First Edition: July 25, 2024

KFF Health News: Oregon Senator Proposes Criminal Charges And Fines For Rogue Obamacare Agents
Health insurance agents who fraudulently enroll consumers in Affordable Care Act health plans could be subject to criminal charges — and civil penalties of $10,000 to $200,000 — under legislation introduced Wednesday by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. Wyden first promised the bill in May, when he called on federal regulators to do more to combat sketchy Obamacare enrollment schemes. (Appleby, 7/24)

KFF Health News: Montana Looks To Become Latest State To Boost Nonprofit Hospital Oversight 
Montana is poised to become the latest state to increase scrutiny of how its nonprofit hospitals deliver community benefits in exchange for their tax-exempt status. Under proposed rules, the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services plans to collect data on nonprofit hospitals’ charitable acts, such as discounting prices, providing health education, or conducting free screenings. Montana officials expect to adopt the new rules in August, but state officials have yet to set standards for exactly what constitutes acceptable giving or how much hospitals must do. (Houghton, 7/25)

The Hill: Joe Biden Calls For Supreme Court Reform In Oval Office Speech
President Biden on Wednesday said he intends to call for Supreme Court reform as he laid out his plans for his final six months in office. Biden delivered remarks from the Oval Office outlining his decision not to seek reelection, his first on-camera remarks since making that announcement on Sunday. In addition to explaining why he is ending his candidacy, he listed off his priorities for his remaining time as president. (Samuels, 7/24)

The Washington Post: Judge Blocks Forced Reset Trigger Ban, Citing Supreme Court Ruling On Bump Stocks 
A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a Biden administration ban on forced reset triggers, devices that allow semiautomatic weapons to fire at faster rates, citing the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a ban on bump stocks last month. Judge Reed O’Connor of the Northern District of Texas ruled in favor of guns-rights groups that had sued the U.S. Justice Department and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in 2023 challenging the ban. (Wu, 7/24)

The New York Times: Nephew Says Trump Suggested Some Disabled People ‘Should Just Die’
Fred Trump’s son was born with a rare medical condition that led to developmental and intellectual disabilities. His care had been paid for in part with help from the family. After Mr. Trump was elected, Fred Trump wanted to use his connection to the White House for good. With the help of Ivanka Trump, his cousin, and Ben Carson, at the time the housing and urban development secretary, he was able to convene a group of advocates for a meeting with his uncle. After the meeting, Fred Trump claims, his uncle pulled him aside and said, “maybe those kinds of people should just die,” given “the shape they’re in, all the expenses.” (McCreesh, 7/24)

The Washington Post: Kamala Harris Vows To Revive Biden’s Defeated ‘Care Economy’ Plans 
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris vowed twice this week to revive Democratic plans to expand the welfare state, previewing a campaign message against Donald Trump and potentially signaling one of her top priorities should she be elected. In remarks to campaign staff in Delaware on Monday and a campaign speech in Wisconsin on Tuesday, the vice president focused on key parts of President Biden’s domestic agenda that failed to pass because of resistance from Republicans and centrist Democrats. In both speeches, Harris highlighted the need for legislation to expand paid family leave, housing assistance, child care and eldercare — parts of the “care economy” that advisers say have been one of her top priorities in the administration. (Stein, 7/24)

The 19th: The ‘Moms’ Candidate: Harris Champions Paid Leave, Child Care And Disability Rights
When she speaks about the economy, Kamala Harris often talks about the mothers in her life. Her own mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a single parent who worked as a breast cancer researcher. She’d pack lunches before Harris and her sister, Maya, woke up in the morning, and pay the bills at night after the girls went to bed. (Carrazana and Luterman, 7/24)

The Washington Post: J.D. Vance Said Kamala Harris Has No Kids. Stepparents Would Like A Word
When Ella Emhoff graduated from college in 2021, Vice President Harris posed smiling beside her stepdaughter. At Cole Emhoff’s wedding in October, Harris officiated her stepson’s ceremony. The Emhoff siblings have affectionately dubbed Harris “Momala,” a name she has said she wears proudly. But Harris’s parental role was altogether erased in recent and resurfaced attacks from her political opponents. In a video drawn from a 2021 interview on Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” J.D. Vance, now the GOP vice-presidential nominee, said that Harris and other prominent Democrats (including Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) “don’t really have a direct stake” in the country’s future because they are “people without children.” (Gibson, 7/24)

The Atlantic: Kamala Harris Could Make 2024 The Abortion Election
Of all the reasons Kamala Harris is better equipped than Joe Biden to defeat Donald Trump in November—her relative youth, the fact that she’s a former prosecutor challenging a convicted felon—her biggest advantage may be her record on abortion. Harris served as the Biden administration’s de facto advocate for reproductive rights; it is her voice, not Biden’s, that’s been loudest in objecting to abortion bans and conservative efforts to curtail IVF and contraception. (Filipovic, 7/24)

