First Edition: December 6, 2019

Kaiser Health News: Black Mothers Get Less Treatment For Postpartum Depression Than Other Moms
Portia Smith’s most vivid memories of her daughter’s first year are of tears. Not the baby’s. Her own. “I would just hold her and cry all day,” Smith said. At 18, Smith was caring for two children, 4-year-old Kelaiah and newborn Nelly, with little help from the partner in her abusive relationship. The circumstances were difficult, but she knew the tears were more than that. (Feldman and Pattani, 12/6)

Kaiser Health News: Website Errors Raise Calls For Medicare To Be Flexible With Seniors’ Enrollment
Saturday is the deadline for most people with Medicare coverage to sign up for private drug and medical plans for next year. But members of Congress, health care advocates and insurance agents worry that enrollment decisions based on bad information from the government’s revamped, error-prone Plan Finder website will bring unwelcome surprises. Beneficiaries could be stuck in plans that cost too much and don’t meet their medical needs — with no way out until 2021. (Jaffe, 12/6)

Kaiser Health News: Analysis: Choosing A Plan From The Impossible Health Care Maze
In this highly partisan political moment, there’s one issue that nearly every American can agree on: Our health care system is a mess and in need of dramatic overhaul. That’s not just because it is absurdly expensive compared with the systems of other developed countries. It’s also because it is so dauntingly complex. That complexity, in large part, derives from the fact that the health care system has been driven significantly by profit, rather than by measures of health. (Rosenthal, 12/6)

Kaiser Health News: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: We Spend HOW MUCH On Health Care?
Health spending in the U.S. grew to $3.6 trillion in 2018, according to a new report from the federal government. The rate of growth — 4.6% — was up slightly from 2017’s 4.2%, despite the fact that nearly a million more Americans lacked insurance. Meanwhile, Congress has less than two weeks to finish a year’s worth of work, including the spending bills required to keep the government running and promised legislation to address “surprise” medical bills and prescription drug prices. (12/5)

California Healthline: Patient-Induced Trauma: Hospitals Learn To Defuse Violence
When Mary Prehoden gets dressed for work every morning, her eyes lock on the bite-shaped scar on her chest. It’s a harsh reminder of one of the worst days of her life. Prehoden, a nurse supervisor at Scripps Mercy Hospital San Diego, was brutally attacked last year by a schizophrenic patient who was off his medication. He lunged at her, threw her to the ground, repeatedly punched and kicked her, and bit her so hard that his teeth broke the skin and left her bleeding. (De Marco, 12/5)

The New York Times: Health Spending Grew Modestly, New Analysis Finds
The burdensome costs of medical care, prescription drugs and health insurance have become dominant issues in the 2020 presidential campaign. But a new report from the Department of Health and Human Services shows the nation remains in a period of relatively slow growth in health spending. Health spending in the United States rose by 4.6 percent to $3.6 trillion in 2018 — accounting for 17.7 percent of the economy — compared to a growth rate of 4.2 percent in 2017. Federal officials said the slight acceleration was largely the result of reinstating a tax on health insurers that the Affordable Care Act imposed but Congress had suspended for a year in 2017. Faster growth in medical prices and prescription drug spending were also factors, they said, but comparatively minor. (Goodnough and Sanger-Katz, 12/5)

Reuters: U.S. Health Spending Recovers After Two Slow Years: CMS
The federal government and households were the largest sponsors, each contributing 28% to the total spending in the year. The cost of health as a share of the economy decreased 0.2 points to 17.7% in 2018. Increased net costs drove up private health insurance spending by 5.8% to $1.2 trillion in 2018, faster than the 4.9% growth in the year before. (12/5)

The Wall Street Journal: More Uninsured People, Faster Growth In Health-Care Spending Due To ACA Tax, Report Says
The number of people without insurance rose by 1 million in 2018 for the second consecutive year, with 30.7 million individuals uninsured. Democrats have criticized Mr. Trump for his efforts—including ending billions of dollars in payments to insurers and expanding health plans that are cheaper but don’t provide the health law’s consumer protections—to roll back the 2010 Obama-era health law that expanded coverage to an estimated 20 million people. While the overall acceleration in national health-care spending wasn’t that large relative to other years, an Affordable Care Act tax accounts for most of the increase, according to the report. The tax, an annual fee on all health insurers, is among several imposed under the law to cover its estimated 10-year cost of more than $1 trillion. (Armour, 12/5)

