Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
First Edition: June 16, 2017
Kaiser Health News: Lead Detected In 20% Of Baby Food Samples, Surprising Even Researchers
Pediatricians and public health researchers know they have to be on the lookout for lead exposure from paint chips and contaminated drinking water. A new report suggests food — particularly baby food — could be a problem, too. The Environmental Defense Fund, in an analysis of 11 years of federal data, found detectable levels of lead in 20 percent of 2,164 baby food samples. The toxic metal was most commonly found in fruit juices such as grape and apple, root vegetables such as sweet potatoes and carrots, and cookies such as teething biscuits. (Zuraw, 6/15)
California Healthline: The New War On Sepsis
Dawn Nagel, a nurse at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, Calif., knew she was going to have a busy day, with more than a dozen patients showing signs of sepsis. They included a 61-year-old mechanic with diabetes. An elderly man recovering from pneumonia. A new mom whose white blood cell count had shot up after she gave birth. Nagel is among a new breed of nurses devoted to caring for patients with sepsis, a life-threatening condition that occurs when the body’s attempt to fight an infection causes widespread inflammation. She has a clear mission: identify and treat those patients quickly to minimize their chance of death. Nagel administers antibiotics, draws blood for testing, gives fluids and closely monitors her charges — all on a very tight timetable. (Gorman, 6/16)
The New York Times: Secrecy Surrounding Senate Health Bill Raises Alarms In Both Parties
As they draft legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Senate Republican leaders are aiming to transform large sections of the American health care system without a single hearing on their bill and without a formal, open drafting session. That has created an air of distrust and concern — on and off Capitol Hill, with Democrats but also with Republicans. (Kaplan and Pear, 6/15)
The Wall Street Journal: Conservatives Sound Alarm About Senate Health Bill
Conservatives inside and outside the Senate GOP are sounding alarms over the emerging shape of the chamber’s bill to dismantle the Affordable Care Act, a sign that the faction’s support may be increasingly difficult to secure. Pressure from outside groups has intensified in recent days, and conservative lawmakers have signaled their concern that the Senate bill doesn’t do enough to curb spending on the Medicaid federal-state program for the poor or to reduce health-care premiums—two of their top goals. (Peterson, Radnofsky and Armour, 6/15)
The Washington Post: GOP Senate Leaders Aim To Bring Health-Care Legislation To The Floor By End Of June
Senate Republican leaders are aiming to bring a major revision to the nation’s health-care laws to the Senate floor by the end of June even as lingering disagreements, particularly over Medicaid, threaten to derail their efforts, several Republicans familiar with the effort said Thursday. President Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are pressing for an ambitious timeline to complete the bill, although it is being drafted in the Senate with little assistance from the White House. (Sullivan and Snell, 6/15)
Politico: Senate Likely To Miss Its Obamacare Repeal Deadline
Senate Republicans are getting dangerously close to missing their deadline to hold a Senate health care vote by month’s end, potentially derailing fulfillment of their 7-year-old campaign promise to repeal Obamacare. The Senate left Washington on Thursday with a seemingly insurmountable health care to-do list: When they return on Monday, Republicans will have just two weeks before the Fourth of July recess to overcome the remaining big divides on policy — including what year to roll back Medicaid expansion and how deeply to cut the program that covers health care for people with low incomes. (Haberkorn, 6/16)
Reuters: Senate May Keep Some Obamacare Taxes In U.S. Healthcare Overhaul
Republican senators trying to repeal Obamacare are forming consensus to keep some of the U.S. healthcare law's taxes they long criticized, in hopes of delaying more drastic funding cuts, particularly to the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled. First proposed by moderate Republicans, the idea is gaining traction among party members, according to five sources involved in or briefed on internal discussions. (Abutaleb, 6/15)
The Wall Street Journal: What May Be In The Senate’s Health Bill
The Senate health bill is still a work in progress, with no official text yet. The Senate’s Republican leadership has been hammering out the bill behind closed doors, so there has been scant information about the legislation. But its outline so far is said to resemble a more expansive version of the legislation passed last month by the House. (Armour, 6/15)
The Wall Street Journal: Insurers Look To Ramp Up Premiums In Health Law Exchanges
A growing number of major insurers are seeking premium increases averaging 20% or more for next year on plans sold under the Affordable Care Act, according to rate proposals in more than 10 states that provide the broadest picture so far of the strains on the marketplaces. As Republicans try to pass a health-care bill to overhaul the ACA, the attention has focused on insurers’ withdrawals from a few states that risk leaving some consumers with no exchange plans next year. But the rate requests by major insurers show stress on the marketplaces stretches beyond those trouble spots. (Wilde Mathews and Radnofsky, 6/16)
The Associated Press: Democrats Criticize Trump's Budget Plan As Hurting VA Care
Congressional Democrats on Thursday sharply criticized President Donald Trump's proposed budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs, saying it would harm veterans by rapidly expanding private care while neglecting core VA hospitals and programs. The report from top Democrats on the Senate and House committees overseeing the VA pointed to proposed double-digit increases to expand veterans' access to private doctors as funding for VA services remains mostly flat. (Yen, 6/15)
The Associated Press: Ex-VA Exec ‘Astounded’ By Cost Of Hospital
A former Veterans Affairs Department executive who was harshly criticized by Congress for massive cost overruns at a new Colorado VA medical center said he was never told the price had ballooned to more than $1.7 billion before he left the agency, and does not know how it happened. “I’m just astounded, quite frankly, I’m absolutely astounded,” Glenn Haggstrom told The Associated Press in a rare interview. Haggstrom, who was the VA’s top construction official when the project nearly collapsed amid legal disputes and skyrocketing costs, said the last estimate he heard from the builder before he was removed from the project was about $890 million. (Elliott, 6/15)
