First Edition: March 15, 2018

Kaiser Health News: Everything You Need To Know About The New Medicare Cards (But Beware Of Scams)
In April, the government will start sending out new Medicare cards, launching a massive, yearlong effort to alter how 59 million people enrolled in the federal health insurance program are identified. Historically, Medicare ID cards have been stamped with the Social Security numbers of members — currently, about 50 million seniors and 9 million people with serious disabilities. But that’s been problematic: If a wallet or purse were stolen, a thief could use that information, along with an address or birthdate on a driver’s license, to steal someone’s identity. (Graham, 3/15)

The New York Times: Trump’s Vow To Make More Federal Benefits Depend On Having A Job Faces An Uncertain Future
In his State of the Union speech two months ago, President Trump vowed to end welfare as he defined it, heralding a plan to force recipients off federal housing vouchers, food assistance and Medicaid if they were not willing to do “a hard day’s work.” Days before the speech, as part of the plan, several federal departments took steps to impose the stricter work requirements on able-bodied adults receiving noncash aid. The move could result in the loss of subsistence benefits for as many as four million poor, single adults over the next few years, experts say. (Thrush, 3/15)

The New York Times: Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos C.E.O. And Silicon Valley Star, Accused Of Fraud
Holding up a few drops of blood, Elizabeth Holmes became a darling of Silicon Valley by promising that her company’s new device would give everyday Americans unlimited control over their health with a single finger prick. Ms. Holmes, a Stanford University dropout who founded her company, Theranos, at age 19, captivated investors and the public with her invention: a technology cheaply done at a local drugstore that could detect a range of illnesses, from diabetes to cancer. (Thomas and Abelson, 3/14)

The Associated Press: Holmes Surrenders Theranos, Pays $500K After 'Massive Fraud'
Elizabeth Holmes, a Stanford University dropout once billed as the "next Steve Jobs," has forfeited control of Theranos, the blood-testing startup she founded, and will pay $500,000 to settle charges that she oversaw a "massive fraud. "Under an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Holmes is barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for 10 years. The SEC said Wednesday that it will pursue its case against the president of the company, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, in federal court. (Sweet, 3/14)

The Wall Street Journal: SEC Charges Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes With Fraud
The SEC began investigating Theranos after The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2015 that the lab instrument developed as the linchpin of the company’s strategy handled just a small fraction of the tests sold to consumers. Some employees also were leery about the machine’s accuracy, the Journal reported. Theranos was valued at more than $9 billion at the time and Ms. Holmes’s majority stake at more than half that. (Carreyrou, 3/14)

The Washington Post: SEC Accuses Theranos Of ‘Elaborate, Years-Long Fraud’
Over the years, Holmes, now 34, persuaded some of the most powerful men in Washington to serve on her company’s board — drafting former secretaries of state George Shultz and Henry Kissinger and Marine Gen. Jim Mattis as advisers. Their reputations lent credibility, connections and heft to a young company that promised to upend medicine by making blood tests cheap, fast and accessible. (Johnson, 3/14)

The Hill: Exit Poll Shows Health Care A Top Issue In Pa. Special Election 
The majority of voters in Tuesday’s special election in Pennsylvania considered health care to be one of the most important issues in deciding who to vote for, according to an exit poll released Wednesday. For 52 percent of voters, health care was ranked as a top issue when deciding who to vote for, while 19 percent said it wasn’t at all important to them, according to Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling firm. (Hellmann, 3/14)

Politico: Trump Administration Dials Back Shulkin Firing Rumors — For Now
President Donald Trump may be itching to fire him, but Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin has the support of GOP lawmakers and veterans, and the lack of a preferred successor may keep him at the agency’s helm at least for now. Trump’s consternation with Shulkin bubbled over Monday, as he was meeting with Energy Secretary Rick Perry and planning Rex Tillerson’s ouster from the State Department. Trump didn’t offer Perry the job, nor did he ask if Perry wanted it, but the events prompted speculation that a major Cabinet shakeup was in the works. (Woellert and Allen, 3/14)

The New York Times: Veterans Health Program Closes ‘Indefinitely’ After Killings
The Pathway Home program in Yountville, Calif., is shutting down “indefinitely” less than a week after three employees were taken hostage by a gunman and killed. The program, part of the Veterans Home of California, provided post-Sept. 11 veterans with academic and vocational support as they prepared to re-enter the civilian world after deployment. (Salam and Stevens, 3/14)

The Associated Press: Perry Says He's Not Interested In Becoming VA Secretary
Energy Secretary Rick Perry said he had no interest in becoming the next head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, flatly rejecting speculation that he would soon take over the position amid rapidly eroding White House support for embattled VA Secretary David Shulkin. Two administration officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Shulkin's position is growing more precarious and that he could be out of a job within the week, but they cautioned that nothing was finalized. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive personnel matter. (Yen and Miller, 3/15)

