Politico: Why The CDC Director Had To Resign
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had planned to send a clear message to Congress and his new boss in the White House that he would not tolerate ethically questionable behavior. That opportunity came faster than expected after POLITICO reported Tuesday that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had traded in tobacco stocks while she led the agency. (Cancryn and Haberkorn, 1/31)

Stat: CDC Director's Investment In Tobacco, Drug Companies Baffles Ethicists
It was a financial investment in a tobacco company that helped lead to the downfall of Brenda Fitzgerald, who until Wednesday was the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For many in the public health community, the notion that the head of the CDC held shares of a company in an industry that has been so anathema to the agency’s mission was shocking. But Fitzgerald also purchased shares in pharma giants Merck and Bayer after taking over the CDC — an apparent conflict of interest that also confounded government ethics experts. (Branswell, 1/31)

Modern Healthcare: In Wake Of Fitzgerald Resignation, Ethics Experts Call For Tougher Scrutiny Of Conflicts Of Interest
Ethics wonks hope that the latest high-profile resignation from HHS will spur the Trump administration to be more aggressive in addressing conflicts of interest among top policymakers. Nearly every major healthcare leader picked by the administration has raised Washington insider concerns about whether they can effectively do their jobs despite major ties to various industries. (Dickson, 1/31)

The New York Times: Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, C.D.C. Director, Resigns Over Tobacco And Other Investments
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention resigned on Wednesday, in the middle of the nation’s worst flu epidemic in nearly a decade, because of her troubling financial investments in tobacco and health care companies that posed potential conflicts of interest. (Kaplan, 1/31)

Politico: CDC Director Who Traded Tobacco Stock Resigns
Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald's resignation comes one day after POLITICO reported that one month into her tenure as CDC director, she bought shares in a tobacco company. Fitzgerald had long championed efforts to cut tobacco use, which is the leading cause of preventable death. (Ehley and Karlin-Smith, 1/31)

The Associated Press: CDC Director Resigns Over Financial Conflicts Of Interest
Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald's complex financial investments presented conflicts that made it difficult to do her job, according to a statement from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC. In an ethics agreement filed in September, Fitzgerald had said that legal and contractual restrictions prevented her from selling the two investments. The new HHS head, Alex Azar, who took office on Monday, accepted her resignation Wednesday after discussing the investments with her and their effect on her work. (1/31)

The Washington Post: CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald Resigns Because Of Conflicts Over Financial Interests
Fitzgerald, 71, a physician who served as the Georgia public health commissioner until her appointment to the CDC post in July, said in an interview late last year that she already had divested from many stock holdings. But she and her husband were legally obligated to maintain other investments in cancer detection and health information technology, according to her ethics agreement, requiring Fitzgerald to pledge to avoid government business that might affect those interests. (Sun, 1/31)

The Wall Street Journal: CDC Director Quits After Report She Bought Tobacco Stocks
Lawmakers in Washington had grown increasingly frustrated over Dr. Fitzgerald’s conflicts from the health-care-related investments, after she was forced on a few occasions to recuse herself and send deputies to testify before Congress on the nation’s opioid crisis and emergency-preparedness issues. Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.), the senate Health Committee’s top Democrat, said Dr. Fitzgerald’s resignation represents “yet another example of this Administration’s dysfunction and questionable ethics.” Dr. Fitzgerald has said that she was trying to divest the holdings, and that she was able to engage in policy work. (McKay and Hackman, 1/31)

Los Angeles Times: CDC Director Resigns Over Financial Conflicts Including Stock In Tobacco, Beer And Soda Companies
Fitzgerald, though praised by some in public health after she was appointed, has maintained a relatively low profile as CDC director, particularly compared to many of her predecessors who have been outspoken champions for issues such as smoking cessation. Dr. Tom Frieden, for example, who headed the CDC under President Obama, already was a leading national champion for cutting tobacco use and tackling obesity, both of which he had done as commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Fitzgerald, in contrast, canceled her first scheduled appearance before Congress last fall to discuss the opioid epidemic, citing potential conflicts of interest because she continued to hold investments in companies involved in the public health crisis. (Levey, 1/31)

