First Edition: July 1, 2024

KFF Health News: The Concierge Catch: Better Access For A Few Patients Disrupts Care For Many
“You had to pay the fee, or the doctor wasn’t going to see you anymore.” That was the takeaway for Terri Marroquin of Midland, Texas, when her longtime physician began charging a membership fee in 2019. She found out about the change when someone at the physician’s front desk pointed to a posted notice. At first, she stuck with the practice; in her area, she said, it is now tough to find a primary care doctor who doesn’t charge an annual membership fee from $350 to $500. (Rossheim, 7/1)

KFF Health News: Idaho’s OB-GYN Exodus Throws Women In Rural Towns Into A Care Void
The ultrasound in February that found a mass growing in her uterus and abnormally thick uterine lining brought Jonell Anderson more than anxiety over diagnosis and treatment. For Anderson and other patients in this rural community who need gynecological care, stress over discovering an illness is compounded by the challenges they face getting to a doctor. (Orozco Rodriguez, 7/1)

KFF Health News: Journalists Break Down SCOTUS Decision On Purdue Pharma And California's New Heat Rules
KFF Health News and California Healthline staff hit the airwaves in the last couple of weeks to discuss stories in the headlines. Here’s a collection of their appearances. (6/29)

KFF Health News: Supreme Court OKs Local Crackdowns On Homelessness, As Advocates Warn Of Chaos
The U.S. Supreme Court’s watershed decision on homelessness Friday will make it easier for elected officials and law enforcement authorities nationwide to fine and arrest people who live on streets and sidewalks, in broken-down vehicles, or within city parks — which could have far-reaching health consequences for homeless Americans and their communities. In a 6-to-3 ruling in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the justices in the majority said allowing the targeting of homeless people occupying public spaces. (Hart, 6/28)

KFF Health News: 1st Biden-Trump Debate Of 2024: What They Got Wrong, And Right
President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Democratic and Republican presidential nominees, shared a debate stage June 27 for the first time since 2020, in a confrontation that — because of strict debate rules — managed to avoid the near-constant interruptions that marred their previous encounters. Biden, who spoke in a raspy voice and often struggled to articulate his arguments, said at one point that his administration “finally beat Medicare.” Trump, meanwhile, repeated numerous falsehoods, including that Democrats want doctors to be able to abort babies after birth. (6/28)

KFF Health News' 'What The Health?' Podcast: SCOTUS Ruling Strips Power From Federal Health Agencies
In what will certainly be remembered as a landmark decision, the Supreme Court has overruled a 40-year-old precedent that gave federal agencies, rather than judges, the power to interpret ambiguous laws passed by Congress. ... Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Victoria Knight of Axios, and Joanne Kenen of Johns Hopkins University and Politico Magazine join KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more. (Rovner, 6/28)

The Washington Post: GOP Leaders Call For Probes Into Alleged Affordable Care Act Fraud 
House Republican leaders are asking government watchdogs to investigate health insurance sign-ups through the Affordable Care Act, citing reports that allege insurance brokers are fraudulently enrolling customers into some ACA health plans and that millions of Americans may be wrongly benefiting from federal insurance subsidies. ... The allegations center on a report from the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative think tank, which concluded that as many as 5 million Americans may be wrongly receiving ACA insurance subsidies. The allegations also are driven by recent KFF Health News reports about unscrupulous brokers falsifying information to enroll customers or wrongly switching customers between plans without their knowledge or consent, a development that has stirred bipartisan anger. (Diamond, 6/29)

The Washington Post: It Was A $6.6B Deal For 9 Years. Then The Feds Reneged. Did Politics Play A Role?
On the surface, 1-800-MEDICARE is a government success story: a free, popular service helping tens of millions of older Americans understand their health insurance and options for care. The call line boasts a 95 percent satisfaction rate, according to federal officials. But behind the scenes, the multibillion-dollar job of running the Medicare call line and similar services for the Affordable Care Act — one of the richest service contracts offered by the federal government — has sparked a bitter battle between a powerful labor union, a prominent federal contractor and politicians who are now accusing the White House of delivering an election-year favor for its union allies. (Diamond, 6/28)

