First Edition: January 19, 2016

Kaiser Health News: Determining Whether A Marketplace Plan Covers Abortion Is Still Difficult
As the third open enrollment period winds down on the health insurance marketplaces, one thing hasn’t changed much since the online exchanges opened: It’s still often hard to find out whether a plan covers abortion services. (Andrews, 1/19)

The New York Times: Bernie Sanders Releases Details On Health Plan That Would Raise Taxes But, He Argues, Save On Costs
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, under pressure from the Clinton campaign to explain how he would pay for his progressive policies, unveiled a universal healthcare plan on Sunday night that includes sweeping tax increases and a drastic tax hike for the wealthiest. Ahead of a nationally televised Democratic presidential debate, Mr. Sanders said that his “Medicare-for-all” plan was in the spirit of Democratic presidents such as Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and projected that the health savings would outweigh the higher taxes that would pay for the plan. (Alcindor and Rappeport, 1/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Bernie Sanders Releases ‘Medicare for All’ Single-Payer Health Plan
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Sunday that he would pay for his plan for a single-payer health-care system with a suite of new taxes, including a 2.2% “premium” applied to all income, a new payroll tax paid by employers, and a variety of tax increases on the wealthiest Americans. The plan would increase government spending by a total of nearly $14 trillion over 10 years, the campaign said, and together with his other proposals, would bring federal spending to its highest level since World War II. (Meckler, 1/17)

The Associated Press: Sanders Proposes Tax Hike To Pay For Universal Health Care
His campaign said the plan would cost $1.38 trillion a year, but would save $6 trillion over the next decade compared to the current health care system, citing an analysis by Gerald Friedman, an economist at University of Massachusetts at Amherst. But much of the cost would be paid for through a 6.2 percent payroll tax paid by employers and a 2.2 percent "health care premium" on workers. It also relies on taxing capital gains and dividends on families earning more than $250,000 a year, eliminate deductions for wealthy Americans and raising the estate tax. The plan would also raise income taxes on Americans making more than $250,000 a year, including a top tax rate of 52 percent for those earning $10 million annually or more. (Thomas, 1/17)

Reuters: Sanders Releases Universal Healthcare Plan Before Democratic Debate
Clinton's campaign had taken aim at Sanders in recent days, saying the U.S. senator from Vermont had not said how he plans to pay for his healthcare plan and that he needed to before the first party-nominating contest in Iowa on Feb. 1. (Becker, 1/17)

The Washington Post: Hours Before Debate, Sanders Shares Details Of Health-Care Plan That Would Raise Income Taxes
The plan also would be funded in part by an increase in estate taxes on wealthy Americans, as well as a change in the way capital gains and dividends are taxed, the senator said. Sanders has long argued that most families would pay substantially less out of pocket for health care under his approach. (Wagner, 1/17)

The New York Times: In Democratic Debate, Hillary Clinton Challenges Bernie Sanders On Policy Shifts
Hillary Clinton targeted Bernie Sanders’s electoral appeal with some of her strongest language yet in a debate on Sunday night, seizing on Mr. Sanders’s recent policy shifts on universal health care and gun control to try to undercut his image as an anti-political truth teller. ... With Mr. Sanders gaining on her before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, Mrs. Clinton cast herself as the defender of Mr. Obama’s record and Mr. Sanders as playing into Republican hands with proposals like replacing the Affordable Care Act with a single-payer plan, which Mr. Sanders describes as “Medicare for all.” (Healy and Chozick, 1/17)

The Associated Press: Debate Takeaways: Gloves Come Off Between Clinton, Sanders
Health care emerged as a major dividing line, placing the future of President Barack Obama's health care law in the spotlight. Just two hours before the debate, Sanders released a proposal that would create a "Medicare for all" health care system funded by higher taxes on middle class families and the wealthy. Clinton warned that reopening the health care debate would put Obama's health care law at risk. (Thomas, 1/17)