The Associated Press: US Report: Prescription Drug Prices Down Slightly Last Year
Prices for prescription drugs edged down by 1% last year, a rare result driven by declines for generics and slow, low growth in the cost of brand-name medications, the government said Thursday. Though modest, it was the first such price drop in 45 years, according to nonpartisan economic experts at the federal Department of Health and Human Services, who deliver an annual report on the nation's health care spending. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 12/5)

The Washington Post: Retail Drug Prices Declined Last Year For First Time Since 1973
The slowing of drug price increases “means buyers are being smarter and more sensitive” looking for generic alternatives and other ways to avoid high-priced medicines, said Dan Mendelson, founder of Avalere Health, a D.C.-based consulting firm. “It’s tempting to declare victory when spending growth attenuates,” Mendelson said. But in part because health plans are shifting more of the burden to their customers, “the polling this year very clearly shows we are in a health-care affordability crisis, and consumers are facing a big squeeze on their finances,” he said. (Goldstein, 12/5)

The Hill: U.S. Spent $1 Trillion On Hospitals In 2018, Report Finds
In the Democratic fight over "Medicare for All" and in the push to lower health care costs in general, hospitals usually fly under the radar, as politicians tend to focus on drug companies and insurers. But the report shows hospitals make up a much larger share of health care spending than drug companies. (Weixel, 12/5)

The Associated Press: Pelosi Sets Medicare Showdown On Drug Costs And New Benefits
The House will hold a showdown vote next week on Speaker Nancy Pelosi's bill empowering Medicare to negotiate drug prices, expanded Thursday to provide seniors with dental, vision and hearing benefits not currently covered. Leading Democratic committee chairmen said the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that Pelosi's bill would save the government $500 billion over 10 years, which they pledged to use for new Medicare benefits and other health care priorities such as the National Institutes of Health and the opioid crisis. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 12/5)

Politico: House To Vote On Pelosi Drug Pricing Bill Next Week
Left unclear is whether there will be a complete score of the projected savings from the legislation prior to the vote. Pelosi's office has said leaders wanted a full score before bringing the bill to the floor. The Congressional Budget Office to date has evaluated only the part of the bill, which allows for direct government negotiation of some Medicare drug prices. “We have now received enough guidance from CBO to bring the Lower Drug Costs Now Act to the Floor and to reinvest its savings in one of the most transformation improvements to Medicare since its creation," Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Richard Neal (D-Mass.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.) said in a statement. (Karlin-Smith, 12/5)

The Hill: Progressive Leader Warns Members Could Vote No On Drug Price Bill As It Stands 
The co-chairman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus warned Thursday that some progressive lawmakers might vote against Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) bill to lower drug prices unless changes are made. “We have told leadership that there could be people who vote against the bill so they should be ready for that if things aren't included,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) told reporters after a meeting of the Progressive Caucus on Thursday, adding that the group had not done a formal vote count. (Sullivan, 12/5)

ProPublica: Inside The Cell Where A Sick 16-Year-Old Boy Died In Border Patrol Care
Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, a 16-year-old Guatemalan migrant, was seriously ill when immigration agents put him in a small South Texas holding cell with another sick boy on the afternoon of May 19. A few hours earlier, a nurse practitioner at the Border Patrol’s dangerously overcrowded processing center in McAllen had diagnosed him with the flu and measured his fever at 103 degrees. She said that he should be checked again in two hours and taken to the emergency room if his condition worsened. None of that happened. Worried that Carlos might infect other migrants in the teeming McAllen facility, officials moved him to a cell for quarantine at a Border Patrol station in nearby Weslaco. By the next morning, he was dead. (Moore, Schmidt, and Jameel, 12/5)

The New York Times: Migrant Teen Lay For Hours In His Cell Before He Was Found Dead
Following Mr. Hernandez Vasquez’s death, a news release stated that he was discovered by federal agents during a welfare check. But a video recording provided by the Police Department in Weslaco, Texas, which initially investigated the case, shows that his death was flagged by his cellmate. Customs and Border Protection officials have not explained why the recording — in which the teenager vomits blood on the floor, his body crumpling and squirming in apparent distress — has a four-hour gap or why the nurse practitioner’s advice was ignored.(Dickerson, 12/5)

