First Edition: October 4, 2018

Kaiser Health News: Elder Orphans Or Solo Agers, Who Lack Children Or A Spouse To Care For Them, Need A Plan B On Aging
It was a memorable place to have an “aha” moment about aging. Peter Sperry had taken his 82-year-old father, who’d had a stroke and used a wheelchair, to Disney World. Just after they’d made their way through the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, nature called. Sperry took his father to the bathroom where, with difficulty, he changed the older man’s diaper. (Graham, 10/4)

Kaiser Health News: High-Deductible Health Plans Fall From Grace In Employer-Based Coverage 
Few if any employers will return to the much more generous coverage of a decade or more ago, benefits experts said. But they’re reassessing how much pain workers can take and whether high-deductible plans control costs as advertised. “It got to the point where employers were worried about the affordability of health care for their employees, especially their lower-paid people,” said Beth Umland, director of research for health and benefits at Mercer, a benefits consultancy that also conducted a survey. (Hancock, 10/3)

The Washington Post: GOP Candidates Pay The Price For Attempts To Kill Obamacare And Its Guarantee Of Coverage For Preexisting Conditions
In February, Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley joined a Republican lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and with it protections for Americans suffering from preexisting medical conditions that previously could be excluded from insurance coverage. Now, running to unseat Democrat Claire McCaskill in one of the nation’s most competitive U.S. Senate races, Hawley is airing a sympathetic ad using the affliction of his 5-year-old son, diagnosed this year with a rare bone disease. (Jan, 10/3)

The Hill: GOP Lawmaker's Ad Pledges Support For Pre-Existing Condition Protections 
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) on Wednesday released a reelection ad saying he wants to ensure protections for people with pre-existing conditions, making him the latest vulnerable Republican to highlight support for the ObamaCare provision. ... His campaign did not say how he is taking on the Republican party. A spokesman pointed to an op-ed from last year where Rohrabacher wrote that Medicare should bear all the costs of covering people with pre-existing conditions. (Weixel, 10/3)

The Wall Street Journal: Some Democrats Want Medicare For All. Others Aren’t So Sure
Shortly after her primary victory in New York, Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared her goal of giving Medicare to all Americans. Some fellow Democrats like Ken Harbaugh aren’t convinced. The Navy veteran, who is challenging Rep. Bob Gibbs (R., Ohio), says the party should focus on bolstering the Affordable Care Act, not starting from scratch with Medicare for All. “We need a much quicker fix, which is shoring up the ACA,” he said. (Armour, 10/4)

The Washington Post Fact Checker: GOP Ads Falsely Depict Democrats As Supporters Of Sanders’s Health Plan
With a sick child on the couch, holding a teddy bear, a mother calls to make a doctor’s appointment. She pulls out her health-insurance card and then with her voice breaking, says: “What do you mean you don’t take that anymore? But it’s through my work.” The ad, via the National Republican Campaign Committee, concludes by claiming that the Democratic candidate, Xochitl Torres Small, “takes from us to give it all to Washington.” (Kessler, 10/4)

Politico: House Democrats Plan Investigations Blitz Over Trump Health Policies
Democrats are quietly preparing to launch a slew of investigations into the Trump administration's health care moves if they retake the House in November, aiming to freeze the White House's efforts to unravel Obamacare and probe the administration's care of immigrant kids. The wide-ranging inquiries, coordinated across multiple committees, would focus on the administration’s most controversial actions on health care, which include chipping away at the Affordable Care Act, urging the courts to gut the health law's protections for pre-existing conditions, and separating migrant families at the border, lawmakers and aides told POLITICO. (Cancryn and Ollstein, 10/4)

The Washington Post: Senate Easily Passes Sweeping Opioids Legislation, Sending To President Trump
The Senate passed the final version of a sweeping opioids package Wednesday afternoon and will send it to the White House just in time for lawmakers to campaign on the issue before the November midterm elections. The vote was 98 to 1, with only Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) opposing it. (Itkowitz, 10/3)

CNN: Senate Passes Legislation To Fight Opioid Epidemic
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell referred to it as "landmark" legislation in remarks on the Senate floor on Wednesday, saying that the bill will bring "relief to American communities that have been decimated by the scourge of substance abuse and addiction." McConnell said that the package will "deliver critical resources to establish opioid-specific recovery centers," and "will help law enforcement stop the flow of opioids across borders and increase safeguards against over-prescription." (10/3)

