First Edition: March 30, 2015

Kaiser Health News: Hoping To Live, These Doctors Want A Choice In How They Die
The right-to-die movement has gained renewed momentum in California and around the nation following the highly publicized death of an East Bay woman with brain cancer. Brittany Maynard, 29, moved to Oregon to take advantage of its “Death with Dignity” law and died in November after taking a fatal dose of barbiturates prescribed by her doctor. ... Kathryn Tucker, an attorney on several of the court cases, is also spearheading the California lawsuit. This time, she and her legal team decided to include among the plaintiffs two doctors with life-threatening illnesses, Swangard and a retired San Francisco obstetrician. Physicians "have a very deep and broad understanding about what the journey to death can be like," said Tucker, executive director of the Disability Rights Legal Center. "The curtain is pulled back. For lay people, death is much more mysterious." (Gorman, 3/30)

The Associated Press: GOP-Guided Budget Sets Up Battles Between Congress And Obama
The Senate budget would cut $4.3 trillion from benefit programs over the next 10 years, including annulling Obama's health care law, a step the president would without doubt veto. Those savings would include $431 billion from Medicare, matching Obama's figure. The House budget would pare $148 billion from the health care program for the elderly and convert it into a voucher-like program for future beneficiaries, a step the Senate shunned. (Fram, 3/27)

The Associated Press: After A Few Stumbles, GOP Lawmakers Regain Footing On Budget
Republicans are looking like they’ve finally figured out how to govern. The GOP’s first months in control of both chambers of Congress were marked by high-profile stumbles and a near-shutdown of the Homeland Security Department. But this week, the party celebrated important successes. Republicans in both the House and the Senate came together to pass boldly conservative and balanced budgets, and House leaders struck a bipartisan deal on Medicare that passed on a huge vote and is expected to clear the Senate once lawmakers return from a two-week spring break. (Werner, 3/28)

The New York Times: Boehner Reflects On Bipartisan Support For Medicare Bill
Lately, in the House of Representatives, all it takes to claim a major success is a bill passed with support from both Republicans and Democrats. On Thursday, when the House passed a bill amending various provisions of Medicare, it was hailed as one of the most significant bipartisan achievements in years. In an interview that aired Sunday, Speaker John A, Boehner, Republican of Ohio, reflected on the bill’s passage, and called it “an opportunity that presented itself.” (Siddons, 3/29)

The Associated Press: Colleges Getting Out Of Health Insurance Business
The federal health care overhaul is leading some colleges and universities to get out of the health insurance business. Experts are divided on whether this change will be good or bad for students. Some call it an inevitable result of health care reform and a money-saver for students since insurance in the marketplace is usually cheaper than the college plans. Others worry that more students will go without health insurance since their premiums won’t be folded into the lump sum they pay for school, and they say college health plans offer more coverage for the money than other options. (Blankinship, 3/28)

The Washington Post: Md. Might Owe Federal Government Millions For Health-Care Exchange, Audit Finds
A federal audit of Maryland’s once-troubled health-insurance exchange found that the state waited too long to formally update its enrollment projections and numbers with federal grant providers, resulting in the misallocation of $28.4 million. The inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommended Friday that Maryland repay that money and properly apply for reimbursement, which could be 50 to 90 percent of the original amount. (Johnson, 3/28)

The Associated Press: Audit: Maryland Misallocated $28.4M For Health Exchange
Maryland misallocated $28.4 million in federal money for its flawed health care exchange and should pay the money back, according to a federal audit released Friday. The audit marked the first time the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services recommended that a state repay misallocated federal grant funds involving a health care exchange. (Witte, 3/28)

ProPublica/The Washington Post: New Hepatitis C Drugs Are Costing Medicare Billions
Medicare spent $4.5 billion last year on new, pricey medications that cure the liver disease hepatitis C — more than 15 times what it spent the year before on older treatments for the disease, previously undisclosed federal data shows. The extraordinary outlays for these breakthrough drugs, which can cost $1,000 a day or more, will be borne largely by federal taxpayers, who pay for most of Medicare’s prescription drug program. But the expenditures will also mean higher deductibles and maximum out-of-pocket costs for many of the program’s 39 million seniors and disabled enrollees, who pay a smaller share of its cost, experts and federal officials said. (Ornstein, 3/29)

The Wall Street Journal: White House Plan For Limiting Antibiotic Resistance Is Criticized
The goal is to control the spread of these so-called ‘superbugs’ by 2020 and the plan outlines five goals to accomplish over the next five years. These include slowing the spread of resistant bacteria; strengthening surveillance efforts; speed development of diagnostic tests; hasten R&D for generating new drugs, and improve coordination among government agencies. (Silverman, 3/27)

The Wall Street Journal: White House Issues Plan To Fight Drug-Resistant Bacteria
The plan, formally known as the National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, sets goals to reduce by 50% to 60% illnesses caused by some of the most lethal microbes known to man by 2020. It seeks enhanced laboratory capacity across the U.S. to detect the worst pathogens, and it calls on federal agencies to set new rules aimed at curbing dangerous microbes. (Burton and Tracy, 3/27)

Los Angeles Times: Obama To Drug-Resistant Superbugs: We Are Coming After You
Each year, more than 2 million Americans are sickened by these superbugs and about 23,000 die as a result, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The World Health Organization has warned that drug-resistant bacteria are on the rise in every part of the globe. The recent outbreak of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, tied to contaminated duodenoscopes at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center is just one example of the problem. As many as half of people infected with CRE may die. (Kaplan, 3/27)

