The New York Times: Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway And JPMorgan Name C.E.O. For Health Initiative
It’s a marquee name for a marquee venture. Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, the powerful triumvirate that earlier announced its hope to overhaul the health care of its employees and set an example for the nation, said on Wednesday that it had picked one of the country’s most famous doctors to lead the new operation. Dr. Atul Gawande, a Harvard surgeon and staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, will become chief executive of the new company, which will be based in Boston, on July 9. (Abelson and Hsu, 6/20)

The Associated Press: Amazon, Buffett, JPMorgan Pick Gawande To Lead Health Firm
Berkshire Chairman and CEO Warren Buffett has described health costs as a "hungry tapeworm on the American economy." And the leaders of the three companies see a lot they want to fix, even though they have said little yet about how that will be done. "We said at the outset that the degree of difficulty is high and success is going to require an expert's knowledge, a beginner's mind, and a long-term orientation," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement Wednesday. "(Gawande) embodies all three, and we're starting strong as we move forward in this challenging and worthwhile endeavor." (Murphy, 6/20)

NPR: Atul Gawande: CEO Of Health Venture By Amazon, JPMorgan And Berkshire Hathaway
"I have devoted my public health career to building scalable solutions for better healthcare delivery that are saving lives, reducing suffering, and eliminating wasteful spending both in the US and across the world," Gawande said in a press release announcing his new job. "Now I have the backing of these remarkable organizations to pursue this mission with even greater impact for more than a million people, and in doing so incubate better models of care for all. This work will take time but must be done. The system is broken, and better is possible." (Hensley, 6/20)

The Washington Post: Atul Gawande Named To Head Cost-Cutting Health-Care Venture From Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway And JPMorgan Chase
Choosing Gawande, a practicing surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and a writer for the New Yorker magazine, suggests that the company will be focused on innovation that could ripple broadly. Gawande was praised Wednesday by colleagues as a creative, visionary leader who has devoted his career to devising health-care solutions that can be widely adopted to improve surgery, childbirth and end-of-life care around the world. He is best known for making surgery safer through the implementation of a simple checklist. "He's never one to shy away from a problem, particularly a problem that appears to be unsolvable," said Elizabeth Nabel, the president of Brigham Health. "For Atul, it’s always about reducing suffering, saving lives and creating efficiencies in the health system. So I think the best is still ahead of him. He's such a creative and talented individual, I think we don’t know yet what his scalable solutions will be." (Johnson, 6/20)

Bloomberg: Doctor And Journalist Atul Gawande Picked For Dimon-Bezos-Buffett Health Firm 
Gawande is a prominent name in health-care policy circles, though hasn’t run a major business. Many details of the new venture -- its name, size, budget and authority -- weren’t immediately available. It will be an “independent entity that is free from profit-making incentives and constraints,” the group said in the statement. “Almost of the same import is who does Atul hire as his COO,” said Vivek Garipalli, the CEO of Clover Health, a closely held health insurer that serves Medicare patients, and has focused on coordinating their care to try and cut costs. “That vision has to be translated by somebody who understands the nuances” of contracting with doctors and hospitals, health insurance markets and other details. (Tracer, Chiglinsky and Davis, 6/20)

The Wall Street Journal: Gawande To Head Health Venture Of Berkshire, Amazon, JPMorgan
In January, Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan announced they teamed up to figure out how to reduce health-care costs and improve care for their hundreds of thousands of U.S. employees. The companies said the entity would operate independently and be free from profit-making incentives and constraints. Together, Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan have more than one million employees, though not all of them in the U.S. (Wilde Mathews, 6/20)

Bloomberg: Can This Surgeon Help Buffett, Bezos And Dimon Solve America’s Health-Care Crisis? 
The Harvard surgeon and author picked to run a heralded new health-care venture has compared the U.S. medical system to a car built with Porsche brakes, a Ferrari engine and a BMW chassis. “You put it all together and what do you get?” Atul Gawande asked the audience at a 2012 TED conference. “A very expensive pile of junk that does not go anywhere.” Now the 52-year-old physician is in the driver’s seat. (Langreth, 6/20)

Stat: 5 Ideas That May Steer Gawande As CEO Of Amazon-Backed Health Venture
Atul Gawande has yet to speak out about his plans for leading the new Amazon-JPMorgan-Berkshire Hathaway health care organization, but his past speeches and writings provide some clues to what he might do in the job. Here are five key points about Gawande’s views. (Joseph and Thielking, 6/20)

Modern Healthcare: Amazon, JPMorgan And Berkshire Crown Gawande: Does He Have The Business Chops? 
But with the lofty goal of trying to fundamentally change the financial scope and delivery of healthcare, which effectively is an economy the size of Germany, it would be helpful to have a CEO with more experience managing healthcare businesses and more time to dedicate to the job, said Craig Garthwaite, a health economist at Northwestern University. "I am disheartened to see that he will maintain all these other jobs while running the firm. It is a full-time endeavor," he said. "I don't see how you can have yourself involved in all these other ventures at the same time and be effective." (Kacik, 6/20)

Modern Healthcare: Antitrust Experts, Providers Warn Against CVS-Aetna Merger At Calif. Hearing 
CVS Health and Aetna executives defended their $69 billion proposed merger before the California insurance commissioner on Tuesday, as a panel of antitrust experts and healthcare providers chipped away at the companies' promise to lower U.S. healthcare costs and improve the quality of care without harming competition. Although California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones doesn't have direct approval authority over the merger because Aetna isn't based in California, his opinion could influence how other state regulators view the deal. (Livingston, 6/20)

