The New York Times: Republicans Are Suddenly Running Ads On Pre-Existing Conditions. But How Accurate Are They?
For months, Democratic candidates have been running hard on health care, while Republicans have said little about it. In a sign of the issue’s potency, Republicans are now playing defense, releasing a wave of ads promising they will preserve protections for Americans with pre-existing health conditions. The ads omit the fact that the protections were a central feature of the Affordable Care Act and that the Republican Party has worked unceasingly to repeal the law, through legislation and lawsuits. (Sanger-Katz, 10/16)

The Hill: Trump Attacks ‘Crazy Bernie’ Sanders Over Medicare Plans 
President Trump on Monday attacked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a supporter of single-payer "Medicare for all," over health care, claiming that Sanders "and his band of Congressional Dems" would outlaw Medicare Advantage. "Open enrollment starts today on lower-priced Medicare Advantage plans so loved by our great seniors. Crazy Bernie and his band of Congressional Dems will outlaw these plans. Disaster!" Trump tweeted. (Burke, 10/15)

The Associated Press: Insurer Anthem Will Pay Record $16M For Massive Data Breach
The nation's second-largest health insurer has agreed to pay the government a record $16 million to settle potential privacy violations in the biggest known health care hack in U.S. history, officials said Monday. The personal information of nearly 79 million people — including names, birthdates, Social Security numbers and medical IDs — was exposed in the cyberattack, discovered by the company in 2015. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 10/15)

The Associated Press: 7 Companies, 4 Men Charged In $1B Telemedicine Fraud Scheme
Seven companies and four men are facing charges, accused of roles in a $1 billion telemedicine fraud scheme that deceived tens of thousands of patients and more than 100 doctors, federal prosecutors announced Monday. The eastern Tennessee U.S. attorney's office said six Florida companies, a Houston firm and four Florida men are named in a 32-count indictment charging them with conspiracy to commit health care fraud, introducing misbranded drugs into interstate commerce and mail fraud. (10/15)

Modern Healthcare: Tariffs Add Weight To Healthcare Construction
Tariffs on imported building materials have caused healthcare providers to rethink their construction projects as they look to mitigate higher costs. The Trump administration on Sept. 24 placed a 10% tariff, amounting to $200 billion, on 5,745 items from China, including concrete and lumber. That will rise to 25% in 2019. That's in addition to $50 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports that was implemented in August. A 25% levy on steel and 10% on aluminum imported from a handful of countries already kicked in earlier this year. (Kacik, 10/15)

Modern Healthcare: EHRs Hit Hospitals' Bottom Lines With Uncertain Benefits 
The federal government fed the initial investments in [Electronic Health Records]. Through May 2016, it poured $34.7 billion into incentives for adopting EHRs, money that many health systems went after. As a result, hospitals and health systems spent millions and sometimes billions of dollars each to install new health record-keeping software. A newly live Epic EHR installation at the Mayo Clinic, for instance, made up a chunk of the health system’s overall $1.5 billion investment in new technology. (Arndt, 10/13)

MPR: CVS-Aetna Merger A Big Deal In Minn., Or Not?
CVS and Aetna have said they expect to cut administrative and patient care costs by steering Aetna customers to walk-in clinics in CVS stores for less expensive medical services. What that means in Minnesota isn't clear. (Moylan, 10/15)

PBS NewsHour: What Will CVS-Aetna Mega-Merger Mean For Consumer Choice?
Last week, CVS and insurance giant Aetna finalized a nearly $70 billion merger. The deal could impact where people get their care, how they get their drugs and how much choice they have. (Woodruff, 10/15)

Sacramento Bee: California Doctors: Proposed Trump Immigration Rule Threatens Public Health
California’s family physicians are warning federal officials that a proposed change in immigration rules will put public health at risk because it weakens “herd” immunity, especially in the Golden State where one in every two children has a foreign-born parent. The Trump administration on Wednesday proposed changes to a federal rule that, immigration experts say, creates ambiguity about what it means to be an immigrant who depends on the government for their support. (Anderson, 10/15)

