First Edition: December 8, 2017

Kaiser Health News: Challenges Abound For 26-Year-Olds Falling Off Parental Insurance Cliff
Marguerite Moniot felt frustrated and flummoxed, despite the many hours she spent in front of the computer this year reading consumer reviews of health insurance plans offered on the individual market in Virginia. Moniot was preparing to buy a policy of her own, knowing she would age out of her parent’s plan when she turned 26 in October. (Heredia Rodriguez, 12/8)

Kaiser Health News: For Marketplace Customers Who Delay, Auto-Enrollment Could Be Nasty Wake-Up
Shopping to update your coverage on the health insurance marketplace may be annoying — didn’t you just do this last year? But letting the exchange automatically renew your coverage instead could be a big mistake. If you don’t like the plan you’re auto-enrolled in this year you may be stuck with it in 2018, unlike previous years when people could generally switch. (Andrews, 12/8)

Kaiser Health News: Cities, Counties And Schools Sidestep FDA Canadian Drug Crackdown, Saving Millions
Schenectady County, N.Y., is on track to pay 20 percent less on prescription drugs for its employees this year than in 2003. Flagler County, Fla., expects to save nearly $200,000 in 2017 on brand-name medicines for its 800 workers, its total drug costs having fallen by 10 percent since last year. Kokomo, Ind., has found a way to save so much money buying drugs that it offers employees a 90-day supply of dozens of popular brand-name medicines for free. (Galewitz, 12/8)

Politico: Collins' Obamacare Deal Faces Moment Of Truth
Sen. Susan Collins is barreling toward yet another health care showdown with her own party. But this time, she might not have the leverage to get what she wants. Republicans who watched Collins lead the rebellion over the GOP’s Obamacare repeal effort just three months ago are playing tough on yet another high-stakes bill, wagering they can do without the Maine moderate’s swing vote and still claim a narrow year-end legislative win on tax reform. (Cancryn, 12/8)

Politico: House Tax Writers Weigh Plan To Suspend Obamacare Insurer Tax
House Republican tax writers are considering delaying Obamacare's health insurance tax for only limited markets next year, leaving out small businesses and possibly private Medicaid plans, according to sources on and off Capitol Hill. They would suspend it for all markets in 2019. Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee are worried that it will be difficult for the small businesses to send prospective savings from delaying the tax back to consumers. Industry sources, however, say it is possible. (Haberkorn, 12/7)

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Hospitals, Schools Rush To Raise Tax-Free Funds
Hospitals, universities and nursing homes across the U.S. are rushing to borrow money tax-free—while they still can. Last week, borrowers issued more than $4 billion in new so-called private-activity bonds, which allow nonprofits and some for-profit firms to raise money for development projects perceived to have a public benefit. That was triple the amount issued during the same week in 2016, according to a Municipal Market Analytics analysis of Bloomberg data, and one of the highest weekly issuances of the past two years. Prices on private-activity bonds have increased this week alongside other municipal bonds. (Gillers and Evans, 12/7)

The Hill: Bipartisan Group Of Senators Seek To Block Trump Cuts To Drug Discount Program
Six senators, including three Republicans, are asking GOP leadership to block a Trump administration rule that slashes funding for a federal drug discount program. The program, called 340B, requires drug companies give discounts to health-care organizations that serve high volumes of low-income . (Hellmann, 12/7)

The Daily Beast: Justice Department Moves To Investigate Planned Parenthood’s Fetal Tissue Practices
The Justice Department is taking steps to investigate Planned Parenthood, The Daily Beast has learned. The head of Justice’s office of legislative affairs has sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee asking for documents from its investigation of Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue practices. The Daily Beast reviewed the letter, which says the requested documents are “for investigative use.” (Woodruff, 12/7)

Los Angeles Times: America, It's Time To Get Ready For The Flu
It’s the most wonderful time of the year — the time when the flu makes its presence known in the United States. You may not have given influenza much thought, but that’s OK — health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been doing it for you. They say the virus had been lying low through October, but that’s changed since early November. So far, the dominant strain of influenza here is of a sort that usually produces more misery. It’s also the type that’s less vulnerable to flu vaccines. Even so, health experts recommend that you get your annual flu shot (or nasal mist), if you haven’t done so already. (Kaplan, 12/7)

The Washington Post: A Mother Got The Flu From Her Children — And Was Dead Two Days Later
The children were the first to get sick. They spent Thanksgiving with sore throats and chills and fevers. By the end of the long weekend, the adults who had gathered for the family’s holiday meal in Phoenix were feeling flu symptoms, too. “We were all together for Thanksgiving, and the little kids got sick, then the adults got sick,” Stephanie Gonzalez told CBS News. “It traveled through our family. Everybody kind of got over it. Everybody was fine.” Everybody but Alani “Joie” Murrieta. (Wootson, 12/7)

The Washington Post: Surge In Gun Sales After Sandy Hook Led To Spike In Accidental Gun Deaths, Study Says
In the days after the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, gun enthusiasts rushed to buy millions of firearms, driven by fears that the massacre would spark new gun legislation. Those restrictions never became a reality, but a new study concludes that all the additional guns caused a significant jump in accidental firearm deaths. The study, published Thursday in the journal Science, estimates that the 3 million guns sold in the several months after Sandy Hook caused about 60 more accidental gun deaths than would have occurred otherwise. Children were killed in a third of them — some 20 youngsters, the same number as died at Sandy Hook. (Wan, 12/7)

Los Angeles Times: Add At Least 57 To The Number Of Gun-Related Deaths Tied To The Sandy Hook Mass Shooting
But the aftermath of a mass shooting does not appear to be very good for Americans' safety. New research suggests that the increased availability of firearms after a mass shooting exacts a deadly toll of its own. That toll falls heavily on children, according to the study, which links the spike in gun sales following a mass shooting with an increase in fatal accidents involving firearms. (Healy, 12/7)

