Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
States Receive Second Installment Of Funds From Rural Health Transformation Program
Politico: States Get Another $10B For Rural Health As Far Bigger Medicaid Cuts Loom
The Trump administration on Monday announced a $10 billion disbursement divided among all 50 states to shore up struggling rural health care systems, with some states receiving millions more than last year and others getting millions less. “States have already put these resources to work bringing better care closer to home for their rural communities,” Mehmet Oz, the leader of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a statement, adding that his agency “looks forward to helping them build on that progress in the coming year.” (Ollstein, 11/9)
In other Trump administration news —
ProPublica: Firm Tied To Trump Sons Won Federal Funds To Screen For Ebola, Other Diseases
The Trump administration awarded a small biosecurity company nearly $40 million to screen for Ebola and other infectious diseases just months after a firm linked to President Donald Trump’s elder sons invested in its parent company, according to records and interviews. The contracts, one to screen for Ebola in several U.S. airports and the other to respond to disease outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are seven times the total value of government contracts the company had directly received before. (Lerner, Barry-Jester and Faturechi, 11/9)
The New York Times: Scientists Sue To Block Trump Administration Changes At National Science Foundation
American researchers and advocacy groups sued the National Science Foundation on Monday to halt the erosion of government funding for social sciences. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Massachusetts, seeks to block the N.S.F. from dismantling its social science funding division, known as the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences. The division is “dedicated to understanding human behavior and improving people’s quality of life,” according to the science foundation’s website, and it typically funds research in topics ranging from brain mapping to economics. (Sella, 11/9)
Stat: BIO Sues Over Trump's GLOBE Drug Pricing Model For Medicare
The Biotechnology Innovation Organization is joining the legal fight against the Trump administration’s pilot program aimed at aligning drug prices in Medicare with prices charged in peer countries. (Wilkerson, 11/7)
Politico: Top RFK Jr. Ally Bashes Trump Admin After Quitting
Calley Means, former senior adviser to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., torched now-former White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and several of President Donald Trump’s top advisers, laying the blame at their feet for stalled progress on populist platforms like the Make America Healthy Again movement. (Haslett, Brown and Gardner, 11/6)
Health news from the Supreme Court —
The Washington Post: Supreme Court Seems Likely To Limit Prisoners’ Ability To Sue Over Claims Of Poor Medical Care
The Supreme Court appeared likely Monday to curtail lawsuits by federal inmates who claim they have received inadequate medical care from prison officials, which would further erode a legal precedent that has allowed people to hold federal law enforcement accountable for alleged constitutional violations for decades. The justices seem inclined to nix a lawsuit brought by Kekai Watanabe, a former inmate who alleged that a prison nurse failed to give him proper treatment after his tailbone was broken in a gang-related assault during a riot at the federal detention center in Honolulu. (Jouvenal, 11/9)
Bloomberg: Terror Suit Against Drugmakers Draws US Supreme Court Inquiry
The US Supreme Court asked the Trump administration for input on an appeal from pharmaceutical and medical-device companies that are trying to stop a lawsuit accusing them of helping to finance terrorist attacks in Iraq. The companies are seeking review of a ruling that let American terrorism victims sue the companies for allegedly paying millions of dollars in bribes to secure medical-supply contracts with the Iraqi Ministry of Health from 2004 to 2013. The victims say the money went to Jaysh al-Mahdi, a militant group that controlled the ministry. (Stohr, 11/9)
On gun ownership and mental health —
The Washington Post: ‘No Business Having A Gun’: Some ICE Recruits Had A Record Of Red Flags
A Post review of records exposed in a DHS hack found that some immigration officers quickly hired last year were involved in past misconduct or criminality. (Hesson, Sohyun Lee, Nakhlawi, Sacchetti and Schaffer, 11/10)
KFF Health News: When A Gun Owner Shows Early Signs Of Dementia
He was 72, a retired health administrator who lived alone near Seattle. Laura Prater, a firearms researcher at Ohio State, was interviewing him via Zoom. She’d administered a questionnaire that indicated he had mild cognitive impairment, which is often, but not always, a precursor to dementia. His doctor had also diagnosed him with depression. As part of a study of firearm safety for older adults, Prater asked if he kept a gun in his home. (Span, 11/10)
