First Edition: Sept. 13, 2021

KHN: Why At-Home Rapid Covid Tests Cost So Much, Even After Biden’s Push For Lower Prices 
Rapid at-home covid tests are flying off store shelves across the nation and are largely sold out online as the delta variant complicates a return to school, work and travel routines. But at $10 or $15 a test, the price is still far too high for regular use by anyone but the wealthy. A family with two school-age children might need to spend $500 or more a month to try to keep their family — and others — safe. (Norman, 9/13)

KHN: Health Care Unions Defending Newsom From Recall Will Want Single-Payer Payback 
Should Gavin Newsom survive the Republican-driven attempt to oust him from office, the Democratic governor will face the prospect of paying back supporters who coalesced behind him. And the leaders of California’s single-payer movement will want their due. Publicly, union leaders say they’re standing beside Newsom because he has displayed political courage during the covid-19 pandemic by taking actions such as imposing the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order. But behind the scenes, they are aggressively pressuring him to follow through on his 2018 campaign pledge to establish a government-run, single-payer health care system. (Hart, 9/13)

KHN: Georgia Eyes New Medicaid Contract. But How Is The State Managing Managed Care? 
Just before Frank Berry left his job as head of Georgia’s Medicaid agency this summer, he said the state “will be looking for the best bang for the buck” in its upcoming contract with private insurers to cover the state’s most vulnerable. But whether the state — and Medicaid patients — are getting an optimal deal on Medicaid is up for debate. (Grapevine and Miller, 9/13)

KHN: Journalists Explain Ramifications Of Theranos Trial And Texas’ New Abortion Law
KHN Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Rosenthal discussed health tech and the start of the fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes, who founded the biological screening company Theranos, on WGN’s “The John Williams Show” on Wednesday. ... KHN senior correspondent Julie Appleby discussed abortion law in Texas, covid-19 and vaccination rates on NPR’s weekly news roundup “1A” on Sept. 3. (9/11)

NPR: Unvaccinated People Are 11 Times More Likely To Die Of COVID-19 Than Vaccinated
Unvaccinated people are 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who are fully vaccinated, new research has found, bolstering evidence that the inoculations continue to provide powerful protection, even against the delta variant. The latest studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released on Friday also found that vaccinated people were nearly five times less likely to get infected and 10 times less likely to get so sick they ended up in the hospital. The CDC "looked at COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in 13 states and offers further evidence of the power of vaccination," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, said at a White House COVID-19 briefing on Friday. (Romo, 9/10)

Reuters: Biden To Announce New COVID-19 Steps Ahead Of U.N. Meeting, Surgeon General Says
U.S. President Joe Biden will announce new steps to slow the spread of COVID-19 before the U.N. General Assembly meets, Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said Sunday. Murthy did not specify what those steps would be. The next session of the General Assembly opens Tuesday; the first day of general debate will be the following week. (9/12)

Politico: Surgeon General: New Vaccine Policies Neither Illegal Nor Unusual 
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Sunday defended the administration’s new Covid vaccine requirements, calling them “an appropriate legal measure“ that fit in with traditional safety requirements in schools and workplaces. “We have to put this in context. There are requirements that we put in workplaces and in schools every day to make sure that workplaces and schools are safe,” Murthy said on ABC’s “This Week.” (Cohen, 9/12)

Fox News: Surgeon General: US To 'Monitor' Whether Vaccine Exemptions Being Used Properly
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has advised that the Biden administration will "monitor" to ensure no one abuses COVID-19 vaccine exemptions. President Biden last week announced a mandate that required any company with at least 100 employees to mandate its workforce. The only way to avoid the mandate is to claim an exemption on either religious or medical grounds. Some critics argue that the exemptions allow for simple abuse, but Murthy insists the administration will ensure that does not happen. (Aitken, 9/12)

