First Edition: March 14, 2018

Kaiser Health News: Opioid Maker Funds Efforts To Fight Addiction: Is It ‘Blood Money’ Or Charity?
A program to give naloxone overdose-antidote kits and training to front-line officers. Funding for pill disposal boxes in pharmacies, clinics and police stations across North Carolina. A radio campaign in Connecticut warning of the dangers of opioid abuse. A new medicine to treat opioid-induced constipation. The money behind these efforts to combat the opioid epidemic and its side effects comes from a perhaps unlikely sponsor: Purdue Pharma, the company that makes the top-selling opioid, OxyContin. (Gold, 3/14)

Kaiser Health News: California’s Tax On Millionaires Yields Big Benefits For People With Mental Illness, Study Finds
A statewide tax on the wealthy has significantly boosted mental health programs in California’s largest county, helping to reduce homelessness, incarceration and hospitalization, according to a report released Tuesday. Revenue from the tax, the result of a statewide initiative passed in 2004, also expanded access to therapy and case management to almost 130,000 people up to age 25 in Los Angeles County, according to the report by the Rand Corp. Many were poor and from minority communities, the researchers said. (Gorman, 3/14)

Kaiser Health News: Lifting Therapy Caps Proves A Load Off Medicare Patients’ Shoulders
Physical therapy helps Leon Beers, 73, get out of bed in the morning and maneuver around his home using his walker. Other treatment strengthens his throat muscles so that he can communicate and swallow food, said his sister Karen Morse. But in mid-January, his home health care agency told Morse it could no longer provide these services because he had used all his therapy benefits allowed under Medicare for the year. Beers, a retired railroad engineer who lives outside Sacramento, Calif., has a form of Parkinson’s disease. The treatments slow its destructive progress and “he will need it for the rest of his life,” Morse said. (Jaffe, 3/14)

The New York Times: In Replacing Tillerson With Pompeo, Trump Turns To Loyalists Who Reflect ‘America First’ Views
As the White House absorbed the news about Mr. Tillerson, rumors swirled that the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, and the secretary of Veterans Affairs, David J. Shulkin, would soon follow him out the door. The sense of disarray was deepened by the purging of Mr. Tillerson’s inner circle and the sudden dismissal of a personal aide to Mr. Trump. (Landler, Haberman, and Harris, 3/13)

The Associated Press: Trump Considers Ousting His VA Secretary In Cabinet Shuffle
President Donald Trump is considering ousting embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, who has faced an insurgency within his department and fresh allegations that he used a member of his security detail to run personal errands. Trump has floated the notion of moving Energy Secretary Rick Perry to the VA to right the ship, believing Shulkin has become a distraction, according to two sources familiar with White House discussions. The sources were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations. (Yen and Miller, 3/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Considers Ousting Veterans Affairs Chief
In multiple interviews with The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Shulkin has said forces in the administration and the department are conspiring to oust him, using the pretext of the inspector-general report to urge his ouster. Concerned Veterans for America, a veterans organization aligned with the conservative network backed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, has been lobbying publicly against Dr. Shulkin. (Ballhaus, 3/13)

The Associated Press: Ousted Health Secretary Tom Price Repaid $60K For His Travel
Former health secretary Tom Price repaid the government nearly $60,000 for his costs flying on private charters for official business, House Democrats revealed Tuesday. But White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway flew on some of those same trips, and Democrats want to know how much that cost. "The White House has completely stonewalled our requests for documents," Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said in a letter pressing House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., to subpoena travel records for Conway and other White House officials. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 3/13)

The Hill: Oversight Dem Demands Info On Conway's Private Flights With Tom Price 
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway flew on several of the same private flights as former Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tom Price, but has yet to reimburse the federal government for her share of the costs, House Democrats revealed Tuesday. Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, accused the White House of stonewalling the investigation into how much the flights cost and called on the panel’s chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), to issue a subpoena. (Weixel, 3/13)

The New York Times: White House Hails Success Of Disease-Fighting Program, And Plans Deep Cuts
The White House appeared to declare victory this week for an Obama-era initiative to stamp out disease outbreaks around the world even as it moved to scale back the program. The National Security Council released a report on Monday trumpeting the achievements of the multinational Global Health Security Agenda, which helps low-income countries halt epidemics before they cross borders. The report “clearly shows how the investments made by taxpayers to improve global health security are paying dividends,” White House officials said in the announcement. (Baumgaertner, 3/13)

