First Edition: January 23, 2018

Kaiser Health News: CHIP Renewed For Six Years As Congress Votes To Reopen Federal Government
Republicans, said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Sunday, “were using the 10 million kids on CHIP, holding them as hostage for the 800,000 kids who were Dreamers. Kids against kids. Innocent kids against innocent kids. That’s no way to operate in this country.” Republicans, however, said it was the opposite — that Democrats were holding CHIP hostage by not voting for the spending bill. “There is no reason for my colleagues to pit their righteous crusade on immigration against their righteous crusade for CHIP,” said Hatch. “This is simply a matter of priorities.” (Rovner, 1/22)

Kaiser Health News: Tax Bill Provision Designed To Spur Paid Family Leave To Lower-Wage Workers
Tucked into the new tax law is a provision that offers companies a tax credit if they provide paid family and medical leave for lower-wage workers. Many people support a national strategy for paid parental and family leave, especially for workers who are not in management and are less likely to get that benefit on the job. But consultants, scholars and consumer advocates alike say the new tax credit will encourage few companies to take the plunge. (Andrews, 1/23)

The New York Times: Government Shutdown Ends After 3 Days Of Recriminations
Congress brought an end to a three-day government shutdown on Monday as Senate Democrats buckled under pressure to adopt a short-term spending bill to fund government operations without first addressing the fate of young undocumented immigrants. The House quickly approved the measure — which will fund the government through Feb. 8 and extend funding for the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program for six years — and President Trump signed it on Monday night. (Stolberg and Kaplan, 1/22)

The Washington Post: Short-Term Spending Agreement Provides Longer-Term Relief For CHIP
The spending bill that the Senate and House adopted Monday, and that President Trump signed, provides six years of federal money for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a bipartisan creation that furnishes coverage to nearly 9 million children and 375,000 pregnant women. The budget for CHIP, as it is known, ended on Sept. 30 without lawmakers having reauthorized it as they had done several times over its two decades — usually months in advance of the deadline. States, which share responsibility for CHIP, had been running short of federal funds for their programs at different paces. Connecticut became the first to freeze enrollment just before Christmas, and at least five states notified families that they would need to do so soon. Eleven other states were expecting to run out by the end of next month. (Goldstein, 1/22)

The Hill: Congress Funds Children's Health Program After Four-Month Delay
"This action ends months of anxiety and worry for the hard-working families who rely on CHIP for life-saving health care," said Frederick Isasi, executive director of Families USA, a health care advocacy group in D.C. "States — some of which had already sent notices to families warning of looming CHIP enrollment freezes—can now set about restoring trust that CHIP will be there for kids and their families." (Hellmann, 1/22)

The Washington Post: Shutdown Ends After Democrats Agree To Trust That McConnell Will Allow ‘Dreamer’ Vote
The impact of the shutdown, which began at midnight Friday, was minimal, leaving hundreds of thousands of federal workers unsure of what the week would bring — but stretching into just one workday. Lawmakers agreed to fund the government through Feb. 8 after McConnell (R-Ky.) said he would address the status of young immigrants called “dreamers” who were brought to this country illegally as children. (Sullivan, O'Keefe and Viebeck, 1/22)

The Wall Street Journal: Congress Passes Three-Week Spending Bill To End Shutdown
The agreement will keep the federal government running through Feb. 8, but did little to resolve the underlying policy fights over immigration and government-spending levels and doesn’t preclude a similar shutdown next month. The deal also opened a rift in the Democratic Party between a left flank that wanted to hold out now for an agreement on the young immigrants known as Dreamers and a more centrist group eager to reopen the government and work out a bipartisan compromise. (Peterson, Hook and Andrews, 1/22)

The Associated Press: Deal That Broke Senate Impasse: Kids' Health But No DACA
The agreement [also includes] delays to three taxes under the Obama-era health care law: the medical device tax through 2019, the so-called Cadillac tax on generous employer-paid health care plans through 2021 and a tax on health insurance companies through 2019. (1/22)

Stat: Congress Delays Medical Device Tax For Two Years
Almost no one got everything they wanted out of the Monday deal to reopen the government — except perhaps medical device companies, who managed to fend off an industry-wide excise tax before the first payments were due. The stopgap spending deal that was signed by President Trump on Monday included a two-year delay of the 2.3 percent tax, which was originally included in the Affordable Care Act to help pay for the law’s health insurance subsidies. (Mershon, 1/22)

CQ: Many Health Care Provisions Wait In Limbo For An Omnibus Deal
Lawmakers' focus over the next three weeks will be a long-term spending bill and immigration issues but, as usual in this session, health care issues could creep into the debate. ... But Congress still needs to address a slate of health care issues left over from last year that lawmakers and aides have said could move as part of an omnibus spending bill. (McIntire, 1/22)

Los Angeles Times: Trump Signs Bill To Reopen Government — For Three Weeks — After Bipartisan Deal
The deal was worked out by a gang of 30 or so senators calling themselves the Common Sense Coalition, which grew in numbers over the weekend during frantic negotiations to end the standoff. Now many lawmakers in both parties are hoping the moderate group will continue to exert its influence to break the logjam, even as a few ideological factions were plotting how to stamp it out. (Mascaro, 1/22)

