First Edition: November 6, 2018

Kaiser Health News: Beyond The Buzz: What Do Americans Mean By ‘Medicare-For-All’?
KHN's news analysis on "Medicare-for-all" sparks a broader conversation ahead of the midterm elections. (11/6)

Kaiser Health News: Soda Industry Steals Page From Tobacco To Combat Taxes On Sugary Drinks
In the run-up to the midterm elections, the soda industry has poured millions of dollars into fighting taxes on sugary drinks, an increasingly popular approach to combating obesity, which affects 40 percent of American adults. Soda makers have campaigned against sugary drink taxes in dozens of cities in recent years, mostly successfully. ... Soda makers also have cultivated close relationships with doctors, scientists and professional societies, including the Obesity Society and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Both groups say there’s not enough evidence to know if sugar taxes are effective. (Szabo, 11/6)

California Healthline: Hello? It’s I, Robot, And Have I Got An Insurance Plan For You!
“Anna” will not stop calling. She really, really wants to sell you health insurance. What a lot of consumers really, really want is to smack Anna upside her robocalling head. As health insurance open-enrollment season gets underway in California and nationwide, automated phone calls offering Affordable Care Act or other health plans are spiking — and driving many consumers to the brink. California residents may have it worst, because its open-enrollment period is twice as long as in other parts of the country. (Feder Ostrov, 11/6)

Stat: In These Eight Midterms Races, Health And Medicine Are Front And Center
In Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah, voters will directly decide whether their states should expand their Medicaid programs. In Wisconsin, they could elect a candidate for governor who has pledged to sharply curtail drug prices. And across the country, Democratic congressional candidates are running on platforms highlighting their support for protecting insurance coverage for those with pre-existing conditions and lowering drug prices. Health care is on the ballot across the country, with issues ranging from medical marijuana to abortion rights to insurance coverage dominating the conversation. (Facher, 11/6)

The Guardian: Has Obamacare Become A Winning Issue For Democrats?
But after their catastrophe of 2016, when Hillary Clinton was criticised for lacking a clear message to compete with “Make America great again”, Democrats realised that a pure anti-Trump message would not be enough. Instead, many have maintained a laser-like focus on a single issue: protecting Americans’ healthcare. “In the midterms they were much more the pro-health insurance party than they were the anti-Trump party,” said Bill Galston, a veteran of six presidential campaigns and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington. “They worked very hard to avoid what was widely viewed as the mistake of 2016, which was to be seen as too anti-Trump.” (Smith, 11/6)

The Hill: Pelosi Urges Dems To 'Push' Health Care Message Day Before Midterms 
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urged Democrats to hone in on the issue of health care ahead of the midterm elections Tuesday. "I write to acknowledge the vital role Congressional Democrats played in protecting the Affordable Care Act and exposing the GOP’s monstrous health care agenda – and I urge all of us to continue to push this message in the next 24 hours," Pelosi wrote in a letter to House Democrats. (Hellmann, 11/5)

Stat: As Election Day Nears, Pharma Spends More Heavily On Democrats 
In the final weeks before Tuesday’s midterm elections, the pharmaceutical industry’s campaign donations have begun flowing heavily and unexpectedly in a new direction: toward Democrats. The party received a full 63 percent of the industry’s campaign contributions reported in the first half of October, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s a new trend to cap off a tumultuous election cycle: Up to this point, just over half of drug industry money has flowed toward Republicans, and the GOP has received substantially more campaign cash from the pharmaceutical and health products industry in the past decade. (Facher, 11/6)

The Washington Post: Marijuana Legalization Referendums: Where They're On The Ballot
Now, legalization advocates are hoping to build on these successes with a number of statewide ballot measures up for consideration Tuesday, including full recreational legalization in two states and medical marijuana in two more. Here’s a rundown of what the measures say and where the polling on them stands. (Ingraham, 11/5)

