The New York Times: Elizabeth Warren Isn’t Talking Much About ‘Medicare For All’ Anymore
In warm-up remarks introducing Senator Elizabeth Warren at campaign rallies, young volunteers often say they are supporting her because of her plan to transform the health care system through a single-payer “Medicare for all” program. It happened in Des Moines on Saturday and Oklahoma City last week, and in western Iowa cities like Clarinda and Council Bluffs on Sunday. But Ms. Warren herself is barely speaking of the proposal. After months of attacks from other candidates, and questions and some blowback from both liberals and moderates, the most ambitious and expensive of Ms. Warren’s many plans — and the one most likely to transform the lives of voters — is just a passing mention in her standard stump speech, rarely explored in depth unless a questioner brings it up. (Herndon, 1/1)

The Hill: Sanders: Speed Of Medicare For All Plan Is A 'Major Difference' With Warren 
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Tuesday that one of the “major differences” between himself and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is in how quickly they would roll out "Medicare for All," drawing a contrast on the key campaign issue. Sanders and Warren are vying for the progressive mantle in the Democratic presidential primary, but they have largely shied away from criticizing each other. Sanders, however, did point to some daylight on his signature issue of Medicare for All when asked on Tuesday by NBC News reporter Vaughn Hillyard how he would contrast himself with Warren. (Sullivan, 12/31)

The Associated Press: Prompt Care Was Key To Sanders' Recovery From Heart Attack
Bernie Sanders suffered “modest heart muscle damage" during his recent heart attack but has since recovered well and is fit enough for the rigors of the presidential campaign and the White House should he win it, according to letters released Monday by his primary care physician and two cardiologists. (12/30)

The Wall Street Journal: Bernie Sanders’s Doctors Say He Is Healthy After Heart Attack
An examination in December found that Mr. Sanders “was able to exercise to a level that is approximately 50% higher than other men his age with a similar diagnosis,” Philip Ades, director of cardiac rehabilitation at the University of Vermont, and Patrick Savage, a senior clinical exercise physiologist, said in a letter released by the campaign. (Collins, 12/30)

The Washington Post: Sanders Releases Doctors' Letters Saynig He's Fit For Presidency
The senator has made an “uneventful recovery” from his heart attack, LeWinter said, adding that Sanders has been taking several medications routinely prescribed after heart attacks. “While he did suffer modest heart muscle damage, he has been doing very well since,” LeWinter wrote. (Sullivan, 12/30)

The New York Times: Bernie Sanders Is In ‘Good Health,’ His Doctors Say
Mr. Sanders’s health has been under scrutiny since early October, when he experienced chest pains during a campaign event in Las Vegas. He then had two stents inserted into an artery. His campaign did not reveal that he had suffered a heart attack until after he was released from the hospital three days after being admitted. (Ember, 12/30)

USA Today: Bernie Sanders Health: Here's What The Presidential Hopeful Eats
Is Bernie Sanders drinking from the fountain of youth? If his medical records, released to the public Dec. 30, are any indication, he has a secret or two. At age 78 and on the home stretch of his second presidential primary campaign, the Vermont senator shows no signs of slowing down. His wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, says it all boils down to prioritizing healthy habits, both on the road and at home. For the presidential hopeful, that means baseball — and lots of fruit. (Fornarola, 12/31)

Politico: Democrats Seize On Anti-Obamacare Ruling To Steamroll GOP In 2020
At the most recent Democratic presidential debate, candidates largely avoided discussing the lawsuit or Republicans’ years-long efforts to dismantle Obamacare, and instead continued their intra-party battle over Medicare for All. But Senate Democrats, Democratic candidates and outside groups backing them immediately jumped on the news of the federal appeals court ruling — blasting out ads and statements reminding voters of Republicans’ votes to repeal the 2010 health care law, support the lawsuit and confirm the judges who may bring about Obamacare’s demise. (Ollstein and Arkin, 12/26)

The Hill: Bloomberg Unveils Plan To Fight Black Maternal Deaths
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Monday unveiled his plan to fight maternal mortality and reduce racial disparities in pregnancy-related deaths. Bloomberg, like other Democratic presidential candidates, pointed to data showing black women are three to four times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes as white women are. (Sullivan, 12/30) 