CNN: It May Take Many, Many More Vaccine Mandates To End The Covid-19 Pandemic, Fauci Says 
Millions of Americans still need to get vaccinated to slow or stop the spread of Covid-19 and getting the pandemic under control could take "many, many" more vaccine mandates, Dr. Anthony Fauci said. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said if more people aren't persuaded to get vaccinated by messaging from health officials and "trusted political messengers," additional mandates from schools and businesses may be necessary. (Holcombe, 9/13)

Detroit Free Press: Biden's Vaccine Mandates Likely To Be Upheld, Legal Experts Say
History and the law are on President Joe Biden's side when it comes to coronavirus vaccine mandates, a medical historian and legal experts told the Free Press. Although legal challenges are likely, "the mandates are legal and will ultimately be upheld," said Peter Jacobson, professor emeritus of health law and policy at the University of Michigan, of the sweeping plan Biden announced Thursday to combat the pandemic. The plan includes an emergency order through the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration that will require as many as 100 million U.S. workers get coronavirus vaccines or submit to weekly testing. (Jordan Shamus, 9/11)

CBS News: Gottlieb Says Vaccines Could Be Approved For Kids 5-11 By End Of October
Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb predicted Sunday that the agency he helmed will authorize Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine for emergency use in children ages 5 to 11 by the end of October. In an interview with "Face the Nation," Gottlieb, who serves on Pfizer's board of directors, said the drug company is expecting to have data on its vaccines in young children before the end of September, which will then be filed with the FDA "very quickly." The agency then has said it will be weeks, rather than months, before determining whether it will authorize the vaccine for kids ages 5 to 11. (Quinn, 9/12)

Stat: Biden Administration Releases $25B In Covid Relief For Providers After Delay
The Biden administration on Friday announced plans to release more than $25 billion to health care providers to help with costs related to the Covid-19 pandemic, 11 months after the last major round of funding was released. The funds will be the latest tranche from the total $187 billion lawmakers set aside to help health care providers battling the pandemic. Health care providers and lawmakers from both parties had in recent weeks ratcheted up pressure on the Department of Health and Human Services to release billions in unused funds. (Cohrs, 9/10)

The Hill: Democrats See $3.5T Spending Goal Is Slipping Away
There’s a growing realization among Democrats that their plans for a $3.5 trillion spending package to reshape the nation’s social safety net and to tackle climate change will have to be slimmed down because of anxious centrists worried about the 2022 midterms. Democrats by and large feel confident that President Biden’s ambitious “human” infrastructure agenda has strong public support and that a majority of Americans favor raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to help pay for it. (Bolton, 9/12)

The Washington Post: Democrats On The Cusp Of Painful Choices In Sweeping Budget Bill 
As top Democrats hashed out a plan this summer for a historic expansion of the social safety net, Sen. Bernie Sanders privately struck a deal with White House officials and Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer that is now having major ramifications. Sanders (I-Vt.), a self-described democratic socialist, agreed to support a $3.5 trillion package — much smaller than he wanted — in exchange for a promise that more than a tenth of the money, at least $380 billion, would go toward his longtime goals, chiefly expanding Medicare to cover hearing, vision and dental care. (Sullivan, Sotomayor, Pager and Stein, 9/12)

Politico: Dems Hurtle Toward A New Fiscal Cliff 
Democrats’ internal wrangling over a massive new social spending plan will soon be eclipsed by much more urgent problems: avoiding an economic collapse and a government shutdown. There is growing worry among some rank-and-file Democrats that their tunnel-vision mentality on a $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill could provoke economic blowback if Republicans hold the line and tank efforts to lift the debt ceiling. And Democrats' threadbare majorities in Congress are leaving the party with little time to wriggle out of a dangerous economic morass that could overwhelm their other priorities, from voting rights to tax increases on the wealthy to a sweeping expansion of the social safety net. (Everett and Caygle, 9/12)

The Hill: Manchin Says He Can't Support Biden's $3.5 Trillion Spending Plan 
Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), a key moderate Democrat, said on Sunday that he can't support President Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending plan. "We don't have the need to rush into this and get it done within one week because there's some deadline we're meeting or someone's going to fall through the cracks," Manchin said on NBC's "Meet the Press." (Oshin, 9/12)

