First Edition: August 21, 2017

California Healthline: Anthem’s Exit Leaves Thousands With No Choice Of Health Plans
For about 60,000 Covered California customers, choosing a health plan next year will be easier, and possibly more painful, than ever: There will be only one insurer left in their communities after Anthem Blue Cross of California pulls out of much of the state’s individual market. That means they could lose doctors they trust, or pay higher premiums. (Ibarra, 8/18)

Kaiser Health News: Home Visits Help New Parents Overcome Tough Histories, Raise Healthy Children
Seated at a kitchen table in a cramped apartment, Rosendo Gil asked the young parents sitting across from him what they should do if their daughter caught a cold. Blas Lopez, 29, and his fiancée, Lluvia Padilla, 28, quickly answered: Check her temperature and call the doctor if she has a fever they can’t control. (Gorman, 8/21)

The Wall Street Journal: Republicans Face Looming Deadline On Health Law
A fast-approaching deadline for insurers to commit to selling health plans next year under the Affordable Care Act is pressuring Republican lawmakers to decide quickly whether to shore up the law and ease the path for insurers or continue efforts to roll it back. Lawmakers returning to the Capitol from recess on Sept. 5 will have only 12 legislative days to decide whether to pass a bipartisan bill aimed at bolstering the ACA’s markets before insurers must commit to participating in the law’s exchanges in 2018. (Armour and Hackman, 8/20)

The New York Times: In Tennessee, Promoting Enrollment In Tenuous Health Care Plans
Sharon Barker isn’t used to recruiting new health insurance customers in deepest summer, long before the enrollment season for the Affordable Care Act. But this year, everything is different. Despite surviving Republican efforts to repeal it, the law known as Obamacare remains vulnerable. President Trump has repeatedly threatened to end billions of dollars in payments to insurance companies, but his administration decided this week to continue them for another month. (Goodnough, 8/20)

The Associated Press: Past Health Chiefs: Insurance Market Stability Is The Goal
Three former U.S. health secretaries of both parties say President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Congress should make stabilizing health insurance marketplaces their immediate goal. Former Health and Human Services secretaries Kathleen Sebelius, Mike Leavitt and Tommy Thompson tell The Associated Press that calming markets should be the objective now that "Obamacare" seems here for the foreseeable future. (8/21)

Politico: Obamacare Survives Its Latest Threat — Bare Counties
President Donald Trump contends the health care law is “dead,” but residents of all but one county in America will be able to get an Obamacare health plan next year. Poised for their fifth enrollment cycle this fall, the Obamacare insurance markets are proving more resilient than many anticipated, with insurers jumping in to cover regions other companies fled, undercutting GOP predictions of widespread market collapses. (Demko, 8/20)

The New York Times: Trump Moves To Impede Consumer Lawsuits Against Nursing Homes
The Trump administration is pushing to scrap a rule that would have made it easier for nursing home residents to sue nursing homes for injuries caused by substandard care, abuse or neglect, bringing its campaign to relax federal regulations to the delicate business of care for older Americans. The push would undo a rule issued by the Obama administration that would have prevented nursing homes from requiring that consumers agree to resolve any disputes through arbitration rather than litigation. (Pear, 8/18)

The Associated Press: Battling Demons In A Community Looking To Trump For Change
In Grays Harbor County, a rural community on the coast of Washington state, the rate at which people die from despair — from drugs, alcohol and suicide — is nearly twice the national average. The county embraced Donald Trump’s call to America’s forgotten corners, and flipped Republican in a presidential election for the first time in 90 years. Many of those caught in the cycle of addiction did not vote; they are either felons or too consumed by the turmoil of trying to claw their way out to be engaged in society. But they, too, hope for a better tomorrow. (Galofaro, 8/18)

The Associated Press: Trump Won Places Drowning In Despair. Can He Save Them?
Penn State sociologist Shannon Monnat spent last fall plotting places on a map experiencing a rise in “deaths of despair” — from drugs, alcohol and suicide wrought by the decimation of jobs that used to bring dignity. On Election Day, she glanced up at the television. The map of Trump’s victory looked eerily similar to hers documenting death, from New England through the Rust Belt all the way here, to the rural coast of Washington, a county of 71,000 so out-of-the-way some say it feels like the end of the earth. (Galofaro, 8/18)

The Washington Post: Teen Overdose Deaths Inched Up In 2015 After Declining For Several Years Before Then.
Drug overdose deaths among U.S. teens edged upward in 2015 after declining for several years, according a new report. The report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, looked at drug overdose deaths among Americans ages 15 to 19 over a 16-year period. The report showed that from 1999 to the mid-2000s, drug overdose deaths in this age group more than doubled, from 1.6 deaths per 100,000 people in 1999 to 4.2 deaths in 2007. (Rettner, 8/19)

The Washington Post: Community Health Leaders Say D.C. Isn’t Doing Enough To Curb Opioid Overdoses
James Washington has used naloxone to reverse six overdoses in the past six months.Six times, he has watched the drug stop addicts from dying in parts of the District hit hardest by the city’s growing opioid epidemic. “It’s a dream, a best-kept secret,” said Washington, who super­vises peer educators at Family and Medical Counseling Services in Southeast Washington. “And we don’t have enough.” (Chason, 8/20)

The Wall Street Journal: Congress Weighs Expanding FDA Power To Regulate Beauty Products
The Food and Drug Administration has received dozens of reports over a decade about hair-straightening treatments that contain the carcinogen formaldehyde and can sicken salon workers and customers with burning and blisters in the nose and throat, nausea, and flulike symptoms. (Burton and Hackman, 8/18)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. Warns Homebuilders, But Not Residents, Of Traffic Pollution Health Risks
For five years, Los Angeles has been issuing health advisories to housing developers, warning of the dangers of building near freeways. But when the city moved to alert residents as well, officials rejected it. Planning commissioners axed a provision to require traffic pollution signs on some new, multifamily developments from an environmental ordinance on the grounds that it would burden developers and hurt market values. (Barboza, 8/20)

Los Angeles Times: Burbank Unified Renews Contract For Mental Health And Wellness Centers
The mental health and wellness program in the Burbank Unified School District will continue at least another year after the school board renewed the district’s contract with the Family Service Agency of Burbank, a local nonprofit agency, on Thursday. Wellness centers at John Burroughs and Burbank high schools provide a supportive environment, where students can walk in to share their thoughts and feelings with counselors from the Family Service Agency. (Vega, 8/18)