Stat: Big Medicare Test Of Kidney Dialysis Care Isn’t Working, Studies Say
A few years ago, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched a big experiment. The agency wanted to see if financial incentives and penalties would improve care for people with end-stage kidney disease. So far, it hasn’t worked, a new study finds. (Cueto, 6/30)

The New York Times: Nevada Residents Will Vote On Abortion Rights In November
Nevada residents will vote on whether to protect the right to abortion in the state this November, as abortion rights groups try to continue their winning streak with measures that put the issue directly before voters. The Nevada secretary of state’s office certified on Friday the ballot initiative to amend the State Constitution to include an explicit right to abortion after verifying the signatures required. ... In Nevada, abortion is legal through 24 weeks of pregnancy. But organizers of the ballot initiative are seeking to amend the State Constitution to protect abortion up to the point of fetal viability — also around 24 weeks — because it is harder to change the Constitution than repeal state law. (Taft, 6/30)

Politico: Abortion Rights Groups Argue Florida Is Trying To Throw Up Barriers To Amendment 
Abortion-rights groups in Florida are locked in a battle with the state over the cost for a ballot measure that would overturn the state’s six-week ban. The fight is over a seemingly obscure fiscal impact statement estimating the cost to the state for passing the proposed constitutional amendment. It highlights how both pro-abortion rights and anti-abortion forces are clawing for every inch of ground ahead of a campaign that will see tens of millions of dollars spent across the country’s third-largest state. (Sarkissian, 6/30)

NPR: Kentucky Judge Throws Out Jewish Mothers' Lawsuit Challenging The State's Abortion Ban 
A Kentucky judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by three Jewish mothers who argued that the state's near-total abortion ban violated the religious freedoms of those who believe life begins at birth, not conception. On Friday evening, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Brian Edwards said the group of women lacked standing to bring the case and sided with the state's attorney general, who defended the state's abortion laws. In Kentucky, abortions are banned in almost all circumstances except in cases when a pregnant woman's life is in imminent danger of death or permanent injury. (Kim, 6/29)

USA Today: After Supreme Court Idaho Abortion Ruling, Doctors Want More Clarity
After news broke that the Supreme Court would allow emergency abortions again in Idaho, a message went out to the entire staff of St. Luke’s Health System on the organization's intranet. If a very sick pregnant patient comes to the emergency room or labor and delivery triage, the message said, staff will no longer have to send them out of state for an abortion, according to Peg Dougherty, deputy general counsel for the health system. Doctors could once again terminate a patient's pregnancy to protect her health, not just to save their life, Dougherty said. (Yancey-Bragg, 6/28)

The New York Times: She Needed An Emergency Abortion. Doctors In Idaho Put Her On A Plane. 
Nicole Miller had gone to the emergency room in Boise, Idaho, after waking up with heavy bleeding in her 20th week of pregnancy. By afternoon, she was still leaking amniotic fluid and hemorrhaging and, now in a panic, struggling to understand why the doctor was telling her that she needed to leave the state to be treated. “If I need saving, you’re not going to help me?” she recalls asking. She remembers his answer vividly: “He told me he wasn’t willing to risk his 20-year career.” Instead, that evening, hospital workers at St. Luke’s Boise Medical Center put Ms. Miller on a small plane to Utah. (Zernike, 6/28)

North Carolina Health News: One Year Into New Abortion Law, Patients And Providers Feel Impact
Katherine Farris has been an abortion provider for more than 20 years, and she says that this past year has been the hardest of her career — by a long shot. (Crumpler, 7/1)

The Wall Street Journal: These Men Are On The Front Lines Of The Abortion-Rights Movement 
A push to boost the ranks of men fighting for abortion rights picked up a fresh recruit in a driveway here the other day, some four months before Florida voters will decide whether to add abortion rights to their constitution and effectively scrap the state’s six-week ban. The pitch came from Ethan Temple, an earnest 20-year-old promoting the amendment in shirt-soaking humidity. More guys need to get “off the sidelines,” such as by knocking on doors and rallying in support of bodily autonomy, he told Jordan Gulbronson, a web designer returning from a bagel run. (Calvert, 6/30)