Axios: Warner May Vote Against $3.5 Trillion Bill Over Housing Assistance For Black Families 
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) is warning that he could vote against the $3.5 trillion budget package if more money isn’t added for housing assistance to close the racial wealth gap in the current House version of the bill, Axios has learned. (Nichols, 9/12)

NPR: U.S. Senators Call On EEOC To Probe Amazon's Treatment Of Pregnant Workers
Six U.S. senators are calling for a federal probe into Amazon's treatment of pregnant employees at its warehouses. It's the latest push by lawmakers across the country to focus regulatory attention on the working conditions for the company's ballooning workforce. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission should investigate whether "Amazon systematically denies reasonable accommodations for pregnant employees at its fulfillment centers," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., wrote in a letter co-signed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and three other Democrats. (Selyukh, 9/11)

Fox News: FDA’s Delayed Decision On Juul E-Cigarettes ‘Reckless,’ Pediatrics Group Says
A delayed decision Thursday from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on whether to allow vaping brand Juul to stay on the market was met with strong criticism from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). "This is a reckless decision that will allow products proven to addict and endanger young people to continue being sold," Dr. Lee Savio Beers, president of the AAP, said in part in a statement. (Rivas, 9/11)

AP: Barrett Concerned About Public Perception Of Supreme Court
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett expressed concerns Sunday that the public may increasingly see the court as a partisan institution. Justices must be “hyper vigilant to make sure they’re not letting personal biases creep into their decisions, since judges are people, too,” Barrett said at a lecture hosted by the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center. (Blackburn, 9/13)

Politico: Justice Breyer On Calls For His Retirement: ‘They Are Entitled To Their Opinion’
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer on Sunday defended himself against progressives’ calls for him to step down while both a Democratic president and Democratic Senate are in power. "I didn't retire because I had decided on balance I wouldn't retire,” Breyer said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” (Hooper, 9/12)

ABC News: Nearly 74% Of Eligible Americans Have At Least 1 COVID-19 Vaccine Dose 
The United States is facing a COVID-19 surge this summer as the more contagious delta variant spreads. More than 655,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 while over 4.6 million people have died from the disease worldwide, according to real-time data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Just 62.7% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Winsor, Shapiro, Pereira, Deliso and Lenthang, 9/12)

USA Today: Biden's COVID-19 Mandate To Vaccinate All Health Care Workers May Come With Unintended Consequences
Health care associations applaud the new policy and underscore the importance of getting vaccinated, but they're worried it could exacerbate workforce shortages amid a surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. This unintended consequence could hit rural hospitals especially hard, said Alan Morgan, chief executive officer of the National Rural Health Association. "Right off the back, vaccines are safe and effective and it’s imperative that all rural health care workforce providers and staff need to be vaccinated,” he said. “But we also know that there are higher rates of hospital workers that are unvaccinated and have no intention of getting vaccinated in the rural context … this is a significant concern.” (Rodriguez, 9/10)

Bloomberg: Retired Seniors In U.S. Aren’t Covered By Biden’s Vaccine Plan
President Joe Biden’s new Covid-19 plan will mandate vaccines for 100 million working Americans, but one group was conspicuously absent from this week’s announcement: senior citizens. They’re also the most likely to be hospitalized or die from the virus -- by a wide margin. Retired seniors have been far more accepting of vaccines than their working-age counterparts. Their full vaccination rate is about 82%, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Because they’re susceptible to severe illness, even relatively few unvaccinated seniors means more deaths -- and more crowded hospitals -- than would occur in a larger pool of younger adults. (Levin and Wingrove, 9/11)

