First Edition: Aug. 11, 2022

KHN: Social Media Posts Criticize The 988 Suicide Hotline For Calling Police. Here’s What You Need To Know.
When the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline launched last month, many mental health providers, researchers, and advocates celebrated. Although a national suicide hotline had existed for years, finally there was an easy-to-remember three-digit number for people to call, they said. The shorter number would serve as an alternative to 911 for mental health emergencies. But not everyone felt the same way. Some advocates and people who had experiences with the mental health system took to social media to voice concerns about 988 and warn people not to call it. (Pattani, 8/11)

KHN: They Call It ‘Tranq’ — And It’s Making Street Drugs Even More Dangerous 
Approaching a van that distributes supplies for safer drug use in Greenfield, Massachusetts, a man named Kyle noticed an alert about xylazine. “Xylazine?” he asked, sounding out the unfamiliar word. “Tell me more.” A street-outreach team from Tapestry Health Systems delivered what’s becoming a routine warning. Xylazine is an animal tranquilizer. It’s not approved for humans but is showing up in about half the drug samples that Tapestry Health tests in the rolling hills of western Massachusetts. It’s appearing mostly in the illegal fentanyl supply but also in cocaine. (Bebinger, 8/11)

KHN and Politifact: No, The Senate-Passed Reconciliation Bill Won’t Strip $300 Billion From Medicare
As Senate Democrats raced to pass what could be their final piece of major legislation before the midterm elections, critics went to the airwaves to blast the proposal as hurting older Americans who rely on Medicare. ... The ad misleadingly paints what is more accurately characterized as nearly $300 billion in savings for consumers and taxpayers. (Jacobson, 8/11)

The New York Times: Biden Signs Bill To Help Veterans Exposed To Toxic Burn Pits 
President Biden on Wednesday signed into law a bill that expands medical benefits for veterans who were exposed to toxins from burning pits of trash on military bases, ending a yearslong quest for support by veterans and their families. The issue is deeply personal for the president, who has long speculated that his son Beau developed brain cancer because of exposure to burn pits when he served in Iraq as a member of the Delaware National Guard. Before signing the legislation, Mr. Biden described the lingering effects of the exposures. (Shear, 8/10)

Military Times: Biden Signs Burn Pit Exposure Health Bill Into Law
The president was surrounded at the ceremony by veterans’ rights advocates, many of whom urged legislative action in recent years and, one week ago, held an around-the-clock vigil on the Capitol steps to pressure lawmakers to complete the bill. The bill eventually reached Biden’s desk after it passed in Congress on August 2 following an array of procedural moves by senators. “By signing this historic legislation, President Biden ensured health care access to help save the lives of countless veterans affected by toxic exposure,” retired Lt. Gen Mike Linnington, CEO of Wounded Warrior Project, said after the bill’s signing. “This is without a doubt a great day for veterans across America.” (Shane III and Lehrfeld, 8/10)

The Hill: Biden Signs Historic Health Care Bill Addressing Toxic Burn Pits. But What Exactly Are They? 
While the veteran community has been sounding the alarm to the dangers of burn pits for years, many Americans still do not know what they are or their history.  (O'Connell-Domenech, 8/10)

AP: Abortion To Remain Legal In Wyoming While Lawsuit Proceeds
Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming while a lawsuit that contests a ban on the procedure in nearly all cases moves ahead, a judge ruled Wednesday. The lawsuit will likely succeed because the ban appears to violate the state constitution and is vague, Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens, in Jackson, wrote in granting the preliminary injunction. (Gruver, 8/10)

Houston Chronicle: Texas Supreme Court Reconsiders Rule Allowing Minors To Get An Abortion Without Parental Consent
A spokeswoman for the high court explained that the justices believe the new law, and a landmark June ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court overturning federal protections on abortion, have “raised questions about whether the parental-notification rules are still consistent with Texas law.” (Goldenstein, 8/10)

Roll Call: Medical Schools, Students Review Training Amid Abortion Bans 
Ghazaleh Moayedi credits many of her strengths as a Texas-based obstetrician-gynecologist to training related to abortion. Outpatient abortion training builds bedside manner and teaches practical technical skills outside of a hospital, she says. (Raman, 8/10)

