First Edition: June 12, 2017

Kaiser Health News: Why Many Cancer Patients Don’t Have Answers
In the past four years, Bruce Mead-e has undergone two major surgeries, multiple rounds of radiation and chemotherapy to treat his lung cancer.Yet in all that time, doctors never told him or his husband whether the cancer was curable — or likely to take Mead-e’s life. “We haven’t asked about cure or how much time I have,” said Mead-e, 63, of Georgetown, Del., in a May interview. “We haven’t asked, and he hasn’t offered. I guess we have our heads in the sand.” (Szabo, 6/12)

Kaiser Health News: Medical Responses To Opioid Addiction Vary By State, Analysis Finds
Location, location, location. That mantra may apply even when it comes to how opioid addiction is treated. Specifically, patients with private insurance who are diagnosed with opioid dependency or abuse may get different medical services depending on where they live, a white paper to be released in the upcoming week by a national databank indicates. (Appleby, 6/12)

The Associated Press: GOP's Pursuit Of Health Care Overhaul Comes With Risks
Republicans are taking a big political risk on health care. They're trying to scale back major benefit programs being used by millions of people. And they're trying to do it even though much of the public is leery of drastic changes, and there's no support outside the GOP. It's not stopping them. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 6/12)

The Wall Street Journal: McConnell’s Reserved Approach On Health Bill Leaves Lawmakers Guessing
Before he began clicking through a PowerPoint presentation on Republican health-care options this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a private warning to his Senate Republicans: If they failed to pass legislation unwinding the Affordable Care Act, Democrats could regain power and establish a single-payer health-care system. Mr. McConnell (R., Ky.) has been nearly as downcast in his public comments about Senate Republicans’ chances of passing sweeping legislation to overhaul the country’s health-care system. (Peterson, Armour and Radnofsky, 6/9)

The New York Times: Flexibility That A.C.A. Lent To Work Force Is Threatened By G.O.P. Plan
In recent years, millions of middle- and working-class Americans have moved from job to job, some staying with one company for shorter stints or shifting careers midstream. The Affordable Care Act has enabled many of those workers to get transitional coverage that provides a bridge to the next phase of their lives — a stopgap to get health insurance if they leave a job, are laid off, start a business or retire early. (Abelson, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Senate GOP Plans To Strip Planned Parenthood Funding In Health Bill
Senate Republicans plan to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood Federation of America and add several other abortion restrictions to their health-insurance overhaul bill, creating another potential concern for centrist GOP senators who are considering whether to back the legislation. Republican leaders believe they have the votes to keep the defunding measure in any final Senate bill, people familiar with the discussions said, though they still could remove it should that be the deciding factor in the bill’s passage. (Hackman, 6/10)

Politico: Fate Of Planned Parenthood Funding Tied To Senate Moderates
Two female Senate Republicans could stop the anti-abortion movement from achieving its most significant win against Planned Parenthood in decades. Most Republicans want to eliminate the group’s $555 million in federal funding as part of their bill to repeal Obamacare. But as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tries to solve the legislative Rubik’s Cube of finding 50 votes for repeal, he may have to drop the Planned Parenthood cut to win the support of the two Republican moderates, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. (Haberkorn, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Before Repeal And Replace, Kentucky Is Dismantling Health Law
As Congress works to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature health law, Kentucky Republican Gov. Matt Bevin is already at work unwinding some of its provisions in his state. Mr. Bevin has dismantled the state’s health-insurance exchange, moving patients to the federal website last year. He has proposed introducing new conditions for recipients of Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, that would require patients to pay premiums of up to $15 a month and perform employment-related or community-service activities, among other provisions. (Campo-Flores, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Opioid Crisis Complicates GOP’s Health-Law Push
The nation’s worsening opioid crisis has become another sticking point in Republican plans to dismantle major portions of the Affordable Care Act, with key GOP senators hesitating to support a bill that could threaten addiction treatment for millions of people. Several provisions of the ACA, also known as Obamacare, allowed millions of Americans seeking substance-abuse treatment to gain coverage, including through an expansion of the Medicaid health program for the poor. But the House bill repealing the ACA, passed in early May, would roll back that Medicaid expansion beginning in 2020 and allow insurance companies to charge some people with drug addictions higher premiums or deny them substance-abuse coverage. (Nunn, 6/11)