Stat: This Advocate Wants Mental Health On The Ballot In 2020 
A top mental health and addiction treatment advocate here wants behavioral health on the ballot in 2020. It’s a winning issue, according to Chuck Ingoglia, the president and CEO of the National Council for Behavioral Health, a D.C. nonprofit that represents thousands of community mental health providers. According to a presidential primary poll the organization released last month, large majorities of New Hampshire voters believe the federal government isn’t doing enough to address the nation’s addiction and mental health challenges. (Facher, 12/2)

The New York Times: F.D.A. Plans To Ban Most E-Cigarette Flavors But Menthol
The Trump administration is expected to announce this week that it will ban mint-, fruit- and dessert-flavored e-cigarette cartridges popular with teenagers, but allow menthol and tobacco flavors to remain on the market. Flavored liquid nicotine used in open tank systems can continue to be sold, according to two administration officials who have been briefed on the plan. It is an important concession to vape shops that have thrived alongside the booming e-cigarette business in recent years. (Kaplan and Haberman, 12/31)

The Wall Street Journal: FDA To Ban All E-Cigarette Pod Flavors Except Tobacco And Menthol
Mr. Trump told reporters Tuesday that “we’re taking it off, the flavors, for a period of time, certain flavors.” “We’re going to protect our families. We’re going to protect our children. We’re going to protect the industry,” Mr. Trump said. Mr. Trump has signed legislation passed by the House and Senate banning tobacco and e-cigarettes to anyone under 21. (Maloney and Burton, 1/1)

The Associated Press: Trump Suggests Some Flavored Vapes May Be Pulled From Market
In September, Trump and his top health officials said they would soon sweep virtually all flavored e-cigarettes from the market because of their appeal to young children and teens. But that effort stalled after vaping lobbyists pushed back and White House advisers told Trump the ban could cost him votes with adults who vape. Beginning in May, All e-cigarettes will need to undergo FDA review. Only those that can demonstrate a benefit for U.S. public health will be permitted to stay on the market. (12/31)

The Washington Post: Trump Administration To Ban Most Flavored E-Cigarette Pods
The official described the action as a compromise between those in the administration who have been pushing for a comprehensive flavor ban to stem the surge in youth vaping, and others — including Trump campaign officials — who have warned the White House about the potential political impact of job losses in vape shops caused by a sweeping crackdown. (McGinley and Dawsey, 12/31)

The Washington Post: Trump Administration’s Compromise Vape Ban Provokes Public Health Outcry
Angry public health groups on Wednesday predicted President Trump’s scaled-back plan to limit flavored e-cigarettes will fall far short of its goal of stopping a surge in youth vaping, arguing that the imminent policy is an election-year capitulation to industry interests. (McGinley and Dawsey, 1/1)

Politico: Trump Abandons Sweeping Vape Ban With New Slimmed-Down Rules
The decision is a win for some of Trump's conservative allies, who warned a more sweeping ban on flavored vaping products would alienate the president's base and weaken his reelection effort. However, the carveouts have angered public health groups. "It is a capitulation to both Juul and vape shops and gives a green light to the e-cigarette industry to continue to target and addict kids with flavored products," said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free-Kids, in a statement Tuesday. (Owermohle and Diamond, 12/31)

Bloomberg: Trump Says Flavored Vaping Products To Be Temporarily Restricted 
In South Florida earlier on Tuesday, Trump’s motorcade passed about a dozen pro-vape advocates waving signs urging him to reject a ban on flavored products. However, pediatricians, other health advocates and some lawmakers in his own party had urged Trump to take action to curb a rise in the use of the tobacco products by teenagers. (Wingrove and Sink, 12/31)

The Hill: Trump Expected To Announce Limited Vaping Ban This Week
Juul has dominated the e-cigarette market with its sleek, flash drive-shaped devices, and the popularity of its fruity flavors has led public health experts and federal health officials to blame the company for the teen vaping "epidemic." Anticipating a potential ban, Juul earlier this year pulled all of its fruit flavors from the market. It continues to sell tobacco and menthol. (Weixel, 12/31)

CNN: Trump Administration Plans To Ban Most Flavored E-Cigarette Cartridges, But Not Menthol
Studies published in the medical journal JAMA in November found that nearly 60% of high school students who vape use Juul, the market leader, and mint was the most popular flavor among US 10th and 12th graders. An estimated 2.4 million high school and middle school students use flavored e-cigarettes, one of the studies found. Fruit was the most commonly reported flavor category, at 66.1% for high school and 67.7% for middle school, followed by menthol or mint at 57.3% for high school and 31.1% for middle school. (Gumbrecht and Liptak, 1/1)

