First Edition: May 8, 2023

KFF Health News: On The Night Shift With A Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner
Jacqueline Towarnicki got a text as she finished her day shift at a local clinic. She had a new case, a patient covered in bruises who couldn’t remember how the injuries got there. Towarnicki’s breath caught, a familiar feeling after four years of working night shifts as a sexual assault nurse examiner in this northwestern Montana city. “You almost want to curse,” Towarnicki, 38, said. “You’re like, ‘Oh, no, it’s happening.’” (Houghton, 5/8)

KFF Health News: In Idaho, Taking A Minor Out Of State For An Abortion Is Now A Crime: ‘Abortion Trafficking’ 
Mackenzie Davidson grew up in a Mormon household and sheepishly admits she knew little about pregnancy. “This is embarrassing,” she said, sitting outside a café along a street thronged with students in this college town. “But I didn’t know that you had to have sex to have kids until I was 13 or 14.”She’s a writer for the University of Idaho student newspaper, The Argonaut, and was asked recently to report on a new law. (Varney, 5/8)

KFF Health News: Medi-Cal Enrollees In California: Here’s How To Verify Your Eligibility
If you are enrolled in Medi-Cal, as more than one-third of Californians are, make sure your county knows how to reach you, or you could lose your health coverage unnecessarily. You will likely hear and see public messages over the coming weeks urging you to update your contact information. Heed them. Then, sometime between now and next spring, you’ll probably receive mail from the agency that administers Medi-Cal in your county telling you if you are still eligible for the safety-net health insurance program or asking for more information about your employment status, income, and household size. An information request would likely come in a bright-yellow envelope containing a roughly 20-page form about six weeks before the start of your renewal month. (Wolfson, 5/8)

Politico: 12-Week Abortion Ban Will Do Great Harm, North Carolina's Governor Says 
Gov. Roy Cooper said Sunday that the proposed 12-week abortion ban in his state would largely put an end to abortion in North Carolina. The legislation, approved last week and sent to Cooper, would restrict abortion to within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy (down from 20) but also apply other restrictions as well. “They’ve dressed this up as a 12-week ban, but it’s really not,” Cooper, a Democrat, told host Margaret Brennan on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” (Cohen, 5/7)

The 19th: Abortion In Florida: Campaign To Get 2024 Ballot Measure Set To Take Off
A coalition of abortion rights advocates in Florida is set to push a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion protections into the state’s constitution, with the launch of a public campaign to get the issue on the Florida 2024 ballot expected next week. The coalition has already filed necessary paperwork with the state to begin collecting signatures and fundraising for the effort, said Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party, who first pitched the ballot measure last August. (Barclay, 5/5)

The Washington Post: A GOP Nebraska Lawmaker Chose His Voters Over His Party With Abortion Vote
In the days since state Sen. Merv Riepe cast the lone vote that blocked a near-total abortion ban in his conservative state, he’s faced protests at his office, the cold shoulder from irate colleagues and calls for his resignation. A stranger left an angry note inside his home mailbox. Yet the 80-year-old Republican has also raked in accolades, becoming an unlikely hero for those fighting to protect abortion access in Nebraska and around the country in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortion advocates wept in the Capitol after Riepe’s April 27 vote. A downtown Omaha novelty store is now selling blue T-shirts and tank tops that say “Hot Merv Summer” in bold white type. (Itkowitz and Rodriguez, 5/7)

The New York Times: The Women Blocking South Carolina’s Near-Total Abortion Ban 
When the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, advocates on either side presumed that the country would divide along the bright color lines: red states completely banning abortion, blue states protecting it. That prediction failed to anticipate the Sister Senators. The Sisters, as they call themselves, are the women in the South Carolina State Senate — the only women, three Republicans, one Independent and one Democrat, in a legislature that ranks 47th among states in the proportion of women. As a block, they are refusing to allow the legislature to pass a near-total ban on abortion, despite a Republican supermajority. (Zernike, 5/7)

