First Edition: October 22, 2018

Kaiser Health News: News Analysis: Politicians Hop Aboard ‘Medicare-For-All’ Train, Destination Unknown
After decades in the political wilderness, “Medicare-for-all” and single-payer health care are suddenly popular. The words appear in political advertisements and are cheered at campaign rallies — even in deep-red states. They are promoted by a growing number of high-profile Democratic candidates, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York and Rep. Beto O’Rourke in Texas. Republicans are concerned enough that this month President Donald Trump wrote a scathing op-ed essay that portrayed Medicare for all as a threat to older people and to American freedom. (Rosenthal and Luthra, 10/22)

Kaiser Health News: Primary Care Doctors ‘Not Doing Enough’ To Curb STDs
Julie Lopez, 21, has been tested regularly for sexually transmitted diseases since she was a teenager. But when Lopez first asked her primary care doctor about screening, he reacted with surprise, she said. “He said people don’t usually ask. But I did,” said Lopez, a college student in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s really important.” (Gorman, 10/22)

California Healthline: Spending Against Dialysis Ballot Measure In California Nears Record
With the midterm election less than three weeks away, the dialysis industry has made Proposition 8 the most expensive on the ballot this year.By the time Nov. 6 rolls around, the industry may also break the record for spending by one side on a statewide ballot measure. As of Oct. 17, dialysis companies have contributed more than $104 million to the “Vote No on 8” committee, which is encouraging voters to reject the union-backed measure to limit dialysis company profits. Industry giants DaVita and Fresenius Medical Care, which operate nearly three-quarters of the chronic dialysis clinics in California, are responsible for more than 90 percent of that total. (Rowan, 10/18)

Kaiser Health News: Facebook Live: What About Those Sky-High Air Ambulance Costs?
It’s bad enough that a patient has a health emergency so dire it requires a helicopter ride to make it to the hospital in time. But then comes the bill, which can approach six figures and for which insurance coverage is often spotty. In this Facebook Live discussion, Diane Webber, a senior editor at KHN who has coordinated coverage of the issue, talks with senior editor Stephanie Stapleton about the regulatory and market-based factors that contribute to these sky-high costs. (10/19)

The New York Times: ‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out Of Existence Under Trump Administration
The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law. A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing gender largely as an individual’s choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth. The policy prompted fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed. (Green, Benner and Pear, 10/21)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump’s Health Department Takes Aim At Transgender-Rights Rules
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services had sought to push through changes to Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting gender discrimination in education, according to a story Sunday in the New York Times. While Title IX doesn’t directly govern sex discrimination beyond education, other civil rights laws generally base their definition of such discrimination on Title IX. But Education Department officials have been drafting their own changes to Title IX, focused on the process for adjudicating campus sexual assault. And those officials, particularly Secretary Betsy DeVos, have resisted including a broad redefinition of gender in those changes, preferring to keep the focus limited. (Armour and Hackman, 10/21)

The New York Times: Stacey Abrams Hopes Medicaid Expansion Can Be A Winning Issue In Rural Georgia
For the upscale urban audience at a campaign town hall here, it would have been enough for Stacey Abrams to pitch Medicaid expansion as a moral issue — the health-care-as-human-right argument that appeals to progressives everywhere. Instead, Ms. Abrams, the Democrat in the tossup race for Georgia governor, stuck to the pragmatic line of reasoning she has pushed in making Medicaid expansion a top priority of her campaign: It will help save the state’s struggling rural towns without busting its budget, since the Affordable Care Act requires the federal government to pay 90 percent of the cost. (Goodnough, 10/20)

The Wall Street Journal: Medicaid-Expansion Fights Pit Hospitals, Labor Against Conservative Groups, Tobacco Companies
Voters in four states will decide Nov. 6 whether to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, with the initiatives spurring some $20 million in political spending and testing the public’s appetite for expansions in states where the ACA remains unpopular. Top spenders in the campaigns are groups linked to the tobacco industry and the Koch brothers, which are aligned against the initiatives, and hospitals and union-back advocacy groups, which are in favor of them. (Armour, 10/20)

The Associated Press: Medicaid Expansion Becomes Key Issue In GOP-Leaning States
For nearly a decade, opposition to former President Barack Obama's health care law has been a winning message for Republicans. But this year, residents in several conservative states are bypassing legislatures that have refused to expand Medicaid, one of the pillars of Obama's health overhaul. Voters in three Republican-dominated states — Idaho, Nebraska and Utah — will decide in November whether to expand the health insurance program to more lower-income Americans. (Schulte and Mulvihill, 10/21)