In other health industry news —

Bloomberg: Health Care Is Eating The Economy. Will Walgreens Sate The Dow? 
With the addition of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the storied stock-market gauge now looks a lot more like the health-care heavy U.S. economy. The giant drugstore chain joins UnitedHealth Group Inc., the largest U.S. health insurer by number of members, and drugmakers Pfizer Inc., Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson in the 30-company Dow average. Health care accounts for almost a fifth of U.S. economic output. (Annett, 6/20)

The New York Times: Trump’s Executive Order On Family Separation, Explained
President Trump on Wednesday sought to quell the uproar over his administration’s systematic separation of immigrant children from their families at the border, signing an executive order he portrayed as ending the problem. (Savage, 6/20)

The New York Times: Trump Retreats On Separating Families, But Thousands May Remain Apart
“We’re going to have strong — very strong — borders, but we are going to keep the families together,” Mr. Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.” But ending the practice of separating families still faces legal and practical obstacles. A federal judge could refuse to give the Trump administration the authority it wants to hold families in custody for more than 20 days, which is the current limit because of a 1997 court order. (Shear, Goodnough, and Haberman, 6/20)

The Washington Post: Fact-Checking Claims About Trump’s Plan To Stop Family Separations
A new executive order signed by President Trump lays out steps to end the separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border. We see this as a tacit admission by the Trump administration that many of its previous claims about family separations were bunk. Until Trump signed the order June 20, the administration was insisting that it didn’t have a policy of separating families (false), that several laws and court rulings were forcing these separations (false), that Democrats were to blame (false), that only Congress could stop family separations (false) and that an executive order wouldn’t get the job done. (Rizzo and Kelly, 6/21)

The Washington Post: The Trauma Of Separation Lingers Long After Children Are Reunited With Parents
Long after the wailing and tears, the trauma of separation can linger in children’s minds, even after they are reunited with their parents, experts say. On Wednesday, under pressure from around the globe and his own party, President Trump signed an executive order to keep migrant families together. For some, the crisis may now seem resolved. But experts warn that for many of those children, the psychological damage of their separation will require treatment by mental health professionals — services they are extremely unlikely to receive because of U.S. government policies for undocumented migrants. (Wan, 6/20)

Los Angeles Times: 'Children Must Not Be Abused For Political Purposes': What Health Groups Say About Family Separation
America’s medical and public health organizations have been unanimous in their criticism of the Trump administration’s practice of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border. President Trump signed an executive order ending the policy on Wednesday, after U.S. border officials placed more than 2,300 children in facilities away from their parents, who were detained for criminal prosecution. Here’s a roundup of why these groups opposed the family separation policy, and what they’ve said about it. (Healy, 6/20)

Los Angeles Times: The Long-Lasting Health Effects Of Separating Children From Their Parents At The U.S. Border
Researchers have long looked upon wars, famines and mass migrations as grim but important opportunities to understand how adversity affects children’s health. They’ve culled the experiences of orphans warehoused in government facilities, Jewish children dispatched to foreign families ahead of a Nazi invasion, and young refugees fleeing guerrilla warfare in Central America. They’ve conducted experiments in child development labs, taken brain scans, used epidemiological methods, examined the narratives of children torn from their parents — all in an effort to find meaning in tragedy. (Healy, 6/20)

NPR: A Pediatrician Reports Back From A Visit To A Children's Shelter Near The Border
Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, visited a shelter in Texas' Rio Grande Valley where some of these children are held. She spoke with All Things Considered's Audie Cornish about that visit on Monday. She said she's concerned that the stress the children are going through will have long-term health effects. Stress triggers the release of fight-or-flight hormones, including epinephrine, cortisol and norepinephrine. When children are separated from their parents those hormones are increased and remain in the system, putting the child on high alert, Kraft said. (Davis, 6/20)

NPR: Kids' Health Suffers When They Are Torn From Their Parents, Researchers Say
Rachel Osborn knows kids who slept in the immigrant detention centers in Texas that have dominated recent headlines. "We have kids who will say that was the worst part of their journey," Osborn says. "They were traveling for weeks and the hardest part was being in this freezing cold room where, you know, they were fed a cold sandwich and had a thin blanket to shiver under." And they had no parent or caregiver to comfort them and make them feel safe. (Kodjak, 6/20)

PBS NewsHour: Toddlers Separated From Parents ‘Eerily Quiet’ Or Inconsolable At One Migrant Shelter
For days, the public has seen images of shelters for the more than 2,300 migrant children who have been separated from their parents by the Trump administration. What do we know about the facilities and the conditions where toddlers and infants are being held? (Yang, 6/20)

Politico: ‘Some Of The Kids I Spoke To Were Traumatized. Some Could Barely Speak.’
Advocates slam the conditions as inappropriate for children and say the Trump administration’s policy to criminally prosecute all migrants crossing into the United States illegally and its attendant family separations are overwhelming holding and processing centers, forcing migrants – including young children -- to stay in them for far longer than the permitted 72 hours before they are transferred to shelters. “Some of the kids I spoke to were traumatized, some could barely speak,” said Michelle Brané, director at Detention and Asylum Program at the Women's Refugee Commission, who toured CBP facilities last Thursday. (Rayasam, 6/20)

Take a closer look at the "tender age" shelters, as well as the bigger detention facilities —

