First Edition: December 12, 2018

Kaiser Health News: ‘We’re Fighting For Our Lives’: Patients Protest Sky-High Insulin Prices
Angela Lautner knew her thirst was unusual, even for someone directing airplanes, outside in the Memphis summer heat. “We had coolers of Gatorade and water for people to always have access to,” Lautner recalled of her job as a ground services agent. “But the amount of thirst that I felt was just incredible.” She had no appetite and she lost an unusual amount of weight. Then after a trip to the emergency room, Lautner, who was 22, was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. The diagnosis was life-changing. (Sable-Smith, 12/12)

California Healthline: Blue Shield’s Trims To Out-Of-State Coverage Give Some Californians The Blues
Denise Roberts is still coping with complications from a life-threatening bout of Valley Fever three years ago that claimed part of a lung. Roberts, who lives in Doyle, Calif., a tiny rural community near the Nevada border, typically drives to Reno for the care she needs. Specialists in her own state, she said, are too far away. But starting Jan. 1, Roberts’ insurer, Blue Shield of California, likely won’t cover the out-of-state care Roberts has come to rely on. (Feder Ostrov, 12/11)

The Hill: Study: 4.2 Million Uninsured People Eligible For Free ObamaCare Coverage 
A new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that 4.2 million uninsured people are eligible for ObamaCare coverage at no cost at all. The study, published Tuesday, finds that those people can find an ObamaCare plan for $0 in premiums due to the financial assistance under the health-care law being high enough to completely cover the cost of the cheapest ObamaCare options, known as bronze plans. (Sulliban, 12/11)

The Hill: ObamaCare Signups Spike On Same Day Obama Tweeted Support
The ObamaCare signup website healthcare.gov received its highest traffic on Monday, the same day former President Obama recorded a message urging people to sign up. A spokesperson from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not say what drove the spike, but noted the website always sees spikes closer to the Dec. 15 deadline to sign up for insurance coverage. (Weixel, 12/11)

The Hill: Judge Sides With Religious Groups In ObamaCare Birth Control Mandate Fight 
A federal judge this week sided with three religious colleges and three Christian organizations in their challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate. Judge Philip Brimmer, a George W. Bush appointee on the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, issued an order that permanently blocks the federal government from forcing the plaintiffs to cover sterilization drugs or contraception drugs devices, procedures, and related education and counseling in their health care plans. (Wheeler, 12/11)

The Hill: Incoming Dem Chairman Open To Hearing On 'Medicare For All' 
The incoming chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), said Tuesday that he is open to holding hearings on "Medicare for all" next year. ... The comments, while not a firm commitment, are some of the most encouraging toward Medicare for all supporters from a top House Democrat to date. Democratic leaders and key committee chairmen have so far not given support to Medicare for all, despite a push from the progressive wing of the party. (Sullivan, 12/11)

Modern Healthcare: How Can We Lower Healthcare Costs? Key GOP Senator Seeks Ideas 
Senate health committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) plans to have his panel next year work on legislation to address high healthcare costs. On Tuesday, the senator asked hospitals, insurers, patient groups, state regulators and think tanks to submit proposals for solutions by March 1, 2019. He sent a letter to the Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute and others he wants to hear from. (Luthi, 12/11)

The Hill: House Passes Bipartisan Bill Aimed At Reversing Rising Maternal Mortality Rates 
The House on Tuesday passed a bipartisan bill aimed at reversing the maternal mortality crisis in the U.S. in what supporters say is the strongest action yet that Congress has taken on the issue. The bill from Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) and Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) would support state-level efforts to track and investigate pregnancy-related deaths, and then look for ways to prevent future deaths from occurring. (Hellmann, 12/11)

The Hill: The Year Ahead: Drug Pricing Efforts To Test Bipartisanship 
A new Democratic majority is taking over in the House next year with a number of health issues taking center stage. Democrats will use their new power to try to shore up the Affordable Care Act and rein in high health-care and prescription drug costs. But the party will also face its own internal debate, while insurgents on the left keep up their push to implement "Medicare for all." (Hellmann, 12/11)

The Hill: House Passes Bill To Keep Drug Companies From Overcharging Medicaid 
The House approved a proposal Tuesday cracking down on the tactics drug companies use to charge Medicaid. The bipartisan bill, from Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), comes after the Department of Health and Human Services last year accused Mylan, the maker of EpiPen, of overcharging the Medicaid program by as much as $1.27 billion over ten years by misclassifying the drug as a generic. (Hellmann, 12/11)

