First Edition: January 21, 2020

Kaiser Health News: Diagnosed With Dementia, She Documented Her Wishes. They Said No.
When she worked on the trading floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange, long before cellphone calculators, Susan Saran could perform complex math problems in her head. Years later, as one of its top regulators, she was in charge of investigating insider trading deals. Today, she struggles to remember multiplication tables. Seven years ago, at age 57, Saran was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia, a progressive, fatal brain disease. She had started forgetting things, losing focus at the job she’d held for three decades. Then tests revealed the grim diagnosis. (Aleccia, 1/21)

California Healthline: For 2020, California Goes Big On Health Care
California is known for progressive everything, including its health care policies, and, just a few weeks into 2020, state leaders aren’t disappointing. The politicians’ health care bills and budget initiatives are heavy on ideas and dollars — and on opposition from powerful industries. They put California, once again, at the forefront. The proposals would lower prescription drug costs, increase access to health coverage, and restrict and tax vaping. (Ibarra, 1/17)

The Washington Post: Trump Lashes Out At HHS Secretary After Briefing Shows Democrats Have Edge On Health Care
President Trump lashed out at Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar for not doing enough on health care and drug pricing during a campaign meeting this week after he was briefed on polling that showed the public trusted Democrats more than Republicans on the issue, according to four people present at or briefed about the meeting. Campaign advisers were updating Trump at the White House on Thursday on polling from battleground states, including Florida, that showed which party voters trusted more on various issues. (Dawsey and Abutaleb, 1/17)

Politico: Trump Berates Azar Over Bad Health Care Polling
Trump’s outburst sent White House staff scrambling to convene a meeting on drug pricing this morning with potentially more to come. Some predicted Trump could look to push harder on stalled drug pricing proposals, including one opposed by many in his party. Trump on Thursday grilled Azar about the administration’s new plan to let states import drugs from Canada, with a focus on how it would affect his reelection prospects in battleground states like Florida, according to two individuals. Azar, whose job does not appear to be in jeopardy, and other officials have promised Trump that the new importation plan will play a significant role in lowering drug costs, although some experts have derided the idea as a political stunt. (Cook, Diamond and Cancryn, 1/17)

Axios: Trump Tells HHS Sec. Alex Azar He Regrets Taking Action On Vaping
President Trump told his health secretary yesterday that he regrets getting involved in the administration's policy on vaping, according to two sources familiar with the conversation. (Swan and Owens, 1/17)

The New York Times: In Oval Office Meeting, Trump Expresses Regret On Vaping Policy
After one of Mr. Trump’s pollsters, Tony Fabrizio, described the importance of health care as an electoral issue, Mr. Trump reached for the phone on the Resolute Desk and called Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of health and human services. “I never should have done this vaping thing,” Mr. Trump said, adding an expletive, according to two of the people familiar with what happened. (Haberman, 1/17)

The Hill: Trump Lashes Out At Health Chief Over Polling: Reports
Trump has been touting a series of actions on drug pricing and other consumer-friendly issues, a move designed to position the president as a populist champion of transparency and reduced medical bills. But the president faces an uphill battle, especially with regards to ObamaCare. While Trump has tried to defend his record with misleading statements and tweets, Democrats aren't letting voters forget his repeated efforts to repeal and undermine the law. (Weixel, 1/17)

The New York Times: Supreme Court To Consider Limits On Contraception Coverage
The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether the Trump administration may allow employers to limit women’s access to free birth control under the Affordable Care Act. The case returns the court to a key battleground in the culture wars, but one in which successive administrations have switched sides. In the Obama years, the court heard two cases on whether religious groups could refuse to comply with regulations requiring contraceptive coverage. (Liptak, 1/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Supreme Court To Review Exemptions To Birth Control Mandate
The justices said Friday they would hear the administration’s appeal of lower- court decisions that blocked the rules nationwide. A Philadelphia-based U.S. appeals court in July ruled the administration’s exemptions likely weren’t authorized under the 2010 health-care law and weren’t required by a different federal law protecting religious rights. The court also agreed to hear a related appeal by the Little Sisters of the Poor, an order of Roman Catholic nuns that operates nursing homes. In the case before the court, Pennsylvania and New Jersey sued the administration, arguing that its exemptions would unlawfully deny preventive health care to millions of women. (Kendall, 1/17)