The Wall Street Journal: Democrats Have Shot At Reclaiming Several Midwest Governorships
Candidates vying for governors’ seats across the Midwest are facing tight races in a test of the loyalty of voters who propelled Donald Trump to victory in 2016. States where governorships could flip from red to blue in the November midterms include Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and Iowa. Recent polls have shown Democrats in each state pulling even or ahead. Nationwide, 33 states have Republican governors, while 16 have Democrats. Alaska’s governor is an Independent. Thirty-six of those seats are up for grabs this year. (Maher, 10/21)

The Associated Press: Hackers Breach HealthCare.Gov System, Get Data On 75,000
A government computer system that interacts with HealthCare.gov was hacked earlier this month, compromising the sensitive personal data of some 75,000 people, officials said Friday. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services made the announcement late in the afternoon ahead of a weekend, a time slot agencies often use to release unfavorable developments. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 10/19)

The Washington Post: Consumer Data Compromised In Affordable Care Act Enrollment Portal
The breach, involving a system used by agents and brokers as part of the insurance program, exposed credit and other personal information. It throws into turmoil one aspect of the ACA’s insurance-signup process less than two weeks before the start of the annual enrollment period for coverage created by the 2010 health-care law. According to a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the online pathway for agents and brokers into the federal insurance exchange was shut down earlier this week, though officials hope to reopen it a few days before the Nov. 1 start of the six-week enrollment period. (Goldstein, 10/19)

The Washington Post: Choose A Medicare Plan Can Be Complicated. Here's What To Know
For those approaching Medicare or already covered by it, now is a critical time of year to review health benefits. Philip Moeller — author of a popular Medicare book, “Get What’s Yours for Medicare: Maximize Your Coverage, Minimize Your Costs,” and a blogger on Medicare for the “PBS NewsHour” website — knows well about the program’s fine print that has ensnared many in what he dubs the “no one told me” syndrome. (Squires, 10/20)

The Wall Street Journal: Agent Orange Concerns Joined By Worry Over Modern-Era ‘Burn Pits’
Members of Congress and veterans advocates are mounting a push to get the Department of Veterans Affairs to increase aid to former service members with health problems blamed on toxic exposures, a move the VA secretary has publicly fought since taking over the department. Secretary Robert Wilkie opposes legislative proposals to expand benefits to thousands of Vietnam War veterans who served at sea and claim exposure to Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant. The VA also opposes new benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan troops exposed to burn pits until the issue can be studied in depth. (Kesling and Armour, 10/21)

The New York Times: Immune-Based Treatment Helps Fight Aggressive Breast Cancer, Study Finds
Women with an aggressive type of breast cancer lived longer if they received immunotherapy plus chemotherapy, rather than chemo alone, a major study has found. The results are expected to change the standard of care for women like those in the clinical trial, who had advanced cases of “triple-negative” breast cancer. That form of the disease often resists standard therapies, and survival rates are poor. It is twice as common in African-American women as in white women, and more likely to occur in younger women. Researchers said the new study was a long-awaited breakthrough for immunotherapy in breast cancer. (Grady, 10/20)

The Associated Press: Immunotherapy Scores A First Win Against Some Breast Cancers
Women in the study who received Tecentriq plus chemo went two months longer on average without their cancer worsening compared with those on chemo alone — a modest benefit. The combo did not significantly improve survival in an early look before long-term follow-up is complete. Previous studies found that immunotherapies work best in patients with high levels of a protein that the drugs target, and the plan for the breast cancer study called for analyzing how women fared according to that factor if Tecentriq improved survival overall. (Marchione, 10/20)

The Washington Post: Strength Training Seen Helping Breast Cancer Survivors Regain Muscle Mass
Breast cancer research has resulted in treatment that greatly improves survival rates. As a result, 3.1 million breast cancer survivors are alive in the United States today. The five-year survival rate is about 90 percent. This is great news. But, survivors are still left to struggle with many adverse side effects from the disease and cancer treatments, which include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and drugs that are used to suppress hormones that may have fueled the breast cancer. (Panton and Artese, 10/21)

The New York Times: Hurricane Michael Victims’ Biggest Fear: ‘People Are Going To Start Forgetting’
After two weeks of working grueling hours on hurricane response and sleeping fitfully under a tatty Auburn University fleece in his office, Rodney E. Andreasen, the emergency management director for Jackson County, Fla., decided on Friday that it was time to nudge his neighbors back to normalcy. He started by scaling back on round-the-clock staffing. Then he turned to the county’s eight multiagency “points of distribution” — known as PODs — which have been handing out free drinking water, ice, canned goods, hot meals, diapers, garbage bags, and the most coveted item of all, toilet paper. (Thrush and Blinder, 10/21)

