First Edition: January 28, 2016

Kaiser Health News: Despite Kvetching, Most Consumers Satisfied With Health Plans: Poll
Bashing insurance companies may be a popular pastime, but a poll released Thursday found most people were satisfied with their choices of doctors and even thought the cost of their health coverage was reasonable. The Kaiser Family Foundation poll revealed that 71 percent of insured adults younger than 65 considered the health care services they receive to be either “excellent” or “good” values. (Rau, 1/28)

The Washington Post: Many Uninsured Americans Seem Oblivious As ACA Enrollment Deadline Nears
As the third open enrollment season for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act comes to a close on Sunday, a new poll reveals that many uninsured Americans still aren't paying attention. The poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, released Thursday, found that the majority of the uninsured say they don't know the deadline for getting coverage this year. Virtually no one knew that the fine for going without health insurance in 2016 has jumped to $695 per adult or 2.5 percent of household income -- whichever is higher. (Sun, 1/28)

The Associated Press: Poll: Uninsured Sit On The Sidelines As Sign-Up Season Ends
A new poll finds most uninsured Americans sitting on the sidelines as sign-up season under President Barack Obama's health care law comes to a close. ... Only 15 percent of the uninsured know that this year's open enrollment deadline is this coming Sunday. ... About two-thirds say they have not been contacted about signing up. The health care law has led to historic gains in coverage, but the poll signals those gains may be slowing. (1/28)

Los Angeles Times: Insurance Costs Dominate Public Worries About Healthcare, Survey Finds
Though President Obama's Affordable Care Act continues to animate political debate in Washington and on the campaign trail, Americans are more concerned with basic healthcare issues such as the cost of their health insurance, a new national poll shows. The health law ranked eighth among issues voters identified as most likely to be extremely important to their vote for president this year, with 23% identifying the 2010 legislation, commonly called Obamacare. (Levey, 1/28)

The New York Times: Oklahoma Resists Push For Enrollment In Affordable Care Act Coverage
A resolute band of insurance counselors, undeterred by the politics of health care in this staunchly conservative state, is increasing its efforts to find people who are uninsured and enroll them in coverage before the Affordable Care Act’s third annual open enrollment period ends on Sunday. But the push is facing Dust Bowl-force headwinds in one of the states most hostile to the health law — from some Oklahoma officials and from residents who mistrust all things federal. (Pear, 1/27)

The Washington Post: OPM Opens Additional But Limited Insurance Enrollment For Feds
The Office of Personnel Management will hold a limited open enrollment period for active federal employees who want to sign up for single plus one health insurance coverage. Self plus one is a new option in the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program. It allows enrollees to obtain coverage for themselves and one other family member. In most cases that coverage costs less than family coverage. (Davidson, 1/27)

The New York Times: Theranos Lab May Pose Threat To Patient Safety, Regulator Says
A federal regulator has found that a lab run by Theranos, the Silicon Valley laboratory that promised to perform blood tests with a simple finger stick, violated several clinical standards, including one it said posed a threat to patient safety that had to be immediately corrected. The regulator, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, conducted an inspection of the company’s Newark, Calif., laboratory last year, but it issued a letter this week detailing the violations and raising the possibility that Theranos could lose certification for the lab in question. (Abelson, 1/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Theranos Lab Practices Pose Risk to Patient Health, Regulators Say
[The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] defined one infraction by the blood-testing company, based in Palo Alto, Calif., as a situation “likely to cause, at any time, serious injury or harm, or death, to individuals served by the laboratory or to the health and safety of the general public.” If the lab doesn’t correct them and come back into compliance, CMS could revoke the facility’s certification to test human specimens and fine Theranos as much as $10,000 a day, according to the letter. (Carreyrou, 1/27)

The Associated Press: Regulators Warn Testing Startup Theranos Over Lab Conditions
Federal regulators have issued a warning to blood-testing startup Theranos, saying some of the Silicon Valley company's testing procedures do not meet standards designed to protect patients. Inspectors for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services sent a letter to Theranos, citing five deficiencies at a laboratory run by the privately held company. In the Jan. 25 letter, inspectors say that some of the problems "pose immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety." (1/27)

USA Today: Theranos Lab Poses 'Immediate Jeopardy' To Patients, Say Regulators
A California startup offering easy and inexpensive blood tests to help people check themselves for STIs, celiac disease or high cholesterol levels has again run afoul of federal lab regulators. It’s the latest public blow for the formerly high-flying Theranos of Palo Alto, Calif., which in September “voluntarily paused” the use of its specialized finger-prick blood draws. (Hughes, 1/27)

