First Edition: February 14, 2018

Kaiser Health News: KHN Conversation On Living Well With Dementia
Dementia is one of the most challenging chronic conditions for individuals and their caregivers. More than 15 million family members in the U.S. provide care for people with dementia. Living well with this condition is important to both groups — and extremely difficult to achieve in practice. On Feb. 13, Kaiser Health News hosted an informative and important discussion about improving care and services for people with dementia and supporting their caregivers. (2/13)

Kaiser Health News: The Training Of Dr. Robot: Data Wave Hits Medical Care
The technology used by Facebook, Google and Amazon to turn spoken language into text, recognize faces and target advertising could help doctors combat one of the deadliest killers in American hospitals. Clostridium difficile, a deadly bacterium spread by physical contact with objects or infected people, thrives in hospitals, causing 453,000 cases a year and 29,000 deaths in the United States, according to a 2015 study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Traditional methods such as monitoring hygiene and warning signs often fail to stop the disease. (McQuaid, 2/14)

The Wall Street Journal: Businesses Challenge IRS Bid To Start Enforcing Insurance Mandate
Businesses are pushing back on the Internal Revenue Service’s decision to begin enforcing the Affordable Care Act’s employer insurance mandate, challenging penalties that run into the millions and asserting the agency is wrong to impose the fines. The ACA imposes a penalty on employers with more than 50 workers who don’t provide qualifying coverage to employees, but the fines weren’t initially enforced. In November, the IRS said it would begin assessing penalties, starting with companies that failed to comply in 2015, when parts of the employer mandate first kicked in. (Armour, 2/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Idaho Insurer To Sell Plans At Odds With Federal Health Law
Blue Cross of Idaho said it plans to use new rules set by state regulators to sell insurance that doesn’t meet all the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, a move that could force the Trump administration to take a stance on the legality of such products. The not-for-profit company’s efforts will be closely watched by officials and insurers around the country who want to understand the limits of states’ ability to carve out their own health-insurance rules. (Wilde Mathews, 2/14)

The Hill: Ryan Calls For 'Incremental' Health Reforms After Failure Of ObamaCare Repeal
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is calling for "incremental" health-care reform after the Senate failed to pass an ObamaCare replacement bill last year. Asked on Fox Business on Tuesday if lawmakers will try again to pass an ObamaCare repeal legislation this year, Ryan pointed to incremental changes. (Sullivan, 2/13)

The Hill: House GOP Discussing Repeal Of ObamaCare Employer Mandate
House Republicans are in discussions about repealing or delaying ObamaCare’s employer mandate to offer health insurance, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said Tuesday. Brady told reporters that he has discussed the idea with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, as well as other members of the Ways and Means Committee. (Sullivan, 2/13)

The Washington Post: Sanders Claims White House Budget Would Kill Thousands But Mulvaney Says That’s Not True
Sen. Bernie Sanders berated White House budget director Mick Mulvaney over President Trump’s budget proposal Tuesday, contending that thousands of people would die and others would freeze because of the administration’s proposed cuts. Sanders was referring specifically to the budget proposal’s repeal of the Affordable Care Act and cuts to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. (Werner, 2/13)

The Hill: Rubio Blasts Trump Budget For ObamaCare 'Bailout' Provision 
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Tuesday criticized a provision of President Trump’s budget request that he said bails out ObamaCare insurers. The White House budget calls for more than $800 million in mandatory appropriations to fully fund ObamaCare’s risk corridor program, which was created in 2014 to help cushion insurers from major losses during the early years of the federal insurance exchanges. (Weixel, 2/13)

Reuters: U.S. Can Sue UnitedHealth In $1 Billion Medicare Case, Judge Rules
A federal judge has ruled the U.S. Justice Department can move forward with a lawsuit claiming UnitedHealth Group Inc wrongly retained more than $1 billion from the government healthcare program Medicare. U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald in Los Angeles on Monday ruled that the department had sufficiently alleged UnitedHealth submitted invalid diagnostic data related to the health status of patients enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans. (Raymond, 2/13)

The Washington Post: Virginia House Passes Medicaid Work Requirements At Session Midpoint
Virginia’s House of Delegates passed a bill Tuesday to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients, laying the groundwork for potential expansion of the health-care program as the legislature reached the halfway point of its 60-day session. The measure is one of a flurry of bills taken up in the Capitol on a day known as “crossover,” the deadline for legislation to make it out of one chamber and move to the other. Any bills left behind are dead for the year, with one exception: the two-year state spending plan. Budget bills come out of House and Senate money committees Sunday, arriving on the floor next week. (Vozzella, 2/13)

The Associated Press: West Virginia Gets Medicaid OK To Treat Babies In Drug Rehab
West Virginia, which has the nation's highest rate of babies born dependent on drugs, will now offer Medicaid coverage to treat those babies. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has approved treatment services in the state for newborns enduring the torment of drug withdrawal, the state Department of Health and Human Resources said in a news release Tuesday. (2/13)

The Associated Press: Number Of Lawsuits Challenging Opioid Industry Still Growing
The number of lawsuits continues to grow in a combined federal challenge of drug companies’ role in the opioid crisis. Judge Dan Polster is overseeing the consolidated lawsuits in a case in federal court in Cleveland. The complaints allege drug manufacturers and drug distributors bear responsibility for the deadly overdose epidemic and for not doing enough to stop it. (2/14)