The Hill: CDC Loses Director Amid Flu Outbreak
The abrupt resignation Wednesday of the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) comes at a difficult time for the agency, with officials fighting a deadly flu outbreak even as they seek to beat back proposed budget cuts from the White House. The CDC is always on the front lines dealing with public health threats, and it has been working overtime this year to address drug shortages and an unusually active flu season. (Hellmann, 1/31)

Bloomberg: Trump’s CDC Director Steps Down After Tobacco Stock Scandal 
The exit of Brenda Fitzgerald as the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is another black eye for the U.S. Health Department, which last year saw the departure of then-health secretary Tom Price after it was revealed that he had traveled extensively on private jets at taxpayer expense. “Dr. Fitzgerald’s tenure was unfortunately the latest example of the Trump administration’s dysfunction and lax ethical standards,” Senator Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said in a statement. (Edney, 1/31)

Stat: CDC Director Brenda Fitzgerald Resigns Following Controversy Over Stocks
Fitzgerald, a longtime OB-GYN from Georgia, served as that state’s public health commissioner before being named head of the CDC. (Branswell, 1/31)

Modern Healthcare: Fitzgerald's Resignation Comes As CDC Faces Huge Funding Cuts
Dr. Umair Shah, executive director of the Harris County Public Health department in Texas and president of the National Association of County and City Health Officials, said the White House should name a permanent director soon to help advocate against funding cuts as the threat of a second government shutdown looms if Congress fails to pass a spending bill by Feb. 8. "You cannot rely on an interim director for an extended period of time without over time having an impact on activities within that organization and outside of that organization," Shah said. (Johnson, 1/31)

The Washington Post: ‘Using His Position For Private Gain’: Ben Carson Was Warned He Might Run Afoul Of Ethics Rules By Enlisting His Son
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson allowed his son to help organize an agency “listening tour” in Baltimore last summer despite warnings from department lawyers that doing so risked violating federal ethics rules, according to internal documents and people familiar with the matter. ... The officials also told Cruciani that Carson Jr. and his wife asked that Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, be invited. A little less than three months later, according to federal records, CMS awarded a $485,000 contract to the consulting company Myriddian, whose chief executive is Merlynn Carson. Carson Jr. identifies himself online as one of Myriddian’s board members. The contract was awarded without a competitive bidding process, federal records show, although a CMS spokesman said multiple minority-owned firms were considered. (Eilperin and Gillum, 1/31)

The Hill: House GOP Warming To ObamaCare Fix 
Key House Republicans are warming to a proposal aimed at bringing down ObamaCare premiums, raising the chances of legislative action this year to stabilize the health-care law. House GOP aides and lobbyists say that top House Republicans are interested in funding what is known as reinsurance. The money could be included in a coming bipartisan government funding deal or in another legislative vehicle. (Sullivan, 2/1)

Modern Healthcare: Congressional Democrats Eye HHS' Response To Idaho ACA Insurance Plans 
Leading congressional Democrats, worried about Idaho's plan to break with Affordable Care Act regulations on its state exchange, warned HHS on Wednesday that they are watching how the Trump administration plans to uphold the Affordable Care Act statute. Early in January, Idaho officials made the first step to test the limits of the Trump administration's dislike of the ACA when Republican Gov. Butch Otter asked via executive order for "creative" options to expand choice on the exchanges. Idaho's insurance commissioner in response put out guidelines asking insurers to come up with cheaper alternatives to the current, ACA-compliant plans to offer on the individual market exchange. (Luthi, 1/31)

And in other news from Capitol Hill —

CQ: Health Centers Push For Long-Term Funding
Community health centers are increasingly nervous about their funding, months after it expired last fall. As the March 31 end of many centers’ grant contracts inches closer, some states are experiencing problems with retaining and hiring staff. Funding for community health centers, or CHCs, ended Sept. 30 along with funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program and several other safety net programs. However, while CHIP funding was renewed for six years as part of the last continuing resolution (PL 115-120), no steps were taken to fund the centers. (Raman, 1/31)

The New York Times: Amazon Wants To Disrupt Health Care In America. In China, Tech Giants Already Have.
Amazon and two other American titans are trying to shake up health care by experimenting with their own employees’ coverage. By Chinese standards, they’re behind the curve. Technology companies like Alibaba and Tencent have made health care a priority for years, and are using China as their laboratory. After testing online medical advice and drug tracking systems, they are now focused on a more advanced tool: artificial intelligence. (Wee and Mozur, 1/31)

