First Edition: June 18, 2019
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
Kaiser Health News:
Miracle Machine Makes Heroic Rescues — And Leaves Patients In Limbo
The latest miracle machine in modern medicine — whose use has skyrocketed in recent years — is saving people from the brink of death: adults whose lungs have been ravaged by the flu; a trucker who was trapped underwater in a crash; a man whose heart had stopped working for an astonishing seven hours. But for each adult saved by this machine — dubbed ECMO, for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation — another adult hooked up to the equipment dies in the hospital. For those patients, the intervention is a very expensive, labor-intensive and unsuccessful effort to cheat death. (Bailey, 6/18)
Kaiser Health News:
Texas Is Latest State To Attack Surprise Medical Bills
Texas is now among more than a dozen states that have cracked down on the practice of surprise medical billing. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed legislation Friday shielding patients from getting a huge bill when their insurance company and medical provider can’t agree on payment.The bipartisan legislation removes patients from the middle of price disputes between a health insurance company and a hospital or other medical provider. (Lopez, 6/18)
Kaiser Health News:
Democratic Voters Want To Hear Candidates’ Views On Health, But Priorities Vary
Nearly 9 out of 10 Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents said it is very important for candidates to discuss health issues. But 28% said they want candidates to focus on “lowering the amount people pay for health care,” and about 18% said Democrats should talk about “increasing access to health care,” the Kaiser Family Foundation poll reported. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.) That divide extends to specific health care proposals, mirroring the split on the issue among Democratic politicians. About 16% of the voters leaning Democratic said the party should discuss “protecting the [Affordable Care Act] and protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” while about 15% said they want candidates to talk about “implementing a single-payer or Medicare-for-all system.” (Luthra, 6/18)
The Washington Post:
Biden Gets Tepid Reception At Poverty Event
The gap between former vice president Joe Biden and more liberal candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination was on display Monday before activists at a candidates forum in Washington, where representatives of the Poor People’s Campaign grilled the hopefuls on their approaches to poverty and racism. Biden outlined a new health-care proposal, which would build on the Affordable Care Act by increasing access for lower-income people. The former vice president’s tack on health care is less sweeping than the Medicare-for-all plan embraced by some of his Democratic rivals, which they touted later onstage. (Janes, 6/17)
The Associated Press:
Report: Childhood Poverty Persists In Fast-Growing Southwest
The number of children living in poverty has swelled over the past three decades in fast-growing, ethnically diverse states such as Texas, Arizona and Nevada as the nation's population center shifts south and west, a report Monday on childhood well-being shows. The annual Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 18% of the nation's children live in poverty, down from the Great Recession. (6/17)
The Hill:
Pelosi: Dems Will 'Fight Relentlessly' Against Trump's ObamaCare Repeal Attempts
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) denounced President Trump on Monday for reviving plans to repeal and replace ObamaCare, saying Democrats would “fight relentlessly” against it. “The American people already know exactly what the President’s health care plans mean in their lives: higher costs, worse coverage and the end of lifesaving protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” Pelosi said in a statement. (Sullivan, 6/17)
The Hill:
Trump's Health Care Focus Puts GOP On Edge
President Trump has put the issue of health care back on the political front burner, providing ammunition to Democrats and worrying Republicans who think a new battle over ObamaCare will hurt their party in next year’s elections. Senate Republicans, defending 22 seats next year, thought they had put ObamaCare repeal behind them when they told Trump earlier this year that they have no intention of acting on a health care overhaul before the election. (Bolton, 6/18)
The Washington Post:
McConnell: I Don’t Know Why Jon Stewart Is ‘All Bent Out Of Shape’ On 9/11 Victims Fund
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) responded Monday to comedian Jon Stewart’s criticism of his handling of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, saying that he didn’t know why Stewart was “all bent out of shape.” McConnell’s comments, made in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” came one day after Stewart blasted the Kentucky Republican’s leadership on the issue. “I want to make it clear that this has never been dealt with compassionately by Senator McConnell,” Stewart said on “Fox News Sunday.” “He has always held out until the very last minute, and only then, under intense lobbying and public shaming, has he even deigned to move on it.” (Sonmez, 6/17)
Stat:
Why Democrats Reopened The Debate About Germline Gene Editing
A rogue Chinese scientist stunned the world last year when he announced the birth of genetically modified twin girls, prompting widespread outcry from the broader scientific community and calls for a “global moratorium” on editing human embryos that result in births. Yet months later, Democrats on Capitol Hill surprised many science policy experts when they attempted to roll back a related, 4-year-old ban on altering the DNA of embryos intended for pregnancies. (Facher, 6/18)