San Diego Union-Tribune: San Diego County Healthcare Workers Seek Vaccine Exemptions
President Biden’s new COVID-19 vaccination mandate requires all federal workers and contractors, including all healthcare workers in the nation, to receive their shots or lose their jobs. But administration officials said last week that the new federal vaccination program would allow anyone to request an exemption on “narrow” religious grounds or if they had a qualifying disability, loopholes that are similar in California, which announced a vaccination mandate for healthcare workers on Aug. 5 that takes effect Sept. 30. Sharp HealthCare, San Diego’s largest health system, reported that it had received more than 700 religious exemption requests, with UC San Diego Health receiving 610 and Scripps Health more than 400. Those numbers represent about 3% of each organization’s total workforce, about 16,000 to 22,000 workers. (Sisson, 9/12)

Crain's Detroit Business: Employees Withdraw Lawsuit Against Henry Ford Health After Biden's COVID-19 Executive Order
A lawsuit against Henry Ford Health System and its executives over the hospital system's COVID-19 vaccine mandate has been withdrawn. Court records show the 51 employees pulled the lawsuit Friday, only four days after filing in U.S. District Court in Detroit, after President Joe Biden signed an executive order Thursday to force hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid payments to mandate the vaccine. Biden said Thursday he'd order all executive branch employees, federal contractors and millions of healthcare workers to be vaccinated against the coronavirus, and that his administration would issue rules requiring large private employers to mandate shots or testing. (9/10)

CNN: Consumer CEOs Have Many Questions About Biden's Vaccine Order 
The trade group that represents consumer brands including Coca-Cola (COKE), Kellogg (K) and Campbell Soup (CPB) fired off a letter to President Joe Biden on Monday with a laundry list of questions about his new vaccine mandate. In the letter, Consumer Brands Association CEO Geoff Freeman called for "immediate clarity" on the administration's new Covid-19 Action Plan. (Egan, 9/13)

Los Angeles Times: LAPD Employees Sue City Over Vaccination Mandate
A group of Los Angeles Police Department employees has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the city’s mandate that all L.A. employees be vaccinated against COVID-19. The lawsuit, filed Saturday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, claims the mandate violates the employees’ constitutional rights to privacy and due process, and asks the court to provide immediate and permanent relief from the requirement. The six LAPD employees suing include individuals “who could not assert a medical or religious exemption” to the vaccine requirement, as well as individuals who have “experienced and recovered from COVID-19" and have natural antibodies to fight the virus, the complaint states. (Rector, 9/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Biden’s Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate Further Stresses Supply Of Rapid Tests
CVS Health Corp. and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. have begun limiting the number of at-home tests customers can buy online or in stores as they work with test suppliers to ensure they are able to meet demand. Meanwhile, employers already are having a tougher time securing bulk tests to screen employees as retail pharmacies and other testing providers ration supplies, according to consulting group Mercer LLC. (Terlep and Abbott, 9/12)

The New York Times: Covid Vaccine Resisters Seek Religious Exemptions. But What Counts?
Major religious traditions, denominations and institutions are essentially unanimous in their support of the vaccines against Covid-19. But as more employers across the country begin requiring Covid vaccinations for workers, they are butting up against the nation’s sizable population of vaccine holdouts who nonetheless see their resistance in religious terms — or at least see an opportunity. Vaccine-resistant workers are sharing tips online for requesting exemptions to the requirements on religious grounds; others are submitting letters from far-flung religious authorities who have advertised their willingness to help. (Graham, 9/11)

The Washington Post: Jefferson County Colorado’s Mobile Vaccine Clinics Get Security After Reports Of Harassment 
Roving central Colorado with three vans, pop-up tents and folding chairs, public health workers in Jefferson County set out this spring to get coronavirus vaccines to the people who were hardest to reach. They brushed off heckling from passersby who sometimes yelled that covid-19 was a hoax or that the shots were “poison.” But the harassment grew more frequent, said Jefferson County Public Health Executive Director Dawn Comstock. And more threatening. (Knowles, 9/12)