Politico: Clinton And Sanders Brawl Over Doctors, Guns And Money
On the debate stage, Clinton positioned herself as the more pragmatic defender of the Affordable Care Act. “When you’re talking about health care, the details really matter,” Clinton said, “and therefore we have been raising questions about the nine bills that [Sanders] introduced over 20 years.” ... “We finally have a path to universal health care,” Clinton said. “We’ve accomplished so much. I do not want to see the Republicans repeal it, and I do not want us to start over again with a contentious debate. I want us to defend and build on the Affordable Care Act and improve it.” Sanders, raising his voice, shot back at Clinton: “What her campaign was saying -- Bernie wants to end Medicare, Medicaid -- that is nonsense.” (Karni, 1/17)

Politico: Sanders, Clinton Clash Over His New 'Medicare For All' Plan
Sanders denied he'd tear down Obamacare, noting that he had a role in drafting it and he voted for it. But he said he wants to build on it, and bring down the cost of health care which is still leaving the newly insured with big expenses. He also pointed out that nearly six years after Obamacare was enacted, around 29 million people are still uninsured. (Debenedetti, 1/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Democratic Debate: Hillary Clinton And Bernie Sanders Spar Ahead Of Iowa Caucuses
The harshest exchanges Sunday, as on the campaign trail in recent days, were over health care, and Mr. Sanders’s plan for a single-payer national health-care plan. Mrs. Clinton’s argument against his plan was essentially a political one: it isn’t smart, she said, to start over again at a time when the Affordable Care Act remains under attack from Republicans. She noted that even during the 2009-10 health-care debate, when Democrats had large majorities in both houses of Congress, there wasn’t sufficient support for a public option to compete with private health-insurance plans. (Meckler, Nicholas and McCain Nelson, 1/17)

The Washington Post: Clinton And Sanders Sharpen Their Tone As The Stakes Rise
With raised voices, interruptions and wonky examinations of one another’s voting records and policies, Sanders and Clinton battled over who had the more progressive or more workable solutions. Their exchanges were the most combative and personal of the campaign so far, reflecting the newly potent threat Sanders poses to Clinton in her second White House run. (Gearan and Rucker, 1/17)

Los Angeles Times: Sharp Clinton-Sanders Debate Foreshadows Primary Battles
Clinton's demand of loyalty to the president, and desire to retain her lofty standing among African American voters, was central to a lengthy dispute over healthcare. The national front-runner has proposed tweaking Obama's landmark healthcare law to improve it. Sanders, the Vermont senator whose support is greatest among white and young voters, has proposed moving to a fully government-funded plan that, he announced just before the debate, would be paid for by taxes on all but the poorest Americans. (Decker, Halper and Mehta, 1/18)

Los Angeles Times: Tightening Democratic Race Revives Party's Old Debate Over Healthcare
Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, is exciting liberal activists by championing a proposal where the government supplies healthcare in what’s known as a single-payer system, an elusive ideal that many on the left have demanded for more than half a century. Clinton argues that Obama’s hard-fought healthcare law, often called Obamacare, should be defended and improved. She has called for new consumer protections to lower the cost of prescription drugs and safeguard patients from surprise medical bills and limited insurance networks. The divergent views epitomize the differences between the candidates – Clinton as a battle-hardened realist, with Sanders the uncompromising crusader – and the healthcare debate has become one of the most rancorous parts of an increasingly competitive primary. (Megerian and Levey, 1/15)

The Washington Post: Paul Ryan: Congressional GOP Will Have Full Five-Point Agenda By ‘The Time We Have A Nominee’
Ryan promised it would be a specific policy outline, despite the caucus’s inability to forge consensus for years on complicated issues, such as alternatives to the Affordable Care Act. “Believe you me, the people of this country will know who we are and what we stand for when this is done, and they will be given a choice in 2016,” Ryan said. (Kane, 1/15)

