First Edition: April 11, 2023

KHN: Most Americans Say They Or A Family Member Has Experienced Gun Violence 
A majority of Americans say they or a family member has experienced gun violence, such as witnessing a shooting, being threatened by a person with a gun, or being shot, according to a sweeping new survey. The national survey of 1,271 adults conducted by KFF revealed the severe physical and psychological harm exacted by firearm violence, especially in minority communities. (Szabo, 4/11)

KHN: Doctors’ Lesson For Drug Industry: Abortion Wars Are Dangerous To Ignore
Texas District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision April 7 to rescind the approval of the abortion pill mifepristone dealt a blow to more than just people seeking a medication abortion. It appears to be the first time a court has directly usurped the FDA’s authority to provide the final word on which medicines are safe and effective and, thus, allowed to be sold in the United States. And it could well throw the pharmaceutical industry into turmoil. (Rovner, 4/11)

KHN: Doctor Shortages Distress Rural America, Where Few Residency Programs Exist
Anger, devastation, and concern for her patients washed over Dr. Bridget Martinez as she learned that her residency training program in rural northeastern Nevada would be shuttered. The doctor in training remembered telling one of her patients that, come July of this year, she would no longer be her physician. Martinez had been treating the patient for months at a local health care center for a variety of physical and psychiatric health issues. “She was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do,’” Martinez said. “It almost set her back, I would say, to square one. That’s so distressing to a patient.” (Rodriguez, 4/11)

KHN: Watch: Rulings On Abortion Pill Have Far-Reaching Repercussions 
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, has invalidated the FDA’s two-decade-old approval of mifepristone, part of a drug regimen used in medication abortion. The order will take effect on April 14, unless an appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes. In Washington state, U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice, appointed by former President Barack Obama, directed the FDA not to make any changes that would restrict access to the drug in 17 states and the District of Columbia, where Democrats sued to protect its availability. The conflicting rulings are all but assured to wind up before the Supreme Court. (Varney, 4/10)

KHN: Listen To The Latest ‘KHN Health Minute’ 
This week’s KHN Health Minute looks at how some lawmakers are reacting to ballooning pay for travel nurses and how states are spending billions of dollars in opioid settlement funds. (4/10)

AP: Justice Department Appeals Texas Abortion Pill Order
The Justice Department on Monday appealed a Texas court ruling that would halt approval of a drug used in the most common method of abortion in the U.S., calling the decision “extraordinary and unprecedented. ”If allowed to stand, the order issued last week by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk could restrict access to the abortion medication mifepristone as early as Friday, unsettling abortion providers less than a year after the reversal of Roe v. Wade already dramatically curtailed abortion access. (Weber, 4/10)

Roll Call: Legal Fight Over Abortion Drug Could Quickly Hit Supreme Court
The Justice Department and several Democrat-led states took steps Monday to preserve access to a commonly used medication abortion drug after dueling federal court rulings about its availability. The moves come as experts expect fast-paced court action that could easily head to the Supreme Court as soon as this week on the Food and Drug Administration’s approval and regulations of mifepristone, which was first approved in 2000 to end pregnancies. (Macagnone and Raman, 4/10)

Politico: White House Says Ignoring Judge's Abortion Pill Ruling Would Set 'Dangerous Precedent' 
The White House said on Monday that it would be a “dangerous precedent” for the administration to ignore a federal judge’s decision last week blocking the sale of an abortion pill. “But I’ll say this, you know, as a dangerous precedent is set for the court to set aside the FDA’s and expert judgment regarding a drug’s safety and efficiency, it will also set a dangerous precedent for this administration to disregard a binding decision,” White House press secretary Jean-Pierre said at her briefing on Monday. “We are ready to fight this. This is going to be a long fight. We understand this. We stand by FDA approval of mifepristone.” (Frazier, 4/10)

The New York Times: Pfizer CEO And Other Drug Company Leaders Condemn Texas Abortion Pill Ruling
The pharmaceutical industry plunged into a legal showdown over the abortion pill mifepristone on Monday, issuing a scorching condemnation of a ruling by a federal judge that invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug and calling for the decision to be reversed. The statement was signed by more than 400 leaders of some of the drug and biotech industry’s most prominent investment firms and companies, none of which make mifepristone, the first pill in the two-drug medication abortion regimen. It shows that the reach of this case stretches far beyond abortion. Unlike Roe v. Wade and other past landmark abortion lawsuits, this one could challenge the foundation of the regulatory system for all medicines in the United States. (Belluck and Jewett, 4/10)