The Associated Press: Report: Teen Who Died In US Custody Unresponsive For Hours
Already, President Trump has faced withering criticism for the thousands of family separations it conducted under a “zero tolerance” policy at the southern border and the squalid conditions under which it detained parents and children earlier this year. U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a statement Thursday saying it could not discuss specifics of the teen’s death due to an ongoing investigation, but that the agency and the Department of Homeland Security “are looking into all aspects of this case to ensure all procedures were followed.” (12/6)

Politico: Appeals Court Lifts Some Rulings Blocking Trump ‘Public Charge’ Rule For Immigrants
A divided federal appeals court has lifted several injunctions blocking the Trump administration from implementing a rule aimed at limiting immigration benefits for individuals who participate in government programs such as food stamps or Medicaid. In an order Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 9 th Circuit Court of Appeals voted, 2-1, to stay preliminary injunctions issued by federal judges in Oakland, Calif., and Spokane, Wash., against the newly issued “public charge” policy just before it was to take effect in October. (Gerstein, 12/5)

The Washington Post: Pregnant Immigration Detainees Spiked 52 Percent Under Trump Administration
U.S. officials jailed approximately 2,100 pregnant women for immigration violations in 2018, including hundreds who were held for weeks or longer, bringing the increase since President Trump took office to 52 percent, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Thursday. The spike in pregnant detainees came after federal officials terminated an Obama administration order to release most expectant mothers because of health concerns. (Sacchetti, 12/5)

The Washington Post: The Genealogy Boom Has Hit A Roadblock. The Trump Administration Plans Huge Fee Hikes For Immigration Records.
At a time when researching family history is booming, the nation’s immigration and citizenship agency has proposed dramatically hiking fees to access records from the first half of the 20th century. The move has outraged professional and amateur genealogists, who argue that the increase would effectively put valuable immigration information out of reach for many. The fees would nearly triple, and in many cases, they would rise nearly 500 percent, from $130 to $625 to obtain a single paper file. (Trent, 12/5)

Politico: Trump Pulled Into Feud Between Top Health Officials
President Donald Trump has personally tried to settle the long-running feud between his two top health appointees, telling his health secretary to fix the relationship with his Medicare chief, said three individuals with knowledge of the situation. Trump and Seema Verma, who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, privately met in mid-November amid escalating tensions between her and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, according to two sources familiar with the meeting. Around the same time, Trump instructed Azar to smooth things over. Those conversations came shortly before POLITICO first reported on the souring relationship between Azar and Verma, whose agency sits within HHS. (Diamond, Pradhan and Cancryn, 12/5)

The New York Times: Trump’s Rollback Of Transgender Rights Extends Through Entire Government
Nicolas Talbott, a graduate student at Kent State University in Ohio who is transgender, was told in May that because of President Trump’s transgender ban in the military, he would no longer be eligible for placement as an Army officer. He could continue participating in the Reserve Officers Training Corps program, but the benefits that he joined for — health insurance and student loan forgiveness — were no longer available to him. “Everyone else would walk away with a job in the United States Army, and I would walk away with just more student loan debt,” Mr. Talbott said. (Fadulu, 12/6)

The Associated Press: Bloomberg Gun Plan: Permits, Assault Weapon Ban, Age Limits
Democratic presidential contender Michael Bloomberg unveiled a gun control policy on Thursday just steps from the site of one of Colorado's worst mass shootings, calling for a ban on all assault weapons, mandatory permits for gun purchasers and a new position in the White House to coordinate gun violence prevention. “I’ve been all in on the fight against gun violence for 15 years, and I’m just getting started,” Bloomberg declared. “As president, I will work to end the gun violence epidemic once and for all." (Peoples, 12/5)

The New York Times: Bloomberg Proposes Sweeping Gun Agenda, Including Federal Licensing
Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City and the most recent entrant in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, paired the policy announcement with a visit to Aurora, Colo., the site of a 2012 massacre at a movie theater that left a dozen people dead and many more injured. He appeared with State Representative Tom Sullivan of Colorado, whose son was killed in the Aurora shooting. Mr. Sullivan, a Democrat, was elected to the Legislature in 2018, unseating an incumbent Republican. Mr. Sullivan said in an interview that he was endorsing Mr. Bloomberg for president because he trusted him above all the other candidates to wage a fight for stricter gun laws. (Burns, 12/5)