The New York Times: Republicans In Congress Will Write 2016 Campaign Platform, Ryan Says
It was unclear, for instance, whether Republicans will actually present a plan to replace the current health care law that has been their central policy punching bag since they took over the House. Republican leaders in the House and Senate demurred on whether they would write and vote on a bill this year. But members were concerned by a presentation of polling data, some Republicans said, that found that while the health care law remained unpopular with many people, Democrats had a double-digit lead over their party on the issue of health care. (Steinhauer and Herszenhorn, 1/15)

Reuters: House Opens Inquiry Into Deaths Of Drug-Dependent Newborns
The chairman of a U.S. House committee that oversees child abuse issues opened an inquiry Friday into whether the federal government is failing to enforce a law meant to protect thousands of babies born dependent on drugs each year. The inquiry, launched by Representative John Kline of Minnesota, comes in response to a Reuters investigation last month that identified 110 examples of children who were exposed to opioids while in the womb and later died preventable deaths after leaving the hospital. No more than nine states comply with a 2003 law that calls on hospitals to alert social workers whenever a baby is born dependent on drugs, the news agency found. (Schiffman and Wilson, 1/16)

USA Today: Bevin's Medicaid Testing Ground Lies In E. Ky.
These hardscrabble Appalachian hills so rife with need and illness have been a national testing ground for Obamacare over the past two years, but they may soon test something more fundamental – the age-old struggle to balance personal responsibility with the obligation to care for the poor. (Ungar and Kenning, 1/17)

Los Angeles Times: Obamacare Open Enrollment Deadline Is Jan. 31, And Penalties Are Stiffer This Year
With less than two weeks of open enrollment left, Covered California is reminding consumers that they will face increased penalties for not having health insurance this year. ... This year, the penalty is $695 per adult and $347 per child up to a family cap of $2,500 or 2.5% of household income, whichever is greater. Last year's penalty was $325 for adults, with a $975 maximum or 2% of household income. (Sisson, 1/19)

The Washington Post: Why Ultrasounds Are Intensifying North Carolina’s Abortion Fight
Ultrasounds have long been a flash point in the battle over abortions. But under a new law in North Carolina, doctors in the state must now submit ultrasound images, along with fetal measurements, to state authorities when performing abortions past a certain point in a pregnancy. The law, which was implemented Jan. 1, is meant to ensure abortion providers comply with previously established legislation that prohibits the procedures past 20 weeks of pregnancy. But critics of North Carolina’s new law say it is a gross violation of women’s privacy. (Bever, 1/16)

Reuters: Thousands Brave Cold To Attend Chicago Anti-Abortion March
Thousands braved bitter cold temperatures for a "March for Life" in downtown Chicago on Sunday, five days before the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide. Demonstrators held yellow balloons with "life" printed on them as organizers passed around rosary beads and others danced to music to keep warm in temperatures that hovered just above 0 degrees Fahrenheit. (Young and Wisniewski, 1/17)

Reuters: Major Drugmakers Push Back In U.S. Price Debate
With a backlash brewing over the price of medicines in the United States, drugmakers are pushing back with a new message: Most people don't pay retail. Top executives from Eli Lilly and Co, Merck & Co and Biogen Inc said in interviews with Reuters this week that the media focus on retail, or "list prices," for branded medications is misplaced. They stressed that the actual prices paid by prescription benefit managers, insurers and other large purchasers are reduced through negotiated discounts. (Humer, 1/15)

The Associated Press: Merck Pays $830 M To Settle Class-Action Case Over Vioxx
Merck will pay $830 million to resolve a federal class-action lawsuit involving shareholders and the painkiller Vioxx, which the drugmaker pulled from the market years ago over safety concerns. Merck said Friday that the case involved people who purchased its securities between 1999 and 2004. The litigation focused on statements Merck made regarding Vioxx's cardiovascular safety. Merck & Co. Inc. removed Vioxx from the market in 2004 after evidence showed it doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke. (1/15)