In other vaping news —

The CT Mirror: State Health Officials Ask Lawmakers To Ban Flavored Tobacco Products
Leaders at the state’s public health department are asking the General Assembly to ban flavored tobacco and vaping products during the upcoming legislative session. Pressure to pass reform at the state level has ramped up since the Trump administration backed away from its pledge to outlaw flavored vaping products nationwide. In November, anti-tobacco advocates called on lawmakers in Connecticut to take action in the wake of Trump’s reversal. (Carlesso, 1/2)

The Wall Street Journal: Juul Finds It Is Tough To Quit Vaping In The Office
Every new year brings a wave of smokers pledging to quit. Many people who work at Juul Labs Inc. have already ditched cigarettes. Trouble is, they won’t stop vaping in the office. Vaping at work has been part of Juul’s culture since the startup’s early days. Last year, the leader of the e-cigarette market prohibited its staff from vaping in most of its U.S. offices, saying it had to do so to comply with local and state laws as well as some of its lease agreements. (Maloney, 12/30)

The Hill: CDC: Vaping Lung Injuries On The Decline From Peak 
The number of deaths and injuries linked to a vaping disease have declined from their peak and appear to be leveling off, according to new data released Tuesday by federal health authorities. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2,561 hospitalized cases have been reported in all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands, since the summer. (Weixel, 12/31)

The Associated Press: US Agency Formalizes Border Medical Plan After Migrants Die
U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Tuesday formalized a medical plan formed in the wake of a massive surge of migrant families to the U.S.-Mexico border and a series of deaths in immigration custody. The goal was to increase medical care and efficiency. According to the directive, the codified plan includes a sustainable proposal for triage, plus screenings for respiratory systems, instructions to isolate sick migrants to prevent the spread of disease, vaccines for staff and a supply of face masks and hand sanitizer. More than 500 medical professionals are on contract to help administer care. (Long, 12/31)

CNN: Long-Awaited CBP Plan For Migrant Health Screenings Is 'Bare Bones,' Doctor Says
More than a year after migrants in the custody of US Customs and Border Protection began to die, the agency released a plan on Tuesday to improve medical screening. Doctors said they were disappointed it took that long to come up with the plan, which is lacking in many details and provides health screenings only for children, not adults. "To me, this is beyond disappointing. It's incredibly frustrating," said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. (Cohen, 1/1)

In other news on the Trump administration —

The New York Times: Science Panel Staffed With Trump Appointees Says E.P.A. Rollbacks Lack Scientific Rigor
A top panel of government-appointed scientists, many of them hand-selected by the Trump administration, said on Tuesday that three of President Trump’s most far-reaching and scrutinized proposals to weaken major environmental regulations are at odds with established science. Draft letters posted online Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board, which is responsible for evaluating the scientific integrity of the agency’s regulations, took aim at the Trump administration’s rewrite of an Obama-era regulation of waterways, an Obama-era effort to curb planet-warming vehicle tailpipe emissions and a plan to limit scientific data that can be used to draft health regulations. (Davenport and Friedman, 12/31)

The New York Times: How Cutting Food Stamps Can Add Costs Elsewhere
The Department of Agriculture recently finished work on a new rule that may take food stamps away from nearly 700,000 Americans by tightening work requirements. Several times in the past year, the government has proposed cutting food stamp eligibility. The new rule is intended to save almost $8 billion over five years. It’s not clear how much money would actually be saved, research suggests, given the costs that might come from a decline in the health and well-being of many of the country’s 14.3 million “food-insecure” households. (Frakt and Pearson, 12/31)

The Hill: Five Health Care Fights To Watch In 2020 
Advocates hope lawmakers can beat the odds and move major health care legislation in the new year. 2019 opened with bipartisan talk of cracking down on drug prices and surprise medical bills. But it ended without major legislation signed into law on either front, and a host of other health care battles, including a lawsuit threatening the entire Affordable Care Act, looming over the coming election year. Here are five health care fights to watch in 2020. (Sullivan and Hellmann, 12/29)

The Hill: Democrats To Put Renewed Focus On Health Care In New Year
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday that Democrats will prioritize getting health care legislation signed into law when lawmakers return to the Capitol next week. “When we return to Washington, our priority will be to continue a drumbeat across America to press the President and the GOP Senate to pass the Lower Drug Costs Now Act into law,” Pelosi wrote in a "Dear Colleague" letter to members of her caucus. “And we also look forward to ending the financial unfairness of surprise billing, which has bipartisan support in the Congress and among the American people.” (Brufke, 12/30)