The Associated Press/Capital News Service:
AP Investigation: Many US Jails Fail To Stop Inmate Suicides
Increasingly, troubling questions are being raised about the treatment of mentally ill inmates in the nation's 3,100 local jails, possible patterns of neglect — and whether better care could have saved lives. A joint investigation by The Associated Press and the University of Maryland's Capital News Service finds many jails have been sued or investigated in recent years for allegedly refusing inmates medication to help manage mental illness, ignoring cries for help, failing to properly monitor them, or imposing excessively harsh conditions. (Cohen and Eckert, 6/18)
The Associated Press/Capital News Service:
Government Fails To Release Data On Deaths In Police Custody
More than four years after Congress required the Department of Justice to assemble information about those who die in police custody, the agency has yet to implement a system for collecting that data or release any new details of how and why people die under the watch of law enforcement. The information vacuum is hampering efforts to identify patterns that might lead to policies to prevent deaths during police encounters, arrests and incarceration, say advocates and the congressman who sponsored the Death in Custody Reporting Act. (Ready, Gaskill and Eckert, 6/18)
The Associated Press/Capital News Service:
Q&A: A Look At The Issue Of Mentally Ill Inmates In Jails
The nation's jails face increasing pressures as they house large numbers of mentally ill and addicted inmates. But the policies that contributed to this problem are decades in the making. Here's a look at why the population of troubled inmates has increased in jails and what's being done to address the problem. (Cohen, 6/18)
The Associated Press/Capital News Service:
Some Of The Stories Behind Those Involved In Jail Suicides
A Marine with PTSD, a schizophrenic father, a granddad struggling with depression: They are just some of the many who've taken their lives in U.S. jails — a problem experts say is preventable with more training and safeguards. Here are their stories. (6/18)
The Washington Post:
Robocalls Are Overwhelming Hospitals And Patients, Threatening A New Kind Of Health Crisis
In the heart of Boston, Tufts Medical Center treats scores of health conditions, administering measles vaccines for children and pioneering next-generation tools that can eradicate the rarest of cancers. But doctors, administrators and other hospital staff struggled to contain a much different kind of epidemic one April morning last year: a wave of thousands of robocalls that spread like a virus from one phone line to the next, disrupting communications for hours. For most Americans, such robocalls represent an unavoidable digital-age nuisance, resulting in seemingly constant interruptions targeting their phones. (Romm, 6/17)
The Wall Street Journal:
How 13 Became The Internet’s Age Of Adulthood
At 13, kids are still more than a decade from having a fully developed prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in decision-making and impulse control. And yet parents and educators unleash them on the internet at that age—if not before—because they’re told children in the U.S. must be at least 13 to download certain apps, create email accounts and sign up for social media. Parents might think of the age-13 requirement as a PG-13 movie rating: Kids might encounter a bit more violence and foul language but nothing that will scar them for life. But this isn’t an age restriction based on content. Tech companies are just abiding by a 1998 law called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which was intended to protect the privacy of children ages 12 or under. (Jargon, 6/18)
The Associated Press:
Abortion Foes, Supporters Pack Hearing In Massachusetts
Activists on both sides of the abortion divide clashed Monday on a bill in Massachusetts that would let women obtain an abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy in cases of "fatal fetal anomalies." The bill, called the "Roe Act" by supporters, would amend current state law, which allows abortions after 24 weeks only to preserve the life or health of the mother. (6/17)
The Associated Press:
Ex-Judge With Anti-Abortion Ties Named To Panel
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson appointed a former judge who has supported an anti-abortion pregnancy center — and been disciplined for publicly doing so — to an administrative panel that could handle a licensing dispute with the state's only abortion clinic. The Missouri Supreme Court in 2015 reprimanded former Macon County Associate Circuit Judge Philip Prewitt for encouraging people to donate to local charities on Facebook, including Ray of Hope Pregnancy Care Ministeries, an anti-abortion nonprofit. (6/17)
The New York Times:
Vaccine Injury Claims Are Few And Far Between
At a time when the failure to immunize children is driving the biggest measles outbreak in decades, a little-known database offers one way to gauge the safety of vaccines. Over roughly the past dozen years in the United States, people have received about 126 million doses of vaccines against measles, a disease that once infected millions of American children and killed 400 to 500 people each year. During that period, 284 people filed claims of harm from those immunizations through a federal program created to compensate people injured by vaccines. Of those claims, about half were dismissed, while 143 were compensated. (Belluck and Abelson, 6/18)
The New York Times:
By The Numbers: Vaccines Are Safe
Vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives in recent years. According to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccines have prevented more than 21 million hospitalizations and 732,000 deaths among children in a 20-year period. (Belluck and Abelson, 6/18)
The New York Times:
UNC Children’s Hospital Suspends Most Complex Heart Surgeries
North Carolina Children’s Hospital announced it would suspend heart surgeries for the most complex cases, some of which had a mortality rate approaching 50 percent in recent years, pending investigations by state and federal regulators and a group of outside experts. In a statement on Monday, UNC Health Care, which runs the hospital and is affiliated with the University of North Carolina, also introduced several initiatives to “restore confidence in its pediatric heart surgery program.” (Gabler, 6/17)
The Associated Press:
Child Death Hike Halts Hospital's Complex Heart Surgeries
The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services launched an investigation into the Chapel Hill facility after a New York Times report published last month. The article included audio recordings in which cardiologists were alarmed at the number of child deaths. (6/17)
North Carolina Health News:
NC Children’s Hospital Suspends ‘Most Complex’ Pediatric Heart Surgeries
Mandy Cohen, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services, quickly assembled a team to investigate the program. The team’s onsite work was completed Friday, according to Kelly Haight Connor, a spokeswoman for the state DHHS, giving them 10 business days to complete a report that then is to be submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for review. “While UNC Health Care and its Board of Directors have strong confidence in our extraordinary current pediatric heart surgery team, we believe it is vitally important that both current and future patients, our medical colleagues, key regulators, and the public share this confidence,” Charlie Owen, the UNC Health Care board of directors chairman, said in a statement released Monday. (Blythe, 6/18)
The Associated Press:
Sandy Hook Families Switch Tactics, Put Hoaxers On Defensive
The father of a victim of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre has won a defamation lawsuit against the authors of a book that claimed the shooting never happened — the latest victory for victims’ relatives who have been taking a more aggressive stance against conspiracy theorists. The book, “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook,” has also been pulled to settle claims against its publisher filed by Lenny Pozner, a man whose 6-year-old son Noah was killed in the shooting. “My face-to-face interactions with Mr. Pozner have led me to believe that Mr. Pozner is telling the truth about the death of his son,” Dave Gahary, the principal officer at publisher Moon Rock Books, said Monday. “I extend my most heartfelt and sincere apology to the Pozner family.” (Eaton-Robb, 6/18)
Politico:
How Rep. Eric Swalwell Would Tackle Gun Violence In America
Democratic presidential hopeful Eric Swalwell on Monday stood outside the National Rifle Association headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, to unveil a gun-control plan that includes banning assault weapons, instituting a gun buyback program and requiring licenses for all gun owners. The California congressman promised to “restore hope in America’s cities, so people don’t resort to the lowest form of communication: violence.” (Cammarata, 6/17)
The New York Times:
When You’re Told You’re Too Fat To Get Pregnant
The first time a doctor told Gina Balzano that she was too fat to have a baby was in 2013. She was 32, weighed 317 pounds and had been trying to get pregnant since soon after she and her husband, Nick, married in 2010. Balzano — whom I have known since high school — lives in Waltham, Mass., and works in special education. She’s the kind of person whom others often go to with their problems, but her own predicament, after three years of negative pregnancy tests, had left her feeling overwhelmed. “I’ve always had horrible, heavy, painful periods, so I thought something was wrong,” she says. “But I didn’t know enough to know what to worry about.” She told herself it was time to find out. (Sole-Smith, 6/18)
The Washington Post:
The Murder Of Black Transgender Women Is Becoming A Crisis
“They’re just getting so blunt,” Ruby Corado said. “It’s just out there. It used to be more isolated.” Corado could be talking about support for the LGBT community. The Pride parades across the region this month drew huge crowds. And they’re not just drag queens and shimmy-shimmy dancers with in-your-face protests. Social media has been filled during Pride Month with heterosexual couples and families showing up in rainbow regalia supporting LGBT rights with the same verve as they would a Fourth of July parade. (Dvorak, 6/17)
The New York Times:
Getting A Good Night’s Sleep Without Drugs
Shakespeare wisely recognized that sleep “knits up the ravell’d sleave of care” and relieves life’s physical and emotional pains. Alas, this “chief nourisher in life’s feast,” as he called it, often eludes millions of people who suffer from insomnia. Desperate to fall asleep or fall back to sleep, many resort to Ambien or another of the so-called “Z drugs” to get elusive shut-eye. But except for people with short-term sleep-disrupting issues, like post-surgical pain or bereavement, these sedative-hypnotics have a time-limited benefit and can sometimes cause more serious problems than they might prevent. (Brody, 6/17)
The Washington Post:
This Man Ate ‘Expired’ Food For A Year. Here’s Why Expiration Dates Are Practically Meaningless.