USA Today: Poll: Most Voters Want A Chance To Support Abortion On State Ballots
Americans overwhelmingly would like to be able to vote on an abortion measure on their state ballot, an exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds. And if they had the chance, they would oppose efforts to ban the procedure by almost 2-1. The survey, taken in the aftermath of the stunning defeat in Kansas last week of a proposal to remove abortion rights from the state constitution, is more evidence of a backlash to the Supreme Court's decision that allows states to sharpen restrictions on abortion or bar it entirely. (Page, 8/10)

The Washington Post: Democrats Close The Gap In Two Post-Roe V. Wade Special Elections 
Two months ago, Republicans hailed the takeover of a Democratic seat in a South Texas special election as proof of their 2022 momentum. Ten days later, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and since then there have been more and more signs that this momentum might not be all it was cracked up to be. That culminated Tuesday in Democrats over-performing in the second straight special election since Roe was overturned, in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District. Similar to Nebraska’s 1st District just days after the court’s action, Republicans still held the conservative-leaning seat but by a smaller margin than they’d like and by a smaller margin than in 2020. (Blake, 8/10)

The Washington Post: Post-Roe Special Elections Show Potentially Encouraging Signs For Democrats 
Democrats and nonpartisan analysts said Wednesday that they saw fresh signs for the party in power to be more optimistic about the midterms after a special election in the wake of the Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade. But they acknowledged that with three months left in the campaign, President Biden and his party continue to face substantial political hurdles. The result in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District, where Republican Brad Finstad defeated Democrat Jeff Ettinger, caught the attention of party strategists and nonpartisan analysts looking for clues about the mood of the electorate. Finstad led Ettinger by four points with 99 percent of the vote tallied Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. Donald Trump won the district by about 10 points in 2020. (Itkowitz and Bronner, 8/10)

Roll Call: Senate's Medicare Drug Pricing May Ripple Into Private Market
Congress is on the verge of passing historic drug pricing legislation that would allow the government to restrict prices for drugs covered by Medicare, but experts disagree on whether drugmakers will shift those costs to the private market. (Clason and Hellmann, 8/10)

Politico: Health Care Providers Are Shouldering Rising Costs. That Could Change Soon
While the economy as a whole has experienced record-breaking inflation this year, price increases in the health care sector have been relatively subdued — a trend that could end soon as Medicare and other payers adjust to new economic realities. Rising costs, such as labor, have largely not translated to higher medical prices, in part because they took economic forecasters by surprise. Rates set by Medicare and insurers, which are a key driver of health care costs, are negotiated months in advance and are based on forecasts that largely did not anticipate the current burst of inflation. (Doherty, 8/10)

Health Affairs: Understanding The Democrats’ Drug Pricing Package
The IRA’s drug pricing reforms include Medicare drug price negotiation, Medicare inflationary rebates, and Medicare Part D redesign; together they represent the achievement of policy goals sought by Democrats for decades. At the same time, the IRA’s drug pricing reforms are narrower than those in reform bills introduced by Democrats over the last few years. (Sachs, 8/10)

CNET: 3 Ways The Inflation Reduction Act Could Save You Money On Health Care
Here's how the Inflation Reduction Act could save you money on your health care costs. 1. Allows Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices. To address the cost of prescription drugs, the bill would let Medicare annually negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies on 10 pricey medications, starting in 2026. Fifteen more high-cost and high-use drugs would be added the following year, another 15 in 2028, and 20 more drugs would make the list in 2029. (Avery, 8/9)

The Washington Post: How The Inflation Reduction Act Might Affect Your Health Care
As for annual out-of-pocket costs for medicines, the legislation passed Sunday caps costs at $2,000 per year for Medicare beneficiaries. Roughly 1.4 million enrollees in the program’s voluntary prescription drug benefit spent $2,000 or more in 2020 on medications. But it’s likely that even more seniors will save money as a result of the new limit on drug costs, because the estimate from the Kaiser Family Foundation didn’t account for expected hikes in average annual out-of-pocket costs in more recent and in future years. (Roubein, 8/9)