Southern Poverty Law Center: Supreme Court’s Abortion Ruling Disproportionately Affects Black People With Low Incomes In The Deep South
The burden falls most heavily on economically vulnerable, non-Latinx Black people, who nationwide have a maternal mortality rate three times that of white people. In 2019, Black patients accounted for over 38% of U.S. abortions, even though Black people represent only about 12% of the U.S. population. In a Guttmacher Institute survey of more than 6,600 individuals who obtained an abortion at a health care facility in the U.S. from June 2021 to June 2022, three-quarters of respondents had incomes below 200% of the federal poverty line. (Sonnenberg, 5/5)

AP: Abortion Pill Legal Challenge Threatens Miscarriage Care 
A million U.S. women a year suffer miscarriages, which occur in at least 15% of known pregnancies. Mifepristone was approved in 2000 for early abortions but it is often used “off label” to treat early pregnancy loss or to speed up delivery when a fetus dies later in pregnancy. These uses are so common that U.S. senators urged manufacturer Danco to apply to the FDA to add miscarriage to the label of its drug, Mifeprex. Denise Harle, an attorney for the group that filed the Texas lawsuit on behalf of anti-abortion doctors and health care organizations, said they aren’t challenging uses of the drug beyond abortion. But legal experts say if it’s taken off the market for its approved use, it wouldn’t be available for pregnancy loss. (Ungar, 5/6)

NBC News: FDA Appears Skeptical About Over-The-Counter Birth Control Pill
Food and Drug Administration scientists on Friday expressed skepticism about whether the birth control pill can be switched from prescription to over-the-counter. The assessment by FDA staff, included in briefing documents published Friday, comes ahead of a two-day meeting scheduled for next week, when the agency’s advisers will vote on whether to recommend that the agency allow a birth control pill called Opill to be sold over-the-counter. (Lovelace Jr., 5/5)

The New York Times: In Debt Limit Talks, Biden And Republicans Start Far Apart 
President Biden is set to welcome Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other top congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday for a pivotal round of discussions about the nation’s taxes, spending and debt as a potentially catastrophic government default rapidly approaches. The talks come just weeks before the United States is expected to run out of cash to pay its bills unless the nation’s borrowing cap is lifted. (5/8)

Politico: No Good Options If Congress Fails To Raise The Debt Limit, Yellen Says 
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen struck an increasingly troubled tone Sunday as President Joe Biden gears up to meet with congressional leadership Tuesday to discuss raising the debt ceiling.The negotiations “should not take place with a gun really to the head of the American people,” Yellen cautioned Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” With the June 1 “X-date” quickly approaching, Yellen called on Congress to raise the debt ceiling, warning of the economic disaster that will follow should the government fail to come to an agreement. Once that date hits, “really that’s it,” Yellen said on “This Week.” “We have been using extraordinary measures for several months now, and our ability to do that is running out.” (Garrity, 5/7)

The Hill: 14th Amendment Emerges As Last-Ditch Fix To Ward Off Default
Top political figures are swirling the possibility that President Biden could use the powers of a clause in the 14th Amendment as a last-ditch effort to ward off the looming threat that the U.S. could default on its debt as soon as next month.  ... The amendment chiefly extended the Bill of Rights liberties to formerly enslaved people, but also includes a section saying “the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned.” (Mueller, 5/7)

Axios: The Health Care Dangers Of A Debt Default
If the federal government breaches the debt ceiling, Medicare wouldn't be able to pay providers — and states wouldn't get their federal Medicaid funding, experts tell Axios. Losing out on those payments, even for a short time, could be disastrous for providers’ bottom lines — and the effects could trickle down to patients. (Goldman and Knight, 5/5)

The New York Times: After Mass Killings In Texas, Frustration But No Action On Guns 
After months of pleading for more gun control measures, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children died in a mass shooting, was told by the Republican leader of the State Senate to stop bringing up gun legislation or be barred from speaking at all. In the State House, Republican members talked and joked among themselves as another Democrat, Representative Jarvis Johnson of Houston, rose to discuss gun control. “This is not a joke — this is real,” he shouted from the lectern at his colleagues on Friday. “Children every day are dying.” (Goodman, Goldman, Sandoval and Montgomery, 5/7)