The Hill: FDA Chief Becomes Point Man On Drug Prices
Scott Gottlieb, head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has emerged as a key figure in the Trump administration’s push to lower the cost of prescription drugs. Gottlieb has moved to the front lines of the drug pricing fight, criticizing brand-name drug manufacturers he says are trying to block competition from getting to market. (Weixel, 3/14)

The New York Times: House Rejects Bill To Give Patients A ‘Right To Try’ Experimental Drugs
In a surprising rebuff to President Trump and Republican leaders, the House derailed a bill on Tuesday that would have given patients with terminal illnesses a right to try unproven experimental treatments. The bill was considered under special fast-track procedures that required a two-thirds majority for passage, and it fell short. When the roll was called, 259 House members supported the bill, and 140 opposed it. (Pear, 3/13)

The Associated Press: House Rejects GOP Bill Easing Use Of Unproven Drugs
The vote for the measure was 259-140, but that fell seven votes short of the two-thirds majority the GOP needed to prevail under special procedures. Since the Senate approved similar legislation last August, Republicans could well revisit the legislation under rules that would require only a simple majority for passage, perhaps after reworking the measure. (Fram, 3/13)

Politico: Democrats Sink House Vote On Trump-Backed Drug Bill
“This legislation delivers the false hope to patients and their families that they will receive a cure to their underlying disease or condition,” House Energy and Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone said. The bill is also “based on false premise that patients are not receiving access to investigational treatments as a result of the Food and Drug Administration." (Karlin-Smith, 3/13)

The Washington Post: House Defeats ‘Right-To-Try’ Legislation To Allow Expanded Use Of Experimental Drugs
The Republicans pushing the legislation, Commerce Committee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Health Subcommittee Chairman Michael C. Burgess (R-Tex.), expressed disappointment at the outcome. “For months we sought to strike the right balance by allowing patients greater access to these unapproved treatments and therapies while also ensuring proper patient protections,” they said in a joint statement. “This bill does just that.” The vote capped an emotionally charged debate that kicked into high gear over the weekend after Walden and Burgess released their bill and said they planned a quick floor vote. The Senate passed a similar measure last summer that was pushed by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). (McGinley, 3/13)

The New York Times: Stephen Hawking, Who Examined The Universe And Explained Black Holes, Dies At 76
Stephen W. Hawking, the Cambridge University physicist and best-selling author who roamed the cosmos from a wheelchair, pondering the nature of gravity and the origin of the universe and becoming an emblem of human determination and curiosity, died early Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 76. His death was confirmed by a spokesman for Cambridge University. (Overbye, 3/14)

Reuters: Physicist Stephen Hawking, Who Unlocked The Secrets Of Space And Time, Dies At 76
The power of his intellect contrasted cruelly with the weakness of his body, ravaged by the wasting motor neuron disease he developed at the age of 21. Hawking was confined for most of his life to a wheelchair. As his condition worsened, he had to resort to speaking through a voice synthesizer and communicating by moving his eyebrows. ... In the book he related how he was first diagnosed: "I felt it was very unfair - why should this happen to me," he wrote. "At the time, I thought my life was over and that I would never realize the potential I felt I had. But now, 50 years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life." (Addison, 3/14)

The Washington Post: Stephen Hawking’s Secret To Surviving His Terrible Condition? A Sense Of Humor.
The fact Hawking survived into his 70s is remarkable in its own right. “He is known as one of the longest, if not the longest, surviving patients with ALS in history,” the International Business Times wrote in 2012. “What’s happened to him is just astounding,” Leo McCluskey, the medical director at the University of Pennsylvania’s ALS Center, told Scientific American in that same year. “He’s certainly an outlier.” In a January 2016 question and answer session, Hawking credited “my work and a sense of humour” with keeping him alive. (Swenson, 3/14)

The Wall Street Journal: Stephen Hawking, Who Bridged Science And Popular Culture, Dies At Age 76
“From his wheelchair, he’s led us on a journey to the farthest and strangest reaches of the cosmos,” President Barack Obama said of Dr. Hawking in 2009 during a ceremony in which the cosmologist received the Medal of Freedom. “In so doing, he has stirred our imagination and shown us the power of the human spirit here on Earth.” (Hernandez, 3/14)

