First Edition: Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024

KFF Health News: After Institutions For People With Disabilities Close, Graves Are At Risk Of Being Forgotten
Hundreds of people who were separated from society because they had disabilities are buried in a nondescript field at the former state institution here. Disability rights advocates hope Iowa will honor them by preventing the kind of neglect that has plagued similar cemeteries at other shuttered facilities around the U.S. (Leys, 11/21)

KFF Health News: Washington Power Has Shifted. Here’s How The ACA May Shift, Too
President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House could embolden Republicans who want to weaken or repeal the Affordable Care Act, but implementing such sweeping changes would still require overcoming procedural and political hurdles. Trump, long an ACA opponent, expressed interest during the campaign in retooling the health law. In addition, some high-ranking Republican lawmakers — who will now have control over both the House and the Senate — have said revamping the landmark 2010 legislation known as Obamacare would be a priority. They say the law is too expensive and represents government overreach. (Armour, Whitehead and Rovner, 11/21)

KFF Health News: California Sets 15% Target For Primary Care Spending Over Next Decade
A California agency charged with slowing health costs has set a lofty goal for insurers to direct 15% of their spending to primary care by 2034, part of the state’s effort to expand the primary care workforce and give more people access to preventive care services. The board of the state Office of Health Care Affordability in October set its benchmark well above the industry’s current 7% primary care spending rate, in hopes of improving Californians’ health and reducing the need for costlier care down the road. (Sánchez, 11/21)

Stat: Top Medicaid Official Calls GOP Reforms 'Bad Policy' 
The Biden administration’s outgoing Medicaid chief said on Wednesday that Republican ideas to overhaul Medicaid are “just plain bad policy” and will hurt the program’s low-income enrollees. (Herman, 11/20)

The New York Times: Medicaid May Face Big Cuts And Work Requirements 
With Republicans set to control Washington, conservative lawmakers and policy experts who could advise the next Trump administration are discussing long-sought cuts to Medicaid, the government health program that covers roughly a fifth of all Americans and makes up about 10 percent of the federal budget. Some of the changes are being proposed as a way to pay for a law that would extend the tax cuts from the first Trump administration, most of which benefited corporations and wealthier Americans. The policies might slash funding for Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion — which added roughly 23 million people to the program — or require that many enrollees work in order to receive benefits. (Kliff and Weiland, 11/20)

The New York Times: Dr. Oz, Tapped to Run Medicare, Has a Record of Promoting Health Misinformation
The heart surgeon turned TV star has championed healthy lifestyle habits. But he’s also promoted sham diet pills and ineffective Covid-19 treatments. (Blum, Schmall and Agrawal, 11/20)

MedPage Today: What To Know About Jay Bhattacharya, Trump's Potential NIH Pick 
Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, of Stanford University in California, has emerged as President-elect Donald Trump's top pick to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH), according to reporting from the Washington Post. Amid Trump's stated plans to "restructure federal agencies," Bhattacharya would indeed be an outsider coming in to lead the NIH. And Bhattacharya has previously said he believes top officials there hold too much influence. (Henderson, 11/20)

Roll Call: CDC Director Looks To Future Of Public Health With Worry
With two months to go before the end of the Biden administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Mandy Cohen says she’s worried about the future of the public health agency and the people it serves. House GOP appropriators are pushing a 22 percent cut to the sprawling public health agency. President-elect Donald Trump has nominated a vaccine skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. And years after the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, skepticism about public health agencies remains despite the agency’s work to restore trust in it and its efforts. (Cohen, 11/20)

Bloomberg: Trump's Top Candidate For FDA Seen To Be Marty Makary
Surgeon and author Marty Makary is seen as the leading candidate to run the US Food and Drug Administration under President-elect Donald Trump, people familiar with the matter said. Makary, a pancreatic surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine, is a health researcher whose latest book focuses on questioning medical orthodoxy on topics from peanut allergies to antibiotics. (Tozzi, Muller, and Cook, 11/20)

Roll Call: FDA’s Nutrition Goals Similar To Kennedy’s, Experts Say 
President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to helm the Department of Health and Human Services has said he wants sweeping changes to how the United States approaches health and food, going so far as to suggest that the Food and Drug Administration should eliminate its nutrition operations. But the agency may be more aligned with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s goals than he’s made it seem. (DeGroot, 11/20)