Politico: Biden Says He Would Sign Gun Legislation Immediately If He Could 
President Joe Biden on Sunday called on Congress to pass new gun control legislation and said he would “sign it immediately,” in the wake of a shooting in Allen, Texas, that left at least eight dead and seven injured. “Too many families have empty chairs at their dinner tables. Republican Members of Congress cannot continue to meet this epidemic with a shrug. Tweeted thoughts and prayers are not enough,” Biden said in a statement. “Once again I ask Congress to send me a bill banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Enacting universal background checks. Requiring safe storage. Ending immunity for gun manufacturers.” (Garrity, 5/7)

Newsweek: High Crime In Republican Cities Fueled By Guns, Inequality
Republican mayors rejected progressive criminal justice reforms embraced by their Democratic counterparts, but factors such as inequality and guns are still driving crime in larger conservative cities, experts told Newsweek. ... However, a city's partisan lean generally does not necessarily correlate with its crime rate, according to data compiled by Newsweek. While cities like Chicago and Philadelphia indeed have higher crime rates than other cities, places like New York City or Los Angeles, frequently cast as crime-ridden by Republicans, have crime rates on par or lower than many cities led by Republicans. (Stanton, 5/8)

The Hill: These Are The 10 Safest States In The US, Data Shows 
Which states in the U.S. are safest? U.S. News and World Report recently revealed the 10 states that are safest in regards to occurrences of both violent and property crimes per 100,000 residents using data from the FBI.As explained by the FBI, violent crimes include murder, robbery, aggravated assault and sexual assault. Property crime includes events like burglary and motor vehicle theft. U.S. News explains the data shows that while violent crime rose 4.6% between 2019 and 2020, property crime dropped 8.1%. (Falcon, 5/7)

Stat: Does End Of Emergencies Mean Covid Pandemic Is Over? 
If you have been looking for a sense of pandemic closure, the World Health Organization’s declaration Friday that it was ending the Covid global health emergency was about as close to it as you are likely to get. The reality is that although battlefield metaphors are often employed to describe humankind’s struggle with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, there will be no 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month-like moment signaling that an armistice has been achieved. (Branswell, 5/8)

The Atlantic: Only The Global-Health Emergency Has Ended
Emergency responses—being, well, emergency responses—aren’t designed to last forever, and this morning, the World Health Organization declared the one that’s been in place for the COVID-19 pandemic since January 2020 officially done. “This virus is here to stay. It is still killing, and it’s still changing,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the WHO, said at a press conference; although the coronavirus will continue to pose a threat, the time had simply come, he and his colleagues said, for countries to move away from treating it as a global crisis. (Wu, 8/5)

VOA: State, Local Agencies In US Prepare For End Of COVID-19 Emergency
“Being in hospitals during the early days of COVID-19 was terrifying, like I was going to war. But as far as I’m concerned, those days are done,” Danielle King, a nurse working in Luling, Louisiana, told VOA.“I think it’s pretty obvious that the pandemic was over a year ago,” she added. “The government’s lagging behind that reality, so maybe they’ll finally catch up.” The U.S. government will take a big step in that direction Thursday as Washington officially declares an end to the coronavirus pandemic by allowing the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) to expire. (Haines, 5/7)

CIDRAP: CDC Details Transitions In COVID-19 Data Reporting
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [on Friday] spelled out its plan for collecting and reporting COVID-19 data once the national public health emergency (PHE) expires on May 11, which will focus less on case rates and lean more heavily on hospital and death data. At a media briefing yesterday, Nirav Shah, MD, JD, the CDC's principal deputy director, said, "We have the right data for this phase of COVID-19." (Schnirring, 5/5)

