First Edition: November 20, 2018

Kaiser Health News: Buyers Of Short-Term Health Plans: Wise Or Shortsighted?
Supporters of the nation’s health law condemn them. A few states, including California and New York, have banned them. Other states limit them. But to some insurance brokers and consumers, short-term insurance plans are an enticing, low-cost alternative for healthy people. (Gorman, 11/20)

Kaiser Health News: Fish Oil Drug Looks Heart-Healthy. Just Don’t Swallow It Hook, Line And Sinker.
When biopharma company Amarin teased its latest clinical trial results this fall, it stirred both buzz and controversy in the medical community by suggesting its drug, Vascepa, could transform heart disease prevention. The company’s stock skyrocketed. But this month at the American Heart Association’s scientific sessions, an annual who’s who of cardiology, the company unveiled the complete study findings, also published in the New England Journal of Medicine. (Luthra, 11/20)

California Healthline: Paradise Lost: Wildfire Chases Seniors From Retirement Havens To Field Hospitals
After barely getting out of Paradise alive before the Camp Fire turned her town to ash, Patty Saunders, 89, now spends her days and nights in a reclining chair inside the shelter at East Ave Church 16 miles away. It hurts too much to move. She needs a hip replacement and her legs are swollen. Next to her is a portable commode, and when it’s time to go, nurses and volunteers help her up and hold curtains around her to give her some measure of privacy. (Rinker, 11/19)

Reuters: House Democrats Target DOJ Decision Not To Defend Obamacare
Democrats will scrutinize the Trump administration's decision not to defend Obamacare in federal court, when Democrats take control of the U.S. House of Representatives next year, a leading Democrat said on Monday. In June, the Department of Justice declared the healthcare law's individual mandate unconstitutional in federal court, which threatened to undermine insurance protections for people with preexisting conditions, and helped make healthcare a winning issue for Democrats in House elections on Nov. 6. (11/19)

CQ: Democrats Weigh Path Forward On 'Medicare-For-All'
Progressives in the House are calling for a vote on a single-payer “Medicare-for-all” bill in the next Congress, but the expected chairmen who will set the agenda for next year say they have other health priorities. Still, the progressives’ push could earn more attention over the next two years as Democratic candidates begin vying to take on President Donald Trump in 2020. A handful of potential presidential candidates expected to declare interest have already co-sponsored “Medicare-for-all” legislation, an issue that was also a flashpoint in Democratic primaries over the past year. (McIntire, 11/19)

The New York Times: Chicago Hospital Shooting Leaves 4 Dead
This city’s hospitals have grown all too accustomed to receiving victims of gunshot wounds from unrelenting violence on the streets, but on Monday, one hospital became the scene of a shooting that left four people dead and sent health workers and patients alike scrambling for safety. As a frantic scene played out inside and outside Mercy Hospital, south of Chicago’s downtown, four people were shot and killed, Superintendent Eddie Johnson of the Chicago Police said. Among the dead, according to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, were a police officer, a doctor and a pharmacy employee. (Smith, 11/19)

The Associated Press: Four Dead, Including Suspected Gunman, After Chicago Hospital Shooting, Police Say
The chain of events that led to the shooting began with an argument in the hospital parking lot involving the gunman and a woman with whom he was in a domestic relationship, police said. When a friend of the woman’s tried to intervene, ‘‘the offender lifted up his shirt and displayed a handgun,’’ Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said. The woman’s friend ran into the hospital to call for help, and the gunfire began seconds later, with the attacker killing the woman he was arguing with. Johnson described her only as a hospital employee. (Seitz and Babwin, 11/19)

Sacramento Bee: Camp Fire Update: 79 Now Dead, 699 Still Unaccounted For
The number of reported dead in Butte County’s Camp Fire increased by two Monday, bringing the total to 79, Cal Fire said in an incident report. One of the human remains found Monday was located in a structure in Paradise; the other was located outside in Magalia, according to a press release from the Butte County Sheriff’s office. Of the 79 dead, 64 have been tentatively identified, according to the release. (Darden, 11/19)

The Washington Post: With Disease In Shelters And Hotels At Capacity, Wildfire Evacuees Desperately Seek Refuge
The main exhibit hall at the Yuba-Sutter Fairgrounds here has become the home of last resort for 68 people who fled the fires that swept through a broad swath of forest and hill towns nearby. And some days, an ambulance shows up. A team of paramedics, wearing protective masks and disposable yellow plastic aprons, wheeled a sick man out of the exhibit hall Monday on a stretcher, another victim of the bitter repercussions of mass displacement that the Camp Fire has created. (Sellers, Wilson and Craig, 11/19)