The Hill: Senate Sends Bipartisan Package To Fight Opioid Epidemic To Trump's Desk 
In the House, Republican incumbents in tough reelection races touted their work on the bill, while in the Senate more Democratic incumbents lauded the progress. For example, Sen. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), who faces a tough race in a state President Trump won handily in 2016, praised the bill from the Senate floor Wednesday and pointed to the inclusion of provisions he worked on. Some Democrats say the bill is a good first step but more work still needs to be done, including more funding. (Sullivan, 10/3)

Stat: Opioid Settlement Will Take Time, But May Cost Less Than The Big Tobacco Deal
The sprawling opioid litigation confronting drug makers and distributors is likely to take years to resolve, but cost less than the infamous lawsuits that were filed against Big Tobacco and, not surprisingly, will hurt some companies more than others, a new credit analysis suggests. For the moment, the litigation is still in the early stages and the first trials are not scheduled until September 2019. But despite the uncertainty, any potential settlement is expected to be “considerably lower” than the $206 billion deal reached with the four largest U.S. cigarette makers in 1998, according to analysts at S&P Global Ratings. (Silverman, 10/3)

The Washington Post: Fentanyl Test Strips Lead To More Caution Among Illicit Drug Users 
Illicit drug users who are certain that fentanyl is mixed into the heroin they consume are much more likely to take precautions that reduce their chances of overdosing, researchers reported Wednesday in a small study. The survey examined the use of fentanyl test strips by 125 injection drug users in Greensboro, N.C., over a two-month period last year. Distribution of the small strips has become an increasingly popular “harm reduction” technique in the past few years among groups trying to protect drug users from overdosing on the powerful narcotic that has swept most of the United States. (Bernstein, 10/3)

The Associated Press: Ex Pennsylvania Governor Joins Safe Injection Site Effort
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell has joined the effort to open Philadelphia's and possibly the nation's first supervised drug injection site— saying Wednesday that he would support the effort even if it meant facing federal charges. The 74-year-old Rendell joined the board of the nonprofit Safehouse, which is raising money to open a safe injection site— a place where people can use drugs under medical supervision including overdose prevention— despite federal and state laws that prohibit them. (Lauer, 10/3)

The Associated Press: Immigrants Refuse Aid For Fear It Will Doom Green Card Hopes
When she was struggling financially this past year, Laura Peniche traveled all over Denver to get free food from churches to feed her three young children. She was too scared to apply for government food assistance. When she was offered a chance a few weeks ago to get a reduced-rent apartment through a city program, she turned it down. Instead, she stretches her budget to pay several hundred dollars a month more to rent somewhere else. (Hajela and Long, 10/3)

The Associated Press: Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Leon Lederman Dies At 96
Leon Lederman, an experimental physicist who won a Nobel Prize in physics for his work on subatomic particles and coined the phrase “God particle,” died Wednesday at 96. ... Lederman won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1988 with two other scientists for discovering a subatomic particle called the muon neutrino. He used the prize money to buy a log cabin near the tiny town of Driggs in eastern Idaho as a vacation retreat. The couple moved there full-time in 2011 when Leon Lederman started experiencing memory loss problems that became more severe, his wife said. His Nobel Prize sold for $765,000 in an auction in 2015 to help pay for medical bills and care. (Ridler, 10/3)

The Associated Press: Chemistry Nobel For Using Evolution To Create New Proteins
Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for using a sped-up version of evolution to create new proteins that have led to a best-selling drug and other products. The Royal Swedish Academy of Science said their work has led to the development of medications, biofuels and a reduced environmental impact from some industrial processes. (Ritter, Heintz, and Chester, 10/3)

Los Angeles Times: Caltech Scientist Is Among 3 Awarded Nobel Prize In Chemistry For Sparking ‘A Revolution In Evolution’
Frances Arnold, a biochemical engineer at Caltech, was awarded half of the $1.01-million prize for her pioneering experiments in the field known as directed evolution. The other half of the prize was split between George P. Smith of the University of Missouri in Columbia and Gregory P. Winter of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, who paved the way for directed evolution to become an important tool in drug development. (Netburn and Kaplan, 10/3)