Reuters: GOP States' Effort To Restrict Abortion Pill Rebuffed By Appeals Court 
A group of Republican-led states do not have legal standing to try to get a court to impose restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone, including a ban on prescribing it by telemedicine and dispensing it by mail, a federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday. The decision comes the month after the U.S. Supreme Court preserved access to the pill by finding that anti-abortion groups and doctors in a separate case do not have standing to seek restrictions on it. The Supreme Court did not rule on the underlying merits of the case, leaving the pill open to future challenges. (Pierson, 7/24)

AP: North Dakota Judge Will Decide Whether To Throw Out A Challenge To The State's Abortion Ban 
Attorneys argued Tuesday over whether a North Dakota judge should toss a lawsuit challenging the state’s abortion ban, with the state saying the plaintiffs’ case rests on hypotheticals, and the plaintiffs saying key issues remain to be resolved at a scheduled trial. State District Judge Bruce Romanick said he will rule as quickly as he can, but he also asked the plaintiffs’ attorney what difference he would have at the court trial in August. (Dura, 7/23)

AP: Texas Woman's Lawsuit After Being Jailed On Murder Charge Over Abortion Can Proceed, Judge Rules 
A Texas woman who was jailed and charged with murder after self-managing an abortion in 2022 can move forward with her lawsuit against the local sheriff and prosecutors over the case that drew national outrage before the charges were quickly dropped, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton denied a motion by prosecutors and the sheriff to dismiss the lawsuit during a hearing in the border city of McAllen. Lizelle Gonzalez, who spent two nights in jail on the murder charges and is seeking $1 million in damages in the lawsuit, did not attend the hearing. (Gonzalez, 7/24)

ABC News: Infant Mortality In The US Rose 3% In 2022, Marking 2nd Year Of Increases: CDC
Infant mortality rates in the United States increased by 3% in 2022, according to a new federal report published early Thursday morning. Researchers from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics looked at linked birth and death data sets -- information from the death certificate linked to the information from the birth certificate -- from the National Vital Statistics System. (Kekatos, 7/25)

The Washington Post: Twice-A-Year Shot Offers 100 Percent HIV Protection, Study Finds 
A twice-yearly injection could help prevent HIV infections, according to the results of a new study described by medical experts as a breakthrough. In a randomized trial involving more than 5,000 young women and girls in South Africa and Uganda, none of those who received the prevention shots contracted HIV. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday. (Pannett, 7/25)

NPR: HIV Preventive Strategy Sparks Interest -- And Protests -- At AIDS Conference
A new way to prevent HIV infection is generating great buzz -- and more than a bit of controversy -- at this week’s AIDS 2024 Conference in Munich. ... These results were significant enough for the Data Monitoring Committee -- an independent group of experts appointed to assess the progress of clinical trials -- to recommend that Gilead halt its blinded trial and offer lenacapavir to all study participants. On June 20, Gilead announced these results, and now, all participants can choose to receive the injection. (Barros Guinle, 7/24)

The New York Times: Halting The Bird Flu Outbreak In Cows May Require Thinking Beyond Milk 
A new study paints a complex picture of the outbreak, suggesting that the virus could be spreading in multiple ways and that it is not always mild in cows. (Anthes, 7/24)

NPR: With Bird Flu Spreading, Here's What Worries Scientists
For nearly four months, the spread of bird flu in the nation’s dairy cattle has stoked fears that, if left unchecked, the virus could eventually unleash a pandemic. The recent cluster of human cases connected to poultry farms in Colorado only underscores that the threat remains real. Genetic sequencing of the virus collected from the sickened poultry workers closely resembles what’s circulating in dairy herds, suggesting that cattle somehow introduced the virus into the poultry flock. (Stone, 7/24)

Military.com: Navy SEALs, Sailors Who Refused COVID Vaccine Will Have Records Expunged After Legal Settlement 
The U.S. Navy has reached a settlement with sailors who filed a lawsuit over the service's COVID-19 vaccine mandate, ending a nearly four-year saga that pitted Navy SEALs and other service members against their commander in chief. Under an agreement in the case announced Wednesday, Navy sailors who refused the vaccine for religious reasons can now have their records corrected and will be protected against discrimination on promotion boards for the next three years, according to their attorneys. (Kime, 7/24)

Axios: The Years After COVID Have Turned Into A Post-Flu Vaccine Era
Demand for flu shots is declining, particularly among some of the most medically vulnerable groups, raising concerns that the vaccines may be falling out of favor in a post-pandemic world. While uptake for flu shots has never been stellar, experts say vaccine fatigue, shifting attitudes and lowered public trust may be eroding demand. (Reed, 7/25)

The Wall Street Journal: CrowdStrike Explains What Went Wrong Days After Global Tech Outage 
CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that upended computer systems across the world last week, said it had identified a quality-control flaw that led to outages for millions of Microsoft Windows users — including health care systems — and how it got onto its systems. In an incident report published Wednesday, the company said a bug in a quality-control tool it uses to check system updates for mistakes allowed a critical flaw to be pushed to users’ machines. (Vipers and Rundle, 7/24)

