First Edition: Feb. 6, 2024
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
KFF Health News:
Is Housing Health Care? State Medicaid Programs Increasingly Say ‘Yes’
States are plowing billions of dollars into a high-stakes health care experiment that’s exploding around the country: using scarce public health insurance money to provide housing for the poorest and sickest Americans. California is going the biggest, pumping $12 billion into an ambitious Medicaid initiative largely to help homeless patients find housing, pay for it, and avoid eviction. Arizona is allocating $550 million in Medicaid funding primarily to cover six months of rent for homeless people. Oregon is spending more than $1 billion on services such as emergency rental assistance for patients facing homelessness. Even ruby-red Arkansas will dedicate nearly $100 million partly to house its neediest. (Hart, 2/6)
The Washington Post:
U.S. Rules On Donated Transplant Organs To Be Tightened
The U.S. government is moving to tighten a regulation for the collection of human pancreases for research after a Senate committee and others complained the rule was being exploited by groups that also procure kidneys, hearts, livers and other organs for transplant. A rule issued in 2020 allows the nation’s 56 nonprofit organ procurement organizations to collect human pancreases for research and count them toward benchmarks they must meet so they can retain government certification to operate. (Bernstein, 2/5)
Stat:
A Single Democrat Is Willing To Weaken Medicare Negotiation Power
Two Republican lawmakers who introduced legislation to water down the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare drug price negotiation program managed to find themselves a Democratic co-sponsor — even though every single Democrat in Congress in 2022 voted for the legislation. (Cohrs, 2/5)
Stat:
Supreme Court To Hear If Covid Misinformation Is Protected Speech
As social media sites were flooded with misleading posts about vaccine safety, mask effectiveness, Covid-19’s origins and federal shutdowns, Biden officials urged platforms to pull down posts, delete accounts, and amplify correct information. Now the Supreme Court could decide whether the government violated Americans’ First Amendment rights with those actions — and dictate a new era for what role, if any, officials can play in combating misinformation on social media. (Owermohle, 2/6)
Reuters:
Fact Check: No Evidence For Vaccine DNA Risk Raised By Florida Surgeon General
There is no evidence to suggest that residual DNA fragments in mRNA COVID-19 vaccines pose a health risk raised in statements by Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo. Social media posts are sharing screenshots of a letter Ladapo wrote to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Dec. 6 asking if the agencies had done tests to see if DNA fragments in mRNA COVID vaccines might integrate into the genomes of vaccine recipients, potentially destabilizing chromosomes or causing cancer. (2/5)
CNN:
Respiratory Virus Season In The US Isn’t Over Yet
After a few weeks of decline, some measures show that flu activity is starting to pick up again and respiratory virus levels remain high overall in the United States. During the week ending January 27, more than 82,000 people who visited an emergency department were diagnosed with influenza, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — an 8% bump, or about 6,000 more than the week before. The test positivity rate for flu also ticked up in the US overall. (McPhillips, 2/5)
CBS News:
COVID Variant JN.1 Now More Than 90% Of Cases In U.S., CDC Estimates
Close to all new COVID-19 cases in the United States are now being caused by the JN.1 variant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, with an estimated 93.1% of infections now blamed on the highly mutated strain. The CDC's latest biweekly estimate of the variant's spread was published Friday. It comes as key trends reflecting COVID-19's spread are now showing signs of slowing, following a peak over the winter holidays. (Tin, 2/5)
CBS News:
A Mild Case Of COVID-19 May Cause People To Lose Sleep, Study Says
A new study finds that having even a mild case of COVID-19 could cause you to lose sleep. Insomnia has been associated with COVID among hospitalized patients, but a team of researchers in Vietnam wanted to know whether it also affected people with mild illness. They looked at more than a 1,000 adults who had COVID within the past six months, but did not need to be hospitalized. They found that 76% of them reported experiencing insomnia. (Marshall, 2/5)
The Atlantic:
Flu Shots Need To Stop Fighting ‘Something That Doesn’t Exist’
In Arnold Monto’s ideal vision of this fall, the United States’ flu vaccines would be slated for some serious change—booting a major ingredient that they’ve consistently included since 2013. ... To include it again now, Monto, an epidemiologist and a flu expert at the University of Michigan, told me, would mean vaccinating people “against something that doesn’t exist.” That probably nonexistent something is Yamagata, a lineage of influenza B viruses that hasn’t been spotted by global surveyors since March of 2020, shortly after COVID mitigations plummeted flu transmission to record lows. (Wu, 2/5)