The Washington Post's Wonkblog: Deficiencies At Theranos ‘Pose Immediate Jeopardy To Patient Health’
Theranos, once valued at $9 billion based on its immense promise to make blood testing cheaper and more efficient, has been embroiled in questions about its technology and regulatory strategy for months. The scrutiny was sparked by a Wall Street Journal investigation that revealed that the intensely secret company's much-touted fingerprick blood tests were barely being used and employees had raised questions about the accuracy of its tests. (Johnson, 1/27)

Reuters: Health Insurer Anthem Says Obamacare Costs Drag Down Fourth-Quarter Profit
Health insurer Anthem Inc, which is in the process of buying smaller rival Cigna Corp, said on Wednesday its individual Obamacare exchange health plans weighed on fourth-quarter profit, causing it to miss analysts' expectations. Anthem said that it had nearly 800,000 people enrolled in plans through the exchanges, which were created under President Barack Obama's national healthcare reform law, about 30 percent below its expectations. Without the membership it had planned for, costs of running the business were too high, Anthem said. (Humer, 27)

The Associated Press: Anthem 4Q Profit Falls 64 Pct, Misses Expectations
Anthem’s fourth-quarter earnings tumbled 64 percent as the health insurer absorbed some sizeable expenses and booked fewer customers than it expected through the Affordable Care Act’s public insurance exchanges. The Blue Cross Blue Shield insurer continued to expand its business from government programs like Medicaid and reaffirmed its forecast for the new year. But earnings fell short of Wall Street expectations, and its stock price fell more than 2 percent in afternoon trading Wednesday. (Murphy, 1/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Anthem Medical Costs Rise
Health insurer Anthem Inc. said more of its premiums went toward paying medical costs in its latest quarter, eating into profit, though revenue rose more than expected. The company also said it expects revenue for 2016 in the range of $80 billion to $81 billion, below analysts’ consensus expectations for $82.98 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. (Steele and Wilde Mathews, 1/27)

The Washington Post: Pelosi Dismisses Portions Of Sanders’s Tax And Health-Care Agenda: ‘It’s Not Going To Happen’
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) dismissed portions of Bernie Sanders’s agenda Wednesday, welcoming the Vermont senator’s energetic support for his presidential bid but declaring that some of his deeply liberal ideas were unrealistic. Kicking off a three-day retreat of House Democrats in her childhood home town, Pelosi said that the party’s agenda would not include a call to raise taxes and would continue to embrace the Affordable Care Act that Democrats bitterly fought for in 2010. (Kane, 1/27)

The New York Times: John Kasich Is Called An ‘Obama Republican’ In New Hampshire Ads
Gov. John Kasich of Ohio has steadily gained ground in the New Hampshire polls, drawing few attacks from his opponents as they have fought among themselves. Now, that will begin to change. A national conservative group, the American Future Fund, ... will run a commercial that goes after Mr. Kasich for supporting Common Core educational standards and expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. It shows an image of Mr. Kasich smiling, face to face with Barack Obama, and calls him “one of the few Republican governors to cheerlead Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion.” (Burns, 1/27)

The New York Times: Scientists Move Closer to Understanding Schizophrenia’s Cause
Scientists reported on Wednesday that they had taken a significant step toward understanding the cause of schizophrenia, in a landmark study that provides the first rigorously tested insight into the biology behind any common psychiatric disorder. ... The researchers pieced together the steps by which genes can increase a person’s risk of developing schizophrenia. That risk, they found, is tied to a natural process called synaptic pruning, in which the brain sheds weak or redundant connections between neurons as it matures. During adolescence and early adulthood, this activity takes place primarily in the section of the brain where thinking and planning skills are centered, known as the prefrontal cortex. People who carry genes that accelerate or intensify that pruning are at higher risk of developing schizophrenia than those who do not, the new study suggests. (Carey, 1/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Study Gives New Clues To Schizophrenia Risks
Scientists have identified key genetic traits that for the first time point to a biological mechanism behind schizophrenia. There has been a tremendous amount of research on the genetics of the condition, which has a strong hereditary component. But, previous work has yielded little understanding into what goes wrong in the brain to cause the illness, which is characterized by cognitive and emotional changes, often including hallucinations and delusions. (Wang, 1/27)

