First Edition: July 27, 2023

KFF Health News: Home Sweet Parking Lot: Some Hospitals Welcome RV Living For Patients, Families, And Workers 
Jim Weaver has had two major surgeries in the past decade: one to remove cancerous tumors from his bladder and another to clear a blocked artery. Weaver, 70, knew that after he emerged from surgery, he’d want privacy. But because he and his wife drove more than 150 miles from Bend, Oregon, to Oregon Health & Science University Hospital in Portland, immediately returning home was not an option. (Saint Louis, 7/27)

KFF Health News: Covered California To Cut Patient Costs After Democratic Lawmakers Win Funding From Gov. Newsom 
Weeks after Democratic lawmakers forced Gov. Gavin Newsom to make good on a four-year-old pledge to use tax penalty proceeds from fining the uninsured to increase health insurance subsidies for low- and middle-income Californians, Covered California officials announced they will funnel that money into reducing out-of-pocket spending for many enrollees struggling with the cost of care. The state’s health insurance exchange will zero out some patients’ hospital deductibles, up to $5,400; lower the copay of primary care visits from $50 to $35; and reduce the cost for generic drugs from $19 to $15. Some enrollees will also see their annual out-of-pocket spending capped at $6,100, down from $7,500. (Hart, 7/27)

Modern Healthcare: Key House, Senate Committees Advance PBM Reform Bills
Two influential congressional committees on Wednesday passed bills aimed at reigning in pharmacy benefit managers’ operations, signaling that lawmakers' scrutiny of the prescription middlemen is here to stay. With the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees' action, every congressional committee focused on healthcare has now passed proposals to increase oversight of PBMs, which negotiate prescription prices with drugmakers on behalf of insurers. More than 80% of the PBM market is controlled by CVS Health’s Caremark, UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRx and Cigna’s Express Scripts. The three parent companies that also operate some of the largest insurers, provider groups and retail pharmacy networks. (Tepper, 7/26)

Stat: Senate Panel Puts Off Hardest PBM Reforms For Another Day
Senators on the Finance Committee on Wednesday nearly unanimously passed a bill to clamp down on drug middlemen, but kicked the can down the road on some of the more challenging policies. (Wilkerson, 7/26)

Stat: Democrats Decry New Health Bill For Going Easy On Private Equity
A rift between Democrats and Republicans over health care transparency was on full display in the House on Wednesday. Republicans on the House Ways & Means Committee introduced a package this week that they say would increase health care transparency, but Democrats and outside groups are arguing that it doesn’t go far enough to force companies to disclose information about their ownership. They also think it goes too easy on the private equity firms that are buying up health care practices. (Cohrs, 7/26)

Axios: First Look: A New Republican Health Care Plan
A trio of policy experts from Stanford’s Hoover Institution are launching a new free-market health care plan this week that they're hoping will become the go-to Republican message for 2024 campaigns, with a focus on expanding health care choices. Ever since the Affordable Care Act "repeal and replace" effort failed in 2017, Republicans have struggled to find a unifying vision for health care they can put forward in presidential and congressional races. (Knight, 7/27)

NPR: McConnell Says He's 'Fine' After Abruptly Stopping Press Conference
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell abruptly stopped talking at his weekly press conference with top Senate GOP leaders on Wednesday when he froze and appeared unable to continue for more than 30 seconds as he gripped the podium. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the third ranking Republican and a physician, walked with McConnell for a few steps near the Senate floor as other leaders resumed the press conference. (Walsh, 7/26)

NBC News: McConnell Fell Recently At D.C. Airport Prior To Wednesday’s Freeze-Up
The fall, which has not been previously reported, occurred July 14 after the flight out of Washington was canceled while everyone was on board. McConnell, R-Ky., who was a passenger, had a “face plant,” someone who was on the plane at the time but did not witness the fall told NBC News. That passenger also said they spoke to another passenger who helped tend to McConnell. McConnell has also recently been using a wheelchair as a precaution when he navigates crowded airports, said a source familiar with his practices. (Haake and Kapur, 7/27)