Stat: Pennsylvania Auditor Urges Laws To Crack Down On PBM Contracts For Medicaid 
Amid rising scrutiny of pharmacy benefit manager practices, the Pennsylvania state auditor is recommending several steps that lawmakers should take to clamp down on these controversial middlemen in hopes of controlling prescription drug costs. The effort was prompted after Ohio recently ended contracts with two of the largest PBMs over pricing practices in the Medicaid program that cost the state tens of millions of dollars, a step that triggered increased interest among officials in other states over contracts and an alleged lack of transparency. (Silverman, 12/11)

Modern Healthcare: Healthcare Groups Rip Trump Proposal Penalizing Legal Immigrants For Using Medicaid
In a rare moment of consensus, healthcare industry groups uniformly blasted the Trump administration's proposal to penalize legal immigrants for using Medicaid and other public benefit programs, warning it would have broad negative effects on the healthcare system, government budgets and public health. The Department of Homeland Security received 210,889 comments on its proposed "inadmissibility on public charge grounds" rule, issued in October, when the comment period ended Monday. Healthcare stakeholder groups, including hospitals, physicians, insurers and public health advocates, urged DHS to withdraw the rule entirely. (Meyer, 12/11)

The Washington Post: Trump Loyalist At VA Forced Out After Collecting Pay But Doing Little Work
The Trump administration has forced out a senior White House political appointee at the Department of Veterans Affairs who spent months on the federal payroll doing little to no work. Peter O’Rourke’s departure marks an unceremonious fall for a Trump loyalist once seen as a rising star at VA, where he nonetheless had a rocky tenure, first leading a high-profile office handling whistleblower complaints, next as chief of staff and then, for two months, as the agency’s acting secretary. (Rein and Dawsey, 12/11)

The New York Times: How Do You Recover After Millions Have Watched You Overdose?
The first time Kelmae Hemphill watched herself overdose, she sobbed. There she was in a shaky video filmed by her own heroin dealer, sprawled out on a New Jersey road while a stranger pounded on her chest. “Come on, girl,” someone pleaded. Ms. Hemphill’s 11-year drug addiction, her criminal record, her struggles as a mother — they were now everybody’s business, splashed across the news and social media with a new genre of American horror film: the overdose video. As opioid deaths have soared in recent years, police departments and strangers with cameras have started posting raw, uncensored images of drug users passed out with needles in their arms and babies in the back seats of their cars. The videos rack up millions of views and unleash avalanches of outrage. Then some other viral moment comes along, and the country clicks away. (Seelye, Turkewitz, Healy and Blinder, 12/11)

Bloomberg: Killer Opioid Fentanyl Could Be A Weapon Of Mass Destruction 
Fentanyl has emerged as the most dangerous of a group of drugs blamed for creating a U.S. public health crisis. American deaths linked to fentanyl grew more than 50 percent to 29,406 last year, from 19,413 in 2016, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Relatively easy to manufacture, the drug is turning up more on the streets as dealers strive to meet still-enormous demand for opioids in the U.S.Fentanyl is ever-evolving as suppliers try to avoid detection and still boost the potency of the drug using what are called analogues — essentially chemical cousins. (Edney, 12/12)

The Associated Press: Meth Playing Bigger Role In US Drug Overdose Crisis
A bigger share of U.S. drug overdose deaths are being caused by methamphetamine, government health officials reported. The number of fatal overdoses involving meth more than tripled between 2011 and 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. The percentage of overdose deaths involving meth grew from less than 5 percent to nearly 11 percent. (Stobbe, 12/12)

The Washington Post: Cocaine Deaths Increase Amid Ongoing National Opioid Crisis
Deaths from cocaine sharply increased from 2011 to 2016 across the United States, adding another dimension to a crisis of fatal overdoses that has primarily been driven by opioids, according to new data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Overdose deaths from cocaine increased by about 18 percent each year during the five-year period. The data also showed a staggering rise in the number of deaths from fentanyl, with deaths from the powerful synthetic opioid increasing about 113 percent each year from 2013 to 2016. (Zezima, 12/12)