The Washington Post: Scientists Open The ‘Black Box’ Of Schizophrenia With Dramatic Genetic Discovery
For the first time, scientists have pinned down a molecular process in the brain that helps to trigger schizophrenia. The researchers involved in the landmark study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Nature, say the discovery of this new genetic pathway probably reveals what goes wrong neurologically in a young person diagnosed with the devastating disorder. The study marks a watershed moment, with the potential for early detection and new treatments that were unthinkable just a year ago. (Ellis Nutt, 1/27)

Los Angeles Times: Geneticists Uncover A Key Clue To Schizophrenia
Scientists say they have broken new ground in the study of schizophrenia, uncovering a potentially powerful genetic contributor to the mental disorder and helping to explain why its symptoms of confused and delusional thinking most often reach a crisis state as a person nears the cusp of adulthood. Genes associated with the function of the immune system have long been suspected in schizophrenia, but scientists have been at a loss to understand the nature of the link. (Healy, 1/27)

The Associated Press: Drug Abuse Bill Raises Hopes For Election-Year Achievement
In a testy election year likely to see scant collaboration between Republicans and Democrats, there's a glint of hope in Congress for a bipartisan bill aimed at fighting heroin and opioid addiction — a deadly, growing problem that afflicts states both red and blue. Senate and House bills establishing grants to combat abuse, improve treatment and bolster some law enforcement programs are winning support from members of both parties. President Barack Obama used this month's State of Union address to call such legislation one area where lawmakers "might surprise the cynics" and get something done this year. (1/27)

NPR: Congress Moves To Tackle Heroin, Prescription Drug Epidemic
What is being done to fight heroin and prescription drug abuse in hard-hit states like New Hampshire? What can Congress do to help? Lawmakers tackle the issue. (Chang, 1/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Officials Call For Stronger Efforts To Combat Heroin, Painkiller Abuse
Governors, senators and law-enforcement officials on Wednesday called for stronger efforts to combat heroin and painkiller addiction, saying the problem was overwhelming police, health-care workers and families in every state. At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, they argued for more federal funding, wider access to substance-abuse treatment and stricter rules for painkiller prescribing to fight the main driver of soaring drug overdose rates. (Whalen, 1/27)

The Associated Press: Sen. Manchin Joins Growing Opposition To FDA Nominee
Add West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin to the growing list of lawmakers vowing to block President Barack Obama's nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration. In a statement Wednesday, Manchin cited Dr. Robert Califf's ties to the pharmaceutical industry and argued that it would make it difficult for him to deal with the prescription opioid crisis. Califf was a cardiologist and medical researcher at Duke University for more than 30 years. (1/27)

The Wall Street Journal: White House Remains Confident In FDA Nominee
The Obama administration has “full confidence” in its nominee to run the Food and Drug Administration despite a Democratic senator’s plan to filibuster the nomination, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday. Mr. Earnest said the White House is confident Robert Califf has the ability “to make the kinds of decisions that are in the best interests of the health and safety of the American people.” (Burton, 1/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Massachusetts Examining Gilead’s Hepatitis C Drug Pricing
The Massachusetts attorney general’s office is investigating whether Gilead Sciences Inc.’s pricing of its hepatitis C drugs violates state laws on unfair trade practices, according to a letter from the prosecutor that also asked the company to lower its prices. The costs for drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni are a significant burden on state Medicaid and prison programs that must care for large populations of hepatitis C patients, Attorney General Maura Healey wrote, and not all patients can get access to the potentially curative treatments. (Rockoff, 1/27)

The New York Times: Gilead Faces Fights Over Hepatitis C And H.I.V. Drugs
The attorney general of Massachusetts said on Wednesday that she had opened an inquiry into whether Gilead Sciences had violated state consumer protection laws by charging too much for its hepatitis C drugs. ... [And] on Tuesday, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a nonprofit organization that treats patients with H.I.V. and AIDS, filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate patents covering the new version of Gilead’s mainstay H.I.V. drug, tenofovir. The lawsuit also says that Gilead, to maximize product life span but to the detriment of patients, delayed the introduction of the new, safer version of tenofovir until the old version was about to lose patent protection. (Pollack, 1/27)