The Associated Press: Congressman John Lewis Says Cancer Is His Latest Battle
As a civil rights activist at 25, John Lewis was beaten so badly his skull was fractured and the TV images from an Alabama bridge in the 1960s forced a nation's awakening to racial discrimination. As a congressman today at 79, Lewis is facing a foe like none before: advanced pancreatic cancer. The veteran Democrat congressman from Georgia has fought many struggles in his lifetime. Yet, he said, “I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now," announcing Sunday in Washington that the cancer was detected earlier this month and confirmed in a diagnosis. (12/29)

The New York Times: John Lewis, Congressman And Civil Rights Icon, Has Pancreatic Cancer
Survival rates for pancreatic cancer are grim, and Mr. Lewis said his cancer was Stage 4, the most advanced. Mr. Lewis said that while he was “cleareyed about the prognosis,” doctors had told him that advances in medical treatment would help give him “a fighting chance.” “I have decided to do what I know to do and do what I have always done: I am going to fight it and keep fighting for the beloved community,” Mr. Lewis said. “We still have many bridges to cross.” (Cochrane, 12/29)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What Is Pancreatic Cancer, Diagnosed In John Lewis, Alex Trebek?
According to the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO), about 56,770 adults were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2019. The incidence rate is 25% higher in black people than white people. Ashkenazi Jews also are at higher risk for pancreatic cancer, said Abushahin. Aside from individuals with genetic and hereditary considerations, individuals with a history of smoking and individuals who are overweight have a heightened risk of pancreatic cancer, according to the NCI. (Bote, 12/30)

The New York Times: In Indian Country, A Crisis Of Missing Women. And A New One When They’re Found.
Prudence Jones had spent two years handing out “Missing” fliers and searching homeless camps and underpasses for her 28-year-old daughter when she got the call she had been praying for: Dani had been found. She was in a New Mexico jail, but she was alive. It seemed like a happy ending to the story of one of thousands of Native American women and girls who are reported missing every year in what Indigenous activists call a long-ignored crisis. Strangers following Dani’s case on social media cheered the news this past July: “Wonderful!” “Thank you God!” “Finally, some good news.” (Healy, 12/25)

The Wall Street Journal: Kate Miner’s Tragic Journey Through The U.S. Indian Health Service
Kate Miner walked into the Indian Health Service hospital, seeking help for a cough that wouldn’t quit. An X-ray taken of Ms. Miner’s lungs that day, Oct. 19, 2016, found signs of cancer. What exactly the IHS doctor said to Ms. Miner about her exam remains in dispute. Notations in her medical file indicate the doctor told her to come back for a lung scan the next day. Her family says they never were given such instructions and weren’t told of the two masses the X-ray revealed. (Frosch, 12/23)

The Wall Street Journal: Rx For Ailing Indian Health Service: Changes In Spending, Recruitment
Some of the biggest problems plaguing the troubled Indian Health Service, which cares for 2.6 million Native Americans, could be addressed by taking some relatively straightforward steps, according to IHS employees, tribal members, U.S. lawmakers and outside health-care experts. A series of articles by The Wall Street Journal has identified numerous deficiencies at the federal agency, including problem employees, recruitment challenges and regulatory lapses. The turmoil has sparked calls for changes. (Weaver and Wilde Mathews, 12/31)

And in other news —

Iowa Public Radio: 'We Have To Be Role Models': Native Americans Hold Sober New Year's Eve Powwow
Native Americans have made up the largest portion of arrests related to public intoxication in Sioux City for the last five-plus years. In 2015, there were roughly 600 arrests involving Native Americans. In 2018, the numbers dropped to less than 200. The overall number of public intoxication arrests across all demographics has dropped over time, but Native Americans have consistently made up close to 50 percent of them. (Peikes, 1/1)

The New York Times: As Tens Of Thousands Died, F.D.A. Failed To Police Opioids
Newly unearthed documents show that the Food and Drug Administration failed to use its policing powers to make sure a program to curb improper prescribing of opioids was effective, researchers say. The lax oversight, they point out, occurred as the epidemic was growing and tens of thousands of people were dying from overdoses each year. In 2011, the F.D.A. began asking the makers of OxyContin and other addictive long-acting opioids to pay for safety training for more than half the physicians prescribing the drugs, and to track the effectiveness of the training and other measures in reducing addiction, overdoses and deaths. (Goodnough and Sanger-Katz, 12/31)