The Associated Press: Survey: Companies Continue To Pass Health Costs To Workers
If your employer is sticking you with a bigger share of the medical bill before health insurance kicks in, you may have to get used to it. More companies are making workers pay an annual deductible or increasing the amount they must spend before insurance starts covering most care, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Annual deductibles for single coverage have now climbed about eight times as fast as wages over the last decade. (Murphy, 10/3)

The Wall Street Journal: Employer-Provided Health Insurance Approaches $20,000 A Year
The average cost of employer health coverage offered to workers rose to nearly $20,000 for a family plan this year, according to a new survey, capping years of increases that experts said are chiefly tied to rising prices paid for health services. Annual premiums rose 5% to $19,616 for an employer-provided family plan in 2018, according to the yearly poll of employers by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. Employers, seeking to blunt the cost of premiums, also continued to boost the deductibles that workers must pay out of their pockets before insurance kicks in. (Wilde Mathews, 10/3)

The Hill: Premiums See Moderate Increase In 2018 For Employer Plans 
Overall, the burden of deductibles for covered workers has tripled since 2008, growing eight times faster than wages, according to the survey. “Health costs don’t rise in a vacuum. As long as out-of-pocket costs for deductibles, drugs, surprise bills and more continue to outpace wage growth, people will be frustrated by their medical bills and see health costs as huge pocketbook and political issues,” KFF President and CEO Drew Altman said. (Hellmann, 10/3)

Stat: This New Advocacy Group Is An Unapologetic Defender Of High Drug Prices 
It’s less than a week old, but a shadowy new pharma advocacy group is already launching diatribes against advocates for lower drug prices, blasting pharmacy middlemen and defending even sky-high list prices for prescription drugs. The new group, the Alliance to Protect Medical Innovation, says its goal is to “help educate policymakers and the public about medical breakthroughs developed by the biopharmaceutical industry.” An “About Us” section on its website describes it as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. (Florko, 10/4)

Stat: What The Last Trade Debate Over Drug Prices Can Tell Us About The New One 
The drug pricing advocates who once trounced President Obama for his proposal to shield expensive biologic drugs from competition are now girding for a fight with President Trump over his new trade pact. ...Trump announced earlier this week that his newly renegotiated trade agreement with Mexico and Canada — now dubbed the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) — will require all three countries provide 10 years of exclusivity for brand name biologic drugs, which are made from living cells and used to treat complex conditions like cancer. That means competitors that copy these drugs, often known as biosimilars, would be legally barred from entering the market for that period of time. (Florko, 10/3)

Bloomberg: Merck Board To Shrink As Member Under Fire Over Conflicts Quits 
Merck & Co. said its board of directors will shrink to 12 members after the resignation of Memorial Sloan Kettering Chief Executive Officer Craig Thompson, who is stepping down following criticism of ties between the hospital’s leaders and health-care companies. Thompson said he would leave the board of the Kenilworth, New Jersey-based drugmaker, the New York Times and ProPublica reported on Tuesday, after a series of news articles raised questions about relationships between the New York-based cancer center and private industry. Thompson has served as Sloan Kettering’s CEO since 2010. He joined Merck’s board in 2009 and served on the research committee. (Hopkins, 10/3)

Stat: Sarepta's Duchenne Gene Therapy Delivers Early Muscle Function Improvements
In a clinical trial earlier this year, an experimental gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, licensed to Sarepta Therapeutics (SRPT), produced large increases in a crucial muscle protein normally missing in patients diagnosed with the disease. Those results, disclosed in June, were better than expected but still left an important question unanswered: Would making more of this protein lead to meaningful improvements in muscle strength, movement, and function for Duchenne patients? (Feuerstein, 10/3)

Stat: New Data Shows Genentech's Potential Spinraza Competitor Inching Forward 
A new experimental drug for spinal muscular atrophy from Roche subsidiary Genentech is showing promise, according to new data published Wednesday. The new data shows that the drug, risdiplam, could help children with the debilitating illness sit up and move more easily. It’s an incremental new data set, but one that hints that the drug, if approved, could ultimately compete with Biogen’s pricey drug for the same condition, Spinraza. And the CEO of PTC Therapeutics, from which Genentech licensed the drug, is already hinting that the drug’s backers could file a new drug application with the FDA by the end of 2019. (Sheridan, 10/3)

