First Edition: October 5, 2018

Kaiser Health News: In The Battle To Control Drug Costs, Old Patent Laws Get New Life
In the drug pricing battle, progressive lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and patients’ rights activists rarely find themselves in step with the health industry’s big players. But in a twist, these usually at-odds actors are championing similar tactics to tame prescription drug prices. (Luthra, 10/5)

Kaiser Health News: Managing Your Mental Health While Managing A Newsroom’s Social Media
Like many people in society today, we know we spend too much time online — but as social media managers it is our job to be there. Social media managers, a position that was unheard of a decade ago, experience tremendous stress. Social media can be a toxic place — especially for those of us who work in that space. Angry users on social seem to forget that a human being is behind the brand’s account they are screaming at or the story they are criticizing. (Giles, 10/5)

Kaiser Health News: Congress Targets Misuse Of Hospice Drugs
Hospice workers would be allowed to destroy patients’ unneeded opioids, reducing the risk that families misuse them, according to one little-noticed provision in the bipartisan opioids bill headed to President Donald Trump’s desk for his likely signature. The bill would empower hospice staff to destroy opioid medications that are expired, no longer needed by the patient because of a change in treatment or left over after the patient dies. (Bailey, 10/4)

California Healthline: Dirty Air And Disasters Sending Kids To The ER For Asthma
Children in some California counties visited emergency rooms for asthma at nearly twice the statewide rate, according to the latest data — a phenomenon that experts blame largely on dangerous air pollution. While children in some of these counties struggle with consistent, long-term exposure to bad air, experts also point to the effects of environmental disasters, such as wildfires and the spread of toxic dust from a dying lake. (Rowan, 10/4)

Kaiser Health News: Podcast: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’ Some Things Old, Some Things New
Congress passed major health-related legislation in time for the fiscal year, which began Monday, including a broad bill to address the opioid epidemic and a spending bill for the Department of Health and Human Services. This marks the first time since the 1990s that Congress has agreed to HHS spending levels before the start of the fiscal year. (10/4)

The Hill: Iowa To Sell Health Plans That Can Disqualify People Based On Pre-Existing Conditions 
New health plans sold through Iowa’s Farm Bureau will be able to ask applicants if they have any pre-existing conditions. According to a checklist posted online by the Farm Bureau, applicants will be asked about a list of conditions related to mental health, blood pressure, reproductive system, lungs or the respiratory system, among others. (Weixel, 10/4)

Politico: 'It Was Not Real Insurance'
Republican businessman Mike Braun says he wants all Americans to have health insurance just like his own workers — a pillar of his campaign to unseat Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly in Indiana’s exceedingly tight Senate race. Braun boasts that his prowess at cutting deals with health insurers at his auto parts and shipping company means he could “walk into that Senate and probably know more about what to do than anybody that’s there.” But while he may have kept premiums stable for a decade for his roughly 900 workers, deductibles are sky-high — meaning big out-of-pocket costs for anyone who gets sick. (Ollstein, 10/5)

The Associated Press: Questions Of Conflict Mount Over Florida Governor’s Finances
During his nearly eight years in office, [Fla. Gov. Rick] Scott was required to file forms disclosing his investments. Now that he is running for U.S. Senate, however, his wife is also required to reveal her own investments — and they seem to mirror those in Scott’s trust. ... The documents also show that Scott’s investment portfolio has at times included holdings in companies with ties to Florida’s government, including a fund tied to the state’s largest public utility; a credit fund run by the parent company of a high-speed rail line being built in the state; a company that provides drugs to the state’s Medicaid patients and a company that donated land to a new state university. Some of the exact amounts aren’t known because they are reported in ranges, but the investments have varied in size from tens of thousands of dollars to at least $1 million. (Fineout, 10/4)

The Hill: Planned Parenthood Targets Dean Heller On Kavanaugh Comments In Ad 
Planned Parenthood's political arm is targeting vulnerable GOP Sen. Dean Heller on comments he made about the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. A six-figure digital ad buy focuses on Heller reportedly saying the nomination had run into a "hiccup" following Christine Blasey Ford's allegations against Kavanaugh. (Hellmann, 10/4)

