First Edition: May 31, 2022

KHN: Bill Of The Month: Her First Colonoscopy Cost Her $0. Her Second Cost $2,185. Why? 
Elizabeth Melville and her husband are gradually hiking all 48 mountain peaks that top 4,000 feet in New Hampshire. “I want to do everything I can to stay healthy so that I can be skiing and hiking into my 80s — hopefully even 90s!” said the 59-year-old part-time ski instructor who lives in the vacation town of Sunapee. So when her primary care doctor suggested she be screened for colorectal cancer in September, Melville dutifully prepped for her colonoscopy and went to New London Hospital’s outpatient department for the zero-cost procedure. (Andrews, 5/31)

KHN: Got Long Covid? Medical Expertise Is Vital, And Seniors Should Prepare To Go Slow
Older adults who have survived covid-19 are more likely than younger patients to have persistent symptoms such as fatigue, breathlessness, muscle aches, heart palpitations, headaches, joint pain, and difficulty with memory and concentration — problems linked to long covid. But it can be hard to distinguish lingering aftereffects of covid from conditions common in older adults such as lung disease, heart disease, and mild cognitive impairment. There are no diagnostic tests or recommended treatments for long covid, and the biological mechanisms that underlie its effects remain poorly understood. (Graham, 5/31)

KHN: Politics And Pandemic Fatigue Doom California’s Covid Vaccine Mandates
In January, progressive California Democrats vowed to adopt the toughest covid vaccine requirements in the country. Their proposals would have required most Californians to get the shots to go to school or work — without allowing exemptions to get out of them. Months later, the lawmakers pulled their bills before the first votes. (Bluth, 5/31)

Stat: Biden Administration Won’t Lower Seniors’ Medicare Premiums This Year
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra in January publicly announced he was ordering Medicare to consider dropping older adults’ premiums in the middle of this year, which would have been an unprecedented move. But the administration decided against a change due to “legal and operational hurdles,” the department said Friday afternoon. The overpayments will instead be factored into next year’s premiums. (Cohrs, 5/27)

AP: Medicare Recipients To See Premium Cut — But Not Until 2023
Medicare recipients will get a premium reduction — but not until next year — reflecting what Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Friday was an overestimate in costs of covering an expensive and controversial new Alzheimer’s drug. Becerra’s statement said the 2022 premium should be adjusted downward but legal and operational hurdles prevented officials from doing that in the middle of the year. He did not say how much the premium would be adjusted. (5/27)

Modern Healthcare: CMS To Adjust Medicare Premiums In 2023 Due To Lower Aduhelm Costs
Projections for how much Aduhelm, also known as aducanumab, would cost the government in 2022 were the primary reason for a 14.5% Medicare Part B premium hike that brought the monthly cost to $170.10 this year, CMS disclosed in November. Circumstances have changed since then. CMS has limited Aduhelm coverage to beneficiaries enrolled in clinical trials. And Biogen, the drug's manufacturer, halved the original $56,000 yearly price. ... CMS concluded that delaying the adjustment until next year is the only practical method, the agency wrote in a notice. The agency expects Part B premiums to be lower in 2023 because Adulhelm spending won't meet projections this year. (Goldman, 5/27)

NPR: Goat's Milk And Other Baby Formula Product Arrives In U.S.
The U.S. will distribute another 1.25 million cans of baby formula in effort to replenish the country's dire supply in the coming weeks, the Food and Drug Administration says. That stock will bring the total imported supply of baby formula product to the equivalent of 30 million 8-ounce bottles, since the Biden administration began its effort to alleviate the national shortage. During the first week of May, the average out-of-stock rate for baby formula at retailers nationwide was 43%, according to data from Datasembly. (Bowman, 5/28)