The Washington Post: Stephen Hawking, Physicist Who Came To Symbolize The Power Of The Human Mind, Dies At 76
Dr. Hawking eventually became one of the planet’s most renowned science popularizers, and he embraced the attention, traveling the world, meeting with presidents, visiting Antarctica and Easter Island, and flying on a special “zero-gravity” jet whose parabolic flight let Dr. Hawking float through the cabin as if he were in outer space. “My goal is simple,” he once said. “It is complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.” He spent much of his career searching for a way to reconcile Einstein’s theory of relativity with quantum physics and produce a “Theory of Everything.” (Achenbach and Rensberger, 3/14)

Politico: Hospitals Missing From Gun Control Debate
Hospitals treat gunshot victims, and send the dead to morgues. But in the national debate on guns, they are studiously noncommittal. That’s a contrast from much of the public health world. “Guns kill people,” a prestigious network of medical journals jointly editorialized after last year’s deadly shooting in Las Vegas. Doctors exhorted colleagues to raise gun control with their elected officials: “Now. Don’t wait.” Health insurance giant Aetna announced it will donate $200,000 to an anti-gun rally in Washington. (Pittman, 3/13)

The Associated Press: Northam Sets Date For Special Session On State Budget
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam is calling state lawmakers back to work next month to pass a state budget. Northam, a Democrat, announced Tuesday that he’s calling a special session on April 11. The move comes after lawmakers adjourned the regular 2018 session last week without passing a state spending plan. The GOP-led General Assembly is split on whether to expand Medicaid to about 300,000 low-income Virginians. The House supports expansion while the Senate does not. (3/13)

The Washington Post: Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam Orders Lawmakers Back For A Special Session To Pass A Budget.
“Virginians sent us to Richmond to work together to make life better for every family, no matter who they are or where they live,” said Northam, who won office last year on a promise to expand the program. “We can live up to that responsibility by passing a budget that expands health care to hundreds of thousands of Virginians who need it.” During the regular session, the House passed a budget bill that called for expanding Medicaid eligibility to as many as 400,000 uninsured Virginians. The Senate’s budget plan did not expand the program, which currently covers 1 million residents. (Vozzella, 3/13)

NPR: Lawmakers In Virginia May Pass An ACA Medicaid Expansion This Year
At a recent rally outside the state Capitol in Richmond, Governor Northam continued his campaign message. "Are you all ready to get this done?" he called to the crowd's cheers. "Are you ready to expand coverage?" A December poll showed over 80 percent of likely Virginia voters support an expansion. "I think the House heard that message, loud and clear. I think the Senate still needs to listen a little bit," Northam says. (Pauly, 3/14)

The Hill: US Spends Twice As Much As Other Wealthy Countries On Health Care
The United States spent twice as much on health care than ten other high-income countries in 2016, largely because of the high costs of prescription drugs, administrative overhead and labor, a new study released Tuesday indicates. While Americans don't use more services than people in high-income countries, the U.S.'s overall health spending still topped that of the United Kingdom, Canada and Germany, according to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (Hellmann, 3/13)

The Washington Post: The Real Reason The U.S. Spends Twice As Much On Health Care As Other Wealthy Countries
A sweeping new study of health-care expenditures found that the United States spends almost twice as much on health care as 10 other wealthy countries, a difference driven by high prices — including doctors' and nurses' salaries, hospital charges, pharmaceuticals and administrative overhead. For years, it has been clear that Americans are not getting a good bang for their buck on health care. The United States spends more than any other country and gets much less, at least as measured by life expectancy or infant mortality. Policy fixes have tended to focus on the idea that medicine is being overused. The thinking goes that the American health care system is uniquely set up to incentivize wasteful imaging scans, oodles of unnecessary prescriptions and procedures that could have been prevented. (Johnson, 3/13)

Los Angeles Times: With Healthcare, It's Not What You Spend But How You Spend It
Americans did rank at or near the top in several categories of healthcare utilization. For instance, they ranked first in coronary artery bypass graft surgeries (79 per 100,000 people; the average for all countries was 54 per 100,000) and total knee replacements (226 per 100,000 people; the average for all countries was 163 per 100,000). They also got the most CT scans (245 per 1,000 people; the average was 151 per 1,000) and the second-most MRIs (118 per 1,000 people; the average was 82 per 1,000). But overall healthcare use was “relatively similar to other high-income nations,” the researchers found. Even in the areas where the U.S. was at or near the top, “this utilization did not appear to explain a large part of the higher spending in the U.S.” (Kaplan, 3/13)

