First Edition: March 11, 2015

Kaiser Health News: Republican Lawmakers Sink Montana Governor’s Medicaid Expansion Plan
Obamacare’s tenuous toehold in Montana appears to be growing no firmer. Despite a hearing crowded with supporters of the Democratic governor’s Medicaid expansion bill, Republican legislators have dealt the measure a likely death blow. Republicans control both houses of the Montana legislature, which meets only every other year, and the health law has been controversial. The legislature refused to set up a state-run insurance marketplace before enrollment began and in 2013 it turned down a proposal to expand Medicaid. But statehouse Democrats were hopeful they could ally with enough moderate Republicans to gain a majority of votes in favor of their bill this year. (Whitney, 3/11)

Kaiser Health News: FDA Heads Into Uncharted Territory Of ‘Biosimiliar’ Drugs
Mark McCamish spent more than five years preparing for a presentation he gave at the Food and Drug Administration’s headquarters this winter. McCamish is in charge of biopharmaceutical drug development at the Sandoz division of Switzerland’s Novartis. He and his colleagues made the case to a panel of 14 cancer specialists and a group of regulators that a company drug code-named EP2006 should be approved for sale in the U.S. The drug, brand name Zarxio, is similar to but not quite identical to Amgen’s Neupogen, a medicine approved by the FDA back in 1991 to fight infections in cancer patients. (Gordon, 3/10)

The New York Times: 86 Percent Of Health Law Enrollees Receive Subsidies, White House Says
The Obama administration said Tuesday that 11.7 million Americans now have private health insurance through federal and state marketplaces, with 86 percent of them receiving financial assistance from the federal government to help pay premiums. (Pear, 3/10)

Los Angeles Times: More Than 85% Of Obamacare Enrollees Qualify For Subsidies
Reliance on government aid is higher in states where the federal government operates insurance marketplaces than in states like California that run their own systems. The legal challenge being considered by the Supreme Court would strip away subsidies in states that rely on the federal government, affecting as many as 7.7 million people, according to the report. In many of those states, consumers are getting subsidies that top $300 a month on average, according to the data. (Levey, 3/10)

USA Today: More Young People But Fewer Minorities Pick ACA Plans
More than 4.1 million people under age 35 picked Obamacare health insurance plans so far in this open enrollment period, a small increase compared with the end of the 2014 period, the Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday. And HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell on Monday said nearly 11.7 million people enrolled in plans on state and federal exchanges through Feb. 22. Those numbers run through the end of a one-week enrollment extension for those delayed by issues with Healthcare.gov and its call center. Next week, a new tax-related extension takes effect for those facing penalties for not having insurance last year. (O'Donnell, 3/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Three States Would Be Hardest Hit If Supreme Court Upends Health-Law Subsidies
Florida, North Carolina and Texas would be among the states hardest hit if their health-insurance subsidies are struck down by the Supreme Court. Those states had the highest number of consumers who were eligible for tax credits when selecting a plan on the federal HealthCare.gov website, government data show. Affordable Care Act enrollment figures released Tuesday give the most up-to-date snapshot of which states would bear the brunt of any loss of subsidies. Nearly 7.7 million people who selected a plan using the federal site qualified for an average tax credit of $263 a month to help pay for premiums, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. (Armour, 3/10)

The Kansas Health Institute News Service: 350,000 Kansans And Missourians Signed Up For Healthcare.gov Coverage
Twice as many Kansans and Missourians signed up for health insurance this year under the Affordable Care Act compared with the first enrollment period last year, new figures released Tuesday show. More than 250,000 Missourians and nearly 100,000 Kansans selected plans on the federal insurance exchange, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (Smith, 3/10)

The Washington Post: Maximus, Seeking To Expand Into Health IT Market, Acquires Acentia
Reston-based contractor Maximus said this week that it will acquire information technology contractor Acentia for $300 million cash as it seeks to expand more into the federal space. The deal signals a concerted step into the federal health IT market for a company better known for processing Medicare claims for state governments and running call centers for state health exchanges. (Gregg, 3/10)

The Washington Post: Obama To Visit VA Hospital In Phoenix, The Heart Of Last Summer’s Scandal
The president’s visit comes two months after he was criticized by Congress and veterans groups for not talking with Arizona veterans during a visit to the state, where he previewed his housing policies. Some members of Congress slammed Obama because he drove right past the hospital without stopping during that visit. The scandal over the medical center’s delays in providing care for veterans, some of them struggling with cancer, suicidal thoughts and other issues, sparked an investigation. It led to revelations that the problem was not limited to the Phoenix facility and that similar lapses were seen at scores of VA facilities. (Thibodeaux and Nakamura, 3/10)