The Wall Street Journal: Danone To Fly Formula To The U.S. For Babies With Allergies 
Danone SA is to send the equivalent of about five million bottles of specialist infant formula to the U.S. as part of a broader push to alleviate shortages faced by babies with allergies. The French food giant said about half a million cans of specialized medical formula made by its Nutricia business will be flown into the U.S. in the coming weeks. Danone said the formula will come from its factory in Liverpool, England, which makes the Neocate line of amino acid-based products used for babies allergic to cow’s milk and other proteins. (Chaudhuri, 5/30)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. County Buys Baby Formula To Distribute During Shortage
Los Angeles County has purchased $750,000 worth of baby formula that it will soon start handing out at food distribution sites and through outreach programs for new mothers, officials said. The county purchased the formula to help feed babies as the nation grapples with a severe infant formula shortage, Supervisor Hilda L. Solis said in a news release. For weeks now, parents have been scrambling to find formula following supply chain disruptions and a safety recall at the nation’s largest formula producer. (Esquivel, 5/28)

NPR: The Baby Formula Shortage Is Prompting Calls To Increase Support For Breastfeeding
Parents are scrambling to find baby formula. Factories are working around the clock to make more. And military cargo planes are airlifting formula from overseas. Often overlooked, though, in the race to fill the gap left when a big formula factory closed due to suspected contamination is the most natural alternative: mother's milk. "If we did more to support breastfeeding, we wouldn't be in this mess," says Dr. Melissa Bartick, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that most babies be fed exclusively with breast milk for the first six months. But in 2018, only about one in four babies born in the U.S. met that target. (Horsley, 5/30)

NPR: FDA Investigates Hepatitis A Outbreak Potentially Linked To Strawberries
The FDA and other agencies are investigating a hepatitis A outbreak in the U.S. and Canada potentially linked to organic fresh strawberries. The agency says the strawberries were sold under the FreshKampo and HEB brands and purchased between March 5 and April 25. The FDA is investigating 17 cases — 15 in California and one apiece in Minnesota and North Dakota. Canada's public health agency has identified 10 cases across two provinces: Alberta and Saskatchewan. HEB and FreshKampo strawberries were sold at a number of retailers, including Trader Joe's, Kroger, Safeway, Aldi, Walmart and HEB, according to the FDA. (Torchinsky, 5/30)

The Boston Globe: How A Boston Doctor Diagnosed The First US Case Of Monkeypox
The doctor was puzzled. His patient had ordinary symptoms that many infections could cause – fever, sweating, swollen lymph nodes, and a rash. But the usual tests yielded no answers. And the usual medications didn’t make him better. Concerned about his worsening condition and the lack of a diagnosis, Dr. Benjamin Davis admitted his patient to Massachusetts General Hospital, where a team led by Dr. Nesli Basgoz, an infectious disease specialist, took over his care. Now he was Basgoz’s puzzle to solve. What happened next would challenge the team’s diagnostic skills and test two decades of preparations for the spread of new and exotic diseases around the globe, diseases like COVID-19. (Freyer, 5/29)

The Hill: Bipartisan Senate Working Group On Gun Violence Will Meet Tuesday 
Republican and Democratic senators negotiating over a legislative proposal to respond to mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, will hold a Zoom call Tuesday in hopes of reaching a deal on a basic framework by next week.  Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who has been tasked by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to negotiate with Democrats, said the talks have been ongoing on the phone and in person.  (Bolton, 5/30)

CBS News: Cornyn And Murphy To Meet Virtually To Attempt "Basic Framework" For Gun Proposals
President Biden told reporters on Monday it's hard to say what one element Republicans might support because he hasn't been negotiating with any of them yet. The president spent Sunday in Uvalde, Texas, grieving with the family members who lost loved ones. "Look, I don't know, but I think there's a realization on the part of rational Republicans -- and I think Senator McConnell is a rational Republican; I think Cornyn is as well," Mr. Biden told reporters on the White House South Lawn on Memorial Day. "I think there's a recognition in their part that they -- we can't continue like this. We can't do this." (MacFarlane and Watson, 5/30)