Houston Chronicle: Houston Health Group To Lobby Against Immigrant Policy Change In DC 
Legacy Community Health, the largest network of community health clinics in Texas, will send a group to Washington this week to lobby lawmakers against a new Trump administration rule change that could hold using health and nutrition assistance programs against immigrants seeking legal residency. At issue is a proposed revision in the so-called public charge rule that would greatly expand the negative factors determining if an immigrant seeking a temporary visa or green card is now or will "likely" become a burden on taxpayers. (Deam, 10/15)

Boston Globe: Mayor Walsh And Advocates Rip Proposal To Make It Harder For Immigrants To Get Green Cards
Mayor Martin J. Walsh, city councilors, and advocates on Monday ripped a Trump administration proposal to make it significantly harder for immigrants receiving certain public benefits to obtain green cards. Walsh, speaking during a rally in the ornate Great Hall inside Faneuil Hall, called the administration’s proposed changes to the rules surrounding green card applications a “disgrace.” (Andersen, 10/15)

The New York Times: Harvard Calls For Retraction Of Dozens Of Studies By Noted Cardiologist
A prominent cardiologist formerly at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston fabricated or falsified data in 31 published studies that should be retracted, officials at the institutions have concluded. The cardiologist, Dr. Piero Anversa, produced research suggesting that damaged heart muscle could be regenerated with stem cells, a type of cell that can transform itself into a variety of other cells. (Kolata, 10/15)

The Washington Post: Harvard Investigation Finds Fraudulent Data In Papers By Heart Researcher
Piero Anversa and his colleagues were credited with finding a population of cells in the heart that suggested the organ has the ability to regenerate. His work, underwritten by millions of dollars in federal funding, helped lay the groundwork for clinical trials, and cardiologists continue to study ways to repair the heart with stem cells. But the cells Anversa described, so-called “c-kit” stem cells, don’t appear to work in the way he suggested, and subsequent research has raised doubt that they can regenerate heart tissue. (Johnson, 10/15)

Stat: How The Navy Brought A Once-Derided Scientist Out Of Retirement — And Into The Virus-Selling Business
What was being requested was a sample from the Navy’s collection of viruses. The word virus, to most of us, implies disease, but in this case the Navy wasn’t stockpiling pathogens. Instead, these viruses were potential cures. Called bacteriophages — literally, eaters of bacteria — they could inject themselves inside germs, reproduce like crazy, and cause the buggers to explode. To the military, that image was alluring. Bacteriophage therapy had long been abandoned in the U.S., but as more and more antibiotics had stopped working, biodefense experts, Navy doctors — and just about anyone else with a stake in protecting human health — were wondering about other treatments. (Boodman, 10/16)

The Wall Street Journal: Babies’ Sleep Linked To Lower Obesity Risks Years Later
Combating high childhood obesity rates is a vexing problem: Diets and other interventions often don’t work, and when they do the effects aren’t long-lasting. Now, some researchers are attacking the problem at the newborn stage with an unlikely target: sleep. Newborns whose parents received advice and hands-on education about sleep had about half the risk of developing obesity by ages 3½ and 5, compared with children whose parents didn’t get the sleep instruction, according to a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in August. (Reddy, 10/15)

Los Angeles Times: Paging Dr. Facebook: How The Social Network Could Help Doctors Screen Patients For Depression
More than half of Americans who suffer from depression never get any treatment, and in many cases that’s because their symptoms are never diagnosed. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force advises primary care physicians to screen all of their patients for depression and make sure proper care gets to those who need it, but this is a big job and doctors could use some help. Paging Dr. Facebook, stat! (Kaplan, 10/15)

Columbus Dispatch: Merck To Fund Programs Tackling Rising Pregnancy-Related Deaths
In the United States, women giving birth in the 21st century are 2.5 times more likely to die of a complication of pregnancy or labor than women who gave birth three decades ago. The trend, largely overshadowed by the much higher rate of infant deaths, has been getting a closer look in recent years. (Viviano, 10/15)