The Associated Press: Congress OKs Opioid Legislation In Show Of Bipartisanship
Setting aside the Supreme Court fight, members of Congress this week approved bipartisan legislation aimed at curbing the devastating opioid addiction across the country. But the Support for Patients and Communities Act, which President Donald Trump said he would sign into law, has political implications. It includes contributions from at least 70 lawmakers, some of whom face tough re-election campaigns in November. The measure, which the Senate passed 98-1 on Wednesday and the House approved 393-8 on Sept. 28, ensures incumbents have something positive to campaign on in the final weeks before the election. (Beam, 10/4)

The Wall Street Journal: ‘We Don’t All Hate Each Other’: Senate’s Bipartisanship Obscured By Kavanaugh Fight
The intense partisanship engulfing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has diverted attention from a raft of recent bipartisanship in the Senate during the past few weeks, drowning out issues that could appeal to voters in the midterms. ... Also on Wednesday, the Senate advanced an opioid bill to President Trump’s desk by a vote of 98-1. That bill includes several changes to Medicare and state Medicaid programs, such as requiring Medicare to cover services provided by certified opioid treatment programs. (Jamerson, 10/4)

The New York Times: An Infant Is Dead, Her Twin Is Injured, And Their Mother Is In Police Custody
Child welfare workers were asked to visit a modest home in Queens a year ago to check on a mother with five young children, because she had just given birth to fraternal twins, a boy and a girl, who had opioids in their systems. On Wednesday night, the police were called to the same single-family house to deal with a far graver situation. The 13-month-old girl was found dead and showed signs of physical trauma, and her brother, also injured, was clinging to life. (Stewart and Wolfe, 10/4)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Administration To Step Up Oversight Of Hospital Watchdogs
The Trump administration announced increased oversight of organizations that accredit and inspect most U.S. hospitals, following a report last year in The Wall Street Journal focusing on problem-plagued facilities that kept their accreditation status. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which grants accrediting authority, said it will change the way it measures the performance of accrediting organizations in a pilot project and will provide the public with new information about accreditors’ and hospitals’ performance. (Armour, 10/4)

The Wall Street Journal: MiMedx Kept Cheaper Products Out Of Its Offerings To VA Hospitals
The MiMedx Group, a maker of amniotic-tissue products, is a major supplier to government-run hospitals and says its products help heal wounded service members and veterans. But an examination of the embattled company’s dealings with Veterans Affairs hospitals and those run by the Defense Department shows that MiMedx’s sales to these entities came at a high cost to taxpayers. According to former employees and company product lists, MiMedx limited the range of products it offered to federal buyers, forcing the government to buy more expensive products than it needed for some very common treatments. (Morgenson, 10/5)

The Associated Press: Ruling Strikes Down Parts Of St. Louis 'Abortion Ordinance'
A federal judge has ruled that some provisions of a St. Louis ordinance banning discrimination based on reproductive health decisions violate the U.S. Constitution and Missouri law. A lawsuit questioned the city's 2017 ordinance that bars employers from hiring or firing workers based on whether they have had an abortion, been pregnant outside marriage, or used contraceptives or artificial insemination. Landlords also can't refuse tenants based on those criteria. (Salter, 10/4)

Reuters: E-Cigarette Maker Juul Files Complaints Against 'Copycat Products'
Juul Labs, the e-cigarette maker at the heart of a U.S. crackdown on youth vaping, has filed patent infringement complaints in the United States and Europe against what it said were copycat rivals. The complaints follow the seizure this week by U.S. health regulators of more than 1,000 pages of documents from Juul Labs about its sales and marketing practices, as they investigate growing e-cigarette use among young people that threatens to create a new generation of nicotine addicts. (Geller, 10/4)