The New York Times: U.S. Moves To Improve Airplane Bathrooms For People With Disabilities 
The Transportation Department announced on Wednesday that it had finalized new regulations to require more commercial aircraft to have accessible bathrooms, a long-awaited step to address complaints from disabled travelers about the difficulties of flying. Under the regulations, new single-aisle planes with at least 125 seats will eventually be required to have at least one lavatory large enough for a disabled passenger and an attendant to enter and move around in. Twin-aisle planes are already required to have an accessible lavatory. (Walker, 7/26)

CNBC: New Bill Aims To Help Low-Income People With Disabilities Save Money
The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law 33 years ago to protect people with disabilities from discrimination. But disabled people still face major hurdles when it comes to building wealth. To help make it easier for disabled individuals with lower incomes to save, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who serves as chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, is introducing a new proposal, called the ABLE MATCH Act. The legislation would create a federal dollar-for-dollar match for new and existing ABLE accounts for individuals who earn $28,000 or less per year. (Konish, 7/26)

The Wall Street Journal: Hedge Funds Seek To Cut Off $1 Billion Meant For Opioid Victims
A group of hedge funds is devising a plan to cut off about $1 billion meant to help victims of opioid addiction, opening the way to keep some of the money for themselves. Mallinckrodt, one of America’s largest manufacturers of opioids, last year agreed to pay $1.7 billion to resolve thousands of lawsuits brought by state and local governments and opioid-addicted individuals, who accused the company of helping cause a public-health crisis. The settlement funds, to be paid through 2030, were meant to help state health departments buy lifesaving overdose reversal drugs like Narcan and pay treatment costs for people who took prescription opioids. (Saeedy, Gladstone and Matsuda, 7/26)

CIDRAP: Wastewater Surveillance May Be Best Marker Of Community COVID-19 Prevalence
Wastewater surveillance may be the most accurate way to track SARS-CoV-2 community prevalence and identify variants of concern amid increased home COVID-19 testing, decreased public health reporting, and fewer healthcare visits due to asymptomatic cases and the wide availability of vaccines and treatments, Stanford University researchers report today in JAMA Network Open. The team conducted a time series analysis of wastewater surveillance data from 268 counties in 22 US states from January to September 2022 and offer a strategy for communities to use SARS-CoV-2 wastewater metrics amid declining reliability of conventional surveillance methods. The study period took place during SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant predominance. (Van Beusekom, 7/26)

Politico: DeSantis Suggests He Could Pick RFK Jr. To Lead The FDA Or CDC 
Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might have an offer to run a federal agency in 2025 — but not for the party he is running to gain the nomination from. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is struggling to gain steam in the GOP primary, mused on Wednesday in an interview with Clay Travis on OutKick that he generally aligns with Kennedy’s conservative views on Covid-19 policies and vaccines. Those views, DeSantis indicated, could make him a pick to lead a federal agency with medical jurisdiction. (Zhang, 7/26)

Reuters: Owners Of Morning-After Pill Plan B Mulling $4 Billion Sale Of Company, Source Says 
The private equity owners of popular emergency contraception pill Plan B, Foundation Consumer Healthcare, have hired advisors to explore options including a potential sale of the company, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. A sale could value the company at more than $4 billion, the source said, adding that the process is at an early stage. It is owned by investment firms, including Kelso & Co. and Juggernaut Capital Partners. (Summerville, 7/26)

Reuters: Obesity Drugs Don't Make WHO's Essential List, But Ebola, MS Drugs Added 
Obesity drugs will not join the World Health Organization's (WHO) latest essential medicines list, but treatments for diseases, including Ebola and multiple sclerosis will, documents published by the U.N. agency showed. The WHO's essential medicines list is a catalogue of the drugs that should be available in all functioning health systems. (Rigby, 7/26)

Reuters: Insight: Wegovy Weight-Loss Injection Factory Plagued By Sterile-Safety Failures 
The factory that fills the self-injection pens for booming weight-loss drug Wegovy has repeatedly breached U.S. sterile-safety rules in recent years and staff have failed to perform required quality checks, a Reuters review of regulatory documents shows. The breaches at Catalent, the Wegovy pen filler, were found by inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration who visited the plant in Brussels in October 2021 and August 2022 to check on its compliance with manufacturing regulations, according to detailed FDA reports on the inspections, obtained by Reuters under freedom of information laws. (Fick, 7/27)