Politico: Bloomberg Unveils Sweeping Gun Control Plan
“We have to make sure that we build for the future so no one else has to go through this,” he said. “And I want to say how grateful I am for your leadership. You are making the world a better place and hopefully we don't have to have that many more meetings like this one.” Since entering the Democratic presidential primary last month, Bloomberg has been amplifying his gun control record as he seeks to win over a party that hasn’t settled on a frontrunner. Gun control is a popular issue with the left flank of the party that is otherwise distrustful of the former New York City mayor’s vast wealth — an estimated $54.7 billion — and routine financial support of Republicans over the years. (Goldenberg, 12/5)

The Washington Post: Hundreds Of Lawyers Tell The Supreme Court About Their Own Abortion Stories
As the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear a new landmark abortion case, hundreds of lawyers and legal professionals who have had the procedure filed an amicus brief Monday in support of overturning a restrictive Louisiana law. The 368 signers — now partners at top-10 law firms, counsel to Fortune 100 companies, public defenders, prosecutors, retired judges, award-winning professors and current law students — “speak for many more of the past, present, and future members of the legal profession who have, like one in four American women, terminated a pregnancy in their lifetimes,” the filing stated. (Paul, 12/5)

The Hill: Planned Parenthood Targets GOP Senators In Seven-Figure Ad Campaign 
Planned Parenthood is targeting Republican senators in a seven-figure ad campaign over the Trump administration's changes to a federally funded birth control program. The campaign, which will include ads on television, radio and digital platforms, as well as mailers, will target three Republican incumbents who Democrats hope to defeat in 2020: Sens. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.). (Hellmann, 12/5)

NPR: Study Of Progesterone To Reverse Medication Abortion
A study designed to test the effectiveness of a controversial practice known as "abortion pill reversal" has been stopped early because of safety concerns. Researchers from the University of California, Davis, were investigating claims that the hormone progesterone can stop a medication-based abortion after a patient has completed the first part of the two-step process. (Gordon, 12/5)

Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court Confronts Whether Homeless Can Sleep On Sidewalks
The Supreme Court meets Friday to consider for the first time whether the Constitution gives homeless people a right to sleep on the sidewalk. The justices are weighing an appeal of a much-disputed ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that held last year that it was cruel and unusual punishment to enforce criminal laws against homeless people who are living on the street if a city doesn’t offer enough shelters as an alternative. (Savage, 12/5)

Politico: Liberal California Looks To Get Tougher On Homelessness
California has had enough with its homeless problem. The liberal stronghold is losing patience with the sprawling homeless encampments, the growing ranks of people with mental illnesses and substance abuse on the streets, and the deteriorating quality of life that comes with it — human waste, trash and open-air drug dealing. (Colliver, 12/5)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. Wins Legal Battle Over Laws Meant To Ease The Way For Homeless Housing
Los Angeles city officials won a key battle Thursday over a pair of local laws meant to ease the way for more housing for homeless people, defeating a challenge from a Venice group that sought to overturn the ordinances. Fight Back, Venice! sued the city over the two ordinances, arguing the city flouted state law when it approved the local laws. Then state lawmakers stepped in, exempting the L.A. ordinances from the California law at the heart of the case. (Reyes, 12/5)

The Associated Press: Panel Calls For Virginia To Purge Dozens Of Old Racist Laws
The laws are still on the books in Virginia: Blacks and whites must sit in separate rail cars. They cannot use the same playgrounds, schools or mental hospitals. They can’t marry each other either. The measures have not been enforced for decades, but they remain in the state’s official legal record. A state commission on Thursday recommended that dozens of such discriminatory statutes finally be repealed, in some cases more than a century after they were adopted. (12/5)

The New York Times: Gov. Northam Plans To Purge Racist Language From Virginia Law
Many of the laws, some of which are no longer enforced or have been invalidated, stem from the state’s segregationist past, including Jim Crow laws and the Virginia’s Massive Resistance policy, a coordinated effort to thwart federally mandated laws to integrate schools, transportation and neighborhoods. Other laws prohibited interracial marriage and imposed a poll tax designed to prevent black Virginians from voting. “Repeal of these outdated, unjust, and in many cases plainly racist Acts of Assembly is an important step in recognizing and correcting the sins of the past,” Cynthia Hudson, Virginia’s chief deputy attorney general and chair of the governor’s commission, said in a statement. (Rueb, 12/6)