The New York Times: What’s Behind The ‘Tender Age’ Shelters Opening For Young Migrants
The shelters were intended for children under the age of 12, referred to as “tender age” detainees, who are entering the detention system in ever-larger numbers under the Trump administration’s practice of separating children from parents who enter the country illegally. Many are toddlers and babies and require special care, and their numbers have been rising since last month, when the government enforced a “zero tolerance” policy on people crossing the border. Eestimates suggest that more than 2,400 children under the age of 12 are now in federal custody, including many who have been separated from their parents. (Dickerson and Fernandez, 6/20)

The Washington Post: At Least 3 'Tender Age' Shelters Set Up For Child Migrants
The Trump administration has set up at least three “tender age” shelters to detain babies and other young children who have been forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, The Associated Press has learned. Doctors and lawyers who have visited the shelters in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley said the facilities were fine, clean and safe, but the children — who have no idea where their parents are — were hysterical, crying and acting out . Many of them are under age 5, and some are so young they have not yet learned to talk. (Burke and Mendoza, 6/20)

Kaiser Health News: 1 In 5 Immigrant Children Detained During ‘Zero Tolerance’ Border Policy Are Under 13
The Trump administration has detained 2,322 children 12 years old or younger amid its border crackdown, a Department of Health and Human Services official told Kaiser Health News on Wednesday. They represent almost 20 percent of the immigrant children currently held by the U.S. government in the wake of its latest immigrant prosecution policy. Their welfare is being overseen by a small division of the Department of Health and Human Services — the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) — which has little experience or expertise in handling very young children. (Luthra and Taylor, 6/20)

Reveal: Everything We Know About Texas-Regulated Facilities Holding Migrant Children: Violations, Numbers And More
Many of the thousands of children separated from their parents at the southern border under the Trump administration’s paused “zero tolerance” policy went to one of Texas’ 32 state-licensed facilities. Those shelters, licensed as child care providers that may accept unaccompanied minors as well as children taken from their families, have a long history of regulatory inspections that have uncovered serious health and safety deficiencies. (Walters, Murphy and Cameron, 6/20)

The New York Times: The Billion-Dollar, Secretive Business Of Operating Shelters For Migrant Children
The business of housing, transporting and watching over migrant children detained along the southwest border is not a multimillion-dollar business. It’s a billion-dollar one. The nonprofit Southwest Key Programs has won at least $955 million in federal contracts since 2015 to run shelters and provide other services to immigrant children in federal custody. (Fernandez and Benner, 6/21)

Meanwhile, allegations of abuse start to emerge —

The Associated Press: Young Immigrants Detained In Virginia Center Allege Abuse
Immigrant children as young as 14 housed at a juvenile detention center in Virginia say they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells. The abuse claims against the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center near Staunton, Virginia, are detailed in federal court filings that include a half-dozen sworn statements from Latino teens jailed there for months or years. Multiple detainees say the guards stripped them of their clothes and strapped them to chairs with bags placed over their heads. (6/21)

Reuters: U.S. Centers Force Migrant Children To Take Drugs: Lawsuit
Immigrant children are being routinely and forcibly given a range of psychotropic drugs at U.S. government-funded youth shelters to manage their trauma after being detained and in some cases separated from parents, according to a lawsuit. Children held at facilities such as the Shiloh Treatment Center in Texas are almost certain to be administered the drugs, irrespective of their condition, and without their parents' consent, according to the lawsuit filed by the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law. (6/20)

The Associated Press: Rights Group Worried About Immigrants Dying In Custody
Huy Chi Tran was awaiting deportation at an immigrant detention center in Arizona when he was found unresponsive. A week later, he was dead. Initially rushed to a medical center, the 47-year-old Vietnamese man died after being hospitalized for a week. He was the seventh person to die in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody during the current year that began Oct. 1. (Snow, 6/20)

Even as lawmakers worry about the political fallout from the zero-tolerance policy, the House's immigration bill seems to be headed toward defeat —

Politico: GOP Immigration Bills On Brink Of Collapse
Speaker Paul Ryan’s carefully crafted immigration bill appears headed toward defeat after tensions boiled over in the House ahead of Thursday’s vote. In a rare dispute on the House floor Wednesday, Ryan and House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows argued loudly with each other over what exactly was going to see a vote. At one point, looking down his glasses, Meadows angrily gestured at Ryan. (Bade, Caygle and Bresnahan, 6/20)

The Wall Street Journal: Vulnerable Republicans Feel Heat From Uproar Over Migrant Families Issue
About 50 protesters gathered outside the office of Republican Rep. Jeff Denham this week to denounce the practice of separating immigrant children from their parents on the southern border. “It makes me almost cry,” said Gary Peichoto, a 68-year-old retired nurse practitioner from a rural part of Stanislaus County. “It gets me more emotionally involved in the whole aspect of getting Denham out of office.” (Andrews and Lazo, 6/20)

Modern Healthcare: Fraud Fears Rise As Feds Expand Access To Association Health Plans
Regulators and insurance experts worry the Trump administration's new rule expanding association health plans for small businesses and self-employed people will lead to a spike in insurance fraud and insolvencies that plagued consumers and healthcare providers in the past. The Labor Department's 198-page final rule, issued Tuesday in response to President Donald Trump's executive order in October, will make it easier for small firms and individuals to band together across state lines in association health plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. (Meyer, 6/20)

The Hill: NY, Mass. To Sue Over Trump Health Plans Skirting ObamaCare Requirements
New York and Massachusetts will sue the Trump administration over its expansion of health insurance plans that don't meet all of ObamaCare's requirements. New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood (D) and Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) argue the expansion of association health plans will "invite fraud, mismanagement and deception." (Hellmann, 6/20)