NPR: Doctors React: OxyContin Maker Purdue Pharma Halts Opioid Marketing
The maker of OxyContin, one of the most prescribed and aggressively marketed opioid painkillers, will no longer tout the drug or any other opioids to doctors. The announcement, made Saturday, came as drugmaker Purdue Pharma faces lawsuits for deceptive marketing brought by cities and counties across the U.S., including several in Maine. The company said it's cutting its U.S. sales force by more than half. Just how important are these steps against the backdrop of a raging opioid epidemic that took the lives of more than 300 Maine residents in 2016, and accounted for more than 42,000 deaths nationwide? (Wight, 2/13)

The Hill: Sessions Makes A Remark About Opioids, Starts A Discussion About Pain 
Attorney General Jeff Sessions drew criticism last week when he suggested the opioid epidemic could be eased if people “take some aspirin sometimes and tough it out a little bit.” The attorney general’s point was that doctors are giving out too many painkillers, and that this had contributed to people becoming addicted to opioids. (Roubein, 2/14)

The Hill: Planned Parenthood Announces Nationwide Push For Abortion, Birth Control Legislation 
Planned Parenthood on Tuesday announced a nationwide initiative to expand access to abortion, birth control and reproductive health care. Planned Parenthood, its affiliates, state lawmakers and other partners will roll out legislation in more than a dozen states this week that it says will expand access to sexual and reproductive care, with a plan to advance initiatives in all 50 states by the end of the year. (Hellmann, 2/13)

Politico: Google Paper Stirs Interest, But Not Seen As Transformative
By throwing some of its best engineering and medical minds at vast stores of clinical data with the help of powerful computers running for hundreds of thousands of hours, Google appears to have produced a model that accurately predicts patient deaths, hospital readmissions and other health-related events. The model won't transform medicine. But academics and other technology mavens think the methods described in the paper serve as a prototype for future work in predictive models, in areas like end-of-life care. (Tahir, 2/13)

The New York Times: Adam Rippon On Quiet Starvation In Men’s Figure Skating
Shortly before Adam Rippon’s breakthrough victory at the United States figure skating championships, Brian Boitano crossed paths with him and asked how he was doing. Boitano, the 1988 Olympic gold medalist, expected Rippon to rave about his jumps or his signature spins. Instead, Boitano said, Rippon pulled back his shoulders, puffed out his chest and proudly proclaimed, “I’ve never been thinner.” (Crouse, 2/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Is Chocolate A Healthy Choice For Valentine’s Day? That Depends On Which Kind
Valentine’s Day is known for two things: romantic love and chocolate. Romance is famously fickle—it comes and goes. But our love affair with chocolate never seems to wane. Americans spend more today on chocolate products than the gross national product of some of the countries where cacao is grown. The research group Euromonitor International reports that U.S. sales of chocolate went from $14.2 billion in 2007 to $18.9 billion in 2017, a period during which overall sales for candy declined, largely because of growing health concerns over sugar. (Schiffman, 2/13)

The Washington Post: A Potentially Powerful New Antibiotic Is Discovered In Dirt
The modern medical era began when an absent-minded British scientist named Alexander Fleming returned from vacation to find that one of the petri dishes he forgot to put away was covered in a bacteria-killing mold. He had discovered penicillin, the world's first antibiotic. Ninety years later, the world faces an antibiotic crisis. Superbugs have evolved resistance to dozens of drugs in doctors' arsenals, leading to infections that are increasingly difficult to treat. (Kaplan, 2/13)

The New York Times: Obesity Tied To Survival In Men With Melanoma
Obese men treated for metastatic melanoma may survive longer than their normal-weight peers. Researchers did a retrospective analysis of 1,918 people, 1,155 of them men, under treatment for metastatic melanoma. The study is in Lancet Oncology. (Bakalar, 2/13)

The Associated Press: Oregon House OKs Health Care As A Right, Funding Questioned
Oregon's Legislature took a step Tuesday toward enshrining the right to health care in the state Constitution, a move that would be unprecedented in the United States but raises serious funding questions. The House of Representatives' 35-25 endorsement of the bill sends it to the state Senate, whose approval would put the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot for Oregon voters in the November election. The move comes as the Trump administration has tried to dismantle former President Barack Obama's health care law. (2/13)

The Associated Press: Oklahoma Health Agency Head Resigns After Abuse Accusations
The interim director of Oklahoma's health department — one of Republican Gov. Mary Fallin's top aides — stepped down Tuesday following accusations of domestic violence. Preston Doerflinger stepped down after about four months on the job. Fallin appointed him in October after commissioner Terry Cline resigned amid allegations of financial mismanagement at the agency. (2/13)

The Associated Press: Houston Surgeons Separate Toddlers Joined At Chest, Abdomen
Doctors in Houston have successfully separated twin toddlers who were born in 2016 conjoined at the chest and abdomen. A spokeswoman at Texas Children’s Hospital says 13-month-old Anna and Hope Richards were in good condition Tuesday. Lindsey Fox says separation surgery was done Jan. 13 and announced Monday. Fox says the twin sisters join two brothers and their parents, Jill and Michael Richards of North Texas. Fox declined to provide more specifics about the family as the parents focus on their daughters’ recovery. (2/13)

The Associated Press: New Hampshire Bill Targets Soda On Kids Menus
New Hampshire restaurants would no longer be allowed to offer soda as a beverage choice for children’s meals under a bill before a state House committee. The bill would apply to restaurants that serve children’s meals that include food and a beverage for one price. Such meals would only be allowed to include milk, 100 percent juice or juice combined with water, plain water or flavored water with no sweeteners. (2/14)