Politico: The Abortion Pill Rulings Are Scaring The FDA And Drugmakers. Here’s Why.
Jane Henney, who was FDA commissioner when mifepristone was approved, said Monday that “this ruling sets a very dangerous precedent for the FDA’s authority in terms of other new medications.” “Clearly, we would be entering totally uncharted territory in that regard,” she said during a call with reporters. ... And William Schultz, former deputy commissioner for the FDA and former general counsel for HHS, said the decision “could allow virtually anyone to challenge any FDA drug approval decision with a good chance of succeeding.” “Any FDA drug approval involves hundreds of judgments by the agency. If a court feels free just to kind of take a fresh look at each of those, there’s a chance that a court will find one of those judgments is wrong,” Schultz said. (Foley, Lim, Messerly and Ollstein, 4/10)

Stat: 6 Burning Questions About FDA's Response To Abortion Pill Decisions
A dueling pair of federal court decisions has thrown the fate of the abortion pill mifepristone into jeopardy  — and have left regulators and drugmakers navigating uncharted territory. The two decisions throw the drug, also used to treat miscarriages, into legal limbo nationwide, regardless of state governments’ abortion protections. They also raise fundamental questions for regulators responsible for overseeing much of the country’s health care, and for the drugmakers that expend time and money to bring countless medicines to the market. (Owermohle and Silverman, 4/11)

Politico: Blue States Are Buying Up Abortion Medication Amid Legal Uncertainty 
California and other blue states are rushing to stockpile abortion medication amid uncertainty at the federal level about the status of the drugs. Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday that California had secured 250,000 misoprostol pills and negotiated the purchase of up to 2 million — the latest move by a state that has repeatedly tried to shore up abortion access in the face of restrictive laws elsewhere. The announcement follows a Texas judge’s decision to invalidate the Food and Drug Administration’s approval for mifepristone, another medication commonly used in the procedure. (Bluth, 4/10)

AP: Some US States Stock Abortion Medications After Court Ruling
Massachusetts has purchased enough doses of the drug mifepristone — one of two drugs used in combination to end pregnancies — to last for more than a year, Democratic Gov. Maura Healey said Monday. California has secured an emergency stockpile of up to 2 million pills of misoprostol, the other drug used in abortion medication, Gov. Newsom, also a Democrat, announced. And in Washington state, Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee announced last week that the state purchased 30,000 doses of the generic version of mifepristone — which he said is enough to last the state’s residents three years. The shipment arrived in late March. (LeBlanc, 4/11)

Bloomberg: Abortion Pill Still on Market Despite Judge’s Ruling to Pull It
Pharmacies are pushing ahead with sales of the abortion pill even after a judge’s decision threatens to restrict access to the drug nationwide as soon as Friday. (Rutherford, 4/10)

AP: Montana Abortion Proposal Met With Preemptive Lawsuit
Planned Parenthood of Montana filed a preemptive lawsuit Monday seeking to stop legislation that would ban the abortion method most commonly used in the second trimester, arguing the proposed law is unconstitutional. The nonprofit organization filed the complaint over the proposal to ban dilation and evacuation abortions before the bill has been forwarded to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte. The organization asked for the court to at least temporarily block the legislation because it would take effect immediately upon being signed, causing irreparable harm to its patients. (Hanson, 4/10)

CNN: Biden Signs Bill Ending Covid-19 National Emergency
President Joe Biden signed legislation Monday to end the national emergency for Covid-19, the White House said, in a move that will not affect the end of the separate public health emergency scheduled for May 11. A White House official downplayed the impact of the bill, saying the termination of the emergency “does not impact our ability to wind down authorities in an orderly way.” The bill to end the national emergency cleared the Senate last month in a bipartisan 68-23 vote and passed the House earlier this year with 11 Democrats crossing party lines to vote for the joint resolution. (Carvajal, 4/10)

