First Edition: August 17, 2017

Kaiser Health News: Often Missing In The Health Care Debate: Women’s Voices
Women are hardly speaking in unison when it comes to overhauling health care. “Women’s health” means very different things to different people, based on their backgrounds and ages. A 20-year-old may care more about how to get free contraception, while a 30-year-old may be more concerned about maternity coverage. Women in their 50s might be worried about access to mammograms, and those in their 60s may fear not being able to afford insurance before Medicare kicks in at 65. ... To get a richer sense of women’s viewpoints on health care as the national debate continues, we asked several around the country and across generations to share their thoughts and personal experiences. (Gorman and Gold, 8/17)

The Associated Press: White House: Gov't To Make Health Law Payments This Month
The government will make this month’s payments to insurers under the Obama-era health care law that President Donald Trump still wants to repeal and replace, a White House official said Wednesday. ... A White House spokesman said “the August payment will be made,” insisting on anonymity to discuss the decision ahead of the official announcement. The so-called “cost-sharing” subsidies total about $7 billion this year and are considered vital to guarantee stability for consumers who buy their own individual health insurance policies. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 8/16)

The Wall Street Journal: White House: Health-Insurer Payments Will Be Made In August
Governors and Democratic lawmakers have been urging President Donald Trump to continue the payments, known as cost-sharing reduction payments, because insurers have said they may pull out of the ACA’s insurance markets or raise premiums in 2018 without the funding. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a report Tuesday that premiums for popular, midprice plans on the ACA exchanges would rise 20% next year without the payments. (Armour and Radnofsky, 8/17)

Los Angeles Times: Trump Administration, Facing Pressure, Agrees To Continue Obamacare Subsidy For Now
The decision to make this month’s payment, which was due next week, signaled that the administration has decided against immediately precipitating a collapse, potentially giving Congress time to pass a bipartisan package of fixes to some of the law’s problems. Leading Republican members of Congress have pressed the administration to keep making the payments, fearing that any move to cut them off would cause chaos in insurance markets. Trump has said voters would blame Democrats for any problems with the markets, but few Republican elected officials share that view. (Lauter, 8/16)

Politico: Trump Administration Will Make This Month’s Obamacare Payments But Leaves Program’s Future In Limbo
The administration's decision was immediately denounced by an influential GOP House conservative, suggesting mounting tensions among Republicans about how to move forward on health care after the repeal effort collapsed in the Senate late last month. ... "Instead of the executive branch issuing unconstitutional payments to bail out insurance companies, the Senate should continue working until they have passed a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare," [Rep. Mark] Walker said in a statement. "Their constituents are tired of their inability to fulfill their promise." (Demko, 8/16)

The Associated Press: Companies Set To Participate New Hampshire Insurance Market
Uncertainty over which health insurers will continue coverage under the Affordable Care Act in New Hampshire ended Wednesday, with three companies confirming their participation before the deadline. ... Anthem, Harvard Pilgrim, Ambetter by NH Healthy Families all had indicated earlier this year they planned to continue in the marketplace, but in recent weeks declined to reaffirm their commitments. All three, however, had done so by Wednesday’s deadline for states to submit all 2018 plan information, other than rates, to the federal government. (Ramer, 8/16)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Set To Roll Back Obama-Era Contraception Rule
The Trump administration is poised to issue a rule unwinding an Obama -era requirement that employee health benefits include contraception, which will spark a fresh round of litigation over an issue that has been before courts for six years. Federal health officials are expected to finalize a regulation that would allow employers with religious or moral objections to birth control to omit coverage for contraception from their workers’ plans, according to two people familiar with its contents. The regulation closely mirrors an earlier, leaked draft, they said. (Hackman and Radnofsky, 8/16)

The Associated Press: Federal Court: Arkansas Can Block Planned Parenthood Money
A federal appeals court panel ruled Wednesday that Arkansas can block Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, two years after the state ended its contract with the group over videos secretly recorded by an anti-abortion group. In a 2-1 ruling, an 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel vacated preliminary injunctions a federal judge issued preventing the state from suspending any Medicaid payments for services rendered to patients from Planned Parenthood. Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson ended the state’s Medicaid contract with the organization in 2015. (DeMillo, 8/17)

Politico: Court Rules Arkansas Can Block Medicaid Funding From Planned Parenthood
The ruling Wednesday by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacates preliminary injunctions from a federal judge that required the state to continue Medicaid payments following legal challenges brought by three patients challenging Gov. Asa Hutchinson's 2015 decision to end the state's Medicaid contract with the women's health group. (Ehley, 8/16)

