Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Alabama Execution Today Will Use Controversial Nitrogen Gas
The Washington Post: Alabama’s Nitrogen Gas Execution To Be Historic, Controversial First
When Kenneth Eugene Smith enters the death chamber at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., on Thursday night, he will be in a place that is at once familiar and entirely unknown. Smith, 58, is expected to be placed on the same gurney that was used 14 months earlier, when he survived a botched lethal injection that was eventually called off because his death warrant was expiring and prison workers failed to set his IV line. But instead of being administered lethal drugs, prison workers will place a mask over his face and start the process of making Smith the first person executed by an untested method that uses nitrogen gas to force death by oxygen depravation, a process known as nitrogen hypoxia. (Bellware, 1/25)
More health news from across the U.S. —
St. Louis Public Radio: St. Louis Nursing Home Endangered Residents, Report Says
A report from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services concludes that the owners of a north St. Louis nursing home didn’t develop emergency protocols and procedures before moving residents out in December. (Fentem and Davis, 1/24)
News Service of Florida: Medical Malpractice Caps Emerge In Bill Endorsed By Florida Senate Committee
Florida senators Monday began moving forward with a proposal that would make major changes in the state’s medical malpractice laws, including limiting pain-and-suffering damages in lawsuits against doctors and hospitals. The proposal refueled a decades-long debate in the Capitol about damage caps, pitting doctors, hospitals, insurers and business groups against plaintiffs’ attorneys and people who said they had suffered from malpractice. (Saunders, 1/24)
KFF Health News and NPR News: New York Joins Local Governments In Erasing Billions In Medical Debt
New York City pledged this week to pay down $2 billion worth of residents’ medical debt. In doing so, it has come around to an innovation, started in the Midwest, that’s ridding millions of Americans of health care debt. The idea of local government erasing debt emerged a couple of years ago in Cook County, Illinois, home to Chicago. Toni Preckwinkle, president of the county board of commissioners, says two staffers came to her with a bold proposal: The county could spend a portion of its federal pandemic rescue funds to ease a serious burden on its residents. (Noguchi, 1/25)
The New York Times: To Get A Shelter Bed In New York, Now Some Migrants Must Take A Number
Moises Chacon is number 14,861. Jon Cordero’s number is in the 15,000s. Oumar Camara’s wristband says he is number 16,700. The men are all migrants who have come up against New York City’s 30-day limit for single adults on stays at any one homeless shelter. After 30 days, anyone who wants to stay in the shelter system has to reapply. But there are not enough beds these days, so each person has to take a number at a city office in the East Village in Manhattan, and wait. (Newman and Parnell, 1/24)
AP: Washington State Reaches A Nearly $150 Million Settlement With Johnson & Johnson Over Opioid Crisis
The Washington state attorney general announced a $149.5 million settlement Wednesday with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson, more than four years after the state sued the company over its role in the opioid addiction crisis. “They knew what the harm was. They did it anyway,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson told reporters Wednesday. (Valdes and Golden, 1/24)
Los Angeles Times: California Inmate Died After Not Being Given His HIV Medicine, Suit Says
The last time Lesley Overfield went to see her son in jail, everything had changed. She visited El Dorado County Jail every two weeks or so, and when she’d previously seen him, he’d been fine, walking and talking and looking healthy. But on April 22, when she visited her 38-year-old, HIV-positive son at the facility near Lake Tahoe and the Nevada border, he was completely different. Nicholas Overfield was in a wheelchair. He was unable to lift the phone to talk with his mother from behind the glass partition in the visiting room. Then he leaned forward and put his head down on the table. The two never spoke on that visit. Two months later, he was dead of a viral infection, varicella zoster virus encephalitis, which is among the conditions associated with AIDS, according to his family’s attorney, Ty Clarke. Medical records show that Overfield was not administered his HIV antiretroviral medications while in jail. Now, Lesley Overfield is suing over her son’s death. (Goldberg, 1/24)
San Francisco Chronicle: Addiction Researchers Want To Kill Powerful California Panel
A group of more than 70 leading addiction researchers and advocates penned a letter to Newsom, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and state lawmakers requesting a dissolution of the Research Advisory Panel of California, which they call a “nonviable obstruction to essential research and public health activities in California.” Dissolving the panel would require passage of state legislation. “The cost of these RAPC delays is immense, entirely unique to California, and limiting the State’s capacity to respond to health crises tightly intertwined with homelessness,” the group’s letter reads. (Angst, 1/24)
In military health news —
Military.com: Some Military Patients Left Without Heat For A Week At Texas Base During Blast Of Frigid Weather
Barracks that house service members undergoing medical treatment at a Texas military hospital lost heat during frigid temperatures throughout the region last week, Military.com learned. Liberty Barracks, located on Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, serves troops who are being treated at Brooke Army Medical Center. The heating stopped Jan. 15 in several rooms, and was out for a week, exposing vulnerable patients to unseasonably cold temperatures. (Novelly, 1/24)
Military.com: In Reversal, Defense Department Now Wants To Bring Tricare Beneficiaries Back To Military Health System
The Defense Department is doing an about-face on a major component of reforms it launched seven years ago to reduce medical care costs, abandoning a plan to push family members and military retirees to private-sector care. In a memo sent last month to senior Pentagon leaders, Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks outlined an effort to "re-attract" beneficiaries to military hospitals and clinics -- at least 7% of those now receiving medical care through Tricare, the DoD's private health program, by Dec. 31, 2026. (Kime, 1/24)