The Associated Press: Florida Panhandle Medical Care On Life Support After Michael
Already sick with strep throat and asthma, Aleeah Racette got sicker when she cleaned out a soggy, moldy home after Hurricane Michael, so she sought help at the hospital where she began life. She was stunned by what she saw there. The exterior wall of Bay Medical Sacred Heart in Panama City is missing from part of the building, and huge vent tubes attached to fans blow air into upper floors through holes where windows used to be. (Farrington and Reeves, 10/19)

The Associated Press: 'I Don't Feel Real': Mental Stress Mounting After Michael
Amy Cross has a hard time explaining the stress of living in a city that was splintered by Hurricane Michael. She's fearful after hearing gunshots at night, and she's confused because she no longer recognizes the place where she's spent her entire 45 years. "I just know I don't feel real, and home doesn't feel like home at all," Cross said. (Reeves, 10/21)

The Associated Press: Maryland Asks Supreme Court To Uphold Law On Drug Pricing
Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to uphold a first-in-the-nation law against pharmaceutical price gouging. The Maryland law, which was struck down by a federal appeals court panel this year, enabled the state's attorney general to sue makers of off-patent or generic drugs for price increases that state officials considered "unconscionable." That was defined as an excessive increase, unjustified by the cost of producing or distributing the drugs. Frosh noted that prices of generic drugs have skyrocketed in recent years. (Witte, 10/19)

The Baltimore Sun: Attorney General Frosh Appeals To U.S. Supreme Court To Uphold Maryland's Law Curbing Drug Price-Gouging 
The General Assembly passed the so-called “price-gouging” law in 2017 at the urging of Frosh and health care advocates, and over the objections of the pharmaceutical industry. In response to an industry challenge, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided in April that the first-of-its-kind legislation violates the U.S. Constitution by trying to regulate trade beyond Maryland’s borders. (Dresser, 10/19)

Stat: Maryland Asks Supreme Court To Uphold Generic Price Gouging Law 
Last spring, however, a federal appeals court ruled the state law violated interstate commerce by giving Maryland officials the right to govern business outside the state, effectively providing “unprecedented powers to regulate the national pharmaceutical market.” The clause bars states from passing legislation that regulates activity overseen by federal law. The challenge had been filed by the Association for Accessible Medicines, the trade group for the generic industry, which feared other states might pass similar laws. Over the past couple of years, bills were introduced in New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. And lawmakers in Vermont and Maine have also eyed such legislation. (Silverman, 10/19)

Stat: Former Heads Of FDA Push Plan To Make Agency Independent 
A bipartisan group of seven former FDA Commissioners are uniting to advocate for breaking the Food and Drug Administration out of the Department of Health and Human Services and making it an independent agency. The idea is to make the FDA less vulnerable to political pressure, so it can focus instead on protecting public health. While FDA’s mission has always been politicized, the issue is particularly salient now given President Trump’s propensity for pressuring the agency to prioritize politically popular policies. (Florko, 10/19)

Stat: Just How Promising Is Merck's New Cancer Target STING?
Merck has a done a lot right in cancer immunotherapy, probably more than any of its pharma rivals. But the clinical debut of a new immune-boosting drug from its early-stage cancer pipeline Saturday suggests Merck is not heeding a hard lesson learned from its biggest blunder. The new Merck drug, called MK-1454, shows no evidence that it can kill cancer cells when injected into patients on its own, as a monotherapy. But when MK-1454 was used in combination with Merck’s checkpoint inhibitor Keytruda, the tumors in a small number of patients got smaller. (Feuerstein, 10/20)

The Associated Press: AP Analysis: 'Obamacare' Shapes Opioid Grant Spending
An Associated Press analysis of the first wave of emergency money targeting the U.S. opioid crisis finds that states are taking very different approaches to spending it. To a large extent, the differences depend on whether states participated in one of the most divisive issues in recent American politics: the health overhaul known as "Obamacare." (Johnson and Forster, 10/22)

The Associated Press: Coming Clean: Public Embrace For Celeb Addicts Offers Hope
Beneath sparkling chandeliers hanging in the famed Rainbow Room, as a gala crowd dotted with rock stars sat around white-clothed dinner tables, Ringo Starr stood at a podium and described what it felt like to be 30 years sober. With wife Barbara Bach Starkey — herself a recovering alcoholic — at his side, the former Beatle described what it took for him to get help and called for more resources and acceptance for the treatment movement that saved their lives. (Italie, 10/20)

