First Edition: Monday, Sept. 23, 2024

KFF Health News: How North Carolina Made Its Hospitals Do Something About Medical Debt
North Carolina officials had been quietly laboring for months on an ambitious plan to tackle the state’s mammoth medical debt problem when Gov. Roy Cooper stepped before cameras in July to announce the initiative. But as Cooper stood by the stairs of the executive mansion and called for “freeing people from medical debt,” the future of his administration’s work hung in the balance. (Levey and Alexander, 9/23)

KFF Health News: Across North Carolina, Medical Debt Exacts A Heavy Toll
On March 30, 2019, a swerving car upended Tom Burke’s life. Severely injured after the crash, Burke was airlifted from the Fort Liberty U.S. Army base in North Carolina to UNC Medical Center, in Chapel Hill, where doctors performed surgeries to rebuild his leg. Medicaid covered most of the cost, but Burke was still left with more than $10,000 in bills. He was confined to a wheelchair for two years after the accident, unable to work his car sales job. As a result, he said, he couldn’t pay the outstanding hospital bill and his account was turned over to a collection agency. (Alexander and Levey, 9/23)

KFF Health News: She Was Accused Of Murder After Losing Her Pregnancy. SC Woman Now Tells Her Story
Amari Marsh had just finished her junior year at South Carolina State University in May 2023 when she received a text message from a law enforcement officer. “Sorry it has taken this long for paperwork to come back,” the officer wrote. “But I finally have the final report, and wanted to see if you and your boyfriend could meet me Wednesday afternoon for a follow up?” (9/21)

KFF Health News: Journalists Give Insights Into Opioid Settlements And Picking A Nursing Home
KFF Health News and California Healthline staff took to the airwaves recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances. (9/21)

Modern Healthcare: Cybersecurity Plan For Reducing Data Breaches Unveiled By CMS
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has developed a five-pronged plan geared toward reducing data breaches and ensuring accountability among healthcare organizations. The strategy, which will expand on policies CMS Principal Deputy Administrator Jonathan Blum shared Sept. 12 at Modern Healthcare's Leadership Symposium, will be introduced and implemented in the coming months, according to federal agency leaders. (Perna, 9/20)

The Washington Post: Health System To Pay $65 Million After Hackers Leaked Nude Patient Photos 
In March 2023, a Pennsylvania woman received a phone call from a health-care executive that left her in disbelief: Hackers had obtained photos of her naked body while she underwent radiation treatments and posted them to a dark corner of the internet. Lehigh Valley Health Network refused to pay a ransom “in excess” of $5 million to recover the photos and other stolen patient information, but it couldn’t sidestep financial damages from the breach. The unidentified woman, who is in her 50s and known as Jane Doe, became the lead plaintiff in a class action suing Lehigh for failing to safeguard highly sensitive patient information, including nude photos of hundreds of cancer patients. On Sept. 12, a law firm announced that Lehigh had agreed to pay $65 million to settle the case. (Gilbert, 9/22)

Reuters: Challenge To US Drug Price Negotiation Program Revived By Appeals Court
A U.S. appeals court revived a lawsuit on Friday by healthcare and drug industry groups challenging the first-ever U.S. law requiring pharmaceutical companies to negotiate drug prices with the government's Medicare health insurance program that covers 66 million people. The decision from the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not address the merits of the case, which was brought by the nation's largest drug industry lobbying group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and others. Instead, the court found only that a Texas judge was wrong to dismiss the case in February on the grounds that he did not have jurisdiction to hear it. (Pierson, 9/20)

The New York Times: F.T.C. Accuses Drug Middlemen Of Inflating Insulin Prices 
The Federal Trade Commission said on Friday that it had taken legal action against the three largest pharmacy benefit managers, accusing the drug middlemen of inflating insulin prices and steering patients toward higher-cost insulin products to increase their profits. The legal action targets CVS Health’s Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth’s Optum Rx and subsidiaries they’ve created to handle drug negotiations, agency officials said. The three collectively control 80 percent of prescriptions in the United States. (Abelson and Robbins, 9/20)

Stat: Medicare Drug Price Negotiations: Study Predicts Drugs Up Next
The GLP-1 drug Wegovy tops the list of medications expected to be included in the next round of Medicare price negotiations, according to a paper in the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy. Last month, Medicare officials unveiled prices for the first 10 drugs chosen for negotiation. Now, all eyes are on which Part D drugs will be chosen for the next round of 15 drugs. (Wilkerson, 9/23)