The Wall Street Journal: Amazon Is Now A $700 Billion Stock-Market Gorilla
Amazon.com Inc. is pushing its weight around in the stock market. The e-commerce giant’s rapid climb in recent years has only accelerated in 2018, pushing the company’s market cap above $700 billion for the first time on Wednesday. That puts it in rarefied territory alongside Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc., and Microsoft Corp. ... [It's rapid rise] is the latest sign of just how much weight Amazon has to throw around in the stock market. And recently it’s been doing just that. On Tuesday, it sent health-care stocks tumbling after the firm, along with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, said it is creating a company to figure out how to reduce health-care costs. (Eisen, 1/31)

In other marketplace news —

Bloomberg: Anthem Rebounds As 2018 Profit Forecast Calms Investor Jitters 
Anthem Inc.’s stock rebounded after the health insurer’s forecast for a 2018 profit increase heartened investors who’ve been nervously watching big potential changes in the industry. The Indianapolis-based company’s earnings this year will exceed $15 a share, with the recent U.S. tax overhaul providing roughly a 15 percent boost to profits, Anthem said in a statement on Wednesday. That sent the stock about 3.7 percent higher, partly recovering from Tuesday’s drop on news that three corporate giants were starting a health company. (Tracer, 1/31)

The CT Mirror: Cigna Says Tax Law Allows It To Raise Worker Pay, Increase Benefits
Bloomfield-based Cigna is the latest American company saying it is giving its workers a raise because of the recent GOP-led tax overhaul. In a statement released Wednesday, the health insurer said “the net financial benefits of United States tax reform will allow the company to further accelerate investments in our employees, our capabilities and our customers, clients, partners, and communities.” (Radelat, 1/31)

Stat: Some Clinics Allow Patients To Pay In Bitcoin — But Find Little Demand
As the value of bitcoin climbed last year so too did its public prominence. Still, the cryptocurrency isn’t accepted in all that many brick-and-mortar shops. But a smattering of clinics across the US have started taking the currency in recent years, allowing patients to pay their medical bills or their copays with bitcoin — though, in many cases, they aren’t getting any takers. My Doctor Medical Group, a practice of seven of physicians with an office in San Francisco, has allowed patients to pay with bitcoin since 2013 — with some limits. (Samuel, 2/1)

Bloomberg: Half Of Post-9/11 Vets Aren’t Getting Mental Health Care, Report Says 
About half of U.S. veterans who served during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq don’t get the mental health care they need, according to a new report that recommends changes to improve the care delivered by the Veterans Affairs health system. While many veterans receive good mental health care through the VA, it’s inconsistent across the system, according to the report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine—nonprofit institutions that inform public policy. The detailed, 439-page assessment of the VA’s mental health services was ordered by Congress in 2013 and completed by a committee of 18 academics. (Tozzi, 1/31)

CNN: Veterans Aren't Always Getting Mental Care They Urgently Need, Report Finds
Thomas Burke Jr., a Marine who returned from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq to attend Yale Divinity School, has also done three tours in the Veterans Health Administration for mental health care and says he's experienced mixed results. Burke, 28, served in the infantry. He said his first counselor, in 2011, didn't have much experience with combat veterans and wasn't much help. In 2012, he clicked with his second counselor, who "really cared and took time to get to know me and gave me enough of a baseline to productively go through my academics." Before becoming a minister and providing mental care of his own, he tried to get back into counseling. But it was a "very negative experience," he said. (Christensen, 2/1)

ProPublica: Unnecessary Medical Care Is More Common Than You Think
It’s one of the intractable financial boondoggles of the U.S. health care system: Lots and lots of patients get lots and lots of tests and procedures that they don’t need. Women still get annual cervical cancer testing even when it’s recommended every three to five years for most women. Healthy patients are subjected to slates of unnecessary lab work before elective procedures. Doctors routinely order annual electrocardiograms and other heart tests for people who don’t need them. (Allen, 2/1)