The New York Times: Drug Overdoses Propel Rise In Mortality Rates Of Young Whites
Drug overdoses are driving up the death rate of young white adults in the United States to levels not seen since the end of the AIDS epidemic more than two decades ago — a turn of fortune that stands in sharp contrast to falling death rates for young blacks, a New York Times analysis of death certificates has found. The rising death rates for those young white adults, ages 25 to 34, make them the first generation since the Vietnam War years of the mid-1960s to experience higher death rates in early adulthood than the generation that preceded it. (Kolata and Cohen, 11/16)

Stateline: Treating Addicts: The Tension Between Drug Treatment And Abstinence
Physicians and brain researchers say that drugs such as buprenorphine, methadone and naltrexone are the most effective anti-addiction weapons available. Nevertheless, more than two-thirds of U.S. clinics and treatment centers do not offer the medicines. Many refuse to admit people who are taking them. The result is that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans are dying unnecessarily, victims of an epidemic that killed more than 28,000 people in 2014 — more than homicides and almost as many as highway fatalities. (Vestal, 1/18)

The New York Times: In Rural Alabama, A Longtime Mistrust Of Medicine Fuels A Tuberculosis Outbreak
Marion [Ala.] is in the throes of a tuberculosis outbreak so severe that it has posted an incidence rate about 100 times greater than the state’s and worse than in many developing countries. Residents, local officials and medical experts said the struggle against the outbreak could be traced to generations of limited health care access, endemic poverty and mistrust — problems that are common across the rural South. (Binder, 1/17)

The Washington Post: Are The Mentally Ill Being Unfairly Targeted By The FBI’s Gun List?
When President Obama recently outlined steps to reduce gun violence, mental-health advocates applauded his proposal to spend $500 million to aid access to care for the mentally ill. Advocates, however, are divided over whether proposals to ease the sharing of information with the FBI’s background-check system breach patient rights. (Nutt, 1/14)

The Washington Post: NIH’s Big Cancer Database Coming Soon
Most experts believe that one important element of Vice President Biden's cancer "moonshot" has to be a major database that researchers and clinicians can access to help them develop new therapies or treat patients. Both the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the American Association for Cancer Research have launched such projects, as have some big academic cancer centers. And Thursday, during a teleconference with reporters to discuss President Obama's State of the Union call for a stepped-up war on cancer, the National Cancer Institute's acting director, Douglas R. Lowy, stressed that his agency is nearing completion on an effort of its own. (Bernstein, 1/14)

The New York Times: New Guidelines Nudge Doctors To Give Patients Access To Medical Records
The Obama administration is tearing down barriers that make it difficult for patients to get access to their own medical records, telling doctors and hospitals that in most cases they must provide copies of these records within 30 days of receiving a request. ... In new guidelines, issued this month, the administration says doctors and hospitals cannot require patients to state a reason for requesting their records, and cannot deny access out of a general concern that patients might be upset by the information. (Pear, 1/16)

Los Angeles Times: County Turns To Urgent Care Centers, Rather Than Jails Or ERs, To Treat The Mentally Ill In Crisis
County mental health officials and police are increasingly looking to urgent care centers as an alternative to jail beds or overcrowded psychiatric emergency rooms for people in the throes of a mental health crisis. There are now five such centers around the county, the newest of which opened last month, and the county plans to open four more over the next couple of years. (Sewell, 1/19)

NPR: Can't Focus? It Might Be Undiagnosed Adult ADHD
[Dr. David Goodman at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine says he's] seeing more and more adults over the age of 50 newly diagnosed with ADHD. The disorder occurs as the brain is developing, and symptoms generally appear around age 7. But symptoms can last a lifetime. For adults, the problem is not disruptive behavior or keeping up in school. It's an inability to focus, which can mean inconsistency, being late to meetings or just having problems managing day-to-day tasks. Adults with ADHD are more likely than others to lose a job or file for bankruptcy, Goodman says. They may overpay bills, or underpay them. They may pay bills late, or not at all. (Neighmond, 1/18)