Los Angeles Times: Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks Tennessee 'Abortion Trafficking' Law
A federal judge Friday temporarily blocked Tennessee from enforcing a law banning adults from helping minors get an abortion without parental permission. In a 49-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger argued that the Republican-controlled state cannot “make it a crime to communicate freely” about legal abortion options even in a state where abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy except for a handful of situations. Trauger’s decision means that the law will be placed on hold as the case make its way through court. (Kruesi, 9/21)

NBC News: A Dramatic Rise In Pregnant Women Dying In Texas After Abortion Ban
The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care — far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds. From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period, according to an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute. The nonprofit research group scoured publicly available reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and shared the analysis exclusively with NBC News. (Edwards, Essamuah and Kane, 9/21)

Reuters: US Victims Of Food-Benefit Theft Could Lose Means Of Recovering Funds
Recipients of U.S. federal food aid whose benefits are stolen will soon have no way to recoup the lost funds unless Congress takes action by the end of September. Roughly 42 million Americans receive food aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The benefits are loaded onto electronic benefit transfer cards, akin to debit cards, and can be stolen when illegal devices on card-swiping machines copy the card data. Congress passed a law in 2022 that for the first time enabled states to replace stolen benefits. The provision expires on Sept. 30. (Douglas, 9/20)

Military.com: Veterans Not Covered By Toxic Hazards Legislation Wait Decades For VA Recognition, Report Finds
The passage of the PACT Act gave millions of veterans the chance at expedited disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs, but thousands of others exposed to environmental hazards in military service wait roughly 31 years to receive similar recognition from the VA, a new report has found. (Kime, 9/20)

The Washington Post: Trump’s Second-Term Agenda On LGBTQ Issues Alarms Civil Rights Groups 
The former president, who has shifted his position over the years on LGBTQ issues, is planning to lead the GOP charge on gender identity if he returns to the White House, according to his campaign and interviews with allies, testing the legal limits of federal action as the Supreme Court also takes up the issue. Donald Trump says he wants to kick providers out of Medicare and Medicaid for offering gender transition care to minors, such as hormone therapy and surgery; pull federal funding from schools if officials suggest a child “could be trapped in the wrong body”; and purge anything in the federal government deemed to promote transgender identity. The moves would go against the advice of leading medical groups. (Knowles, 9/22)

Stat: A Mysterious Anti ‘Big Pharma’ Bus Is Barnstorming Swing States
The wheels on a big red bus emblazoned with anti-pharmaceutical industry messaging are going ’round and ’round all through the nation’s electoral battlegrounds, from Montana to Arizona to Pennsylvania. But nobody will say who’s paying to fill up the gas tank. (Zhang, 9/23)

USA Today: Medicare Dental Insurance Is Popular With Voters, But Not In Speeches
More than half of U.S. adults don't have consistent access to dental care, and untreated issues such as oral infections can harm overall health. Although many people face these barriers to routine care, dental coverage has gained little traction among political leaders. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, have traded barbs over abortion and lowering the price of insulin. One health-related topic neither candidate has emphasized is how to extend dental care to the tens of millions of Americans who lack insurance. (Alltucker, 9/22)

The Washington Post: For Some Parents, Surging Child-Care Costs Could Determine How They Vote
Kayla and Ryan Frost were desperate. Every local day care was full. Nannies were booked. Neither could quit their job. So they patched together a solution: paying their dog sitter to watch their 3-month-old daughter. But the dog sitter, who was great with their German shepherd mix, wasn’t the right fit for their infant. And because of her $25 hourly rate, the Frosts could afford care for only a couple of days a week. (Bhattarai, 9/22)

Reuters: Background Checks Blocked Thousands Of Gun Sales To Youth, Domestic Abusers, White House Says 
Enhanced background checks have blocked thousands of gun sales to people under the age of 21 and those convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence crimes in the past year, the White House said on Sunday, a year after President Joe Biden set up a new office to accelerate work on preventing gun violence. Homicides have dropped 17% in the period, building on the largest-ever drop in homicides in 2023, the White House said. It said data from the Gun Violence Archive showed that mass shootings were also down 20% to date in 2024 compared to a year earlier and would reach their lowest level this year since 2019. (Shalal, 9/22)

Stateline: Safe Storage And Minimum Age Gun Laws Would Curb Violence, Study Says
Gun policy has been a topic of debate in America for decades, and its prominence has increased as gun-related deaths and mass shootings have risen nearly every year since 2014, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks gun violence in the United States. Many Americans despair of ever taming the epidemic, but a new report says certain laws can make a difference. (Hernández, 9/20)

