First Edition: June 10, 2024

KFF Health News: Nursing Homes Are Left In The Dark As More Utilities Cut Power To Prevent Wildfires
When powerful wind gusts created threatening wildfire conditions one day near Boulder, Colorado, the state’s largest utility cut power to 52,000 homes and businesses — including Frasier, an assisted living and skilled nursing facility. ... The practice, also known as public safety power shut-offs, has taken root in California and is spreading elsewhere as a way to keep downed and damaged power lines from sparking blazes and fueling the West’s more frequent and intense wildfires. (Ruder, 6/10)

KFF Health News: Heat Rules For California Workers Would Also Help Keep Schoolchildren Cool
Proposed rules to protect California workers from extreme heat would extend to schoolchildren, requiring school districts to find ways to keep classrooms cool. If the standards are approved this month, employers in the nation’s most populous state will have to provide relief to indoor workers in sweltering warehouses, steamy kitchens, and other dangerously hot job sites. The rules will extend to schools, where teachers, custodians, cafeteria workers, and other employees may work without air conditioning — like their students. (Young, 6/10)

KFF Health News: Journalists Discuss Abortion Laws, Pollution, And Potential Changes To Obamacare Subsidies
KFF Health News and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media in the last two weeks to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances. (6/8)

The Washington Post: Pyschedelic Drug Boosters Assess Challenges After FDA Panel Turns Thumbs Down On MDMA
Developers of mind-bending drugs for medical use are distancing themselves from the first company to seek regulatory approval for a psychedelic compound, after its application encountered strong opposition from a government panel. ... But biotech executives, investors and researchers said in interviews that their enthusiasm for psychedelics to treat mental health disorders remains undimmed. They are betting that a by-the-books clinical trial design run by a more conventional drugmaker will ultimately succeed. (Gilbert and Ovalle, 6/8)

Stat: The Inside Story Of How Lykos’ MDMA Research Went Awry
At a heated advisory committee meeting convened by the Food and Drug Administration last week, regulators repeatedly expressed frustration that Lykos, a company seeking approval of MDMA-assisted therapy to treat PTSD, failed to follow instructions and track positive feelings such as “euphoria” that could be used to inform understanding of the drug’s addiction potential. The missing data, said clinical reviewer David Millis, were “a major concern.” (Goldhill, 6/9)

Politico: Acid For The Ear
The Pentagon is investigating how psychedelic medicine can help servicemembers — beyond mental health issues. The agency has awarded $825,000 to Boston-based Delix Therapeutics for the development of a nonhallucinogenic version of the famed counterculture drug LSD to treat hearing loss. Delix is among several pharmaceutical companies developing drugs that are structurally similar to psychedelics but without the characteristic high. (Reader, Odejimi, Paun, Payne and Schumaker, 6/7)

Politico: Florida Pot Legalization Amendment Has A Surprising Opponent: Medical Marijuana Doctors
Florida’s ballot initiative to legalize recreational pot has divided the state’s growing medical marijuana industry. The state’s largest medical marijuana company has bankrolled Amendment 3, which would legalize recreational marijuana for adults 21 and older. But some of the roughly 2,000 doctors who are state-certified to recommend pot as medicine are warning patients about the consequences that could jeopardize access to the drug for medicinal purposes. (Sarkissian, 6/7)

Axios: The GOP/Pro-Life Coalition Frays Amid Backlash To Abortion Limits
Republicans and anti-abortion groups worked in lockstep for decades to dismantle the nationally protected right to abortion in the U.S. — but their unity has frayed since the Supreme Court struck down abortion rights two years ago. (Kight, 6/9)

Axios: Swing States To Test Biden's Abortion-Rights Push
Democrats hope the backlash to the recent blitz of state abortion restrictions will continue to give them a boost in November. But the bigger question is how much it will help President Biden in the battleground states likely to decide the election. (Doherty, 6/9)