And in other health law news —

The Wall Street Journal: Insurers To Expand Presence In Affordable Care Act Marketplaces Despite Uncertainty
After years of pullbacks, insurers are increasing their footprints in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces next year, despite uncertainty including the latest court challenge to the health law. Centene Corp. and Molina Healthcare Inc. said they are making regulatory filings to newly join or re-enter ACA exchanges in states including North Carolina, Wisconsin and Utah. Smaller operators have made filings signaling they will likely come into markets where they didn’t offer ACA marketplace products this year, including Bright Health Inc. in Tennessee, Virginia Premier in the Richmond, Va., area and Presbyterian Health Plan in New Mexico. (Wilde Mathews, 6/21)

The Hill: Key ObamaCare Groups In Limbo As They Await Funding 
Local groups that help people sign up for ObamaCare and Medicaid have yet to hear from the Trump administration about their annual federal funding, leaving many in limbo and fearing the grants could be too small or might not come at all. “We really haven’t gotten any update or any deadline to submit applications or any knowledge at all about what the future is going to bring,” said Karen Egozi, CEO of the Epilepsy Foundation of Florida, one of the state’s larger health-care navigator programs. (Hellmann and Roubein, 6/20)

Des Moines Register: Medica Price Increases For Iowa Health Insurance Modest For 2019
Iowans who buy their own health insurance are about to get a rare bit of good news — at least relatively good news. Medica, the sole carrier now selling individual health insurance policies in Iowa, plans to raise its 2019 premiums by less than a tenth as much as it did for 2018. Medica raised its Iowa health insurance premiums by a staggering average of 57 percent for 2018. It was the steepest such health insurance increase in Iowa history. Company leaders said last summer they needed the higher premiums to stay in the market. But this time around, the Minnesota-based carrier is planning to raise Iowa premiums by an average of less than 5.6 percent, state regulators disclosed Wednesday. (Leys, 6/20)

The New York Times: Trump To Propose Government Reorganization, Targeting Safety Net Programs
President Trump plans to propose a reorganization of the federal government as early as Thursday that includes a possible merger of the Education and Labor Departments, coupled with a reshuffling of other domestic agencies to make them easier to cut or revamp, according to administration officials briefed on the proposal. The plan, which will most likely face significant opposition in Congress from Democrats and some Republicans, includes relocating many social safety net programs into a new megadepartment, which would replace the Department of Health and Human Services and possibly include the word “welfare” in its title. (Thrush and Green, 6/20)

The Washington Post: White House To Propose Merging Labor And Education Into One Agency As Centerpiece Of Federal Government Overhaul
Many changes the Trump White House will propose Thursday — the Labor and Education merger and other plans to consolidate offices with similar missions, for example — would need to be approved by Congress, making their success a long shot in a politically divided period leading up to the midterm elections. But the strategies could serve to better frame Trump’s vision of government amid complaints from conservatives about the growing budget deficit. The president has not advocated for specific changes to agencies’ structures, although his supporters often gripe about what they believe is a “deep state” of entrenched federal workers that they want removed. (Rein and Paletta, 6/20)

The Wall Street Journal: White House To Propose Merging Education, Labor Departments
The administration has also been weighing changes at the Department of Health and Human Services, such as consolidating safety-net programs under HHS. That could accompany a renaming of the department to something similar to its name in the 1970s, when it was called the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. HHS oversees Medicaid and other social assistance programs, while school meals and the food stamp program, formally called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, are run by the Department of Agriculture. The Treasury and Department of Housing and Urban Development oversee still other programs. (Hackman and Morath, 6/20)

Stat: What's In The House's Bills To Address The Opioid Crisis — And What's Not
The House spent much of the last two weeks passing dozens of bills aimed at addressing the opioid crisis, an effort top lawmakers from both parties have long identified as a priority. Many are consensus proposals, though a few have generated controversy. Some are substantial in their scope, though many fund pilot programs or studies, or enact grants for which funding will expire within years. (Facher, 6/21)

CQ: House Passes Opioid Bills After Arguing Over Them
The House debated two opioid bills related to patient privacy and Medicaid coverage for inpatient treatment but ultimately passed them Wednesday afternoon. The chamber also easily passed by voice vote a bill (HR 5925) reauthorizing the Office of National Drug Control Policy earlier in the day. (Raman, 6/20)

The Hill: Opioid Crisis Sending Thousands Of Children Into Foster Care
The opioid epidemic ravaging states and cities across the country has sent a record number of children into foster and state care systems, taxing limited government resources and testing a system that is already at or near capacity. An analysis of foster care systems around the country shows the number of children entering state or foster care rising sharply, especially in states hit hardest by opioid addiction. The children entering state care are younger, and they tend to stay in the system longer, than ever before. (Birnbaum and Lora, 6/20)

And in other news —

New Hampshire Public Radio: N.H. Will Soon Have Millions More To Fight The Opioid Crisis. But Where Will It Go?
State officials have less than two months to detail their plans to spend a major increase in federal opioid dollars. ... But attached to the grant are a number of requirements, said state Health Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers, including that the funds only be used for programs that have a data-based track record of success. (Greene, 6/20)

San Francisco Chronicle: San Mateo County Sues Drug Distributors Over Opioid Crisis
San Mateo County sued McKesson Corp. on Wednesday, accusing the San Francisco drug distributor and two other major pharmaceutical distributors over their alleged role in exacerbating the nation’s opioid epidemic. The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco Superior Court, is the latest in a slew of legal actions by California counties and cities against companies that manufacture and distribute prescription opioids. (Ho, 6/20)