The Hill: FDA Can't Prove Effectiveness Of Opioid Safety Strategy, Analysis Finds
The strategy was launched in 2012 to address risks tied to extended-release and long-acting opioids, which were more associated with greater risk of addiction, unintentional overdose and death than their immediate-release counterparts. The REMS program was intended to be the FDA’s primary tool “to reduce serious adverse outcomes resulting from inappropriate prescribing, misuse, and abuse,” according to the researchers. (Weixel, 12/30)

CNN: Opioid Epidemic: The FDA Can't Prove Its Strategy Worked
As part of the FDA's strategy to clamp down on inappropriate prescribing and misuse of these drugs, the agency mandated that drugmakers offer education on safe prescribing, and that they create medication guides informing patients of risks. The FDA also required companies to provide reports on prescriber behavior and patient safety. But the new study concluded that "more than 5 years after implementation, the FDA was unable to assess whether these outcomes were achieved." (Nedelman, 12/30)

The New York Times: Opioid Deaths Rise When Auto Plants Close, Study Shows
The last two decades have brought both a sharp decline in automaking jobs in the United States and the rise of a deadly epidemic of opioid abuse. According to a new study, the two trends may well be related. The study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that opioid deaths were about 85 percent higher among people of prime working age in counties where automotive assembly plants had closed five years earlier, compared with counties where such factories remained open. (Chokshi, 12/30)

The Washington Post: Fatal Opioid Overdoses Spike In Counties Where Auto Plants Close, According To New Research
“Major economic events, such as plant closures, can affect a person’s view of how their life might be in the future. These changes can have a profound effect on a person’s mental well-being, and could consequently influence the risk of substance use,” said Atheendar Venkataramani, the study’s lead author and an assistant professor in the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, said in a news release. “Our findings confirm the general intuition that declining economic opportunity may have played a significant role in driving the opioid crisis.” (Telford, 12/31)

And in other news on the crisis —

NPR: In Rural Areas Without Pain Or Addiction Specialists, Family Doctors Fill In The Gaps
Dr. Angela Gatzke-Plamann didn't fully grasp her community's opioid crisis until one desperate patient called on a Friday afternoon in 2016. "He was in complete crisis because he was admitting to me that he had lost control of his use of opioids," recalls Gatzke-Plamann. The patient had used opioids for several years for what Gatzke-Plamann calls "a very painful condition." (Sable-Smith, 12/30)

The Star Tribune: Overdose At St. Paul 'Sober Home' Sheds Light On Unregulated Industry 
The homes serve a vital role in helping people with substance use disorders return to mainstream life; yet they are unlicensed and largely unregulated by state health and social service agencies. Many of these privately owned homes market themselves as drug-free, therapeutic environments, but many provide little more than a bed in a shared room and limited on-site staff, according to advocates and counselors for people with substance use disorders. Tenants are frequently required to waive their rights as renters, which means they can be evicted on a moment’s notice, even for minor transgressions. (Serres, 12/31)

The CT Mirror: From Prison To The Grave
Accidental drug overdose deaths tripled in Connecticut between 2010 and 2018, with the proportion of overdose victims with prior involvement in the criminal justice system slowly increasing during that time. Former inmates account for more than half of the people who died from drug overdoses between 2016 and 2018, according to an analysis of new state data. In 2015, this same group made up 44% of the people who died from an overdose. (Lyons, 1/2)

The Washington Post: Why Millions Of Americans — Including Men — Will Get A Separate Bill For Abortion Coverage Starting In June
If you are one of the 3 million Americans who bought health insurance on an Affordable Care Act state exchange, you may be surprised to open up the mail this summer and find two separate monthly bills. Under a new rule finalized by the Department of Health and Human Services in December, insurers are now required to issue a separate invoice for the amount of your premium that they attribute to abortion services. So you’ll get one bill for abortion services and another for the rest of your insurance coverage. (Cha, 12/26)

The Associated Press: 3 Years In, No Sign Of Trump's Replacement For Obamacare
As a candidate for the White House, Donald Trump repeatedly promised that he would “immediately” replace President Barack Obama’s health care law with a plan of his own that would provide “insurance for everybody.” Back then, Trump made it sound that his plan — “much less expensive and much better” than the Affordable Care Act — was imminent. And he put drug companies on notice that their pricing power no longer would be “politically protected.” (12/30)