The Associated Press: Target To Pay $3M To Resolve Massachusetts Medicaid Claim
Target Corp. has agreed to pay $3 million to resolve allegations that it violated rules of Massachusetts' Medicaid program. Federal and Massachusetts authorities allege Minneapolis-based Target violated federal and state False Claims Acts by automatically refilling Medicaid recipients' prescriptions and seeking payment from Medicaid. Massachusetts is among several states that prohibit pharmacies from automatically refilling Medicaid prescriptions without the beneficiary's explicit request. The policy is designed to prevent unnecessary prescriptions from being reimbursed by taxpayers. (12/11)

The Wall Street Journal: The Loneliest Generation: Americans, More Than Ever, Are Aging Alone
Danny Miner, a 66-year-old retired chemical plant supervisor, spends most days alone in his Tooele, Utah, apartment, with “Gunsmoke” reruns to keep him company and a phone that rarely rings. Old age wasn’t supposed to feel this lonely. Mr. Miner married five times, each bride bringing the promise of lifelong companionship. Three unions ended in divorce. Two wives died. Now his legs ache and his balance is faulty, and he’s stopped going to church or meeting friends at the Marine Corps League, a group for former Marines. “I get a little depressed from time to time,” he says. Baby boomers are aging alone more than any generation in U.S. history, and the resulting loneliness is a looming public health threat. (Adamy and Overberg, 12/11)

The New York Times: Is Aerobic Exercise The Key To Successful Aging?
Aerobic activities like jogging and interval training can make our cells biologically younger, according to a noteworthy new experiment. Weight training may not have the same effect, the study found, raising interesting questions about how various types of exercise affect us at a microscopic level and whether the differences should perhaps influence how we choose to move. There is mounting and rousing evidence that being physically active affects how we age, with older people who exercise typically being healthier, more fit, better muscled and less likely to develop a variety of diseases and disabilities than their sedentary peers. (Reynolds, 12/12)

Los Angeles Times: Your Aging Brain: Is It ‘Use It Or Lose It’?
Yes, your brain is like a muscle: If you don’t strengthen and stretch its capacities, it will not deliver high performance. But your brain is not like one of those forgiving muscles that lets you engage in a lifetime of indolence and then perks up willingly when you take up weight-training upon retirement. No, your brain is more like one of those muscles that will reward you for having worked it across the full length of your lifespan. (Healy, 12/11)

NPR: VICTAS Study Tests Vitamins For Sepsis Treatment
Dr. Jonathan Sevransky was intrigued when he heard that a well-known physician in Virginia had reported remarkable results from a simple treatment for sepsis. Could the leading cause of death in hospitals really be treated with intravenous vitamin C, the vitamin thiamine and doses of steroids? "Hundreds of thousands of people die in the U.S. every year and millions of people in the world die of this," says Sevransky, a critical-care physician at Emory University. "So when somebody comes out with a potential treatment that is cheap and relatively easily available, it's something you want to think about." (Harris, 12/12)

NPR: Shingrix Vaccine Against Shingles Remains In Short Supply
If you're 50 or older, Judith Strull's story might sound familiar. Told by her doctor last month to get the shingles vaccine, Shingrix, Strull went to her local CVS in Newton, Mass., expecting a quick in-and-out procedure — like getting a flu shot. The pharmacist, however, said the store had no Shingrix left in stock. (Wasser, 12/11)

CNN: Animal Attacks Cost Us More Than $1 Billion A Year
Animal-related injuries lead to health care costs of more than $1 billion a year in the United States, according to a new study -- and they're happening more often. The rate of all animal attack injuries has increased over the past 10 years, according to Dr. Joseph Forrester, one of the authors of the study published Tuesday in the BMJ. He anticipates that it will continue to rise, partially because of climate change. (Thomas, 12/11)

Reuters: McDonald's To Curb Antibiotic Use In Its Beef Supply
McDonald's Corp said on Tuesday it plans to reduce the use of antibiotics in its global beef supply, fueling projections that other restaurants will follow suit. The move by the world's biggest fast-food chain addresses concerns that the overuse of antibiotics vital to fighting human infections in farm animals may diminish the drugs' effectiveness in people. (12/11)

The Wall Street Journal: McDonald’s To Trim Antibiotics From Its Beef
McDonald’s and many other fast-food chains already have eliminated the use of such antibiotics in chicken in the U.S., and McDonald’s is aiming to do so in other markets around the world. Reducing the use of such antibiotics in beef has been more difficult for McDonald’s, because of the company’s scale and the smaller number of suppliers that produce beef without the medicine. (Jargon, 12/11)