The Washington Post: Senate Rejects Billions In Trump Spending Cuts As Two Republicans Vote ‘No’
The Senate on Wednesday rejected billions in spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration as two Republicans joined all Democrats in voting no. The 48-50 vote rebuffed a White House plan to claw back some $15 billion in spending previously approved by Congress — a show of fiscal responsibility that was encouraged by conservative lawmakers outraged over a $1.3 trillion spending bill in March. The House had approved the so-called rescissions package earlier this month. But passage had never been assured in the Senate, where a number of Republicans had been cool to the idea from the start. (Werner, 6/20)

CNN: Senate Rejects Spending Cuts Package, A White House Priority
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell firmly endorsed the proposal in a floor speech Wednesday. He said the unspent funds from various agencies were ripe to be returned to taxpayers. He also said the money being rescinded was not related to the recent hard-fought budget agreement reached by Republicans and Democrats. "This modest belt-tightening would in no way infringe on the bipartisan spending deal that senators on both sides agreed to earlier this year. This savings package is 100% unrelated to that agreement. Totally separate," McConnell said. "It simply pulls back a small amount of unspent funds from a variety of government accounts." (Barrett, 6/20)

The Associated Press: Virginia Health Care Providers Sue Over Abortion Regulations
A group of women's health care providers filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to overturn a number of Virginia's abortion regulations in light of a landmark 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The lawsuit filed in federal court challenges Virginia laws, some decades old, that restrict who can provide an abortion and how it can be provided. The plaintiffs argue the laws are unconstitutional obstacles to care that are not supported by medical evidence. (6/20)

The Washington Post: Abortion Advocates Filed A Federal Lawsuit Against The State Of Virginia, Seeking To Roll Back Restrictions On Abortion
The suit contends that some of those restrictions, such as a ­24-hour waiting period before an abortion and a state-mandated abdominal ultrasound, are medically unnecessary and therefore unconstitutional in the wake of a 2016 Supreme Court ruling in a Texas case. In that case, the justices found that certain restrictions Texas had imposed in the name of protecting women’s health were medically unjustified and intended to make abortions harder to obtain. (Vozzella, 6/20)

The Hill: Health Groups Sue Virginia Over Decades-Old Abortion Restrictions 
“The laws we are challenging today are shutting down clinics, delaying care, increasing costs, and piling one burden on top of another in an attempt to regulate the fundamental protections of Roe v. Wade out of existence,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. (Hellmann, 6/20)

Richmond Times-Dispatch: Abortion-Rights Advocates File Federal Lawsuit Challenging Virginia Restrictions
In a 5-3 opinion in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, a case that arose in Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot create a burden for women seeking abortions by passing unnecessarily restrictive health regulations. (Moomaw, 6/20)

WBUR: For VA Whistleblowers, A Culture Of Fear And Retaliation
More than 30 current and former VA employees spoke to NPR. They include doctors, nurses and administrators — many of them veterans themselves. All describe an entrenched management culture that uses fear and intimidation to prevent potential whistleblowers from talking. (Westervelt, 6/21)

The Associated Press: Appeals Court Tosses Veterans' Lawsuits Over Burn Pits
Military veterans who claim that the use of open burn pits during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan caused myriad health problems cannot move forward with dozens of lawsuits against a military contractor, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a federal judge in Maryland, who last year threw out the lawsuits brought against KBR, a former Halliburton Corp. subsidiary. (6/20)

The Hill: Senate Panel Schedules Hearing On Trump VA Pick 
President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will get a Senate confirmation hearing next week. The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee will take up the nomination of Robert Wilkie on June 27, the committee announced Wednesday. (Weixel, 6/20)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: New Audit: Staffing Shortages Hamper Atlanta VA
The Atlanta VA Medical Center leads the veterans health care system in a negative measurement: the hospital on Clairmont Road has the highest number of staffing shortages of any VA hospital in the country, according to a new audit by the agency’s inspector general. The facility listed 89 positions designated as shortages, including critical clinical jobs such as neurologist, staff nurses and pathologist. (Schrade, 6/20)

Reuters: EPA-Recommended Chemicals Levels In Water Too High: U.S. Report
The risk level for exposure in water to common chemicals used in Teflon and firefighting foam should be at least seven to 10 times lower than the threshold recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to a draft report released on Wednesday that the White House and EPA had tried to keep from publication. The Department of Health and Human Services' Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry released the draft study of the controversial class of chemicals called PFOA or PFAS for public comment. (Volocovici, 6/20)

Reuters: New York Sues 3M, Five Others Over Toxic Chemical Contamination
New York state sued 3M Co and five other companies to recover the cost of cleaning up environmental contamination caused by toxic chemicals in firefighting foam that they manufactured. Governor Andrew Cuomo and Attorney General Barbara Underwood said on Wednesday the lawsuit seeks more than $38.8 million plus punitive damages and is the first of its type by a U.S. state. (6/20)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Cleveland Admits Mistake In Ordering Residents To Leave 30 Homes Where Lead Hazards Were Fixed
Cleveland officials admitted Wednesday they mistakenly issued orders to vacate for 30 properties, after lead hazards in the homes had been cleaned up through a city-run remediation program. The people living in the homes, whether they own or rent, will not have to leave, said Tania Menesse, director of Community Development. (Dissell and Zeltner, 6/20)

