First Edition: August 23, 2019

Kaiser Health News: Years Ago, This Doctor Linked A Mysterious Lung Disease To Vaping
Dr. John E. Parker was working at a West Virginia hospital in 2015 when a 31-year-old female patient was admitted with acute respiratory problems. A team of doctors ultimately suspected that her mysterious case of lipoid pneumonia might be related to vaping and weren’t sure they had seen anything like it before. They were intrigued enough to publish a case report — a type of medical paper on unusual or provocative patient findings. Such reports can serve as a call to the medical community to be on the lookout, though they sometimes raise more questions than they provide answers. This summer, almost four years later, federal officials began investigating a national outbreak of severe lung illnesses linked to vaping that has struck more than 150 patients in 16 states. (Knight, 8/23)

Kaiser Health News: Addiction Clinics Market Pricey, Unproven Treatments To Desperate Patients
Jason was hallucinating. He was withdrawing from drugs at an addiction treatment center near Indianapolis, and he had hardly slept for several days. “He was reaching for things, and he was talking to Bill Gates and he was talking to somebody else I’m just certain he hasn’t met,” his mother, Cheryl, says. She remembers finding Jason lying on the floor of the treatment center in late 2016. “I would just bring him blankets because they didn’t have beds or anything.” (Harper, 8/23)

California Healthline: Dialysis Industry Spends Big To Protect Profits
The dialysis industry spent about $2.5 million in California on lobbying and campaign contributions in the first half of this year in its ongoing battle to thwart regulation, according to a California Healthline analysis of campaign finance reports filed with the state. Last year, dialysis companies poured a record-breaking $111 million into a campaign to defeat a ballot initiative that would have capped their profits. (Rowan, 8/22)

Politico: Kamala's Rivals Seize On Health Care Stumbles
Kamala Harris offered her health care plan expecting to bridge the party’s divides and decisively answer doubts about her see-sawing positions. But in the month since, the California Democrat is still struggling to rebut attacks from her chief rivals who are poking holes in its specifics and accusing Harris of putting political calculation before true conviction. Joe Biden’s campaign dismisses it as a “have-it-every-which-way” plan while Bernie Sanders’ camp ripped it as “cobbled together to address various poll numbers.” (Cadelago and Diamond, 8/22)

Politico: Fact Check: Did Bernie Just Backtrack On Medicare For All?
Speaking to labor officials in Iowa this week, Bernie Sanders unveiled a new twist to his “Medicare for All” plan. His centrist Democratic rivals pounced, accusing the original champion of government-run health care of softening his signature policy in order to placate angry union members. Nonsense, his campaign responded. So what's the deal? (Ollstein and Otterbein, 8/22)

The Associated Press: Democrats Take A Look At A Practical Health Care Approach
Democratic voters appear to be reassessing their approach to health care, a pragmatic shift on their party's top 2020 issue. "Medicare for All" remains hugely popular, but majorities say they'd prefer building on "Obamacare" to expand coverage instead of a new government program that replaces America's mix of private and public insurance. (Price and Alonso-Zaldivar, 8/23)

The Hill: Gillibrand Unveils Mental Health Plan
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) unveiled her plan to improve mental health care in the U.S. this week, arguing that the issue demands more attention from leaders. The Democratic presidential candidate wrote in a Medium post on Tuesday that she plans to invest in community-based approaches to mental and behavioral health, personalize the way the U.S. delivers mental health care and require insurance coverage for mental and behavioral health. (Manchester, 8/22)

The Wall Street Journal: Health Insurers Set To Expand Offerings Under The ACA
Insurers are expanding their Affordable Care Act plan offerings for next year, with the once-troubled business now generating profits, even as the overall individual-insurance market has shrunk. Oscar Insurance Corp. is the latest to announce its expected growth for 2020, adding six new states, including Pennsylvania and Georgia, to its current roster of nine. Insurers including Cigna Corp. , Bright Health Inc., Molina Healthcare Inc. and Centene Corp. , the biggest seller of ACA plans, also plan larger footprints next year. Anthem Inc. is expanding in at least two of its states, California and Virginia. (Wilde Mathews, 8/22)

The Wall Street Journal: Social Issues Weigh On Health-Care Companies, Credit Raters Warn
Social issues are increasingly weighing on the credit ratings of American health-care companies. S&P Global Ratings, Moody’s Corp. (MCO) and Fitch Ratings Inc. warn that mounting public pressure to cut medical costs has recently threatened the industry’s credit amid a renewed political debate on drug pricing and national health insurance. For instance, health-care companies are under pressure from insurers to lower costs as Medicare patient volumes have surged against commercial patients, said Andrew Steel, global head of sustainable finance at Fitch Ratings Inc. (Holger, 8/22)

Politico: $16B Veterans' Health Project Hits Major Snag
Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie insisted last week that the Trump administration is "on track" with a $16 billion project to connect medical records for the military and vets. But that’s not exactly the case — the project faces significant delays and unanticipated headaches, according to three sources with detailed knowledge of what will be one of the largest technology contracts in federal history. (Allen, 8/23)

