First Edition: November 5, 2019

Kaiser Health News: FDA Keeps Brand-Name Drugs On A Fast Path To Market ― Despite Manufacturing Concerns
After unanimously voting to recommend a miraculous hepatitis C drug for approval in 2013, a panel of experts advising the Food and Drug Administration gushed about what they’d accomplished. “I voted ‘yes’ because, quite simply, this is a game changer,” National Institutes of Health hepatologist Dr. Marc Ghany said of Sovaldi, Gilead Science’s new pill designed to cure most cases of hepatitis C within 12 weeks. (Lupkin, 11/5)

Kaiser Health News: As UVA Scales Back Lawsuits, Pain For Past Patients Persists
Kitt Klein and Mike Miller lost thousands of dollars in hard-won savings more than a decade ago after UVA Health put a lien on their home for a hospital bill they couldn’t pay. They can’t believe they’re at risk of losing a second home today. “Can they do this twice?” said Klein, who lives with her husband, a house painter, in her late mother’s house in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. (Hancock, 11/4)

Kaiser Health News: Warren’s Plan On ‘Medicare For All’ Could Raise Concerns Among Health Providers
Julie Rovner, Kaiser Health News’ chief Washington correspondent, joined host Scott Simon on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday to talk about the plan released by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) for funding the “Medicare For All” health plan she has endorsed. She is calling for the elimination of private insurance and replacing it with a government-sponsored health plan for all residents. Rovner pointed out that the plan, which calls for paying doctors and hospitals at roughly the current Medicare reimbursement rates rather what higher private insurance pays, is bound to raise concerns among those health care providers. (11/4)

Kaiser Health News: Record Number Of Legionnaires’ Cases In 2018 Risk Lives, Cause Cleanup Headaches
Cases of Legionnaires’ disease reached a record high in 2018 — a more than eight-fold increase since the numbers began to climb nearly two decades ago. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Monday 9,933 cases in 2018 of Legionellosis, which includes both Legionnaires’ disease and Pontiac fever. Legionnaires’ disease made up the vast majority of cases, according to the CDC. (Weber, 11/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Scrutiny Grows Over Elizabeth Warren’s Medicare-For-All Plan
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s call for a Medicare-for-All health plan drew heightened scrutiny from her Democratic presidential rivals after she released a highly anticipated plan to pay for it. Two leading Democratic candidates—former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg —had criticized Ms. Warren’s plan to expand government-run insurance to all Americans. They also found fault with her proposal to pay for it with $20.5 trillion in new funding, largely generated from employers and the wealthy. (Jamerson, 11/4)

The Washington Post Fact Checker: Warren’s Plan To Pay For Medicare-For-All: Does It Add Up?
When The Fact Checker evaluates campaign policy proposals, we’re often reminded of the story of the man who claimed he sold a dog for $50,000. How did he do that? “I traded him for two $25,000 cats,” he replied. Campaign proposals are not easy to fact-check unless you figure out that the numbers don’t add up. But if they do add up, then you are left with experts picking holes in the assumptions that are behind those numbers, which the campaign will vigorously dispute. (Kessler, 11/5)

Politico: 5 Ways Opponents Are Going After Warren’s 'Medicare For All' Plan
Warren’s Democratic primary rivals immediately pounced on her calculation of the cost of Medicare for All, noting that it clocks in much lower than the figure Sen. Bernie Sanders has been citing on the campaign trail — a difference Warren attributes to how her plan would aggressively bargain down the price of prescription drugs, eliminate a huge amount of waste in the system, and slash payments to doctors and hospitals, among other differences. Pete Buttigieg called her $20.5 trillion estimate “controversial,” while Joe Biden’s campaign accused her of “lowballing the cost of her plan by well over $10 trillion while overcounting the revenue that would be gained from the sources she identifies.” (Ollstein, 11/4)

The Associated Press: Georgia Governor Unveils Medicaid Plan With Work Requirement
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp released a plan Monday to expand Medicaid to the state's poorest able-bodied adults, on the condition that they work, volunteer, receive job training or attend school. Under Kemp's proposal, which is more limited than other states, uninsured adults in Georgia who make no more than the federal poverty level would qualify for Medicaid assistance if they spent at least 80 hours a month working, volunteering, training or studying. They would also have to pay monthly premiums. (Thanawala and Nadler, 11/4)

The Hill: GOP Georgia Governor Proposes Limited Medicaid Expansion 
Kemp’s proposal, called Georgia Pathways, would cover adults who meet the work requirements and who are at or under 100 percent of the federal poverty level — about $12,490 a year for an individual. “Unlike Medicaid expansion, which will literally cost billions of dollars, Georgia Pathways will not bankrupt our state or raise taxes on our families or our businesses,” Kemp said at an event Monday morning. (Hellmann, 11/4)

The Associated Press: Oklahoma Supreme Court Blocks Abortion Law
The Oklahoma Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a ban on a second-trimester abortion procedure. The high court acted Monday after an Oklahoma abortion clinic appealed a lower court judge's decision to uphold a ban on a second-trimester abortion procedure. (11/4)