The Associated Press: Are Sugar Worries Weighing On Frappuccino Sales?
Frappuccino sales are struggling, and concerns about how much sugar the slushy drinks contain may be among the reasons. Starbucks says sales from the drinks that mix coffee, ice, syrup and milk are down 3 percent from a year ago, and is blaming the "health and wellness" trend for the dip. "These are oftentimes more indulgent beverages— higher in sugar, higher in calories," Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson said during a presentation to investors Tuesday. (6/20)

In related news —

The Associated Press: FDA Reconsiders Added Sugar Label For Maple Syrup, Honey
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reconsidering its plan to require that pure maple syrup and honey be labeled as containing added sugars. Maple syrup producers had rallied against the plan, saying the nutrition labels updates were misleading, illogical and confusing and could hurt their industries. (6/20)

San Jose Mercury News: Out With Soda, Juice And Chocolate Milk - California Could Become First State To Restrict Kids’ Meals
Under a bill advancing in the Capitol, restaurants could offer only water or milk with meals marketed for children. ...It’s the Legislature’s latest attempt to combat obesity and diabetes by limiting how much soda Californians drink. (6/20)

The Associated Press: Science Says: What Makes Something Truly Addictive
Now that the world's leading public health group says too much Minecraft can be an addiction, could overindulging in chocolate, exercise, even sex, be next? The short answer is probably not. The new "gaming disorder" classification from the World Health Organization revives a debate in the medical community about whether behaviors can cause the same kind of addictive illness as drugs. (6/21)

Stat: Can This Doctor Figure Out How To Stop Alzheimer’s Before It Starts? 
Reisa Sperling, one of the world’s foremost researchers of Alzheimer’s disease, was vacationing at Lake Tahoe with her family in 2008 when she noticed her father was behaving strangely. “Where’s your mother?” he would ask, disoriented. “What are we doing here?” At first, Sperling thought her dad, a 74-year-old chemistry professor, might simply be tired. Perhaps the altitude had affected him. And then she had a terrible thought: He was acting just like her grandfather  —  his own father  —  who had died of Alzheimer’s in 1993. (Kendall, 6/20)

Stat: Muscle And Fat Loss May Offer Clues To Pancreatic Cancer's Deadly Ways
Of all the places to get cancer, the pancreas may be the worst. Difficult to detect and nearly impossible to treat, pancreatic cancer is the only major cancer with a five-year survival rate below 10 percent. New research, published Wednesday in Nature, challenges some widely held assumptions about the disease and could eventually help doctors diagnose patients earlier, when treatments are most effective. The study’s findings came from investigating how early pancreatic tumors affect peripheral tissues — mainly muscle and fat — in both mice and humans. (Chen, 6/20)

Stat: Consumer Group Petitions FDA To Yank A Widely Prescribed Gout Drug Over Heart Risks 
A consumer advocacy group is asking regulators to “immediately remove” a widely used gout medication over concerns that it poses “unique, serious,” and potentially “fatal” risks to patients while not offering any health benefit. In a petition sent to the Food and Drug Administration on Thursday, Public Citizen argued there is “overwhelming evidence that the serious cardiovascular harms of (Uloric) outweigh any purported clinical benefit,” and that a failure to remove the drug ensures “further preventable harm” to patients. (Silverman, 6/21)

The New York Times: Night Owls May Have Higher Depression Risk
Night owls may be at greater risk for depression than early birds. Previous studies have found a link between a person’s unique circadian rhythm, or chronotype, and depression, but none were able to tell whether sleep habits were a cause or an effect of the disease. This new prospective study, in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, is a step closer to establishing causality. (Bakalar, 6/20)

The Associated Press: Kate Spade Foundation To Donate $1M For Suicide Prevention
Kate Spade New York has announced plans to donate $1 million to support suicide prevention and mental health awareness causes in tribute to the company's late founder. To start, the company said Wednesday the Kate Spade New York Foundation is giving $250,000 to the Crisis Text Line , a free, 24-hour confidential text message service for people in crisis. (6/20)

Stat: Lawmakers Press Genetic Testing Companies For Privacy Policy Details
Pressure is growing on direct-to-consumer genealogy and genetic testing companies to be more transparent about their privacy policies, after the arrest of the notorious Golden State Killer using publicly available data from one of the websites. In a letter sent this week — and shared with STAT — Reps. Dave Loebsack of Iowa and Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey peppered four of the platforms with questions about their security systems and customer privacy. The Democratic lawmakers are hoping to work with the companies — 23andMe, AncestryDNA, Family Tree DNA, and National Geographic Geno — to identify and resolve any privacy and security issues. And they’re in a prime position to do so: They sit on the Energy and Commerce committee, which handles both health care and privacy issues in technology. (Thielking, 6/21)

The Washington Post: These College Students Moonlight As ‘Grandkids’ For Hire. Seniors Love It.
When Andrew Parker’s grandfather began suffering from dementia three years ago, his grandmother had to start taking care of the house and caring for him. It was hard work, and one day, Parker got the idea to hire a college student to help out. “I said, ‘Hey, can you go hang out with my grandfather and make him a sandwich or something? I’ll pay you, lets see how it goes.” His grandfather loved it. And more importantly, so did his grandmother. For a few hours, he said, “She got to go do her own thing.” (Bahrampour, 6/20)

Bloomberg: Wanted: Wrinkled Men Not Afraid Of Needles For ‘Brotox’ Revival 
ManLand is emblematic of a trend that’s sweeping the medical aesthetics industry as the distributors of drugs such as Botox, Dysport and Xeomin step up their efforts to sell cosmetic drugs to men. None may be more prominent right now than Allergan Plc’s push to market what the media has dubbed “Brotox.” In April, the drugmaker rolled out print, television and social media ads in attempt to lure male customers, running them during baseball games and the Stanley Cup finals. (Ockerman, 6/21)

