First Edition: January 18, 2017

Kaiser Health News: Sky-High Prices For Orphan Drugs Slam American Families And Insurers
Sarah Jane Tribble and Sydney Lupkin report: "Before Luke Whitbeck began taking a $300,000-a-year drug, the 2-year-old’s health was inexplicably failing. A pale boy with enormous eyes, Luke frequently ran high fevers, tired easily and was skinny all over, except his belly stuck out like a bowling ball. “What does your medicine do for you?” Luke’s mother, Meg, asked after his weekly drug treatment recently. “Be so strong!” Luke said, wrapping his chubby fist around an afternoon cheese stick." (Tribble and Lupkin, 1/17)

Kaiser Health News: Budget Scorekeepers Say GOP Plan Would Raise The Number Of Uninsured By 32M
“CBO and JCT estimate that about half of the nation’s population lives in areas that would have no insurer participating in the nongroup market in the first year after the repeal of the marketplace subsidies took effect,” said the report. And that would rise to “about three-quarters of the population by 2026.” (Rovner, 1/17)

Kaiser Health News: 6 Lesser-Known Obamacare Provisions That Could Evaporate
On NPR’s Morning Edition, Kaiser Health News correspondent Julie Appleby discusses some lesser known parts of the health law that could be repealed by the GOP Congress and Donald Trump. (1/18)

The New York Times: Health Law Repeal Could Cost 18 Million Their Insurance, Study Finds
Eighteen million people could lose their insurance within a year and individual insurance premiums would shoot upward if Congress repealed major provisions of the Affordable Care Act while leaving other parts in place, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday. A report by the office sharply increases pressure on Republicans to come up with a comprehensive plan to replace the health care law. (Pear, 1/17)

Los Angeles Times: Repealing Obamacare Without Replacement Would Hike Premiums 20% And Leave 18 Million Uninsured, Report Says
In the first year, insurance premiums would jump by 20% to 25% for individual policies purchased directly or through the Obamacare marketplace, according to the report. The number of people who are uninsured would increase by 18 million. Those numbers would only increase in subsequent years. Premium prices would continue to climb by 50% the next year, with the uninsured swelling to 27 million, as full repeal took effect, the report said. (Mascaro, 1/17)

The Associated Press: 18 Million More Uninsured If Obamacare Killed, Not Replaced
Spotlighting potential perils for Republicans, the report immediately became a flashing hazard light for this year's effort by Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers to annul Obama's law and — in a more complicated challenge — institute their own alternative. (Fram, 1/17)

The Washington Post: Pressure Mounts On GOP For Post-Obamacare Plan Following CBO Report
Democrats seized on the report, issued Tuesday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, to discredit Republican efforts to repeal Obamacare and rally Americans who are insured under the program. The report underscored the political peril that Trump faces in trying to meet one of his top campaign promises — and also the discord among Republicans about how to do it. (Eilperin, Sullivan and Goldstein, 1/17)

Politico: Congressional Budget Office: Obamacare Repeal Could Lead To 32 Million Fewer Insured
Republicans are using their 2015 Obamacare repeal bill as a framework for their latest effort, although they have yet to release final details on how much of Obamacare they plan to repeal and what they intend to enact as a replacement. This report is based on the 2015 repeal legislation, and does not take into account any GOP plan that would replace Obamacare. (Haberkorn, 1/17)

USA Today: Congress' Budget Office: 18M Lose Coverage If No Obamacare Replacement
Some of the CBO's previous reports on the ACA have been controversial for how far off they were in their projections of ACA enrollment. But it isn't because of any liberal bias. The office is now headed by Keith Hall, a conservative former economist in the George W. Bush administration who also worked at the free market Mercatus Center at George Mason University.Chris Jacobs, a former Republican congressional policy aide, said in a blog post Tuesday, that CBO's earlier miscalculations undercut its new message. (O'Donnell, 1/17)

NPR: Trump's HHS Nominee Faces His First Senate Grilling
On Wednesday, Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., goes before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions in his first grilling since he was nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. ... Here are five things to look out for. (Kodjak, 1/18)

The Associated Press: Pointed Questions Await Trump's Pick For Health Secretary
With coverage for millions of people at stake, Rep. Tom Price is facing pointed questions about President-elect Donald Trump's health policies — and his own investments in health care companies — from senators considering his selection as health secretary. While Price, an orthopedic surgeon-turned-lawmaker, is largely a known quantity on Capitol Hill, Trump's bottom line on health care remains a mystery for Democrats and Republicans alike. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 1/18)

The Washington Post: Facing The Senate, HHS Nominee Price Will Defend GOP’s Health Care Overhaul
The courtesy hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee will mark the first time Price has appeared before lawmakers since being nominated; his formal confirmation hearing, before the Senate Finance Committee, is set for Jan. 24. This first encounter will both give the six-term congressman his first opportunity to make a public case for his selection, while allowing Democrats to argue why the incoming administration should preserve — not jettison — the Affordable Care Act. (Eilperin and Goldstein, 1/18)