The Associated Press: Obama To Visit Phoenix VA Hospital That Sparked Scandal
President Barack Obama will visit the Arizona veterans' hospital that prompted an overhaul of veterans' health care and led to the resignation of the VA secretary, his first visit since reports of mismanagement surfaced nearly a year ago. (3/10)

NPR: Veterans Choice Act Fails To Ease Travel Burdens For Vets In Need Of Care
Veterans who need to see a doctor often have to travel long distances – 40 miles or more – to get to a Department of Veterans Affairs facility. So last year, after scandals involving long wait times for vets, Congress tried to make getting care easier. The Veterans Choice Act gives veterans the option of using a doctor outside the VA system if VA facilities are more than 40 miles away, or there's more than a 30-day wait for an appointment. (Walsh, 3/11)

Politico: Human Trafficking Bill Hits Abortion Snag
Senate Democrats are threatening to pull their support from a bipartisan anti-trafficking bill set for Senate action this week. They are infuriated over an abortion-related provision that Democrats say was slipped in without their knowledge. The legislation passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in late February without opposition, but Democrats are now balking over language in it that would prohibit money in a restitution fund from being spent on abortions. (Everett and Kim, 3/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Abortion Fight Threatens Bill To Crack Down On Human Trafficking
Democratic concerns erupted Tuesday over abortion language embedded in a Senate bill to curb human trafficking that had previously appeared poised to glide to passage. Less than two months after House GOP leaders pulled a contentious bill barring abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy from the House floor, a fresh abortion fight across the Capitol threatened to derail the widely supported bill aimed at cracking down on human trafficking. (Peterson and Radnofsky, 3/10)

The Washington Post: Anti-Human-Trafficking Bill Gets Caught Up In Abortion Politics In Senate
Proving that there is virtually no issue that cannot get mired in partisan combat, an anti-human trafficking bill now under Senate consideration is in limbo after Democrats accused Republicans of sneaking anti-abortion language into the legislation before it hit the Senate floor. (DeBonis, 3/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Investors See Potential Opportunity In Marijuana Reform Bill
When Sens. Cory Booker (D., N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) and Rand Paul (R., Ky.) announced a bill Tuesday to reform federal marijuana regulation, they pitched it not just as a health, military veteran and states’ rights issue, but from a business angle. And they used words that investors in the developing marijuana industry have been waiting to hear for a long time. (Dunford, 3/10)

The Associated Press: Report: Specialty Drugs Drive Prescription Spending Jump
Prescription drugs spending jumped 13 percent last year, the biggest annual increase since 2003, according to the nation’s largest pharmacy benefits manager. Express Scripts Holding Co. said Tuesday that the jump was fueled in part by pricey specialty drugs that accounted for more than 31 cents of every dollar spent on prescriptions even though they represented only 1 percent of all U.S. prescriptions filled. (3/10)

The Washington Post: Three Years After Approval, Nationwide Network For First Responders Faces Challenges
The federal government is in the early stages of building the first nationwide public safety communications network for first responders, a project long sought by public safety advocates to address communication failures during the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina. Three years after Congress approved $7 billion for the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to launch the network, the First Responders’ Network Authority faces some challenges in planning for long-term funding and in internal controls to ensure that it operates with high ethics standards. (Rein, 3/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Medical Device ID Effort Hits Snag
The ideal way to protect the public from hazardous medical devices, the Food and Drug Administration says, is a brand-specific identification number on devices like implanted heart defibrillators and artificial hips. If one goes haywire, the thinking goes, doctors can quickly tap large insurance databases to find out whether the malfunction was rare—or part of a broader public-health threat. ... Congress passed this “unique device identifier” concept into law in 2007. ... But the overall safety effort has hit a barrier. The Obama administration’s Medicare agency, in a behind-the-scenes bureaucratic conflict, has dug in its heels and opposes the FDA’s plan. (Burton, 3/10)

Politico: Accompanying Apple Watch, A Medical Surprise
And now, Apple will enroll you in a clinical trial. In a surprise announcement that overshadowed the presentation of its new Apple Watch — for the health care industry, at least — the Silicon Valley giant on Monday unveiled a new biomedical platform called ResearchKit. The platform ... will allow any iPhone user to enroll in tests of new drugs and therapies by downloading apps from hospitals and providers who are recruiting patients. (Gold, 3/10)

NPR: States Aim To Restrict Medically-Induced Abortions
Of the million or so women who have abortions every year in the U.S., nearly a quarter end their pregnancy using medications. But just as states have been passing a record number of restrictions on surgical abortion, more are trying to limit this option as well. One of the country's strictest laws is in Ohio. To understand it, a little history helps. (Ludden, 3/11)