First Edition: Monday, Dec. 16, 2024

KFF Health News: How Are States Spending Opioid Settlement Cash? We Built A Database Of Answers
In the past few years, state and local governments across the U.S. have begun spending billions in opioid settlements paid by companies accused of fueling the overdose crisis. But where is that money going, who is getting it, and is it doing any good? KFF Health News, partnering with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Shatterproof, a national nonprofit focused on addiction, undertook a yearlong investigation to find out. (Pattani, 12/16)

KFF Health News: Helicopters Rescued Patients In ‘Apocalyptic’ Flood. Other Hospitals Are At Risk, Too
April Boyd texted her husband before she boarded the helicopter. “So, I don’t want to be dramatic,” she wrote on Sept. 27, “but we are gonna fly and rescue patients from the rooftop of Unicoi hospital.” Earlier that day, Hurricane Helene roared into the Southern Appalachian Mountains after moving north through Florida and Georgia. The storm prompted a deadly flash flood that tore through Unicoi County in eastern Tennessee, trapping dozens of people on the rooftop of the county hospital. (Sausser and Hacker, 12/16)

KFF Health News: Native American Patients Are Sent To Collections For Debts The Government Owes
Tescha Hawley learned that hospital bills from her son’s birth had been sent to debt collectors only when she checked her credit score while attending a home-buying class. The new mom’s plans to buy a house stalled. Hawley said she didn’t owe those thousands of dollars in debts. The federal government did. (Houghton and Zionts, 12/16)

The Wall Street Journal: RFK Jr. Has A Battle Plan To Get Senate Confirmation
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s attempt to win over Capitol Hill starts this week with a strategy to play down the topic of vaccines, adhere tightly to President-elect Donald Trump’s messaging on abortion and talk up healthy food and preventing chronic disease, according to people familiar with his thinking. ... Kennedy is slated to be on the Hill several days this week, sitting down with over two dozen senators and a team of Republican staffers, people familiar with his plans said. His team is hoping to assuage senators’ concerns about his broad criticism of vaccines, according to people familiar with his strategy. He is likely to tell senators that, if confirmed to lead HHS, he isn’t planning to take anyone’s vaccines away and instead wants to promote transparent, safe, effective vaccines, the people said. (Whyte, Peterson and Andrews, 12/16)

The Washington Post: Polio Survivor Mitch McConnell Criticizes Efforts To Undermine Vaccine 
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who battled polio as a child, warned on Friday that anyone seeking a Senate confirmation should “steer clear” of associating with any efforts to undermine public confidence in the polio vaccine. “The polio vaccine has saved millions of lives and held out the promise of eradicating a terrible disease. Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous,” McConnell said in a statement. “Anyone seeking the Senate’s consent to serve in the incoming Administration would do well to steer clear of even the appearance of association with such efforts.” (Vazquez, 12/13)

Axios: Polio Vax Petition Could Preview More Challenges
Efforts to revoke Food and Drug Administration approval of the polio vaccine could provide a preview of how vaccine skeptics plan to challenge decades of federal health policy during a second Trump administration, experts say. (Reed, 12/16)

The New York Times: Are Childhood Vaccines ‘Overloading’ The Immune System? No.
It’s an idea as popular as it is incorrect: American babies now receive too many vaccines, which overwhelm their immune systems and lead to conditions like autism. This theory has been repeated so often that it has permeated the mainstream, echoed by President-elect Donald J. Trump and his pick to be the nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Mandavilli, 12/14)

The Washington Post: Dave Weldon, Trump’s CDC Pick, Has A Long History Of Vaccine Skepticism 
The world’s most respected infectious-disease agency needed a new leader. Anti-vaccine activists knew just the man: Dave Weldon, a Florida physician and former seven-term Republican congressman who had for years expressed concerns about the safety of vaccines. The year was 2017. Weldon didn’t get the job then, but, seven years later, President-elect Donald Trump has tapped the 71-year-old former Army doctor to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC is charged with protecting the United States from health threats at home and abroad. That includes making vaccine recommendations — work that has come under fire from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the longtime vaccine skeptic whom Trump has picked to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which has oversight over the CDC. (Sun, Nirappil and Schaffer, 12/15)

ProPublica: A Strange Alliance: Oxygen Companies and Their Medicare Patients Want Congress to Pay the Companies More
For years, the home-oxygen industry has failed in myriad ways the million-plus Americans who struggle to breathe. Lincare, the country’s largest distributor of breathing equipment, has a decadeslong history of bilking Medicare and the elderly, as ProPublica has revealed. Philips Respironics hid serious problems with its sleep apnea machines, with devastating consequences, including reported deaths. Other large respiratory companies have paid multimillion-dollar fraud settlements. But as the current session of Congress hurtles to a close, advocates for oxygen patients — in a seemingly improbable alliance with the companies that have victimized them — are making a final push for legislation that, among other things, would pay the scandal-scarred industry hundreds of millions of dollars more than it currently receives. (Elkind, 12/16)