The Washington Post: Virginia Commission Cites Almost 100 Racist Laws Still On The Books
The report groups the laws by topic, illustrating how racism reached into so many areas of daily life — voting, education, health, transportation, housing and criminal justice. “We know that in Virginia, our history is difficult and extremely complex,” Northam said. “And we know that discrimination, racism and black oppression marched on, even after slavery ended. In the form of Jim Crow laws, massive resistance [to school integration] and now among other things, mass incarceration.” (Vozzella, 12/5)

The New York Times: Tufts Removes Sackler Name Over Opioids: ‘Our Students Find It Objectionable’
Tufts University removed the Sackler name from five facilities and programs on Thursday over the family’s role in the opioid epidemic, a gesture aimed at distancing the institution from a pharmaceutical dynasty closely tied to the school for 40 years. The Sacklers’ company, Purdue Pharma, the producer of the prescription painkiller OxyContin, has been cast by prosecutors and plaintiffs as responsible for an addiction epidemic that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans over the past two decades. (Barry, 12/5)

The Associated Press: Tufts University Severs Ties With Family Behind OxyContin
University officials announced the decision Thursday, ending a relationship that has spanned nearly four decades and brought $15 million to the school’s science and medical programs. Tufts leaders said they considered the issue for more than a year before concluding it is inconsistent with the school's values to display the family's name. “We had to deal with the reality that the Sackler name has become associated with a health care epidemic. Given our medical school’s mission, we needed to reconcile that,” Peter Dolan, chairman of Tufts’ board of trustees, said in an interview. (12/5)

The Washington Post: Tufts Removes Sackler Name From Campus, Creates Endowment To Combat Addiction
The university is not returning money donated by the Sacklers; the gifts will continue to be used for their intended purposes, such as biomedical research. Tufts will create a $3 million endowment to support education, research and other efforts to prevent and treat addiction. It will also create an exhibit about the Sackler family’s history with Tufts, which began in the 1980s, long before OxyContin was introduced, and includes contributions from members of the family unconnected with the drug. (Svrluga, 12/5)

Reuters: New York Doctor Convicted Of Taking Kickbacks From Opioid Maker Insys
A New York doctor was convicted on Thursday of accepting thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks from Insys Therapeutics Inc in exchange for prescribing his patients an addictive fentanyl spray the drug manufacturer produced. Gordon Freedman was the fourth medical practitioner to face trial on charges stemming from what prosecutors say was a wide-ranging bribery scheme orchestrated by the now-bankrupt drugmaker that helped fuel the U.S. opioid epidemic. (12/5)

The Associated Press: Doctor Among Painkiller's Top Dispensers Is Convicted
Prosecutors said Freedman in 2014 wrote the fourth-highest number of prescriptions for Subsys, a potent painkiller, while he was paid more than any other doctor in bribes. “Dr. Gordon Freedman sold out his patients by prescribing a powerful and dangerous fentanyl opioid in exchange for bribes from the pharmaceutical company that manufactured that drug,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a release. (12/5)

The New York Times: Nearly A Third Of Teens Use One Or More Tobacco Products
Nearly one in three high school students has reported using a tobacco product recently, according to a new federal survey released on Thursday, evidence that concerns over nicotine addiction among teenagers are not limited to e-cigarettes. “The data released today on youth tobacco product use are deeply troubling and indicate that past progress in reducing youth use of these products has been erased,” said Brian King, the deputy director of the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “These troubling rates of use are being driven by e-cigarettes, which have no redeeming aspects among youth.” (Hoffman and Kaplan, 12/5)

The Hill: CDC: Tobacco Use Among Kids Jumped To 6.2 Million This Year 
The findings also show that many of the young people who tried e-cigarettes for the first time said they did so because they were curious. Witnessing their family or friends try e-cigarettes, as well as interest in flavors such as fruit, mint, candy or chocolate were other reasons. In addition, tobacco advertising played a huge role. Nearly 9 in 10 middle and high school students reported exposure to tobacco product advertisements or promotions from at least one source. (Weixel, 12/5)

Politico: Big Jump In Teen E-Cigarette Use Despite Public Outcry Over Vaping Perils
“Our nation’s youth are becoming increasingly exposed to nicotine, a drug that is highly addictive and can harm brain development,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in a release. Last year’s data — showing a reversal in two decades of declining tobacco use — propelled a sweeping proposal from then-FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb to curb sales of sweet and fruit-flavored e-cigarettes in stores and on websites that cannot verify buyers’ age. “In order to close the on-ramp for kids, we are going to have to narrow the off-ramp for adults,” Gottlieb said at the time. (Owermohle, 12/5)