Stat: RFK Jr. Has A Risky Approach To Remaking The FDA 
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a prescription for fixing what he calls the “corrupt” system at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — blow it up. As far as the controversial gadfly is concerned, employees should “pack their bags” thanks, in part, to long-standing pharmaceutical industry influence that has undermined the agency. And he is threatening an overhaul that has alarmed drug companies, Wall Street, and public health advocates. (Silverman, 11/20)

The Washington Post: RFK Jr. Wants Fluoride Out Of Water. Oregon Is Way Ahead. 
Oregon, the third-least-fluoridated state, one where the mineral has long been a contentious issue, offers a window into the fluoride fights to come. Just 26 percent of Oregonians using community water systems drink fluoridated water, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared to 72 percent of Americans overall. Portland is the nation’s largest city without fluoridated water, and voters have repeatedly rejected efforts to add it since 1965, most recently in a bruising 2013 ballot measure vote. In addition to conservative Lebanon, residents of Hillsboro, Oregon, a Democratic-leaning Portland suburb, voted in November against a ballot measure to fluoridate its water supply. The battles in Oregon illustrate how fear of fluoride spans partisan lines, tapping into distrust of authorities and mainstream science. (Nirappil, 11/20)

USA Today: RFK Jr., AIDS Denial, Trans Rights: Why LGBTQ+ People In Uproar
RFK Jr. has become somewhat of a persona non grata for sharing what LGBTQ+ advocates say is harmful misinformation about some of the hot-button topics that impact them the most: HIV, transgender people and their healthcare. In the days since his name was put forward, many have expressed their concern and disappointment both with Kennedy and the direction they fear the Trump administration will take overall. (Oliver, 11/20)

Stat: Bluesky Sees Influx Of New Users From 'MedTwitter,' Scientists On X
Ten years ago, science was entering its extremely online era. On Twitter, some academics, traditionally siloed in their niche fields, were growing unprecedented public profiles. Neil Hall, a genome scientist in the United Kingdom, responded by creating what he called the “Kardashian index,” a satirical measure comparing a scientist’s publishing record with their following on Twitter. The K-index — and countless lists of scientists to follow — sparked intense debate over scientists’ role in communicating their work (and more) to the public. (Palmer, 11/21)

Roll Call: Trump's First Week In Office May Set Tone On Abortion Policy 
President-elect Donald Trump’s first actions upon taking office in January could set the tone for how much he plans to leave the issue of regulating abortion to the states. Presidents typically make two key global family planning decisions during their first week in office: whether to fund the United Nations Population Fund, known as UNFPA, and whether to fund foreign nongovernmental organizations that perform, refer for or provide counseling for abortion abroad. (Raman, 11/20)

NPR: Anti-Abortion Groups Have A To-Do List For Trump In His Second Term
During his first term in office, President-elect Donald Trump delivered on many goals of the anti-abortion-rights movement: appointing conservative Supreme Court justices and restricting federal funding for groups like Planned Parenthood, among other things. Now, those activists hope a second Trump term will be a chance to take their agenda further. "All of that is good, what we saw in the first Trump administration. But we can do better," said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America. (McCammon, 11/21)

Chicago Tribune: Anti-Abortion Groups, Employers Sue Pritzker Over Abortion Law
Half a dozen groups and employers who oppose abortion are suing Gov. JB Pritzker and other state officials, aiming to stop them from enforcing a law that requires health insurers in Illinois to cover abortions and abortion medications at no cost to patients. (Schencker, 11/20)

The Hill: Biden Awards The Medal Of Freedom To Cecile Richards, Former Planned Parenthood President
President Biden awarded on Wednesday the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Cecile Richards, an abortion rights activist and former president of Planned Parenthood. During a private ceremony, Biden said Richards has “led some of our Nation’s most important civil rights causes — to lift up the dignity of workers, defend and advance women’s reproductive rights and equality, and mobilize Americans to exercise their power to vote.”  (Weixel, 11/20)