The Associated Press: Michigan, North Dakota Weigh Bringing Legal Pot To Midwest 
Voters in Michigan and North Dakota will decide Tuesday whether to legalize recreational marijuana, which would make them the first states in the Midwest to do so and would put conservative neighboring states on notice. More than half the states have already legalized medical marijuana, and Utah and Missouri could join their ranks Tuesday. (Karoub, 11/6)

Wired: How Antivax PACs Helped Shape Midterm Ballots
In other hotbeds of anti-vaccine sentiment, centrist conservatives who’ve championed similar bills have also been conspicuously missing from this year’s midterm ballots. Replacing them are candidates backed by well-financed organizations made up of members who either entertain the fraudulent science linking vaccines to autism, who believe their kids have had adverse vaccine reactions, or think the government shouldn’t dictate what goes in their children’s bodies. (Molteni, 11/5)

The New York Times: Sales Of ‘Ruinous’ Health Insurance Plans
Federal authorities have shut down a network of Florida companies that they say used aggressive, deceptive tactics to sell skimpy health insurance products that skirt requirements of the Affordable Care Act and left tens of thousands of people around the country with unpaid medical bills. “There is good cause to believe” that the Florida companies have sold shoddy coverage by falsely claiming that such policies were comprehensive health insurance or qualified health plans under the Affordable Care Act, Judge Darrin P. Gayles of the Federal District Court in Miami said in a temporary restraining order issued last week at the request of the Federal Trade Commission. (Pear, 11/5)

The Associated Press: Planned Parenthood Says It's Complying With Restriction
Planned Parenthood said Monday it’s now complying with an Arkansas law that was put on hold requiring doctors providing abortion pills to contract with a physician with admitting privileges at a hospital who agrees to handle any complications. Attorneys for Planned Parenthood Great Plains and the state of Arkansas asked a federal appeals court to lift a judge’s ruling that had prevented the state from enforcing the abortion pill restriction. A federal judge in July had issued a preliminary injunction but ordered Planned Parenthood to continue trying to find a contracting physician. (DeMillo, 11/5)

The New York Times: Cancer Society Executive Resigns Amid Upset Over Corporate Partnerships
A top official of the American Cancer Society has resigned in part because of concern over some of the organization’s fund-raising partnerships. The official, Dr. Otis W. Brawley, an executive vice president and chief medical officer, resigned his post late last week after 11 years at the society. His departure was largely attributed to his dismay over some commercial partnerships, including with Herbalife International, the controversial supplements company, people close to him said. (Kaplan, 11/5)

Stat: Can Novartis Charge $4 Million For A One-Time Drug? 
Novartis believes its new gene therapy is worth more than $4 million for a one-time dose, and the company has some data to back that up. But, with a global spotlight on the escalating cost of medicine, is it politically viable to set a new record for the world’s most expensive drug? The treatment, called AVXS-101, has demonstrated dramatic effects in spinal muscular atrophy, a rare genetic disorder whose most severe form is fatal for almost all patients before age 2. In a 15-patient trial, infants with SMA who got AVXS-101 had a 100 percent survival rate after 24 months, data that convinced Novartis to pay $8.7 billion for the gene therapy’s inventor. (Garde, 11/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Insys Looks To Sell Opioid-Related Assets, Including Subsys
Insys Therapeutics Inc. is looking to sell its opioid-related assets, including Subsys, the fentanyl painkiller that fueled its success and later landed it in legal trouble for aggressive sales practices. Subsys, a mouth-spray version of fentanyl, has been commercially available in the U.S. since 2012 to treat cancer-related pain. Its sales helped make Insys the best-performing initial public offering in 2013. Those fortunes turned when former CEO and co-founder John Kapoor and other executives and managers were arrested and indicted last year as part of a federal probe into alleged bribes for doctors to prescribe large amounts of the drug. They have pleaded not guilty. (Armental, 11/6)

The Associated Press: Bono To Congress: Thanks For Ignoring Trump On AIDS Funding
Bono has a message for the U.S. Congress: Thanks for ignoring President Donald Trump. Trump has sought to slash hundreds of millions of dollars from U.S. funding for AIDS programs at home and abroad, but the U2 frontman says members of Congress “have so far turned down this president’s request to cut AIDS funding — right and left in lockstep together on this.” His message to them? “Thank you for your leadership.” (Lawless, 11/5)