Bloomberg: Republicans Push Unfounded Mental Health Claim For US Gun Violence
Republican politicians from Senator Ted Cruz to Texas Governor Greg Abbott have been quick to blame mental illness following a deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two teachers. The problem with that thinking is that the evidence doesn’t support it -- even if common sense suggests a mass shooting, especially of children, is not the act of a person who is mentally well. While reporting from Texas following the May 24 shooting makes clear the Uvalde gunman, Salvador Ramos, was a deeply troubled individual, state officials have said he had no documented mental health issues. Research shows that only a very small percentage of violent behavior is connected to mental illness. (Court, 5/27)

Fortune: We're Living In An Era Of Daily Trauma: Here's How To Cope
With so much loss running through America's veins today (and for many days to come), one question feels particularly pressing: How do we mourn those lost and cope with the multilayered grief that's become a foundational part of living in the U.S.? Bereavement researcher Mary-Frances O'Connor, Ph.D., has spent more than two decades studying the emotional effects of losing a loved one. Her work has revealed a lesson that's worth remembering as we forge a way forward: "Grieving is a form of learning." (McPhillips, 5/27)

The Washington Post: What School Shootings Do To The Kids Who Survive Them, From Sandy Hook To Uvalde
The children and adults who die in school shootings dominate headlines and consume the public’s attention. ... Those tallies, however, do not begin to capture the true scope of this epidemic in the United States, where hundreds of thousands of children’s lives have been profoundly changed by school shootings. There are the more than 360 kids and adults who have been injured on K-12 campuses since 1999, according to a Washington Post database. And then there are the children who suffer no physical wounds at all, but are still haunted for years by what they saw or heard or lost. (Cox, 5/28)

NBC News: Broken Heart Syndrome: What Are The Symptoms And Causes?
Two days after fourth-grade teacher Irma Garcia was killed in the Uvalde, Texas school shooting, her husband, Joe Garcia, suddenly died as well. Family members attributed his death to a broken heart. Irma Garcia’s nephew, John Martinez, said Joe collapsed at home on Thursday shortly after delivering flowers for Irma's memorial. Doctors said a sudden death following a tragedy could be evidence of broken heart syndrome, a rare condition that mimics a heart attack. (Bendix, 5/27)

ABC News: Harris Addresses 'Epidemic Of Hate' As Final Victim Of Buffalo Mass Shooting Laid To Rest
The final victim of the supermarket shooting massacre in Buffalo, New York, was laid to rest Saturday, as the country reels from another mass shooting. Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff attended the memorial service for Ruth Whitfield Saturday afternoon at Mt. Olive Baptist Church in Buffalo. Whitfield, 86, was one of 10 people killed at Tops Friendly Market on May 14 in what authorities are calling a "racially motivated hate crime." "I do believe that our nation right now is experiencing an epidemic of hate," Harris said during the service. (Deliso, 5/28)

AP: Exception Added To New Hampshire's 24-Week Abortion Ban 
New Hampshire’s ban on late-term abortion no longer applies in cases in which the fetus has been diagnosed with “abnormalities incompatible with life.” Gov. Chris Sununu signed a bill Friday adding an exception to the ban on abortions after 24 weeks gestation that took effect Jan. 1. The ban, which Sununu had signed into law as part of the state budget, previously had exceptions only for pregnancies that threaten the mother’s life or health. It also required ultrasounds to be performed before any abortion, but the bill signed Friday limited that requirement. (Ramer, 5/27)

Politico: Austin Pushing To Effectively Decriminalize Abortion Ahead Of Ruling On Roe 
The city of Austin is attempting to shield its residents from prosecution under a Texas law that would criminalize almost all abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned — the first push by a major city in a red state to try to circumvent state abortion policy. Councilmember Chito Vela is proposing a resolution that would direct the city’s police department to make criminal enforcement, arrest and investigation of abortions its lowest priority and restrict city funds and city staff from being used to investigate, catalogue or report suspected abortions. (Messerly, 5/30)

AP: US State Legislators Praise Abortion Access In Mexico
A group of U.S. state legislators from Texas, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and North Carolina toured Mexico and said this week they are impressed by efforts to expand abortion access south of the border. The legislators visited the country’s three largest cities, Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey to meet with activists and Mexican legislators. (5/28)