Reuters: U.S. Vaping-Related Deaths Rise To 48, Cases Of Illness To 2,291
U.S. health officials on Thursday reported one new case and one more death from a respiratory illness tied to vaping, taking the total death toll to 48. As of Dec. 4, 2019, there were 2,291 cases of hospitalized cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from 50 states, the District of Columbia, and two U.S. territories. (12/5)

The Washington Post: Gilead Delayed Safer HIV Drug To Extend Monopoly Profits, Advocates Allege
In 2005, Gilead Sciences notified federal regulators that it was suspending development of a potentially safer, more potent HIV-fighting drug than the one on the market. The company did not restart its Food and Drug Administration application until 2010. Now the five-year delay of a promising drug is at the core of accusations by advocates that Gilead improperly exploited the patent system at the expense of patient health. (Rowland, 12/5)

The Associated Press: Experts Split Sharply Over Experimental Alzheimer’s Drug
A company that claims to have the first drug to slow mental decline from Alzheimer's disease made its case to scientists Thursday but left them sharply divided over whether there’s enough evidence of effectiveness for the medicine to warrant federal approval. Excitement and skepticism have surrounded aducanumab since its developers stopped two studies earlier this year because it didn't seem to be working, then did a stunning about-face in October and said new results suggest it was effective at a high dose. (Marchione, 12/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Biogen Details Case For Controversial Alzheimer’s Drug
The presentation was highly anticipated by investors and physicians, but some weren’t persuaded. “It remains very uncertain whether signals of potential activity within a complex and flawed dataset would be enough to warrant approvability—though we believe [Biogen] incrementally strengthened their argument with an additional new data analysis,” Brian Abrahams, an RBC Capital Markets analyst, said in a note to investors. (Walker, 12/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Sage Therapeutics Shares Plummet On Subpar Depression-Treatment Study Results
Sage Therapeutics Inc.'s share price was cut by more than half Thursday, erasing more than $4 billion in market value after the company said its treatment for depression failed in a late-stage trial. The biopharmaceutical company said Thursday its Phase 3 study of the Sage-217 treatment in adults with major depressive disorder didn’t meet its primary endpoint of a statistically significant improvement in a scale that tracks 17 parameters, including anxiety and paranoia, at day 15. (Sebastian, 12/5)

Stat: Eli Lilly Places The Team From Loxo In Charge Of Its Cancer Research
Eli Lilly’s $8 billion purchase of Loxo Oncology in January wasn’t supposed to be a tech-style acqui-hire. But it’s turning into one. On Thursday, the drug giant announced that it is renaming its early cancer drug development arm Loxo Oncology at Lilly, and that the new unit will be helmed by Josh Bilenker, who had been Loxo’s CEO, along with his whole team from the biotech startup, including Jacob Van Naarden, who was the company’s chief operating officer, and Nisha Nanda, its chief development officer. The group is also hiring Dr. David Hyman, the Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist who spearheaded the company’s early cancer trials, as chief medical officer. (Herper, 12/5)

Stat: Experts Say Acquisitions, Not Congress, Will Chart Biotech’s Course In 2020
Washington has never before been so focused on lowering prescription drug prices. But these biotech investors aren’t worried. “Politics is politics,” Affinity Asset Advisors senior research analyst Patrick Nosker said of drug pricing legislation at a STAT event Tuesday in New York. “The whole political overhang is definitely going to be noise throughout the next year.” (Sheridan, 12/6)

Stat: Veritas Genetics Suspends Its U.S. Operations 
Veritas Genetics, the Boston-based personal genome testing company co-founded by noted Harvard Medical School professor George Church, suspended its operations in the United States, according to a statement the company posted Thursday on Twitter. The company experienced “an unexpected adverse financing situation,” according to the posted statement. “We are currently assessing all paths forward, including strategic options.” (Sheridan, 12/5)

The Wall Street Journal: For Many Soldiers, Mental-Health Issues Start Before Enlistment
Combat experience is often blamed as the root cause of suicidal behavior among veterans. But ongoing Army studies show that many troops with mental-health problems can trace them back to trauma experienced before they joined the military. “There is a significant and growing proportion of soldiers who enter the military with psychiatric disorders, increasing the risk over time for suicide behaviors within the Army,” according to a paper released earlier this year from University of Washington researchers that used data from Army-funded studies. (Kesling, 12/5)