NPR: Idaho Hospitals Are Overwhelmed, But People Remain Skeptical Of Vaccines
Jeremy Smith and his wife Sheena are on a four-wheeler, leading me up a dirt road on the 20 acres of mostly undeveloped land they live on near Sagle, in the Idaho panhandle. We stop near a big grove of trees and get out. It's beautiful. "We've got some Douglas fir. This is a grand pine. This is a maple," Smith says as he walks along a private trail. Smith and his extended family have been hunkering down here since the pandemic began. They are a minority in this very conservative part of Idaho. They take COVID-19 seriously and wear masks. And unlike 65% of the people in Bonner County, they're fully vaccinated. (Hegyi, 9/12)

AP: Northern Idaho's Anti-Government Streak Hampers COVID Fight
Northern Idaho has a long and deep streak of anti-government activism that has confounded attempts to battle a COVID-19 outbreak overwhelming hospitals in the deeply conservative region. A deadly 1992 standoff with federal agents near the Canadian border helped spark an expansion of radical right-wing groups across the country and the area was for a long time the home of the Aryan Nations, whose leader envisioned a “White Homeland” in the county that is now among the worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Hospitals in northern Idaho are so packed with COVID-19 patients that authorities announced last week that facilities would be allowed to ration health care. (Geranios, 9/12)

USA Today: New York Hospital Will Stop Delivering Babies As Staffers Quit
A hospital in Upstate New York says it will stop delivering babies in less than two weeks after several workers quit rather than get vaccinated against COVID-19. "We are unable to safely staff the service after Sept. 24th," Lewis County General Hospital CEO Gerald Cayer said last week. New York state is requiring health care workers to be vaccinated by Sept. 27. Cayer said six workers already resigned and seven more had not made a final decision. The hospital, 300 miles north of New York City, was struggling to remain adequately staffed even before the mandate, he said. (Bacon and Santucci, 9/12)

Modern Healthcare: Intermountain Delaying Almost All Surgeries Amid COVID-19 Surge
Intermountain Healthcare is pausing almost all surgeries to preserve capacity amid a crush of COVID-19 patients, the not-for-profit integrated health system announced Friday. The pause on "urgent but not immediately life threatening" surgeries begins Sept. 15 and will probably last a couple of weeks, Intermountain Healthcare CEO Dr. Marc Harrison said at a news conference. The suspension of surgeries affects 13 of the Salt Lake City-based health system's 24 hospitals. Rural hospitals and its orthopedic specialty hospital and children's hospital are exempt. (Bannow, 9/10)

The Washington Post: Alabama Man Ray DeMonia Dies After 43 Hospitals Did Not Have An ICU Bed, Family Says 
When Ray DeMonia was having a cardiac emergency last month, his Alabama family waited anxiously for a nearby hospital with available space in its intensive care unit. But in a state where coronavirus infections and unvaccinated patients have overwhelmed hospitals in recent months, finding an available ICU bed was an ordeal. It was so difficult, his family wrote this month, that the hospital in his hometown of Cullman, Ala., contacted 43 others in three states — and all were unable to give him the care he needed. (Bella, 9/12)

CIDRAP: Study: Many Early Nursing Home COVID Cases, Deaths Likely Unreported 
More than 68,000 COVID-19 cases and 16,000 related deaths in US nursing homes may have gone uncounted because they occurred before federal guidelines required facilities to report case and death data in late May 2020, suggests a study yesterday in JAMA Network Open. Led by a Harvard University researcher, the study compared the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths reported by 15,415 nursing homes in 20 states to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) with those reported to state departments of health by May 24, 2020. Analysis took place from December 2020 to May 2021. (Van Beusekom, 9/10)

AP: West Virginia Hits Daily Record In New Cases
West Virginia set two daily records in the past week for positive coronavirus cases as the pandemic continues to ravage the state. Thursday’s total of confirmed cases was a record 1,738, only to be broken by Saturday’s total of 1,821, according to state health data. The previous one-day high of more than 1,700 was set on Dec. 31. (9/12)

Axios: Thirteen Gorillas At Atlanta Zoo Test Positive For COVID-19 
Thirteen western lowland gorillas at Zoo Atlanta are receiving treatment for COVID-19 after initial tests came back positive, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported. Zoo Atlanta confirmed in a statement on Friday that "a number" of its 20 gorillas had tested presumptively positive, and that the zoo believes they were infected by a fully vaccinated team member. (Saric, 9/12)

