Latest KFF Health News Stories
Hace años, este doctor relacionó un misterioso mal pulmonar con el “vaping”
Este verano, funcionarios federales comenzaron a investigar un brote nacional de enfermedades pulmonares graves relacionadas con el vapeo que ha afectado a más de 150 pacientes en 16 estados.
Longer Looks: Racking Up The Steps; Confusing Diet Advice; And The Price Of Cellular Therapies
Each week, KHN finds interesting reads from around the Web.
Opinion writers weigh in on these public health issues and others.
Editorial pages focus on topics devoted to ending gun violence.
Media outlets report on news from Illinois, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, Minnesota, California, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee and Missouri.
The Connecticut legislature passed a law this year that allows the state to reduce Medicaid money to nursing homes that don’t maintain at least a 70 percent occupancy level. The facilities that will be hit the hardest are hoping to challenge the cuts. Medicaid news comes out of Georgia and Colorado, as well.
Diagnosing brain diseases like Parkinson’s can be complicated, but doctors are more likely to treat men for the diseases and label women as having “functional disorders.” In other public health news: air pollution dangers; sitting less; DNA database privacy issues; and skewed genetic databases.
Opponents of the changes have deemed them a “gag rule.” Planned Parenthood had also announced that it will not accept the federal funds with the constraints in place. Abortion news comes out of Indiana and Missouri, as well.
There’s ample research that exists that confirms the negative mental health impact of children being held in institutionalized settings. “The longer it goes on, the more damage is inflicted,” says Jack Shonkoff, who directs the Harvard Center for the Developing Child.
As court cases against Purdue Pharma progress, details continue to be revealed about the extent the Sackler family was involved in making decisions about the company’s strategy. In other news on the crisis: lawyers fight to give newborns suffering from opioid exposure a role in the upcoming legal battles; Ohio’s attorney general warns Endo and Allergan that their settlements don’t resolve all the claims against them; a look at how journalists dug into DEA records on the root of the crisis; and more.
In recent decades, pharmaceutical funding has been directed primarily toward drug research and development that will yield higher revenue, such as cancer drugs. But TB Alliance relied on donors from across the world to fund the development of its new tuberculosis antibiotic, and experts wonder if this is a path forward for new drugs. In other pharmaceutical news: the Norvartis data manipulation case continues, the FDA flexes its muscles, and a new treatment might help blood cancer patients.
Advocates say widely distributing the “polypills” — a daily pill that contains a cocktail of heart-related generic drugs — could globally cut cardiac by 60 to 80 percent. Critics of that strategy say it’s dangerous and unethical to consider distributing heart drugs to patients whose risk factors haven’t been assessed.
The original regulation was put in place in 1975 to protect patients from law enforcement repercussions. HHS Secretary Alex Azar, however, said that those restrictions only “served as a barrier to safe, coordinated care for patients.” Azar says the new proposal preserves the prohibition on law enforcement’s use of health information and poses no privacy threat to patients.
Experts suggest there are several factors at play including the fact that mass violence events tend to have a “contagion effect.” But psychologists also say that it might be a heightened awareness from the general public at the root of the arrests. “I think people are on edge and there’s more concern in communities, more concern among police,” Vanderbilt University professor Jonathan Metzl tells USA Today.
Significant Delays, Unanticipated Headaches Throw $16B VA Medical Records Project Off Track
A host of glitches have surfaced as the massive undertaking to digitize health records for veterans tries to get off the ground. Many critics who have been skeptical of the Trump administration strategy from the start worry that the delays foretell even bigger issues on the horizon. Meanwhile, emails reveal the frustration VA staffers felt over the interference from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago friends.
Many big insurers are planning bigger footprints in the exchanges for next year despite all the political and legal uncertainty still surrounding the health law. In other health insurance and industry news: the quality of coverage from insurers offering ACA plans, the financial effects of public ire over high health prices, premiums that are leveling off, and more.
There’s a rift in the Democratic party about how sweeping the next steps in health care reform should be, but it’s a long, bumpy road between that debate and actually implementing a plan. Meanwhile, in the month following the release of her health plan, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has taken a bruising from her critics who say her proposal is based on political calculations rather than conviction.
First Edition: August 23, 2019
Today’s early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
Addiction Clinics Market Pricey, Unproven Treatments To Desperate Patients
An amino acid infusion called NAD is not approved by the FDA to treat addiction. Yet patients with addiction can be desperate enough to try it, at prices as high as $15,000.
Years Ago, This Doctor Linked A Mysterious Lung Disease To Vaping
In an exclusive interview, a West Virginia physician says that back in 2015 he had a sense a patient’s illness “probably wasn’t the first case ever seen nor would it be the last.” Was it a sentinel event?