Los Angeles Times: Thousands Of Homes Incinerated But Trees Still Standing: Paradise Fire’s Monstrous Path
Driving toward Paradise on the afternoon of Nov. 8, Jonathan Pangburn was less worried about the flames burning through the forest than he was about the smoke. Black and thick, it billowed over the road like a dangerous fog, cutting visibility to less than three feet in places. A member of the incident management team with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, Pangburn knew the signs. Gray smoke meant vegetation. Black smoke meant homes, possibly entire city blocks. The Camp fire was no longer just a wildland fire. (Curwen and Serna, 11/20)

Los Angeles Times: California Fires: Trump Administration Now Blames Devastation On 'Radical Environmentalists'
The political battle between the Trump administration and California over blame for the the devastating wildfires that have killed scores and left nearly 1,000 missing continued Monday. U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke blamed the state’s fires on “radical environmentalists” who he said have prevented forest management. (Reyes-Velarde and Serna, 11/19)

San Jose Mercury News: Camp Fire: PG&E Power Line Linked To Blaze Had 2012 Problem
In December 2012, a fierce winter storm toppled five steel towers that support the same PG&E transmission line that malfunctioned minutes before the Camp Fire roared to life. Now, six years later, the 115,000-volt Caribou-Palermo transmission line near Poe Dam and the tiny resort town of Pulga is again under the microscope. PG&E reported damage to it around 6:15 a.m. Nov. 8, about 15 minutes before flames were first reported under the high-tension wires, according to a regulatory filing and firefighter radio traffic. Another transmission line in nearby Concow also malfunctioned a half hour later, possible sparking a second fire. (Gafni, 11/19)

The New York Times: ‘Like A Terror Movie’: How Climate Change Will Cause More Simultaneous Disasters
Global warming is posing such wide-ranging risks to humanity, involving so many types of phenomena, that by the end of this century some parts of the world could face as many as six climate-related crises at the same time, researchers say. This chilling prospect is described in a paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change, a respected academic journal, that shows the effects of climate change across a broad spectrum of problems, including heat waves, wildfires, sea level rise, hurricanes, flooding, drought and shortages of clean water. (Schwartz, 11/19)

San Jose Mercury News: California Fires: Why More Disasters Like Paradise Are Likely
Fire crews are still working to contain the deadly inferno that leveled the town of Paradise, virtually wiping it off the map. Thousands of people are homeless, living in tents, trailers and parking lots. Dozens are dead. Hundreds are still missing. And massive, choking plumes of smoke continue to blanket Northern California. Forecasters say rain might arrive by Thanksgiving to clear away the smoke and mercifully reduce fire danger. But the optimism is tempered by a grim reality. Scientists say as temperatures continue to warm, drying out brush, grasses and trees into explosively flammable fuel by late summer and autumn, catastrophic fires and the unhealthy smoke they spew hundreds of miles away will almost certainly become more frequent in California and across the West in the coming years. (Rogers, 11/19)

Stat: Air Pollution Exposure During Pregnancy Linked To Autism Diagnosis
Two new studies suggest that rising autism rates might be connected at least in part to air pollution from traffic. They are not the first to show a link between exposure to pollutants during pregnancy and the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. But both studies look at large populations and find a link with relatively low levels of pollutants. In a study of 132,256 births in Vancouver, Canada, published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics, researchers detected an association between exposure to roadway pollution in utero and later diagnosis with autism. The study’s strengths were its large size and its method of diagnosing autism, which can be inconsistent. (Weintraub, 11/19)

The Washington Post: How Many Years Do We Lose To The Air We Breathe?
The average person on Earth would live 2.6 years longer if their air contained none of the deadliest type of pollution, according to researchers at the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute. Your number depends on where you live. (11/20)

Stat: FDA Proposes New Regulations For Some Health Smartphone Apps 
The Food and Drug Administration wants to ramp up the way it regulates smartphone apps linked to prescription drugs — like medication reminders or symptom trackers. In a new proposal released Monday, the agency said it may treat some apps like drug advertisements — which would allow companies to distribute apps without going through a review process with every update. Right now, the apps aren’t covered by existing regulations. (Sullivan, 11/19)