The Washington Post: White House Launches $5B Program To Speed Covid Vaccine Development 
The Biden administration is launching a $5 billion-plus program to accelerate development of new coronavirus vaccines and treatments, seeking to better protect against a still-mutating virus, as well as other coronaviruses that might threaten us in the future. “Project Next Gen” — the long-anticipated follow-up to “Operation Warp Speed,” the Trump-era program that sped coronavirus vaccines to patients in 2020 — would take a similar approach to partnering with private-sector companies to expedite development of vaccines and therapies. Scientists, public heath experts and politicians have called for the initiative, warning that existing therapies have steadily lost their effectiveness and that new ones are needed. (Diamond, 4/10)

CNBC: Moderna Hopes To Offer New Vaccines For Cancer, Heart Disease By 2030
Moderna hopes to offer a new set of life-saving vaccines targeting cancer, heart disease and other conditions by 2030, a spokesperson for the company told CNBC on Monday. The spokesperson confirmed remarks Moderna’s chief medical officer, Dr. Paul Burton, made to the Guardian on Saturday. Burton said he’s confident those jabs will be ready by the end of the decade, adding that Moderna could possibly offer them in as little as five years. (Constantino, 4/10)

The Courier-Journal: Biden On Louisville Shooting: 'Too Many Americans Are Paying For The Price Of Inaction'
In a brief statement Monday following a mass shooting in downtown Louisville, President Joe Biden said the victims were on his mind – and called on Republican legislators to take action. ... "Once again, our nation mourns after a senseless act of gun violence – Jill and I pray for the lives lost and impacted by today's shooting," Biden said in a Twitter post. ... In a longer statement, Biden thanked Louisville Metro Police Department officers "who quickly and courageously stepped into the line of fire to save others." But he also used the release to ask Republican lawmakers to pass gun safety measures. He said Republican lawmakers need to pass legislation to require safe storage of firearms, background checks for people buying guns and to eliminate the immunity from liability from gun manufacturers. (Aulbach, 4/10)

The Washington Post: Louisville Bank Shooting Leaves 5 Dead, 8 Wounded 
Last month, Kentucky lawmakers passed a bill making the state a “Second Amendment sanctuary,” prohibiting local authorities from enforcing federal firearm bans or regulations. Gov. Beshear neither signed nor vetoed the bill, which allowed it to become law. On Monday, he called for a focus on “friends and loved ones that are no longer with us” — in what seemed a deliberate attempt to sidestep the gun-control debate. (Gaffney, Javaid and Brulliard, 4/10)

The New York Times: The Direct Effects And Existential Dread Created By Gun Violence 
As of mid-April, there have been at least 145 mass shootings in the United States in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit research group that tracks gun violence. (The group defines a mass shooting as one in which at least four people are killed or injured.) And mass shootings represent just a small fraction of shootings nationwide. How has this pervasive violence affected our mental states or changed the way we live? The New York Times’s Well desk created an online form for readers to answer those questions in their own words. More than 600 people responded: Some had personal experiences with gun violence; others were dealing with the existential dread of what might occur. (Lindner, 4/11)

AP: AMA's First Gay President To Take Over At Tumultuous Time
The first openly gay person to lead the American Medical Association takes the reins at a fractious time for U.S. health care. Transgender patients and those seeking abortion care face restrictions in many places. The medical judgment of physicians is being overridden by state laws. Disinformation is rampant. And the nation isn’t finished with COVID-19.In the two decades since Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld first got involved with the AMA as young medical resident, the nation’s largest physicians’ group has tried to shed its image as a conservative self-interested trade association. While physician pocketbook issues remain a big focus, the AMA is also a powerful lobbying force for a range of public health issues. (Tanner, 4/9)

Modern Healthcare: CMS Proposes 2.8% Hospital Inpatient Reimbursement Hike
Hospitals complying with quality reporting rules and the electronic health records meaningful-use policy would get a 2.8% net increase in Medicare reimbursements in fiscal 2024 under the hospital inpatient prospective payment system proposed rule published Monday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Turner, 4/10)

Crain's Chicago Business: CommonSpirit Data Breach Impacted Over 100 Facilities, Cost Millions
CommonSpirit Health, a nationwide Catholic hospital chain, revealed additional details around the impact of a data breach late last year that affected more than 600,000 patients. (Davis, 4/10)