Stat: Top Health Care Policy Issues To Watch: Medicaid Cuts, Medicare, ACA 
Health care did not play a big role in the election that’s sending President Trump back to the White House and giving Republicans control of Congress. That doesn’t mean Congress will avoid the topic next year. (Wilkerson, 12/16)

San Francisco Chronicle: Nancy Pelosi Is Recovering From Hip Surgery In Germany
House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi underwent successful hip replacement surgery in Germany after suffering an injury during a congressional trip to Luxembourg, her spokesperson confirmed Saturday. Ian Krager, Pelosi’s spokesperson, said in a statement that the former speaker is “well on the mend” and expressed gratitude to the U.S. military staff at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and the medical team at Hospital Kirchberg for their “excellent care and kindness.” (Vaziri, 12/14)

The Washington Post: NIH Launches Women’s Health Research Website 
Want to know the latest about research funded by the National Institutes of Health on topics including menopause, polycystic ovary syndrome and other conditions affecting women’s health? Discover Women’s Health Research (DiscoverWHR), a recently launched website on federally funded women’s health research across the lifespan, offers answers. The portal is a resource from NIH in support of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, which is focused on closing research gaps and improving prevention, detection and treatment of health issues affecting girls and women. (Blakemore, 12/15)

The New York Times: Health Protections For Migrant Children In Custody Are Set To Expire 
A court-ordered system for protecting the health of children detained at the southern border, put in place two years ago after several children died in custody, is set to expire nine days after Donald J. Trump takes office with plans to intensify the deportation of migrants. The system, part of a July 2022 legal settlement between the government and lawyers representing migrant children in custody, set detailed protocols for detaining minors at Customs and Border Protection facilities in the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso sectors. It required agents to provide them with access to emergency care and basic hygiene items — showers, toothbrushes and blankets for sleeping, for example. It forbade agents to separate children from their parents for extended periods of time. (Baumgaertner, 12/13)

Stat: Outgoing CDC Director Girds Against An Overhaul, And Tries To Calm Staff Nerves
As her tenure as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention winds down, Mandy Cohen is in persuasion mode — simultaneously trying to convince critics of the CDC in the incoming administration that the agency has re-focused since its pandemic-era missteps, and calm nervous staff about what is to come. (Branswell, 12/16)

The Washington Post: Brian Thompson Warned Of UnitedHealth’s Negative Image Before Shooting 
In early 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson had an urgent warning for his colleagues: The company has a public relations problem. Average Americans didn’t understand the massive insurance company’s role in the nation’s health system, Thompson argued in internal discussions and with fellow executives, including steps it had taken to eliminate out-of-pocket costs for lifesaving drugs, colleagues said. Instead, UnitedHealthcare and its parent, UnitedHealth Group, faced investigations, a congressional probe and simmering consumer anger over charges it was making billions by denying health care to the ill and the elderly. (Gowen, Diamond and Torbati, 12/15)

The Guardian: UnitedHealth Chief Admits US Health System ‘Does Not Work As Well As It Should’ 
The leader of the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, whose chief executive officer was shot to death outside a New York City hotel on 4 December, conceded that the US’s patchwork health system “does not work as well as it should”. But in a guest essay published by the New York Times, UnitedHealth Group’s CEO, Andrew Witty, maintained the slain Brian Thompson cared about customers and was working to make the system better. (12/14)

The New Republic: UnitedHealth CEO Sparks Uproar After New York Times Op-Ed 
Critics are torching a New York Times op-ed Friday by the chief of UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, arguing that the $23.5 million-salaried executive’s message overwhelmingly ignored the failures actively perpetuated by his company in the American health care system. (Houghtaling, 12/13)

AP: Online Posts Show That Luigi Mangione Had Back Pain And Brain Fog 
After Luigi Mangione made the difficult decision to undergo spinal surgery last year for chronic back pain, he became a proponent of the procedure that changed his life for the better. He repeatedly posted on Reddit about his recovery and offered words of encouragement for people with similar conditions, telling them to push back against doctors who suggested they had to live with pain. (Skene and Kelleher, 12/12)

The Hill: Democrats Pessimistic On Health Insurance Reform Despite Public Anger
Democrats are pessimistic that Congress will enact new rules around the health insurance industry, even as they try to appear responsive to growing calls for reform following the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.  Luigi Mangione faces murder charges for the killing of Thompson on December 4. His death unleashed a torrent of anger on social media against the U.S. health system, and insurance companies specifically.  Sen. Rafael Warnock (D-Ga.) said the incident was a “flash point,” but he wasn’t sure how much impact it would have in spurring any changes. (Weixel, 12/15)