The Associated Press: AP-NORC Poll: Many Caregivers Neglecting Their Own Health
Skipping your checkup but not grandma's? Caring for an older loved one is a balancing act, and a new poll shows that too often it's the caregivers' health that's neglected. The survey, by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found about a third of caregivers have gone without a routine physical or dental care, skipped or didn't schedule a test or treatment or even forgot to fill a prescription or failed to see a doctor for their own illness or injury because they were too busy with their caregiving duties. (10/15)

WBUR: If Your Medical Information Becomes A Moneymaker, Could You Get A Cut?
Hospitals and health plans are increasingly using the huge amount of medical data they collect for research. It's a business worth billions of dollars, and sometimes those discoveries can be the foundation of new profit-making products and companies. When a company profits from your data, should you get a cut? (Harris, 10/15)

WBUR: Report: World Support For Mental Health Care Is 'Pitifully Small'
It's a major milestone in the fight to recognize mental health and mental illness as global issues: a comprehensive report from the Lancet Commission on Global Mental Health, three years in the making, released this past week at a London summit with royals Prince William and Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, in attendance to show their support for the cause. But it was not a celebratory event. Threaded throughout the 45-page report is a lament that the world is ignoring millions of suffering people. (Silberner, 10/15)

Kaiser Health News: Influential Leapfrog Group Jumps In To Rate 5,600 Surgery Centers 
The influential Leapfrog Group, which grades nearly 2,000 U.S. hospitals, is launching a national survey to evaluate the safety and quality of up to 5,600 surgery centers that perform millions of outpatient procedures every year. The group now issues hospitals an overall letter grade and evaluates how hospitals handle myriad problems, from infections to collapsed lungs to dangerous blood clots — helping patients decide where to seek care. (Jewett, 10/16)

The Associated Press: Officials Say A Child Is First To Die In Florida Flu Season
Florida health officials say a child is the first to die during this year's flu season. The Florida Department of Health's Bureau of Epidemiology said in a report the unidentified child tested positive for influenza B and died between Sept. 30 and Oct. 6. The report did not say where the child died but did say the child was otherwise healthy. The child had not been vaccinated. (10/15)

The Hill: Florida Officials Confirm First Flu Death Of The Season 
The child had no underlying medical conditions, officials said. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 80,000 people in the United States died of the flu and its complications last winter, the most deaths in at least four decades. That included almost 200 children. (Burke, 10/15)

The New York Times: The Results Of Your Genetic Test Are Reassuring. But That Can Change.
The results of a genetic test may seem final — after all, a gene mutation is present or it is not. That mutation increases the risk of a disease, or it does not. In fact, those findings are not as straightforward as they might seem, and the consequences may have grave implications for patients. While a person’s genome doesn’t change, the research linking particular bits of DNA to disease is very much in flux. Geneticists and testing labs constantly receive new information that leads them to reassess genetic mutations. (Kolata, 10/16)

Meanwhile, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren's DNA test shines a light on the science behind the popular trend —

The Washington Post: Elizabeth Warren's DNA Test: Kellyanne Conway Called It 'Junk Science.' Is It?
After news that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) released DNA results showing that she had a distant Native American ancestor — something President Trump had dared her to do — White House counselor Kellyanne Conway dismissed the DNA test, calling it “junk science.” “I haven’t looked at the test,” Conway told reporters Monday morning. “I know that everybody likes to pick their junk science or sound science depending on the conclusion, it seems some days.” But is it junk science? (Bever, 10/15)

The Associated Press: South Dakota Board To Hear First 'Compassionate Parole' Case
A South Dakota man sentenced in 1999 to nearly 60 years in prison for molesting boys while working as a counselor at a juvenile correctional center will be the first person to have a hearing after the state, facing rising prison health care costs, launched a new "compassionate parole" system for seriously ill and elderly inmates earlier this year. (10/15)

