Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Brothers Claim Small Contracting Firm Let Them Go Because Of Their Expensive Blood Disorder
The Wall Street Journal: When Three Brothers With A Blood Disorder Lost Their Jobs, The EEOC Sued
Five years ago, Anthony, Drew and Raymond West were called into their supervisor’s office and let go from their jobs performing heavy-duty maintenance work at an oil refinery in Beaumont, Texas. “We kind of knew it was gonna happen, but then again we were all shocked,” said Raymond West, age 26, the youngest of the brothers. The Wests were employed for a contract-worker firm, Signature Industrial Services LLC, and were contracted to do work for Exxon Mobil Corp. Their Signature supervisor had been instructed to let them go because of their medical condition, hemophilia A, according to a lawsuit filed in February by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that charged Signature with violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Weber, 7/9)
In other news from the health industry —
Stat: 5 Challenges Atul Gawade Will Face In A Risky New Health CEO Role
Dr. Atul Gawande will step out of health care’s limelight on Monday to put himself under its microscope. Taking the helm of the new health venture funded by Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Berkshire Hathaway is the riskiest move of his career — one that will subject his acclaimed New Yorker narratives to a real-world stress test whose outcome is far from certain. In the balance will hang not just his reputation as a physician and writer, but perhaps the highest-profile effort to date to leverage the private sector to fix America’s fragmented and dysfunctional health care system. Gawande has made a name for himself by proposing novel solutions to the system’s many shortcomings — from surgical checklists to rooting out unnecessary care — and testing them in specific hospitals or markets around the world. (Ross, 7/9)
Modern Healthcare: Fitch Expects Healthcare Defaults Will Remain Low
Stable cash flows and robust capital markets have kept the U.S. healthcare sector's 16-year default rate well below the overall market rate, according to a new report from Fitch Ratings. The sector that includes healthcare and pharmaceuticals saw an average high-yield default rate of 1% between 2002 and 2017, materially lower than the 4.1% rate for the market overall during that period. Given the short list of bonds Fitch is concerned about, the ratings agency wrote that it expects the sector's below-average default environment to stick around another year, absent unexpected regulatory changes or other external factors. (Bannow, 7/5)