Los Angeles Times: Fentanyl Smuggled From China Is Killing Thousands Of Americans
The Zheng drug trafficking organization was hardly clandestine. The Shanghai-based network sold synthetic narcotics, including deadly fentanyl, on websites posted in 35 languages, from Arabic and English to Icelandic and Uzbek. The Chinese syndicate bragged that its laboratory could “synthesize nearly any” drug and that it churned out 16 tons of illicit chemicals a month. The group was so adept at smuggling, and so brazen in its marketing, that it offered a money-back guarantee to buyers if its goods were seized by U.S. or other customs agents. (Wilber, 10/19)

The New York Times: Miscarrying At Work: The Physical Toll Of Pregnancy Discrimination
If you are a Verizon customer on the East Coast, odds are good that your cellphone or tablet arrived by way of a beige, windowless warehouse near Tennessee’s border with Mississippi. ... Three other women in the warehouse also had miscarriages in 2014, when it was owned by a contractor called New Breed Logistics. Later that year, a larger company, XPO Logistics, bought New Breed and the warehouse. The problems continued. Another woman miscarried there this summer. Then, in August, Ceeadria Walker did, too. The women had all asked for light duty. Three said they brought in doctors’ notes recommending less taxing workloads and shorter shifts. They said supervisors disregarded the letters.(Silver-Greenberg and Kitroeff, 10/21)

The Washington Post: As U.S. Fertility Rates Collapse, Finger-Pointing And Blame Follow
As 2017 drew to a close, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) urged Americans to have more children. To keep the country great, he said, we’re “going to need more people.” “I did my part,” the father of three declared. Ryan’s remarks drew some eye rolls at the time, but as new data about the country’s collapsing fertility rates has emerged, concern has deepened over what’s causing the changes, whether it constitutes a crisis that will fundamentally change the demographic trajectory of the country — and what should be done about it. (Cha, 10/19)

NPR: Grassroots Battles Continue Over Missouri Planned Parenthood Site
When Angela Huntington arrived at work on a Wednesday morning in early October, she had to do something she dreaded: turn patients away. Huntington is the manager at the Columbia Health Center in Columbia, Mo., a Planned Parenthood site that recently had to halt its abortion services in the midst of a highly publicized legal fight in the state. (Gordon, 10/19)

The New York Times: A National Goal: Prevent A Million Heart Attacks And Strokes By 2022
Attention all Americans: Too many are at risk of succumbing before your time to the nation’s leading killer, cardiovascular disease. Translation: heart attacks and strokes. After a decades-long drop, the cardiovascular death rate has all but stalled and, frighteningly, has even reversed in a young group of people — adults aged 35 to 64, among whom deaths from heart disease are now rising. (Brody, 10/22)

Los Angeles Times: To Keep Your Blood Pressure In Check, Don’t Forget To Brush And Floss
Struggling to bring your high blood pressure under control, even with the help of medications? Open your mouth and say “aha!” if you see tooth decay or gums that are sore, bleeding or receding. You may have found the culprit. Researchers reported Monday that in adults whose hypertension was being treated with medications, systolic blood pressure — which measures pressure in the vessels when the heart beats — got higher as the health of their teeth and gums declined. (Healy, 10/22)

The Associated Press: National Health Initiative Takes Aim At Sugar-Packed Foods
New York City has announced a national effort to reduce sugar in packaged foods by 20 percent. The city's health department said Friday the endeavor is being undertaken by the National Salt and Sugar Reduction Initiative, a partnership of about 100 health departments and related groups. (10/19)

The Wall Street Journal: NYC Health Department To Lead National Charge To Cut Sugar Intake
The sugar initiative has set a target to cut the sugar in packaged foods—including desserts, ice cream, candies, yogurt, cereals and condiments—by 20%. The target for soda, sports and fruit drinks and sweetened milk is 40%. After a public comment period, the program will commence in 2019. The average American eats 17 teaspoons of sugar daily, about five more than they should when based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Some 68% of packaged foods have added sugars which “get snuck into our diet in ways that we would never really anticipate,” said Oxiris Barbot, the acting commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. (West, 10/19)