Stat: UCSF Settles Sexual Harassment Suit Involving Star Researcher For $150,000 
The University of California, San Francisco, has agreed to pay a former postdoc $150,000 to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit involving a prominent tobacco researcher on its faculty. In the settlement, dated last month, Stanton Glantz, director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, and UCSF “deny and dispute” the allegations by the former postdoc, Dr. Eunice Neeley, who now is a resident in family medicine at Emory University in Atlanta. (Oransky and Marcus, 10/16)

Iowa Public Radio: Candidates For Governor Discuss Iowa's Mental Health System
The three major-party candidates for Iowa governor gathered at a forum in Des Moines Sunday to discuss how the state can improve its capacity to care for people with mental health issues. (Sostaric, 10/15)

KQED: 6 Things To Know About Covered California Open Enrollment For 2019
Last summer, Trump and congressional Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but a few months later, they were able to repeal the ACA's individual mandate as part of their tax bill, meaning that individuals will no longer face a penalty if they choose not to buy health insurance. Since then, the Trump administration has also announced that it would again decrease the amount it spends on marketing to encourage people to sign up for insurance, and that it would not defend the ACA in a lawsuit arguing much of the health care law to be unconstitutional. (Levi, 10/15)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Walker Campaigns With Tommy Thompson, Evers With Kathleen Sebelius
GOP Gov. Scott Walker pledged Monday to make sure people with preexisting conditions have insurance coverage — a claim Democratic challenger Tony Evers called hollow because Walker authorized a lawsuit to end such coverage. The two staked out their stances as they campaigned with rival health officials —Walker with Tommy Thompson, the four-time Wisconsin governor and health and human services secretary under President George W. Bush, and Evers with Kathleen Sebelius, the former Kansas governor and health and human services secretary under President Barack Obama. (Marley and Spicuzza, 10/15)

The CT Mirror: Housing Inequality Can Be Both Cause And Effect Of Poverty In Wealthy CT
Representing both the disparities between housing quality and the availability of affordable shelter, housing inequality stems both from market forces as well as discrimination and segregation. It can be both the cause and the effect of poverty. (Silber, 10/16)

The Associated Press: Jurors: Don't Throw Out $289M Weed Killer Cancer Verdict
Jurors who found that agribusiness giant Monsanto's Roundup weed killer contributed to a school groundskeeper's cancer are urging a San Francisco judge not to throw out the bulk of their $289 million award in his favor, a newspaper reported Monday. Juror Gary Kitahata told Judge Suzanne Bolanos in a letter that the jury was convinced by the evidence, the San Francisco Chronicle said. (10/15)

San Francisco Chronicle: Monsanto Case: Jurors Urge Judge Not To Overturn $289 Million Award
Jurors who awarded $289 million to a former school groundskeeper who is dying of cancer are imploring a San Francisco judge to reconsider her tentative decision to overturn most of the damages against Monsanto Co., manufacturer of the weed killer that they found to be the cause of the man’s illness. (Egelko, 10/15)

Kansas City Star: More Doctors Take Medicare In Missouri Than Kansas
About 86 percent of Missouri doctors accept all Medicare plans, one of the highest rates in the nation. But across the state line, Kansans face one of the lowest rates of acceptance, according to a new survey. With open enrollment for Medicare plans starting this week, the survey provides a strong reminder that people need to check what plans their doctors participate in before they sign up. (Marso, 10/15)

KCUR: Four Transgender People Sue Kansas For The Right To Change Their Birth Certificates 
Four transgender residents of Kansas sued the state on Monday, challenging its refusal to allow them to change the sex listed on their birth certificates. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Kansas City, Kansas, argues that Kansas’ policy violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the Constitution. It also argues that it violates the plaintiffs’ free speech rights under the First Amendment. (Margolies, 10/15)

The Associated Press: Supreme Court Won't Take Up Lead Paint Issue From California
The Supreme Court is leaving in place a decision that required paint companies to fund the removal of lead paint from California homes. The Supreme Court on Monday said it wouldn't take up the issue. Courts previously ruled in favor of 10 California cities and counties that argued ConAgra, NL Industries and Sherwin-Williams knowingly endangered public health by advertising and selling lead paint. (10/15)