Politico Pulse Check: Tommy Thompson's Advice To Alex Azar: 'I Told Him To Be Bold'
What’s the best advice that one HHS secretary can give to another? Tommy Thompson — who ran the department for four years under President George W. Bush — says his guidance to new leader Alex Azar has been clear: Never hesitate. “I told him to be bold,” Thompson said on POLITICO’s “Pulse Check” podcast. “Follow your gut, your heart, your mind.” (Diamond, 3/14)

Politico: Head Of Major Insurer Lobby Stepping Down After Turbulent Term
Marilyn Tavenner is stepping down after three tumultuous years at the helm of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a K Street powerhouse that's seen its influence decline as Washington grew more hostile to Obamacare. Tavenner oversaw AHIP as Republicans took full control of the federal government, hellbent on dismantling the 2010 health care law. The industry group was forced to take on that fight with diminished resources, with three of the country’s largest insurers — UnitedHealth Group, Aetna and Humana — dropping out of the organization in recent years. AHIP spent $6.5 million on lobbying last year — a nearly 40 percent decline from four years earlier. (Demko, 3/14)

The Hill: CEO Of Lobby Group For Insurers Stepping Down 
She will be replaced by Matt Eyles, the group’s chief operating officer. Her resignation will be effective June 1. Eyles said in an interview Wednesday that Tavenner was "certainly the right leader at the right time and has helped improve the association." He said she made a "personal decision to step down at this time," but that it was an "orderly transition" that was "not based on any surprises." (Weixel, 3/14)

The Washington Post: Thousands Of Students Walk Out Of School In Nationwide Gun Violence Protest
Tens of thousands of students across the country walked out of their classrooms Wednesday and onto athletic fields and city streets as part of a massive ­national protest on gun violence spurred by a Florida high school shooting a month ago that left 17 dead. The walkouts, which came 10 days before a march on Washington that could draw hundreds of thousands of students to the nation’s capital, are unprecedented in recent American history, not seen in size or scope since student protests of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s. (Heim, Lang and Svrluga, 3/14)

The Wall Street Journal: Students Protest Gun Violence In National School Walkout
Far from big cities, in rural states with high levels of gun-ownership, students protested. Anna Strong Garcia, a 17-year-old senior at Billings Senior High School, said, “We don’t expect Montana to be the leader in gun-control laws, but we don’t want to be left behind.” More than 3,000 registered demonstrations took place in all 50 states, according to organizers with Women’s March Youth Empower, which helped coordinate the “#Enough” school walkouts. It put the initial tally at nearly 1 million and said it was still counting. About 56 million students attend pre-K through 12th grade in public and private schools, according to federal data. (Campo-Flores, 3/14)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. Students Join Nationwide Walkouts And Actions To Remember Parkland Victims, Push Gun Control
At Hamilton High School, the protest began with a young man and a bullhorn. Ari Elkins, a senior, stood on the front lawn of his Palms school and in a voice both firm and loud, cried out: "No more silence! End gun violence!" Seconds later, hundreds of his fellow students came pouring out the building's double doors. (Jennings, Kohli, Blume and Bermudez, 3/14)

The Associated Press: Gun Control Bills Winding Through Delaware Legislature
Several gun control bills advanced through the Delaware legislature on Wednesday as lawmakers take aim at restricting weapon sales and ensuring those deemed potentially dangerous for mental health reasons do not have access to firearms. With little discussion, a Senate committee released a bill defining bump stocks, trigger cranks and similar devices as “destructive weapons” whose sale or possession is a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. (Chase, 3/14)

The New York Times: Hepatitis C Drugs Save Lives. Sick Prisoners May Never Find Out.
Any national campaign to eliminate hepatitis C, an insidious virus that kills tens of thousands of Americans a year, would almost certainly involve prisons. One in seven state inmates are believed to be infected, and the regimented environment of a prison has its advantages when it comes to screening and treatment.The problem is, the drugs that effectively cure the disease are priced in the tens of thousands of dollars — far more than prisons can pay. In 2015, state corrections departments were treating less than 1 percent of those inmates known to be infected, a survey found. (Alcorn, 3/15)

The Associated Press: Michigan Settles Lawsuit Over Hepatitis C Treatment Access
The state of Michigan has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit over a policy that restricts certain hepatitis C treatments in the Medicaid program. Details of the agreement haven't been publicly disclosed, but a federal judge will get an update on March 29. Lawyers who filed the lawsuit on behalf of an Oakland County woman said the case could affect thousands of people. (White, 3/14)

The Associated Press: Investigations Begin Into Ohio Fertility Clinic Malfunction
A fertility clinic where thousands of frozen embryos and eggs may have been destroyed in a storage tank failure is being investigated by two accreditation organizations and Ohio's health department. It's not clear yet what caused the malfunction on March 4 at the clinic run by University Hospitals in suburban Cleveland. It's also a mystery why liquid nitrogen levels for a storage tank at a San Francisco fertility clinic fell dramatically on the same day. There is no known connection between the two episodes. (3/14)