The New York Times: Fast Food: It’s What’s For Dinner. And Lunch. And Breakfast.
More than a third of adults in the United States patronize fast-food restaurants and pizza parlors on any given day. And the higher their income, the more likely they are to do so. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released data on fast food consumption gathered from 2013 to 2016 in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, or Nhanes, a program that continuously monitors the health and nutritional status of Americans. (Bakalar, 10/22)

NPR: To Boost Mental Health, Try Team Sports Or Group Exercise
Ryan "China" McCarney has played sports his entire life, but sometimes he has to force himself to show up on the field to play pick-up soccer with his friends. "I'm dreading and I'm anticipating the worst. But I do it anyway. And then, it's a euphoric sensation when you're done with it because you end up having a great time," says McCarney. McCarney was just 22 when he had his first panic attack. As a college and professional baseball player, he says getting help was stigmatized. (Woodruff, 10/22)

NPR: Fixing Your Hearing And Vision Loss Can Keep Your Memory Sharper
By age 40, about one in 10 adults will experience some hearing loss. It happens so slowly and gradually, says audiologist Dina Rollins, "you don't realize what you're missing." And even as it worsens, many people are in denial. By the time someone is convinced they have a hearing problem, age-related memory loss may have already set in. But, here's the good news: Restoring hearing with hearing aids can help slow down cognitive decline. (Aubrey, 10/22)

Reuters: USC Agrees To $215 Million Settlement In California Gynecologist Case
The University of Southern California has reached a $215 million proposed settlement with former patients of a gynecologist at the school who was accused of sexual abuse, the president of the university said in a letter on Friday seen by Reuters. The settlement centers on the conduct of George Tyndall, who practiced at USC until he was suspended in 2016 after a complaint from a health worker accusing him of making sexually inappropriate comments to patients. (10/19)

The Wall Street Journal: University Of Southern California To Pay $215 Million In Gynecologist Sex-Abuse Case
The money will be available to thousands of women who were treated by Mr. Tyndall during his nearly 30-year tenure at the private Los Angeles university, including both those who do and don’t claim he abused them. The settlement, reached in a class action in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles and subject to court approval, will offer larger payouts to women who allege they suffered the worst abuse. (Randazzo and Korn, 10/19)

The Associated Press: Heart Transplant Program Changes Chief After Patient Deaths
The hospital says Morgan will remain on its medical staff, but it's not saying if he will continue performing transplants. "The addition of two expert surgeons and an experienced executive who specializes in transplant program administration demonstrates Baylor St. Luke's continued and growing commitment to heart and lung transplants," said St. Luke's President Gay Nord in a statement Friday. (10/19)

Stateline: Tough New DUI Law Brings Controversy
On Dec. 30, Utah will become the first state to make it illegal to drive with a blood alcohol level of .05 or higher, rather than the .08 standard that every other state and the District of Columbia use. That means Utah will have the strictest DUI law in the nation. (Bergal, 10/19)

The Wall Street Journal: Colleges Try To Stop Spread Of Hand, Foot And Mouth Disease
College students and university doctors are fighting to keep an outbreak of hand, foot and mouth disease at bay as it spreads across campuses along the East Coast. At Dartmouth College, students are wearing yellow surgical masks to avoid passing the bug to classmates. At Johns Hopkins, where more than 100 cases have been reported, they have planted lawn signs and posted fliers to warn students about an outbreak, and at Lehigh University and Princeton, an email blast went out warning students to wash their hands and avoid sharing eating utensils and water bottles. (Belkin, 10/19)

The Washington Post: Leaping From Specialists To ERs Fails To Solve This Young Boy’s Odd Ailments
Ever since he was a toddler, Michael had been beset by an array of medical problems that doctors couldn’t explain. Severe leg pain came first. That was followed a few years later by recurrent, sometimes severe, stomachaches. Later, the little boy developed a wracking cough, followed by trouble breathing. In fifth grade, after he fell and smacked his tailbone, he was in so much pain he wound up in a wheelchair. (Boodman, 10/20)

The Washington Post: Perry Funeral Home, Detroit: Dozens More Infant Corpses Found After Cantrell Funeral Home Raid
Detroit Police Chief James Craig announced a “wide probe” into Michigan funeral homes Friday, after hidden caches of baby corpses were allegedly discovered at two unrelated businesses inside a week. “This is deeply disturbing,” Craig said at a news conference, hours after police raided Perry Funeral Home and allegedly seized 63 fetus or infant bodies, more than half of which were packed together in unrefrigerated boxes. “We want to understand the reasons: Is it financial gain? If so, how? Who knew or who else is involved in this?” (Selk, 10/21)