First Edition: May 11, 2018

Kaiser Health News: Under Trump Proposal, Lawful Immigrants Might Be Inclined To Shun Health Benefits
The Trump administration is considering a policy change that might discourage immigrants who are seeking permanent residency from using government-supported health care, a scenario that is alarming some doctors, hospitals and patient advocates. Under the proposed plan, a lawful immigrant holding a visa could be passed over for getting permanent residency — a green card — if they use Medicaid, a subsidized Obamacare plan, food stamps, tax credits or a list of other non-cash government benefits, according to a draft of the plan published by The Washington Post. Even the use of such benefits by a child who is a U.S. citizen could jeopardize a parent’s chances of attaining lawful residency, according to the document. (Jewett, Bailey and Andalo, 5/11)

Kaiser Health News: Living Apart Together: A New Option For Older Adults
Three years ago, William Mamel climbed a ladder in Margaret Sheroff’s apartment and fixed a malfunctioning ceiling fan. “I love that you did this,” Sheroff exclaimed as he clambered back down. Spontaneously, Mamel drew Sheroff to him and gave her a kiss.“I kind of surprised her.  But she was open to it,” he remembered. (Graham, 5/11)

Kaiser Health News: Podcast: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’ The Politics Of Rising Premiums And Menu Labeling
Proposed insurance premium increases unveiled in Maryland and Virginia officially marked the start of finger-pointing on Capitol Hill this week, as Democrats and Republicans blamed each other for the dysfunction of the individual insurance market under the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump sent to lawmakers a budget “rescission” package that would take back some $7 billion from the Children’s Health Insurance Program. And, after many delays and considerable controversy, new rules requiring calorie counts on menus at chain restaurants took effect this week. (5/10)

Reuters: Trump Plan For Drug Prices Seen Largely Sparing Industry
As U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to deliver a long-anticipated speech on Friday on curbing prescription drug costs, health industry insiders expect little in the way of policies that would hurt the drugmakers he once accused of "getting away with murder." The speech will address the high prices set by drugmakers, rising costs for consumers and barriers to negotiating lower prices for seniors in the government's Medicare program, senior White House officials told reporters. (Abutaleb, 5/10)

The Associated Press: In Taking On High Drug Prices, Trump Faces A Complex Nemesis
Officials said the plan would increase competition, create incentives for drugmakers to lower initial prices and slash federal rules that make it harder for private insurers to negotiate lower prices. The result would be lower pharmacy costs for patients — a key Trump campaign promise. (Perrone, 5/11)

The New York Times: Trump To Drop Call For Medicare To Negotiate Lower Drug Prices
Asked if the plan would include direct negotiations by Medicare, the official said, “No, we are talking about something different.” “We are not calling for Medicare negotiation in the way that Democrats have called for,” the official said later. “We clearly want to make important changes that will dramatically improve the way negotiation takes place inside the Medicare program.” (Pear, 5/10)

Stat: White House Trumpeting Drug Plan As Most Far-Reaching 'Of Any President'
Officials also said the policy changes could happen sooner than later. The “vast majority” of the proposals will be regulatory actions the “president can direct the administration to take.” In the plan, Trump will address a quartet of issues the administration has identified, the officials said. “The blueprint focuses on four major problems: high list prices set by drug manufacturers, rising out-of-pocket costs for consumers and patients, foreign governments free-riding off American innovation, and government rules preventing private plans from negotiating better deals for our seniors, especially for high-cost medications,” one official said. (Mershon, 5/11)

The Wall Street Journal: White House Set To Announce Plan To Curb Drug Prices
The president will also propose changes to government rules that his administration contends have allowed drugmakers and pharmacy benefit managers to game the system, the officials said. He will also try to make foreign governments pay more to buy drugs created through U.S. innovation and further seek to accelerate the use of generic drugs in place of higher-cost brand names, they said. Low-income seniors could get free generic drugs, doctors might see reduced incentives to select more expensive drugs if cheaper alternatives exist, and health plans could be required to share rebates with beneficiaries, as part of the proposals. (Armour, Radnofsky and Burton, 5/10)

Politico: Trump Touts Plan To Lower Drug Costs But Rejects Medicare Negotiations
Trump will also move to rein in what his administration has characterized as “foreign freeloaders” — or first-world countries that use government controls or negotiations to hold down their drug costs. “The U.S. taxpayer, through our publicly funded research efforts as well as through patients and consumers … are largely paying for the vast majority of the R&D that goes into the development of new biologics,” a senior administration official said, lamenting that foreign countries get to “free ride” off of U.S. investment in drug development. (Cancryn and Pittman, 5/10)

