First Edition: Nov. 10, 2022

KHN: Stopping The Churn: Why Some States Want To Guarantee Medicaid Coverage From Birth To Age 6 
Before the covid-19 public health emergency began in 2020, millions of children churned on and off Medicaid each year — an indication that many were losing coverage because of administrative problems, rather than because their family’s income had increased and made them ineligible. Spurred by pandemic-era lessons, several states are rethinking their enrollment policies for the youngest Medicaid members. Oregon is leading the way after getting federal approval to implement a new continuous-enrollment policy. (Galewitz, 11/10)

KHN: South Dakota Voters Approved Medicaid Expansion, But Implementation May Not Be Easy
South Dakotans voted Tuesday to expand the state’s Medicaid program to cover thousands of additional low-income residents, becoming the seventh state to approve expansion via the ballot box. But as other conservative states have shown, voter approval doesn’t always mean politicians and administrators will rush to implement the change. (Zionts, 11/10)

KHN: Homelessness Among Older People Is On The Rise, Driven By Inflation And The Housing Crunch
On a recent rainy afternoon in this small town just outside Glacier National Park, Lisa Beaty and Kim Hilton were preparing to sell most of their belongings before moving out of their three-bedroom, two-bathroom rental home. Hilton, who was recovering from a broken leg, watched from his recliner as friends and family sorted through old hunting gear, jewelry, furniture, and clothes. “The only thing that’s not for sale is the house — everything else has to go,” Hilton, 68, said as he checked his blood sugar. (Bolton, 11/10)

KHN: Fentanyl In High School: A Texas Community Grapples With The Reach Of The Deadly Opioid
The hallways of Lehman High School looked like any other on a recent fall day. Its 2,100 students talked and laughed as they hurried to their next classes, moving past walls covered with flyers that advertised homecoming events, clubs, and football games. Next to those flyers, though, were posters with a grim message warning students that fentanyl is extremely deadly. Those posters weren’t there last school year. Right before this school year started, the Hays Consolidated Independent School District, which includes Lehman, announced that two students had died after taking fentanyl-laced pills. They were the first recorded student deaths tied to the synthetic opioid in this Central Texas school district, which has high school campuses in Kyle and Buda, a nearby town. Within the first month of school, two more fatalities were confirmed. (DeGuzman, 11/10)

KHN: Abortion Issue Helps Limit Democrats’ Losses In Midterms
Republicans are likely to take control of one or both houses of Congress when all the votes are counted, but Democrats on Wednesday were celebrating after their party defied expectations of substantial losses in the midterm election. The backlash over the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn 49 years of abortion rights was apparently a big reason. Inflation and the economy proved the most important voting issue, cited as the motivation of 51% of voters in exit polls conducted by the Associated Press and analyzed by KFF pollsters. But abortion was the single-most important issue for a quarter of all voters, and for a third of women under age 50. Exit polls by NBC News placed the importance of abortion even higher, with 32% of voters saying inflation was their top voting issue and abortion ranking second at 27%. (Rovner, 11/9)

The New York Times: Where the Midterms Mattered Most for Abortion Access
In many places, the outcome of down-ballot races may prove as consequential for abortion access as those for governor or legislative seats. Shifts in power on state supreme courts are important to watch, as these courts can rule on challenges to new or existing abortion laws. Newly elected attorneys general will also have some say in their enforcement. (McCann, Walker, Murphy and Cahalan, 11/9)

Politico: A Predicted ‘Red Wave’ Crashed Into Wall Of Abortion Rights Support On Tuesday
Tuesday’s results likely ensure that millions of people will be able to legally terminate a pregnancy going forward — and bolster progressives’ arguments that reproductive rights is a winning issue that Democrats and their allies should pursue aggressively in the years ahead. “There are lessons here for 2024 that I hope the administration will take to heart,” said Morgan Hopkins, the leader of All* Above All, an abortion-rights advocacy group. “We showed up, especially young voters of color, in record numbers. Now, we need these elected officials to show up for us.” (Ollstein and Messerly, 11/9)

The New York Times: How Democrats Used The Abortion Debate To Hold Off A Red Wave
For months, the midterm elections appeared to be a clash over rising prices, public safety worries and fears of a looming recession. But another driving issue proved almost as powerful for voters: abortion rights. In the first major election since the Supreme Court overturned the case that ensured a federal right to an abortion for nearly half a century, abortion rights broke through, lifting Democrats to victory in Virginia, Minnesota, Michigan and New Mexico. (Lerer and Dias, 11/10)

NBC News: White House Buoyed By Early Midterm Results As Biden Avoids His Predecessors' Fate
Biden said at the White House that voters “sent a clear and unmistakable message” about issues such as democracy and abortion rights but were also “clear that they are still frustrated” when it comes to the economy and inflation. (Pettypiece, Alba and Egan, 11/9)