The New York Times: Biden Administration Opposes Surgery For Transgender Minors 
The Biden administration said this week that it opposed gender-affirming surgery for minors, the most explicit statement to date on the subject from a president who has been a staunch supporter of transgender rights. The White House announcement was sent to The New York Times on Wednesday in response to an article reporting that staff in the office of Adm. Rachel Levine, an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, had urged an influential international transgender health organization to remove age minimums for surgery from its treatment guidelines for minors. (Rabin, Rosenbluth and Weiland, 6/28)

The 19th: Texas Supreme Court Upholds Gender-Affirming Care Ban For Trans Youth
The Texas Supreme Court found that parents in the state do not have the constitutional right to seek gender-affirming care for their children. The court on Friday upheld the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth in a ruling that pushed the state’s interpretation of parental rights into a more limited scope when it comes to medical decision-making. (Rummler, 6/28)

ABC News: LGBTQ People Say Their Mental Health Is Positively Impacted When States Have Protective Laws
Growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s just outside of Akron, Ohio, Shane Stahl felt it was taboo to talk about being part of the LGBTQ+ community or about LGBTQ+ experiences. Stahl, 40, who identifies as a gay man, said that although he grew up in an accepting and supporting family, he didn't feel like it was possible to openly express himself and feared he would be ostracized from his community if he did so. (Kekatos, 6/29)

The New York Times: How Does Bird Flu Spread In Cows? Experiment Yields Some ‘Good News.’ 
Ever since scientists discovered influenza infecting American cows earlier this year, they have been puzzling over how it spreads from one animal to another. An experiment carried out in Kansas and Germany has shed some light on the mystery. Scientists failed to find evidence that the virus can spread as a respiratory infection. Juergen Richt, a virologist at Kansas State University who helped lead the research, said that the results suggested that the virus is mainly infectious via contaminated milking machines. The findings have yet to be posted online or published in a peer-reviewed science journal. (Zimmer, 6/29)

CNN: FDA’s Testing Of Raw Milk Finds H5N1 Bird Flu In Half Of Samples But Confirms Flash Pasteurization Kills Virus
New test results released by the US Food and Drug Administration on Friday found that bird flu virus is making its way from dairy farms and into milk processing plants but also confirmed that the commonly used flash pasteurization method fully neutralizes the virus. (Goodman, 6/28)

CIDRAP: H1N2v Flu Infects 2 More People In Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Department of Health two more variant H1N2 (H1N2v) infections, both of them adults who had attended a livestock auction that had pigs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly influenza update. (Schnirring, 6/28)

Los Angeles Times: Signs Of Avian Flu Found In San Francisco Wastewater
Signs of H5N1 bird flu virus have been detected at three wastewater sites in California’s Bay Area, according to sampling data. While positive wastewater samples have been found in seven other states, California is the only one that has yet to report a bird flu outbreak in a herd of dairy cows. (Rust, 6/29)

CBS News: San Mateo Co. Farmworkers To Receive PPE Amid H5N1 Bird Flu Concerns
Personal protective equipment will be distributed to dairy and poultry farmworkers in San Mateo County to protect against the H5N1 virus, county health officials said Wednesday. Due to a rising concern of H5N1, or bird flu, spreading among dairy cows nationally, the county health department will be participating in a program through the California Department of Public Health to provide a one-time supply of personal protective equipment to businesses and organizations that employ or serve dairy and poultry farmworkers. (6/28)

Stat: Bird Flu Snapshot: Dutch Expert Sees Parallels To Q Fever Outbreaks
When pathologist Thijs Kuiken looks at what’s happening in the U.S. response to the H5N1 bird flu outbreak in dairy cows, he’s reminded of a difficult period in the Netherlands, where he lives, back in the late aughts. (Branswell, 7/1)

Crain's Chicago Business: Lurie Children's Hospital Cyberattack Affects Nearly 800K
A months-long cyberattack earlier this year on Lurie Children's Hospital that took down its phone lines, patient records and other services leaked the personal data of nearly 800,000 individuals. According to a data breach notice filed yesterday with the Office of the Maine Attorney General, 791,784 people were affected by the cyberattack, which Lurie first identified in January. (Davis, 6/28)

Modern Healthcare: UnitedHealth Group's Optum Drops Steward Physician Group Bid
Optum is not moving forward with its bid to purchase Steward Health Care’s physician group, scuttling a key element of Steward’s financial turnaround plan as it restructures through Chapter 11 bankruptcy. ... A spokesperson for the commission said Friday Optum is no longer working to finalize the agreement. (Kacik, 6/28)