Politico: Supreme Court Will Again Review Obamacare Birth Control Mandate
It marks the third high court review of the contraception mandate stemming from Obamacare — and the first since Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined the court. The provision requires employer-sponsored health plans to provide their enrollees with contraceptive coverage at no extra personal cost. Both Gorsuch and Kavanaugh considered similar cases while appellate court judges, and both showed sympathy for religious groups seeking exemptions from the requirement on moral grounds. (Luthi, 1/17)

Reuters: Supreme Court To Hear Trump Appeal In Obamacare Contraception Fight
Arguments in the case before the high court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority including two justices appointed by Trump, are likely to be in April with a ruling due by the end of June. “The Trump administration’s attempt to take away people’s insurance coverage for contraception is one of the administration’s many attacks on access to abortion and contraception, and we hope the Supreme Court will uphold the lower court’s ruling blocking this awful law,” said Brigitte Amiri, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the rule. (Hurley, 1/17)

NPR: Supreme Court Takes Up Obamacare Birth-Control Conscience Case
Kristen Waggoner, an attorney with the religious liberty group the Alliance Defending Freedom, said the case could have far-reaching implications for other businesses and organizations that oppose providing contraception through their health plans. "They're not interfering [with employees' choices]," Waggoner said. "This is about whether a person can run their business in a way that's consistent with their beliefs." Waggoner's group is representing the anti-abortion rights group the March for Life in a related case that is also working its way through the legal system. (McCammon, 1/17)

The Associated Press: Major Doctors' Group Calls For US To Assure Coverage For All
With health care an election-year priority, a major doctors’ organization on Monday called for sweeping government action to guarantee coverage for all, reduce costs and improve the basic well-being of Americans. Declaring that the U.S. health care system "is ill and needs a bold new prescription,” the American College of Physicians endorsed either of the two general approaches being debated by Democratic presidential candidates: a government-run “single-payer” system that would cover everyone, or a new “public option” government plan that would offer comprehensive coverage to compete with private insurance. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 1/20)

NPR: More Pizza And Fries? USDA Proposes To 'Simplify' Obama-Era School Lunch Rules
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has proposed new rules for school meals aimed at giving administrators more flexibility in what they serve in school cafeterias around the country each day. For instance, instead of being required to offer higher quantities of nutrient-dense red and orange vegetables such as carrots, peppers and buttternut squash, schools would have more discretion over the varieties of vegetables they offer each day. In addition, students will be allowed to purchase more entree items as a la carte selections. (Aubrey, 1/17)

The New York Times: Trump Targets Michelle Obama's School Lunch Program On Her Birthday
A spokeswoman for the department said that it had not intended to roll out the proposed rule on Mrs. Obama’s birthday, although some Democratic aides on Capitol Hill had their doubts. Food companies applauded the proposal, while nutritionists condemned it, predicting that starchy foods like potatoes would replace green vegetables and that fattening foods like hamburgers would be served daily as “snacks.” “Schools and school districts continue to tell us that there is still too much food waste and that more common-sense flexibility is needed to provide students nutritious and appetizing meals,” Sonny Perdue, the agriculture secretary, said in a statement. “We listened and now we’re getting to work.” (Fadulu, 1/17)

The Wall Street Journal: USDA Proposes Relaxing School Lunch Healthy Eating Rules
Some consumer-advocacy groups said the changes would give students more leeway in choosing pizza and burgers over balanced meals. “This would create a huge loophole,” said Colin Schwartz, deputy director of legislative affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a group that is suing the USDA over its prior moves to roll back health requirements for school food. (Gasparro, 1/17)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration To Soon Issue Guidance On Medicaid Block Grants
The Trump administration plans to release guidance as soon as this month for granting states waivers to convert Medicaid funding to block grants, according to two people familiar with the matter, paving the way for a transformation of the 55-year-old program that is likely to reignite a partisan feud. The impending release comes as a surprise after the Office of Management and Budget, which reviews regulatory actions, indicated in November that block-grant instructions had been withdrawn. Lawmakers and legal advisers speculated that the guidance may have been shelved or significantly delayed. (Armour, 1/19)