ABC News: Why Rates Of Postpartum Depression Have Doubled In The Last Decade
Rates of postpartum depression -- a serious mood disorder affecting new moms within the first 12 months after childbirth -- have doubled over the last decade, according to a new study of more than 440,000 people from Kaiser Permanente Southern California. The rate of diagnosis jumped from about 9% in 2010 to 19% in 2021. This is part of a larger trend. Mental health conditions are now the leading cause of pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Zusstone, 11/20)

Stat: The Health Care Industry Is Girding For Trump’s Tariffs —And Pushing Hard For Carveouts
President-elect Trump campaigned on imposing broad, steep tariffs to create more jobs in the U.S. and combat China. If enacted, these taxes would send the U.S. health care industry scrambling and could eventually force patients and insurers to shell out more for medical care. But no one in the industry is in a tizzy just yet, at least not publicly. There are two reasons for that. One: No one knows what Trump is actually going to do. Two: They’re pushing hard for carve-outs behind the scenes. (Bannow and Silverman, 11/21)

Modern Healthcare: Underinsured Patients At Risk If ACA Subsidies Lapse
More people may face gaps in insurance coverage, have trouble affording medical care or not be able to pay for coverage if certain Affordable Care Act subsidies aren't renewed next year, the Commonwealth Fund said Thursday. The independent healthcare research organization's 2024 report on health insurance found 44% of Americans are underinsured, face coverage gaps or are uninsured, despite improvements in lowering the number of uninsured citizens. In its 2022 report, the group pegged the percentage at 43%. (DeSilva, 11/20)

Modern Healthcare: Prior Authorization Policies Need More Changes, Providers Say
The Biden administration sought to tackle one of the most contentious policies in healthcare: prior authorization. Providers and insurers say there’s still room for improvement. Provider groups have complained misuse of prior authorizations is responsible for care delays, increased hospitalizations and a reduced likelihood that patients follow their care plans, along with the administrative burden providers face in trying to secure coverage for patients. (Early, 11/20)

AP: Open Enrollment: How To Shop For Health Insurance
Everyone likes a good deal, and health insurance bargains abound this time of year. But buyers should look beyond price when searching for a plan. Shoppers also should consider doctor networks and coverage limits to avoid getting stuck with big bills after care. Millions of Americans are looking for 2025 coverage now during annual enrollment windows for Medicare Advantage plans and individual insurance. Plus, many employers are telling their workers about their coverage plans for next year too. (Murphy, 11/20)

Bloomberg: New York Aims To Lower Drug Prices With PBM Rules For CVS, Cigna, UnitedHealth
New York state regulators are setting new rules to rein in the behavior of prescription drug middlemen — including units of CVS Health Corp., Cigna Group and UnitedHealth Group Inc. — in a step the state’s top financial regulator said will boost competition and transparency. Regulations taking effect this month will make pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, publish their lists of covered drugs and directories of pharmacies in their networks. The state will also bar PBMs from steering patients to their affiliated pharmacies and allow local pharmacies to offer mail-order and home delivery. (Tozzi, 11/20)

MedPage Today: Health Prices Are Getting More Transparent, But It's Still Not Enough, Experts Say 
Health transparency rules have helped researchers gain more insight into hospital pricing practices, Ge Bai, PhD, CPA, said here Wednesday at an event sponsored by Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms. The price transparency regulations that were part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) "gave us unprecedented insight into what's really going on in the commercial market," said Bai, who is professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. (Frieden, 11/20)

North Carolina Health News and Charlotte Ledger: Trapped In The Medical Billing Maze
When Mary Katherine Snow of Cornelius was diagnosed with leukemia in 2017, she was prepared to fight for her life. But she didn’t expect that in addition to fighting cancer, she would also have to fight a cascade of medical billing errors that tanked her credit score, required hours of back-and-forth with her hospital and her health insurer, and piled on stress at a time when she could least afford it. (Crouch, 11/21)