USA Today: Tom Price, Trump's HHS Nominee, To Face Tough Grilling About Policies, Stock Trades
Three Democratic senators on the panel holding Wednesday's hearing sent a letter to Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., on Tuesday urging him to delay the hearing until the ethics allegations can be "thoroughly investigated and addressed." (O'Donnell, 1/18)

The Wall Street Journal: Health Secretary Pick Tom Price To Face Questions On Stock Trades, Obamacare Plans At Confirmation Hearing
A spokesman for Mr. Price has said he followed all relevant laws and rules, and the Trump transition team rejected the idea that any serious concerns surround Mr. Price.“The only pattern we see emerging is that Senate Democrats and their liberal media allies cannot abide the notion that Dr. Tom Price is uniquely qualified to lead HHS and will stop at nothing to smear his reputation,” Phillip Blando, a spokesman for the Trump transition team, said in a statement. (Armour, 1/18)

Los Angeles Times: Senate Panel To Hear From Trump's Health Secretary Pick Amid Rising Ethics Questions
Senate GOP leaders have signaled their intent to quickly confirm Price. But the six-term Georgia congressman has become one of Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks, as much for his ethics disclosures as his unusually partisan record. (Levey, 1/18)

Los Angeles Times: Trump's Health Secretary Pick Fought To Limit Coverage In One Of America's Neediest States
From the packed hallways of Atlanta’s massive county hospital to the thousands of patients who line up around the state every year to get Obamacare, yawning gaps in Georgia’s overburdened healthcare system aren’t hard to find. “The need for care is just tremendous,” said Dr. Charles Moore, a Harvard-trained ear, nose and throat specialist who runs an Atlanta clinic for poor patients. Georgia has some of the worst health outcomes in the country, with high rates of untreated illness and death from preventable diseases. (Levey, 1/18)

The Wall Street Journal: Tom Price, Nominee For HHS Secretary And A Doctor, Is A Harbinger Of Health Care Under Donald Trump
Tom Price walked into an emergency room years ago when he was a practicing orthopedic surgeon to see a patient with a broken hip, a case one fellow doctor described as among the worst he’d ever seen. “What you have is really bad,” Mr. Price reportedly said, “but I can fix this.” Mr. Price, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Health and Human Services, did fix the patient’s hip, according to the story, which was relayed by a longtime friend. But the U.S. representative from Georgia is now taking on a far bigger repair job, hoping to remedy a health-care system he believes is badly broken. Critics fear he will only make it worse. (Armour, 1/17)

The Associated Press: In Price's Ga. District, What Happens After Health Repeal
Carla Dent is a restaurant owner who steers her employees to federal health insurance exchanges. Eden Purdy helps poor and working-class Georgians navigate the health care marketplace. Bryson Boech is a grocery cashier recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, what the insurance industry calls a pre-existing condition. None of the three claims to be intensely political, but all say they are concerned their congressman, Tom Price, will rip up President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law if the Senate confirms the Georgia Republican to be Donald Trump's health secretary. (Barrow, 1/17)

The Wall Street Journal: More In U.S. Like ‘Obamacare,’ As Ax Hovers Over It: Poll
Americans are starting to warm up to the Affordable Care Act amid concerns about Republicans’ efforts to dismantle it, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that 45% of Americans think the 2012 health law is a “good idea,’’ the highest mark since pollsters began asking about President Barack Obama’s vision for a health overhaul in April, 2009. (Radnofsky, 1/17)

Politico: Poll: Obamacare At Its Most Popular On Eve Of Repeal
The NBC/WSJ poll found that 50 percent of respondents have “little to no confidence that Republican proposals to replace the law will make things better.” Congressional leaders had first advocated repealing the law immediately and leaving open a window before it would take effect so they can take more time to pass a replacement package. Trump and some others, though, have publicly pushed back on that plan. (Conway, 1/17)

Reuters: Quarter Of Republicans Would Keep Obamacare: Reuters/Ipsos Poll
About a quarter of U.S. Republicans do not want to see Obamacare repealed, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday. Trump and his fellow Republicans, who control Congress, have promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, but a majority of Americans, including 25 percent of Republicans polled, do not want it to be repealed. (1/17)

Politico: HHS Secretary Burwell Will Sign Up For Obamacare
HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell will be signing up for Obamacare. Burwell, who has led implementation of the Affordable Care Act for more than two years, plans to sign up for coverage on D.C.’s health insurance exchange when her federal employee plan ends — even as Republicans wrestle with how to repeal the law. (Haberkorn, 1/17)

Los Angeles Times: Abortion Rate Declines To Historic Low, With Obamacare A Likely Contributor, Study Says
“We saw declines in abortion in almost every single state,” said Jenna Jerman, a public health researcher at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank in New York, and a coauthor of the study, which was published Tuesday in the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. Though the study did not look at the reasons for the decline, the authors and other experts suggested that improved access to contraception played the biggest role by preventing unintended pregnancies. (Agrawal, 1/17)