The Wall Street Journal: FDA Menthol Ban Will Be A Slow Burn
The Food and Drug Administration’s war on menthol cigarettes could take years. Investors have time to sift the ashes and decide which tobacco stocks are best prepared for tougher U.S. regulations and a shift to alternative forms of smoking. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb last week said he wants to ban menthol brands, which are more addictive than regular tobacco, but didn’t give a timeline. He will immediately restrict sales of flavored e-cigarettes to fight rocketing use among young Americans—3.6 million middle- and high-school students are now e-smokers, up from 2.1 million in 2017. (Ryan, 11/20)

The Hill: Ex-Health Chief Price Joins New Georgia Governor's Transition Team 
Tom Price, who resigned as secretary of Health and Human Services last year following controversy about his use of a private jet, is joining the transition team of Georgia Gov.-elect Brian Kemp (R). Kemp, who just prevailed over Democrat Stacey Abrams in the closely watched gubernatorial race, announced Price would be among the members of his transition team at a press conference on Monday. (Sullivan, 11/19)

The Hill: Trump's Top Refugee Official Takes New Job At HHS
Scott Lloyd, the controversial Trump administration official in charge of refugee children at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is taking on a new role at the agency. Lloyd, who joined HHS in March 2017 as director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), is leaving that post to serve as a senior adviser at the Center for Faith and Opportunity Initiatives. (Hellmann, 11/19)

USA Today: Alcohol Taxes And Restrictions Could Curb Problem Drinking, But Are Hard To Sell
When health officials wanted to reduce deaths from tobacco, they spread messages about the proven cancer risks, pushed to ban smoking in public places and worked to raise taxes on cigarettes. Alcohol, which causes 88,000 deaths a year in the United States, is a similarly grave public health concern. But the way forward is less clear. What worked with smoking may not work with drinking, which still enjoys broad social acceptance. Nearly all the potential solutions are hitting considerable roadblocks. (O'Donnell, 11/19)

The Wall Street Journal: Opioid Industry Fights Efforts To Make It Pay For Crisis
Opioid makers and distributors are fighting a novel New York state law that aims to collect hundreds of millions of dollars from the industry to help defray costs of the opioid crisis, with some companies re-engineering their supply chain to avoid the new tax. Companies and trade groups have argued in three legal challenges filed in recent months that the law, which seeks $600 million over six years, is unconstitutional. They point to a lawsuit New York’s attorney general has already filed against major opioid industry players to recoup money for the state, and say the tax is an improper end-run around resolution of that case. (Randazzo, 11/19)

Stat: Pharmacists Dispense Naloxone. Can They Train Customers To Use It?
Sixty pharmacists began a recent Friday here in the company of a limbless dummy, watching an animation of a bird named Kiwi develop an addiction to golden nuggets. It was a pointed, if simplistic, way to explain the opioid crisis, and why first responders and even non-health professionals are often called upon to administer naloxone, the overdose-reversal drug. So at a conference just outside Washington, the dozens of pharmacists spent an hour of their free time learning to assemble nasal naloxone kits, squirt a milliliter of the drug into each nostril of someone experiencing an overdose — or use an autoinjector to stab them in the thigh and hold it there until a robotic voice finished counting to five. (Facher, 11/20)

Stat: Drug Maker Upped Opioid-Overdose Antidote Price 600 Percent. Taxpayers Paid 
In order to capitalize on the opioid crisis, a small company that sells a version of naloxone, a decades-old drug that is widely used to reverse the effect of opioid and heroin overdoses, raised the price of its product by more than 600 percent between 2014 and 2017, which cost the federal government more than $142 million, according to a lengthy report from a Senate subcommittee. Central to its strategy, Kaleo circumvented the traditional pharmaceutical market by subsidizing patients who were given its Evzio opioid antidote device, instead of contracting with pharmacy benefit managers and insurers. In doing so, the company used a controversial scheme to provide Evzio at no cost to patients, but counted on private and public insurers to pay an ever-rising wholesale, or list, price. (Silverman, 11/19)

NPR: Rhode Island Inmates Get Top-Level Treatment For Opioid Addiction
In a windowless classroom at the John J. Moran medium-security prison in Cranston, R.I., three men sit around a table to share how and when they began using opioids. For Josh, now 39, it was when he was just 13 years old. "I got grounded for a week in my house, so I grabbed a bundle of heroin and just sat inside and sniffed it all week." "I started using heroin at 19," says Ray, now 23. "I was shooting it. It was with a group of friends that I was working with, doing roof work." (Hsu and Shapiro, 11/19)