AP: Abortion Rights Boosted With Defeat Of Kentucky Amendment
Kentucky voters rejected a ballot measure aimed at denying any constitutional protections for abortion, handing a victory to abortion-rights supporters who have seen access to the procedure eroded by Republican lawmakers in the deeply red state. The outcome of the election that concluded Tuesday highlighted what appeared to be a gap between voter sentiment and the expectations of Kentucky’s GOP-dominated legislature, which imposed a near-total ban on abortions and put the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. (Schreiner and Campbell, 11/9)

AP: Effort To Further Restrict Abortion Fails In South Carolina 
After a dozen meetings and sessions over the summer and fall, South Carolina efforts to pass a stricter abortion law failed Wednesday after senators rejected a House-backed proposal and House members didn’t return for another meeting to try and work out a compromise. A number of Republicans thought now was the time in South Carolina to ban almost all abortions and called a special session after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. (Collins, 11/9)

Stat: How Abortion Bans Make Gestational Age Even Less Precise
If you want to understand the fickleness of pregnancy and the American laws that regulate it, one place to start would be a gas station in Iowa City, where a 31-year-old sat in the passenger seat of a gray Hyundai, making frantic calls. (Boodman, 11/10)

AP: WHO Reports 90% Drop In World COVID-19 Deaths Since February 
The World Health Organization chief on Wednesday said a nearly 90% drop in recent COVID-19 deaths globally compared to nine months ago provides “cause for optimism,” but still urged vigilance against the pandemic as variants continue to crop up. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that last week just over 9,400 deaths linked to the coronavirus were reported to the WHO. In February of this year, he said, weekly deaths had topped 75,000 globally. (Keaten, 11/9)

Stat: FDA Panel Votes Against Veru’s Drug For Severe Covid 
An FDA advisory panel voted 5-to-8 to recommend rejecting a new drug for patients hospitalized with Covid-19, ruling that a glimmer of potential life-saving benefit couldn’t make up for a long list of questions around the company’s main trial. (Mast, 11/9)

ABC News: Paxlovid Rebound More Common Than Initially Thought, Doctors Say
Six months ago, Dr. Joseph Boselli said he was prescribing the antiviral drug Paxlovid to nearly everyone who turned up at his practice with COVID. Now, the internal medicine physician at Jefferson Health in Philadelphia said he's reserving it mostly for people who are 60-plus, with serious health problems, or who aren't up-to-date on their vaccines. (Abdelmalek and Flahrerty, 11/10)

CNN: Lower Your Blood Pressure To This Number To Reduce Risk Of Severe Covid, Study Finds
High blood pressure is a known risk factor for a bout of Covid-19 severe enough to raise the specter of hospitalization and death. In fact, research has shown having high blood pressure doubles the risk of having a severe case of Covid, even if you are fully vaccinated and boosted. (LaMotte, 11/9)

CIDRAP: US Test To Treat COVID Sites A Long Drive For Many 
A study today in JAMA Network Open reveals disparities in access to COVID-19 Test to Treat sites—and thus to illness-limiting oral antivirals—with 15% of the US population living more than an hour from the nearest center. A team led by researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and the University of Virginia used HealthData.gov information to identify the locations of 2,227 Test to Treat sites across the United States as of May 4, 2022. They also calculated drive times from the population center of each US Census region to the 10 nearest testing sites. (Van Beusekom, 11/9)

Stat: U.S. Set To Face Third Covid Winter Without Key Tools And Treatments
The country is heading into its third Covid winter without crucial tools we’ve relied on at previous points in the pandemic, both as governments roll back their responses and as the virus outruns some of our most important medicine-cabinet defenses. (Joseph and Mast, 11/10)

The Atlantic: Annual COVID Shots Mean We Can Stop Counting
By this point in the pandemic, a lot of people must be losing track. “I actually think this is a good thing,” says Grace Lee, a pediatrician at Stanford, and the chair of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Now that so many Americans have racked up several shots or infections, she told me, the question is no longer “‘How many doses have you gotten cumulatively?’ It’s ‘Are you up to date for the season?’” (Wu, 11/8)

CIDRAP: WHO: Weekly Monkeypox Cases Up Slightly
The number of monkeypox cases reported to the WHO rose slightly last week, with 19 countries reporting rises in cases, the head of the WHO said today at a briefing on a host of health issues. (11/9)

The Verge: In World-First Trial, Lab-Grown Blood Was Just Injected Into Two People
In a world first, two people were injected with red blood cells grown in a lab as part of a clinical trial, the research team announced this week. It’s a first step toward seeing if lab-grown blood cells are safe and work in the body — which would be a major advance for people living with rare blood types or blood disorders. (Wetsman, 11/8)

AP: In A First, Doctors Treat Fatal Genetic Disease Before Birth
A toddler is thriving after doctors in the U.S. and Canada used a novel technique to treat her before she was born for a rare genetic disease that caused the deaths of two of her sisters. Ayla Bashir, a 16-month-old from Ottawa, Ontario, is the first child treated as fetus for Pompe disease, an inherited and often fatal disorder in which the body fails to make some or all of a crucial protein. (Aleccia, 11/9)

