Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
First Edition: August 22, 2017
Kaiser Health News: Oregon, Texas Are Latest States To Put Down Markers On Abortion Coverage
Federal health insurance rules are a moving target, and it’s unclear whether Republicans will take another run at replacing the Affordable Care Act. In the meantime, some states are staking out strong positions on coverage of abortion, cementing their position regardless of how the federal landscape changes. (Andrews, 8/22)
Kaiser Health News: Dying At Home In An Opioid Crisis: Hospices Grapple With Stolen Meds
Nothing seemed to help the patient — and hospice staff didn’t know why. They sent home more painkillers for weeks. But the elderly woman, who had severe dementia and incurable breast cancer, kept calling out in pain. The answer came when the woman’s daughter, who was taking care of her at home, showed up in the emergency room with a life-threatening overdose of morphine and oxycodone. It turned out she was high on her mother’s medications, stolen from the hospice-issued stash. (Bailey, 8/22)
The New York Times: Hospitals Are Clogged With Patients Struggling With Opioids
President Trump this month declared the opioid epidemic a national emergency, a move intended to direct more funding and attention toward the crisis. Recent research on hospitalizations related to opioid use depicts a problem of increasing urgency. According to a series of government briefs published this year, nearly 1.3 million hospitalizations involving opioids occurred in the United States in 2014. The figure includes hospitalizations for abuse of both prescription and illegal drugs, including heroin. (Yin, 8/21)
The Associated Press: US Health Chief Lauds China For Help With Opioid Control
China has been an "incredible partner" in cracking down on synthetic opioids seen as fueling fast-rising overdose deaths in the United States, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said Monday during a visit to the country considered the source of many of the deadly substances sought by addicts. Price said China has been quick to respond when regulators identify a threat from a dangerous drug such as fentanyl, the powerful opioid blamed for thousands of fatal overdoses, including the death of entertainer Prince. (Bodeen, 8/21)
The New York Times: Coal Mining Health Study Is Halted By Interior Department
The Interior Department has ordered a halt to a scientific study begun under President Obama of the public health risks of mountaintop-removal coal mining. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which was conducting the study, said in a statement Monday that they were ordered to stop work because the Interior Department is conducting an agencywide budgetary review. (Friedman and Plumer, 8/21)
The Washington Post: Trump Administration Halted A Study Of Mountaintop Coal Mining’s Health Effects
A statement by the academy said Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement dispatched a letter Friday telling it to cease all work by an 11-member committee undertaking the study pending a departmental review of projects costing more than $100,000. The review was prompted “largely as a result of the Department’s changing budget situation,” the statement said. (Fears, 8/21)
The Associated Press: VA Seeks To Funnel More Nursing Home Money To Rural Areas
Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin said Monday during a visit to Montana that his agency will propose changes to make it easier for rural areas to receive funding to build nursing homes for veterans. Rural areas are often bypassed under the agency’s existing guidelines for awarding grants for veterans’ homes, Shulkin told reporters after touring VA facilities and meeting with veterans in Helena. (Volz, 8/21)
The New York Times: Public Hospitals Treat Greater Share Of Mental Health Patients
It has grown into a grim ritual of late in New York City: a burst of violence in which a person with mental illness is the victim or aggressor, followed by the city mapping out breakdowns in care and pledging to stitch the safety net tighter. But the late stages of a sick person’s struggle — medications missed, doctors’ declining last-minute appointments, hospitals that discharge patients with little follow-up care — are often only a coda to years of moving between home and a hospital bed. (Mueller, 8/22)
The New York Times: $417 Million Awarded In Suit Tying Johnson’s Baby Powder To Cancer
In what may be the largest award so far in a lawsuit tying ovarian cancer to talcum powder, a Los Angeles jury on Monday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay $417 million in damages to a medical receptionist who developed ovarian cancer after using the company’s trademark Johnson’s Baby Powder on her perineum for decades. (Rabin, 8/22)
USA Today: Jury Awards $417M In Lawsuit Linking Talcum Powder To Cancer
The judgment, reached after a roughly one-month long trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, includes $347 million in punitive damages against Johnson & Johnson. It was the latest among several verdicts against the consumer-products maker, with about 2,000 women having filed similar cases. In the latest verdict, plaintiff Eva Echeverria alleged that Johnson & Johnson was aware of potential dangers from consistently using its talcum-based products for personal hygiene but refused to warn the public. (Jones, 8/21)
The Wall Street Journal: Johnson & Johnson Hit With $417 Million Verdict In Baby Powder Case
The verdict here comes in the sixth completed trial alleging the talcum powder in J&J’s popular bath product causes ovarian cancer, and that the company failed to warn about the risks. The company won a trial in March but lost four others, leading to jury awards totaling more than $300 million that are now on appeal. (Randazzo, 8/21)
The Associated Press: Record $417M Award In Lawsuit Linking Baby Powder To Cancer
The verdict in the lawsuit brought by the California woman, Eva Echeverria, marks the largest sum awarded in a series of talcum powder lawsuit verdicts against Johnson & Johnson in courts around the U.S. Echeverria alleged Johnson & Johnson failed to adequately warn consumers about talcum powder’s potential cancer risks. She used the company’s baby powder on a daily basis beginning in the 1950s until 2016 and was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2007, according to court papers. (Balsamo, 8/21)
Los Angeles Times: L.A. Jury Hits Johnson & Johnson With $417-Million Verdict Over Cancer Link To Its Talc