Reuters: Exclusive: UK Probes Novo's Ozempic, Weight-Loss Drug Saxenda Over Suicidal, Self-Harming Thoughts 
Britain is reviewing a class of drugs used in a diabetes medicine and a weight-loss treatment sold by Novo Nordisk after some patients reported suicidal or self-harming thoughts, two weeks after similar action by the European Union. (Fick, 7/26)

Reuters: Moderna/Merck Begins Late-Stage Study Of Skin Cancer Vaccine Combination
Moderna and its partner Merck said on Wednesday that they had begun enrolling patients in a late-stage study testing their personalized mRNA-based skin cancer vaccine in combination with the immunotherapy Keytruda. Data from a mid-stage study in 157 patients had shown that the vaccine combination cut the risk of recurrence or death by 44% in patients with melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer, when compared with Keytruda alone. (7/26)

The New York Times: Flipping A Switch And Making Cancers Self-Destruct 
Within every cancer are molecules that spur deadly, uncontrollable growth. What if scientists could hook those molecules to others that make cells self-destruct? Could the very drivers of a cancer’s survival instead activate the program for its destruction? That idea came as an epiphany to Dr. Gerald Crabtree, a developmental biologist at Stanford, some years ago during a walk through the redwoods near his home in the Santa Cruz mountains. (Kolata, 7/26)

The New York Times: For Adults With No Heart Attack or Stroke History, Evidence Says Not to Start Baby Aspirin
A new analysis of data from a large clinical trial of healthy older adults found higher rates of brain bleeding among those who took daily low-dose aspirin, and no significant protection against stroke. The analysis, published Wednesday in the medical journal JAMA, is the latest evidence that low-dose aspirin, which slows the clotting action of platelets, may not be appropriate for people who do not have any history of heart conditions or warning signs of stroke. Older people prone to falls, which can cause brain bleeds, should be particularly cautious about taking aspirin, the findings suggest. (Baumgaertner, 7/26)

Bay Area News Group: Dietary Supplement Company Balance Of Nature To Pay $1.1 Million Over Misleading Advertising
A dietary supplement company agreed to pay a $1.1 million settlement after a group of California district attorneys — including several in the Bay Area — challenged the company’s claims that its freeze-dried capsules could cure diabetes, lupus and numerous other ailments. Evig LLC — which does business as Balance of Nature — agreed to the settlement after the California Food, Drug and Medical Device Task Force filed a civil lawsuit against the company, claiming that its advertising campaigns across California “were not supported by competent and reliable scientific evidence,” according to a news release by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office. (Rodgers, 7/26)

Stat: UHS Says Company Favors Patients Whose Insurance Pays More
The country’s largest private psychiatric hospital operator cherry-picks patients whose insurance will pay more, its finance chief said on an earnings call Wednesday. It’s no secret that such hospitals, especially when run by for-profit companies, base admission decisions on how much they’ll get paid, but it’s rare to hear the practice described so bluntly. (Bannow, 7/26)

Axios: Report Finds Hospitals Still Struggle To Discharge Patients
Hospitals are struggling to discharge recovering patients to less intensive settings amid staffing shortages at nursing homes and home health agencies, a new report from WellSky finds. Patients who remain hospitalized longer than necessary can reduce the overall capacity of the facility, limit the ability to treat new patients and even cause canceled or delayed procedures, the report noted. (Dreher, 7/26)

The Boston Globe: The Once-Hot Market For Biotech Jobs And Lab Space Has Cooled. What Now?
When Crystal Shih Byers left her job at Novartis in 2020, she was excited to make the leap into a smaller startup. Byers had spent almost nine years at Novartis, most recently helping lead a group that worked on gene therapy. But pharmaceutical companies are large and complex, and she craved more immediate impact. “I was looking for a place where I could be in the room,” she says. She wanted more autonomy, and to feel like her work would reach patients sooner. (Miller, 7/26)