Axios: Democratic-Leaning Doctors Flex Political Muscle Over Abortion Restrictions
The wave of state abortion restrictions that began after the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022 has led Democratic-leaning doctors to become an organizing and political force against such laws. Doctors driving the backlash say many of the new state laws jeopardize patients' health and restrict their ability to practice medicine. (Goldman, 6/9)

The Hill: Minority Groups' Uninsured Rates Plummeted Under Affordable Care Act: Research
Uninsured rates among minority groups in the U.S. plunged between 2010 and 2022, according to reports released Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The increase in the number of insured people points to the impact of the Affordable Care Act, former President Obama’s signature health law. (Maher, 6/7)

The Hill: Trump Takes Credit For Insulin Pricing: Biden 'Had Nothing To Do With It'
Former President Trump attempted to take credit for insulin pricing in a Saturday post on Truth Social. “Low INSULIN PRICING was gotten for millions of Americans by me, and the Trump Administration, not by Crooked [President Biden,]” Trump said in the Truth Social post. “He had NOTHING to do with it. It was all done long before he so sadly entered office. All he does is try to take credit for things done by others, in this case, ME!” (Suter, 6/8)

The Hill: James Clyburn On Donald Trump Attempt To Take Credit For Insulin Pricing: 'How Can You Be So Bold With Your Lies'
“Donald Trump is now saying he, not Joe Biden, reduced the cost of insulin. How can you be so bold with your lies? If this guy didn’t do a single thing, but the push to reduce, in fact, eliminate the Affordable Care Act? In fact, he used that as his reason for being against John McCain and mimic him for having cast the deciding vote, not to eliminate the Affordable Care Act,” Clyburn said. (Sforza, 6/9)

The Washington Post: Democrats Increasingly Take Aim At Patents In Bid To Lower Drug Prices 
Democrats have hit on a new tactic in their long battle with drug companies: challenge patents that they say are deliberate attempts to game the system and box out low-cost, generic competitors. ... The Democrats are targeting Novo Nordisk, including some of its patents related to expensive drug Ozempic; GlaxoSmithKline; and other companies that produce asthma and diabetes medications. (Diamond, 6/7)

Modern Healthcare: DOJ Motion To Toss Humana Medicare Advantage Lawsuit Denied
A federal judge Friday denied a motion by the federal government to dismiss a legal challenge seeking to block updated Medicare Advantage auditing standards. Humana, the second-largest Medicare Advantage insurer by membership, sued the Health and Human Services Department in September 2023 over a regulation announced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services earlier that year. (Tepper, 6/7)

Modern Healthcare: NIH Pilots Primary Care Research Network To Boost Access, Delivery
The National Institutes of Health is piloting a cross-country network for primary care research to improve community-based primary care and increase the presence of underserved populations in clinical research, the agency announced Thursday. As part of the Communities Advancing Research Equity for Health initiative, also known as CARE for Health, NIH-funded clinical research networks and primary care sites will partner to conduct studies and research on health issues affecting local patient populations. (Devereaux, 6/7)

Reuters: US FDA Expands GSK's RSV Vaccine Approval To Adults Aged 50 To 59
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the expanded use of GSK's (GSK.L) respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine on Friday in adults aged between 50 and 59, making it the first shot endorsed for that age group. The shot, branded Arexvy, and vaccines from rivals Pfizer (PFE.N) and Moderna (MRNA.O) are already approved for people aged 60 and older for the virus. RSV is a leading cause of pneumonia ... causing 177,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths in the United States annually. (Roy and Santhosh, 6/8)

Axios: Lilly's Alzheimer's Drug Faces Delayed Reckoning
The outlook for the latest experimental drug shown to delay Alzheimer's disease will come into focus Monday, when Food and Drug Administration advisers review an application from Eli Lilly that's been held up by questions about the design of clinical trials and safety risks. Their conclusions could influence how the FDA treats future drugs that target proteins in the brain known as amyloid plaques that are believed to contribute to the development of the dreaded neurological condition that afflicts nearly 7 million people in the U.S. (Bettelheim, 6/10)