Stateline: State Courts Could Overturn Abortion Bans In Red States
If the federal right to abortion is erased by the U.S. Supreme Court in a few weeks as expected, the legal spotlight will shift immediately to state courts, where experts say judges in some conservative states could surprise everyone and uphold the right to abortion. “Hundreds of attorneys for abortion advocates across the country are no doubt poised to go into state courts to block enforcement of multiple state abortion laws the minute the decision comes down,” said Clarke Forsythe, senior counsel at Americans United for Life, which opposes abortion. “There will be attempts in all but a few states to create the equivalent of Roe v. Wade.” (Vestal, 5/27)

Bloomberg: Wyoming’s Only Surgical Abortion Clinic Will Open Despite Arson
The only abortion clinic in Wyoming to offer surgical procedures will open as planned after a suspected arson fire damaged the premises, its sponsoring agency said Friday. The clinic -- located in Casper, the state’s largest city -- was set ablaze May 24. There were no injuries. “Based on our initial assessment, we expect the necessary repairs to delay our opening by at least several weeks,” said Julie Burkhart, founder of Wellspring Health Access. (Del Giudice, 5/27)

Fortune: Do I Have Long COVID? As Many As 23 Million Americans Want To Know, As More Than 200 Symptoms Emerge 
One Long COVID patient complains of fatigue, loss of smell, and a persistent cough weeks after his initial COVID infection. Another experiences hallucinations and an inability to record new memories, and begins speaking unrecognizable words. It gets stranger. Among the 200-plus symptoms identified so far are ear numbness, a sensation of “brain on fire,” erectile dysfunction, irregular menstrual periods, constipation, peeling skin, and double vision, according to a landmark July study published in British medical journal The Lancet. (Prater, 5/29)

Fortune: Kids Get Long COVID, Too. Experts Are Racing To Understand It 
A year ago this month, Dr. Alexandra Brugler Yonts opened a clinic with hopes to shutter it quickly. “When we started, we weren’t sure how long we’d be open—we thought only a couple of months,” says Brugler Yonts, an infectious disease specialist at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C. She’s the head of the hospital’s new Pediatric Post-COVID Program, launched in May of last year to treat children who developed a slew of mysterious symptoms after COVID infection—and those whose symptoms never stopped. (Prater, 5/28)

WUSF Public Media: Health Officials Urge Caution And Mask-Wearing As Florida Coronavirus Cases Climb 
Federal health officials are recommending more Floridians wear masks indoors as the coronavirus spreads. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a number of counties across Florida are now categorized as "at a high risk" of COVID-19 as cases continue to climb across the state — and hospitalizations increase as well. Counties on the CDC lists are Hillsborough, Pinellas, Polk, Pasco, Sarasota, Alachua, Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. The CDC's "COVID Community Level" measure is different from one that tracks transmission — and factors hospitalizations in as well. (Colombini, 5/27)

The Atlantic: You Are Going To Get COVID Again … And Again … And Again
“I personally know several individuals who have had COVID in almost every wave,” says Salim Abdool Karim, a clinical infectious-diseases epidemiologist and the director of the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa, which has experienced five meticulously tracked surges, and where just one-third of the population is vaccinated. Experts doubt that clip of reinfection—several times a year—will continue over the long term, given the continued ratcheting up of immunity and potential slowdown of variant emergence. But a more sluggish rate would still lead to lots of comeback cases. Aubree Gordon, an epidemiologist at the University of Michigan, told me that her best guess for the future has the virus infiltrating each of us, on average, every three years or so. “Barring some intervention that really changes the landscape,” she said, “we will all get SARS-CoV-2 multiple times in our life.” (Wu, 5/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Paxlovid Becomes Household Name For Covid-19 Patients
Pfizer’s antiviral drug, called Paxlovid, totaled more than 412,000 prescriptions through May 6, compared with about 110,000 prescriptions of molnupiravir, an antiviral from Merck & Co. and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics LP, according to drug-data firm Iqvia Holdings Inc. (Hopkins, 5/30)