Politico: Emails Show Veterans Affairs Officials' Scorn For 'Mar-A-Lago 3'
Emails from senior Veterans Affairs staff released Thursday reveal the frustration and scorn they felt at having to deal with the intrusion of three wealthy members of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in the agency’s plans to create a new digital health platform. The 2017 and 2018 emails, which Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show the outsized influence of the Mar-a-Lago members, Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Perlmutter, attorney Marc Sherman and internist Bruce Moskowitz. (Allen, 8/22)

USA Today: 'People Are On Edge': Mass Violence Threats – At Least 30 In 18 States – Have Surged Since El Paso, Dayton
The three arrests reported Thursday for threats of mass killings bring the total to at least 30 people detained on similar charges since the shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, earlier this month. Even in a country where such attacks have become a fact of life – there have been 263 mass shootings in the U.S. this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines them as four or more people wounded or killed – those numbers are staggering. What’s behind them? (Ortiz, 8/22)

The New York Times: How Wayne LaPierre Survived A Revolt At The N.R.A.
Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, has confronted threats from all sides this year. He faced a revolt from the N.R.A.’s top lobbyist, its president, its longtime advertising firm and several board members and donors that quickly became public. New documents reviewed by The New York Times show that the effort against him was even wider in scope, drawing in three outside law firms working for the N.R.A. and at least one in-house attorney. A wave of embarrassing leaks showed that Mr. LaPierre billed a contractor hundreds of thousands of dollars for bespoke suits and foreign travel, as well as some of his wife’s makeup costs. (Hakim, 8/22)

The Associated Press: Feds To Revamp Confidentiality Rules For Addiction Treatment
Federal health officials are proposing to revamp stringent patient confidentiality rules from the 1970s to encourage coordination among medical professionals treating people caught in the nation's opioid epidemic. The idea is to make it easier to share a patient's drug treatment history with doctors treating that person for other problems. That can stave off serious — even fatal — errors, like unwittingly prescribing opioid painkillers to a surgical patient with a history of dependence. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 8/22)

The Washington Post: Babies Born After Opioid Exposure Deserve Legal Recognition, Lawyers Argue
With a nationwide prescription opioid lawsuit scheduled for trial in two months, attorneys for newborns suffering from exposure to opioids in the womb have made a last-ditch plea for special legal treatment for the infants and their guardians. Attorneys representing a group that may number more than 250,000 children have spent much of the past two years seeking a separate trial against drug companies but have been rebuffed twice by the judge who oversees the sprawling legal case. The children are still included in that lawsuit, along with about 2,000 other plaintiffs, against some two dozen defendants from the pharmaceutical industry. (Bernstein, 8/22)

NPR: How Journalists Mined DEA Opioid Records To Uncover Corporate Painkiller Pushing
Nearly 2,000 cities, towns and counties across America are currently participating in a massive multidistrict civil lawsuit against the opioid industry for damages related to the abuse of prescription pain medication. The defendants in the suit include drug manufacturers like Mallinckrodt, wholesale distributors McKesson and Cardinal Health, and pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens. Evidence related to the lawsuit was initially sealed, but The Washington Post and the Charleston Gazette-Mail successfully sued to have it made public. (Davies, 8/22)

The New York Times: This Daily Pill Cut Heart Attacks By Half. Why Isn’t Everyone Getting It?
Giving people an inexpensive pill containing generic drugs that prevent heart attacks — an idea first proposed 20 years ago but rarely tested — worked quite well in a new study, slashing the rate of heart attacks by more than half among those who regularly took the pills. If other studies now underway find similar results, such multidrug cocktails — sometimes called “polypills” — given to vast numbers of older people could radically change the way cardiologists fight the soaring rates of heart disease and strokes in poor and middle-income countries. (McNeil, 8/22)

The Associated Press: Cheap Combo Pill Cuts Heart, Stroke Risks, Study Finds
The pills contained two blood pressure drugs, a cholesterol medicine and aspirin. Many people can’t afford or don’t stick with taking so many medicines separately, so doctors think a polypill might help. A previous study testing one in India found it lowered cholesterol and blood pressure. The new study is much larger and gives stronger evidence because it tracked heart attacks, strokes and other problems — not just risk factors. (Cheng, 8/23)

BBC News: Four-In-One Pill Prevents Third Of Heart Problems
"Given the polypill's affordability, there is considerable potential to improve cardiovascular health and to prevent the world's leading cause of death," said Dr Nizal Sarrafzadegan, of Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The idea of the polypill has been around since 2001 but this is the first major trial to prove its effectiveness. (Gallagher, 8/23)

The Wall Street Journal: FDA Focuses On Novartis Delay In Reporting Drug-Test Data Manipulation
Federal regulators examining test data manipulation for a gene-therapy drug made by Novartis AG are zeroing in on the company’s two-month delay in launching a formal inquiry, according to documents and interviews. The drug, Zolgensma, is used to treat a sometimes fatal form of spinal muscular atrophy in children and costs about $2.1 million for a one-time infusion. The Food and Drug Administration said this month that it wasn’t informed about the data manipulation until after it approved use of the drug May 24. (Burton, 8/22)