The Washington Post: Bisexual Women Are More Likely To Misuse Prescription Opioids, Study Finds. But Why?
People who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual are more likely to misuse prescription opioids than those who identify as heterosexual — and bisexual women face a particularly high risk, according to a new nationwide study. The study from the New York University School of Medicine, published Monday in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, is the first to use a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States to examine sexual orientation as a risk factor for prescription opioid misuse, its authors said. (Schmidt, 11/19)

CNN: One-Third Of US Parents Plan To Skip Flu Shots For Their Kids
Thirty-four percent of US parents said their child was unlikely to get the flu vaccine this year, according to a report published Monday by C.S. Mott Children's Hospital. The online poll, which was administered in October, looked at 1,977 parents who had at least one child, whether parents would get their children the flu vaccine and their reasoning, among other things. Of parents polled, 48% said they usually followed the recommendations of their child's health care provider when making choices about the flu vaccine. (Thomas, 11/19)

Stat: Scientists Are Creating A Contraceptive That Stops Sperm In Its Tracks 
Scientists are trying to create a new kind of contraception with a novel tactic: tangling up sperm so they can’t reach an egg. The project relies on the precision targeting ability of monoclonal antibodies, which are widely used as drugs to treat everything from cancer to Crohn’s disease. Boston University and Mapp Biopharmaceutical, a San Diego-based drug company that specializes in this technology, are spearheading the research, and scientists across the country have signed on to help study the idea. They’ve already scored early support: The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development recently awarded the team an $8 million grant. (Thielking, 11/20)

The New York Times: The Experiments Are Fascinating. But Nobody Can Repeat Them.
At this point, it is hardly a surprise to learn that even top scientific journals publish a lot of low-quality work — not just solid experiments that happen, by bad luck, to have yielded conclusions that don’t stand up to replication, but poorly designed studies that had no real chance of succeeding before they were ever conducted. Studies that were dead on arrival. We’ve seen lots of examples. (Gelman, 11/19)

The New York Times: Omega-3s May Lower The Risk Of Preterm Birth
Taking omega-3 supplements during pregnancy may lower the risk for preterm birth, a review of studies has found. The analysis, in the Cochrane Reviews, considered 70 randomized trials that included almost 20,000 women. A few studied fish consumption, but most tested supplements of omega-3 fatty acids, the fats found in fish. (Bakalar, 11/19)

The New York Times: The Fight Against Malaria Has Reached A Standstill
Progress against malaria has stalled, and the disease remains a significant threat to billions of people despite the expensive, decades-long efforts to contain it, the World Health Organization reported on Monday. According to the W.H.O.’s latest annual assessment, there were an estimated 220 million cases of malaria last year, and about 435,000 deaths from the disease. Of the dead, 262,000 were children under age 5. (McNeil, 11/19)

The Associated Press: Limiting Screen Time For Your Kid? It’s Harder Than It Looks
It is Saturday morning, and 10-year-old Henry Hailey is up at the crack of dawn. Still in PJs, his microphone-equipped headphones glowing blue in the dim basement, he fixates on the popular online game “Fortnite” on a large screen. “What?! Right as I was about to finish it, I died,” he calls out disappointedly to his friend Gus, a fellow fifth-grader playing the game from his home just a few blocks away. “Dude, I should NOT have died.” The digital battles resume, and Henry’s enthusiasm never wanes. Would he play all day if his parents let him? “Probably,” he concedes with a slight grin. (Irvine, 11/19)

USA Today: James Woods Uses Twitter To Help Veteran Contemplating Suicide
Actor James Woods used his Twitter account to call attention and help to a distressed veteran who was contemplating suicide. The "Salvador" actor, 71, alerted the Orlando Police Department Monday night and asked authorities to perform a wellness check on former Marine Andrew MacMasters. (Henderson, 11/20)

The Washington Post: The Maternity Homes Where ‘Mind Control’ Was Used On Teen Moms To Give Up Their Babies
Karen Wilson Buterbaugh was 16 in the fall of 1965 when she got pregnant by her steady boyfriend. Terrified and in denial, she hid her growing body under an oversized sweater for five months. When she could no longer hide the pregnancy, she finally told her parents. They shipped her off to a maternity home without telling her where she was going. (Bernard and Bogen-Oskwarek, 11/19)

The New York Times: How Long Can People Live?
The most common risk factor for serious disease is old age. Heart disease, cancer, stroke, neurological conditions, diabetes — all increase radically with advancing years. And the older a person is, the more likely he or she is to have multiple chronic illnesses. Some scientists hope one day to treat all of them at once — by targeting aging itself. (Bakalar, 11/19)