The New York Times: China Confirms New Coronavirus Spreads From Humans To Humans
The mysterious coronavirus that has killed at least four people and sickened more than 200 in China is capable of spreading from person to person, a prominent Chinese scientist said on Monday, adding to fears of a broader epidemic. The disclosure increased pressure on the Chinese government to contain a growing public health crisis, just as China enters its busiest travel season of the year. On Tuesday, the authorities confirmed a fourth death from the illness in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. (Hernandez and Ramzy, 1/20)

The Washington Post: China Virus: Coronavirus Cases Surge Ahead Of Spring Festival Travel
“The outbreak is at a critical stage, and we estimate an increasing number of infections during the 40 days of Spring Festival travel rush,” said Zhong Nanshan, the leader of a group of experts at China’s National Health Commission and the respiratory disease specialist who discovered the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, during an outbreak in China in 2003. (Fifield, 1/20)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Spreads Across China As Confirmed Cases Triple
Zhong Nanshan, one of China’s most highly regarded epidemiology experts who is leading an expert committee on the outbreak for China’s cabinet-level National Health Commission, urged heightened vigilance in a live interview on state broadcaster China Central Television Monday, citing the risk of human-to-human transmission. “Right now is the time when we should increase alert,” said Dr. Zhong, who rose to national prominence nearly two decades ago as an authoritative voice during China’s fight against severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. In that outbreak, a similar coronavirus killed 774 people after its emergence in southern China beginning in late 2002. (Deng and Cheng, 1/20)

Reuters: China Coronavirus Claims Sixth Victim As Holiday Travel Heightens Infection Risks
The scare brought back bad memories of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), another coronavirus that broke out in China in 2002/2003, resulting in the death of nearly 800 people in global pandemic. Health authorities around the world have begun to step up screening of travellers arriving from China. Two cases have already been identified in Thailand, one in Japan and one in South Korea, while the Philippines reported on Tuesday its first suspected case. (Lee and Zhang, 1/21)

The New York Times: Three U.S. Airports To Check Passengers For A Deadly Chinese Coronavirus
Airports in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles will begin screening passengers arriving from Wuhan, China, for infection with a mysterious respiratory virus that has killed two people and sickened at least 45 overseas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced on Friday. Most people with the infection are believed to have contracted it through exposure to animals at a market that sells seafood and meat in Wuhan. It is not certain that the virus spreads from person to person. (Grady, 1/17)

The Washington Post: Travelers At 3 U.S. Airports To Be Screened For New, Potentially Deadly Chinese Virus
The announcement comes as millions of people in China are already traveling across the country and overseas for Lunar New Year, which officially starts Jan. 25. There are direct flights several times a week from Wuhan to San Francisco and JFK airports, including one scheduled to arrive Friday in New York at 10 p.m. (Sun, 1/17)

The New York Times: W.H.O. Warns That Pipeline For New Antibiotics Is Running Dry
With the pipeline for new antibiotics slowing to a trickle and bankruptcies driving pharmaceutical companies from the field, the World Health Organization on Friday issued a fresh warning about the global threat of drug resistant infections. Some 700,000 people die each year because medicines that once cured their conditions are no long effective. Yet the vast majority of the 60 new antimicrobial products in development worldwide are variations on existing therapies, and only a handful target the most dangerous drug-resistant infections, the agency said in a report. (Jacobs, 1/17)

Reuters: China Virus Sends Shiver Through Markets As Risks Mount
Global shares took a beating on Tuesday, wiping out all gains made at the start of the week as mounting concerns about a new strain of coronavirus in China sent a ripple of risk aversion through markets. Authorities in China confirmed that a new virus could be spread through human contact, reporting 15 medical staff had been infected and a fourth person had died. (1/21)

NPR: Generic Version Of Pricey MS Treatment Didn't Reduce Drug Costs Much For Patients
Sometimes, the approval of a new generic drug offers more hype than hope for patients' wallets, as people with multiple sclerosis know all too well. New research shows just how little the introduction of a generic version of Copaxone — one of the most popular MS drugs — did to lower their medicine costs. MS is an autoimmune disease that gradually damages the central nervous system, disrupting communication between the brain and the rest of the body. (Lupkin, 1/20)