The Washington Post: Opioid Epidemic: Tiny West Virginia Was Town Flooded With Millions Of Painkillers, Congressmen Say
Over the past decade, nearly 21 million prescription painkillers have been shipped to a tiny town in West Virginia, a state where more people have overdosed on opioids and died than in any other in the nation. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has been investigating the opioid epidemic, revealed that 20.8 million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills have been delivered to Williamson, W.Va., a town with a community college, a rail yard — and fewer than 3,200 residents, according to the most recent Census figures. (Bever, 1/31)

Charleston Gazette-Mail: Drug Firms Shipped 20.8M Pain Pills To WV Town With 2,900 People
The House Energy and Commerce Committee cited the massive shipments of hydrocodone and oxycodone — two powerful painkillers — to the town of Williamson, in Mingo County, amid the panel’s inquiry into the role of drug distributors in the opioid epidemic. “These numbers are outrageous, and we will get to the bottom of how this destruction was able to be unleashed across West Virginia,” said committee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and ranking member Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., in a joint statement. (1/29)

In other news on the crisis —

The Hill: Senate Dems Press Watchdog Group To Investigate Trump's Strategy On Opioid Epidemic
A group of Senate Democrats is pressing a congressional watchdog to investigate President Trump’s efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. Led by Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the Democrats asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to review actions taken by the Trump administration to reduce the number of opioid deaths, as well as any steps taken to minimize the effect of opioids on American communities. (Weixel, 1/31)

The Wall Street Journal: To Deal With A Flu Onslaught, Emergency Rooms Expand Into Waiting Rooms And Hallways
Emergency departments across the U.S. have been slammed in recent weeks by an onslaught of flu visits, forcing hospitals to devise new spaces to house patients, to restrict visitors and to postpone elective surgeries. Visits to hospital emergency departments, urgent care centers and other outpatient clinics by people with flu symptoms have been skyrocketing for several weeks. As of mid-January, such visits had surpassed every flu season except 2009-10, when a new flu strain caused a global pandemic. The dominant strain this season, H3N2, is particularly virulent, and the vaccine isn’t very effective against it. (Toy, 2/1)

The Associated Press: Coroner: Teen Is First Flu-Related Child Death In Georgia
A Georgia county coroner says a 15-year-old girl is the state's first flu-related child death this season. Coweta County Coroner Richard Hawk told news outlets that Kira Molina died Tuesday at an Atlanta hospital. He says the Newnan High School student had initially tested negative for the flu upon developing symptoms last week, but was found unresponsive on Sunday. She was hospitalized in Newnan and then airlifted to Atlanta. (2/1)

Georgia Health News: Flu Death Toll In Georgia Rises To 37; First Pediatric Fatality Reported
Georgia’s number of influenza-related deaths has now reached 37, and state health officials say that the brutal flu season may not yet have peaked. ...The deaths, up from the 25 total reported Friday, include a child who was between ages 12 and 18, Public Health officials said Wednesday. (Miller, 1/31)

The Washington Post: Breast Cancer Treatments Can Raise Risk Of Heart Disease, American Heart Association Warns
The American Heart Association issued a stark warning Thursday for women with breast cancer: Life-saving therapies like chemotherapy and radiation can cause heart failure and other serious cardiac problems, sometimes years after treatment. The organization said patients and doctors shouldn’t avoid the treatments but instead take steps to prevent or minimize the cardiac risks. And it stressed that breast cancer survivors can improve their chances of a long, healthy life by exercising regularly and sticking to a healthy diet. (McGinley, 2/1)

Stat: Heart Group Warns Of Cardiovascular Risks After Breast Cancer Treatment
It has been known for years that some breast cancer drugs (including some also used for other cancers) can weaken the heart muscle, causing heart failure. But the group of heart doctors is concerned that if heart symptoms arise years after cancer treatment, the link to chemo may be missed. An older class of drugs called anthracyclines, which includes doxorubicin, can kill cardiomyocytes, which make up the heart muscle, especially in older women or those with pre-existing heart disease. (Begley, 2/1)

Los Angeles Times: This Is How Many Pounds You Can Lose In A Year By Standing For Six Hours A Day Instead Of Sitting
Brace yourself: The calorie-burning benefits of standing versus sitting will not, at first blush, blow you out of your seat. Spend a minute upright instead of seated, and the additional energy expended amounts to less than one-tenth of a calorie (0.04 of a calorie, to be exact). But a new study that combines the best available research on sitting, standing and energy expenditure invites readers (reclining and otherwise) to consider the potential long-term effects of this seemingly marginal difference. (Healy, 1/31)