NPR: GOP Cuts To Medicaid Would Threaten Addiction Treatment, Doctors Say
Republicans in both the House and the Senate are considering big cuts to Medicaid. But those cuts endanger addiction treatment, which many people receive through the government health insurance program. Charlene Yurgaitis is one of the people who's been helped. She's 35 and lives in Lancaster, Penn., and once supervised 17 people at an insurance company. But when some college students moved in next door about a decade ago, they became friends and she started doing oxycontin with them. Then she moved onto heroin and harder drugs. (Allen, 6/11)

The New York Times: When Opioid Addicts Find An Ally In Blue
In this college town on the banks of Lake Champlain, Chief Brandon del Pozo has hired a plain-spoken social worker to oversee opioids policy and has begun mapping heroin deaths the way his former commanders in the New York Police Department track crime. In New York City, detectives are investigating overdoses with the rigor of homicides even if murder charges are a long shot. They are plying the mobile phones of the dead for clues about suppliers and using telltale marks on heroin packages and pills to trace them back to dealers. And like their colleagues in Philadelphia and Ohio, they are racing to issue warnings about deadly strains of drugs when bodies fall, the way epidemiologists take on Zika. (Baker, 6/12)

The New York Times: Seizing On Opioid Crisis, A Drug Maker Lobbies Hard For Its Product
The ads have been popping up on billboards, buses and subways and in glossy magazines, with portraits of attractive men and women and a simple question in bold letters: What is Vivitrol? Five years ago, Vivitrol was a treatment for opioid addiction that was struggling to find a market. Now, its sales and profile are rising fast, thanks to its manufacturers’ shrewd use of political connections, and despite scant science to prove the drug’s efficacy. (Goodnough and Zernike, 6/11)

The Washington Post: Drug Crisis Is Pushing Up Death Rates For Almost All Groups Of Americans
The opioid epidemic that has ravaged life expectancy among economically stressed white Americans is taking a rising toll among blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans, driving up the overall rate of death among Americans in the prime of their lives. Since the beginning of this decade, death rates have risen among people between the ages of 25 and 44 in virtually every racial and ethnic group and almost all states, according to a Washington Post analysis. The death rate among African Americans is up 4 percent, Hispanics 7 percent, whites 12 percent and Native Americans 18 percent. The rate for Asian Americans also has increased, but at a level that is not statistically significant. (Achenbach and Keating, 6/9)

The New York Times: States Lead The Fight Against Trump’s Birth Control Rollback
Not long after President Trump took the oath of office, a busload of women’s health advocates made the first of a series of 860-mile round trips from Las Vegas to the Nevada capital, Carson City. Their mission: to push state legislators to expand insurance coverage for contraception. It worked. On Saturday, Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada, a Republican, signed a measure requiring insurers to cover 12 months of birth control at a time, with no co-payment. (Stolberg, 6/9)

The Washington Post Fact Checker: Planned Parenthood’s Claim About Birth Control Access For ’99 Percent Of Sexually Active Women’
According to a draft regulation obtained by Vox, the Trump administration wants to overhaul the birth control mandate under the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare. Reproductive rights groups opposed these proposed changes, and Planned Parenthood Action Fund used this statistic in its tweets about the draft regulation. It’s worth noting that Planned Parenthood’s wording for this statistic includes the caveat “sexually active,” which other organizations don’t always do. Still, it needs more context, especially when juxtaposed against Obamacare’s birth control mandate. (Lee, 6/12)

Reuters: Delaware Is First U.S. State To Enact Abortion Rights Law Under Trump
Delaware's governor has signed into law a bill ensuring abortion remains legal in the state, the first such move in the United States since President Donald Trump was elected on a pledge to overturn a landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationally. (Goldberg, 6/9)

The Washington Post: UNC Oncologist And Researcher Named Head Of The National Cancer Institute
President Trump has named Norman “Ned” Sharpless, the director of the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, to lead the National Cancer Institute. The oncologist and geneticist will succeed Doug Lowy, who has been acting director of NCI since early 2015. Lowy is expected to remain at the institute as deputy director and a researcher. Sharpless, 50, has done extensive work on how cells age and become malignant. He sees patients at North Carolina Cancer Hospital, which is the clinical home for UNC Lineberger. (McGinley, 6/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Medicare Erroneously Paid Millions In Electronic Records Push, Audit Finds
Medicare erroneously paid an estimated $729 million to doctors and other health professionals under a multibillion-dollar federal initiative designed to shift the health-care system from paper records to computer files, according to a new federal audit. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, which conducted the audit, said Medicare, over a three-year period, improperly paid health professionals who vouched they earned bonus payments under the initiative, but who either lacked required proof or failed to meet bonus criteria. (Evans, 6/12)