NPR: No Needles Required: The FDA Approves An At-Home Flu Vaccine
The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first flu vaccine that people can administer to themselves at home. The agency on Friday gave the green light for people who have been screened to give themselves the FluMist nasal spray, which can be ordered directly from an online pharmacy, skipping the need to visit a doctor’s office. It will still require a prescription from a doctor's office, however. It's expected to be available next year. (Wise, 9/20)

CIDRAP: US COVID Markers Show More Declines 
US COVID activity continued to decline in many areas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its latest updates. Detections of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater are still high nationally, according to CDC tacking. The highest levels remain in the West, followed by the Midwest and the South. However, all regions show downward trends. (Schnirring, 9/20)

CNN: Health Care Worker Is Third Person To Become Ill After Contact With Missouri Patient Who Had Bird Flu
A third close contact of a patient in Missouri who was hospitalized with H5N1 bird flu has reported that they also experienced symptoms, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The person, a health care worker, was not tested because their symptoms resolved before the investigation into the illnesses began, according to the CDC. (Goodman, 9/20)

CIDRAP: Minnesota Reports 2 H3N2v Flu Infections In Fairgoers 
The Minnesota Department of Health has reported two variant H3N2 (H3N2v) flu infections, both involving young people who visited agricultural fairs, where they were exposed to pigs, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its latest weekly flu update. ... Investigators found that the patients were not contacts of each other but had attended the same agricultural fair. One child had indirect contact with pigs, and the other had direct contact. Both have recovered from their infections. (Schnirring, 9/20)

CIDRAP: California Confirms More Avian Flu In Dairy Herds, Poultry
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has confirmed 6 more H5N1 avian flu outbreaks in California dairy herds, raising the state's total to 16 since the virus was first found in the state's Central Valley dairy farms in the middle of August. (Schnirring, 9/20)

CNN: Whooping Cough Cases Are Soaring. Can Infecting People Help Test A Better Vaccine?
Whooping cough is surging in the United States, with cases now five times higher than they were at the same point last year, according to preliminary data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that was reported Friday. It’s the highest number of whooping cough infections since 2014, “with no indication of slowing down,” said Dr. Susan Hariri of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, who presented the data Friday at a meeting of experts who advise the US Food and Drug Administration on its vaccine decisions. (Goodman and McPhillips, 9/20)

Modern Healthcare: CMS Sets National Dates For Medicaid Enrollment Compliance
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is cracking down on state Medicaid programs after determining that widespread problems with enrollment still haven’t been fixed. Although the Medicaid unwinding process is essentially complete, CMS is not satisfied with its takeaways. Inappropriate disenrollments and applications backlogs skyrocketed when states resumed Medicaid eligibility checks in early 2023 after pausing them during the COVID-19 public health emergency, and CMS is concerned that some problems remain unresolved. (Early, 9/20)

Modern Healthcare: Medicare Fee Schedule Fixes May Only Be Short Term: GOP Doctors
The best that physicians can hope for to repair the latest proposed cuts to the Medicare fee schedule is a short-term fix, said members of the House Republican Doctors Caucus Friday as they fumed that their private sector colleagues have been left out in the cold by the federal government. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in July proposed a 2.9% cut in the 2025 physician fee schedule, which was widely decried by physician groups. (McAuliff, 9/20)

Modern Healthcare: Private-Equity Firms Cool On Physician Groups
Private equity firms are struggling to find buyers for physician groups in the wake of increased oversight and financial pressure. Rising interest rates, lower evaluations and tougher regulations have scuttled potential private equity-led physician group deals. Healthcare attorneys say a softening sellers’ market has irked doctors, many of whom were promised a pay boost once private equity-backed management services organizations flipped a physician practice to another buyer. (Kacik, 9/20)

NBC News: North Carolina Hospital Company Forgives Debts Of 11,500 People After NBC News Report
Less than a week after NBC News detailed how the hospital system Atrium Health of North Carolina aggressively pursued former patients’ medical debts, placing liens on their homes to collect on hospital bills, the nonprofit company announced it would cancel those obligations and forgive the unpaid debts associated with them. Some 11,500 liens on people's homes in North Carolina and five other states will be released, Atrium’s parent company, Advocate Health, said with some dating back 20 years or more. (Morgenson, 9/20)