San Francisco Chronicle: COVID Emergency Is Over, WHO Says. Here’s What Bay Area Data Shows
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious disease expert at Stanford, said the time is right for the transition. “At a certain point, you can’t live in an emergency mode any longer,” she said. “You need to start incorporating best practices into daily life — into international, national, and local policies, into public health, into virtually every aspect of our life that we found this virus affected. And, no, the virus is clearly not gone.” (Vaziri, 5/5)

Bay Area News Group: COVID: Californians Get 6 Extra Months Of Free Tests
If your medicine cabinet is low on COVID tests, you only have a few days left to stock up for free from the federal government. And starting Friday, the feds also will no longer protect patients from being billed for their COVID testing. But there’s good news for Californians: The state legislature has given Golden State residents an extra six months of guaranteed coverage of COVID tests and reimbursements from their insurance. (Blair Rowan, 5/6)

The Colorado Sun: Colorado Is Ending Its Exposure Notifications Phone App For COVID
It’s time to say RIP to Exposure Notifications, that thing on your phone that, if you enabled it, would sometimes buzz and tell you that you had been near someone who later tested positive for COVID-19. The service is ending in Colorado on Thursday, according to the state Department of Public Health and Environment. Users will receive a notice on their phones saying that the service is no longer operational and a prompt to delete their app data. (Ingold, 5/8)

CIDRAP: Some Messages More Likely To Sway Parents To Vaccinate Kids Against COVID, Survey Finds 
A survey of 898 parents found that more were very likely to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 after reading messages indicating that other trusted parents have done so or that the vaccine is safe, but not when the messages said the vaccine is well-tolerated. The results were published today in Pediatrics. (Van Beusekom, 5/5)

Modern Healthcare: Cigna's Express Scripts PBM Ready For Crackdown, CEO Says
Cigna is prepared to weather a government crackdown on pharmacy benefit managers despite its Express Scripts subsidiary's reliance on spread pricing and drugmaker rebates, CEO David Cordani said Friday. Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee are scheduled to consider a legislative package next week that would ban spread pricing and force PBMs to pass through all rebates to employer clients. The Senate Finance Committee and two House panels also are eying legislation to rein in PBMs. (Tepper, 8/5)

Modern Healthcare: Kaiser Permanente Reports $1.2 Billion Gain In First Quarter
After sustaining big losses last year, Kaiser Permanente swung back into the black in the first quarter with an added boost from financial markets. Oakland, California-based Kaiser on Friday reported net income of $1.21 billion in the first quarter, compared with a net loss of $961 million in the year-ago period. Revenue grew 4.2% to $25.22 billion. Expenses, including elevated labor costs and higher prices for goods and services, rose 3% overall to $24.99 billion. (Hudson, 8/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Atlanta Shooting Highlights Risk Of Violence In Medical Facilities 
Healthcare industry officials and state leaders are voicing growing concern over violence in medical facilities, highlighted by last week’s deadly shooting here. On May 3, a man opened fire with a handgun in the waiting room on the 11th floor of Northside Medical Midtown, a medical office building, according to Atlanta police. The day before, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp had signed a new law, which partially took effect May 2, allowing hospital systems to establish their own campus police forces. Other states have also passed bills aimed at preventing attacks and increasing penalties for assaults, and more are in the works. (Kamp and McWhirter, 5/7)

NPR: How An Indiana Hospital Fought To Recover From A Cyberattack
It was October 2021 and the staff at Johnson Memorial Health were hoping they could finally catch their breaths. They were just coming out of a weeks-long surge of COVID hospitalizations and deaths, fueled by the Delta variant. But on Friday, October 1, at 3 a.m., the hospital CEO's phone rang with an urgent call. (Yousry, 5/8)

The Boston Globe: Investigation Continues Into Deadly Newburyport Pharmaceutical Plant Explosion
Authorities continued their investigation Sunday into the cause of an explosion at a pharmaceutical plant in Newburyport last week which killed one worker, sent four other employees to the hospital, and triggered a massive response by state and federal agencies. The early morning blast Thursday at the PCI Synthesis facility was powerful enough to shake nearby homes, and blow a large industrial vat through the building’s roof and land about 30 feet away in a parking lot, officials have said. (Hilliard, 5/7)