NBC News:
How The Anti-Vaccine Movement Is Downplaying The Danger Of Measles
As outbreaks of measles spread throughout the world, anti-vaccine activists aren’t just urging people not to get vaccinated — they’re taking a page from a well-worn playbook, falsely downplaying the dangers from the highly contagious respiratory disease. ... But national health agencies warn the fear of measles is well-founded. ... For every 1,000 cases of measles, about 200 children may be hospitalized, 50 may get pneumonia, one child may develop brain swelling along with deafness or disability, and between one and three may die. (Zadrozny, 2/5)
Fox News:
Travelers At Cincinnati Airport May Have Been Exposed To Measles, Ohio Health Officials Warn
Health officials in Ohio are warning of a possible measles exposure on Monday after a person traveled through the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport over a weekend last month. ... "ODH is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other state and local health officials to identify people who might have been exposed, including contacting potentially exposed passengers on specific flights," the agency said. (Sorace, 2/5)
Roll Call:
Bradley Opens Up About His Experience With Abortion
Bill Bradley, a former three-term New Jersey senator and presidential candidate, has opened up about his personal experience with abortion, both in a new documentary about his life and while speaking to Political Theater Friday. In his new film “Rolling Along,” Bradley, who sought the presidential nomination in 2000, describes how, in the 1960s while playing for the New York Knicks, a woman he was dating became pregnant unintentionally. The woman, he said, opted to have an abortion – which was illegal and difficult to find at the time. (Raman, 2/5)
PolitiFact:
Fact Check: 1 In 3 Women Of Reproductive Age Live Under Abortion Bans?
The claim: ..."This is, in fact, a health care crisis and there is nothing about this that is hypothetical," Harris told the crowd. "Today in America, 1 in 3 women of reproductive age live in a state with an abortion ban." PolitiFact ruling: True. About 21.5 million women of reproductive age — 15 to 49 — live in states that ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. That’s about 29% of U.S. women in this age group. (Putterman, 2/5)
The CT Mirror:
Sharon Hospital Maternity Services Must Stay Open, CT Rules
The Connecticut Office of Health Strategy has denied Nuvance Health’s application to terminate labor and delivery services at Sharon Hospital, according to a final decision published Monday. (Golvala, 2/5)
Asheville Watchdog:
Mission Hospital In 'Immediate Jeopardy'
Mission Hospital has been officially informed by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services that it is in “immediate jeopardy” related to deficiencies in care, according to an internal email obtained by Asheville Watchdog. The finding is the most severe sanction possible for a hospital and starts a 23-day clock for Mission to produce a plan for fixing the problems or risk losing its Medicare and Medicaid funding. (Jones, 2/6)
CBS News:
2 Hospitals, 19 Clinics In Western Wisconsin Set To Close This Spring
Western Wisconsin residents are on the verge of losing many of their local health care facilities, sending lawmakers into panic mode. Wisconsin Congressman Derrick Van Orden, R-Eau Claire, sent a letter to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers Monday to call for state and federal resources to cushion the blow from the upcoming closures of hospitals in Eau Claire and Chippewa Falls operated by the Hospital Sisters Health System's Sacred Heart (HSHS), and Prevea Health's 19 facilities across the Chippewa Valley. (Swanson, 2/5)
San Francisco Chronicle:
UCSF To Pay $100 Million To Acquire Two Struggling SF Hospitals
UCSF Health has confirmed that its $100 million deal to acquire two struggling San Francisco community hospitals is just weeks away from closing. ... UCSF Health officials say the intent is to bring diversified care choices to consumers by investing in two underused hospitals that will augment UCSF Health’s academic medical system with community-based services. (Ho and Waxmann, 2/5)
Modern Healthcare:
Medica Layoffs Hit 6% Of Workforce
Nonprofit health insurance company Medica has laid off 162 employees. The job cuts represent about 6% of Medica's workforce of roughly 3,000 staff members. Minnetonka, Minnesota-based Medica declined to provide details on specific positions affected, but a company spokesperson said Monday the layoffs were spread across its offices and staff received severance packages and outplacement assistance. (Berryman, 2/5)
Modern Healthcare:
Will Home Care’s Wage Violations Spark Closures—Or More Workers?