The New York Times: Medicare’s Part D Doughnut Hole Has Closed! Mostly. Sorta.
With the new decade comes this long-awaited milestone: the Medicare Part D doughnut hole has closed. Two cheers. More than 61 million Americans are Medicare beneficiaries, and about 46 million of those are enrolled in Part D. The doughnut hole, more formally called the coverage gap, has been one of Part D’s more detested features since the drug benefit took effect in 2006. (Span, 1/17)

The Wall Street Journal: CDC Steps Back From Broad Recommendation To Refrain From E-Cigarettes
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has moved away from a broad recommendation that people consider refraining from vaping altogether during the investigation into the outbreak of lung illnesses linked to the practice. The agency removed from its website guidance that people should stop vaping if they were concerned about the illnesses. The agency first said people should end the use of vaping products in September, but later narrowed that recommendation, warning that people should stop using vaping products containing THC—the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis—but consider refraining from all vaping. (Abbott, 1/17)

The Washington Post: Puerto Ricans Still Waiting On Disaster Funds As Hurricane Maria’s Aftermath, Earthquakes Continue To Affect Life On The Island
Nydia Camacho's ankles are swollen and puffy after days of sleeping in a compact car with her two teenagers. The single mother can’t return to her rented home because it shakes. The one she owns is a roofless jumble of wood and tin, uninhabitable since the hurricanes ravaged it. The 39-year-old is low on cash, her hours as a private security guard have been suspended because the public school she protects is closed. (Hernandez, 1/19)

The Associated Press: Feds Allow Use Of Opioid Funds To Stem Meth, Cocaine Surge
Alarmed by a deadly new twist in the nation's drug addiction crisis, the government will allow states to use federal money earmarked for the opioid epidemic to help growing numbers of people struggling with meth and cocaine. The little-noticed change is buried in a massive spending bill passed by Congress late last year. Pressed by constituents and state officials, lawmakers of both parties and the Trump administration agreed to broaden the scope of a $1.5 billion grant program previously restricted to the opioid crisis. (1/21)

The Washington Post: Federal Judge Allows New Liver Transplant Policy To Take Effect
A federal judge has cleared the way for a new method of distributing livers to transplant patients, a plan that will shift more of the scarce organs to people in metropolitan areas where demand is highest and away from some rural regions where they are easier to obtain. In a case she called “difficult and wrenching,” U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg refused Thursday to permanently block new rules for allocating livers that were approved by the federal government in December 2018. In response to a lawsuit, she temporarily halted the plan in May while she considered a request for a permanent injunction. (Bernstein, 1/17)

The New York Times: Health Care Costs Are Rising. Fund Returns Are Less Reliable.
Until science beats death, disease and disability, the health care industry would seem a wonderful investment. Yet in 2019, it fell a bit behind the broader stock market. Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds focused on health care returned 29 percent in 2019, according to Morningstar. That would have been laudable in most years, but it lagged the S&P 500 stock index, which returned 31.49 percent, including dividends. (Gray, 1/17)

NPR: Her Own Birth Was 'Fertility Fraud' And Now She Needs Fertility Treatment
When Heather Woock was in her late 20s, she started researching her family history. As part of the project she spit into a tube and sent it to Ancestry, a consumer DNA testing service. Then in 2017, she started getting messages about the results from people who said they could be half-siblings. "I immediately called my mom and said, 'Mom, is it possible that I have random siblings out there somewhere?'" Woock says. She remembers her mom responded, "No, why? That's ridiculous." (Bavis and Harper, 1/20)

The Associated Press: St. Louis Donations Wipe Away $13 Million In Medical Debt
Thousands of St. Louis-area families were freed from a major financial burden thanks to a charitable effort that is increasingly popular among churches and other organizations trying to help the needy — eliminating medical debt. Money raised at more than a dozen United Church of Christ congregations and a donation from the St. Louis-based Deaconess Foundation wiped away nearly $13 million in medical debt for 11,108 families in St. Louis city and county. United Church of Christ officials and civic leaders announced details Saturday. The church was also sending letters this weekend to those whose debt was wiped out. (Salter, 1/18)

The Wall Street Journal: Hospitals Give Tech Giants Access To Detailed Medical Records
Hospitals have granted Microsoft Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. the ability to access identifiable patient information under deals to crunch millions of health records, the latest examples of hospitals’ growing influence in the data economy. The breadth of access wasn’t always spelled out by hospitals and tech giants when the deals were struck. (Evans, 1/20)