Stat: Americans Spend More On Prescription Drugs Than Other Wealthy Countries
As Americans grapple with the rising cost of medicines, a new analysis shows that the U.S. had the highest spending per capita among nearly a dozen other high-income countries. Specifically, U.S. spending per capita on pharmaceuticals was $1,443, despite the fact that generics represented 84 percent of the U.S. market, the largest tally among the 11 countries that were examined. The mean spending per capita was $749, according to the analysis, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Retail spending per capita was also highest in the U.S., at $1,026. (Silverman, 3/13)

Stat: White House Panel On Cancer Drug Costs Recommends Finding 'Value'
A White House panel issued a report Tuesday urging several steps designed to curb rising prices for cancer medications, notably a recommendation for determining value for these increasingly expensive treatments, which can cost $100,000 or more a year. ... Value has become one of the hot buzzwords used by pharmaceutical and insurance industry insiders, along with some policy makers, to redefine the drug pricing debate. Rather than focus solely on lowering prices — a thorny and elusive goal in a world of opaque pricing — insider conversations now seek to balance pricing with usefulness. (Silverman, 3/13)

Stat: Feds Outline When They Will Pursue Drug Makers For Off-Label Marketing
Despite impressions to the contrary, federal officials plan to pursue drug makers for illegal marketing, according to one Department of Justice official who recently provided a roadmap for those seeking to identify bad behavior. At issue is off-label marketing, a contentious topic that has resulted in huge fines paid by numerous drug makers over the years and is now at the center of a free speech struggle between the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration. (Silverman, 3/13)

Stat: Henry Waxman Says Lawmakers 'Derelict' If They Don't Address Drug Prices
Henry Waxman is a household name in pharmaceutical circles — during his three decades on Capitol Hill, he helped write the Affordable Care Act and expand Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. He sponsored the 1984 Hatch-Waxman Act, which set up the modern infrastructure for bringing generic drugs to market, and chaired the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over health-related issues, from 2009 to 2011. Since his retirement from Congress in 2015, Waxman has served as chairman of Waxman Strategies, a lobbying firm that has been active on health issues, especially the 340B drug discount program. (Swetlitz, 3/14)

The New York Times: What Fertility Patients Should Know About Egg Freezing
The failure of systems used to store frozen eggs and embryos at two fertility clinics has rattled people who count on such clinics to help them realize their hopes of having children. But the breakdowns at clinics in Cleveland and San Francisco, each apparently involving the temperature or level of liquid nitrogen in one storage tank, have damaged at least some eggs and embryos belonging to potentially hundreds of people. (Belluck, 3/13)

The Associated Press: Doctors Hunt For Hidden Cancers With Glowing Dyes
It was an ordinary surgery to remove a tumor — until doctors turned off the lights and the patient's chest started to glow. A spot over his heart shined purplish pink. Another shimmered in a lung. They were hidden cancers revealed by fluorescent dye, an advance that soon may transform how hundreds of thousands of operations are done each year. (Marchione, 3/14)

The New York Times: A Cure For Nausea? Try Sniffing Alcohol
Sniffing an alcohol pad may be a good cure for nausea. Almost five million people go to emergency rooms annually in the United States for severe nausea and vomiting, and it is commonly treated with oral ondansetron (Zofran), a drug used to control the nausea of chemotherapy. (Bakalar, 3/13)

NPR: Medical Students With Disabilities Seek More Help
Being a medical student or resident is hard enough, but what if you have a disability that adds to the challenge? One medical resident with a physical disability was about a year and a half into training when the medical institution finally installed an automatic door he needed. Another student faced frustrations when arranging accommodations for taking tests, with it seeming like the medical school was "making up rules along the way." When another resident with a disability first sought support, the disability representative was allegedly unfamiliar with the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Gordon, 3/13)

The Washington Post: The CDC Says Its Missing Researcher Wasn’t Denied A Promotion. Police Say Otherwise.
The Atlanta Police Department was clear: A researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had disappeared the same day he learned why he was passed over for a promotion. But exactly one month after Timothy Cunningham vanished, abandoning everything he would need to survive and leaving no clues about his whereabouts, the CDC issued an unusual rebuke of that police finding. (Horton, 3/13)