NPR and ProPublica: Many Nurses Lack Knowledge Of Health Risks To Mothers After Childbirth
In recent months, mothers who nearly died in the hours and days after giving birth have repeatedly told ProPublica and NPR that their doctors and nurses were often slow to recognize the warning signs that their bodies weren't healing properly. A study published Tuesday in MCN: The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing substantiates some of those concerns. Researchers surveyed 372 postpartum nurses nationwide and found that many of them were ill-informed about the dangers mothers face after giving birth. (Martin and Montagne, 8/17)

The Associated Press: UnitedHealth CEO To Step Down After Run Of More Than Decade
UnitedHealth Group has picked company President David Wichmann to replace CEO Stephen Hemsley in a long-planned transition that Wall Street greeted with polite applause.The nation’s largest health insurer says Wichmann, 54, will take over Sept. 1, and Hemsley will become executive chairman of the company’s board. Current Chairman Richard Burke will shift to lead independent director. (Murphy, 8/17)

The Wall Street Journal: UnitedHealth Names David Wichmann As New CEO
UnitedHealth Group Inc. said David S. Wichmann, its current president, will next month succeed Stephen J. Hemsley as chief executive, a widely expected transition at the top of the nation’s largest health insurer. Mr. Wichmann, 54 years old, will take over the CEO job on Sept. 1, and Mr. Hemsley, 65, who has held the title since 2006, will become executive chairman. UnitedHealth Group’s current board chairman, Richard Burke, will then take the title of lead independent director. (Wilde Mathews, 8/16)

The Associated Press: Express Scripts To Limit Opioids; Doctors Concerned
The nation’s largest pharmacy benefit manager will soon limit the number and strength of opioid drugs prescribed to first-time users as part of a wide-ranging effort to curb an epidemic affecting millions of Americans. But the new program from Express Scripts is drawing criticism from the American Medical Association, the largest association of physicians and medical students in the U.S., which believes treatment plans should be left to doctors and their patients. (Salter, 8/17)

The Associated Press: Overdoses On The Road: Drugged Driving Rises As A Menace
Car crashes caused by overdosing drivers are becoming so commonplace, authorities say, that some rescue crews immediately administer the antidote, naloxone, to any unresponsive driver they find at an accident scene. People who use heroin and related drugs are sometimes so eager to get high, or so sick from withdrawal, that they’ll shoot up in the car as soon as they get their hands on more, police say. Often they’re back on the road before the overdose takes hold, and they lose consciousness, a recipe for traffic accidents. (Stacy and Welsh-Huggins, 8/17)

NPR: With Heavy Drinking On The Rise, How Much Is Too Much?
If one glass of wine takes the edge off, why not drink a few more? This thinking may help explain the findings of a new study that points to an increase in drinking among adults in the U.S., especially women. "We found that both alcohol use and high-risk drinking, which is sometimes called binge-drinking, increased over time," says Deborah Hasin, a professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center and an author of the study. (Aubrey, 8/16)

The Associated Press: Governors Of 2 Pot States Push Back On Trump Administration
Governors in at least two states that have legalized recreational marijuana are pushing back against the Trump administration and defending their efforts to regulate the industry. Alaska Gov. Bill Walker, a one-time Republican no longer affiliated with a party, sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week asking the Department of Justice to maintain the Obama administration’s more hands-off enforcement approach to states that have legalized the drug still banned at the federal level. (Bohrer, 8/17)

The Associated Press: Transgender New Yorkers Have New Health Insurance Protection
Transgender individuals in New York state have new protections when it comes to health insurance coverage.Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo says health insurers can't deny coverage based on gender identity. A state Department of Financial Services letter Wednesday tells health insurers to take reasonable steps to determine if the insured is eligible for services before denying a claim. (8/17)

The New York Times: Working To Close The Breast-Feeding Gap
“When your mother hasn’t breast-fed, it’s hard to get that support to breast-feed your own child,” Dr. McKinney said. “This is where health care providers have the opportunity to step in.” ... She was the lead author of a National Institutes of Health community study published last summer in Pediatrics, which found that the newborns of African-American women were nine times more likely than the babies of white mothers to be given formula in hospitals – a factor the researchers considered a significant contributor to the entrenched disparity in breast-feeding rates between black, white and Hispanic mothers. (Miller, 8/17)

NPR: Sepsis Risk For Newborns Reduced By Probiotic Bacteria
Feeding babies the microbes dramatically reduces the risk newborns will develop sepsis, scientists report Wednesday in the journal Nature. Sepsis is a top killer of newborns worldwide. Each year more than 600,000 babies die of the blood infections, which can strike very quickly. (Doucleff, 8/16)

USA Today: Bubonic Plague In Arizona: Fleas Found Carrying Infectious Disease
Fleas tested positive for the the bubonic plague in two counties in Arizona, with public health officials warning the infectious disease that claimed millions in the Middle Ages may exist in other nearby locations, too. The plague's presence in Arizona follows three confirmed human cases in New Mexico earlier this year. (Hafner, 8/16)