Military.Com: Victims Asked To Come Forward After VA Doctor Charged With Sexually Assaulting Patients
A Department of Veterans Affairs doctor in Georgia has been indicted over allegations that he sexually assaulted at least four female patients, prosecutors announced this week. Rajesh Motibhai Patel, a primary care physician at the Atlanta VA Medical Center in Decatur, was charged with multiple counts of violating his patients' constitutional right to bodily integrity while acting under color of law and for engaging in unwanted sexual contact, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia said in a news release Thursday. (Kheel, 5/5)

Axios: Fibroids Play A Role In Ovarian Cancer Risk, Study Finds
Endometriosis and fibroids in both Black and white women are associated with a greater risk for ovarian cancer, a new study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology found. It is the first study to include enough Black women to confirm the association between fibroids — noncancerous tumors that develop in the uterus — and a modestly increased risk of ovarian cancer in this group, the study's authors said. (Dreher, 5/5)

The Washington Post: Study: Sons Of Women With PCOS Up To Twice As Likely To Develop Obesity 
Newly published research suggests that the sons of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are up to twice as likely to develop obesity as their peers. The study in Cell Reports Medicine used data from cohort research following 467,275 male infants born in Sweden between July 2006 and December 2015. Of those, 9,828 were born to a mother with PCOS — and 147 of those boys were eventually diagnosed with obesity. (Blakemore, 5/7)

Fox News: Medical Research On Cellphone Use Says Chatting For This Amount Of Time Per Week Can Raise Blood Pressure Risk
Talking on a mobile phone even for a very short time each week can raise the risk of high blood pressure — a major cause of heart attacks and strokes. That's according to new research out of Southern Medical University, as SNWS, a British news agency, has reported. Those who spent just 30 minutes a week talking — even hands-free — on their cellphones were 12% more prone to hypertension. (Mackey, 5/6)

CNN: Foods And Drinks Packaged For Kids Are Higher In Sugar And Lower In Nutrition, Study Shows 
Colorful labels and cartoons on packaging might be a good indicator that a snack isn’t the most nutritious, according to a new study. Products with marketing that appealed to children were higher in sugars and lower in all other nutrients, according to the study, published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One. The study looked at nearly 6,000 packaged foods to analyze their number of marketing strategies aimed at children and their nutritional information. (Holcombe, 5/4)

The Washington Post: Bill Aims To Improve Air Travel For Passengers With Disabilities
Passengers with disabilities have described harrowing problems during air travel, including bungled security screenings, risky transfers onto planes, and lost and damaged wheelchairs. ... The Mobility Aids on Board Improve Lives and Empower All Act, introduced Friday, would require the Transportation Department to publicly report on the type of damage that occurs to wheelchairs and other mobility aids. It would require airline carriers to provide information to passengers to ensure a mobility aid can safely fit on a plane. (Morris, 5/5)

Houston Chronicle: Texas House Democrats Again Delay Bill Banning Gender-Affirming Care
Texas House Democrats on Friday for a second time successfully delayed debate on a bill that would prohibit transgender minors from accessing transition care. The Democrats used a procedural tactic to force Republicans to send the bill back to committee and tweak the text of a bill analysis. On Tuesday, Democrats did the same thing, pushing back debate by two days. (Goldenstein, 5/5)

AP: Elevated Cancer Rates Found Near Kansas Chemical Spill 
Kansas health officials have identified elevated levels of liver cancer among people living in several historically Black neighborhoods in Wichita where groundwater was polluted by a rail yard chemical spill. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment released a study Friday that found a liver and biliary tract cancer diagnosis rate of 15.7 per 100,000 people in the contamination zone, which was more than double the statewide rate of 6.4 per 100,000, The Wichita Eagle reports. (5/6)