New Hampshire Union Leader: ‘Unorthodox’ Pain Doctor Fined For His Record-Keeping 
A Nashua pain doctor whose practice involved poor record-keeping, a reluctance to drug test patients, and an insistence that gainful employment is the best weapon to battle addiction will pay a $2,000 fine but remain in practice, the Board of Medicine has decided. The board issued the ruling last week against Dr. Aaron Geller, who operates Nashua Pain Management. It came 22 months after a full-blown, three-day, contested hearing into his practice. (Hayward, 10/15)

The Star Tribune: Medtronic Cuts Cyber Access To Vulnerable Devices
Medtronic has shut off the ability to remotely update the software on two machines that are used in doctor’s offices to program the settings on implanted pacemakers and defibrillators, expanding cybersecurity precautions that were announced earlier this year. The Irish medical device company, operated from offices in Fridley, announced that it was shutting down the ability of its CareLink 2090 and CareLink Encore 29901 device programmers to download new software updates remotely. (Carlson, 10/15)

New Hampshire Public Radio: State Seeks Citizen Input On PFAS Science Ahead Of New Water Standards
The state begins work this week on writing new limits for potentially toxic PFAS chemicals in drinking water -- and they want the public's input. The limits, known as maximum contaminant levels or MCLs, are due out in January. (Ropeik, 10/15)

The Associated Press: Firefighters Sue California Gas Company Over Massive Leak
Firefighters who worked in and around the site of a massive natural gas leak sued the Southern California Gas Co. on Monday, saying the utility knowingly let them be exposed to dangerous levels of toxic chemicals. A blowout in a well at the underground Aliso Canyon storage field about 40 miles north of Los Angeles was discovered on Oct. 23, 2015, and took nearly four months to cap after spewing immense amounts of methane into the air. It was the largest known natural gas leak in United States history. (10/15)

Kaiser Health News: Listen: Health Care Issues Reverberate In The States
Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for Kaiser Health News, joined “1A” host Joshua Johnson, Scott Greenberger, the executive editor of Stateline, and Reid Wilson, national correspondent for The Hill, to discuss health policy initiatives in the states. (10/15)

New Hampshire Public Radio: DHHS Holds Listening Sessions Before N.H.'s Next "Plan On Aging"
New Hampshire's Department of Health and Human Services is preparing its next four-year State Plan on Aging and wants to hear from older residents. The Bureau of Elderly and Adult Services will hold 13 listening sessions across the state. It's also asking seniors to complete an online survey. (Garova, 10/15)

Stat: Medicare For All Is A Good Step Toward Universal Health Care In The U.S.
Millions of Americans live with health care coverage that is either incredibly expensive or poor to nonexistent. It’s no surprise, then, that the push is on throughout the country for some form of universal health care, such as the Medicare for All plan promoted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Is the idea of a universal health care system that’s paid for and run by the government and has only trivial out-of-pocket costs truly plausible? I’ve been following health care for some 35 years. So just out of curiosity, I decided to look at European countries with universal health care. They’ve appeared to be the utopian goal for health care for many of us over the years, thinking “If we could only get there!” (Daniel Callahan, 10/16)

Boston Globe: The Role That Adults Can Play In Fighting The Stigma Of Child Sexual Abuse
We need to expand messaging beyond “Stranger Danger” and recognize that the problem exists and thrives much closer to home. Ninety percent of abused children suffer at the hands of someone they know and trust. (Aly Raisman, 10/15)

The Washington Post: Not All Senior Citizens Need Discounts. But All Low-Income People Do.
To stretch her tight budget, Beth Cote Dekis, 61, who describes herself as a disabled woman struggling to save her house, tends to shop at retailers like Marshalls and T.J. Maxx, which offer senior discounts on certain days of the week. “I am low-income since my husband died of cancer,” Dekis said. “Makes it very difficult to make ends meet.” (David Wallis, 10/15)