The New York Times: Personal Conflicts, Even Violence, Are Not Uncommon In Long-Term Care
"We have this extraordinary paradox: the institutions, nursing homes and assisted livings who care for the most vulnerable members of our society are some of the most violent in our society,” said Karl Pillemer, a Cornell University gerontologist who has studied resident-to-resident conflict for years. Aside from psychiatric hospitals and residential youth facilities, he said, “it doesn’t happen anywhere else that one in five residents are involved in some kind of aggressive incident every month.” (Span, 6/9)

NPR: Multiple Death Counts For Climate-Related Disasters
Despite the growing danger from climate-driven disasters, there is no single, reliable count of who is dying as a result of extreme weather in the United States. For any given weather disaster, multiple government agencies publish independent — and often widely differing — death counts. (Hersher and Borunda, 6/10)

USA Today: New COVID Variant KP.3 Is On The Rise: Here's What To Know
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that a new COVID variant, the KP.3 variant, is rising to dominance across the United States. For the two-week period starting on May 26 and ending on June 8, the government agency data shows that KP.3 accounts for 25% of COVID cases in the U.S. and is now the dominant variant. This knocks down previous frontrunner, the JN.1 variant, which spread globally last winter, and now makes up 22.5% of cases. (Forbes, 6/8)

NPR: The Tick-Borne Illness, Babesiosis, Is On The Rise. A Malaria Drug May Help
The first case of babesiosis in the U.S. was identified on Nantucket Island in 1969. The tick-borne parasitic disease is endemic in New England. ... The CDC points to a significant increase in incidence over the last decade. ... Now, researchers are launching a randomized, controlled clinical trial, slated to begin this month, to test whether the anti-malaria drug — tafenoquine — in combination with the other drugs already used, can speed up recovery and clear the parasite from patients’ bodies faster. (Aubrey, 6/10)

Fortune: Zyn Nicotine Patches And Teens: Are There Health Risks?
According to the National Youth Tobacco Survey of 2023, an estimated 1.5% of high school and middle school students (more than half of them boys), representing 400,000 adolescents, use nicotine pouches—around the same percentage (1.6%) who smoke cigarettes, but much less than those who vape (7.7%). Those numbers have remained unchanged in recent years, noted an April press release from the FDA regarding underage sales of nicotine pouches by retailers. (Greenfield, 6/8)

CNN: The Color Of Your Child’s Swimsuit Can Play A Role In Their Safety At The Pool, Experts Say
The color of your child’s swimsuit could impact their safety at a swimming pool or the beach. That’s according to water safety experts who have taken a close look at how the hue of swimwear may influence how visible a child is under water. (Howard, 6/9)

The Hill: Diet, Exercise May Slow Decline In Some Alzheimer’s Patients: Study
A healthy diet and consistent exercise may slow decline in some early-stage Alzheimer’s disease patients, according to research published Friday. The study, published in the journal Alzheimer’s Research and Therapy, found that patients in a group who implemented “intensive” lifestyle changes — like eating whole foods, exercising moderately and performing stress management techniques — saw their dementia symptoms stabilize. (Timotija, 6/7)

CIDRAP: RSV Research: Nirsevimab 80% Effective Against Hospitalization
Two studies highlight new respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) findings, with one estimating that the monoclonal antibody nirsevimab was 80% effective against hospitalization in French pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) and the other showing that more hospitalizations occurred during the atypical 2021 and 2022 RSV seasons despite similar disease severity to previous seasons. RSV is the No. 1 cause of the hospitalization of US infants, leading to an estimated annual 58,000 to 80,000 hospitalizations and 100 to 300 deaths in children younger than 5 years old. (Van Beusekom, 6/7)

