fired, 54 employees were from the Denver region, 33 from northern Colorado and 32 from the southern part of the state. (10/5)
The Washington Post:
Workers With Unvaccinated Spouses Will Pay More For Insurance, A Louisiana Health System Says
Louisiana’s largest health-care system is giving its employees a choice as it seeks to boost coronavirus vaccination numbers: ensure your spouse has received a shot or face higher health insurance costs. Beginning next year, employees of Ochsner Health System will see a roughly $200-a-month surcharge if their spouse or domestic partner on the company health plan is not vaccinated against the coronavirus, according to a letter sent to affected employees last week. The surcharge does not apply to child beneficiaries covered by the plan. (Bellware, 10/5)
The Washington Post:
Hospitals Are Suffering Financially As Covid Delta Surge Rages Among Unvaccinated
The ferocity of the delta variant surge has delivered a serious financial blow to hospital systems in parts of the country with low vaccination rates that are struggling to care for coronavirus patients, even as they combat plummeting income, reduced bailout funds and higher labor costs. Many hospitals in Southern states and rural areas of the country — even in states with otherwise high vaccination rates — have been forced once again to temporarily curtail elective procedures such as hip replacements that bring in the most money. (Rowland, 10/5)
USA Today:
Ellume Home COVID Test Recall: False Positives Blamed For Recall
An Australia-based company is recalling hundreds of thousands of coronavirus tests after discovering some Ellume COVID-19 home tests deliver higher-than-anticipated false positive results. Ellume became the first company to gain Food and Drug Administration authorization to sell consumers kits at major retailers such as Walmart, CVS, Target and Amazon. The kits don't require a prescription and deliver results in minutes. But the company discovered false positive results at higher rates than the company's original clinical studies showed and "isolated the cause and confirmed that this incidence of false positives is limited to specific lots." (Alltucker, 10/5)
The Boston Globe:
Senator Lindsey Graham Told A Crowd Of Republicans They Should Consider Getting A COVID-19 Vaccine. He Was Booed
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham was booed over the weekend by a crowd of South Carolina Republicans after he encouraged them to consider getting vaccinated for COVID-19. Graham on Saturday had begun to suggest to the group that they consider getting the COVID-19 vaccine when he was interrupted by the crowd, who responded at a volume high enough that he was briefly forced to stop speaking. “If you haven’t had the vaccine, you ought to think about getting it because if you’re my age...” Graham said during the event, hosted by a local Republican Party group in the state. “No!” members of the crowd yelled back at him. (Kaufman, 10/5)
Axios:
Organ Procurement Organization Data To Be Analyzed For First Time
Several organ procurement organizations will open up at least a decade's worth of their data for analysis in the first such effort to improve the understanding of the American organ procurement system, the Federation of American Scientists announced late Tuesday. The federal government knows very little about how those on the organ donation list are being helped in real-time. HHS data suggests improvements in organ recovery practices could lead to at least 7,000 additional lifesaving transplants every year. (Fernandez, 10/6)
The Wall Street Journal:
Indian Health Service Repeatedly ‘Did Nothing’ To Stop Pediatrician From Sexually Abusing Patients
Top health officials knew of complaints about a pedophile doctor abusing Native American boys at U.S. Indian Health Service hospitals years earlier than the agency has previously acknowledged, according to an internal investigation the agency released Tuesday after a legal effort by The Wall Street Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones & Co. The report shows that lawyers at the Department of Health and Human Services, which supervises the Indian Health Service, were notified of allegations against the doctor as early as 2009, and concludes that top regional officials also suspected him of abusing patients. (Weaver and Frosch, 10/5)
USA Today:
Cement Found In Man's Heart Following Spinal Surgery
After two days of chest pain and shortness of breath, a man went to the emergency room. It's not an uncommon story. This man, however, had a 4-inch piece of cement piercing his heart and right lung, according to a report published Saturday in the peer-reviewed New England Journal of Medicine. The 56-year-old man had undergone surgery of another kind, known as kyphoplasty, just a week before. The procedure treats injury to the spine by injecting a special type of cement into damaged vertebrae, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. (Avery, 10/5)
Modern Healthcare:
Researchers Look To Discontinue Oxygen Monitoring In Some Infants
Every winter, doctors put sick babies on a continuous oxygen monitor that alerts clinicians if a particular type of respiratory infection is worsening. But a growing body of research shows the monitoring actually doesn't carry a lot of evidence, and can actually cause unnecessary alarm fatigue and rack up hospital charges. A team of researchers from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia will soon embark upon a multi-year clinical trial to see if they can reduce that monitoring, and potentially reduce infant harm. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute recently gave the effort a $5.3 million grant for what's called a deimplementation study. (Gillespie, 10/5)
Crain's New York Business:
Insurers Question NY Gov.'s Suspension Of Prior Authorization In Executive Order