Politico: Congress Votes To End Shutdown
Coons and King were part of a group of at least two dozen senators who began meeting late last week in the office of Sen. Susan Collins to broker a deal to stave off a shutdown — much like the effort that the Maine Republican led in 2013. To try and keep the peace, Collins wouldn't let any senator in the room talk unless they were holding a "talking stick" — which one aide later said was a Maasai leadership stick that Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) gave Collins a few years ago. At one point, Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee forcefully tossed the stick toward Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia after Warner interrupted him, nearly shattering a glass elephant belonging to Collins, according to two people briefed on the throw. After that incident, Collins suggested using a small rubber ball, and Alexander also brought his own basketball "because it’d be safer than a stick," an aide said. (Kim, Everett and Schor, 1/22)

The Hill: Collins 'Optimistic' ObamaCare Fixes Will Pass 
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said Monday that she is “optimistic” that the ObamaCare fixes she is pushing for can still pass, despite the deadline for voting on them having “slipped.” “Our negotiations with the House are going very, very well,” Collins told reporters. “The deadline slipped but the policy is what is important.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnel (R-Ky.) in December gave a commitment to Collins to support the passage of two bills aimed at stabilizing ObamaCare markets and lowering premiums before the end of the year, in exchange for her vote for the tax reform bill. (Sullivan, 1/22)

The Wall Street Journal: How Doctors Deal With Racist Patients
Darien Sutton-Ramsey walked into a patient’s room at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan a few months ago. The mother of the patient demanded that a physician come in. “Well, you’ve got it, I’m here,” responded Dr. Sutton-Ramsey, a third-year resident in the emergency medicine department at NYU Langone Health. The mother didn’t believe that Dr. Sutton-Ramsey, who is African-American, was a doctor. She asked to talk to the physician-in-charge. His supervisor was also black. The patient ended up refusing medical care and left the emergency room. (Reddy, 1/22)

The Wall Street Journal: Flu Season Continues To Worsen
The number of people sick with the flu is continuing to climb, and transmission is now the most intense it has been since the 2009 pandemic, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials said Monday. The federal agency continued to track and respond to the epidemic despite the government shutdown. Its flu laboratories were working Monday, and “we are continuing to look at data we have received from states so that public-health officials can know about their community and influenza,” CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald said in an interview. (McKay, 1/22)

Stat: Two Biotechs Vying For The First Peanut Allergy Treatment Have Readouts Coming Soon. Here’s What To Expect
Two drug makers — Aimmune Therapeutics (AIMT) and AnaptysBio (ANAB) — are developing different methods to protect people against severe peanut allergy and will disclose important clinical trial results within the next two months. Anyone with school-age children knows peanut allergy is a serious and prevalent health problem. It’s estimated that between 1.5 million to 2 million people under 18 in the U.S. have peanut allergy. Apart from scrupulous peanut avoidance, there are no approved treatments for people at risk for severe allergic reaction if exposed to even trace amounts of peanut protein. (Feuerstein, 1/23)

Stat: Dr. Reddy's Fined For Knowingly Shipping Drugs That Were Not Child Resistant
Six years after an embarrassing episode came to light, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories has agreed to pay a $5 million fine for knowingly distributing medicines in blister packs that were not child resistant as required by federal law. In disclosing the settlement, the U.S. Department of Justice noted that packaging engineers at the company’s subsidiary in New Jersey prepared a report in 2011 detailing how child-resistant blister packs for several medicines did not meet federal standards. Despite being urged by its own employees to test the packaging, the company shipped the generic medicines anyway, according to court documents. (Silverman, 1/22)

Reuters: Study: Being Around Trees And Other Greenery May Help Teens Stave Off Depression
Exposure to trees and other greenery has been shown to stave off depression in adults, and a new study finds the same may be true for teenagers. Researchers looked at more than 9,000 children 12 to 18 and found those who lived in areas with a lot of natural vegetation were less likely to display high levels of depression symptoms. The effect was strongest among middle schoolers, the study team reports in the Journal of Adolescent Health. (Gillis, 1/22)

The Wall Street Journal: P&G Trying To Stop ‘Dangerous’ Tide Pods Challenge, CEO Says
Procter & Gamble Co. Chief Executive David Taylor on Monday outlined steps the company is taking to keep teens from eating Tide laundry pods for sport, a behavior he called a “dangerous trend” fueled by social media. In a blog published by the company, Mr. Taylor said the company has put out public-service announcements and is asking industry and advocacy groups to discourage the game while working with social media companies to stop the spread of videos of the so-called Tide Pod challenge. (Terlep, 1/22)

The Associated Press: Vermont Governor With 'Mixed Emotions' Signs Marijuana Bill
Gov. Phil Scott on Monday privately signed Vermont's marijuana bill into law, making the state the first in the country to authorize the recreational use of the substance by an act of a state legislature. The law, which goes into effect July 1, allows adults to possess up to 1 ounce of marijuana, two mature and four immature plants. (1/22)

The Associated Press: Arkansas Scabies Cases In Nursing Homes Linked To Inaction
A scabies outbreak at a south Arkansas nursing home spread throughout the facility and into the community after those in charge failed to act, according to a government report. Government documents show that officials at Longmeadow Nursing Care in Camden told nursing staff in some cases not to leave any documentation indicating they were treating residents for scabies, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported . Scabies is a highly contagious skin condition caused by mites, according to the U.S. Library of Medicine. (1/22)

The Washington Post: Emanuel Zayas Dies After Doctors Remove 10-Pound Tumor From Cuban Boy’s Face
The basketball-size tumor was finally gone, and the first signs after Emanuel Zayas’s surgery were deceptively encouraging. The 14-year-old’s eyes had begun to react to stimulation. The muscles on his face were strengthening. For a moment, his family, doctors and other supporters exhaled. But inside, the teen was already dying, according to Miami NBC-affiliate WTVJ. (Wootson, 1/22)