The Associated Press: CVS Pledges Aetna Will Remain In Hartford For Least 10 Years
Connecticut officials have received official assurances that CVS Health Corp. will keep Aetna Inc. in Hartford for at least the next decade. The pledge is included in a commitment letter CVS delivered Wednesday to the Connecticut Insurance Department. (10/3)

The Associated Press: Child Experts File FTC Complaint Against Facebook Kids' App
Children's and public health advocacy groups say Facebook's kid-centric messaging app violates federal law by collecting kids' personal information without getting verifiable consent from their parents. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and other groups asked the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday to investigate Facebook's Messenger Kids for violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA. (10/3)

Stat: Mindstrong's Mood-Predicting App Is Shadowed By Questions Over Evidence
In the world of digital health, Silicon Valley-based Mindstrong stands out. It has a star-studded team and tens of millions in venture capital funding, including from Jeff Bezos’ VC firm. It also has a captivating idea: that its app, based on cognitive functioning research, can help detect troubling mental health patterns by collecting data on a person’s smartphone usage — how quickly they type or scroll, for instance. The promise of that technology has helped Mindstrong build incredible momentum since it launched last year; already more than a dozen counties in California have agreed to deploy the company’s app to patients. (Sheridan, 10/4)

The Wall Street Journal: Brain Scans Can Detect Who Has Better Skills
To gain new insight into how highly specialized workers learn skills or react to stressful situations, researchers are leveraging advanced scanning technologies to look at what’s happening inside the brain. In the latest findings, a team of researchers studied surgeons as they performed surgical simulations and found they could identify novice from experienced surgeons by analyzing brain scans taken as the physicians worked. (Hernandez, 10/3)

NPR: Sexual Assault And Workplace Harassment May Affect Women's Health For Years
The trauma of sexual assault or harassment is not only hard to forget; it may also leave lasting effects on a woman's health. This finding of a study published Wednesday adds support to a growing body of evidence suggesting the link. In the study of roughly 300 middle-aged women, an experience of sexual assault was associated with anxiety, depression and poor sleep. A history of workplace sexual harassment was also associated with poor sleep and with an increased risk of developing high blood pressure. (Gordon, 10/3)

The Wall Street Journal: A New Push To Lower Your Risk For Breast Cancer 
A regular mammogram isn’t enough to battle breast cancer anymore. Researchers have found that a third of breast cancer cases may have roots in issues like obesity, alcohol use and inactivity. Hospitals are parlaying that fact into new, personalized assessments that emphasize prevention and healthier life choices, along with other factors that increase or decrease risk. They’re using the results to guide follow-up and recommendations tailored to each woman. (Landro, 10/3)

The New York Times: Psychedelic Mushrooms Are Closer To Medicinal Use (It’s Not Just Your Imagination)
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have recommended that psilocybin, the active compound in hallucinogenic mushrooms, be reclassified for medical use, potentially paving the way for the psychedelic drug to one day treat depression and anxiety and help people stop smoking. The suggestion to reclassify psilocybin from a Schedule I drug, with no known medical benefit, to a Schedule IV drug, which is akin to prescription sleeping pills, was part of a review to assess the safety and abuse of medically administered psilocybin. (Holson, 10/3)

The New York Times: Why Elephants Don’t Shed Their Skin
The African elephant is known for its thick, wrinkly skin. But look closer and you’ll see an intricate network of tiny crevices that makes the mighty mammal’s hide resemble cracked mud or damaged asphalt. The purpose of those cracks is no mystery. An elephant doesn’t have sweat or sebum glands, so it covers its skin in water or mud to keep cool. The micrometer-wide cracks in its skin retain 10 times more moisture than a flat surface, helping the animal regulate its body temperature. They also help mud adhere to the skin, which protects against parasites and rays from the sun. (Quenqua, 10/3)

Los Angeles Times: More Than 1 In 3 Americans Eat Fast Food On A Typical Day, And We Eat It All Day Long
If you’re an adult in America, there’s a better than 1 in 3 chance that you’ll eat fast food today — if you haven’t already. New survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 36.6% of us eat some kind of fast food on any given day. That includes 37.9% of men and 35.4% of women, according to a report published Wednesday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. (Kaplan, 10/3)