The Boston Globe: Mass. Towns With High Infection Numbers Have Fewer Young People Inoculated, Raising Concerns As Students Start School
Teenagers in many of the cities and towns hardest hit by COVID-19 are getting vaccinated at alarmingly low rates, according to an analysis from a Harvard University researcher, raising concerns there could be a fresh surge in infections as schools open for in-person classes across Massachusetts. The analysis, which focused on 42 communities that have had some of the state’s highest infection rates through most of the pandemic, found that 37 of them recorded teen vaccination rates lower, and in some cases dramatically lower, than the state average for teens. (Lazar, 9/11)

Houston Chronicle: Officials Suspect Labor Day Holiday Behind Drop In New COVID Cases At Texas School Districts
The number of COVID-19 cases reported by school districts across Texas for last week significantly decreased, but the number may not be an accurate depiction of reality, according to data released Friday. Districts reported 13,222 confirmed positive cases among students for the week ending Sept. 5 and 1,836 cases among staffers, according to figures released by the Department State Health Services. The week prior, there were 35,230 newly confirmed cases among students and 5,574 among staffers, up from 18,804 new student cases and 4,523 staff cases throughout the state the week before that. The increases arrived as schools started welcoming students back to classrooms. (Serrano, 9/10)

AP: School Starts For 1 Million NYC Kids Amid New Vaccine Rules
Classroom doors swing open for about a million New York City public school students on Monday in the nation’s largest experiment of in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic. The start of the school year coincides with several milestones in the city’s pandemic recovery that hinge on vaccine mandates. Nearly all of the city’s 300,000 employees will be required to be back in their workplaces, in person, Monday as the city ends remote work. Most will either need to be vaccinated, or undergo weekly COVID-19 testing to remain in their jobs. (Matthews, 9/13)

AP: County Employees Could Work At Hospital Burdened By COVID-19
A northwest Georgia county is negotiating an agreement for its employees to work extra at the local hospital, which is over capacity because of COVID-19 patients. The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports that Gordon County commissioners are near a deal to let county employees assist at AdventHealth Gordon when not working for the county. The hospital would pay the employees. (9/12)

CNBC: Office Tensions Rise Between The Vaccinated And Unvaccinated
Office politics have been a thing of the past for most of us over the last 18 months, as millions of people worked from home throughout Covid-induced lockdowns. Now, as many employees return to their offices, tensions appear to be emerging along new lines: those who are vaccinated against Covid, and those who are not. (Ellyatt, 9/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Snowbirds Are Heading To Florida And Arizona Despite The Delta Variant 
The annual migration for many snowbirds is weeks away, but the Covid-19 waves in warm-weather locales like Florida and Arizona are causing some seasonal residents to rethink travel plans. Others say they’re determined to make the trip after missing a season in the sun. Fully vaccinated and equipped with latex gloves to pump gas, Robert Slack and his wife, Lois Slack, plan to drive 1,400 miles from their Ontario, Canada, home to Winter Haven, Fla. (Ansberry, 9/11)

Politico: Covid Data Dearth At New York Public Housing Continues A Pattern Of Neglect 
Norma Saunders doesn’t know exactly how many neighbors at her public housing development in the Bronx have died from Covid-19 — she just knows there have been many. She’s lived at Bronx River Houses, run by the New York City Housing Authority, her entire life and serves as the tenant association president. But since the start of the pandemic last year, she’s had to rely mostly on word of mouth to track Covid cases in the nine-building public housing complex. In one instance, a woman alerted Saunders in April 2020 that she hadn’t heard from her 81-year-old neighbor in a week. When NYCHA didn’t have a spare key they called the police, who broke down the door to find the man had died. (Kvetenadze, 9/12)