CIDRAP: Asymptomatic COVID-19 May Not Spread As Easily As Symptomatic
Symptomatic COVID-19 cases are responsible for more viral transmission than asymptomatic infections, suggests an updated systematic review and meta-analysis of 130 studies published yesterday in PLOS Medicine. ... In 46 contact-tracing or outbreak studies, the total share of asymptomatic COVID-19 cases was 19%. Relative to symptomatic infections, the rate of viral spread from asymptomatic index patients to contacts was about two-thirds lower. (5/27)

CIDRAP: Vaccines Lower Risk Of Long COVID 15%, Death By 34%, Data Show 
Long COVID-19 symptoms can affect even fully vaccinated people after mild breakthrough infections, but their risk of serious complications such as lung and blood-clotting disorders is much lower than that of their unvaccinated peers, finds a study of more than 13 million US veterans published this week in Nature Medicine. (Van Beusekom, 5/27)

AP: California Gov. Gavin Newsom Tests Positive For COVID-19 
California Gov. Gavin Newsom tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday, a day after a high-profile meeting with the visiting prime minister of New Zealand. Newsom has mild symptoms and will remain in isolation at least through Thursday and until he tests negative, his office said in a statement. The Democratic governor plans to work remotely during that time. His office said Newsom, 54, will begin a five-day regimen of the Paxlovid antiviral. (5/28)

Politico: America’s Hospital Regulator Wasn’t Designed For A Pandemic 
Cathy Kornman is a nurse in Atlanta who cares for patients recovering from surgery. She is unvaccinated against Covid-19 despite a federal requirement for health workers. Opting out was easy: With the click of a button, Kornman said she lied to her employer, claiming on a one-sentence administrative form that her religion prohibited vaccination. “I don’t really truly have a religious exemption,” Kornman, 62, told POLITICO. “Taking the vaccine, for all intents and purposes, has been optional.” (Levy, 5/30)

CIDRAP: Emergency Medical Staff Report High Levels Of Burnout Amid COVID-19
Two-plus years into the pandemic, an online survey of emergency-medicine professionals in 89 countries reveals that 62% reported one or more symptoms of COVID-19–related burnout syndrome, and 31% reported two. In a study published today in the European Journal of Emergency Medicine, the European Society for Emergency Medicine (EUSEM) surveyed 1,925 emergency-medicine physicians (84%), nurses (12%), and paramedics (2%) in January and February 2022. (Van Beusekom, 5/27)

Axios: The Parents Aren't All Right
Parenting is hard. Parenting in a pandemic that has taken 1 million American lives, through an unpredictable economy, in a country where school shootings aren’t rare, baby formula is hard to come by and classrooms are political battlegrounds can feel borderline impossible. There are 63 million parents in the U.S. with kids younger than 18 at home. They work; they volunteer; they’re raising the next generation of Americans — and stress and strain are hindering them from doing all of those things. “There’s almost not a word to express the stress parents are under right now,” says Gloria DeGaetano, a parenting expert and founder of the Parent Coaching Institute. “‘Overwhelmed’ doesn’t cut it. It’s beyond anything we’ve ever experienced.” (Snyder, Cai and Pandey, 5/31)

The Washington Post: Uterine Cancer May Be Added To The List Of 9/11-Related Health Issues 
The World Trade Center Health Program, a government program that monitors and treats WTC-related health conditions, covers nearly every type of cancer. But a single type has never been added to its list: uterine cancer. That could soon change. Officials have proposed adding uterine cancer to the list of cancers covered by the program, and the rule change is in its final stage. (Blakemore, 5/30)

Stat: AMA Fights Popular Bill Requiring Training Doctors About Opioid Use Disorder
The American Medical Association wants doctors to have more training on treating people with opioid use disorder. The group’s Substance Use and Pain Care Task Force has recommended it. The AMA website regularly lauds doctors who integrate addiction treatments into their practice. One past president even issued a nationwide “call to action” for doctors to get training on the topic. But the AMA is opposing an otherwise popular bipartisan bill that would mandate doctors be trained on treating people with opioid use disorder, according to a letter from the powerful lobbying organization obtained by STAT. (Florko, 5/31)