Reuters: U.S. Appeals Court Upholds Risk Payments To Health Insurers
A U.S. appeals court upheld the validity of a federal program governing the payment of billions of dollars to insurers under the Affordable Care Act, reversing a lower court ruling that had prompted the White House to temporarily suspend payments. Tuesday's 3-0 decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver is a victory for insurers that feared the Feb. 2018 lower court ruling and payments suspension could drive up premium costs and cause market turmoil. (Stempel, 12/31)

The Associated Press: Health Insurance Mandate Takes Effect In Rhode Island
Rhode Island residents must now have health insurance or face a penalty on their taxes.The state’s taxation division released a list of tax changes taking effect Wednesday, including the new health insurance mandate. Residents who do not have minimum essential coverage in 2020, and do not qualify for an exemption, will face a penalty next year when filing a state tax return for 2020. (1/1)

The New York Times: Christian Health Cost-Sharing Ministries Offer No Guarantees
Eight-year-old Blake Collie was at the swimming pool when he got a frightening headache. His parents rushed him to the emergency room only to learn he had a brain aneurysm. Blake spent nearly two months in the hospital. His family did not have traditional health insurance. “We could not afford it,” said his father, Mark Collie, a freelance photographer in Washington, N.C. Instead, they pay about $530 a month through a Christian health care sharing organization to pay members’ medical bills. (Abelson, 1/2)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: As Health Insurance Costs Rise, Some Louisiana Residents Are Turning To Faith-Based Plans 
The ministries aren't insurance even if they seem to work in a similar way. And the plans, which often require members to agree to live in alignment with Christian principles, often have a lot of limits — a yearly spending cap, limited to no coverage for preexisting conditions, and a denial of treatments seen as a violation of faith, such as a pregnancy for unmarried people. Still, their popularity has been growing. (Woodruff, 12/24)

Past KHN coverage: ‘Sham’ Sharing Ministries Test Faith Of Patients And Insurance Regulators

The New York Times: In The U.S., An Angioplasty Costs $32,000. Elsewhere? Maybe $6,400. 
Why does health care cost so much more in the United States than in other countries? As health economists love to say: “It’s the prices, stupid.” As politicians continue to lament the system’s expense, and more Americans struggle to pay the high and often unpredictable bills that can accompany their health problems, it’s worth looking at just how weird our prices really are relative to the rest of the world. (Sanger-Katz, 12/27)

Columbus Dispatch: Families Crippled By Medical Debt, Even After Comparison Shopping To Find Cheaper Treatment
Shortly after Deb Genetin was diagnosed with colon cancer in November 2018, she was told she couldn’t have the surgery that eventually would end up saving her life — all because of costs. A medical technician at Mercy Health in Springfield walked into the room, right after a surgeon had explained what to expect in surgery, and said “financing isn’t in place,” Genetin said. ...Genetin said she applied for financial aid through Mercy Health to help offset the costs of the surgery but received a rejection letter in the mail last Christmas Eve. (Henry, 12/31)

Kaiser Health News: ‘An Arm And A Leg’: Tradition Grows Into $1 Million Gift For People In Medical Debt 
Every year — for decades — the Buehler family and friends have organized a softball tournament in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area to raise money for someone with big medical expenses. “It’s like a holiday for us in the family,” Ed Buehler, 40, said. “You know, another one that just happens to come in July.” The tournament started in 1980 as a fundraiser for Ed’s dad, Denny Buehler, who was battling leukemia and needed to travel to Seattle for treatment. The tournament typically raises about $10,000 each year. (Weissman, 12/16)

ProPublica/AL.com: What Happens When Sheriffs Release Violent Offenders To Avoid Paying Their Medical Bills
Sheriffs across Alabama and the U.S. regularly find ways to release sick and injured inmates from county jails to avoid paying for their hefty hospital bills, a practice often referred to as medical bond that AL.com and ProPublica reported in September. Some sheriffs defend the practice as a way to keep jail medical costs down while allowing people who aren’t a threat to society to access care. In Alabama, it’s now clear that some of those inmates were in jail awaiting trial on charges that they’d committed violent crimes, even murder, AL.com and ProPublica have found. (Sheets, 12/31)