The Associated Press: New Report: Abortions In US Drop To Lowest Level Since 1974
Even as the election outcome intensifies America's abortion debate, a comprehensive new survey finds the annual number of abortions in the U.S has dropped to well under 1 million, the lowest level since 1974. The report, which counted 926,200 abortions in 2014, was released Tuesday by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group which supports abortion rights. It is the only entity which strives to count all abortions in the U.S.; the latest federal survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lacks data from California, Maryland and New Hampshire. (1/17)

The Washington Post: Planned Parenthood Could Be First Casualty Of Obamacare Repeal Efforts
A fierce battle over the future of reproductive rights is now underway in Washington as congressional Republicans made the first move last week to slash funding for Planned Parenthood. In starting to roll back the Affordable Care Act, the GOP is also planning to target the country’s largest women’s health-care provider. Planned Parenthood could lose millions in dollars of reimbursements from Medicaid and other funding as soon as this spring, if the repeal effort advances. (Snell, 1/18)

The Washington Post Fact Checker: Paul Ryan’s Claim That For Every Planned Parenthood Clinic, 20 Health Centers Provide Care
[Speaker Paul] Ryan said that for each Planned Parenthood clinic, there are 20 federal community health centers that can provide the kinds of services that Planned Parenthood provides. Is that correct? (Lee, 1/18)

Reuters: Texas Planned Parenthood Asks Judge To Block Medicaid Funding Cut
The leaders of Texas Planned Parenthood asked a federal judge on Tuesday to block the state's bid to halt Medicaid funding for the healthcare group, which has long been targeted by Republicans for providing abortions. Planned Parenthood has said the threatened funding cut, by terminating Planned Parenthood's enrollment in the state-funded healthcare system for the poor, could affect nearly 11,000 patients across Texas. (1/17)

The Associated Press: Judge: Planned Parenthood Videos 'Baloney' In Medicaid Fight
A federal judge deciding whether Texas can block Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid dollars scolded attorneys Tuesday for rehashing the debate over secretly recorded videos that Republicans across the U.S. — Texas included — have used to try defunding the nation's largest abortion provider. (1/17)

The Associated Press: Bill Would Let Women Sue Doctors Who Perform Their Abortions
Iowa lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow a woman who gets an abortion to sue the doctor who performed the procedure if she experiences emotional distress later. If approved, it would be the first law of its kind in the U.S. (1/17)

ProPublica: Pharma Money Reaches Guideline Writers, Patient Groups, Even Doctors On Twitter
The long arm of the pharmaceutical industry continues to pervade practically every area of medicine, reaching those who write guidelines that shape doctors' practices, patient advocacy organizations, letter writers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and even oncologists on Twitter, according to a series of papers on money and influence published Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine. (Ornstein, 1/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Pharma Investors Find Themselves In The Spotlight
If drug makers thought they would escape the political spotlight in 2017, the first few weeks of the new year have certainly dissuaded them of that notion. In magazine and newspaper interviews, on Twitter and during his press conference, President-elect Donald Trump has homed in on the industry’s pricing of drugs. That’s not something investors in those companies expected. The iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology exchange-traded fund had surged 8.9% the trading session after Election Day, apparently on the belief that a Republican-controlled White House and Congress was unlikely to prioritize drug pricing reform. That clearly is not the case. (Eisen, 1/17)

The Wall Street Journal: UnitedHealth’s Revenue, Profit Tops Forecasts
UnitedHealth Group Inc. reported a 56% increase in profit in the latest quarter, with results fueled by growth in its core insurance unit and its Optum health-services arm, as well as reduced impact from its money-losing Affordable Care Act business. The Minnetonka, Minn., company reported net income of $1.90 billion, or $1.96 a share, compared with $1.22 billion, or $1.26, in the year-ago quarter. (Wilde Mathews and Jamerson, 1/17)

The Associated Press: UnitedHealth Looks Beyond Insurance To Help Fuel 4Q Growth
The nation's biggest health insurer made most of its money in the fourth quarter by selling things other than health insurance. UnitedHealth Group's Optum division, which manages prescription drug plans, runs doctor practices and analyzes health care data, generated slightly more of a profit than the company's traditional business of selling insurance. (Murphy, 1/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Second Theranos Lab Failed U.S. Inspection
Theranos Inc. failed a second major U.S. regulatory inspection of its laboratory facilities, people familiar with the situation said, a setback the Silicon Valley blood-testing firm hasn’t disclosed to investors or patients.The failed regulatory inspection—at its one active lab at the time—has put the company at risk of a new round of sanctions, these people said. (Weaver and Carreyrou, 1/17)

The Associated Press: New Prescription: Doctor Offices That Look Like Apple Stores
After a relative suffered a heart attack a few years ago, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Adrian Aoun got an unsettling look at a health-care system that he diagnosed as an inefficient and outdated mess. Now he believes he has a remedy. It's called Forward, a health-management service that charges a $149 per month — roughly $1,800 a year — to tend to all of its patients' primary-care needs. And not just with attentive doctoring, either; Forward plans to deploy body scanners, sensors, giant touch-screen monitors, infrared devices and other high-tech gizmos that could make a doctor's appointment feel more like a trip to an Apple store. (Liedtke, 1/17)