The Washington Post: Tweaking Brains With ‘Smart Drugs’ To Get Ahead In Silicon Valley
George Burke has a talent for tossing back his daily cocktail — which contains vitamins, minerals, muscle-building compounds, some little-known research drugs and a microdose of LSD — in almost a single gulp. It’s a weird but handy trick for someone who swallows 25 pills a day, most of them purchases off the Internet. Burke credits the regimen with giving him the cognitive edge he needs to thrive in California’s Silicon Valley, where he’s the co-founder of a food service that caters to athletes and fitness devotees. (Solovitch, 6/11)

NPR: Got Cancer Questions? This Little-Known Hotline Can Help
If you were worried you had cancer, who would you call for information? Chances are a federally-funded cancer helpline isn't the first place that pops into your mind. But for 40 years, a helpline funded primarily by the National Cancer Institute has been answering people's questions about cancer. (Columbus, 6/9)

NPR: Will Baby Boxes Really Keep Children Safer?
When Maisha Watson heard about baby boxes, her first reaction was: "Why would I want to put my baby in a box?" She was talking with Marcia Virgil — "Miss Marcia" to her clients — a family support worker with the Southern New Jersey Perinatal Cooperative. True, it's a cardboard box, Miss Marcia told her. But it's also a safe place for a baby to sleep: It comes with a firm mattress and a snug sheet, in line with American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations meant to protect against sleep-related deaths, including sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS. (Pao, 6/12)

NPR: Zika Travel Advice Still Holds For Pregnant Women And Their Mates
There's no doubt about it: Zika is on the retreat in the Americas. In Brazil, cases are down by 95 percent from last year. Across the Caribbean, outbreaks have subsided. And in Florida, the virus seems to have gone into hiding. Health officials haven't investigated a new Zika case for more than 45 days in Miami-Dade County. (Doucleff, 6/12)

NPR: First Responders In Florida Struggle With PTSD
Gerry Realin says he wishes he had never become a police officer. Realin, 37, was part of the hazmat team that responded to the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando on June 12, 2016. He spent four hours taking care of the dead inside the club. Now, triggers like a Sharpie marker or a white sheet yank him out of the moment and back to the nightclub, where they used Sharpies to list the victims that night and white sheets to cover them. (Aboraya, 6/12)

Los Angeles Times: Health Officials Urge Meningitis Vaccination Amid L.A. Pride Festival
Los Angeles County health officials on Friday again urged gay and bisexual men to get vaccinated against meningitis, as an outbreak that began last year continues to grow. Twenty-nine people in the county have been diagnosed with meningitis since March 2016, with the latest case identified a few weeks ago. Earlier this year, one patient died from the infection. (Karlamangla, 6/9)

The New York Times: Michigan Case Adds U.S. Dimension To Debate On Genital Mutilation
As more details emerge about the first-ever charges of female genital mutilation in the United States, the case is opening a window onto a small immigrant community, while stirring impassioned discussion about genital cutting among women who have experienced it. At a hearing in Michigan this past week, a federal prosecutor said the defendants — two doctors and a clinic manager from a small Shiite Muslim sect — were believed to have arranged cutting for up to 100 girls since 2005. The prosecutor, Sara Woodward, said investigators had so far identified eight girls. (Belluck, 6/10)

The Washington Post: Officers At New York Precinct Told Not To Shower At Station After Fears Of Legionnaires’ Disease
Officials are investigating after a New York Police Department officer contracted Legionnaires' disease, a potentially life-threatening form of pneumonia. Preliminary test results indicate that traces of the bacteria causing Legionnaires' disease were found at the police station in East Harlem. Officials have started inspecting the facility's systems and testing the precinct's water supply. The officer, who was not named, is recovering at a hospital outside of the city, according to the New York City Department of Health. (Phillips, 6/11)

The New York Times: Bacteria Behind Legionnaires’ Disease Found At New York Police Station
Traces of the bacteria that cause Legionnaires’ disease have been found in the water at a Manhattan police station where an officer who recently fell ill works, the police and health officials said on Sunday. The police officer, whose name was not released, was recovering from Legionnaires’ disease at a hospital outside the city, while city Health Department workers looked for the source of the contamination discovered at the 23rd Precinct station house on East 102nd Street in East Harlem. (Southall, 6/11)