The New York Times: Government Studying Widely Used Chemicals Linked To Health Issues
Two decades after concern emerged about a class of chemicals used in everything from Teflon pans to firefighting foam, the federal government has started the first in a series of detailed studies of the impact the chemicals have had on human health. The goal is to determine what role the chemicals, known generally as PFAS, play in a long list of health conditions including thyroid, kidney, liver, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, among other ailments. (Lipton, 12/5)

NPR: Protein Waves In Blood Linked To Aging Process
Scientists know that if they transfuse blood from a young mouse to an old one, then they can stave off or even reverse some signs of aging. But they don't know what in the blood is responsible for this remarkable effect. Researchers now report that they've identified hundreds of proteins in human blood that wax and wane in surprising ways as we age. The findings could provide important clues about which substances in the blood can slow aging. (Harris, 12/5)

The Associated Press: Phone-In-Cheek: Spike Seen In Cellphone-Linked Face Injuries
Add facial cuts, bruises and fractures to the risks from cellphones and carelessly using them. That's according to a study published Thursday that found a spike in U.S. emergency room treatment for these mostly minor injuries. The research was led by a facial plastic surgeon whose patients include a woman who broke her nose when she dropped her phone on her face. (12/5)

Los Angeles Times: Time-Restricted Eating Improved Health For Metabolic Syndrome Patients
What if a clock did a better job than a scale at promoting weight loss, improving sleep and preventing diabetes? New research suggests it’s about time to consider that possibility. In an early effort to explore the benefits of daily fasting in humans, researchers have found that people who are at high risk of developing diabetes improved their health in myriad ways when they ate all of their meals over a span of just over 10 hours, then fasted for the remainder of their 24-hour day. (Healy, 12/5)

The New York Times: Premature Babies At Higher Diabetes Risk
Premature babies are at increased risk for diabetes, a large new study reports. In previous studies, preterm birth has been associated with insulin resistance, but this is the first large study to track the risks of diabetes from childhood into adulthood. The researchers followed 4,193,069 singleton babies born in Sweden from 1973 to 2014 for an average of 23 years, some as long as 43 years. (Bakalar, 12/5)

ProPublica/Vox: The Extraordinary Danger Of Being Pregnant And Uninsured In Texas
Rosa Diaz was no stranger to hunger and stress and a throbbing pain in the gut that was usually nothing serious — gastritis, she had been told, or lactose intolerance. When she became ill on the evening of Jan. 6, 2015, she figured it was the hot chocolate she’d been drinking with her family to celebrate El Día de los Reyes. It was made with milk, but she finished it anyway, savoring every drop. In the middle of the night, her oldest daughter, Diana, found her on the couch, clutching her belly and moaning. Diana half-carried her to the bathroom, offering her some Alka-Seltzer and a sip of Gatorade to wash the antacid down. Rosa started to shiver and cry. (Martin and Belluz, 12/6)

The New York Times: Troubled Children’s Hospital Is Sued Over Toddler Who Died After Surgery
The parents of a 3-year-old who died after heart surgery at North Carolina Children’s Hospital in 2016 are suing the institution, saying it failed to disclose internal concerns about the quality of its care. Tasha and Thomas Jones, the parents, also allege that doctors didn’t warn them about problems with the heart surgery program, and “instead chose to protect their own reputational and monetary interests” by continuing to refer patients to the Chapel Hill hospital, according to a complaint filed on Thursday in North Carolina state court. (Gabler, 12/5)

Los Angeles Times: Ex-UCLA Gynecologist's Behavior Was Sexual Assault, Report Finds
The behavior of a prominent UCLA Health gynecologist during an exam with a married mother of four amounted to sexual assault and harassment, according to an investigative report by the university made public Thursday. It took UCLA almost two years to complete the investigation into allegations raised by a patient against Dr. James Heaps, a 63-year-old physician who was arrested in June on sexual battery and exploitation charges. (Cosgrove, 12/5)

The Associated Press: Heart Transplant Patient Dies After Chicago Hospital Wedding
A 23-year-old Chicago man who received two heart transplants as a teenager died in hospice care, days after he married his high school sweetheart, his new bride said. Javier Rodriguez was diagnosed in seventh grade with dilated cardiomyopathy, a genetic disease that predisposes victims to develop heart failure at a young age. Rodriguez, known to his family and friends as Javi, underwent two heart transplants, including one when he was 14 years old and another when he was 18. (12/5)