The New York Times: 86 And Opening Closet Doors At The Hebrew Home
At the start of a recent meeting of the L.G.B.T. & Allies group at the Hebrew Home here, the group leaders Olivia Cohen and Liisa Murray reminded attendees of the ground rules, which they had written on a poster board. “Treat others like you wish to be treated,” was one, and another was “what is said in the group stays in the group.” Participants are also urged to be nonjudgmental and to respect one another. (Hanc, 6/21)

The New York Times: The Shifting Global Terrain Of L.G.B.T.Q. Rights
This year, and especially this month, events and celebrations in countries around the world are marking the growing acceptance of people who identify as L.G.B.T.Q. Some, like New York City and San Francisco, are splashy and spectacular. Others, like Lexington, Ky., and Bilbao, Spain, are much more modest, even wary, but they are still celebrations. (Mohn, 6/21)

Georgia Health News: Abrams Pushing Health Care As A Key Issue In Her Campaign For Governor
Stacey Abrams is making health care a central issue of her campaign for Georgia governor. The Democratic nominee this week issued a statement reiterating her call for the state to expand its Medicaid program. (Miller, 6/20)

Miami Herald: Climate Change Puts South Floridians’ Health At Risk
Vector-borne diseases such as Zika, dengue and chikungunya are re-emerging because temperatures are rising. As the planet warms, habitats that support mosquito vectors expand, allowing these diseases to spread faster and further beyond neighborhood, state and national borders. (Frenk, 6/20)

The Associated Press: Legal Fight Winding Down In Hospital Hepatitis C Case
A New Hampshire hospital is closer to holding others financially accountable for a traveling medical technician who infected dozens of patients in multiple states with hepatitis C. David Kwiatkowski is serving 39 years in prison for stealing painkillers and replacing them with saline-filled syringes tainted with his blood. Despite being fired numerous times over drug allegations, he had worked as a cardiac technologist in 18 hospitals in seven states before being hired in New Hampshire in 2011. After his arrest in 2012, 46 people in four states were diagnosed with the same strain of the hepatitis C virus he carries, including one who died in Kansas. (Ramer, 6/20)

KCUR: Families Suing Over Mysterious Deaths At Chillicothe Hospital To Get Their Day In Court
The families of five patients who died under mysterious circumstances in 2002 at a Chillicothe, Missouri, hospital got some bad news three years ago. The Missouri Supreme Court refused to allow their wrongful death lawsuits against the hospital to proceed. The court said the families had filed their lawsuits too late, five years after the three-year statute of limitations had run out. Except those families had no reason to sue earlier, because they'd been told their loved ones had died of natural causes. It was only afterward that they learned foul play might have been involved and brought suit. (Margolies, 6/20)

The Associated Press: Lawsuit: Georgia Is Denying Equal Access For Deaf Inmates
Georgia isn't doing enough to help deaf and partially deaf people communicate while they're locked up and after they're released, which can lead to longer incarceration and more returns to prison, according to a new version of a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday. (6/20)

WBUR: In Some States, Drug Felons Still Face Lifetime Ban On SNAP Benefits
Only West Virginia and two other states — South Carolina and Mississippi — still enforce a lifetime ban on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, for people who commit drug-related felonies. (Born, 6/20)

Boston Globe: Recreational Marijuana Businesses Are Banned In Concord
Recreational marijuana businesses will not be coming to Concord, at least for the foreseeable future. Voters in a special election June 12 approved a bylaw prohibiting any recreational marijuana-related businesses, including retailers, testing facilities, and product manufacturers, from locating in the town. (Laidler, 6/20)

Los Angeles Times: Caging Immigrant Children Alongside Their Parents Isn’t Much Of A Solution
The nation should be thankful that President Trump finally came to his senses and ended the inhumane and traumatizing practice of separating children from their immigrant parents who illegally enter the United States. Facing an extraordinary backlash not just from Democrats but from some Republicans, every living former first lady (and, amazingly, the current one), United Nations human rights officials, Willie Nelson, Pope Francis and many, many others who reacted in dismay to scenes of children corralled in metal cages, Trump probably had little choice. But his solution — detaining entire families together while the adults face, in most cases, misdemeanor charges of illegal entry — raises enormously troubling problems of its own. (6/21)

The New York Times: Andrew Cuomo: A Moral Outrage New York Will Not Tolerate
The Trump administration’s inhumane treatment of immigrant children has left a dark stain on the history of our nation. It is a human tragedy and a threat to our values. ...The potential toll on these children is heavy. Research shows that the trauma of forced separation can cause long-lasting physical and emotional effects on children, changing how they process information, react to stress and develop executive function and decision-making skills. Such stress could also make these children more prone to inflammation and disease as they grow to be adults. As the number of adverse childhood events increases, the risk of health problems such as obesity, alcoholism and depression later in life increases. ...To make matters worse, the federal government is prohibiting New York from providing health and mental health services to the hundreds of children who have already been placed by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement in centers around the state — even though the state regulates those centers. (Gov. Andrew Cuomo, 6/20)

The Hill: The Science Of Family Separation And How It Can Harm Children 
After more than a decade caring for refugee and immigrant children as a pediatrician, stories of family separation remain the most difficult to hear. Children are typically silent and withdrawn as their caregivers break down in tears in front of me describing families torn apart by politically motivated incarceration, armed conflict or deportation. (Katherine Yun, 6/20)