The New York Times: Pret A Manger Starts Labeling Food With Allergens
Pret A Manger, the British sandwich chain that has become a mainstay of office lunches with the promise of freshly prepared food, will be adding information about allergens in its food after the death of a girl who ate a sandwich containing sesame seeds, an ingredient she was allergic to. In a statement on Wednesday, the company said it would start affixing ingredient labels to its packaging in November. (Tsang, 10/3)

The Associated Press: Illinois AG To Investigate Legionnaire's Disease Response
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said her office will launch a criminal investigation of how Gov. Bruce Rauner's administration handled a three-year-old Legionnaire's disease crisis at a state-run veterans' home. The Democrat will review compliance with state law and whether residents and staff of the Quincy home and the public were notified in a timely manner, spokeswoman Eileen Boyce said. Republican Rauner faces a stiff re-election challenge in a state that leans Democratic. (10/3)

The New York Times: Police Use Fitbit Data To Charge 90-Year-Old Man In Stepdaughter’s Killing
The last time Anthony Aiello spoke to his stepdaughter, he took homemade pizza and biscotti to her house in San Jose, Calif., for a brief visit. Mr. Aiello, 90, told investigators that she then walked him to the door and handed him two roses in gratitude. But an unnoticed observer in the house later revealed that their encounter ended in murder, a police report said. Five days afterward, Mr. Aiello’s stepdaughter, Karen Navarra, 67, was discovered by a co-worker in her house with fatal lacerations on her head and neck. She had been wearing a Fitbit fitness tracker, which investigators said showed that her heart rate had spiked significantly around 3:20 p.m. on Sept. 8, when Mr. Aiello was there. (Hauser, 10/3)

The Associated Press: Missouri Down To 1 Abortion Clinic Amid Legal Battle
Missouri is down to one clinic providing abortions Wednesday, after the only other clinic in the state that performs the procedure failed to adhere to new state requirements and its license expired. The Columbia clinic's abortion license expired Tuesday, Planned Parenthood Great Plains spokeswoman Emily Miller said. (Ballentine, 10/3)

The Washington Post: Virginia Expanding Funding For Long-Acting Contraceptives
Twelve health care providers across the state are getting additional funding to help expand access to long-acting reversible contraceptives among low-income women. The Virginia Department of Health said in a news release Wednesday that up to $6 million will be awarded to the providers to cover the contraceptives through May 2020. (10/4)

The Associated Press: Industry Groups Spending Millions Fighting Montana Measures
Industry-funded opponents of Montana citizen’s initiatives to raise the state’s tobacco tax and add new mining regulations are vastly outspending the measures’ supporters to put their messages in front of voters about a month before Election Day, according to campaign finance reports. One ballot initiative would raise taxes on cigarettes and snuff for the first time since 2005, and tax vaping products for the first time ever. One tobacco giant in particular, Altria, is spending millions of dollars to flood the state’s airwaves with ads to defeat the initiative after successfully lobbying against a similar measure killed by the Montana Legislature in 2017. (Volz, 10/3)

The Associated Press: Virginia Health Officials Encourage Annual Flu Shots
The Virginia Department of Health is encouraging residents to get their annual flu shots. State health officials gathered Wednesday to highlight the importance of the vaccine and to get their own flu shots. Health Commissioner M. Norman Oliver said everyone six months and older should get a flu shot. He said influenza can be a serious illness, and even mild cases can lead to lost time at work or with friends and family. (10/4)

The Associated Press: FDA: 38 Sick From Tainted Eggs From Alabama
The government says 38 people in seven states have gotten sick from eggs produced by an Alabama poultry farm. The Food and Drug Administration says the illnesses are linked to salmonella-tainted eggs from Gravel Ridge Farms, which is north of Birmingham in Cullman. The agency issued a recall notice last month, and it provided an update Tuesday. (10/3)

The Wall Street Journal: NYC Mayor De Blasio Urges More Money For 9/11 Compensation Fund
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio asked the federal government on Wednesday to provide more money to a 9/11 fund that assists sick first responders, making the plea after a new report said the fund may run dry before fulfilling its mission. The September 11th Victims Compensation Fund was created to cover the health-care costs for volunteers and rescue workers who have become sick since responding to the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and United Flight 93 that crashed near Shanksville, Pa. It also compensates survivors of the attacks and residents who lived near the sites. (Honan, 10/3)