Modern Healthcare: Humana’s CenterWell To Move Into 23 Walmart Health Clinics
Humana's CenterWell health services unit plans to offer senior care at 23 Walmart Supercenter stores, taking space previously occupied by the now-shuttered Walmart Health business. The clinics in Georgia, Missouri and Florida, which will operate under the CenterWell Senior Primary Care and Conviva Care brand names, are expected to open in the first half of next year, Humana said Wednesday. (DeSilva, 7/24)

Bay Area News Group: East San Jose Leaders Criticize Plans To Expand Good Samaritan Hospital While Downgrading Care At Regional Medical Center
San Jose community leaders are decrying a plan by HCA Healthcare to expand a local hospital on the western edge of the city while downgrading care at Regional Medical Center on the East Side. ... On Wednesday evening, community members continued to rally in front of the hospital — this time taking aim at HCA’s decision to expand Good Samaritan Hospital just 14-miles away in a more affluent part of the city. The project, which is being done to comply with state seismic regulations, calls for two new hospital wings that will increase the number of beds from 404 to 419. (Hase, 7/24)

Modern Healthcare: Aetna, Kaiser, Oscar Health Owe Risk-Adjustment Payments
Marketplace health insurers will pay $10.3 billion under the risk-adjustment program for 2023, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced Monday. While insurers will transfer 11.5% more to other carriers than they did the previous year, payments are 10.4% less as a share of premiums. (Berryman and Broderick, 7/24)

Stat: How Insurers Can Use Medical Codes To Profit From Medicare Advantage
Insurers like UnitedHealth are profiting off of the Medicare Advantage system, and it’s causing problems for both doctors and patients. (Empinado, 7/25)

Modern Healthcare: What’s Driving The Healthcare Labor Shortage In 2024
Healthcare’s staffing crisis shows no sign of slowing in the second half of 2024, with many clinical roles continuing to go unfilled. Healthcare employment has been on the rise in all sectors this year, pushed higher by a surge in ambulatory healthcare services and mounting pressure on facilities to meet staffing minimums. Employers are doing what they can to recruit workers by increasing wages while also turning to technology to improve workforce efficiency. (Devereaux, 7/24)

Bloomberg: Spotty Training Hurts Nurse Practitioners And Patients
Americans are more and more likely to get health care not from doctors, but from nurse practitioners. It’s one of the fastest-growing professions in the US — and the number of nurse practitioners in the country is expected to climb 45% by 2032. But training for the booming profession has never been standardized, and some students worry they’re not being set up for success. (Fox, Holder, Lu, and Sugiura, 7/24)

Bloomberg: Is The Nurse Practitioner Job Boom Putting US Health Care At Risk?
When Fred Bedell entered the emergency room on Oct. 12, 2020, he was in the throes of tremendous abdominal pain. The situation was frightening, but Bedell, a 60-year-old father of two, had little reason to doubt that he’d receive anything except excellent care at Florida Lake City Hospital, a 113-bed facility about 60 miles west of Jacksonville. For the past several years, the local chamber of commerce had named it the “Best of the Best.” (Melby, Mosendz, and Buhayar, 7/24)

Stat: Inside UnitedHealth's Doctor Empire
It’s no secret that UnitedHealth is a colossus: It’s the country’s largest health insurer and the fourth-largest company of any type by revenue, just behind Apple. And thanks to a series of stealthy deals, almost 1 in 10 U.S. doctors — some 90,000 clinicians — now either work for UnitedHealth or are under its influence, more than any major clinic chain or hospital system. (Herman, Bannow, Ross and Lawrence, 7/25)

The Hill: Whitmer Signs Law Banning Gay And Trans ‘Panic’ Defenses
Gay and transgender “panic” defenses are no longer viable in Michigan courtrooms under legislation signed Tuesday by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Michigan is the 20th state to outlaw such defenses, which allow individuals accused of violent crimes to receive lesser sentences by arguing that the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity caused them to panic. While gay and trans “panic” defenses — referred to collectively as the LGBTQ “panic” defense — are not freestanding defenses, they are used in conjunction with other legal strategies to reduce the severity of charges or sentencing. (Migdon, 7/24)

CBS News: Maryland's Opioid Epidemic Highlighted By New Health Department Dashboard
Maryland's health department rolled out a new tool that can paint a clear image of the opioid crisis. The interactive dashboard allows people to zoom in and see where fatal doses are located and who is impacted the most by the ongoing opioid crisis. The dashboard is a new iteration of the state's previous site. It will be updated monthly rather than every 90 days to track the crisis that is plaguing the state. Right now, Maryland is looking at nearly 2,100 overdose deaths in the past year, with fentanyl as the leading cause. (Davila, 7/24)

The Baltimore Sun: Jailed Marylanders In Need Of Psychiatric Treatment Languish
Over the course of about a year, a 43-year-old Middle River man called police 62 times, often “rambling” or “speaking in nonsensical speech” about such things as the military infiltrating his home or his neighbors operating a sex trafficking ring involving the Baltimore Ravens. Police described his 911 calls in court documents charging him with making false statements to officers. He was eventually convicted of two such counts and sentenced to two years of supervised probation, with the condition that he undergo mental health treatment. (Mann, 7/25)