Kansas City Star: Migrant Children Separated From Parents Sent To Topeka
While the nation's outrage over the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy reached a boiling point, a small nonprofit in Topeka was quietly accepting migrant children who had been separated from their parents.These children, unwitting victims in the White House's efforts to gain leverage in the immigration debate, do not belong in Kansas. They should be with their parents. (6/20)

USA Today: Donald Trump Immigration Flip Is Good For Border Kids And Public Health
There are times when public health supersedes politics of any and all kinds and this must be one of them. Hundreds of children have been separated from their parents at our southern border over the past few weeks, prompting the American Academy of Pediatrics to state "opposition to family separation stems from the serious health consequences this practice has on children." It is a big relief that President Donald Trump has finally signed an executive order to end this cruel practice. (Marc Siegel, 6/20)

The Hill: Here’s How Trump’s Tax Law Is Raising Health Insurance Premiums 
Approximately six months ago, Congress passed a tax law designed to benefit corporations and the wealthy while repealing the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate penalty. Today, we’re already seeing the consequences: Premiums in the individual market are rising, often by double digits. As more and more states hit their deadlines for insurers to file preliminary premium rates, the headlines tell the same story, with average premiums going up by 30 percent in Maryland, 19 percent in Washington, and 24 percent in New York. This is no surprise — and no accident. The repeal of the mandate penalty was the latest in a long line of actions that the Trump administration has taken to deliberately undermine the ACA marketplaces. (Thomas Heulskoetter, 6/20)

Bloomberg: Add A Dose Of Harvard To The Bezos-Buffett-Dimon Health Mix
Everything about Amazon.com Inc., Berkshire Hathaway Inc., and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s enigmatic effort to reduce health-care costs has been unusual. On Wednesday, the triumverate stuck to their strange guns by picking renowned surgeon, writer and Harvard public-health researcher Atul Gawande to run their new company. (Max Nisen, June 20)

New England Journal of Medicine: Why The VA Needs More Competition
Despite independent studies showing that clinical quality in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health system is often as good as or better than that in the private sector, numerous areas for improvement remain. Moreover, going forward, VA reform efforts will have to focus on building systems that ensure high quality standards for both VA medical centers and private-sector providers that care for veterans. The agency has long relied on the private sector to augment its capacity to meet veterans’ health care needs, and private-sector providers are often the only practical option for veterans in rural areas or those requiring specialty services not offered by their local VA medical center. (David J. Shulkin, 6/20)

USA Today: Release VA Nursing Homes Data. Veterans Deserve Nothing Less.
Most Americans, when they think of the VA, envision a vast bureaucracy of care centers for millions of the nation's veterans. That it is. But who knew the agency also runs a network of nursing homes? Well, it does, and it turns out — thanks to recent coverage by USA TODAY and The Boston Globe — that many of those nursing homes suffer from health delivery concerns similar to those that plague some VA hospitals and clinics. About 46,000 veterans annually are cared for in 133 of these homes nationwide. Some are located on Department of Veterans Affairs hospital campuses, and some are separate facilities. (6/20)

USA Today: VA: USA TODAY's Article Is Misleading
USA TODAY’s misleading Sunday article, “Secret VA nursing home ratings hide poor quality care from the public,” is a prime example of why the phrase “fake news” has gained such prominence. Let’s start with the headline. The VA publicly released these nursing home ratings on June 12. Calling them “secret” is false and irresponsible. So is this paper’s focus on a single, cherry-picked sub-metric — rather than overall rankings — to paint a misleading picture of how our facilities actually compare with the private sector. (6/20)

New England Journal of Medicine: Keeping Your Cool — Doing Ebola Research During An Emergency 
Two key international actors, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF, or Doctors without Borders) and the World Health Organization (WHO), are testing an Ebola vaccine during the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in collaboration with the ministry of health (see map). They must act in a state of extreme uncertainty: the situation is evolving by the hour, information is hard to come by, and the ethical dilemmas and practical hurdles are abundant. And they are using slightly different approaches. (Charlotte J. Haug, 6/21)

Stat: Medical Schools Need To Care About Doctor Burnout. Should The Rest Of Us?
The medical profession is waking up to the fact that too many doctors are burned out in their jobs with plenty of public handwringing. There’s no question it’s a big issue for physicians. But should the rest of us care about it? I’m not sure, and I study doctors and how they work. There isn’t a lot of systematic research linking burnout among physicians to the health of their patients. I’m not saying that physician burnout doesn’t matter for patients. It likely does. If my auto mechanic is burned out, it probably affects the quality of repairs I get, just as an emotionally exhausted clinician may not be at the top of his or her game. (Timothy J. Hoff, 6/21)

Miami Herald: Climate Change Puts South Floridians’ Health At Risk 
Today is the first day of summer, and in South Florida that means warmer temperatures, rain and mosquitoes. Just two years ago, mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus were first identified in Wynwood before spreading across Florida. Vector-borne diseases such as Zika, dengue and chikungunya are re-emerging because temperatures are rising. As the planet warms, habitats that support mosquito vectors expand, allowing these diseases to spread faster and further beyond neighborhood, state and national borders. Climate change has also sparked extreme weather events, which can spur a rise in illnesses. Hurricane Harvey showed us that standing water and flooding from slower and wetter storms can create breeding grounds for water-borne diseases. As we know all too well, hurricanes can also cause damage to vital infrastructure, making it more difficult to contain outbreaks. (Julio Frenk, 6/20)