Reuters: Pfizer's Paxlovid Fails As 15-Day Treatment For Long COVID, Study Finds
A 15-day course of Pfizer's COVID-19 antiviral treatment Paxlovid did not relieve symptoms of long COVID, according a study by Stanford University researchers. Currently, there are no proven treatments specifically for long COVID in which a host of symptoms can last for many months after initial coronavirus infection. Scientists and patients had hoped that Pfizer's two-drug oral treatment would ease symptoms of long COVID after anecdotal reports of patients who said Paxlovid helped them. (Erman, 6/7)

CIDRAP: Study Shows No Link Between Stillbirths, COVID-19 Vaccines
A new study from Yale researchers in Obstetrics and Gynecology shows no link between stillbirth and COVID-19 vaccines. Moreover, pregnant women who had received COVID-19 vaccines in pregnancy were at a decreased risk of preterm birth. The authors say the findings should offer further reassurance that COVID-19 vaccination is safe and useful in pregnancy. (Soucheray, 6/7)

CIDRAP: Study Ties Prevalence Of Drug-Resistant Organisms To Socioeconomic Conditions
A study in Texas found higher rates of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) organisms in areas with higher levels of economic deprivation, researchers reported today in Clinical Infectious Diseases. Using electronic health records from two large healthcare systems in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, a team led by researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center collected select patient bacterial culture results from 2015 to 2020. (Dall, 6/7)

The New York Times: Cancer Researchers Begin Large Long-Term Study Of Black Women
The American Cancer Society has begun an ambitious, far-reaching study focusing on a population that has long been overlooked, despite high rates of cancer and cancer-related deaths: Black women. The initiative, called VOICES of Black Women, is believed to be the first long-term population study of its size to zero in specifically on the factors driving cancer prevalence and deaths among Black women. (Caryn Rabin, 6/7)

The Washington Post: OB/GYNs Routinely Experience Sexual Harassment, Study Suggests
Sexual harassment, bullying and workplace discrimination are commonly encountered by doctors and other clinicians in the field of obstetrics and gynecology, a recent literature review suggests. The analysis, published in JAMA Network Open, shows that although the field is increasingly female-dominated, medical students, residents, fellows and attending physicians in obstetrics and gynecology regularly experience sexual harassment and gender bias on the job. (Blakemore, 6/9)

Axios: Scientists Get A New Tool To Study A Common Genetic Heart Condition
Disease-specific cells developed by the Allen Institute for Cell Science offer a new window into the world's most common genetic heart condition. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) — which affects an estimated 600,000 to 1.5 million Americans or 1 in 500 people — involves mutations that can cause heart muscle to thicken and other changes to the heart's mitral valves and cells. (Snyder, 6/9)

Stat: ALS Patient Reclaims Some Autonomy Thanks To Wearable 'Robot'
John Goodson practiced medicine for almost 50 years at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. As a primary care physician, he saw thousands of patients and ailments, so when he struggled to raise the front of his foot in 2021, he felt a knowing dread. (Broderick, 6/10)

Modern Healthcare: Kroger Health's Little Clinics To Offer GLP-1s
Kroger Health is revamping the weight management program offered in its in-store clinics and offering glucagon-like peptide agonists such as Wegovy and Zepbound. The move by Kroger, announced Friday, adds it to the growing list of health care providers interested in expanding their patient base by offering GLP-1s, which are surging in popularity among consumers. (DeSilva, 6/7)

Modern Healthcare: Waystar Raises $968M In IPO 
Shares of Waystar closed below their offering price Friday on the first day of trading for the healthcare payment technology company. Waystar raised $967.5 million in its initial public offering, selling 45 million shares priced at $21.50 a share. On Friday, shares closed at $20.70 a share, down 3.72%. (Turner, 6/7)

Modern Healthcare: Remote Patient Monitoring Companies Push For Expanded CPT Code
Six years after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services rolled out the first standalone billing code for remote patient monitoring, there is debate over how the technology will be reimbursed. The American Medical Association’s CPT Editorial Panel postponed a May vote on a proposal that would have lowered the threshold for how much remote patient monitoring must occur before a provider can seek reimbursement. (Perna, 6/7)