The Wall Street Journal: ‘It’s Like I Got Kicked Out Of My Family.’ Churches Struggle With Mental Health In The Ranks.
In most industries, federal laws protect workers with disabilities, including mental illness. Church is an exception. Employees including pastors are still regularly fired after disclosing mental-health problems. For eight years, Brady Herbert led a booming church in Waco, Texas. The congregation had a couple hundred members when he took over and grew to an average of more than 1,200 people on Sundays. By early 2018, he told the church’s elders he was burning out and needed a break. They gave him a paid leave. (Lovett, 1/20)

The New York Times: Fish Oil Supplements Tied To Sperm Health
Taking fish oil supplements may improve sperm quality in healthy young men, a new analysis suggests. Researchers studied 1,679 Danish men taking physical examinations for compulsory military service. Their average age was 19, and 98 of them reported taking fish oil supplements during the previous three months. (Bakalar, 1/17)

NPR: Treating Sepsis With Vitamin C And Steroid Mix Proved Ineffective In Study
Hope for an effective and inexpensive treatment for the deadly condition sepsis has dimmed following results of a major new study. Researchers had hoped that a simple treatment involving infusions of vitamin C, vitamin B1 and steroids would work against a disease that kills an estimated 270,000 people each year in the United States and 11 million globally. Sepsis, or blood poisoning, occurs when the body overreacts to infection. It leads to leaky blood vessels, which can cause multiple organ failure. (Harris, 1/17)

The Washington Post: How Can You Be An Assertive Patient Without Antagonizing Your Doctor?
Was that a grin-and-bear-it expression your doctor flashed when greeting you? In what may be a well-kept professional secret, physicians dread encounters with about 15 percent of their patients. In 1978, the New England Journal of Medicine published what has become a classic on the subject: “Taking Care of the Hateful Patient.” (Clicksman, 1/19)

The Washington Post: Chronic Inflammation Is Long Lasting, Insidious, Dangerous. And You May Not Even Know You Have It. 
Most of us think of inflammation as the redness and swelling that follow a wound, infection or injury, such as an ankle sprain, or from overdoing a sport, “tennis elbow,” for example. This is “acute” inflammation, a beneficial immune system response that encourages healing, and usually disappears once the injury improves. But chronic inflammation is less obvious and often more insidious. (Cimons, 1/20)

The Wall Street Journal: A Placebo For Pain Relief—Even When You Know It’s Not Real
Some patients with chronic pain can get relief from a placebo even when they know it isn’t an active medication, a growing body of evidence shows. More researchers are looking at the idea of placebos—substances that have no actual pharmaceutical effect—as an alternative to traditional pain medications, which can be ineffective and carry significant side effects. Placebos might have particular potential for difficult-to-treat conditions like chronic back pain, cancer-related fatigue and symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, researchers hope. (Reddy, 1/20)

The Washington Post: Getting Enough Vitamin D In Wintertime Is Important To Your Health
Winter is upon us and so is the risk of vitamin D deficiency and infections. Vitamin D — which is made in our skin following sunlight exposure and also found in oily fish (mackerel, tuna and sardines), mushrooms and fortified dairy and nondairy substitutes — is essential for good health. Humans need vitamin D to keep healthy and to fight infections. The irony is that in winter, when people need vitamin D the most, most of us are not getting enough. So how much should we take? Should we take supplements? How do we get more? And, who needs it most? (Cantorna, 1/19)

NPR: What Is Perimenopause And How Young Can It Start?
Sarah Edrie says she was about 33 when she started to occasionally get a sudden, hot, prickly feeling that radiated into her neck and face, leaving her flushed and breathless. "Sometimes I would sweat. And my heart would race," she says. The sensations subsided in a few moments and seemed to meet the criteria for a panic attack. But Edrie, who has no personal or family history of anxiety, was baffled. She told her doctor and her gynecologist about the episodes, along with a few other health concerns she was starting to notice: Her menstrual cycle was becoming irregular, she had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep, and she was getting night sweats. Their response: a shrug. (Vaughn and Chatterjee, 1/18)

Los Angeles Times: Closing Coal Power Plants Has Saved Thousands Of Lives, Study Says
The number of coal-fired power plants in operation across the country has plummeted in recent years, quickly changing the power mix — especially in states such as California. But what has that change meant in terms of health? Or even in the number of crops produced? (Nikolewski, 1/20)