Axios: Coffee Associated With Lower Mortality Risk
Coffee drinkers were less likely to die than abstainers over a seven-year window, according to a study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Previous studies have observed coffee is associated with a lower risk of death but didn't distinguish between unsweetened java and coffee consumed with sugar. The jury is still out on artificial sweeteners. (Reed, 5/31)

Fox Business: Disgraced Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes Asks Judge To Overturn Convictions
Convicted healthcare tech fraudster Elizabeth Holmes is asking a judge to overturn jurors’ decision, arguing that there was "insufficient" evidence for them to reach their "guilty" verdicts, according to recent court papers. Holmes, the 38-year-old founder and former CEO of Theranos, was convicted in January on three counts of wire fraud and one counts of conspiracy to commit fraud. But the jury’s decision should be thrown out because "the evidence is insufficient to sustain the convictions," Holmes’ attorneys argued in a motion on Friday. (Pagones, 5/30)

USA Today: Drug Overdoses Led To Sharp Increase In US Homeless Deaths, Not COVID
In Los Angeles County, nearly 2,000 homeless people died during the first year of the pandemic in 2020, an increase of 56% from 2019. Of those, 715 were from drug overdoses. L.A. was not alone. Those experiencing homelessness have been dying in greater numbers across the nation throughout the pandemic, reaching new highs in several U.S. cities, according to a USA TODAY review of data in 10 U.S. cities and counties with some of the highest numbers of homeless people.  And drugs, not the virus, are largely to blame, the data shows. (Hayes, 5/28)

NBC News: Fire At Omaha Chemical Plant Forces Residents To Evacuate Their Homes
A major fire tore through a chemical plant near downtown Omaha on Monday night, forcing some residents in the area to evacuate their homes and leaving hundreds without power. In photos shared by the Omaha Fire Department, smoke could be seen billowing out from the Nox-Crete facility, which manufactures chemical products, according to its website. (Da Silva and Chirbas, 5/31)

AP: Investigation: No Retaliation Against COVID-19 Whistleblower 
There’s nothing to indicate the Florida Department of Health told an employee to falsify COVID-19 data and she wasn’t fired out of retaliation, according to a state investigator’s report released this month. Former department employee Rebekah Jones received national attention when she raised questions about the state’s COVID-19 dashboard and claimed she was fired for exposing problems. The state said she was fired for insubordination after being reprimanded several times. (5/27)

The Boston Globe: Water Quality At Boston Area Beaches Declined In 2021, Report Says
The overall water quality safety rating for beaches in Greater Boston declined in 2021, according to a new report by environmental group Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, which gave the region’s beaches a rating of 86 percent — a 7 percentage point decrease from 2020 and a six-year low. The decrease in water quality safety, determined by the amount of bacteria in a sample, is a result of “far more” rainfall events, which have a “significant impact on water quality on many beaches,” occurring in 2021 than in 2020, the organization said. In all, 19 storms exceeded a half-inch of rainfall, while 12 exceeded one inch of rainfall, the report said. (McKenna, 5/30)

AP: Mobile Lung Cancer Screening Unit Visiting 3 WVa Counties
A mobile lung cancer screening unit that offers service to West Virginia counties without easy access to screenings will be visiting three counties next week. The unit known as LUCAS will visit Preston, Taylor and Marion counties. The unit is operated by WVU Medicine-WVU Hospitals and the WVU Cancer Institute. (5/30)

AP: Deaths Of 3 Women In Early Heat Wave Raise Questions, Fears 
Temperatures barely climbed into the 90s and only for a couple of days. But the discovery of the bodies of three women inside a Chicago senior housing facility this month left the city looking for answers to questions that were supposed to be addressed after a longer and hotter heat wave killed more than 700 people nearly three decades ago. Now, the city — and the country — is facing the reality that because of climate change, deadly heat waves can strike just about anywhere, don’t only fall in the height of summer and need not last long. (Babwin, 5/28)