AP: Georgia Medicaid Insurer Denied Psychotherapy For Thousands
A newspaper finds that the insurance company that manages medical care for many Georgia children has denied or partially denied more than 6,500 requests for psychotherapy between 2019 and mid-2022. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that many of the requests denied by Amerigroup, a unit of insurance insurance giant Elevance Health, were for children in state-run foster care. (4/10

The Washington Post: Black Man Awaiting Kidney Transplant Alleges Racial Bias 
An African American man is seeking millions of dollars in damages and a better position on the kidney transplant waiting list in a lawsuit that claims an algorithm used in determining priority for organs is biased against Black people. Anthony Randall last week sued an affiliate of the Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles, where he is listed as a transplant patient, and the United Network for Organ Sharing, the nonprofit organization that operates the U.S. transplant system. (Bernstein, 4/10)

NBC News: Shortage On 4 Cancer Drugs Creates Dire Scenarios For Patients
Robert Landfair, 76, was diagnosed with Stage 4 prostate cancer in 2018. After several unsuccessful rounds of chemotherapy, his doctor, Alan Tan of Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, recommended that he switch to Pluvicto, a new medication for advanced prostate cancer. But the drug’s manufacturer, Novartis, has had supply problems. Landfair is now on a waitlist for the medication, which isn’t expected to be widely available for several more months. (Lovelace Jr. and Kopf, 4/11)

AP: Vaping Company Juul Settles West Virginia Lawsuit For $7.9M
Vaping company Juul Labs will pay West Virginia $7.9 million to settle a lawsuit alleging the company marketed products to underage users, Attorney General Patrick Morrisey announced Monday. The lawsuit accuses Juul of engaging in unfair or deceptive practices in the design, manufacturing, marketing and sale of e-cigarettes in violation of the state’s Consumer Credit and Protection Act. (Raby, 4/10)

Stat: Stanford President Defends Decision Not To Correct Paper 
Amid an investigation of alleged research misconduct, Stanford University’s president took responsibility in an email to STAT for the decision not to correct or retract a paper at the heart of the controversy and defended his actions. That decision concerned a major study published in the journal Nature in 2009 and co-authored by Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the university’s president and a renowned neuroscientist who at the time was a top researcher at the biotech company Genentech. (Wosen, 4/11)

Bloomberg: Elizabeth Holmes Loses Bid To Remain Free During Appeal 
Elizabeth Holmes must report to prison as scheduled later this month, a judge ruled, rejecting her request to remain free on bail as she appeals her fraud conviction. The decision Monday by US District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California, is likely his last in the case which he’s handled since Holmes was indicted in 2018. Davila presided over the Theranos Inc. founder’s four-month trial in 2021 and sentenced her in November to serve 11 1/4 years of incarceration for deceiving investors in her blood-testing startup. (Rosenblatt, 4/11)

The Washington Post: High Stress Raises Odds Of Cognitive Problems After Age 45 
People 45 and older who have elevated stress levels have been found to be 37 percent more likely to have cognitive problems, including memory and thinking issues, than those who are not stressed, according to research published in the journal JAMA Network Open. (Searing, 4/10)

The New York Times: More Girls Are Being Diagnosed With Autism 
Morénike Giwa Onaiwu was shocked when day care providers flagged some concerning behaviors in her daughter, Legacy. The toddler was not responding to her name. She avoided eye contact, didn’t talk much and liked playing on her own. But none of this seemed unusual to Dr. Onaiwu, a consultant and writer in Houston. “I didn’t recognize anything was amiss,” she said. “My daughter was just like me.” Legacy was diagnosed with autism in 2011, just before she turned 3. Months later, at the age of 31, Dr. Onaiwu was diagnosed as well. (Ghorayshi, 4/10)

Politico: GOP Embraces A New Foreign Policy: Bomb Mexico To Stop Fentanyl 
A growing number of prominent Republicans are rallying around the idea that to solve the fentanyl crisis, America must bomb it away. In recent weeks, Donald Trump has discussed sending “special forces” and using “cyber warfare” to target cartel leaders if he’s reelected president and, per Rolling Stone, asked for “battle plans” to strike Mexico. Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) introduced a bill seeking authorization for the use of military force to “put us at war with the cartels.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said he is open to sending U.S. troops into Mexico to target drug lords even without that nation’s permission. And lawmakers in both chambers have filed legislation to label some cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a move supported by GOP presidential aspirants. (Ward, 4/10)