CNBC: Juul Asks Regulators To Stop Companies Selling Lookalike E-Cigarettes
This is Juul's latest attempt to control a proliferation of lookalike products that have entered the market since it launched its e-cigarette 2015. In August, Juul filed trademark lawsuits against 30 Chinese companies for selling counterfeit products on eBay. The move comes as Juul tries to convince regulators it can control the surge in teens using its products. Food and Drug Administration officials recently seized more than 1,000 pages of documents in a surprise inspection of e-cigarette maker Juul's San Francisco headquarters. The agency has also ordered Juul and four other e-cigarette manufacturers submit plans within 60 days to control youth use. (LaVito, 10/4)

Stat: Why Is This Drug Pricing PAC Spending Millions On Long-Shot Races?
The ad blitz from Patients for Affordable Drugs highlights the unorthodox tack the group is taking in the 2018 midterm elections: intervening in races in which there is no hope of altering the outcome. Of the nine congressional and gubernatorial races in which P4AD has supported or opposed candidates to date, just three or four are competitive, according to STAT’s analysis of election forecasts from the website FiveThirtyEight. (Robbins and Facher, 10/5)

Stat: A GOP Lobbying Firm Helped Launch The Latest Pro-Pharma Advocacy Group 
A Republican lobbying firm, the CGCN Group, is behind this week’s launch of the shadowy drug pricing organization, Alliance to Protect Medical Innovation, a partner at the firm confirmed to STAT Thursday. It is still unclear who is funding the organization, but the group admitted Thursday it relied on some “seed money from people inside the [drug] industry.” The brand drug lobby BIO also said in a new release on its website Thursday that it is joining as one of APMI’s first members. (Florko, 10/4)

Stat: New Jersey Court Again Gives Pharma A Boost In Lawsuits Filed By Consumers 
In what some are calling a boost for the pharmaceutical industry, the New Jersey Supreme Court dismissed hundreds of lawsuits claiming a Roche drug caused a serious side effect because the company had not properly warned about potential harm. And in doing so, the court reaffirmed a state product liability law that drug makers rely on to defend themselves, but has caused disagreement in lower courts. At the center of the litigation was the Accutane acne medication, which was alleged in more than 500 lawsuits to have caused inflammatory bowel disease. (Silverman, 10/4)

Stat: Flu Season Likely To Stretch Longer In Big Cities Than Elsewhere, Study Says
The length of the flu season may vary depending on where you live, with large cities enduring longer periods of transmission and smaller cities experiencing shorter, but more explosive, spread, a new study suggests. The study doesn’t assert that one’s risk of contracting influenza varies depending on the size of any given community. Rather, it argues that in less populous places, flu needs the right atmospheric conditions to spread effectively. (Branswell, 10/4)

The New York Times: How Special Education Is Failing T.J. And Many Children Like Him
By the time T.J. was about 2½-years-old, it was clear to his mother that he was already behind. His twin brother was speaking in full sentences. T.J. couldn’t say a word. “When you have twins,” she said, “you realize if there are some delays.” So T.J.’s mother, Kerrin, called the pediatrician and asked what she could do. (T.J. and his family members are being identified by their middle names or initials to protect his privacy.) (Harris, 10/5)

NPR: Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Can Help Survivors Of Sexual Assault Heal
The wrenching testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, who is accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of a sexual assault years ago, raises questions about the long-term emotional and physical toll this kind of trauma takes on survivors and how our society responds to those who come forward long after the assault. Emily R. Dworkin, a senior fellow at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, studies how the social interactions of trauma survivors can affect their recovery. (Fulton, 10/4)

Los Angeles Times: How Does The Brain See? MacArthur Fellow Doris Tsao Says The Answer Will Reveal How The Brain Works
That question is at the heart of Doris Tsao’s research. The Caltech visual neuroscientist uses brain imaging technology, electrical recording techniques and mathematical modeling in her search for answers. That quest got a boost Thursday as Tsao was named to the 2018 class of MacArthur fellows. (Healy, 10/4)