The Washington Post: Speaker Johnson Restricts Use Of Capitol Bathrooms By Transgender People
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said Wednesday that transgender individuals would not be allowed into restroom facilities in the Capitol and House office buildings that do not correspond with their sex assigned at birth, announcing the rule change about two weeks after Democrat Sarah McBride of Delaware became the first openly transgender individual elected to Congress. “All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex,” Johnson said in a statement. “It is important to note that each Member office has its own private restroom, and unisex restrooms are available throughout the Capitol. Women deserve women’s only spaces.” (Vazquez and Alfaro, 11/20)

St. Louis Public Radio: Hawley Unveils New Radiation Fund Bill With Price Cap 
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley is making a new push to pass funding for St. Louisans sick from exposure to radioactive waste. The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act is a federal program that gives money to people with illnesses that were likely caused by exposure to U.S. nuclear tests or uranium enrichment. The U.S. Senate passed two bills to renew the program, but Congress ultimately allowed the original funding to expire in June. (Grumke, 11/20)

San Francisco Chronicle: Kaiser Poised To Downsize At Oakland HQ In Another Blow To Downtown
Kaiser Permanente, one of Oakland’s largest employers, plans to downsize its headquarters office space in another blow to the city’s downtown. The health care giant “will significantly reduce its space” at the Ordway Building, where it has been headquartered since 1970, according to a building loan servicer note. As a result, the 530,000-square-foot tower faces “imminent monetary default” due to “insufficient cash flow” and was transferred to special servicing earlier this year. (Li, 11/20)

Los Angeles Times: Union Representing UC Service Workers Launches Two-Day Strike
Nearly 40,000 University of California workers began a two-day strike Wednesday to protest what they claim is bad faith bargaining by university negotiators as the two sides try to hammer out new labor agreements. The work stoppage, which affects service and patient care workers at all UC campuses and medical facilities, will continue until 11:59 p.m. Thursday. AFSCME Local 3299, the union representing the workers, and the university system have been in talks over new contracts for nearly a year. (Petrow-Cohen, 11/20)

The 19th: Climate Change Is Disrupting Access To HIV Treatment
Half of people with HIV in the United States are living in places that are vulnerable to extreme weather and climate disasters, according to a new analysis from the left-leaning Center for American Progress (CAP). The report from CAP released Wednesday finds that the areas of the country where HIV is being diagnosed at disproportionately high rates are also places most at risk of disasters. (Kutz, 11/20)

CIDRAP: Novel Genomic Test Shows Promise To Streamline Diagnosis Of Multiple Infectious Diseases
After a decade in development, a new genomic test developed at the University of California–San Francisco (UCSF) promises to rapidly and accurately diagnosis infections caused by almost any pathogen—whether a virus, bacterium, fungus, or parasite. The tool uses a genomic sequencing technique, called metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS), to quickly decipher if a bacterium, fungus, virus, or parasite is causing an infection. Instead of ruling out each pathogen in a process of elimination, mNGS analyzes all the nucleic acids, RNA and DNA, present in a sample simultaneously. (Soucheray, 11/20)

Stat: A Needle Shot Alternative? Researchers Turn To Squids, Cuttlefish
Doctors have been using needles as a way to inject people with drugs since the 1600s. Today they’re often used for biologic drugs, which are too large to deliver via pills because they would be dissolved by stomach acid. Now a group of bioengineers is hoping to give drug delivery an update with a device that draws inspiration from cuttlefish and other sea creatures. (Oza, 11/20)   

Los Angeles Times: Tracking Your Health With A Device? Here's Where The Data Could Go
Wearable technology — smartwatches, smart rings, fitness trackers and the like — monitors body-centric data such as your heart rate, steps taken and calories burned, and may record where you go along the way. ... But the lack of oversight into how body-centric data are used and shared with third parties has prompted concerns from privacy experts, who warn that the data could be sold or lost through data breaches, then used to raise insurance premiums, discriminate surreptitiously against applicants for jobs or housing, and even perform surveillance. (Fry, 11/20)

The Mercury News: Good Samaritan Hospital Clears Rezoning Hurdle At San Jose City Council
Despite criticism from some city leaders over the past few weeks about HCA Healthcare’s previous service cuts, the San Jose City Council will not stand in the way of the health provider’s plans to build a new facility at Good Samaritan Hospital. Instead, the City Council unanimously approved rezoning the hospital’s campus Tuesday — allowing it to move forward with the permitting process to build new facilities that comply with state seismic law — amid overwhelming support for the project from patients, labor groups and medical professionals. (Patel, 11/20)