USA Today: Experts: USA Must Prepare Now For Zika Virus
U.S. public health officials must prepare now for the inevitable arrival of Zika virus, a mosquito-borne infection that has spread to 22 countries and territories in the Americas and poses particular danger to pregnant women, health experts said. International air travel will help the virus spread quickly, said Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University in Washington. Zika doesn’t spread from person to person, but a mosquito carrying the virus could hitch a ride on the plane and end up in the USA. An American mosquito could become a carrier of the virus if it bites an infected person who contracted the virus while traveling in an affected country. (Szabo, 1/27)

The New York Times: Doctors Who Get Sued Are Likely To Get Sued Again
One percent of all doctors account for 32 percent of all paid malpractice claims, and the more often a doctor is sued, the more likely he or she will be sued again. Researchers analyzed 10 years of paid malpractice claims using the National Practitioner Data Bank, a federal government database that includes 66,426 claims against 54,099 doctors. The study is in the New England Journal of Medicine. (Bakalar, 1/27)

The New York Times: Wounded Warrior Project Spends Lavishly On Itself, Insiders Say
In [The Wounded Warrior Project's] swift rise, it has embraced aggressive styles of fund-raising, marketing and personnel management that have many current and former employees questioning whether it has drifted from its mission. ... The charity recently pledged to raise $500 million for a trust to fund lifetime supplemental health care for severely wounded veterans. And on Tuesday, it started a program to provide care for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries, two of the most common injuries for veterans of recent wars. Such ambitious programs would be impossible without significant spending on fund-raising and staff, said Mr. Nardizzi, its chief executive. (Philipps, 1/27)

Reuters: Texas Urges Supreme Court To Uphold Abortion Law
The state of Texas on Wednesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold its restrictions on abortion providers, citing the case of a Philadelphia doctor convicted in 2013 of murdering babies at his abortion clinic. Lawyers for Texas were responding to court papers filed by abortion providers who challenged the 2013 state law. The high court is due to hear oral arguments on March 2 and issue a ruling by the end of June. It is one of the biggest cases before the nine justices in their current term. (Hurley, 1/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Cancer Centers Urge Increase In HPV Vaccinations
The top cancer centers in the U.S. jointly called for an increase in vaccination against the human papilloma virus, or HPV, saying low uptake of the three-shot regimens amounts to a “public health threat” and a major missed opportunity to prevent a variety of potentially lethal malignancies. In a statement issued Wednesday, all 69 of the nation’s National Cancer Institute-designated centers urged parents and health-care providers to “protect the health of our children” by taking steps to have all boys and girls complete the three-dose vaccination by their 13th birthdays, as recommended by federal guidelines, or as soon as possible in children between 13 and 17 years old. (Winslow, 1/27)

Reuters: No New Grand Jury For Two Indicted In Planned Parenthood Videos: Prosecutor
Two people indicted by a Texas grand jury for presenting fake driver's licenses as part of a plan to secretly video tape Planned Parenthood will not have their cases presented again to a new grand jury, the prosecutor in the case said on Wednesday. (Herskovitz, 1/28)

The Associated Press: Obama To Seek $12B From Congress For Child Nutrition
President Barack Obama plans to ask Congress for $12 billion over a decade to help feed millions of schoolchildren from low-income families during the summer, the White House said Wednesday. Nearly 22 million low-income children receive free and reduced-price meals during the school year, but just a fraction of those kids receive meals when school is out. The disparity puts those children at higher risk of hunger and poor nutrition during the summer months, the White House said. (1/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Flint Water Crisis Shines Light On Lead Pipes Crisscrossing The U.S.
The water crisis in Flint, Mich., has exposed the danger that lead could potentially leach into the drinking water of millions of Americans, showing what can go wrong if aging infrastructure isn’t properly monitored and maintained. Lead is common in pipes across the country, mostly in service lines linking street pipes to people’s homes. Millions of pipes now in use were installed well before 1986, when federal law banned lead pipes and solder, and some date back to the 1800s. (McWhirter and Maher, 1/28)

NPR: Teaching Parenting Skills At Doctor Visits Helps Children's Behavior
As researchers have come to understand how poverty and its stresses influence children's brain development, they've begun untangling how that can lead to increased behavior problems and learning difficulties for disadvantaged kids. Rather than trying to treat those problems, NYU child development specialists Adriana Weisleder and Alan Mendelsohn want to head them off. They say they've found a way: Working with low-income parents when they bring babies and young children to the pediatrician. They've been able to reduce key obstacles to learning like hyperactivity and difficulty paying attention, according to research published Wednesday in the journal Pediatrics. (Rancano, 1/27)