First Edition: June 5, 2017

Kaiser Health News: Many COPD Patients Struggle To Pay For Each Medicinal Breath
After a lifetime of smoking, Juanita Milton needs help breathing. She’s tethered to an oxygen tank 24/7 and uses two drug inhalers a day, including Spiriva, which she called “the really expensive one.” “If I can’t afford it, I won’t take it,” Milton said. (Tribble, 6/5)

Kaiser Health News: They’ve Still Got Bucket Lists — In Their 90s
It is one thing to have a bucket list at any age. It is something else entirely to have a bucket list that sends you to college for the first time at 92 — or that sends you on your maiden flight at the controls of a single-engine airplane at 97. These are the bucket list accomplishments of Cecile Tegler (92) and Mildred “Milly” Reeves (97). And neither of them is done yet. (Horovitz, 6/5)

California Healthline: A Community Seeks Answers, Assurances About Health Care — In 10 Languages
Ten years ago, Mary Thach unexpectedly needed throat surgery to improve her breathing and spent two weeks in the hospital. Her bill: $69,000.Her first reaction was panic, said Thach, speaking through a Vietnamese interpreter. Uninsured at the time, she had no idea how to come up with the money. Then she learned from the hospital staff that as a low-income legal resident, she qualified for Medicaid, which ultimately paid the bill. (Ibarra and Browning, 6/2)

The New York Times: The Single-Payer Party? Democrats Shift Left On Health Care
For years, Republicans savaged Democrats for supporting the Affordable Care Act, branding the law — with some rhetorical license — as a government takeover of health care. Now, cast out of power in Washington and most state capitals, Democrats and activist leaders seeking political redemption have embraced an unlikely-seeming cause: an actual government takeover of health care. (Burns and Medina, 6/3)

The Washington Post: At Home, GOP Senators Voice Skepticism About Passing A Health-Care Bill
A pair of Republican senators voiced considerable skepticism this week about the prospect of passing a bill to revamp the nation’s health-care laws in the coming months, injecting fresh uncertainty into the GOP effort to fulfill a signature campaign promise. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) sounded a deeply pessimistic note when he told a local television station he believes it’s “unlikely that we will get a health-care deal.” Earlier in the week, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said he doubted a bill could pass before the August recess. (Sullivan, 6/2)

Politico: GOP Senators Offer Downbeat Predictions On Obamacare Repeal
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) made the most direct prediction on Thursday, telling a news station in his home state that “I don’t see a comprehensive health care plan this year.” Earlier in the week, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested to home-state reporters that lawmakers might shift to a shorter-term plan that would keep insurance markets working, on the heels of negative comments from Iowa GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst. (Schor and Conway, 6/2)

Politico: Meet The GOP Senator Who Wants To Bridge The Obamacare Divide
Sen. Bill Cassidy got cheers on late-night television for calling for an Obamacare replacement plan that would pass what he calls "the Jimmy Kimmel test" — that is, cover children like the comedian's son recently born with a congenital heart defect. But the first-term senator and physician is not seeing that support from his GOP colleagues. (Haberkorn and Everett, 6/4)

Politico: Insurance Companies Duck Obamacare Repeal Fight
The once-powerful health insurance lobby — the same one that killed Hillarycare a generation ago and helped usher in Obamacare — can't pick a side in the latest battle over America's health care system. Some major members of the sprawling trillion-dollar industry, like Humana and Cigna, have little at stake in the fight. Other insurers heavily invested in the Obamacare markets, like the regional Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, are urging Congress to fix the 2010 health law instead of shredding it. And then there’s Anthem, a rare industry voice supporting repeal. (Demko, 6/3)

The Wall Street Journal: Health Care In Iowa Shows Peril For Both Political Parties
Craig Barnum, a school administrator, took the afternoon off recently and drove three hours to Sen. Chuck Grassley’s town-hall meeting to press the Republican senator on the GOP plan to overhaul health care. Mr. Barnum has health insurance through his work. But his family depends on Medicaid to help cover the medical costs of his 9-year-old son, Koan, whose delayed development means he needs expensive therapy and equipment including leg braces. (Peterson and Armour, 6/4)

The Wall Street Journal: GOP’s Quandary Over Medicaid Plays Out In Iowa
Few issues are as fraught for the Republicans writing a health overhaul in the Senate as how to handle Medicaid. Iowa’s experience shows the delicacy of the issue. The state in 2013 used federal funds to expand Medicaid, while also imposing a small premium for certain beneficiaries. The number of uninsured Iowans dropped 38% between 2013 and 2015, according to a review of U.S. Census data by Families USA, a non-partisan health advocacy group. Almost 150,000 Iowans gained coverage under the Medicaid expansion, just part of the millions added to the program under the Affordable Care Act. (Peterson and Armour, 6/4)