Bloomberg: Do Standing Desks Really Help You Lose Weight? 
Are standing desks really doing us any good? That question has divided workplaces since sitting started going out of fashion about five years ago. Our sedentary lifestyles were killing us, so standing, the thinking went, was the logical antidote. Sitting too long has been associated with diabetes, hypertension, some forms of cancer, anxiety and a generally greater probability of early death. However, a few years and hundreds of studies later, the naysayers began arguing that the benefits of standing had been exaggerated. (Greenfield, 2/1)

NPR: Who Still Smokes? A Look At The Numbers
Advertising campaigns, tobacco taxes and public bans have lowered rates of smoking significantly in the U.S. since the 1960s. And for people who never smoke or manage to quit, there are major health benefits: lower risk of cancer, heart problems and stroke. But 15 percent of Americans — about 40 million people — continue to smoke. Who are they? And why are they still smoking? (Wilhelm, 1/31)

Stat: Not Just Zika: Other Mosquito-Borne Viruses Are Tied To Birth Defects
When scientists discovered that the Zika virus was causing birth defects, it seemed to catch the world off guard. The mosquito-borne virus could slip from mother to fetus and damage the developing brain, leaving newborns with a range of serious complications. But what if other viruses spread by insects also pose a threat to fetuses? On Wednesday, scientists reported that two viruses, West Nile and Powassan, attacked mouse fetuses when pregnant mice were infected, killing about half of them. The viruses also successfully infected human placental tissue in lab experiments, an indication that the viruses may be able to breach the placental barrier that keeps many maternal infections from reaching the fetus. (Joseph, 1/31)

NPR: Anxiety Neurons Found In Brains
Scientists have found specialized brain cells in mice that appear to control anxiety levels. The finding, reported Wednesday in the journal Neuron, could eventually lead to better treatments for anxiety disorders, which affect nearly 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. "The therapies we have now have significant drawbacks," says Mazen Kheirbek, an assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco and an author of the study. "This is another target that we can try to move the field forward for finding new therapies." (Hamilton, 1/31)

The New York Times: Hits To The Head May Result In Immediate Brain Damage
When a teenager is hit in the head, his brain can begin to show signs, within days, of the kind of damage associated with degenerative brain disease, according to an unsettling new study of young men and head injuries. The findings, which also involve tests with animals, indicate that this damage can occur even if the hit does not result in a full-blown concussion. (Reynolds, 1/31)

The New York Times: Migraines Increase The Risk Of Heart Attacks And Strokes
Having migraine headaches increases the risk for cardiovascular diseases, a new study has found. Using the Danish National Patient Registry, researchers matched 51,032 people with migraines, 71 percent of them women, with 510,320 people in the general population without migraines. The subjects were, on average, age 35 at the start of the study, and researchers followed them for 19 years. (Bakalar, 1/31)

The New York Times: Pelvic Massage Can Be Legitimate, But Not In Larry Nassar’s Hands
The case of Lawrence G. Nassar, the former doctor for the American gymnastics team who was sentenced last week for systemic sexual abuse of his young patients, raises many uncomfortable questions. One of the more troubling is the way the team doctor duped patients, parents and other physicians into believing that his “treatments” were medically appropriate, even after complaints were lodged. It wasn’t entirely implausible. A form of physical therapy called pelvic floor physical therapy uses internal vaginal soft tissue manipulation, or massage, to relieve pelvic pain by accessing muscles that cannot be reached any other way. (Rabin, 1/31)

The New York Times: Omega-3 Supplements Don’t Protect Against Heart Disease
Supplements containing omega-3 fatty acids, the oils abundant in fatty fish, are ineffective for the prevention of heart disease, a large review of randomized trials has found. The analysis, in JAMA Cardiology, pooled data from 10 randomized trials in people who had had cardiovascular disease or were at high risk for it. There were 77,917 people in the trials, 61 percent men, and their average age was 64. Studies lasted, on average, 4.4 years, and the dose of omega-3’s ranged from 226 to 1,800 milligrams a day. (Bakalar, 1/31)