The Washington Post: What To Watch For In President Trump’s Long-Awaited Drug-Price Speech
No one with a stake in drug prices — whether pharmaceutical companies, pharmacy benefit managers that negotiate on drug prices or health insurers — feels completely comfortable, given Trump's tendency to go off-script — including that time he accused drug companies of “getting away with murder.” But the administration has spent the past few weeks dropping clues about the policy directions it favors — including a slew of technical proposals that do little to threaten the pharmaceutical industry that would seem to be at greatest risk from any plan to lower drug prices. (Johnson, 5/10)

Stat: Democrats Offer Counterpoint To Trump's Drug Pricing Policy Before Speech
A coterie of the country’s most powerful and recognizable Democrats gathered Thursday to offer their early rebuttal to President Trump’s anticipated Friday address on drug prices. As one lawmaker put it, the group was “hopeful, but … not optimistic” that Trump would deliver on his early promises to lower prescription drug prices. What they want to see, however, is far broader than anything that top Trump administration officials have hinted at ahead of Trump’s Friday speech. (Mershon, 5/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Novartis CEO Calls Hiring Of Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen A ‘Mistake’
Novartis AG Chief Executive Vasant Narasimhan said the company “made a mistake” agreeing to pay Trump lawyer Michael Cohen $1.2 million for what Novartis has described as his insight into health-care policy. In an email to the Swiss drug company’s employees on Thursday reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Narasimhan said he felt “frustrated” by the arrangement, which was struck under a previous chief executive. “Many of you will feel disappointed and frustrated,” he said. (Rockoff, 5/10)

Stat: Novartis CEO Writes To Staff Amid Fury Over Michael Cohen Payments
The chief executive of Novartis sent employees an email Thursday seeking to contain intensifying political and business fallout over the revelation that the drug maker paid $1.2 million to President Trump’s personal lawyer to gain access to the White House. “Yesterday was not a good day for Novartis,” wrote Vasant Narasimhan, a physician and former McKinsey consultant, who joined the drug maker more than a decade ago and oversaw global drug development before being promoted to chief executive this past February. (Silverman, 5/10)

Politico: Trump Challenge To Native Americans' Health Splits HHS, Alarms Hill GOP
HHS leaders want states to settle the contentious question of whether Native Americans should get jobs in order to keep their health care — a move that likely won't resolve the underlying challenge to tribal sovereignty and was sparked by an unusual split between the agency's politically appointed administrators and legal counsel. The agency's position that tribes are a racial group and not separate governments — a determination by Trump administration lawyers that POLITICO first detailed last month — has raised concerns in Congress and alarmed the tribes, who say it reverses centuries of protections enshrined in the Constitution and upheld by the Supreme Court. (Diamond and Pradhan, 5/10)

The Washington Post: Top White House Official In Charge Of Pandemic Response Exits Abruptly
The top White House official responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic has left the administration, and the global health security team he oversaw has been disbanded under a reorganization by national security adviser John Bolton. The abrupt departure of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer from the National Security Council means no senior administration official is now focused solely on global health security. Ziemer’s departure, along with the breakup of his team, comes at a time when many experts say the country is already underprepared for the increasing risks of a pandemic or bioterrorism attack. (Sun, 5/10)

Stat: Tennessee Becomes The Second State To Allow Off-Label Promotion
As drug makers seek wider latitude to promote their medicines, Tennessee has become the second state in the U.S. to enact a law allowing the companies to market their products for so-called off-label uses — so long as the information given doctors is truthful. The law, which goes into effect on July 1, arrives more than a year after Arizona adopted the first such law in the country. Moreover, it comes amid rising pressure on the Food and Drug Administration to loosen regulations for off-label promotions, which is one of the most contentious issues to roil both the agency and the pharmaceutical industry. (Silverman, 5/10)

Reuters: DoJ Investigates Mylan On Trade Compliance For Certain Products
Pharmaceuticals company Mylan NV said on Thursday that one of its subsidiary received a civil investigative demand from the U.S. Department of Justice regarding its compliance with the Trades Agreement Act (TAA) for certain products, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company also said certain employees of Mylan S.p.A. were served with search warrants issued by the public prosecutor's office in Milan, Italy, seeking information concerning interactions with an Italian hospital and sales of certain reimbursable drugs. (Krothapalli, 5/10)

Los Angeles Times: L.A. Cracks Down On Unlicensed And Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals
The Los Angeles city attorney filed three lawsuits Wednesday against several individuals accused of selling illegal, banned, misbranded or counterfeit pharmaceuticals. The lawsuits follow an extensive investigation by multiple law enforcement agencies in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego and Arizona, officials said. (Etehad, 5/9)