Los Angeles Times: These Southern California Counties Have Some Of The Highest Cases Of Alzheimer's Disease
Four Southern California counties recorded some of the highest numbers in the nation for Alzheimer’s disease, with cases expected to increase in the next few years as the state’s population ages, according to a new report by the Alzheimer’s Assn. The report, which was shared at the 2023 Alzheimer’s Assn. International Conference in Amsterdam last week, is the first to estimate the disorder’s prevalence and number of people diagnosed at the county level in the U.S. Researchers reviewed 3,142 counties across the country. (Arredondo, 7/26)

CBS News: Woman Gives Birth To Baby Boy After Uterus Transplant In Alabama
A woman born without a uterus welcomed a baby boy, becoming the first person outside of a clinical trial to give birth after receiving a uterus transplant. The mom, identified by University of Alabama Birmingham Hospital only as Mallory, was 17 when she was diagnosed with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome, which affects approximately 1 in 4,500 female newborns. She was told she would never be able to biologically carry her own child. (Chasan, 7/26)

AP: GOP Nominee Says He Would Renew Push For Medicaid Work Requirement If Elected Governor In Kentucky
Republican candidate Daniel Cameron said Wednesday that he would move quickly as Kentucky’s governor to revive a push to require some able-bodied adults to work in exchange for health care coverage through Medicaid. If he succeeds in unseating Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear later this year, Cameron said his administration would seek federal permission to impose the Medicaid work requirement. The proposed rule would exclude able-bodied adults who are “truly vulnerable,” including those with children or who are pregnant, his campaign said in a follow-up statement. Cameron declared that connecting Medicaid coverage to work for some Kentuckians would raise workforce participation in the post-pandemic era. (Schreiner, 7/26)

AP: Michigan Bans Use Of Conversion Therapy On LGBTQ Youth Under Measure Signed By Governor 
The scientifically discredited practice of so-called conversion therapy, which aims to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations, is now banned for minors in Michigan under legislation signed Wednesday by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Michigan becomes the 22nd state to outlaw conversion therapy, which state lawmakers defined as any practice or treatment by a mental health professional that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity. That does not include counseling that provides assistance to people undergoing a gender transition. (Cappelletti, 7/26)

The Boston Globe: Families Impacted By Police Violence Fight For ‘Medical Civil Rights’ 
The “Act Establishing Medical Civil Rights” would require all law enforcement officers, including officers at universities, hospitals, the state police department, and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority police department, to summon emergency medical care for anyone who communicates they’re experiencing a medical emergency or reasonably appears to be medically unstable. The act would guarantee the right to medical care while experiencing an emergency related to physical or mental health, substance use disorder, and severe pain or injury. (Mohammed, 7/26)

NPR: In Florida's Local Malaria Outbreak, Forgotten Bite Led To Surprise Hospitalization
At first, Hannah Heath thought she probably just had a bad case of food poisoning. The Sarasota, Fla. resident was vomiting and had chills and a fever. But four days later, she was still really sick. "Finally I called my husband and I was like, 'You have to take me to the ER, I think I'm dehydrated; I think I need an IV,'" said Heath, 39. (Colombini, 7/26)

AP: Sesame Is Being Newly Added To Some Foods. The FDA Says It Doesn't Violate An Allergy Law
Food manufacturers who deliberately add sesame to products and include the ingredient on labels are not violating a new federal food allergy law, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food safety advocacy group, had petitioned the FDA to halt an unintended consequence of the January law — more companies adding sesame to foods that didn’t have it before. But the agency denied the advocacy group’s request. (Aleccia, 7/26)

NBC News: Why Young Adults, Especially Women, Are Prone To Falls On Stairs
Children under 3 and adults over 85 are the age groups most commonly injured from falling down stairs, but the third-most likely group is often overlooked, experts say: young adults in their 20s. So in a study published Wednesday, a team of researchers at Purdue University focused on that cohort, analyzing particular behaviors that lead young adults to fall on stairs and how much those behaviors varied between men and women. (Pandey, 7/26)

The Wall Street Journal: Cardiac Arrest Isn’t Increasing Among Athletes Despite Incidents Like Bronny James’s Collapse 
Despite the clustering of headline-grabbing cases, experts say there has been no statistically significant rise in cardiac events of young athletes. What has changed is the high profile of the athletes involved—and the preparedness to respond to those emergencies. (O'Connell and Higgins, 7/26)