Johnson & Johnson immediately announced it would seek to overturn the verdict. “We will appeal today's verdict because we are guided by the science, which supports the safety of Johnson's Baby Powder,” the company said in a statement. (Winton, 8/21)
The Washington Post: Despite Measles Outbreak, Anti-Vaccine Activists In Minnesota Refuse To Back Down
Minnesota’s worst measles outbreak in decades has unexpectedly energized anti-vaccine forces, who have stepped up their work in recent months to challenge efforts by public health officials and clinicians to prevent the spread of the highly infectious disease. In Facebook group discussions, local activists have asked about holding “measles parties” to expose unvaccinated children to others infected with the virus so they can contract the disease and acquire immunity. Health officials say they are aware of the message posts but haven’t seen evidence that such parties are taking place. (Sun, 8/21)
The Associated Press: Texas Slashes Underperforming Anti-Abortion Group's Contract
An anti-abortion group awarded nearly $7 million to boost women's health and family planning after the state cut off Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers is falling short and will receive far less money as a result, Texas officials said Monday. The decision comes a year after Texas hired the Heidi Group to help strengthen small clinics that specialize in women's health like Planned Parenthood but don't offer abortions. In March, The Associated Press found the Heidi Group had little to show for its work and had not performed promised outreach. (Weber, 8/21)
Los Angeles Times: There's An Unforeseen Benefit To California's Physician-Assisted Death Law
Some doctors in California felt uncomfortable last year when a new law began allowing terminally ill patients to request lethal medicines, saying their careers had been dedicated to saving lives, not ending them. Many healthcare systems designed protocols for screening people who say they’re interested in physician-assisted death, including some that were meant to dissuade patients from taking up the option. (Karlamangla, 8/21)
USA Today: Solar Eclipse: How To Know If You Damaged Your Eyes During The Eclipse
If you, like our nation's president, looked directly into Monday's eclipse, you might wonder: Did I just damage my eyes? Whether by accident or disregard, untold masses looked at the sun with unshielded eyes during the must-see-safely event. By Monday afternoon, people were already freaking out about their eyes online. (Hafner, 8/21)
NPR: Eye Damage From The Eclipse Might Show Up The Next Day
[I]f you did steal unprotected glances skyward, and especially if your eyes felt funny or hurt a little afterward, you might be wondering how you'll know if you've done any long-term damage. To answer that question, we once again turned to Ralph Chou, a professor emeritus of optometry and vision science at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, and a leading authority on the damage the sun's rays can do to the eye's retina. (Hsu, 8/21)
The New York Times: How To Prevent Deadly Infection In Babies? Good Bacteria
It may be possible, scientists say, to save many thousands of newborns in poor countries by giving them a simple probiotic — a strain of bacteria originally scooped out of the diaper of a healthy baby. A large clinical trial in rural India has found that babies fed a special strain of Lactobacillus bacteria for just one week were 40 percent less likely to develop sepsis, a life-threatening bloodstream infection. (McNeil, 8/21)
The New York Times: More Young People Are Dying Of Colon Cancer
When researchers reported earlier this year that colorectal cancer rates were rising in adults as young as their 20s and 30s, some scientists were skeptical. The spike in figures, they suggested, might not reflect a real increase in disease incidence but earlier detection, which can be a good thing. (Rabin, 8/22)
The Wall Street Journal: A Striking Rise In Serious Allergy Cases
The rate of reports of severe allergic reactions to foods like peanuts has increased by nearly five times over the past decade, according to a new analysis of private insurance claims. The analysis looked at private insurance claims with a diagnosis of an anaphylactic food reaction from 2007 to 2016. Anaphylaxis is a systemic allergic reaction in which the immune system affects multiple parts of the body at the same time, often leading to trouble breathing. It can be fatal if not treated promptly and requires an injection of epinephrine and a trip to the emergency room. (Reddy, 8/21)
The New York Times: Marijuana Tied To Hypertension Risk
Marijuana use may be a cause of high blood pressure, a new study reports. Researchers studied 332 deaths among 1,213 people participating in a larger health study, of whom 57 percent were marijuana users. They had used marijuana for an average of 12 years, and the longer they used it, the more likely they were to have hypertension. The study is in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology. (Bakalar, 8/21)
The New York Times: Is This Treatment The Cure For Hair Loss?
When Heidi Imhof started losing her hair at 42, she also started losing sleep. Ms. Imhof, a lawyer, was afraid that blow-drying her straight dark hair would hasten the shedding, so she got up two hours early to shower and apply mousse and volumizers. When her hair finally air-dried, she’d pull it back, hoping to hide the bald patches on her scalp.“I was desperate,” she said. (Rubin, 8/21)
The New York Times: The Case For A Breakfast Feast
Many of us grab coffee and a quick bite in the morning and eat more as the day goes on, with a medium-size lunch and the largest meal of the day in the evening. But a growing body of research on weight and health suggests we may be doing it all backward. (Rabin, 8/21)
Los Angeles Times: USC's Dean Drug Scandal Could Take A Costly Toll On The School's Legal Battle With The UC System
Six months after Dr. Carmen Puliafito stepped down as dean of USC’s medical school, he was called by the university to give sworn testimony as a witness in a lawsuit the institution was facing. It was a sensitive matter with hundreds of millions of dollars potentially at stake, and two attorneys for the university sat with him as he answered questions. Almost immediately, the opposing lawyer hit on a topic that was a closely guarded secret at USC: The circumstances of Puliafito’s abrupt resignation in March 2016. (Ryan, 8/21)