The Associated Press: White House Unveils Plan To Fight Antibiotic-Resistant Germs
Critics said the White House needs to go further, particularly in terms of the antibiotics used in animals processed for meat. The Food and Drug Administration has already successfully encouraged many drug companies to phase out the use of antibiotics used for animal growth promotion. But advocacy groups have called on the agency to limit other uses of animal antibiotics as well, such as for disease prevention when holding animals in crowded conditions. (Pickler, 3/27)

The New York Times: Obama Seeks To Double Funding To Fight Antibiotic Resistance
President Obama on Friday urged Congress to double the funding to confront the danger of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, calling it a major public health issue that, if left unchecked, would “cause tens of thousands of deaths, millions of illnesses.” The administration also issued a new plan for attacking the problem, part of a national strategy that Mr. Obama laid out in an executive order in September. (Tavernise and Shear, 3/27)

The Washington Post: White House Announces Plan To Fight Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
The White House announced an aggressive plan Friday to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a mounting problem that causes an estimated 2 million illnesses and 23,000 deaths every year in the United States. The plan lists specific goals to fight the spread of antibiotic-resistant microbes over the next five years. It outlines steps to prevent and contain antibiotic-resistant infections through better surveillance of "superbugs," to maintain the effectiveness of current and new drugs, and to develop next-generation therapeutics. (Sun, 3/27)

The New York Times: Pay For Performance Extends To Health Care In Experiment In New York
For a generation, doctors in New York’s economically depressed neighborhoods have been the ugly ducklings of the medical hierarchy. Many are foreign born and foreign trained, serve mostly minority and immigrant patients, and often run high-volume practices to compensate for Medicaid’s low rate of payment. Now these doctors are in the vanguard of an experiment to transform New York’s health care services for the poor from a disorganized hodgepodge into coordinated networks of doctors, hospitals and other practitioners. (Hartocollis, 3/30)

Los Angeles Times: Blue Shield Of California Is Under New Pressure To Lower Rates
With billions of dollars in reserve, nonprofit insurer Blue Shield of California is facing new pressure to offer better prices for its policies. Despite its nonprofit status, the health insurance giant is usually on par or priced slightly above its for-profit rivals, according to a review of rates and interviews with insurance agents and industry officials. ... The San Francisco insurer's premiums are drawing renewed scrutiny since the California Franchise Tax Board stripped Blue Shield of its longtime exemption for state income taxes after an audit. (Terhune, 3/27)

The Associated Press: NY Starts Out-Of-Network Health Coverage Protections
New protections against big surprise medical bills are starting in New York. They require insurance payments for out-of-network medical treatment in emergencies, when similar services or specialists are unavailable within the insurer's network or when care is provided without the patient's knowledge. (3/30)

Los Angeles Times: South L.A.'s MLK Hospital Will Reopen With A New Healthcare Outlook
The new Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital doesn't open until June, but that's hard to tell with all the people darting in and out of buildings at the South Los Angeles medical facility. ... "This place has a heartbeat," says Dr. Mark Ghaly, deputy director for community health and integrated programs for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services. "The heartbeat is not the hospital." The focus of medical care, Ghaly argues, has shifted away from hospitals. And with its emphasis on preventive treatments, with its new urgent-care center and outpatient and public health clinics, the new MLK campus, he says, provides a state-of-the-art answer to the question: How do you build a hospital in 2015? (Karlamangla, 3/28)

NPR: Indiana's HIV Spike Prompts New Calls For Needle Exchanges Statewide
Scott County is one of the poorest and least healthy counties in Indiana. For years, it has struggled with injection drug abuse. Now the drug use in the area has spawned an epidemic of a different kind: HIV. ... The crisis led Indiana's governor, Mike Pence, to declare a public health emergency Thursday. It also reignited a debate in the state over the use of needle exchange programs to prevent HIV's spread among users of injected drugs. Such programs have been found to work elsewhere, but the strategy is illegal in Indiana — and in 22 other states. (Harper, 3/28)

The Wall Street Journal: Needle Exchanges Gain Currency
Evidence that HIV and hepatitis C are spreading among intravenous drug users is prompting more state and local officials to consider setting up needle exchanges—including some who had been resistant to such programs. The problem comes in tandem with rising intravenous use of heroin and prescription painkillers nationwide. (Campo-Flores and Whalen, 3/29)

Wall Street Journal's Pharmalot: More States Pass ‘Right To Try’ Laws, But Will These Make A Difference?
A divisive measure called “right to try” is getting a tryout in Indiana. ... Earlier in the week, [Indiana Gov. Mike Pence] signed a bill allowing people who are battling life-threatening conditions to gain access to experimental medicines. Known as a “right to try” law, the idea is to leapfrog a drug-development process that takes years before new treatments become available. The move reflects rising frustration with an FDA program called expanded access, in which people who are seriously ill can obtain a drug under development, even though they aren’t enrolled in a clinical trial. (Silverman, 3/27)

The New York Times: New York State’s Medical Marijuana Rules Shaping Up As Unusually Restrictive
When New York State’s lawmakers were mulling legalizing the medical use of marijuana last summer, some proponents feared that the proposed law was so restrictive that it would prevent many patients from receiving the drug. Now, with the state’s Health Department close to issuing final regulations about the new program, the law’s supporters say their fears may soon be realized. (McKinley and Saint Louis, 3/29)

NPR: New York City To Teens: TXT ME With Mental Health Worries
The majority of teenagers with mental health issues don't get help. But maybe if help were just a text message away — they wouldn't be so hesitant to reach out. That's the thinking behind NYC Teen Text, a pilot program at 10 New York public high schools that allows teens to get help with mental health issues by text. (Singh, 3/27)