The Baltimore Sun: Groups Seek Better Diagnosis And Treatment Of Debilitating Muscle Loss In Seniors 
As people age, their muscle mass inevitably starts to decline. Everyone starts to lose muscle beginning at age 30, a natural process known as sarcopenia. The lean muscle mass in firm biceps and abs gradually becomes soft layers of fat. For some older people the muscle loss can be severe and debilitating, causing functional decline and loss of independence. ...A group of aging experts and medical organizations hopes to change that. They have formed The Aging in Motion Coalition and are trying to bring more awareness of the disease and are pushing for better treatments, which now focus mostly on diet and exercise. (McDaniels, 2/1)

Dallas Morning News: As North Texas Autism Community Becomes A Reality, The Program Seeks Its First Trainees
The first part of a $12 million project in Denton County that’s aimed at creating job and housing opportunities for adults with autism officially launches this year. Starting in mid-February, adults 18 and older who have a primary diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and who have completed high school can apply for placement in the 29 Acres Transition Academy, the founders say. The two-year transition program will help young people with autism learn to live independently, and offer specialized job training and employment assistance. Residents will be selected on a first-come, first-served basis as they meet the criteria. (Rice, 1/31)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Gag Order Banned Health Department Staffers From Going To Aldermen, Mayor About Lead Concerns
A gag order banned Milwaukee Health Department employees from going to aldermen and Mayor Tom Barrett with their concerns about the city's troubled lead program and other problems, health officials said Wednesday. Department employees disclosed the policy during a heated meeting at City Hall, where angry aldermen grilled them for more than four hours about a newly released report detailing a litany of problems with the city's Childhood Lead Poisoning Program. (Spicuzza, 1/31)

Texas Tribune: Texas House Speaker Joe Straus Calls For Investigation Into State Health Agency Contracting
The State Auditor’s Office released a 44-page report this week showing the Health and Human Services Commission allowed Superior HealthPlan, Inc., a health insurance company, to report $29.6 million in bonus and incentive payments paid to medical providers' employees, even though those payments were not allowed under its contract with the state. (Evans, 1/31)

Boston Globe: UMass Boston Finds Big Fix For Budget Woes
As UMass Boston struggles to fix its overwhelming budget troubles, one especially complex challenge has loomed large: a massive, underground garage in urgent need of costly repair. On Wednesday, interim chancellor Barry Mills said he has found a way to fix the garage for $92 million — dramatically less than the previous estimates of $150 million to $260 million. (Krantz, 1/31)

Boston Globe: Pharmacist In Meningitis Outbreak Sentenced To Eight Years In Prison
Glenn Chin, the former supervisory pharmacist at the New England Compounding Center, was sentenced to eight years in prison Wednesday for his role in a 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak that killed dozens of people across the country. Chin was charged in the deaths of 25 people who received tainted epidural steroid shots made at the now-closed Framingham pharmacy. (Cramer, 1/31)

The Associated Press: Minnesota Nursing Home Client Dies After Dose Of Oxycodone
State investigators say a nurse mistakenly gave a short-term resident at a New Hope, Minnesota, nursing home a dose of oxycodone that was 20 times stronger than he should have received, killing him. (1/31)

Dallas Morning News: North Texas Emergency Room Chain Relocates, Cuts Its Corporate Office Space In Half 
A North Texas operator of freestanding emergency rooms has moved its corporate office from Lewisville to Las Colinas. In a tweet Tuesday Adeptus Health said that it is now located on 220 East Las Colinas Boulevard in Irving. The Dallas Morning News has learned that its new space in the Mandalay Tower office building is two full floors and totals about 44,600 square feet. That’s significantly smaller than the the 80,000 square foot office space it leased in the Vista Ridge Business Park in Lewisville. (Rice, 1/31)

Iowa Public Radio: Limited Permission For Guns At School Advances With Bipartisan Support
A limited exception to Iowa’s law making it a felony to carry firearms onto school property has cleared an initial hurdle at the statehouse, with the backing of the Iowa Firearms Coalition. Under the bill, a gun owner with a permit to carry can remain armed while driving onto school property for the sole purpose of transporting a student, but without entering the school building. (Russell, 1/31)