NPR: Researchers Look For Gun Violence Clues In Google Searches And Background Checks
In Google search data, the team saw spikes in searches including the terms "clean gun" and "buy gun" immediately following the Newtown shooting. The term "clean gun" is, they argue, an indicator that people may be removing guns they already own from storage in order to clean them. In all, the study concludes that increased gun exposure after Newtown led to an additional 66 accidental shooting deaths in the U.S., a third of whom were children. "It's very challenging to estimate empirically," says Studdert. "If we really wanted to understand the health effects of firearm ownership, we would randomize the ownership of weapons in different households and observe their effects over time. Of course, we can't do that." (Hersher, 12/7)

Los Angeles Times: Scientists Use CRISPR To Turn Genes On Without Editing Their DNA
The revolutionary gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 is best-known for helping scientists edit a strand of DNA more precisely and efficiently than ever before. Now, researchers have demonstrated another use for the CRISPR complex: changing what genes are expressed without altering the genome itself. (Netburn, 12/7)

NPR: Adults Can Get Type 1 Diabetes, Too
David Lazarus had just moved to Los Angeles to start a new job as a business and consumer columnist for the Los Angeles Times when he suddenly developed some of the classic signs of diabetes: extreme thirst, fatigue and weight loss. He dropped close to 15 pounds in 2 weeks. Lazarus was in his early 40s. "The weight loss was the first big red flag. It happened really fast," he says. He consulted a physician who diagnosed him with Type 2 diabetes and recommended a "monastic" low-carb, macrobiotic diet. (Tucker, 12/8)

The New York Times: A Comeback For The Gateway Drug Theory?
If you grew up as part of the D.A.R.E. generation — kids of the 1980s and ’90s who learned about drugs from alarmist public service announcements — you know all too well the dangers of so-called gateway drugs. Go to bed with marijuana or beer, you were taught, and risk waking up with cocaine or heroin. Three decades later, scientists and politicians still debate whether using “soft” drugs necessarily leads a person down a slippery slope to the harder stuff. Critics note that marijuana has, in some cases, been shown to actually prevent people from abusing other substances. And even D.A.R.E. now acknowledges that the overwhelming majority of people who smoke pot or drink never graduate to pills and powders. (Quenqua, 12/7)

The New York Times: Sifting Through A Life After Suicide
During a support-group meeting for people left behind by suicide, Hope Litoff realized she was among a group of collectors. “We all had storage spaces of our dead person,” said Ms. Litoff, a New York film editor whose sister, Ruth, an artist and photographer, committed suicide in 2008 at the age of 42. “We all had the same feelings. We had saved every single thing. The items themselves were too precious to part with, but at the same time, too painful to look at.” (Parker-Pope, 12/7)

NPR: Why Your Brain Has Trouble Bailing Out Of A Bad Plan
You're in your car, heading for an intersection. The light turns yellow, so you decide to hit the gas. Then you see a police car. Almost instantly, you know that stomping on the accelerator is a big mistake. But there's a good chance you'll do it anyway, says Susan Courtney, a professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University. That's because as one area of your brain is recognizing that police car, other areas have already begun carrying out your original plan to accelerate. (Hamilton, 12/7)

The Wall Street Journal: An Unfortunate Memento Of The Total Eclipse: Eye Damage
For millions of people last summer’s solar eclipse was a momentary spectacle, but for one New Yorker the sight of the moon crossing the sun is a vision that may never leave her view, burned as a crescent-shaped scar into her retina. Close-ups of her damaged eye tissue—reportedly the most detailed of their kind—were published online Thursday in the journal JAMA Ophthalmology by solar retinopathy specialist Avnish Deobhakta and his colleagues at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai. (Hotz, 12/7)

NPR: Here's What It Looks Like When You Fry Your Eye In An Eclipse
At least one young woman suffered eye damage as a result of unsafe viewing of the recent total solar eclipse, according to a report published Thursday, but it doesn't appear that many such injuries occurred. Doctors in New York say a woman in her 20s came in three days after looking at the Aug. 21 eclipse without protective glasses. She had peeked several times, for about six seconds, when the sun was only partially covered by the moon. (Greenfieldboyce, 12/7)

The New York Times: Should You Be Worried About The Arsenic In Your Baby Food?
Rice cereal is often a baby’s first solid food, but it contains relatively high amounts of arsenic, a source of growing concern. Now an advocacy group reports that while the levels of this potentially toxic substance in infant rice cereals have dropped slightly in recent years, rice cereals still contain six times more inorganic arsenic, on average, than infant cereals made with other grains like barley or oatmeal. The new report comes from Healthy Babies Bright Futures, an alliance of scientists, nonprofit groups and private donors that aims to reduce children’s exposures to chemicals that may harm developing brains. (Rabin, 12/7)

The Associated Press: Prosecutors Insist Eye Doc Stole $136 Million From Medicaid
Either Dr. Salomon Melgen is one of the biggest Medicare swindlers ever, stealing more than $100 million from the federal health care program, or a penny ante thief who walked off with $64,000. Those were the widely contrasting arguments made Thursday by prosecutors and Melgen's defense attorneys as they tried to persuade U.S. District Judge Kenneth A. Marra to sentence the Dominican-born, Harvard-trained doctor to 30 years or something significantly less. (12/7)

The Associated Press: Woman Claims Surgeon Talked On Cellphone During Operation
A suburban New York City woman has sued a doctor, claiming he used his cellphone to take a language test while operating on her. The Journal News reports 70-year-old Mary Edwards, of Port Chester, filed a lawsuit Monday in state Supreme Court against Dr. Eric Fishman and his employer, Westmed Medical Group. The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages. (12/7)