The New York Times: From Maine, A Call For A More Measured Take On Health Care
Hundreds of miles from the health care debate that will begin again this week in Congress, lobstermen here are out in force, bees are furiously pollinating the state’s famous blueberries and part-time workers are preparing for another summer tourist season. As a result of their short-term spike in income, many of Maine’s working class will likely lose some or all of their health insurance subsidy, a feature of the federal health care law, which has been a complicated blessing for the citizens of Maine. (Steinhauer, 6/4)

The Washington Post: This Cancer Doctor Is Running For Congress. Here’s Why.
Jason Westin is an oncologist and lymphoma researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. But now he wants a seat in Congress — the one held by longtime Republican congressman John Abney Culberson. Westin will have plenty of competition; several other Democrats say they'll run for the right to face off against Culberson in a district that Hillary Clinton narrowly won in November. Westin, 40, says he was bitten by the politics bug when, before medical school, he worked as an intern for former Florida senator Bob Graham (D). And now, he argues, with health-care science under assault in the nation's capital, it's important for scientists and physicians like him to get involved. (McGinley, 6/5)

The New York Times: Rebuking Congress, Cuomo Plans To Keep State Health Care Plans Intact
Striking pre-emptively at an increasingly frequent foil, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo plans to announce a series of steps on Monday to safeguard insurance coverage against a possible repeal of all or parts of the Affordable Care Act in Washington. The measures, taken via emergency regulations, will include requiring any private company doing business on the state’s insurance marketplace to guarantee the 10 “essential health benefits” required by President Barack Obama’s signature 2010 health care law. The governor will also direct the state’s health department to block any company that withdraws from the exchange from participating in Medicaid or its children’s health plan. (McKinley, 6/4)

The Wall Street Journal: Mayo Clinic’s Unusual Challenge: Overhaul A Business That’s Working
Change is hard. It is especially hard when the organization in question is among the top in its field. Doctors at the Mayo Clinic, the 153-year-old institution that pioneered the concept of patient-centered care, considered it an ideal place to practice, one that wasn’t in much need of fixing. It is renowned for diagnosing and treating medicine’s most complex patients. Dr. John Noseworthy, Mayo’s chief executive officer, had a different view about the need for change. He saw declining revenue, he says, from accelerating efforts by government health programs, private insurers and employers to rein in health-care costs as a looming threat to the clinic’s health. (Winslow, 6/2)

The Washington Post: Millions Of Dollars’ Worth Of Research In Limbo At NIH
For four years, Jed Meltzer studied communication disorders at the National Institutes of Health, using brain-imaging technology to pinpoint the impact of strokes on speech. His postdoctoral training, he wrote on his blog, comprised “some of the most scientifically satisfying years of my life. “I got to collect amazing, irreplaceable data, and I got to learn from the best and work with unparalleled resources...." But now that data is useless for Meltzer and about a dozen other scientists caught in a dispute that is unusually fierce, even for the highly competitive world of elite biomedical research. (Bernstein, 6/4)

The Washington Post: Foreign-Born Doctors, Many In Underserved Areas, Are Worried About Their Jobs
Just a few months ago, the future appeared promising and certain for Sunil Sreekumar Nair. A British citizen, he was completing a residency in internal medicine at a Brooklyn hospital and had accepted a job in a hospital near Fort Smith, Ark., a rural area with a severe shortage of doctors. Then the Trump administration announced that it was suspending the 15-day expedited process to obtain an H-1B visa, a program that allows U.S. employers to temporarily employ foreign-born workers in specialty fields such as medicine and information technology. Now Nair may not receive his visa for at least eight months, long after he is supposed to show up for his new job in Arkansas. (Ollove, 6/3)

The Washington Post: Is Pregnancy Safe After Breast Cancer? Here’s What The Latest Data Shows.
Women who have had early-stage breast cancer and become pregnant do not have a greater chance of recurrence and death than those who do not get pregnant, according to results released Saturday from the largest study to ever explore the issue. The study is the first to focus specifically on the safety of pregnancy for women whose cancers are fueled by estrogen. Researchers said their conclusions should allay concerns among some doctors and patients that pregnancy, which results in a surge in estrogen levels, could put these women at risk by encouraging the growth of any cancer cells that might remain in the body after treatment. (McGinley, 6/3)

The Washington Post: Women Who Breast-Feed May Be Lowering Their Risk Of Endometrial Cancer
Women who breast-feed their babies for the recommended six months may be lowering their own risk of developing endometrial cancer, a new study suggests. In the analysis of data from 17 past studies, researchers found that women who had ever breast-fed their children were 11 percent less likely than women who had children but didn’t breast-feed to be diagnosed with endometrial cancer. (Crist, 6/3)

The Washington Post: How A Simple Tech Tool Can Help Cancer Patients Live Longer
Doctors often don't hear about the serious side effects of chemotherapy because patients are reluctant to complain or don't have enough time to talk about such problems during jam-packed office visits, experts say. But a new study points to a potential solution: using simple technology to encourage “real time” reporting of symptoms. Its findings show that patients with advanced cancer who reported side effects frequently via an online tool lived a median of five months longer than those who waited to mention problems during office visits. (McGinley, 6/4)