NPR: To Calm Anxiety, Researchers Find Meditation As Effective As Lexapro
For the first time, scientists compared patients who took an intensive eight-week mindfulness meditation program to patients who took escitalopram, the generic name of the widely-prescribed and well-studied anxiety drug Lexapro. They found that both interventions worked equally well in reducing debilitating anxiety symptoms. (Fulton, 11/9)

ABC News: Prostate Cancer Screening Guidelines May Fail To Address Racial Disparity: Study
Relaxed PSA screening guidelines may be leading to more late-stage cancer diagnoses, and the current recommendations updated to address this concern might preferentially serve white men, a new study suggests. (Farha, 11/10)

The New York Times: Medication Treatment For Addiction Is Shorter For Black And Hispanic Patients, Study Finds
Researchers have long known that racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to be prescribed lifesaving addiction treatment options than white people. But even when Black and Hispanic patients start a prescription for buprenorphine — the most popular medication to help those in recovery fight cravings — the typical duration of their treatment is shorter than that of white patients, according to a new data analysis published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. (Baumgaertner, 11/9)

Reuters: Eli Lilly Ordered To Pay $176.5 Mln To Teva In U.S. Migraine Drug Patent Trial 
Eli Lilly & Co must pay Teva Pharmaceuticals International GmbH $176.5 million after a trial to determine whether its migraine drug Emgality infringed three Teva patents, a Boston federal court jury decided on Wednesday. The jury agreed with Teva that Lilly's Emgality violated its rights in the patents, which relate to its own migraine drug Ajovy. Both drugs treat migraines by employing antibodies to inhibit headache-causing peptides. (Brittain, 11/9)

Modern Healthcare: Bright Health Group Ends Florida Medicare Advantage Operations
The insurtech announced in October it would be exiting the Affordable Care Act exchange business to focus next year solely on its Medicare Advantage operations in Florida and California, and on its NeueHealth provider arm. Now, the company will only operate Medicare Advantage plans in California for 2023, Chief Financial Officer Cathy Smith said during the third-quarter earnings call Wednesday. (Tepper, 11/9)

AP: NC Legislators: Medicaid Expansion Efforts Pushed To 2023
North Carolina Republican legislative leaders said Wednesday that they’re shuttling the idea of Medicaid expansion to 2023, rather than attempting to negotiate a bill that could be voted on before the General Assembly’s current two-year edition ends in December. By wide bipartisan margins, the House and Senate approved competing bills months ago that were designed to cover hundreds of thousands of additional low-income adults through the government’s health insurance program that mostly serves the poor. Republicans within the two chambers have disagreed over whether additional health care access changes should be attached to expansion. (Robertson, 11/9)

San Francisco Chronicle: ACLU Weighs In Against New California Law To Punish Doctors Who Spread COVID Misinformation
“(R)ather than employ the existing tools at its disposal, the State has taken a blunt instrument to the entire profession,” ACLU attorneys said in a filing Monday in federal court in Los Angeles, where the doctors’ lawsuit is awaiting judicial review. (Egelko, 11/9)

AP: CDC To Conduct Health Study At Polluted Former Army Base 
Federal health officials are conducting a new study to determine whether veterans once stationed at a now-shuttered California military base were exposed to dangerously high levels of cancer-causing toxins. The decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comes nine months after an Associated Press investigation found that drinking water at Fort Ord contained toxic chemicals and that hundreds of veterans who lived at the central California coast base in the 1980s and 1990s later developed rare and terminal blood cancers. (Mendoza, Linderman and Dearen, 11/9)

Columbus Dispatch: Four Measles Cases Reported At Columbus-Area Child Care Facility
Local public health departments are investigating a measles outbreak linked to a local child care facility. At least four cases of measles have been confirmed as part of the outbreak so far, according to both Columbus Public Health and Franklin County Public Health. Each of the four children infected were unvaccinated for the measles. (Filby, 11/9)

The Washington Post: 3 Americans Dead In Mexico City Airbnb From Likely Gas Poisoning 
Three Americans on vacation in Mexico City were found dead at an Airbnb-listed property that they had rented, according to the U.S. State Department and the property rental platform. ... The woman involved had told her boyfriend before her death that she felt like she had been drugged, according to El País, which viewed messages between the couple. “Like I’ve taken ecstasy, but I haven’t,” she reportedly wrote. She was also reportedly vomiting and said she was feeling fatigued. (Jeong, 11/10)

The New York Times: An Ivory Comb With An Ancient Message: Get Rid Of Beard Lice
The tiny ivory comb came from ancient ruins in central Israel and was about the size of a child’s thumb. A number of its teeth had snapped. It was so encrusted in dirt that the archaeologist who found it initially added it to a bag of assorted bones. More than half a decade later, by a stroke of luck, scientists found letters faintly inscribed on the object: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.” (Whang, 11/9)