ProPublica: UnitedHealth Is Strategically Limiting Access To Critical Treatment For Kids With Autism
There was a time when Sharelle Menard thought her son would never be able to speak. She couldn’t soothe Benji when he cried, couldn’t read him books he could follow, couldn’t take him out in public. “The screaming, and screaming, and screaming,” she said. “He would get so frustrated because he couldn’t communicate.” (Waldman, 12/15)

The Washington Post: Over 120 House Democrats Call On Biden To Have Equal Rights Amendment Ratified
More than 120 House Democrats have signed a letter asking President Joe Biden to urge the nation’s archivist to recognize the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment by publishing the amendment first proposed 101 years ago — a move they believe would finally enshrine sex equality into the Constitution. If the president does as the Democrats ask, the publication of the ERA would probably spark legal challenges over the validity of the amendment, which, despite having met all the constitutional requirements, has not been added to the Constitution because not enough states ratified it in time to meet a Congress-mandated deadline. (Alfaro, 12/15)

AP: Texas Sues New York Doctor For Prescribing Abortion Pills To Woman Near Dallas 
Texas has sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, launching one of the first challenges in the U.S. to shield laws that Democrat-controlled states passed to protect physicians after Roe v. Wade was overturned. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Collin County, and it was announced Friday. (Murphy, Hill and Mulvihill, 12/13)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: ThriVe’s Three Pregnancy Resource Clinics Temporarily Close, Employees Furloughed
A pregnancy resource center promoting alternatives to abortion has temporarily closed its doors at all three of its Missouri clinics amid continuing fallout from abuse allegations leveled against its former director. A letter to staff provided to the Post-Dispatch said that the last of ThriVe St. Louis’ “essential medical professionals” resigned last week, leaving the taxpayer-supported nonprofit unable to carry out clinical functions such as pregnancy testing and ultrasounds. (Munz, 12/13)

The Washington Post: Why Black Women Are Being Told To Speak Up During And After Childbirth
Thirty minutes after giving birth to her daughter, while enjoying a sandwich and chatting with her mother, Ariel Freeman felt a sudden gush of blood that soaked through the pad beneath her. She called out to a nurse, who responded that postpartum bleeding was normal. After another gush of blood 20 minutes later, Freeman began to feel woozy. Again, she told the nurses, and they told her not to worry. A voice inside her head told her to be louder. (Cohen, 12/15)

The Washington Post: GW Hospital Residents Are Ready To Strike. What It Means For Patients.
Time is running out for George Washington University and resident physicians to make a deal to avert a strike set to start early Tuesday. A last-minute bargaining session is set for Monday afternoon, but in the meantime, hundreds of doctors in training at one of the D.C. region’s largest hospitals are finalizing plans for a three-day work stoppage. (Portnoy, 12/16)

Modern Healthcare: AdventHealth CEO Terry Shaw To Retire In 2025
Terry Shaw, president and CEO of AdventHealth, will retire in July, the health system said Friday. An internal successor is expected to be selected in April. Shaw will continue to serve on AdventHealth's board following his retirement, according to the health system. (DeSilva, 12/13)

The Boston Globe: Mass. General Brigham Launches Mobile Postnatal Care Unit
Making wraparound health services more accessible in the weeks after childbirth — when a new mother is less likely to monitor her own health — for moms that are least able to access it, the program’s practitioners say, can be a matter of life or death. ... The mobile postnatal care unit is emerging in a region with proven maternal health disparities. In Massachusetts, Black women have the highest rate of severe maternal morbidity, or life-threatening health complications that occur after childbirth, according to a Boston Indicators report published earlier this year. (Woodard, 12/14)

Bloomberg: Ozempic Craze Appears To Be Curbing US Obesity Epidemic
For the first time in a decade, obesity in the US is declining — and a new study suggests it’s because of wildly popular medications such as Ozempic. The number of obese Americans has been steadily climbing for years, and the country’s average body mass index, or BMI, has been creeping up along with it. But in 2023, something changed: Obesity levels fell to 43.96% from 44.1% the year prior. It’s a small decline, but a meaningful one, researchers say. (Muller, 12/13)

Bloomberg: Ozempic Link To Rare Vision Loss Risk Confirmed In Study
Novo Nordisk A/S’s blockbuster shot Ozempic was linked to an increased risk of a rare form of vision loss in a study that backs up Harvard University research published earlier this year. Diabetes patients who used Ozempic were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with the rare condition, called NAION, than those who took another type of diabetes drug, according to a team of researchers who studied years of patient records from Denmark and Norway. The study wasn’t able to determine whether there was a similar impact among people taking Ozempic’s sister drug, Wegovy, for obesity. (Kresge, 12/13)