San Francisco Chronicle: SF Will Wipe Thousands Of Marijuana Convictions Off The Books
San Francisco will retroactively apply California’s marijuana-legalization laws to past criminal cases, District Attorney George Gascón said Wednesday — expunging or reducing misdemeanor and felony convictions going back decades. The unprecedented move will affect thousands of people whose marijuana convictions brand them with criminal histories that can hurt chances of finding jobs and obtaining some government benefits. (Sernoffsky, 1/31)

The Wall Street Journal: Mr. Bezos, Welcome To The Health-Care Jungle
Amazon announced Tuesday that it will join with J.P. Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway to wade into the jungle of U.S. health care, and the news slashed billions in stock-market value from health-care companies in mere hours. American health care could benefit from creative destruction, though this would be Amazon’s toughest fixer upper to date. “The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy,” said Berkshire chief Warren Buffett in Tuesday’s announcement. The companies will create an entity that “will provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost.” One goal appears to be to spread ideas that work. (1/31)

Los Angeles Times: Reducing Healthcare Costs Doesn't Require Bezos/Buffett/Dimon Magic: Every Other Country Already Knows How
America does relatively well in cancer care, but worse than other developed countries in heart disease mortality. Our infant mortality rate is the highest among developed countries, life expectancy at birth the lowest. Because Messrs. Bezos, Buffett and Dimon didn't work a global perspective into their hand-wringing analysis, they failed to see the American crisis in healthcare costs for what it is: a political problem, not a "technological" problem. (Michael Hiltzik, 1/31)

Bloomberg: How Amazon & Co. Could Fix Health Care
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan haven't said much about what their new joint venture will do to "provide U.S. employees and their families with simplified, high quality and transparent healthcare at a reasonable cost." It's not hard to imagine, however, how the three companies could set up a large, closed system that could serve as a blueprint for the only disruptor with the ability to fix the entrenched, inefficient U.S. health care system -- the U.S. government. (Leonid Bershidsky, 1/31)

Bloomberg: A Better Way To Disrupt Health Care
Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase say they're putting their heads together to make health care better and less expensive for their employees. Just possibly, it's a partnership that could disrupt the U.S. health-care system -- in a good way.   The market value of insurance companies and pharmacy-benefit managers dropped on the announcement, a sign that investors think the alliance might inject new competition and press down on prices. For consumers, that's an encouraging development. Up to now, big private employers have helped to make the American health-care system inefficient. Perhaps they're about to start pushing the other way. (1/31)

Stat: Physician-Assisted Suicide Won't Atone For Medicine's 'Original Sin'
In today’s high-tech medicine, doctors treat disease. Patients’ well-being gets short shrift. When disease can no longer be kept at bay, modern medicine tends to give up altogether. If that sounds cynical, consider that in the wake of its own researchers uncovering serious systemic deficiencies in end-of-life care, UCLA actively moved to the forefront of institutions offering lethal prescriptions to eligible patients. (Ira Byock, 1/31)

Stat: I’m A Doctor With End-Stage Cancer. I Support Medical Aid In Dying
I’m a doctor with incurable stage 4 prostate cancer. When my suffering becomes intolerable, I hope my doctors will permit me the option to end it peacefully with medical aid in dying — something I have been working to get explicitly authorized in Massachusetts, where I live. Medical aid in dying gives mentally capable, terminally ill adults with six months or less to live the option to request a prescription medication they can choose to take in order to end unbearable suffering by gently dying in their sleep. When I was in my 40s, I watched my mother and my father-in-law suffer agonizing deaths from cancer. I remember thinking, “That’s not the way I want to die.” (Roger Kligler, 1/31)

Chicago Sun-Times: Hands Off Social Security, Medicare And Medicaid
Fresh off passing massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, Trump and congressional Republicans want to use the deficit they’ve created to justify huge cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. As House Speaker Paul Ryan says “We’re going to have to get … at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit.” Don’t let them get away with it. (Robert Reich, 1/30)

Detroit News: Medicaid Waivers A Path To Reform
In January the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published guidelines for states seeking to use Section 1115 to institute work requirements affecting “non-elderly, non-pregnant adult Medicaid beneficiaries who are eligible for Medicaid on a basis other than disability.” Many states have already started to take advantage of this go-ahead because they know it will help get people back to work. But there’s another important reason to apply work requirements to Medicaid: the government’s massive debt time-bomb. (Jesse Hathaway, 1/29)