ProPublica/AL.com: How Some Sheriffs Force Their Inmates Into Medical Debt
In Alabama, the county in which you’re arrested could be the deciding factor in who will be financially responsible for your medical bills behind bars. In Baldwin County, known for its white-sand Gulf Coast beaches and waterfront communities, the sheriff’s office ensures that inmates in the county jail do not have to pay anything more than a $15 copayment for medical care. “Inmates are not billed for the full cost of any medical care either inside or outside” the jail, Sheriff Hoss Mack said in an email. (Sheets, 12/26)

Stat: 3 Drug Pricing Policy Experiments To Watch In 2020 
Politicians spent the better part of 2019 bickering over the best way to lower drug prices. But in the meantime, states, advocates — even the drug and insurance industries — were devising novel strategies for solving this perplexing challenge. 2020 will be the year many of those experimental ideas are tested. If they pan out, they’ll undoubtedly be models for other states or companies — and perhaps serve as inspiration for Washington, too. Below, STAT looks at three of the most interesting ideas. (Florko, 1/2)

The New York Times: Crisis Looms In Antibiotics As Drug Makers Go Bankrupt
At a time when germs are growing more resistant to common antibiotics, many companies that are developing new versions of the drugs are hemorrhaging money and going out of business, gravely undermining efforts to contain the spread of deadly, drug-resistant bacteria. Antibiotic start-ups like Achaogen and Aradigm have gone belly up in recent months, pharmaceutical behemoths like Novartis and Allergan have abandoned the sector and many of the remaining American antibiotic companies are teetering toward insolvency. One of the biggest developers of antibiotics, Melinta Therapeutics, recently warned regulators it was running out of cash. (Jacobs, 12/25)

Reuters: Drugmakers From Pfizer To GSK To Hike U.S. Prices On Over 200 Drugs
Drugmakers including Pfizer Inc, GlaxoSmithKline PLC and Sanofi SA are planning to hike U.S. list prices on more than 200 drugs in the United States on Wednesday, according to drugmakers and data analyzed by healthcare research firm 3 Axis Advisors. Nearly all of the price increases will be below 10%, and around half of them are in the range of 4 to 6%, said 3 Axis co-founder Eric Pachman. The median price increase is around 5%, he said. (Erman and O'Donnell, 12/31)

NPR: A Decade Marked By Outrage Over Drug Prices
Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., was in the middle of describing drug price gouging as a scheme to enrich a few industry executives at the expense of everyday patients when he stopped to reprimand a witness. "It's not funny, Mr. Shkreli," said Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform until his death this past October, to a smirking man at the table before him. "People are dying. And they're getting sicker and sicker." (Lupkin, 12/31)

Boston Globe: An Uncommon Form Of Dementia Hits At A Younger Age; Drug Makers Are Searching For A Treatment
Frontotemporal dementia, or FTD, is an umbrella term for group of rare degenerative brain disorders that attack people in their fifth or sixth decade — generally, much earlier than Alzheimer’s. Together, the diseases make up what appear to be the most prevalent form of dementia in people under age 60. ... There are no treatments for FTD. But at least two drug companies in Massachusetts, Alkermes and Arkuda Therapeutics, are working on potential medicines for the Larsens’ strain, which experts say affects only about 5,000 people in the United States. (Saltzman, 1/1)

Stat: STAT’s Guide To The Most Important, Beneficial Drugs Approved In The Past Decade
The new year will end in a zero, making this a perfect opportunity to look back at the past 10 years of drug approvals. Complaints abound that the drug industry lacks innovation. A quick perusal of the new drugs approved over the last decade shows that isn’t so. We dug through every drug that passed muster with the Food and Drug Administration starting in 2010 and identified ten — along with a dozen honorable mentions — that have had the biggest impact on the companies that sell them, on medicine, and on society as a whole. (Feuerstein and Herper, 12/31)

Stat: Crash And Burn: The Four Biggest Biopharma Failures Of 2019 
In biotech, companies fail for a lot of reasons. The science might not quite work, the drug might be too difficult to sell or investors might run out of patience — or questionable practices might wind up undermining the whole endeavor. For some companies, 2019 was the end of the line. STAT took a look back at some of the most significant biopharma blowups of the year — and the consequences they had for patients, investors and employees. (Sheridan, 12/27)