The Associated Press: Abortion Ban Proposal Faces A Murky Future In South Carolina
South Carolina could get closer to being the latest state to pass a ban on almost all abortions Tuesday as a proposal faces another vote, but the bill’s future is murky because it does not include exceptions for victims of rape and incest. The state Senate Medical Affairs Committee is expected to pass the measure along to the full Senate floor for a possible 2020 election year fight. (Collins, 11/5)

The Associated Press: 1 In 2 Seriously Ill Medicare Enrollees Struggles With Bills
More than half of seriously ill Medicare enrollees face financial hardships with medical bills, with prescription drug costs the leading problem, according to a study published Monday. The study in the journal Health Affairs comes as legislation to curb drug costs for seniors languishes in Congress and the growing financial exposure of patients with insurance is getting more attention in the nation's health care debates. (11/4)

The New York Times: Judge Dismisses Health Care Challenge By Prisoner At Guantanamo Bay
A judge has ruled against an Iraqi man held at Guantánamo Bay who wanted a federal court to intervene to improve his medical care and was seeking the appointment of an independent civilian doctor to oversee his treatment. Lawyers for the prisoner, known as Abd al Hadi al Iraqi, 58, had filed the medical negligence case in 2017 after he underwent five spinal surgeries in nine months. Mr. Hadi is scheduled to go on trial in September on war crimes charges stemming from his alleged role as a commander of Taliban and Qaeda forces in Afghanistan. (Rosenberg, 11/4)

The Wall Street Journal: Vaping-Related Illnesses Remain A Mystery To New York Health Officials
More than 150 people in New York have been sickened by vaping-related illnesses, and state health regulators still don’t understand what specifically is causing the ailments, according to a top state health official who testified before New York state senators on Monday. Brad Hutton, the deputy commissioner of the New York State Department of Health, told members of the Senate’s committees on consumer protection, education and health during a hearing that e-cigarette use among New York’s high-school students was 27% in 2018, the same rate as the cigarette-smoking prevalence for that age group back in 2000. (West, 11/4)

The Associated Press: California Cannabis Group Wants Tighter Vaping-Safety Rules
An alliance of major legal marijuana businesses in California urged the state Monday to adopt tougher safety rules for ingredients and devices used in vaping and get tougher with illegal shops, amid an outbreak of a mysterious illness apparently linked to vaping. The recommendations from the industry group — Legal Cannabis for Consumer Safety — come as health officials continue to investigate a wide range of products and chemicals that could be causing the illness that have sickened over 1,600 people nationwide. (Blood, 11/4)

The Washington Post: A Severe Shortage Hits A Drug Used For Cancer, Immune Disorders, Epilepsy, Causing Canceled Treatments And Rationing
A severe shortage of immune globulin — a popular medicine used to treat epilepsy, cancer and immune disorders — is forcing doctors nationwide to cancel patients’ lifesaving infusions, even as hospitals and treatment centers are resorting to rationing and dose-cutting. Immune globulin helps protect patients from infections, and it is used to treat many medical conditions including seizures, leukemia, auto­immune diseases, organ transplants, acute muscle illnesses and nerve disorders. (Rosenkrantz, 11/4)

The Wall Street Journal: A New Approach To Gene Therapy—Now In Dogs, Maybe Later In Humans
A Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Shadow was at the front lines of a new approach to gene therapy. Earlier this month, 7-year-old Shadow was the first dog to be screened at Tufts University for a pilot study attempting to use gene therapy to treat a type of heart disease that often afflicts aging cavaliers. It’s part of a novel approach to gene therapy that has successfully treated age-related ailments in mice. Now it is being studied in dogs, with eventual hopes to test it in humans. (Reddy, 11/4)

NPR: Can Makena Prevent Premature Birth? FDA Panel Votes No, But Some Doctors Disagree
An independent panel of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration recommended last week that a medication to prevent preterm birth be taken off the market because, the advisers decided, the preponderance of evidence suggests it doesn't work. But some other leading OB-GYNs say they hope the FDA won't take the panel's advice this time. The medication is a synthetic form of the hormone progesterone, brand-named Makena. (Neighmond, 11/4)

The New York Times: Why Didn’t She Get Alzheimer’s? The Answer Could Hold A Key To Fighting The Disease
The woman’s genetic profile showed she would develop Alzheimer’s by the time she turned 50. She, like thousands of her relatives, going back generations, was born with a gene mutation that causes people to begin having memory and thinking problems in their 40s and deteriorate rapidly toward death around age 60. But remarkably, she experienced no cognitive decline at all until her 70s, nearly three decades later than expected. (Belluck, 11/4)

Stat: She Was Destined To Get Early Alzheimer's, But Didn't 
“This is an excellent and thought-provoking study,” said Dr. Michael Greicius of Stanford University School of Medicine, an expert in Alzheimer’s genetics who was not involved in the research. He emphasized, however, that because the patient’s combination of genes is “exceedingly uncommon and possibly unique,” the study — published in Nature Medicine — is “hypothesis-generating” but far from definitive. (Begley, 11/4)