Reuters: GSK Builds Oncology Pipeline As Drug Shown To Help Myeloma Patients
GlaxoSmithKline said its experimental multiple myeloma treatment showed a meaningful response in patients that have run out of three previous treatment options, in a boost for the British drugmaker's cancer drug business. Two doses of belantamab mafodotin helped subdue the disease in adults who had received three prior treatments for multiple myeloma, a cancer of the white blood cells, GSK said on Friday, adding that it intends to seek market approval and submit data from the trial to regulatory bodies this year. (Burger and Aripaka, 8/23)

ProPublica: In Men, It’s Parkinson’s. In Women, It’s Hysteria.
Once it was called “hysterical” movement disorder, or simply “hysteria.” Later it was labeled “psychogenic.” Now it’s a “functional disorder.” By any name, it’s one of the most puzzling afflictions — and problematic diagnoses — in medicine. It often has the same symptoms, like uncontrollable shaking and difficulty walking, that characterize brain diseases like Parkinson’s. But the condition is caused by stress or trauma and often treated by psychotherapy. And, in a disparity that is drawing increased scrutiny, most of those deemed to suffer from it — as high as 80% in some studies — are women. (Armstrong, 8/23)

USA Today: Air Pollution Linked To Early Deaths, Study Says
Smog isn't just annoying, it's also deadly: Exposure to even small amounts of toxic air pollutants is linked to increased cardiovascular and respiratory death rates, according to a new international study. The study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the largest ever undertaken to investigate the short-term impacts of air pollution on death. It was conducted over 30 years in 652 cities in 24 countries. (Rice, 8/22)

CNN: Want To Avoid An Early Death? Get Moving, A Study Says
The medical journal BMJ published a report today that links higher levels of physical activity at any intensity to a lower risk of early death in middle-age and older people. Previous studies have repeatedly suggested that any type of sedentary behavior, such as sitting still, is not good for your health. Being sedentary for 9.5 hours or more a day, excluding sleeping time, is associated with an increased risk of death. (Kim, 8/22)

The Wall Street Journal: Customers Handed Over Their DNA. The Company Let The FBI Take A Look.
The trouble started when the Federal Bureau of Investigation attorney made a personal appeal to Bennett Greenspan. Mr. Greenspan, president of FamilyTreeDNA, was used to fielding requests from genealogists, customers, even friends of friends, seeking help with DNA testing. The FBI’s Steve Kramer wasn’t among them. The company’s database of over 1.5 million customers could help solve heinous crimes, the attorney said. He wanted to upload DNA data in two cases to see if there were genetic links to other users. Turning up matches to even distant relatives might generate leads. (Marcus, 8/22)

NPR: Genetic Diversity Is Missing From Many Biobanks
When Lalita Manrai went to see her doctor for treatment of kidney disease, she noticed that some of the blood test results had different "normal" ranges for African Americans compared with everybody else. When she asked her doctor which range applied to her — a woman born in India — he said the "everybody else" category was actually based on a study of Europeans, so neither category was right. (Harris, 8/22)

The Associated Press: Appeals Court Rules South Bend Abortion Clinic Can Stay Open
A federal appeals court has upheld an injunction allowing a South Bend abortion clinic to remain open without a state-required license until there is a final ruling in a lawsuit on the license. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals issued the ruling Thursday, thwarting an attempt by Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill to reverse the opening of the Whole Woman's Health clinic in June. (8/22)

The Washington Post: Embattled Illinois Welfare Agency Praised For Training Lab
The troubling scene inside the dingy Chicago apartment seems real: dangling exposed wires, open pill bottles near a sleeping baby and a kitchen strewn with dog feces and cockroaches. But the mock apartment — with a lifelike infant doll, candles emitting foul smells and plastic insects — is part of a new simulation lab to train workers who investigate child abuse claims across Illinois. “Sometimes textbooks, they sugarcoat things. Teachers sugarcoat things, but this is real life,” said Beth Brown of Murphysboro, who recently trained at the so-called “dirty apartment.” ‘’This is what you’re going to experience.” (Tareen, 8/23)

The Wall Street Journal: De Blasio Says It’s ‘Horrible Policy’ To Name Women Linked To Remains
New York City will no longer make burial records public that include the names of women who had stillbirths, miscarriages and possibly abortions, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. The practice has raised alarms among medical-privacy experts. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that women’s names had been included in burial records for infants and fetal remains on Hart Island, one of the country’s largest public cemeteries that serves as a potter’s field for the city’s unclaimed bodies and deceased low-income residents. (Riski, 8/22)

The Associated Press: Center To Offer Counseling In Wake Of Virginia Mass Shooting
Virginia Beach will be opening a community center in October to provide free mental health counseling and other services to people impacted by a mass shooting earlier this year. The Virginian-Pilot reports the “VB Strong Center” is being funded through a federal grant. (8/23)