The New York Times: Why Are We Still So Fat?
Whenever I see a photo from the 1960s or 1970s, I am startled. It’s not the clothes. It’s not the hair. It’s the bodies. So many people were skinny. In 1976, 15 percent of American adults were obese. Now the it’s nearly 40 percent. No one really knows why bodies have changed so much. (Kolata, 11/19)

The New York Times: Why Don’t We Have Vaccines Against Everything?
Vaccines are among the most ingenious of inventions, and among the most maddening. Some global killers, like smallpox and polio, have been totally or nearly eradicated by products made with methods dating back to Louis Pasteur. Others, like malaria and H.I.V., utterly frustrate scientists to this day, despite astonishing new weapons like gene-editing. (McNeil, 11/19)

The New York Times: When Will We Solve Mental Illness?
Nothing humbles history’s great thinkers more quickly than reading their declarations on the causes of madness. Over the centuries, mental illness has been attributed to everything from a “badness of spirit” (Aristotle) and a “humoral imbalance” (Galen) to autoerotic fixation (Freud) and the weakness of the hierarchical state of the ego (Jung). The arrival of biological psychiatry, in the past few decades, was expected to clarify matters, by detailing how abnormalities in the brain gave rise to all variety of mental distress. But that goal hasn’t been achieved — nor is it likely to be, in this lifetime. (Carey, 11/19)

The New York Times: Will We Ever Cure Alzheimer’s?
It’s a rare person in America who doesn’t know of someone with Alzheimer’s disease. The most common type of dementia, it afflicts about 44 million people worldwide, including 5.5 million in the United States. Experts predict those numbers could triple by 2050 as the older population increases. So why is there still no effective treatment for it, and no proven way to prevent or delay its effects? (Belluck, 11/19)

The New York Times: How Can We Unleash The Immune System?
Cancer has an insidious talent for evading the natural defenses that should destroy it. What if we could find ways to help the immune system fight back? It has begun to happen. The growing field of immunotherapy is profoundly changing cancer treatment and has rescued many people with advanced malignancies that not long ago would have been a death sentence. (Grady, 11/19)

ProPublica: ACLU Of Illinois Demands Removal Of Children In DCFS Care
The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois on Friday took the state’s child welfare agency to federal court to attempt to force the removal of all children in its care from a troubled Chicago psychiatric hospital after additional claims of sexual abuse there. A sexual assault allegation involving a 19-year-old patient, cited in the ACLU’s emergency court filing, comes as Aurora Chicago Lakeshore Hospital faces intense scrutiny following a string of disturbing accusations of sexual and physical abuse. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services sends hundreds of children to the hospital each year, relying on Lakeshore to treat those with severe mental illness who are sometimes turned away by other hospitals. (Eldeib, 11/16)

The Associated Press: 3 Killed When Air Ambulance Crashes In North Dakota
An air ambulance on its way to pick up a patient crashed shortly after taking off in North Dakota, killing all three people on board, and military officials involved in the response said the plane may have broken up in midair. The twin-engine Bismarck Air Medical airplane took off about 10:30 p.m. Sunday and crashed shortly after in a field about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northwest of Bismarck. Air traffic control officials lost contact with the plane about 11 p.m., county spokeswoman Maxine Herr said. (11/19)

The Associated Press: Trial Over Kentucky Abortion Law In Judge’s Hands
The fate of a Kentucky abortion law is in the hands of a federal judge after a trial wrapped up Monday over a lawsuit pitting Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration and the state’s only abortion clinic. The suit challenges a law aimed at a common second-trimester procedure to end pregnancies. An ACLU attorney representing the clinic says the law is unconstitutional because it would essentially end abortion access for women 15 weeks into their pregnancy. (11/19)

The Associated Press: Lawsuit Continues Against Novelist Sparks, School He Started
The former headmaster of a private Christian school founded by novelist Nicholas Sparks can continue to sue the school, the author and the foundation Sparks created to support the school, a federal judge said. U.S. District Judge James Dever III ruled last month that a jury should decide whether the author of "Message in a Bottle" and "The Notebook" defamed Saul Hillel Benjamin and violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. Sparks was described as telling parents, a job recruiter and others that the former Epiphany School of Global Studies headmaster suffered from mental health problems, the judge said. Benjamin was in the position for less than five months and said he was forced out. (11/20)