The Washington Post: Monkeypox Vaccine Maker Voices Concerns On U.S. Dose-Splitting Plan 
The manufacturer of the only vaccine approved by the Food and Drug Administration to protect against monkeypox privately warned senior Biden health officials about their plan to split doses and change how the shots are delivered. “We do have some reservations … due to the very limited safety data available,” Bavarian Nordic CEO Paul Chaplin wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert M. Califf in a letter sent Tuesday and obtained by The Washington Post. (Diamond, 8/10)

The Atlantic: America’s New Monkeypox Vaccine Strategy Rests On A Single Study
This dose-sparing tactic will allow far more people to sign up for doses before summer’s end; if successful, it could help contain the outbreak in the U.S., which currently accounts for nearly a third of the world’s documented monkeypox cases. But this decision is based on scant data, and the degree of protection offered by in-skin shots is no guarantee. ... (Wu, 8/10)

Politico: Bottling The Monkeypox Vaccine Could Take Until Early 2023
The Biden administration is in talks with multiple companies about bottling millions of new doses of the monkeypox shot, but it could take three to six months to get them ready for distribution, according to two senior administration officials and two other people with knowledge of the matter. The administration on Tuesday recommended providers administer the monkeypox vaccine with one-fifth of the normal amount intradermally — between the layers of the skin — to try and stretch supply without sacrificing efficacy. (Banco and Cancryn, 8/10)

Los Angeles Times: Monkeypox Cases Rising Exponentially In California, U.S.
“When you look at the rates of increase, you can see that it’s really approaching an exponential curve. And unfortunately, it’s going to become harder and harder to control the ... higher these numbers get,” said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious-disease expert at UC San Francisco. Doctors fear that an increased spread could result in the virus becoming endemic in the wild animal population, meaning it would be virtually impossible to eliminate as a new disease of concern in the U.S. (Lin II, Money and Gutierrez, 8/10)

Stat: With Monkeypox Support Lacking, Queer Communities Turn To One Another
Tri Vo knew that he had monkeypox before his test came back — what started as painless pimples had turned itchy, then began to feel like glass underneath his skin. It was manageable during the day, but at night, it felt like the glass was vibrating, Vo said. (Gaffney, 8/11)

The Washington Post: WHO Asks People Not To Attack Monkeys Over Monkeypox
With cases of monkeypox surging around the world, it’s not a good time to be a monkey. The primates have, in recent days, been physically attacked — and even killed — by poisoning and stoning attacks in Brazil, according to local media reports that cite police officials. (Hassan, 8/10)

USA Today: New Langya Virus Infects Dozens In China. Why Experts Say You Shouldn't Panic
“In order to really be something we should be worried about … it’s got to be able to transmit between people,” Emily Gurley, epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “There’s no evidence from this report that person-to-person transmission is happening.” (Rodriguez, 8/10)

Axios: Polio Unlikely To Spread Widely In U.S.
The detection of poliovirus in wastewater samples in London and New York state is providing another stark reminder of the importance of vaccination and new forms of surveillance, public health experts say. (Dreher and Reed, 8/11)

The Mercury News: Is COVID Losing Its Fangs And Becoming More Like The Flu?
Today’s hyper-transmissible strain of the COVID-19 virus has sent cases soaring across the country. But rising deaths — the grim marker of earlier dangerous surges — haven’t kept pace, and the average risk of dying from an infection is dropping to levels almost as low as seasonal influenza, leading epidemiologists say. Is the COVID virus — that has killed more than 1 million Americans — losing its fangs? (Woolfolk, 8/10)

AP: Abrams Tests Positive For COVID-19, Has Mild Symptoms 
Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams has COVID-19, her campaign said Wednesday. Abrams campaign spokesperson Alex Floyd said Abrams tested positive for the respiratory illness Wednesday morning after giving a public speech on the economy Tuesday night in Atlanta. (8/10)

The Boston Globe: New Study Based On Mass. Schools Finds Masks Protected Students, Staff From COVID-19
A study comparing the experience of Massachusetts schools that maintained masking requirements early this year with those that dropped them has provided new evidence that masks are beneficial in protecting students and staff from COVID-19. (Finucane, 8/10)