The New York Times: Need A Flu Shot? Get It Now
If you’ve waited until now to get your flu shot, your procrastination may actually pay off, though you’d be unwise to delay getting the vaccine any longer. Although there are some cases of flu in October and November in the United States, flu season here doesn’t usually get going full speed until December, peaking in most years in February and usually ending by April. (Brody, 11/5)

The New York Times: Spanking Is Ineffective And Harmful To Children, Pediatricians’ Group Says
Parents should not spank their children, the American Academy of Pediatrics said on Monday in its most strongly worded policy statement warning against the harmful effects of corporal punishment in the home. The group, which represents about 67,000 doctors, also recommended that pediatricians advise parents against the use of spanking, which it defined as “noninjurious, openhanded hitting with the intention of modifying child behavior,” and said to avoid using nonphysical punishment that is humiliating, scary or threatening. (Caron, 11/5)

The Associated Press: Don't Spank: Pediatricians Warn Parents Of Long-Term Harms
The academy says research since its 1998 discipline policy led to the update. It says spanking is falling out of favor among parents, especially those with young children. While some parents still believe it can lead to short-term improvements in behavior, studies show spanking is no more effective than non-physical punishment, including timeouts, setting firm limits and establishing unwanted consequences. (Tanner, 11/5)

The Wall Street Journal: Another Burst Of Polio-Like Cases In Children Alarms Doctors
The condition is called acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM. Though rare, it has jumped onto the national radar. As doctors struggle to explain its third nationwide peak since 2014, families like the Bottomleys are trying to provide hope to others hit with the sudden, polio-like disease and to push for more awareness in the medical community. AFM causes inflammation of the nervous system, particularly the gray matter of the spinal cord, which results in weakening muscles in usually one or more arms and legs. It can also affect the face and lead to difficulty swallowing or even breathing. Almost all AFM patients are hospitalized for several days or even months. (Reddy, 11/6)

The New York Times: For A Child’s Cough, The Best Medicine Is No Medicine
Parents are often disappointed or even a little bit upset when I tell them there’s no medicine to help their coughing, sneezing, drippy-nosed children feel better. There’s nothing that works, I say, and medicines can have bad side effects. We don’t recommend any of the cough and cold medications for children under 6. But after all, parents are intimately aware of just how miserable a cough and a runny nose and congestion can make a small child feel, from cranky days to disruptive nights. (Klass, 11/5)

NPR: These Flatworms Can Regrow A Body From A Fragment. How Do They Do It And Could We?
[Nelson] Hall and researchers around the world are hard at work trying to understand how most of a group of flatworms called planarians can use powerful stem cells to regenerate their entire bodies, an ability humans can only dream of. When we suffer a severe injury, the best we can hope for is that our wounds will heal. But our limbs don't grow right back if they are cut off, the way that planarians regenerate. (Quiros, 11/6)

NPR: Neuroscientists Debate A Simple Question: How Does The Brain Store A Phone Number?
You hear a new colleague's name. You get directions to the airport. You glance at a phone number you're about to call. These are the times you need working memory, the brain's system for temporarily holding important information. "Working memory is the sketchpad of your mind; it's the contents of your conscious thoughts," says Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. (Hamilton, 11/4)

The New York Times: How To Eat Safely And Travel With An Autoimmune Disease
Most medical professionals categorize travel as a stressful event, even more so for those suffering from autoimmune diseases like inflammatory bowel, celiac, Hashimoto’s or psoriasis. A change of routine, jet lag, and unfamiliar germs or foreign food can exacerbate one’s condition. Plus, since a growing number of people adhere to strict anti-inflammatory diets to manage those illnesses, dining on the road can pose a real challenge. Here, doctors and specialists share some advice on how to stay healthy and eat well while traveling. As always however, talk to your doctor for specific advice related to your condition, depending on where you plan to visit. (Walsh, 11/5)