Bloomberg: Native Americans Demanding Chance To Try Opioid Suits Separately 
Native American tribes devastated by the U.S. opioid epidemic asked a judge set up a separate track for their lawsuits targeting makers and distributors of the painkillers for creating a public-health crisis. Santee Sioux Nation of Nebraska, the Winnebago Tribe and others feel “marginalized’’ by having their cases lumped in with states’ opioid claims, David Domina, a lawyer for the tribes, told U.S. District Judge Daniel Polster Thursday. Polster, who has been pressing for a quick resolution of the suits, said he’d consider the request. (Feeley, 5/10)

The Associated Press: San Francisco's Many Free Syringes Are Littering Its Streets
San Francisco hands out millions of syringes a year to drug users but has little control over how they are discarded and that's contributing to thousands of complaints. The city distributes an estimated 400,000 syringes each month through various programs aimed at reducing HIV and other health risks for drug users. About 246,000 syringes are discarded through the city's 13 syringe access and disposal sites. But thousands of the others end up on streets, in parks and other public areas, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday. (5/10)

The Washington Post: Judge Overseeing Opioid Suits Seeks Steps To Address Crisis
The federal judge overseeing more than 600 lawsuits filed by government entities collectively seeking billions of dollars to address the nation’s opioid crisis said Thursday he will continue to push for solutions to the problem while lawyers continue their settlement talks. U.S. District Judge Dan Polster held an open-court session in Cleveland on Thursday before meeting separately with attorneys for the government entities and those representing drug manufacturers, distributors and pharmacy companies blamed in lawsuits for helping create a crisis that killed 42,000 Americans in 2016. (Gillispie, 5/10)

The Washington Post: She Used To Be Addicted To Crack Cocaine. Now, Her Walk 4 Recovery Will Help Opioid Abusers.
Rhonda Johnson knows addiction can turn you into a different person. How it can change your body, life, even your name. For years, she inhabited an alter ego named Mary. It helped keep her worlds separate. Rhonda was the mother, the sister, the wife. Mary was the addict, the hustler, the woman who would sell a used pen off the street to get the cash she needed for her next high. Drugs transformed the District, too. (Lang, 5/10)

Stat: Artificial Intelligence May Not Be Curing Cancer, But It's Changing Medicine
As recently as a year ago, artificial intelligence was still an amorphous concept in medicine. Almost every major hospital was tinkering with it, but hype about algorithms replacing doctors — or curing cancer — was outrunning reality. Now many hospitals are moving swiftly to incorporate the technology into daily practice, promising to harness patient data to improve certain aspects of care and make medical services cheaper and more efficient. (Ross, 5/11)

Stat: New Cancer Drugs Quickly Prescribed, But More Real-World Data Needed
Cancer drugs that unleash a patient’s immune system to attack tumors have rapidly won accelerated approval from the Food and Drug Administration. These checkpoint inhibitors have also quickly gained acceptance from oncologists. That’s the goal of fast-track approval granted by the Food and Drug Administration to Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Opdivo and Merck’s Keytruda — to speed drugs to people who have not found success with other cancer therapies. (Cooney, 5/10)

The Washington Post: Why Kids And Teens May Face Far More Anxiety These Days
When it comes to treating anxiety in children and teens, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are the bane of therapists' work. “With (social media), it's all about the self-image — who's 'liking' them, who's watching them, who clicked on their picture,” said Marco Grados, associate professor of psychiatry and clinical director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “Everything can turn into something negative ... [K]ids are exposed to that day after day, and it's not good for them.” (Nutt, 5/10)

The Washington Post: Juuling: If You Don’t Know What It Is, Ask Your Kids
At a high school in Maryland’s capital city of Annapolis, the principal ordered doors removed from bathrooms to keep students from sneaking hits in the stalls. A school system in New Jersey installed detectors in its high schools to digitally alert administrators to students looking for their next “rip.” And recently in Fairfax County, students broke into Virginia vape shops looking to score some nicotine. (Bui, 5/10)

Los Angeles Times: Fatal Falls Are On The Rise For America’s Senior Citizens
Fatal falls are on the rise in the United States, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2016, a total of 29,668 Americans ages 65 and older died as a result of a fall. In other words, falls ended the lives of 61.6 out of every 100,000 senior citizens that year. Back in 2007, there were 47 fall-related deaths for every 100,000 senior citizens. (Kaplan, 5/11)

The New York Times: Antibiotics May Raise The Risk For Kidney Stones
The prevalence of kidney stones in the United States has increased 70 percent since the 1970s, and a new report suggests that the use of oral antibiotics may be part of reason. The study, in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, used health records of 13.8 million patients of general practitioners in Britain. The researchers had 25,981 people with kidney stones matched for sex and age with 259,797 controls. They tracked antibiotic exposure three to 12 months before the diagnosis. (Bakalar, 5/10)