Politico: Following Florida’s Lead, New York Wants A Taste Of Canada’s Medicine
New York is making a rare move in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ footsteps. State legislators are pressing forward with creating a program to import drugs in bulk from Canada, emboldened by federal approval of a similar plan in Florida earlier this year. The bill directs New York health and education officials to develop a list of medications that are “expected to generate substantial savings for consumers in the state” if acquired from Canadian suppliers. (Kaufman, 6/7)

Reuters: Texas Bird Flu Strain Kills Ferrets Used To Mimic Disease In Humans, US CDC Says
The bird flu virus strain that infected a Texas dairy farm worker in March was lethal to ferrets in experiments designed to mimic the disease in humans, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Friday. Seasonal flu, by contrast, makes ferrets sick but does not kill them, the CDC said. Ferrets are considered the best small mammal for studying influenza virus infection and transmission and are commonly used as a tool to inform public health risk assessments of emerging influenza viruses, according to the CDC. (Lapid, 6/7)

Modern Healthcare: Texas Rejects Centene, Elevance Protests Over Alleged Aetna Leak
Texas denied requests by Centene, Elevance Health and six other insurers to reconsider which managed care companies it will rely on to run its $116 billion Medicaid program over the next six years, rejecting allegations that local officials’ process improperly advantaged rival CVS Health. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission in March announced it intended to award new, six-year Medicaid and Children Health Insurance Program managed care contracts to 14 companies including CVS Health’s Aetna, Centene, Elevance Health, Humana, Molina Healthcare and UnitedHealthcare. (Tepper, 6/7)

Reuters: Lawsuits Over Change Healthcare Data Breach Centralized In Minnesota
A federal panel on Friday centralized 49 lawsuits accusing UnitedHealth Group's Change Healthcare payment processing unit of failing to protect personal data from February's cyber attack in Minnesota. The federal Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation said in an order on Friday that Minnesota, where UnitedHealth is based and where several cases are already pending, is the most logical venue. (Pierson, 6/7)

Modern Healthcare: Oregon Health And Science University Layoffs Impact Hundreds
Oregon Health and Science University said Friday it plans to lay off at least 500 employees in the coming months. The academic health center attributed layoffs to financial pressures from rising labor and supply costs, according to a message sent to employees Thursday. (Hudson, 6/7)

The Hill: Midwest Health Departments Warn Of New Deadly Animal Tranquilizer’s Emergence
Health departments in the Midwest are warning of the emergence of a new deadly animal tranquilizer that’s linked to overdose deaths. The drug, medetomidine, is a powerful sedative used in veterinary medicine to keep dogs sedated and comfortable during exams and medical procedures, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said when it approved the drug in 2022. (Irwin, 6/7)

AP: Rural Pharmacies Fill A Health Care Gap In The US. Owners Say It's Getting Harder To Stay Open
Basin Pharmacy fills more than prescriptions in rural northern Wyoming. It’s also the key health care access point for the town of about 1,300 people and the surrounding area. The storage room contains things that people rely on to survive, such as a dozen boxes of food for patients who must eat through tubes. The pharmacy fills prescriptions in bulk for the county jail, state retirement center and youth group homes. Some patients come from Jackson, five hours away by car, for the specialized services. (Shastri, 6/7)

Charlotte Ledger: Charlotte-Area Urgent Care Center Stays Open Late
On a Friday night in late May, a soccer ball struck 12-year-old Dhruvtej Karande in the face, driving the edge of his glasses into his eyebrow and opening up a two-inch gash. His parents rushed to the nearest urgent care center, but it was already closed when they arrived, said his mom, Priyanka Karande. Then it was off to another urgent care in Charlotte’s University City area. It, too, was closed. (Crouch, 6/10)