The New York Times: Deep In Human DNA, A Gift From The Neanderthals
People of Asian and European descent — almost anyone with origins outside of Africa — have inherited a sliver of DNA from some unusual ancestors: the Neanderthals. These genes are the result of repeated interbreeding long ago between Neanderthals and modern humans. But why are those genes still there 40,000 years after Neanderthals became extinct? (Zimmer, 10/4)

The Associated Press: HIV-Positive Mother Donates Liver To Critically Ill Child
Doctors in South Africa say they transplanted part of a liver from a mother with HIV to her critically ill but HIV-negative child, concluding that the chance to save a life outweighed the risk of virus transmission. The mother and the child recovered after the 2017 transplant, though it is not yet known whether the child has the virus that causes AIDS, according to the team from the Wits Donald Gordon Medical Centre in Johannesburg. (10/4)

The New York Times: Daily Baby Aspirin May Lower Ovarian Cancer Risk
Taking low-dose aspirin is a daily routine for many people because it may lower the risk for heart attacks and strokes, and some research has tied it to a lower risk of colorectal cancer. Now a new study in JAMA Oncology suggests it may lower the risk for ovarian cancer as well. Researchers followed more than 200,000 women for more than 25 years, recording data on lifestyle, health factors and disease outcomes and updating information with periodic interviews. (Bakalar, 10/4)

CNN: Daily Low-Dose Aspirin May Lower Risk Of Ovarian Cancer
The study highlights two important caveats. Daily use of standard-dose aspirin (325 milligrams) does not reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, and heavy use of nonaspirin nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen and naproxen, may increase the risk, suggests the study, published Thursday in the medical journal JAMA Oncology. Another potential limitation: The result was found only in women who had been using low-dose aspirin for less than a year. (Scutti, 10/4)

The Associated Press: Scientists: US Military Program Could Be Seen As Bioweapon
A research arm of the U.S. military is exploring the possibility of deploying insects to make plants more resilient by altering their genes. Some experts say the work may be seen as a potential biological weapon. (Choi and Borenstein, 10/4)

The Washington Post: The Pentagon Is Studying An Insect Army To Defend Crops. Critics Fear A Bioweapon.
The program, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has a warm and fuzzy name: “Insect Allies.” But some critics find the whole thing creepy. A team of skeptical scientists and legal scholars published an article in the journal Science on Thursday arguing that the Insect Allies program opens a “Pandora’s box" and involves technology that “may be widely perceived as an effort to develop biological agents for hostile purposes and their means of delivery.” A website created by the critics puts their objection more bluntly: “The DARPA program is easily weaponized.” (Achenbach, 10/4)

The Associated Press: Dialysis Clinic Arrives In Puerto Rico A Year After Maria
A mobile dialysis unit long sought by patients suffering kidney failure on the tiny Puerto Rican island of Vieques has arrived more than a year after Hurricane Maria. Gov. Ricardo Rossello said Thursday that the $3 million unit bought by the U.S. government will be set up at a shelter serving as a makeshift emergency clinic. (10/4)

The Associated Press: Utah Vet Confessed To Sending Ricin Envelopes, Officials Say
A Utah Navy veteran confessed to sending four envelopes containing the substance from which ricin is derived to President Donald Trump and members of his administration, authorities said in court documents. (10/4)

The Associated Press: Mormon Church Backs Deal To Allow Medical Marijuana In Utah
The Mormon church joined lawmakers, the governor and advocates to back a deal Thursday that would legalize medical marijuana in conservative Utah after months of fierce debate. The compromise comes as people prepare to vote in November on an insurgent medical marijuana ballot initiative that held its ground despite opposition from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (Whitehurst, 10/4)

The Associated Press: Arizona Company Recalls Beef That's Sickened 57 People In US
An Arizona company voluntarily recalled more than 6.5 million pounds (2.9 kilograms) of beef that could be contaminated with salmonella, federal officials announced Thursday. An investigation found the products, including ground beef and beef patties likely came from JBS Tolleson Inc., a meat packing plant west of Phoenix. The raw beef was packed between July 26 and Sept. 7 and shipped to retailers nationwide, including Walmart, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service. (10/4)