Stat: Ascension Sells Hospitals To Improve Finances 
A STAT analysis of the hospitals Ascension is offloading found that all but a small handful of them lost money in 2022 and 2023, according to their annual financial filings to Medicare. Some of t he losses were sizable, especially at a few hospitals in eastern Michigan and Birmingham, Ala. STAT used data from HMP Metrics, a tool that aggregates hospitals’ filings with Medicare.(Bannow, 7/1)

Chicago Tribune: Error In New Lung Transplant Algorithm Harmed Sick And Dying Patients
The new algorithm was supposed to help distribute lungs more fairly to people who desperately needed life-saving transplants. But a flaw in the process for awarding the organs to sick and dying patients meant some people didn’t receive the care they were entitled to, the Tribune has learned. (Pratt, 6/30)

CBS News: Pilot Program In Pittsburgh Aims To Get More Young People To Become Doctors
A pilot program at Allegheny Health Network aims to get more young people, particularly minorities, to become doctors. These incoming eighth graders from Urban Pathways and Manchester Academic Charter School are learning from a dentist how to put sealants in teeth at Allegheny General Hospital. (Sorensen, 6/28)

Reuters: Cancer Victims Lose Bid To Block Proposed J&J Talc Bankruptcy 
A federal judge on Friday rejected a bid by a group of cancer victims to block Johnson & Johnson from pursuing a proposed bankruptcy settlement of tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging the company's baby powder and other talc products contain cancer-causing asbestos. The cancer victims sought a preliminary order in New Jersey on June 11 to preventing J&J from filing for bankruptcy outside the state, which would have effectively foiled the $6.48 billion settlement plan. The motion was part of a class action lawsuit brought by plaintiffs' lawyers opposed to the plan. (Pierson, 7/1)

NBC News: Scientist Behind Alzheimer’s Drug Candidate Is Indicted On Charges Of Research Fraud
A neuroscientist whose work helped pave the way for an Alzheimer’s drug candidate was indicted by a federal grand jury on Thursday on charges of fraud. The indictment, announced Friday by the Justice Department, brings additional scrutiny to the work of Hoau-Yan Wang, who has had multiple studies retracted and faced an investigation by the City University of New York, his employer, that was later halted. (Bush, 6/29)

NPR: A Drug May Slow Aging. Here's How It'll Be Tested In Humans
A few years back, Matt Kaeberlein was diagnosed with a frozen shoulder. “It was really bad,” he recalls. ... Feeling frustrated, he decided to try rapamycin. In recent years, some high-profile longevity scientists have started taking the drug in hopes of fending off age-related health problems. So far, it’s untested in people taking it for anti-aging, but rapamycin has been shown to extend the lifespan of mice. (Aubrey, 7/1)

Stat: FDA Rejects Rocket Pharmaceuticals’ Gene Therapy For Ultra-Rare Condition
Rocket Pharmaceuticals said Friday that the Food and Drug Administration rejected its gene therapy for an ultra-rare, sometimes fatal immuno-deficiency syndrome, saying the company needed to submit more information to prove it can safely manufacture the product. (Mast, 6/28)

Bloomberg: Japan Drugmaker Looking Into Higher Death Count From Toxic Pills
Kobayashi Pharmaceutical Co. is investigating whether 76 people have died after ingesting its health supplements containing red yeast, a higher toll than initially reported. Shares in the company fell 7% on Friday after the Nikkei newspaper reported concerns from Japan’s health minister. The company later confirmed the news, saying that the deaths were still under investigation after receiving 1,656 inquiries from consumers who were seen at medical facilities after falling ill. (Horie, 6/28)

Bloomberg: Neuralink Surgery Postponed For Brain-Implant Startup’s Second Patient
Neuralink Corp., the brain-implant company founded by Elon Musk, was set to implant its device in a second patient last Monday, but the surgery was halted due to the patient’s medical condition, said Michael Lawton, chief executive officer of the Barrow Neurological Institute. The patient had health issues that made the person an unsuitable candidate for current participation in Neuralink’s study of its experimental device, Lawton said during a phone call. (McBride, 6/28)