Bay Area News Group: California Senate Passes Bill Allowing State To Keep Details Of COVID Outbreaks Secret
The California State Senate approved a bill late Friday evening that upholds the state’s ability to keep the details of workplace COVID-19 outbreaks secret, a win for business groups after key transparency clauses were slashed at the last minute. AB 654 was revised days before the end of the legislative session Friday to erase a requirement that the California Department of Public Health publicize COVID outbreaks by location, contradicting the author’s stated purpose in drafting the bill and dealing a blow to employees, advocates and epidemiologists who have long argued that such information is essential to protecting workers. (Kelliher, 9/12)

The Wall Street Journal: California Recall Puts Governor’s Pandemic Leadership To The Test
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday will be the first governor in a recall election to face voters divided over Covid-19 restrictions and collectively angry about a pandemic that continues to upend lives nationwide. State leaders around the U.S. have exercised broad authority to try to safeguard the health and well-being of both their residents and economies over the past 18 months, including decisions that have drawn fire from all sides. (Mai-Duc, 9/12)

AP: 5 Questions About California's Recall Targeting Gov. Newsom
California's recalls are like no other elections. Voters have to decide whether to recall the officeholder — in this case, Gov. Gavin Newsom — and then answer a second ballot question over who should be the replacement. This unorthodox process has had wild outcomes before — it led to actor Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming governor in 2003.Five things to look for in Tuesday's unusual contest. (9/13)

Stat: A Vaccine Veteran Steps Away From The NIH, Looking Out Toward The World
In early January 2020, most of the world hadn’t yet awakened to the fact that life was soon to change profoundly. But Barney Graham saw a possible need coming, and set out to fill it. Graham was deputy director of the National Institutes of Health’s Vaccine Research Center and chief of the viral pathogenesis laboratory. Mere days after Chinese scientists posted to an international database the genetic sequence of a new, as yet unnamed coronavirus that was causing a fast-expanding outbreak in Wuhan, Graham and his colleague Kizzmekia Corbett had designed the structure for a vaccine that later became the prototype for Moderna’s Covid-19 shot and laid the foundation for Covid vaccines made by Johnson & Johnson, Novavax, and others. (Branswell, 9/13)

Modern Healthcare: Health Insurance Exchanges To See More Competition, Uncertainty Next Year
Health insurers are preparing for a volatile 2022, factoring increased competition, regulatory changes and pandemic uncertainty into their bids for the coming enrollment season on the health insurance exchanges. Next year is poised to be the most competitive yet on Affordable Care Act's exchanges since they opened for business in 2013, said Ari Gottlieb, a principal at the consultancy A2 Strategy. At least 11 insurers plan to enter new markets for the 2022 plan year and some current participants are expanding their footprints, according to data compiled by the consumer guide HealthInsurance.org. Exchange customers have had increasingly more carriers from which to choose over the past three years. Last year, just 10% of counties had a single insurer, down from 25% in 2019. (Tepper, 9/13)

Modern Healthcare: Blue Shield Of California And Walgreens Team Up To Offer Community-Based Care
Blue Shield of California and Walgreens are teaming up to offer healthcare services to Blue Shield commercial members aimed at improving condition management and delivering whole-person care, according to a news release on Friday. Eligible Blue Shield beneficiaries will be able to get blood pressure screenings, blood tests to diagnose diabetes, mammography care coordination and other services through Walgreens' Health Corner locations. Pharmacists, dieticians or nurses are available at each site to offer health, nutrition and disease management help and advice to members. (Brady, 9/10)

Stat: Cancer Drug Indications Remain On Labels After Trials Fail To Confirm Benefits
One-third of the uses for cancer drugs granted speedy approvals remained on product labeling even after follow-up studies failed to confirm their benefits, according to a new analysis in BMJ. And at the same time, widely-read guidelines for physicians also continued to recommend these treatments. At issue is the accelerated approval program created nearly three decades ago to hasten availability of drugs for serious conditions with unmet medical needs. However, since the program allows regulators to rely on surrogate measures that are likely to prove effectiveness in exchange for access, drug makers must run trials to later verify the medicines are benefiting patients as intended. (Silverman, 9/13)