AP: Masks To Be Required Again At Great Smoky National Park 
Masks will once again be required for visitors inside all Great Smoky Mountains National Park buildings due to the high transmission of the COVID-19 outbreak. According to the park’s website, the mask mandate will apply to all visitors regardless of vaccination status. (8/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: Uber, Lyft Facing Fines For Failing To Provide Drivers With Proper COVID-19 Protections
State workplace safety regulators cited ride-hailing companies Lyft and Uber for failing to provide masks and gloves to their drivers and otherwise prevent the spread of COVID-19, and for excluding drivers from their general injury and illness prevention plans, Cal/OSHA documents show. “This is the first time that a state safety agency has extended workplace protections to gig workers, and challenges the companies’ (claim) that they have no responsibility to ensure safety of drivers,” Rideshare Drivers United, a group which represents thousands of gig workers, some of whom brought the complaints, said in a statement. (DiFeliciantonio, 8/9)

Los Angeles Times: Judge: Walgreens Helped Fuel San Francisco's Opioid Crisis
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that pharmacy giant Walgreens could be held liable for fueling the opioid epidemic in San Francisco by shipping and dispensing hundreds of thousands of “suspicious orders” of prescription drugs, the latest legal reckoning over America’s prescription drug crisis. (Lin, 8/10)

Modern Healthcare: Health Insurance Broker GoHealth Lays Off 20% Of Employees
Approximately 800 agents and support workers lost their jobs, the company said. GoHealth employed roughly 4,000 people as of June 6, according to a news release. The layoffs come as digital health funding shrinks from the highs of 2021, leading to job cuts at once-celebrated tech startups, and as GoHealth faces increased competition. (Tepper, 8/10)

CNBC: Health Experts: America Could Have A Vitamin D Supplement Problem
As a supplement, vitamin D has been a common staple on drugstore shelves for years — and its popularity is only growing. (Albert-Deitch, 8/10)

Stat: Blood Tests Can Predict Severe Brain-Injury Outcomes, Study Shows
Simple blood tests taken on the day of a traumatic brain injury (TBI) can predict with fairly high reliability which patients are likely to die and which are likely to survive with severe disability, according to a study published Wednesday in Lancet Neurology. (Muthukumar, 8/10)

Stat: The FDA's 'Breakthrough' Medical Devices Are Finally Hitting The Market In Numbers
The Food and Drug Administration, looking to accelerate access to innovative devices, has now labeled nearly 700 products as breakthroughs while they’re under development. But until recently, relatively few have reached the market. (Palmer, 8/11)

AP: Judge Upholds Auditor Effort To Subpoena Medicaid Records 
A Superior Court judge on Wednesday denied a motion by Delaware’s Department of Health and Social Services to quash a subpoena from the state auditor’s office seeking information regarding eligibility for Medicaid programs. Judge Craig Karsnitz rejected the notion that Auditor Kathleen McGuiness does not have the authority under Delaware law to conduct performance audits of state agencies such as the Division of Medicaid and Medical Assistance. DHSS attorneys had argued that the auditor’s duties were limited to conducting after-the-fact “postaudits” of financial transactions by state agencies. (Chase, 8/10)

AP: State-Licensed Medical Marijuana Store Opens Next Week
Patients enrolled in South Dakota’s medical marijuana program will have their first opportunity to buy cannabis from a state-licensed facility next week. It has been a year and a-half since state voters overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana. (8/10)

Axios: Multiracial LGBTQ Youth Are At Higher Risk Of Attempting Suicide
Nearly half of multiracial LGBTQ youths "seriously considered" suicide in 2021, according to a new report from The Trevor Project provided to Axios. (Gonzalez, 8/11)

The 19th: Yuh-Line Niou Wants To Become The First Openly Autistic Member Of Congress
When New York state Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou announced she was running to represent New York’s 10th District in Congress, the field was already crowded. Niou is one of only three openly autistic elected legislators in the United States – Pennsylvania state Rep. Jessica Benham and Texas state Rep. Briscoe Cain are also on the autism spectrum. If she wins, Niou will make history as the first openly autistic member of Congress. (Luterman, 8/10)