NPR: How A One Patient Got Trapped In A Health Insurance Ghost Network
Early one morning in February 2023, before the sun rose over Phoenix, Ravi Coutinho went on a walk and, for a brief moment, thought about hurling his body in front of a moving bus. He had been feeling increasingly alone and depressed; anxious and unlovable; no longer sure if he was built for this world. Several hours later, Ravi swiped open his iPhone and dialed the toll-free number on the back of his Ambetter insurance card. (Blau, 9/22)

Reuters: Court Revives More Than 500 Lawsuits Over Fosamax Femur Fracture Risk 
A U.S. appeals court on Friday revived more than 500 lawsuits alleging that Merck & Co failed to warn that its osteoporosis drug Fosamax increased the risk of thigh bone fractures. unanimous panel of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal law did not block the plaintiffs' state law claims over the drug. Fosamax was acquired in 2021 by Organon, which agreed to indemnify Merck against liability from the lawsuits. (Pierson, 9/20)

Reuters: J&J Unit Files For Bankruptcy To Advance $10 Billion Talc Settlement 
A Johnson & Johnson subsidiary filed for bankruptcy for a third time on Friday as the healthcare giant seeks to advance an approximately $10 billion proposed settlement that would end tens of thousands of lawsuits alleging that the company's baby powder and other talc products caused cancer. (Knauth, 9/20)

Stat: Smoking Cessation Drug Development Has Stagnated. Here's Why
Of the roughly 15 million Americans who tried to quit smoking in 2022, 5 in 6 failed. It’s a jarring statistic — and an indictment of the treatment options for an addiction that kills 480,000 people in the U.S. each year. (Florko, 9/23)

AP: California Governor Signs Law To Protect Children From Social Media Addiction 
California will make it illegal for social media platforms to knowingly provide addictive feeds to children without parental consent beginning in 2027 under a new law Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Friday. California follows New York state, which passed a law earlier this year allowing parents to block their kids from getting social media posts suggested by a platform’s algorithm. Utah has passed laws in recent years aimed at limiting children’s access to social media, but they have faced challenges in court. (Austin, 9/21)

St. Louis Public Radio: Lawsuit Over Missouri’s Gender-Affirming Care Ban Heads To Trial 
A lawsuit filed by transgender children and their parents challenging a one year-old Missouri law restricting minors from accessing cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers heads to trial in Cole County Circuit Court beginning Monday. (Hanshaw, 9/20)

Wyoming Public Radio: What If You Call 911 And No One Answers? EMS Agencies Struggle Financially In Wyoming.
Many emergency medical service agencies in Wyoming are struggling financially. Most have found ways to make ends meet despite rising costs and more complex expectations. But communities may have some difficult conversations ahead about how to pay for what many consider a necessary service. (Ouellet, 9/20)

Central Florida Public Media: Flagler Is The Latest School District To Mandate Heart Screenings For Student-Athletes
The Flagler County School Board voted 3-2 this week to mandate at least one electrocardiogram screening for student-athletes throughout their high school career. The new rule will go into effect next school year. The test commonly known as an EKG or ECG is painless, and takes only a few minutes, but can detect heart conditions that can lead to sudden cardiac arrest. (Prieur, 9/20)

The Washington Post: Racism, Other Social Factors May Affect Asian Americans’ Heart Health
Immigration status, structural racism and other social factors may contribute to disparities in cardiovascular health among Asian Americans, according to a statement prepared by a group of clinicians and researchers and published in the American Heart Association journal, Circulation. Asian Americans are less likely than White adults to have or die of heart disease, according to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health. But researchers in the Circulation article note that cardiovascular health can vary widely between subgroups of Asian Americans, and warn that combining different subgroups of people into a single “Asian” category could mask important differences. (Blakemore, 9/22)

Axios: Childhood Trauma Linked To Major Lifelong Biological, Health Risks
Childhood trauma can raise the risk of developing major diseases later in life that vary based on a person's unique experiences and even their sex, new research concludes. Although it's widely understood that trauma early in life has biological and real-world health impacts, the findings shed light on how different life experiences can shape the way the body functions and make a person susceptible to chronic diseases. (Owens and Snyder, 9/23)

CNN: Nonalcoholic Drinks: Some Experts Are Calling For Age Restrictions On Sales
They won’t get you buzzed, but some experts say low-alcohol and alcohol-free beers and mocktails shouldn’t be sold to minors, and they’re calling for laws that curb underage sales to kids and teens. (Goodman, 9/20)