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order last week to ease the anticipated staffing challenges for health facilities once the vaccine mandate’s deadline passed. One provision in the order has health plans up in arms. What concerns insurers is the suspension of requirements for prior-authorization review for scheduled surgeries, hospital admissions, hospital outpatient services, home health services and inpatient/outpatient rehabilitation services following hospitalization. Concurrent and retrospective review of claims for inpatient and outpatient services also were suspended. In the governor’s order, the reason for the suspension is to increase availability of healthcare staff who might otherwise have been engaged in submitting or processing those tasks. (10/5)
The Wall Street Journal:
Why It’s So Hard To Find A Therapist Who Takes Insurance
Finding a therapist who takes insurance was tough before the pandemic. Now, therapists and patients say, an increase in the need for mental-health care is making the search even harder. When Molly Pratt, a 30-year-old math teacher in Boston, was dealing with depression a few years ago, she says she called several nearby therapists, but they didn’t accept her insurance plan. She tried a few listed as in-network on her insurer’s website. One didn’t call back. Another said she no longer took Ms. Pratt’s insurance. And a third didn’t have room in her schedule. (Petersen, 10/5)
Modern Healthcare:
Intermountain And SSM Health Launch App Marketplace
Three not-for-profit health systems—Intermountain Healthcare, Presbyterian Healthcare Services and SSM Health—on Tuesday launched a company that they say will make it easier for hospitals to quickly deploy vetted digital health tools. The not-for-profit company, dubbed Graphite Health, will host a marketplace of digital health apps—similar to popular app stores—that the company reviews and certifies. The marketplace, which essentially serves as a central repository of health apps, will use a standard data language, so that developers can create tools they know hospitals will be able to implement, according to the company. (Kim Cohen, 10/5)
AP:
U Of Tennessee Health Center Lands $3.2M For Lab Upgrade
The University of Tennessee Health Science Center has landed $3.2 million in federal money to upgrade a laboratory used for research on infectious diseases. In a news release, the Memphis campus says the the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases awarded the money for equipment and infrastructure improvements at the Regional Biocontainment Laboratory. (10/6)
Bloomberg:
Key Theranos Witness Tied by Holmes to Other Troubled Labs
A former Theranos Inc. lab director who was the primary source for media reporting that took down the company came under fire from Elizabeth Holmes’s lawyers over his work for another medical startup that fell into scandal. Adam Rosendorff, a medical doctor who testified as a government witness at Holmes’s fraud trial that he quit the blood-testing startup in disgust, went on to serve as a lab director at uBiome Inc. -- which collapsed in a morass of insolvency, regulatory probes and criminal charges, similar to Theranos. (Rosenblatt, 10/5)
CIDRAP:
Leafy Greens Outbreaks Part Of This Season's Cyclospora Cases
In an annual final update on domestically acquired Cyclospora cases, which typically increase in warm weather months, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said 1,020 cases from 36 states were reported, with 170 linked to two large multistate outbreaks associated with restaurants or events. One multistate outbreak involved 40 illnesses and the other resulted in 130 infections. For both, traceback investigations suggested leafy greens, but no specific grower or type of greens were identified. In the past, Cyclospora outbreaks were tied to various produce items, including basil, cilantro, mesclun lettuce, and snow peas. In 2020, multiple outbreaks were reported and involved various produce items, including bagged salad mix. (10/5)
San Francisco Chronicle:
California Bans PFAS Chemicals From Baby Products And Food Packaging
California on Tuesday became one of the first states to ban a class of harmful chemicals, known as PFAS, from food packaging and from infant and children’s products after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed two bills. PFAS have been linked to reproductive problems, cancer and other health issues, and consumer and environmental groups say the new laws will protect Californians from what are known as “forever chemicals” because they stay in the body and environment for years. (Duggan, 10/5)
San Francisco Chronicle:
California Shortens Wait For Terminally Ill Patients To Access Assisted Death
Since California legalized assisted death more than five years ago, potentially thousands of terminally ill patients seeking the lethal medication have died before obtaining a prescription that would have allowed them to end their lives on their own terms. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Tuesday to reduce that barrier, shortening a mandatory waiting period for the life-ending drugs during which advocates say many patients become too sick to continue the process. (Koseff, 10/5)
AP:
Health Coverage Through State-Based Exchange Opens Nov. 1
The comeback of Kentucky’s state-run health insurance exchange will be completed Nov. 1, when consumers can start using it to apply for health coverage for the coming year. Retaining its original kynect name, the state-run web portal will enable Kentuckians to apply for coverage and complete their enrollment. Starting Oct. 15, consumers can log in to the portal to compare state-managed health insurance plans ahead of enrollment. (10/6)
CBS News:
Russia Grappling With 3 Times More COVID Cases Than It Had Last Fall
Russia is once again grappling with a surge in coronavirus cases. The rate of new daily infections is currently three times higher than what the country was seeing a year ago, despite vaccines now being widely available in the country. On Tuesday, Russia reported 895 fatalities and 25,110 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the total number of officially reported cases since the start of the pandemic to more than 7.6 million. (Ilyushina, 10/5)