First Edition: August 2, 2017

Kaiser Health News: Drug Puts A $750,000 ‘Price Tag On Life’
Jana Gundy and Amanda Chaffin live within two hours of each other in Oklahoma. Each has a child with the same devastating disease, one that robs them of muscle strength, affecting their ability to sit, stand or even breathe. So both families were ecstatic when the Food and Drug Administration approved the first treatment for the genetic condition — known as spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) — two days before Christmas 2016. It seemed the gift they had been waiting for — a chance to slow the heartbreaking decline of their young sons. (Appleby, 8/2)

Kaiser Health News: Little-Known Middlemen Save Money On Medicines — But Maybe Not For You
For the past seven months, the GOP push to replace the Affordable Care Act has consumed Washington. All the while, many consumers continue to be focused on the rising costs of prescription drugs. (Ying, Appleby and Stapleton, 8/2)

Kaiser Health News: Denial, Appeal, Approval … An Adult’s Thorny Path To Spinraza Coverage
Tammi Bradley jumped on her computer the minute she heard the news about the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a drug targeting spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a progressive muscle-weakening condition she’s had since childhood. “That night, I wrote to all my neurology doctors and my personal physician, saying I was interested in obtaining this treatment,” recalled the 51-year-old Citrus Heights, Calif., resident. (Appleby, 8/2)

Kaiser Health News: Podcast: ‘What The Health?’ Now What?
Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Joanne Kenen of Politico, Sarah Kliff of Vox.com and Mary Agnes Carey of Kaiser Health News discuss what happens now, in the wake of the apparent demise of the Republican-only repeal and replace efforts for the Affordable Care Act. (8/1)

California Healthline: Covered California Expects 12.5% Average Rate Rise In 2018
The expected 2018 rate increase is down from 2017’s average rise of 13.2 percent, and it includes a one-time increase averaging 2.8 percentage points because of the end of a “holiday” that gave health plans a break from the tax they are required to pay under the Affordable Care Act. (Bazar and Bartolone, 8/1)

The Associated Press: GOP Shows Signs Of Reaching Out To Democrats On Health Care
Republicans showed signs Tuesday of reaching out to Democrats for a joint if modest effort to buttress health insurance markets, four days after the GOP effort to unilaterally uproot and reshape the Obama health care law crumpled in the Senate. The Republican chairman of the Senate health committee, Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, said he'd seek bipartisan legislation extending for one year federal payments to insurers that help millions of low- and moderate-income Americans afford coverage. (Fram, 8/1)

The New York Times: Republicans In Congress Bypass Trump To Shore Up Health Law
In the House, two Republicans, Representatives Tom Reed of New York and Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, teamed with Democrats to promote incremental health legislation that would also fund the cost-sharing subsidies. The moves were a remarkable response to the president’s repeated threats to send health insurance markets into a tailspin. They offered tangible indications of cooperation between the parties after Republican efforts to scrap the Affordable Care Act collapsed in the Senate last week, all but ending the seven-year Republican quest to overturn President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement. Lawmakers from both parties concede that the health law needs improvement, as consumers face sharp premium increases and a shrinking number of insurance options in many states. (Pear and Kaplan, 8/1)

NPR: Lawmakers To Hold Hearings To Stabilize Insurance Markets
The next cost-sharing payments are due to be paid in a few weeks and the president has said he'll announce this week whether he'll pay the money or keep it in the Treasury. "In the absence of the CSR, the rate increases could be astonishing," says Dr. Marc Harrison, CEO of Intermountain Healthcare, which operates nonprofit hospitals and clinics and insures more than 800,000 people across Utah. (Kodjak, 8/1)

USA Today: With Obamacare Repeal Stalled, Senate Panel To Focus On Stabilizing Insurance Market
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which he chairs, will hold hearings starting Sept. 4 “so that Americans will be able to buy affordable health insurance.” "If your house is on fire, you want to put out the fire, and the fire in this case is the individual health insurance market," Alexander said. (Gaudiano and Collins, 8/1)

Politico: Alexander, Murray Plan Bipartisan Hearings To Shore Up Obamacare
Alexander, the chairman of the committee, emphasized that the work will be bipartisan and that the hearings will feature a range of health policy experts, including state insurance commissioners, patients and insurance industry representatives. He added that he’s urged President Donald Trump to continue paying for Obamacare’s cost-sharing subsidies through September, to give Congress time to craft a stabilization plan that would include one year of funding for the payments. (Cancryn, 8/1)