The CT Mirror: New CT Law Prohibits Medical Debt Reporting To Credit Agencies
On July 1, a new Connecticut law will take effect preventing health care providers from reporting medical debt to credit agencies, shielding residents’ credit scores from the potential adverse financial impacts of seeking care. (Golvala, 6/28)

The Baltimore Sun: State To Pause Licensure For Certain Mental Health Providers
Starting July 1, the Maryland Department of Health will temporarily stop enrolling certain kinds of behavioral health providers into the Maryland Medicaid Program in an effort to address potential fraud, waste and abuse, the department said in a news release Friday. (Roberts, 7/28)

CBS News: Massachusetts And New Hampshire Residents Warned Of Possible Measles Exposure At Several Locations
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health is warning residents of possible measles exposure after an international traveler was diagnosed. The Department of Public Health said the visitor traveled through Boston to Amsterdam while infectious on June 22. ... Measles symptoms begin to occur 10 days to two weeks after exposure. Symptoms include a fever, cough, runny nose and red eyes. A rash also appears on the skin two to four days after symptoms develop. (D., 6/30)

The Boston Globe: Dengue Fever Cases In Mass. Are On Pace To Break Local Records
Dengue fever, a potentially fatal, tropical mosquito-borne disease, has been diagnosed more than 50 times in Massachusetts this year, on pace to break local records, according to numbers released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week. But experts say the disease, caused by a virus that infects about 100 million to 400 million people globally each year, remains rare in the Northeast. Those 50 cases were likely in individuals who had contracted it elsewhere. (Piore, 6/29)

AP: Street Medicine Teams Search For Homeless People To Deliver Lifesaving IV Hydration In Extreme Heat 
Alfred Handley leaned back in his wheelchair alongside a major Phoenix freeway as a street medicine team helped him get rehydrated with an intravenous saline solution dripping from a bag hanging on a pole. Cars whooshed by under the blazing 96-degree morning sun as the 59-year-old homeless man with a nearly toothless smile got the help he needed through a new program run by the nonprofit Circle the City. (Snow, 7/1)

Axios: Makeover Of Cosmetics' Regulation Takes Next Step
Starting Monday, the Food and Drug Administration will wield new regulatory powers over makers of lipsticks, shampoos, baby wipes and other cosmetic products that account for more than $40 billion in sales annually. It's part of the phase-in of a 2022 law that calls for more oversight of adverse events and requires companies to clearly label allergens, register their facilities and disclose every product they sell. (Reed, 7/1)

The Washington Post: Study Suggests Connection Between Anxiety And Parkinson’s Disease 
People over 50 with anxiety may be up to twice as likely to develop Parkinson’s disease as their peers without anxiety, a new analysis suggests. The study, published in the British Journal of General Practice, looked at primary care data from the United Kingdom. Researchers compared a group of 109,435 people 50 and older who were diagnosed with a first episode of anxiety between 2008 and 2018 with a control group of 987,691 people without anxiety. (Blakemore, 6/30)

The New York Times: Pattern Of Brain Damage Is Pervasive In Navy SEALs Who Died By Suicide 
David Metcalf’s last act in life was an attempt to send a message — that years as a Navy SEAL had left his brain so damaged that he could barely recognize himself. He died by suicide in his garage in North Carolina in 2019, after nearly 20 years in the Navy. But just before he died, he arranged a stack of books about brain injury by his side, and taped a note to the door that read, in part, “Gaps in memory, failing recognition, mood swings, headaches, impulsiveness, fatigue, anxiety, and paranoia were not who I was, but have become who I am. Each is worsening.” Then he shot himself in the heart, preserving his brain to be analyzed by a state-of-the-art Defense Department laboratory in Maryland. (Philipps, 6/30)

The Washington Post: In Head Lice Outbreaks, ‘Selfies’ May Be A Surprising Culprit
Anecdotal reports about a global rise in head lice cases have prompted warnings from some experts about a popular and universal activity among children and teenagers: taking selfies. Head lice, itchy parasites that live on the scalp, are typically spread through direct head-to-head contact, mostly among children. And getting close for group selfies — which often means pressing two or more heads together to fit into a cellphone frame — could give head lice an opportunity to crawl from one head to another, as they cannot jump or fly. (Bever, 6/28)