The New York Times: Held Hostage By Health Insurance
Health insurance rules my life. It decides my jobs, my aspirations, my retirement plans and, potentially, my citizenship. I am one of as many as 133 million Americans under the age of 65 with a pre-existing medical condition — in my case, intractable epilepsy — that for decades blocked me from obtaining individual health insurance. People like me gained visibility in 2010, after the Affordable Care Act required insurers to provide coverage for pre-existing conditions. I cheered that Americans would no longer have their life choices dictated by insurance. (Kurt Eichenwald, 10/15)

Cincinnati Enquirer: Dental And Medical Health Inextricably Linked
Health research has identified links between oral infection and a host of diseases, including cardiovascular disease, stroke and diabetes. Statistics show that oral diseases are very common, with more than 46 percent of U.S. adults affected with periodontitis and 92 percent with dental caries (cavities), both of which are highly preventable. If you are like two-thirds of Americans, you have some form of dental benefits, 75 percent of which are from private plans and 25 percent from public benefits. ...What happens to those without dental insurance? (Tim Ingram, 10/15)

Bloomberg: Elizabeth Warren And The Death Of Genetic Privacy
In theory, taking a DNA test to reveal your ancestry is optional. But it’s on its way to becoming obligatory. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren announced Monday that she had submitted her DNA to ascertain that she does in fact have Native American ancestry — after President Donald Trump had taunted her by saying he would throw a testing kit at her. For those of us not in national politics, a study in the journal Science last week claimed that within a few years, it will be possible to identify some 90 percent of white Americans by using genetic databases that include their cousins. Even if you don’t take the test yourself, someone has taken it for you. The takeaway from these developments is simple: Genetic privacy is well on its way to becoming obsolete, thanks to the voluntary use of cheap DNA testing technology and the astonishing power of statistics. (Noah Feldman, 10/15)

Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court Deals Final Blow To Lead Paint Manufacturers' Years-Long Effort To Avoid Cleanup Costs
The lead paint industry’s efforts to avoid a cleanup bill for more than $400 million has reached the end of the road. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to review California state court rulings finding Sherwin-Williams, Conagra and NL Industries responsible for lead paint contamination in thousands of homes built before 1951. That date is when the companies said their predecessor firms ceased actively advertising lead-based paint as a residential product. (Michael Hiltzik, 10/15)

Stat: Digital Health Startups May Not Want To Do Randomized Trials, But They Need To
The general theme of digital health care is easy to grasp — maybe too easy. Somewhere, right now, a hopeful CEO is making a pitch to a potential investor about how its new digital product or service will transform health care and improve outcomes, reduce costs, and save time. The story works. Digital health care startups are attracting billions of dollars in risk capital, with aggregate investments reaching $7 billion so far in 2018, all in the hopes of modernizing our broken health care system. While the story is easy to tell, proving it poses a far greater challenge. (Joseph Smith, 10/15)

The Star Tribune: A Grain Of Salt To Go With Those Political Ads Attacking 'Single-Payer' Health Care
This campaign season, political attack ads are filling the airwaves with ominous warnings against a government-run “single-payer” health care system. As the funereal music escalates, it’s worth taking a step back and remembering that similar rhetoric abounded in the 1960s as Congress considered, then passed, a controversial government-run health care program. (10/12)

San Jose Mercury News: Reject Irresponsible Health Care Financing Measures
Palo Alto’s Measure F and Livermore’s Measure U win the award for the most irresponsible initiatives before Bay Area voters this fall. ...The measures would force every hospital and health care provider in the two cities to reimburse insurance companies and patients who are charged more than 15 percent above the industry-established cost of services provided. (10/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: Vote No On Prop. 8: It Will Limit Dialysis Services And Raise Costs
Proposition 8 is a contradiction: Its promise to improve patient care at dialysis facilities and contain costs will not be realized — instead, the measure will negatively impact public health in California. The proposal to redirect health care resources is misguided and will lead to higher health care costs and barriers to care. (Cheung, 10/14)