Los Angeles Times: As Trump Mulls Cutting Off Obamacare Aid, Senate Begins Bipartisan Approach
Most patient advocates, physician groups, hospitals and even many health insurers have been saying for months that targeted fixes to insurance marketplaces make more sense than the kind of far-reaching overhaul of government health programs that Republicans had been pushing. The marketplaces, though a pillar of Obamacare, represent a small part of the U.S. healthcare system with just about 10 million people getting coverage there. But rate hikes and the decision by many insurers to exit markets amid the current political uncertainty in Washington has threatened consumers’ access to health plans. (Levey and Lauter, 8/1)

The Wall Street Journal: GOP Proposal Aims To Keep Health Overhaul Going
The White House and some Republicans who want to keep up efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act have seized on a proposal aimed at giving states significant flexibility, though Senate leaders are suggesting they won’t revisit the health-care issue in the near future. The proposal, which Sens. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R., La.) unveiled when the GOP’s primary legislation to overhaul the 2010 health-care law was faltering, is designed to let states craft their own health systems to some degree. (Hackman, 8/1)

Politico: Heller Under Fire Over Obamacare Gymnastics
Dean Heller can’t win on Obamacare. He’s inflamed the left and right throughout the debate on repealing the law. And now the Nevada Republican is handing critics more ammunition by signing onto a new overhaul of Obamacare that has piqued the interest of the White House but nonetheless has little momentum. (Kim, 8/2)

The New York Times: ‘Time To Move On’: Senate G.O.P. Flouts Trump After Health Care Defeat
Senate Republicans are not pretending to have missed the tweets anymore. They have abandoned well-worn phrases, like “growing pains” and “sea legs,” that sustained them through the endless winter and spring. And if a few months ago President Trump’s scattershot demands might have sent the chamber into a lather, compelling lawmakers to honor his megaphone, the collective shrugs at his rage over last week’s failed health care repeal vote have signaled a new phase in this shotgun marriage of unified Republican rule. (Flegenheimer and Kaplan, 8/1)

The Associated Press: Senate Republicans Slowly Turning Their Backs On Trump
There wasn't a dramatic public break or an exact moment it happened. But step by step, Senate Republicans are turning their backs on President Donald Trump. They defeated an Obamacare repeal bill despite Trump's pleas. They're ignoring his Twitter demands that they get back to work on the repeal measure. They dissed the White House budget director, defended the attorney general against the president's attacks and passed veto-proof sanctions on Russia over his administration's objections. (Werner, 8/2)

The Washington Post: Can This Marriage Be Saved? Relationship Between Trump, Senate GOP Hits New Skids.
The relationship between President Trump and Senate Republicans has deteriorated so sharply in recent days that some are openly defying his directives, bringing long-simmering tensions to a boil as the GOP labors to reorient its stalled legislative agenda. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), head of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, announced Tuesday that he would work with his Democratic colleagues to “stabilize and strengthen” the individual insurance market under the Affordable Care Act, which the president has badgered the Senate to keep trying to repeal. Alexander also urged the White House to keep up payments to insurers that help low-income consumers afford plans, which Trump has threatened to cut off. (Sullivan, 8/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Senate Republicans Rebuff Donald Trump’s Health-Care Push
Senate Republicans made clear on Tuesday that they want to chart their own course to focus on a tax overhaul and critical fiscal legislation, bypassing requests from President Donald Trump and White House officials to keep health care their top legislative priority. (Hughes, Andrews and Hook, 8/1)

NPR: Trump Threatens Congress' Health Care; Senate Republicans Don't Seem Too Worried 
Senate Republicans don't appear to be too worried about President Trump's latest round of threats. "If a new HealthCare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!" Trump said on Twitter over the weekend. He followed that tweet with a similar threat Monday, writing, "If ObamaCare if hurting people, & it is, why shouldn't it hurt the insurance companies & why should Congress not be paying what the public pays?" And yet, the Senate is clearly moving on from health care — at least for now. (Detrow, 8/1)

Reuters: Court Allows Democratic States To Defend Obamacare Payments
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday allowed Democratic state attorneys general to defend subsidy payments to insurance companies under the Obamacare healthcare law, a critical part of funding for the statute that President Donald Trump has threatened to cut off. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit granted a motion filed by the 16 attorneys general, led by California's Xavier Becerra and New York's Eric Schneiderman. (Hurley, 8/1)

The Washington Post: Court Ruling Could Help Keep Obamacare Subsidies
Led by the Democratic attorneys general of New York and California, the motion that the court granted is the most recent twist in the gnarled legal and political history of the subsidies. In practical terms, the ruling could make it more difficult for the Trump administration and House Republicans to abandon the payments without a court fight. (Goldstein, 8/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Some Insurers Seek ACA Premium Increases Of 30% And Higher
Major health insurers in some states are seeking increases as high as 30% or more for premiums on 2018 Affordable Care Act plans, according to new federal data that provide the broadest view so far of the turmoil across exchanges as companies try to anticipate Trump administration policies. Big insurers in Idaho, West Virginia, South Carolina, Iowa and Wyoming are seeking to raise premiums by averages close to 30% or more, according to preliminary rate requests published Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Major marketplace players in New Mexico, Tennessee, North Dakota and Hawaii indicated they were looking for average increases of 20% or more. (Wilde Mathews and Radnosfky, 8/1)