Wyoming Public Radio: Health Department: Raise Rates To Retain Physicians And Make Positions Full Time
The Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) is asking for over $18.6 million in its supplemental budget request. Unlike many other large government departments, personnel costs aren’t a large part of its spending. Approximately 90 percent of WDH spending goes out to communities or healthcare providers in the form of reimbursement for services. The remaining 10 percent goes to personnel costs. The budget requests reflect the structure of the department. (Kudelska, 12/13)

The Boston Globe: RIBridges Benefit System Hit By Cyberattack, State Officials Say
The state of Rhode Island has been hit with a major cyberattack, putting at risk the private data of possibly hundreds of thousands of people, including social security numbers and addresses, officials said. The attack hit RIBridges, the benefits system formerly known as UHIP, which people use to apply for health insurance coverage, Medicaid, food stamps, and other public assistance. (Machado, 12/13)

NBC News: 'Like A Miracle': N.C. Couple Free Of Nearly $100,000 Medical Debt After 15 Years
For 15 years, Donna and Gary Lindabury, of Vylas, North Carolina, lived with the financial equivalent of an anvil over their heads: a medical debt owed to a nonprofit hospital that at one point reached $200,000. The debt, owed to Atrium Health for emergency heart surgery Gary underwent in 2009, grew over the years to include almost $100,000 in interest charges, Donna, 72, told NBC News. “We were striving, we were trying, we paid our bills,” she said. “But I just couldn’t afford to pay that hospital.”  (Morgenson, 12/13)

CIDRAP: Louisiana Reports Its First Probable Human H5N1 Case As California Logs Another 
Today, the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) announced the state's first presumptive human H5N1 highly pathogenic avian flu case. The patient, a resident of southwestern Louisiana who was exposed to sick and dead birds with suspected infection, has been hospitalized. Also today, the California Department of Public Health reported another probable human case of H5N1 in a dairy farm worker, raising the state's total to 34, all but 1 in people with occupational exposure. The sample tested positive at a local lab, but confirmatory testing at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was negative. (Van Beusekom, 12/13)

Los Angeles Times: Bird Flu Reportedly Prompts Another Raw Milk Recall
State agriculture officials Saturday announced a raw milk recall from Stanislaus County producer Valley Milk Simply Bottled, a news report said. Officials found H5N1 bird flu in bulk milk tanks produced by the Modesto-based raw milk dairy, according to the news agency YubaNet. The order applies to all Valley Milk Simply Bottled raw cow milk and Desi Milk raw cow milk distributed in quart, half-gallon and one-gallon plastic jugs with a code date of Dec. 23 through Dec. 30 marked on the container. (Rust, 12/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco Reports First Flu Death Of The Respiratory Virus Season
San Francisco health officials Friday reported the first flu-related death this respiratory virus season, an adult older than 65 who had not gotten the annual influenza vaccine. Each respiratory virus season, which generally runs from November through February and peaks around late December, the flu kills thousands of Americans. During the 2023-24 season, 579 people in California died from the virus, according to state data. (Ho, 12/13)

CIDRAP: Indicators Show US Flu And COVID Activity Rising 
lu activity continues to rise, and COVID-19 indicators are also starting to rise from very low levels, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly respiratory virus illness updates. ... "We predict COVID-19 illness to increase in the coming weeks, as it usually does in the winter," the CDC said. Wastewater detections are still in the low range and are highest in the Midwest, followed by the West and the South. (Schnirring, 12/13)

CIDRAP: About 8% Of US Adults Have Ever Had Long COVID, Survey Finds 
A study today demonstrates that last year, about 8% of US adults reported that they ever had long COVID, and those who currently had the condition or currently had activity-limiting long COVID were both under 4%, but a leading US expert on long COVID explains the limitations of such data and why estimates of the prevalence of the condition can vary so widely. Long COVID—also known as post-COVID condition (PCC)—is generally defined as having symptoms 3 months or longer after an acute COVID-19 infection. (Wappes, 12/13)

The Colorado Sun: Colorado's 2024 COVID Trends Just Broke Mysterious Pattern
‘Tis the season in Colorado to be hip-deep in people in the hospital with COVID-19 — except not this year. In each of Colorado’s previous four years living with the virus, the state has seen COVID hospitalizations surge in the late summer and through the fall, with a peak just before Thanksgiving that gradually recedes. (Ingold, 12/16)

Fox News: Colon Cancer Risk Linked To Seed Oils In Early Study, Tied To Inflammation
Seed oils — which are plant-based cooking oils that are often used in processed, packaged foods — have been linked to an increased risk of colon cancer, according to a new study published this week in the medical journal Gut. Researchers at University of South Florida (USF) Health and Tampa General Hospital Cancer Institute analyzed 162 tumor samples from colon cancer patients, according to a USF press release. (Rudy, 12/13)