Last year, Mom’s Organic Market founder and chief executive Scott Nash did something many of us are afraid to do: He ate a cup of yogurt months after its expiration date. Then tortillas a year past their expiration date. “I mean, I ate heavy cream I think 10 weeks past date,” Nash said, “and then meat sometimes a good month past its date. It didn’t smell bad. Rinse it off, good to go.” It was all part of his year-long experiment to test the limits of food that had passed its expiration date. In the video above, we interviewed Nash about his experiment and examined where expiration dates come from and what they really mean. (Taylor, 6/17)
NPR:
'Elderhood' Doctor Says Geriatrics Should Address Different Ages And Phases
Dr. Louise Aronson says the U.S. doesn't have nearly enough geriatricians — physicians devoted to the health and care of older people: "There may be maybe six or seven thousand geriatricians," she says. "Compare that to the membership of the pediatric society, which is about 70,000." Aronson is a geriatrician and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. (Gross, 6/17)
The New York Times:
I Went For A Run. Then My Heart Stopped.
This past New Year’s Eve, I expressed thanks for getting through another year. I was 50, with a wife and two kids. I ran most days, and my freelance career was going well. Two days later, I was nearly dead. The cause was a cardiac arrest. Blood flow to my heart wasn’t the issue. Instead, it was an “electrical problem,” the doctors told me. Cardiologists would later confirm that there was no blockage of my arteries. A random electric malfunction caused an arrhythmia that stopped my heart. (Wasserman, 6/18)
The New York Times:
Excess Body Fat Tied To Fatal Prostate Cancers
Many studies have found that obesity is associated with an increased risk for prostate cancer. Now a new study suggests that the degree of risk may depend on where in the body the fat is. The report, in the journal Cancer, included 1,832 Icelandic men. All underwent CT scans to measure subcutaneous fat in the abdomen, the visceral fat surrounding internal organs, and fat in the thighs. (Bakalar, 6/17)
ProPublica:
After Serious 911 Mishaps, Rhode Island Will Now Pay For Better Training
Rhode Island lawmakers are moving forward on a spending plan that includes money to train all 911 call takers to respond to cardiac arrests and other medical emergencies. The $220,000 earmarked in the budget for the 2020 fiscal year, which begins July 1, follows an investigation by The Public’s Radio and ProPublica that raised questions about whether the lack of training for the state’s 911 call takers is costing lives. (Arditi and McKeon, 6/17)
Colorado Sun:
Colorado Kids And Teens Are Dying At A Rate Higher Than The U.S. Average — And Suicide Is To Blame
Colorado is among the wealthiest, healthiest states in the nation but has a higher teen and child death rate than the national average, a rate that has grown worse over the past two decades. The reason is suicide, which reached an all-time high in 2017 and is the leading cause of death for Coloradans ages 10-24. (Brown, 6/17)
Stateline:
Southern Farmers Reckon With Push To Raise Tobacco-Buying Age
Last month, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who co-sponsored a bill to raise the purchasing age limit for traditional and e-cigarettes from 18 to 21, said the changes were “not a zero-sum choice” between health and agriculture. [Paul] Hornback, who serves as a Republican state lawmaker in Kentucky, agrees. “I believe public health can win — and farmers can win,” Hornback said. He thinks tobacco growers could diversify their crops, improving their long-term economic outlook, while seeing a potential improvement in teen health. (Blau, 6/17)
The Associated Press:
San Francisco Weighs 1st US City Ban On E-Cigarette Sales
San Francisco supervisors are considering whether to move the city toward becoming the first in the United States to ban all sales of electronic cigarettes. It's part of an effort to crack down on youth vaping. The supervisors will vote Tuesday on measures to ban the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes in San Francisco until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration completes a public health review of the devices. The plan would also ban manufacturing e-cigarettes on city property. (6/18)
The Washington Post:
Ex-Federal Contractor Pleads Guilty To Taking Cash To Change Drug Test Results
A former federal contract employee who administered drug tests to people on federal probation pleaded guilty to bribery Monday after admitting to falsifying test results in exchange for money, federal prosecutors said. Michael A. Brown, 47, of Waldorf, Md., pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge as a part of a plea agreement, according to a statement released by U.S. Attorney Robert K. Hur’s office. (Williams, 6/17)