Chicago Tribune: The Cycle Of Life: Getting Stoned Again For Health Reasons
Several decades passed, and along came news of marijuana as a panacea for pain relief, insomnia, anxiety, ailments that were irrelevant to us when we were kids. Friends got medical marijuana cards and touted its post-chemo, anti-nausea benefits, its appetite-stimulating powers for those on AIDS drugs, its ability to salve the pain of persistent bursitis or sciatica. I began to wonder. The arthritis in my fingers makes it hard to sit at the keyboard as long as I'd like. Heck, sitting itself is an issue. We used to tell our bodies what to do; now our bodies tell us. My concentration has gone entirely to hell. Would weed help? (Amy Koss, 1/31)

New England Journal of Medicine: President Trump’s Mental Health — Is It Morally Permissible For Psychiatrists To Comment?
Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist who was recently elected governor of Virginia, distinguished himself during the gubernatorial race by calling President Donald Trump a “narcissistic maniac.” Northam drew criticism for using medical diagnostic terminology to denounce a political figure, though he defended the terminology as “medically correct.” The term isn’t medically correct — “maniac” has not been a medical term for well over a century — but Northam’s use of it in either medical or political contexts would not be considered unethical by his professional peers. For psychiatrists, however, the situation is different, which is why many psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have refrained from speculating about Trump’s mental health. But in October, psychiatrist Bandy Lee published a collection of essays written largely by mental health professionals who believe that their training and expertise compel them to warn the public of the dangers they see in Trump’s psychology. (Dr. Claire Pouncey, 1/31)

New England Journal of Medicine: The Regulatory Accountability Act Of 2017 — Implications For FDA Regulation And Public Health
The Regulatory Accountability Act has been described by its proponents as a way to reverse the increasing volume of regulatory requirements. But it could have potentially disastrous consequences for the FDA and other agencies that protect public health and safety. (Jonathan J. Darrow, Erin C. Fuse Brown, and Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, 2/1)

USA Today: Government Had No Role In My Late-Term Abortion Struggle Nor Should It
My first pregnancy happened easily as my husband was finishing his first year of law school. It didn’t take long for the complications to begin. ...But another problem had been discovered — a grapefruit-sized fibroid in my uterus that could threaten both my health and my pregnancy. It was something we would have to watch, the doctor told me. Because of the fibroid, a C-section would be my only safe option for delivery, should I be fortunate enough to carry the pregnancy to term. (Brie Loskota, 2/1)

New England Journal of Medicine: The Public And The Opioid-Abuse Epidemic
Over the past year, the U.S. opioid-abuse epidemic has gained enormous visibility. President Donald Trump has identified it as a “public health emergency,” and a national commission and a commission of state governors have issued recommendations for action. ...To determine what the public believes should be done to address the epidemic, we examined data from seven national polls conducted in 2016 and 2017. Many of the findings may surprise people who have been following this issue in professional journals and the media. ... On a list of 15 domestic policy issues that were possible priorities for Congress and the President for 2017, opioids ranked sixth, named by 24% as an extremely important priority. (Robert J. Blendon and John M. Benson, 2/1)

Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio's Entire Supply Of Illegal Drugs Contaminated
Ohio’s entire illegal drug supply — except for marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms – is contaminated. That’s causing overdose deaths throughout Ohio’s illegal drug-using population, which I estimate (based on federal drug surveys) at 800,000 to 1 million residents a year, excluding marijuana. (Dennis Cauchon, 1/31)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Shocking Failure By Cleveland EMS To Help Wounded Man Must Not Be Allowed To Recur
Cleveland's Emergency Medical Service is supposed to save lives, but it did its best to brutally sacrifice one when Cleveland EMS dispatchers refused to send an ambulance to the aid of a Cleveland man who had been shot 16 times in an ambush on Jan. 14. ...Despite calls from the Cleveland police asking for help, Cleveland EMS refused to send an ambulance for the man because officials said he was not in the city. (2/1)

The New York Times: The Ohio Abortion Ban’s Distortion Of Disability Rights
On Dec. 22, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio signed Senate Bill 164 banning doctors from performing abortions in cases in which a fetus is likely to have Down syndrome according to prenatal testing. Despite being staunchly pro-choice, I was primed to sympathize with the bill’s supporters more than ever, given my personal circumstances. (Laura Dorwart, 1/31)