The Washington Post: For Women With Congenital Heart Defects, Having A Baby Can Be Risky
For years, the one thing standing between Candace Martinez and motherhood was her heart. She was born with a defect that a generation earlier would have led to death as an infant, but modern medicine — open-heart surgery at 5 weeks old to switch two misconnected arteries — had saved her. At age 18 she experienced heart failure: Her heart muscle couldn’t pump enough blood to oxygenate her body. At 19, she got a pacemaker. Martinez survived, but she always assumed that the life modern medicine had given her would not include having children. Pregnancy and childbirth long were thought to be too tough on women with congenital heart defects like hers. (Haelle, 6/4)

The Washington Post: Much Shorter Chemo Works For Many Colon Cancer Patients, Study Says
Many colon cancer patients can cut their chemotherapy regimen in half, improving their quality of life and reducing their chances of having debilitating side effects, according to a major international study released Sunday. The goal of the research, eagerly awaited by oncologists, was to determine whether a three-month course of chemo was as effective as six months of treatment in staving off a recurrence in people with Stage 3 colon cancer. (McGinley, 6/4)

NPR: Teen Pregnancy Rates Remain Stubbornly High In Some Parts Of Texas
To understand why teen pregnancy rates are so high in Texas, meet Jessica Chester. When Chester was at in high school in Garland, she decided to attend the University of Texas at Dallas. She wanted to become a doctor. "I was top of the class," she says. "I had a GPA of 4.5, a full-tuition scholarship to UTD. I was not the stereotypical girl someone would look at and say, 'Oh, she's going to get pregnant and drop out of school.'" (Silverman, 6/5)

The Associated Press: Texas Lawmakers Make Few Moves To Address Pregnancy Deaths
Lawmakers in Texas largely failed to take any significant action to address the state’s skyrocketing rate of pregnancy-related deaths just months after researchers found it to be the highest in not only the U.S., but the developed world. Legislators introduced proposals to address the issue after a University of Maryland-led study found that the state’s maternal mortality rate doubled between 2010 and 2012. But several key measures didn’t even make it to a vote, falling victim to Republican infighting over other issues. (Hoffman, 6/4)

The New York Times: Drug Deaths In America Are Rising Faster Than Ever
Drug overdose deaths in 2016 most likely exceeded 59,000, the largest annual jump ever recorded in the United States, according to preliminary data compiled by The New York Times. The death count is the latest consequence of an escalating public health crisis: opioid addiction, now made more deadly by an influx of illicitly manufactured fentanyl and similar drugs. Our estimate of 62,500 deaths would be a 19 percent increase over the 52,404 recorded in 2015. (Katz, 6/5)

The Wall Street Journal: From Opioids To Plastic Bags, Gov. Cuomo Turns To Panels For Help On Issues
Hate crimes, heroin and power plants pose disparate problems, but New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has responded with the same idea: Start a task force. Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, has increasingly relied on panels of mostly allies and appointees to navigate some of New York’s dilemmas and controversies. The governor’s office and some past panelists say the tactic allows Mr. Cuomo to delegate tricky issues to outside experts who can reach nonpartisan recommendations. And they point to panel ideas that became laws to indicate the panels were successful. (Vilensky, 6/4)

The Washington Post: As Bike Commuting Soars, So Do Injuries. Annual Medical Costs Are Now In The Billions.
Bikes have transformed urban landscapes throughout America, from pavement markings on streets to our workday gear, and most of us agree it's a good thing. They've reduced the pollution we send into the ozone layer, helped us conserve gas and oil and kept us fitter than we might otherwise be. But there's also been a downside to all that cycling: more injuries. And those injuries are costing billions of dollars a year. (Cha, 6/3)

The Washington Post: Wild 'Death Cap' Mushrooms Sicken 14 People In California — And Often Kill
They sprouted up in abundance after heavy rains, poking up through California lawns and forests, appearing harmless to some of those who found them — as though they'd make a good meal. And so they do, at first. The “death cap” mushroom is said to be delicious. A new federal report detailed what came after consumption for 14 people who sampled the Bay Area's bloom of death cap — or amanita phalloides — last December: Violent nausea, in all cases. For some days later, organ damage as the death caps' potent toxins ravaged the liver. (Selk, 6/3)

The New York Times: The Empathetic Dog
Benjamin Stepp, an Iraq war veteran, sat in his graduate school course trying to focus on the lecture. Neither his classmates nor his professor knew he was silently seething. But his service dog, Arleigh, did. She sensed his agitation and “put herself in my lap,” said Mr. Stepp, 37, of Holly Springs, Miss. “I realized I needed to get out of class. We went outside, I calmed down. We breathed.” (Lucchesi, 6/4)