Home care providers are split on whether the Labor Department’s fines against the industry for wage violations could force more business closures or attract more workers to the high-demand sector. As more care moved into the home during the COVID-19 pandemic, the department’s Wage and Hour Division targeted home care and home health providers in 2021 for overtime infractions, worker misclassification and other violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act. (Eastabrook, 2/5)
The Atlantic:
GoFundMe Is A Health-Care Utility Now
GoFundMe started as a crowdfunding site for underwriting “ideas and dreams,” and, as GoFundMe’s co-founders, Andrew Ballester and Brad Damphousse, once put it, “for life’s important moments.” In the early years, it funded honeymoon trips, graduation gifts, and church missions to overseas hospitals in need. Now GoFundMe has become a go-to for patients trying to escape medical-billing nightmares. One study found that, in 2020, the number of U.S. campaigns related to medical causes—about 200,000—was 25 times higher than the number of such campaigns on the site in 2011. (Rosenthal, 2/5)
Axios:
Pharmacies Are Struggling To Refill Their Own Ranks
Pharmacy retail chains staking their future on expanding the health care services they offer are running into a big problem: It's getting harder to draw the next generation of pharmacists amid turmoil in the industry. (Reed, 2/6)
Reuters:
Parents Seek To Revive Claims They Overpaid For Abbott Formula Before Recall
Parents who say they overpaid for Abbott Laboratories' baby formula before one of its plants was shuttered for unsanitary conditions urged a federal appeals court on Monday to revive their lawsuit against the company. Kiley Grombacher of Bradley Grombacher, a lawyer for the parents, told a three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that her clients would not have bought, or would have paid less, for Similac and other Abbott brands if they had known of the safety risks that led to the plant shutdown and a subsequent recall. (Pierson, 2/5)
Stat:
Diabetes Treatments Have Improperly Listed Patents, Analysis Finds
More than half of the injector-pen patents for several widely used diabetes treatments — including Ozempic and Mounjaro — do not mention several important characteristics that should otherwise prevent them from being listed in a key federal registry, according to a new analysis. (Silverman, 2/5)
Reuters:
FDA Website Shows Limited Availability Of Some Doses Of Lilly's Mounjaro
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) website showed that three higher doses of Eli Lilly's tab diabetes drug, Mounjaro, would be available only in limited amounts through early March 2024, due to increased demand. According to the health regulator's website, 10, 12.5 and 15 milligram doses of the injection will have limited availability, while lower doses of Mounjaro were shown to be available. (2/5)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Covered California Open Enrollment Deadline Extended
Californians aiming to sign up for health insurance through the state’s Covered California marketplace have a little extra time, with the open enrollment deadline extended until Friday, officials said. Covered California extended the Jan. 31 deadline after seeing “record-breaking enrollment nationally” and high demand in the state for health insurance, officials announced last week. The new deadline to sign up for 2024 coverage is midnight Feb. 9, with coverage effective from Feb. 1. (Flores, 2/5)
Axios:
Florida Challenges Federal Requirement To Keep Kids On Health Insurance
Florida is suing the Biden administration over a new policy limiting when states can remove children from public health insurance programs. The lawsuit challenges the implementation of a law requiring states to let kids remain eligible for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program for 12 straight months before reviewing their status, regardless of life changes that mean they may no longer qualify. (Goldman, 2/5)