The Washington Post: David Goodall: For Assisted Suicide, 104-Year-Old Went From Australia To Switzerland
On his final day, before he went to a Swiss clinic to die, David Goodall spoke about his 104 years of life — and his scheduled death. The Australian scientist, who had traveled to Switzerland to end his life because euthanasia isn't legal in his homeland, answered questions about his well-publicized plans for an assisted suicide: Did he want to eat anything in particular for his last meal? He didn't know. Did he want any special song played at his bedside? He wasn't sure — but if he had to choose one, it would be the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. (Bever, 5/10)

The Washington Post: Cancer Docs Feel Unprepared, But Recommend Marijuana Anyway
Nearly half of U.S. cancer doctors who responded to a survey say they’ve recently recommended medical marijuana to patients, although most say they don’t know enough about medicinal use. The results reflect how marijuana policy in some states has outpaced research, the study authors said. All 29 states with medical marijuana programs allow doctors to recommend it to cancer patients. But no rigorous studies in cancer patients exist. That leaves doctors to make assumptions from other research on similar prescription drugs, or in other types of patients. (Johnson, 5/10)

Stat: Oncologists Often Suggest Medical Marijuana, But Know Little About It, Survey Finds 
“The majority feel like it has medical utility for some indications,” said Dr. Ilana Braun, chief of the division of adult psychosocial oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, who led the new research. As an oncologist, Braun said, she hears a growing number of her own patients asking about medical marijuana. “I occasionally recommend it, but very carefully and it’s on an individual patient basis,” she said. (Weintraub, 5/10)

NPR: Cancer Doctors Open To Medical Marijuana
Anecdotal reports suggest marijuana is helpful in managing symptoms of chemotherapy, like pain and nausea. But it's unlikely curious patients are getting clear guidance from their doctors on whether they should try marijuana, which form might work best and how much to take. A new survey of 237 oncologists from around the country finds that while roughly 80 percent talk with their patients about marijuana, fewer than 30 percent feel they have sufficient knowledge to advise them about its medicinal use. (Herman, 5/10)

The Associated Press: Maryland Candidate’s Sudden Death Shocks Colleagues, State
Kevin Kamenetz, a top Democratic candidate for Maryland governor, was just 60, trim and so health conscious he would trot up stairs and routinely tease colleagues about eating doughnuts and other junk food. “He was a yogurt, granola and salad kind of guy,” said Don Mohler, Kamenetz’s chief of staff. So his sudden death Thursday after going into cardiac arrest sent a palpable sense of unease through Baltimore County’s executive offices, based partly on uncertainty about the future but mostly on the knowledge of what they just lost. (McFadden, 5/10)

The Washington Post: After Kevin Kamenetz's Death From Cardiac Arrest, Here’s What Experts Say You Should Do If You Think You’re Having A Heart Attack
The sudden death of Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz from cardiac arrest early Thursday underscores the need for anyone experiencing discomfort that could be related to a heart attack to quickly seek emergency medical care, experts said. “Time is critical,” said Dr. Michael Millin, associate professor of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University. The first step for anyone experiencing symptoms of a heart attack — including chest pain, shortness of breath and fatigue — should be to call 911, he said. (Chason, 5/10)

USA Today: Pizza Hut Break-In Went Viral, Led To Man's Tragic Stay Behind Bars
The recording of Richard Lee Quintero's 911 call in late March went viral.  After all, Quintero reported he was Jesus Christ and turned himself in for breaking into a Pizza Hut, where he ate a pizza and drank a Mountain Dew. The story since then for the Greensboro, N.C., man is far from funny. Quintero, who suffers from chronic paranoid schizophrenia, amputated his own tongue after spending three weeks in jail. That got him hospitalized for about a week until he was sent to Raleigh's maximum security Central Prison, where he was under what's known as "safekeeping" until an expected May 18 court date. (O'Donnell, 5/10)

The Associated Press: Scientist Gets $9M To Further Animal-Human Organ Research
An Indiana University scientist is getting a $9 million boost from a biotech company to further his research into ways to use animal organs in humans. The IU School of Medicine says Dr. Burcin Ekser’s four-year grant comes from Silver Springs, Maryland-based Lung Biotechnology PBC. That company was founded in 2015 by United Therapeutics Corp. to address the acute national shortage of transplantable lungs and other organs. About 20 Americans die every day awaiting organ transplants. (5/11)

The Associated Press: Nurse Charged In Death Of Former Trump Adviser’s Father
A nurse was charged Thursday in the death of the father of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser after authorities said she failed to give him a series of neurological exams following his fall at a Philadelphia senior care facility. Christann Shyvin Gainey, 30, was charged with involuntary manslaughter, neglect and records tampering in the death of H.R. McMaster Sr. (Villarreal and Rubinkam, 5/10)