The New York Times: Amid Tight Security, Virginia Gun Rally Draws Thousands Of Supporters
Some people streamed in on buses from faraway cities. Others drove cars through the night from places like Indianapolis and Fredericksburg, Texas, logging hundreds of miles and leaning on coffee and Red Bull. Still others came from only a few counties over, but carrying the same vehement message as the rest: Leave gun laws alone. Thousands of people descended on Richmond, the capital of Virginia, on Monday to show support for the rights of gun owners as a push for gun control measures by that state’s newly empowered Democrats has inserted Virginia into a nationwide debate over gun violence and the Second Amendment. (Williams, Tavernise, Kanno-Youngs, and Mervosh, 1/20)

The Associated Press: Pro-Gun Rally By Thousands In Virginia Ends Peacefully
Tens of thousands of gun-rights activists from around the country rallied peacefully at the Virginia Capitol on Monday to protest plans by the state's Democratic leadership to pass gun-control legislation — a move that has become a key flash point in the national debate over gun violence. The size of the crowd and the expected participation of white supremacists and fringe militia groups raised fears that the state could see a repeat of the violence that exploded in 2017 in Charlottesville. (Suderman and Rankin, 1/20)

The Washington Post: Weapons, Flags, No Violence: Massive Pro-Gun Rally In Virginia Capital
Intelligence from law enforcement about outside threats had put Virginia officials on edge and led to a massive police presence. The crackdown also made Northam (D) a symbol of the country’s cultural and political divide — as evidenced by harsh signs Monday depicting him as a “tyrant,” “radical Ralph” and photoshopped into a Nazi uniform. “Democrats in the state are demonstrating . . . unadulterated power without authority,” Erich Pratt, senior vice president of Gun Owners of America, thundered in Capitol Square. “No one listening to my voice should ever . . . vote for the party of gun control, the party of Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer,” he said, interrupted by boos at the names of the Democratic leaders. (Schneider, Vozzella, Sullivan and Miller, 1/20)

The New York Times: Kansas City Shooting Leaves 2 Dead And At Least 15 Wounded
It was supposed to be a night of celebration and local pride in Kansas City, Mo. The Chiefs had just clinched a spot in the Super Bowl, its first in a half century. Arrowhead Stadium had been full of fans, and local bars were packed. But late Sunday night, the city found itself confronting yet another episode of what the mayor called an epidemic of gun violence. (Hauser and Zraick, 1/20)

The Washington Post: Kansas City, Missouri, Shooting: 2 Dead, 15 Injured After Gunman Opens Fire Outside Of Bar
Authorities described “a chaotic scene” as hundreds fled the venue by foot and in cars, the violence shattering the city’s celebration of its football team, the Kansas City Chiefs, who had just advanced to the Super Bowl in what was “an exciting night, a euphoric night,” Mayor Quinton Lucas said. “Last night was a night many people in Kansas City have been dreaming of for 50 years,” Lucas said at the news conference. “This is very disappointing for us. It’s heartbreaking.” (Brice-Saddler and Thebault, 1/20)

The New York Times: Rural Montana Had Already Lost Too Many Native Women. Then Selena Disappeared.
Jackie Big Hair slept in her car for days, waking every few hours to fire up the engine and gaze at the frozen highway rest stop where her 16-year-old daughter had been reported missing. “I just have to be here,” Ms. Big Hair, 50, said, watching semis lumber across the plains. “I don’t know where else to go.” That was her vigil, along with searches in Billings about 30 miles away, three weeks after her youngest child, Selena Not Afraid, was reported missing from a barren stretch of Interstate 90 in a southern Montana county where 65 percent of the population is Native American. (Healy, 1/20)

The Washington Post: A Radioactive Legacy Haunts This Navajo Village, Which Fears A Fractured Future
The village of Red Water Pond Road sits in the southeast corner of the Navajo Nation, a tiny speck in a dry valley surrounded by scrub-covered mesas. Many families have lived here for generations. The federal government wants to move them out. In what might seem a cruel echo of history, officials are relocating residents to the city of Gallup, about a half-hour away, and surrounding areas. This echo is nuanced, however. The village sits amid a Superfund site loaded with uranium mine waste. Mitigation has been delayed for decades, along with remedies for hundreds of other abandoned uranium mines across the tribe’s lands that boomed during the Cold War. (Ford, 1/18)