Health News Florida:
Florida Group Starts Signature Collection As Part Of Medicaid Expansion Effort
A coalition of groups that push for health care equity has begun to gather petition signatures supporting a Florida constitutional amendment to expand Medicaid. Florida Decides Healthcare needs roughly 1 million signatures to get its proposal on the ballot in Florida in 2026. (Zaragovia, 2/5)
Axios:
Medicaid Enrollment Cuts Led To More Evictions, Study Finds
A major purge of Tennessee's Medicaid rolls almost 20 years ago led to a big increase in evictions, according to a new Health Affairs study that may hold lessons for the ongoing "unwinding" of pandemic-era coverage protections. More than 16.4 million Americans have been disenrolled from Medicaid since April, when the end of the COVID-19 emergency meant states were no longer barred from terminating coverage. (Goldman, 2/6)
AP:
The Effect Of Police Violence On Black Americans' Health Is Documented In 2 New Studies
The effect of police violence on Black Americans is tracked in two new studies, with one tying police-involved deaths to sleep disturbances and the other finding a racial gap in injuries involving police use of Tasers. The health effects of police violence on Black people “need to be documented as a critical first step to reduce these harms,” three editors of JAMA Internal Medicine wrote in an editorial published Monday with the studies. (Johnson, 2/5)
The New York Times:
Why Some Therapists Are Taking Their Clients Outdoors
Mental health practitioners are hiking, camping and braving the elements with their clients — all in an effort to help them connect with the Earth, and with themselves. (Caron, 2/5)
The New York Times:
Ex-Doctor Charged With Manslaughter In New York Woman’s Suicide
A former doctor from Arizona is facing a manslaughter charge in New York for his role in the suicide of a woman who died in a Hudson Valley motel room in November, according to his lawyer and law enforcement officials. The former doctor, Stephen P. Miller, 85, is charged with second-degree manslaughter under a provision of New York State law that makes it a crime for one person to intentionally cause or aid in the suicide of another. (Shanahan, 2/5)
NPR:
Drug Busts Of 'Magic Mushrooms' Went Way Up In Recent Years, Study Finds
In recent years, there's been growing interest in psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in "magic mushrooms" or "shrooms" as a potentially beneficial therapy for mental health conditions. At the same time, drug busts of mushrooms went way up between 2017 and 2022, and the amount of the psychedelic substance seized by law enforcement more than tripled, according to a new study. "What I think the results indicate is that shroom availability has likely been increasing," says Joseph Palamar, an epidemiologist at NYU Langone Health and the main author of the new study published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. (Chatterjee, 2/6)
People:
Toby Keith Dead At 62 Following Stomach Cancer Diagnosis
Country singer Toby Keith, known for hits such as “Red Solo Cup” and “Should Have Been a Cowboy,” has died. He was 62. The singer-songwriter “passed peacefully” on Monday night, his family shared in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter). Keith was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2022. (Walcott, 2/6)
The New York Times:
Cancer Diagnosis Like King Charles’s Is Not Unheard-Of
A patient checks into the hospital for a routine procedure to treat an enlarged prostate. And, unexpectedly, a test done in the hospital — perhaps a blood test or an X-ray or an examination of the urethra and the bladder — finds a cancer. Apparently, something like that happened to King Charles III. When the British monarch was treated for an enlarged prostate in January, doctors found a cancer that the palace said is not prostate cancer. Charles started treatment Monday. The palace did not disclose what had led to the king’s diagnosis. (Kolata, 2/6)