The Associated Press: California Health Premiums To Rise An Average 12.5 Percent
Monthly premiums for California health insurance plans sold under the Affordable Care Act will rise by an average of 12.5 percent next year, the second consecutive year of double-digit rate increases, officials said Tuesday. (Cooper, 8/1)

Los Angeles Times: Covered California Premiums Will Rise 12.5%, And Anthem Blue Cross Cuts Coverage
Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said that increases in the cost of providing care were responsible for about 7 percentage points of the state’s 12.5% average rate increase. Another 3 percentage points, he said, reflected a one-time tax adjustment. But another 3 points, he said, accounts for insurers’ overall unease with the ongoing debate over scrapping, or massively modifying, the Affordable Care Act. In negotiating with insurance companies this spring, Covered California put together a kind of hold-harmless agreement. That agreement, which Covered California will take to its board this month, essentially agrees to let health insurers make up losses from unexpected changes to the insurance market that may be caused this year or next by unexpected changes in the basic fundamentals of the Obamacare market. (Karlamangla, 8/1)

Reuters: Anthem To Cut Back Obamacare Plan Offerings In California
U.S. health insurer Anthem Inc is pulling back from 16 of 19 pricing regions in California where it offered Obamacare options this year, state officials said on Tuesday. The move, which takes effect for 2018, means Anthem will offer Obamacare coverage in three pricing regions comprising 28 counties in California. (Erman and Berkrot, 8/1)

The Associated Press: Health Insurer Files For Rate Decrease For Alaska Market
The lone insurer offering policies on Alaska's individual health insurance market has filed for an average rate decrease of about 22 percent next year. If approved, this would be the first time the average rate has decreased under the current federal health care law in Alaska, a remote state where high health care and premium costs have been an ongoing concern. (Bohrer, 8/1)

The Associated Press: Senate OKs Bills To Address VA Budget Crisis, Claims Backlog
The Senate has approved a pair of bills taking aim at urgent problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs, clearing a $3.9 billion emergency spending package to fix a looming budget crisis and adopting new measures to pare down a rapidly growing backlog of veterans' disability claims. Both bills passed Tuesday by unanimous vote. (Yen, 8/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Veterans Using Private Doctors At Greater Risk For Opioid Abuse
Veterans using a Department of Veterans Affairs program to seek care from doctors in the private sector instead of the VA face a greater danger of becoming entangled in the country’s opioid epidemic, the VA said Tuesday. Findings from the VA’s Office of Inspector General show that programs allowing veterans to get care from private doctors when appointments aren’t available in the VA system leave veterans vulnerable to overprescription of powerful opioids because of gaps in the process used by the VA to keep track of prescriptions. (Kesling, 8/1)

USA Today: Jerome Adams Promises To Put Science Ahead Of Politics As Surgeon General
Jerome Adams, Indiana’s state health commissioner, pledged Tuesday to put science ahead of politics if he becomes the next surgeon general. But while science is critical, Adams told senators at his confirmation hearing, it has to be applied in a “sympathetic and empathetic way.” (Groppe, 8/1)

The Associated Press: AG Sessions To Address Opioid Epidemic In Hard-Hit Ohio
Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to discuss the impact of the country’s opioid epidemic during a speech in hard-hit Ohio, where about eight people a day are dying of accidental overdoses. Sessions is scheduled to address law enforcement officers and families affected by the crisis Wednesday in Columbus. (8/1)

The Washington Post: The Generic Drug Industry Has Brought Huge Cost Savings. That May Be Changing.
A decade ago, physicians who treat epilepsy got what seemed like a piece of good news: Eight companies had received federal approval to sell a generic version of an injectable lifesaving drug. Doctors liked the brand-name drug Cerebyx because it was safer and easier to use than a previous medicine that stopped seizures but could cause terrible skin reactions. The only problem was that it was too expensive for many hospital pharmacy budgets. A widely available and cheaper generic version would remove those cost barriers — or so doctors thought. (Johnson, 8/1)

Los Angeles Times: Theranos Settles Lawsuit Brought By Walgreens Over Blood Tests
Theranos Inc., the once highflying blood-testing firm, said Tuesday it settled a lawsuit filed against the company by the drugstore chain Walgreens and its parent, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Theranos said there was “no finding or implication of liability” and Walgreens’ lawsuit will be dismissed. (Peltz, 8/1)