Stat: Alzheimer's Drug Approved In China Delivers A Surprise But Also Questions
Chinese regulators have granted conditional approval to an Alzheimer’s drug that is derived from seaweed, potentially shaking up the field after years of clinical failures involving experimental therapies from major drug companies. The announcement over the weekend has been met with caution as well as an eagerness from clinicians and others to see full data from the drug maker, Shanghai Green Valley Pharmaceuticals. (Joseph, 11/4)

The New York Times: Farm Country Feeds America. But Just Try Buying Groceries There. 
John Paul Coonrod had a banana problem. The only grocery store in his 1,500-person hometown in central Illinois had shut its doors, and Mr. Coonrod, a local lawyer, was racing to get a community-run market off the ground. He had found space in an old shoe store, raised $85,000 from neighbors and even secured a liquor license to sell craft beer. But then his main produce supplier fell through. (Healy, 11/5)

The Washington Post: The NRA Foundation Is Raising Money By Auctioning Off Guns In Schools — To The Dismay Of Some Parents
Parents and students trickled into the Muhlenberg County High School gym on a hot Saturday night as the sounds of cheers and a referee’s whistle carried from an athletic field nearby. Inside the “Home of the Mustangs,” Friends of NRA was raffling off guns: semiautomatic rifles and handguns, guns with high-capacity magazines and pump-action shotguns. In the past two years, the NRA Foundation’s fundraising program had displayed actual guns along the wooden bleachers in the gym. This time organizers showed only pictures, bowing to objections from parents who pointed to a shooting at another western Kentucky high school last year that left two students dead and more than a dozen wounded. (Reinhard and Satija, 11/4)

The Washington Post: Worrying Or Feeling Anxious A Lot Can Be A Sign Of Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
“Worry has consumed my life. I have worried about everything and everybody, and am always preparing for the possibility of things going wrong,” said Marla White, a 55-year-old publicist from Los Angeles. She is not alone. A 2018 Gallup poll found that 45 percent of Americans said they felt worried a lot, more than in any year since 2006. (Kecmanovic, 11/4)

The Washington Post: For Some Cancer Patients, Monitoring Symptoms Can Extend Their Lives
There’s an inexpensive, widely accessible and markedly effective approach to cancer care that’s as close as the tips of our fingers. It’s not a new drug, type of radiation or surgical breakthrough with a slew of unwelcome side effects. It’s also not a cure, but it is surprising for its simplicity. It’s a matter of regularly answering a few questions about symptoms. (Ornes, 11/4)

The New York Times: Is The ‘War On Drugs’ Over? Arrest Statistics Say No
Despite bipartisan calls to treat drug addiction as a public health issue rather than as a crime — and despite the legalization of marijuana in more states — arrests for drugs increased again last year. According to estimated crime statistics released by the F.B.I. in September, there were 1,654,282 arrests for drugs in 2018, a number that has increased every year since 2015, after declining over the previous decade. Meanwhile, arrests for violent crime and property crime have continued to trend downward. (Stellin, 11/5)

The New York Times: He Wanted Cold Medicine, But CVS Rejected His Puerto Rican ID
CVS has apologized for denying a 20-year-old Puerto Rican student cold medicine at a store in Indiana because employees did not believe his driver’s license was a valid form of identification. José A. Guzmán-Payano, a junior at Purdue University, went to a store near his dorm in West Lafayette, Ind., on Oct. 25 to buy Mucinex for a cold, his mother wrote on Facebook. When an employee at the checkout saw his Puerto Rican driver’s license, she asked him for a visa, and “started confronting him about his immigration status,” Arlene Payano Burgos wrote in a post that had been shared more than 10,000 times. (Zraick, 11/4)

The Associated Press: Student: CVS Workers Rejected Puerto Rico ID, Asked For Visa
Guzmán Payano said he tried explaining that Puerto Rico is part of the U.S., but the clerk demanded to see a visa to verify his immigration status before he could purchase his cold medicine. “And then when she asked me for a visa, I was in shock at that time,” he said. “It wasn’t worth talking anymore." (11/4)

Los Angeles Times: California's Strict Vaccination Law Will Have Only 'Modest' Impact, Study Says
Since California tightened its childhood vaccination laws in 2016, public health officials across the country have been closely watching for signs of success in bolstering vaccination rates. A study published Monday offers an answer. In a brief in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers found that the strict law will have only a “modest” impact in increasing vaccination rates by 2027. (Karlamangla, 11/4)

Stat: Study: Rise In Religious Vaccine Exemptions Points To Some False Claims
The percentage of children starting kindergarten whose parents claim that vaccination conflicts with their religious beliefs has ticked up in recent years, even while the portion of Americans who profess to be part of an organized religion has fallen. A new study suggests some of the increase may be related to a tightening of school-entry vaccination policies. State law around vaccine exemptions varies, with some states permitting parents to forgo immunization of their children not only on religious grounds but also because of so-called personal beliefs. (Branswell, 11/4)

The Associated Press: Medical Marijuana In Louisiana: Questions About Cost Arise
Three months after medical marijuana became available in Louisiana, doctors and clinics say some patients are finding the cost for therapeutic cannabis too high for treatment, pricing them out of a medication they waited years to obtain. Nine pharmacies dispense medicinal-grade pot and set their individual prices. (11/4)