The Atlantic: Tongue Posture Is a Big Business With Little Evidence
When Kimberly Sheldon was 47, she says made the biggest mistake of her life. That was in 2018, when she says that a dentist explained to her that cutting the tissue under her tongue would help her jaw pain, gum recession, and occasional headaches. Her issues, he said, could be due to the fact that the back of her tongue couldn’t reach the roof of her mouth. With a quick laser slice, a $600 charge, and some instruction on tongue exercises, he seemed confident that she would feel better soon after. But, according to her account, the dentist didn’t explain the possible risks, which include nerve damage and scarring that can restrict the tongue. Sheldon only found out about the issues after she experienced them. Since then, she says, the effects have torn her life apart. (Szalinski and Undark, 9/12)

The Washington Post: Texas’ Abortion Law Has Tech Workers Reconsidering Moving To The State
On Sept. 3, just two days after Texas banned abortions, Vivek Bhaskaran, the chief executive of an Austin-based online survey software company, quickly assembled the handful of female employees that are based in the city. In a virtual town hall that lasted about 15 minutes, he told the women that regardless of insurance, the company would cover out-of-state abortion services. “I’m not a politician; I can’t change anything. But I’m still responsible for my employees in Texas, and I have a moral responsibility to them,” said Bhaskaran, CEO of QuestionPro. (Abril and De Vynck, 9/12)

CNBC: Salesforce Offers To Relocate Employees After Texas Abortion Bill
Salesforce told thousands of employees in a Slack message on Friday that if they and their families are concerned about the ability to access reproductive care in the wake of Texas’ aggressive anti-abortion law, the company will help them relocate. Texas’ Senate Bill 8 became law in May and went into effect earlier this month. The law says doctors cannot perform or induce abortions if they have “detected a fetal heartbeat for the unborn child,” except in medical emergencies. Additionally, ordinary citizens can file lawsuits against those who aid or abet abortions after the detection of a heartbeat. (Novet, 9/10)

AP: Ida Prompts New Look At Nursing Home Storm Plans
Among the many tragic stories in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida are the deaths of seven Louisiana nursing home residents who were evacuated to a warehouse where health inspectors say conditions quickly became unsafe once the storm struck. The squalid conditions found at the Tangipahoa Parish warehouse that sheltered more than 840 people raised new questions and concerns about whether Louisiana is doing enough to protect its most vulnerable residents. (Deslatte, 9/12)

The New York Times: Phony Diagnoses Hide High Rates Of Drugging At Nursing Homes 
The handwritten doctor’s order was just eight words long, but it solved a problem for Dundee Manor, a nursing home in rural South Carolina struggling to handle a new resident with severe dementia. David Blakeney, 63, was restless and agitated. The home’s doctor wanted him on an antipsychotic medication called Haldol, a powerful sedative. “Add Dx of schizophrenia for use of Haldol,” read the doctor’s order, using the medical shorthand for “diagnosis.” But there was no evidence that Mr. Blakeney actually had schizophrenia. (Thomas, Gebeloff and Silver-Greenberg, 9/11)

AP: Parents Against 'Prison-Like' Facility For Autistic Clients
Parents of adults with severe autism and other disabilities say New York officials are threatening to revoke funding for their children’s long-term care at out-of-state care centers unless they agree to send their children to a secure, in-state facility. Some parents believe they have no alternative but to send their adult children to the Sunmount Developmental Center in Franklin County in the Adirondacks, the Times Union of Albany reported Sunday. They describe the facility as remote and prison-like. (9/12)

CNN: France Bans Unvaccinated Americans From Entering 
France has become the latest European country -- and the most significant tourism destination -- to remove the United States from its safe travel list, following EU recommendations in the wake of a US Covid spike. A French government decree issued on Thursday bumped the United States and Israel from the country's "green" list, down to "orange," effectively prohibiting nonessential travel to France for unvaccinated visitors. (Neild and Vandoome, 9/10)