The Associated Press: Nevada Forces Drugmakers To Reveal Insulin Pricing, Profits
Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval signed into law Thursday the nation’s strictest requirements for pharmaceutical companies to reveal how they set certain prescription drug prices. The bipartisan legislation focuses on insulin — one of many life-sustaining prescription treatments sold in the U.S. at prices that have skyrocketed over the last decade. The law requires drugmakers to annually disclose the list prices they set, profits they make and discounts they give market middlemen on insulin. (Noon, 6/16)
The New York Times: As Opioid Panel Meets, Some Say Action, Not Study, Is Needed
Weeks before the presidential election, at a packed rally in New Hampshire, Donald J. Trump recounted the story of a young woman and her boyfriend who had fatally overdosed within a year of each other. He promised not just a border wall to keep drugs out, but also more access to treatment. “We’re going to take care of it,” he said of the opioid addiction epidemic, which has disproportionately hit states that were crucial to his election victory. “What’s taking so long?” (Goodnough, 6/16)
The Associated Press: Overcoming Opioids: Easing An Epidemic 1 Doctor At A Time
Even doctors can be addicted to opioids, in a way: It’s hard to stop prescribing them. Melissa Jones is on a mission to break doctors of their habit, and in the process try to turn the tide of the painkiller epidemic that has engulfed 2 million Americans. (Johnson, 6/15)
The Washington Post: Teenagers’ Tobacco Use Hits A Record Low, With A Sharp Drop In E-Cigarettes
Teenagers' use of e-cigarettes fell sharply last year, while overall tobacco use declined to a new low, according to data that some antismoking advocates said could signal a turning point in the decades-long effort against youth smoking. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's annual report on youth and tobacco found that 11.3 percent of high school students used e-cigarettes in 2016, compared with 16 percent the year before. That's the first drop since the CDC started keeping track of e-cigarettes in 2011. (McGinley, 6/15)
NPR: Teen Use Of E-Cigarettes Declines For The First Time
"It's actually quite remarkable from a public health standpoint," says Brian King, deputy director for research translation in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Office on Smoking and Health, which produced the report. Before the drop, the CDC had documented an exponential increase in the use of e-cigarettes by young people between 2011 and 2015, King says. That prompted widespread alarm among public health authorities. The devices were first imported into the U.S. from China in 2006. (Stein, 6/15)
NPR: Small Genetic Tweaks Could Transform This Bird Flu Into A Human Pandemic
Public health officials have been worried about this bird flu virus, called H7N9, because it's known to have infected more than 1,500 people — and killed 40 percent of them. So far, unlike other strains that more commonly infect humans, this deadly virus does not spread easily between people. The fear is that if it mutates in a way that lets it spread more easily, the virus will sweep around the globe and take a heavy toll, because people's immune systems haven't ever been exposed to this type of flu before. Past pandemics caused by novel flu viruses jumping from animals or birds into people have killed millions. (Greenfieldboyce, 6/15)
The Washington Post: Environmental Watchdog Group Warns Of Lead In Baby Food
While the amount of lead found in most samples was tiny, Sarah Vogel, vice president for health at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the results were “concerning” especially for children younger than 6. Years of studies have shown that children exposed to lead can experience behavioral problems and develop lower IQs and that the damage can be irreversible. (Cha, 6/15)
The Washington Post: In The Hunt For New Antibiotics, Scientists Hit Pay Dirt
Scientists have discovered a new kind of antibiotic — buried in dirt. Tests in animals show that it is effective against drug-resistant bacteria, and it could lead to desperately needed treatments for deadly antibiotic-resistant infections. Almost our entire arsenal of antibiotics was discovered in soil, but scientists haven’t gone digging for drugs in decades. That’s because, “screening microbial extracts from soil is thought to be a tapped-out approach,” said Richard Ebright, a scientist at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers. Soil has been “over-mined,” agreed Kim Lewis, director of the Antimicrobial Discovery Center at Northeastern University. But there is still a wealth of useful compounds under foot; we just have to take a closer look. (Gallegos, 6/15)
The Washington Post: Dangerous Unproven Treatments For ‘Chronic Lyme Disease’ Are On The Rise
An increasing number of Americans with medically ambiguous symptoms are being misdiagnosed with “chronic Lyme disease” and prescribed dangerous and often expensive treatments that do not work, according to a new report. In some instances, patients have died after receiving intensive, long-term and inappropriate courses of intravenous antibiotics that led to septic shock. In other cases, misdiagnosis caused dangerous delays in treatment of a patient’s actual underlying condition. (Sun, 6/15)
The Washington Post: Why A Single Gunshot To Steve Scalise’s Hip Can Be A Life-Threatening Injury
For those of us who experience gun violence via movies or television, the single bullet wound to the hip that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise suffered in a ballfield shooting Wednesday would seem less serious than what could have happened to him. After all, he wasn't hit in the head or chest, which can be immediately fatal. But even a single penetrating wound to the pelvic region, which is densely packed with blood vessels, organs and other structures, is extremely dangerous, according to trauma surgeons and emergency medical personnel. (Bernstein, 6/15)
The Associated Press: Kansas Governor Allows Concealed Carry Bill To Become Law
Public hospitals, mental health centers and other health facilities in Kansas can ban concealed guns without expensive security upgrades after Republican Gov. Sam Brownback allowed a bill to become law Thursday without his signature. (6/15)
The Associated Press: Suit Over Life-Ending Drugs For Terminally Ill Gets Hearing
A judge on Friday is expected to weigh whether a challenge can proceed to California's law letting terminally ill patients seek prescriptions for life-ending drugs. Riverside County Judge Daniel A. Ottolia is expected to hear arguments over whether a lawsuit by doctors challenging the state's 2016 law permitting medically-assisted death can move forward. (6/16)