The Washington Post: Class-Action Lawsuit Filed Against Pacific Fertility For Loss Of Up To Thousands Of Embryos And Eggs
A woman whose frozen eggs were stored at the Pacific Fertility Center has filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco, accusing the company of gross negligence in its maintenance, inspection and monitoring of a storage freezer that malfunctioned in early March. Pacific Fertility is one of two centers that separately reported problems in liquid-nitrogen tanks where thousands of eggs and embryos were kept. Officials at both facilities have acknowledged that some — or potentially all — of the tissue may have been damaged. (Cha, 3/14)

The Washington Post: FAQ: Are My Frozen Embryos Safe? Everything You Need To Know About The Freezer Malfunctions.
In what many reproductive health experts have called a stunning coincidence, two fertility centers in different parts of the country experienced malfunctions in their freezing tanks on the same weekend in early March. Thousands of eggs and embryos were probably lost. Would-be parents are suing. Here's what we know about what happened at the University Hospitals Ahuja Medical Center's Fertility Center in Cleveland and the Pacific Fertility Center in San Francisco, how the country's regulatory process works with reproductive health services and how investigations could unfold. (Cha, 3/14)

NPR: Suicide And Opioid Overdose: Why Discerning Intention Matters
Mady Ohlman was 22 on the evening some years ago when she stood in a friend's bathroom looking down at the sink. "I had set up a bunch of needles filled with heroin because I wanted to just do them back-to-back-to-back," Ohlman recalls. She doesn't remember how many she injected before collapsing, or how long she lay drugged-out on the floor. "But I remember being pissed because I could still get up, you know?" (Bebinger, 3/15)

The Associated Press: Native American Overdose Deaths Surge Since Opioid Epidemic
Overdose deaths in Native American communities have skyrocketed in the time the opioid epidemic has swept the U.S. and federal officials are looking for solutions. Native Americans and Alaska Natives saw a fivefold increase in overdose deaths between 1999 and 2015, Dr. Michael Toedt told the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs on Wednesday. (3/14)

Reuters: South Dakota Sues Opioid Makers As Litigation Swells
South Dakota on Wednesday sued three major drugmakers, accusing them of deceptively marketing prescription opioids and contributing to a nationwide epidemic. Marty Jackley, the state's attorney general, announced civil claims against Purdue Pharma LP, a unit of Endo International Plc and Johnson & Johnson's Janssen unit. (Stempel, 3/14)

The Associated Press: NY AG Seeks Sales, Marketing Records Of Opioid Distributors
The office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has served subpoenas on two opioid distributors as part of a multi-state investigation into their marketing and sales practices. The subpoenas seek company records and internal communications relating to suspicious drug orders or cases in which opioids may have been improperly diverted by customers. (3/15)

Cincinnati Enquirer: Opioid Babies At Risk For Delays, Cincinnati Children's Study Shows
A new study from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center shows that newborns who require treatment for opioid withdrawal are at higher risk than others for delayed language, cognitive and motor skills. Cincinnati Children's this week released the study of 87 children who have been treated at its long-term Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Clinic. (DeMio, 3/13)

The Associated Press: Judge Blocks Ohio Ban On Abortions Due To Down Syndrome
A state law that prohibits doctors from performing abortions based on a diagnosis of Down syndrome was placed on hold by a federal judge on Wednesday. Judge Timothy Black said the law's opponents are "highly likely" to succeed in arguing the law is unconstitutional because "federal law is crystal clear" that a state can't limit a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy before viability. His ruling means the law won't take effect next week, as scheduled, while the litigation proceeds. (3/14)

The Washington Post: Lawmakers In Both D.C. And Congress Want To Understand Why The Nation's Capital Has A Maternal Mortality Rate That Is Twice The National Average.
D.C. mothers are twice as likely to die because of pregnancy than the average American woman. The city’s maternal mortality rate — among the nation’s highest — has captured the attention of local leaders and those in Congress, who say avoidable deaths of mothers are unacceptable in the nation’s capital. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) plans to sign legislation passed last week by the D.C. Council to form a commission to investigate deaths related to childbirth and recommend ways to address the root causes. (Nirappil, 3/14)

The Associated Press: NC County Illegally Removed Kids From Homes
When Brian Hogan got a call that his wife had suffered a massive heart attack, he knew he had to get to the hospital fast. So Hogan asked his neighbor to take care of his 10-year-old daughter, then headed 60 miles east to the intensive care unit in Asheville, North Carolina. What happened next would eventually expose a practice by a child welfare agency that illegally removed potentially hundreds of children from their homes in this poverty-stricken mountain community (Weiss and Holbrook, 3/14)

The Washington Post: Traffic Deaths Continue To Soar Despite Cities’ Pledges To Get Them To ‘Zero’
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser stood in the heart of Union Station on Feb. 20, 2015, and promised to lead the nation’s capital into an era free of traffic fatalities. “We are taking our first step toward realizing a ‘Vision Zero’ where no lives are lost on our streets or at our intersections,” said a newly elected Bowser, setting a goal of zero road deaths by 2024. Instead, the number of traffic fatalities has steadily increased since then, frustrating city officials and advocates, and seemingly putting the goal further from reach. (Lazo, 3/14)