The Wall Street Journal: New York’s Health-Care Industry Awaits Cuomo’s Budget-Deficit Fix
Officials representing New York’s hospitals, nursing homes, counties and insurance plans are bracing for reductions to Medicaid funding as Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposes a new state budget this week. The Democratic governor will have to bridge a projected $6.1 billion deficit in a roughly $175 billion spending plan. About $4 billion of the shortfall comes from cost overruns in the state’s Medicaid program, which provides health-care services for more than six million people. The current state budget expires March 31. (Vielkind, 1/20)

The Associated Press: Appeals Court Won't Rehear Mississippi 15-Week Abortion Case
A federal appeals court said Friday that it will not reconsider its ruling that Mississippi's law banning most abortions after 15 weeks is unconstitutional. The 2018 state law remains blocked and Mississippi's only abortion clinic remains open. The owner has said the clinic d oes abortions up to 16 weeks. Mississippi is likely to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case. (1/17)

The Associated Press: LGBT Activists Say New Bills Target Transgender Youth 
At the urging of conservative advocacy groups, Republican legislators in more than a dozen states are promoting bills that focus on transgender young people. One batch of bills would bar doctors from providing them certain gender-related medical treatment; another batch would bar trans students from participating on school sports teams of the gender they identify with. (1/18)

The Associated Press: Ohio State Doctor Abuse Investigation, Suits Have Cost $9.8M
The investigation and related lawsuits about alleged sexual abuse decades ago by an Ohio State University team doctor have cost nearly $10 million so far, according to the school. The total was about $9.8 million as of December, school spokesman Benjamin Johnson said by email. (1/18)

The Washington Post: Fighting Suicides In Dairy Country Through ‘Farmer Angels’
On what would have been Leon Statz’s 59th birthday, two dozen plaid-shirted farmers sat in the basement of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church to talk about how they were coping with the forces conspiring against them — the forces that had pushed their neighbor, a third-generation dairyman, to kill himself. The gathering was therapy of the most urgent kind. Statz’s 2018 suicide was the first some of the farmers had ever experienced, and in the small community of Loganville, it was a tragic jolt. (Simmons, 1/18)

The New York Times: A Doctor Abused Her. His Name Is On Her Child’s Birth Certificate.
To register her twin daughters for kindergarten a few years ago, Marissa Hoechstetter needed their birth certificates. It had been quite a while since she had last looked closely at them, and when she pulled the papers out, what she saw made her stomach turn, she said. There, on a document that legally and symbolically marked the start of her children’s lives, was the name of a gynecologist in New York City who she said sexually abused her, Robert A. Hadden. (Gold, 1/17)

The Associated Press: Virginia Teens Advocate For Seizure Safe School Legislation
Rowena and Thomas Gesick take turns sleeping in their daughter’s room every night so they can monitor her for seizures while she sleeps. But when Brie goes to school in the morning, the personnel are not required to know how to recognize and respond to seizures. Two families — the Gesick family from Virginia Beach and the Van Cleave family from Yorktown — want to change that, so they’re advocating for Seizure Safe School legislation in Virginia. (Nolte, 1/18)

The Washington Post: Bill Marler Fought E.Coli. Now He Wants Tougher Salmonella Regulations.
Bill Marler, the Seattle lawyer who represented hundreds of victims in the Jack in the Box food poisoning case in the 1990s, was outraged by the avoidable tragedy that sickened 700 and claimed the lives of four children. He courted the media to get the E. coli bacteria on the agenda of policymakers — and played a key role in getting the U.S. Department of Agriculture to outlaw the most virulent strains of the pathogen in meat. (Kindy, 1/19)

Los Angeles Times: Feds Investigate Causes Of A Norovirus Outbreak At Yosemite National Park
As of Monday, one of the West’s most majestic national parks had received reports of about 170 visitors and employees with similar symptoms and most had spent time in Yosemite Valley earlier this month. The National Park Service and other health agencies have launched an investigation into the outbreak, casting a pall over Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday, when visitors were allowed free of charge into the 1,162-square-mile Sierra Nevada landmark known for its giant sequoia trees, towering granite ridges and tumbling waterfalls. (Sahagun, 1/20)