The Texas Tribune: What To Know About Texas Hospitals' Citizenship Question 
On Nov. 1, Texas hospitals that accept Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Plan coverage started asking all patients about their immigration status and whether they are lawfully present in the United States. The requirement is part of an executive order Gov. Greg Abbott issued this summer. The information is statistical only. No identifying information about the patient is passed along to the governor’s office. (Langford, 11/21)

Houston Chronicle: Montgomery County Launches New Medical Examiner's Office
Montgomery County is now the 14th county in Texas to become a medical examiner’s office after commissioners unanimously approved the decision without discussion. The Tuesday action comes after commissioners approved the department’s $3.2 million budget in September. Dr. Kathryn Pinneri, who became director of forensic services in 2016, will be the county's first chief medical examiner. (Dominguez, 11/20)

AP: Alabama To Use Nitrogen Gas To Execute Man For 1994 Slaying Of Hitchhiker 
An Alabama prisoner convicted of the 1994 murder of a female hitchhiker is slated Thursday to become the third person executed by nitrogen gas. Alabama this year began using nitrogen gas to carry out some death sentences, the first use of a new execution method in the United States since lethal injection was introduced in 1982. The method involves placing a respirator gas mask over the person’s face to replace breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death by lack of oxygen. Alabama maintains the method is constitutional. (Chandler, 11/21)

The New York Times: Urologist Who Sexually Abused Patients Is Sentenced To Life In Prison
A urologist convicted of sexually abusing seven patients, including five who were minors, was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday, prosecutors said. The doctor, Darius A. Paduch, a fertility specialist, molested boys and young men for years at two prominent New York hospitals, prosecutors said. Hundreds of other young men and boys have also accused Dr. Paduch, 57, of abuse spanning more than 15 years in scores of civil suits. (McFadden, 11/20)

The Washington Post: CDC Warns Of Body-Lice Transmitted Infections Among Homeless Populations 
A rare disease spread by body lice poses a danger to people experiencing homelessness and others who have received organ transplants from the infected, according to three papers released Wednesday by investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The bacterial infection, known as Bartonella quintana, or trench fever as it was called during World War I, lives in the feces of body lice and can cause skin lesions, fever and bone pain. However, severe cases can lead to a potentially fatal infection of the heart valves. (Johnson and Malhi, 11/20)

NBC News: Georgia Woman Sues In Response To E. Coli Outbreak Linked To Carrots
Melinda Pratt had been buying the same brand of organic carrots for years: Bunny Luv by Grimmway Farms. ... After she ate them, she said, she began experiencing bloody diarrhea and stomach pain that felt like “somebody getting stabbed in the stomach repeatedly and not stopping.” Her symptoms also included nausea and vomiting, Pratt said, adding that she was the only one in her household who ate the carrots. “I genuinely thought at some point that I was slowly dying,” she said. (Richardson, 11/20)

CBS News: Are Food Recalls And Outbreaks On The Rise? FDA Says U.S. Food Supply Still "One Of The Safest In The World"
The Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that the U.S. food supply is still "one of the safest in the world," in the wake of a number of foodborne disease outbreaks affecting items ranging from organic carrots to deli meats to McDonald's Quarter Pounders. E. coli, listeria and other contaminants have sickened thousands of people and forced a number of recalls in recent months. But despite those high-profile examples, data cited by the FDA suggest recalls were not unusually high this past year. (Tin, 11/20)

Axios: A Quarter Of Americans Suffer From Chronic Pain
Roughly a quarter of Americans say they suffer from chronic pain and nearly 1 in 10 say it's bad enough to regularly limit their life or work, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Reed, 11/21)

AP: American And Australian Tourists Die, Raising Toll To 4 In Laos Alcohol Poisoning Incident
An Australian teenager has died after drinking tainted alcohol in Vang Vieng, Laos, in what Australia’s prime minister on Thursday called every parent’s nightmare, and the U.S. State Department confirmed an American also died in the same party town, bringing the death toll to four. (Rising and Saksornchai, 11/21)