The Washington Post: Jimmy Dean: Metal-Tainted Meat Sparks Recall Of 28,000 Pounds Of Sausage, USDA Says
More than 28,000 pounds of Jimmy Dean sausage has been recalled over metal tainting fears in meat distributed to 21 states, the company said Tuesday, in a move to protect consumers from products that pose the greatest health risk under the Agriculture Department’s recall regulations. Five consumer complaints of metal-infused sausage led the agency’s food safety office to trigger the alert, the USDA said, after the sausage left a Tennessee-based facility and was distributed across the country. No health impacts have been reported as of Tuesday, the agency said. (Horton, 12/11)

Los Angeles Times: Police Found Trove Of Nude Images Of Women In Ex-USC Gynecologist’s Storage Unit
Shortly after Los Angeles police launched an investigation into Dr. George Tyndall last spring, a team of detectives began surreptitiously following the former USC gynecologist. The 71-year-old passed most of his days inside a condominium he owns near Lafayette Park, but on at least two occasions, Tyndall drove to a self-storage facility and spent time inside a rental unit, police said. When investigators subsequently raided the unit, they found a trove of homemade pornography and a smaller set of photos of unclothed women in what appeared to be a medical exam room, according to LAPD Capt. Billy Hayes. (Winton, Ryan and Hamilton, 12/11)

The Associated Press: Nude Photos Linked To Ex-USC Doc In Sex-Abuse Investigation
Hundreds of current and former USC students have made allegations against Tyndall to the university, filed police reports or taken part in at least a dozen pending state lawsuits against the school. In October, USC agreed to settle a federal class-action suit on behalf of Tyndall’s patients for $215 million. Tyndall, 71, resigned last year. He has denied wrongdoing and said any photographs he took were for legitimate clinical and other medical purposes. He has not been charged with a crime. (12/11)

The Washington Post: McKenzie Adams, Alabama 9-Year-Old Who Hung Herself, Faced Racist Bullying, Her Family Says
McKenzie Adams wanted to be a scientist when she grew up. The 9-year-old excelled in math. But she also liked riding her bike, playing with dolls and PlayStation 4 and recording goofy home videos with her cousins, according to media reports in Alabama, where Adams attended elementary school in the city of Demopolis. Instead of making plans to gather McKenzie and her cousins for Christmas, the child’s family is preparing to bury her on Saturday after she hung herself. Her body was discovered at their home in Linden, Ala., on Dec. 3 by her grandmother, family members told the Tuscaloosa News. (Stanley-Becker, 12/12)

The Associated Press: Florida Massacre Commission Considers School Safety Plans
There were plenty of missteps in communication, security and school policy before and during the Florida high school massacre that allowed the gunman to kill 17 people. Now, the state commission investigating the shooting will consider a long list of recommendations addressing these problems statewide. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission will consider proposals Wednesday and Thursday, including whether to arm trained, volunteer teachers; making it harder for outsiders to enter Florida’s nearly 4,000 public schools; mandating armed security on all campuses with explicit orders to confront shooters; improving communication systems on campus; and imposing more statewide uniformity in how troubled students are identified, helped and, if necessary, dealt with by police. (Spencer, 12/12)

The Associated Press: Elderly Man Evicted Over Medical Marijuana Hits Another Snag
A 78-year-old New York man who was evicted from federally subsidized housing because he uses medical marijuana for pain said Tuesday that the conflicting state and federal pot laws that left him homeless are now threatening his medical care. “The federal government has stepped in again and squashed it,” said John Flickner, who uses a wheelchair and has a doctor’s prescription for the drug. (Thompson, 12/11)

The Associated Press: New Survey Finds 14 Percent Of Virginians Are Smokers
A new state survey shows that about 14 percent of Virginians consider themselves regular smokers. A report by the Virginia Department of Health found that Southwest Virginia had the highest rate of smoking, with smokers making up more than 18 percent of the region’s population. Smokers only make up less than 8 percent of the population of Northern Virginia. (12/12)

The Associated Press: Study: Virginia Poorly Supervises Its Foster Care Programs
A legislative study says Virginia does a poor job of supervising local foster care systems and intervening when they don’t deliver adequate services to children in their care. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Monday that the study says Virginia’s 120 local foster care programs aren’t good at recruiting foster parents, reuniting families or finding children permanent homes. It says this has led to an increased reliance on costly and often unnecessary institutional care such as group homes. (12/11)