The Baltimore Sun: Maryland Prescription Drug Board Sets First Meeting 
A prescription drug affordability board in Maryland that is the first of its kind in the nation has scheduled its first meeting. All five members have been appointed, and the first meeting is scheduled for Jan. 13 in Annapolis. ...Lawmakers approved legislation in 2019 to create the independent body, which will evaluate and investigate the cost of particularly expensive prescription drugs or ones whose prices abruptly increase. If the board determines a medication presents an affordability challenge for Maryland residents, the board can set an upper payment limit that state or local government health care plans would agree to pay for the drug. (1/1)

The Associated Press: Century-Old TB Vaccine May Work Better If Given In A New Way
Scientists think they’ve figured out how to make a century-old tuberculosis vaccine far more protective: Simply give the shot a different way. In a study with monkeys, injecting the vaccine straight into the bloodstream dramatically improved its effectiveness over today's skin-deep shot, researchers reported Wednesday. (Neergaard, 1/1)

The New York Times: New Injection Method Makes An Old TB Vaccine Far More Powerful
The tuberculosis vaccine, known as BCG for Bacille Calmette-Guérin after the French scientists who developed it, is made from a live, weakened form of the tuberculosis bacteria found in cattle. It has been in use since 1921, is made by many companies and costs as little as $1 a dose for use in developing countries. It is considered safe even for newborns. However, it is not very effective. It protects infants against some devastating forms of TB, but eventually wears off and does not protect adolescents or adults against lung infections, the form that kills most TB victims. (McNeil, 1/1)

Stat: Delivering The TB Vaccine By IV Better Protects Monkeys, New Study Finds
“The question is can we ever do IV vaccination [with the TB vaccine] in humans? That’s a little bit tricky,” he added. Experts said there are questions about the safety of delivering the live — though weakened — bacteria in a TB vaccine into the bloodstream. There would also practical hurdles to delivering an IV vaccine in low-resource areas, where health providers often have difficulty reaching people to provide even simpler vaccinations, like the polio vaccine given through drops in the mouth. (Thielking, 1/1)

NPR: Listen: Researchers Have Found A Way To Improve TB Vaccine
The vaccine for tuberculosis has been around since the 1920s but it doesn't work very well. A new study shows that the vaccine could be far more effective if given at higher doses, intravenously. (Huang, 1/2)

Reuters: Study Finds Google System Could Improve Breast Cancer Detection
A Google artificial intelligence system proved as good as expert radiologists at detecting which women had breast cancer based on screening mammograms and showed promise at reducing errors, researchers in the United States and Britain reported. The study, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, is the latest to show that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve the accuracy of screening for breast cancer, which affects one in eight women globally. (Steenhuysen, 1/1)

The New York Times: A.I. Is Learning To Read Mammograms
The new system for reading mammograms, which are X-rays of the breast, is still being studied and is not yet available for widespread use. It is just one of Google’s ventures into medicine. Computers can be trained to recognize patterns and interpret images, and the company has already created algorithms to help detect lung cancers on CT scans, diagnose eye disease in people with diabetes and find cancer on microscope slides. “This paper will help move things along quite a bit,” said Dr. Constance Lehman, director of breast imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the study. “There are challenges to their methods. But having Google at this level is a very good thing.” (Grady, 1/1)

The Wall Street Journal: Google AI Beats Doctors At Breast Cancer Detection—Sometimes
The health data used in the breast-cancer project doesn’t include identifiable information, Google Health officials said, and the data was stripped of personal indicators before being given to Google. Radiologists and AI specialists said the model is promising, and officials at Google Health said the system could eventually support radiologists in improving breast-cancer detection and outcomes, as well as efficiency in mammogram reading. (Abbott, 1/1)

The New York Times: The Watch Is Smart, But It Can’t Replace Your Doctor
The Apple Watch has been quite successful as a smart watch. The company would also like it to succeed as a medical device. The recently published results of the Apple Heart Study in the New England Journal of Medicine show there’s still a long way to go. An estimated six million people in the United States — nearly 2 percent — have atrial fibrillation, a type of irregular heartbeat that brings increased risk of events like clots, heart attacks and strokes. It’s thought that about 700,000 of people with the condition don’t know they have it. (Carroll, 12/26)

The Washington Post: Facebook Takes Action After LGBTQ Groups Complain About HIV Ads They Find Misleading
Facebook has quietly started removing some misleading ads about HIV prevention medication, responding to a deluge of activists, health experts and government regulators who said the tech giant had created the conditions for a public-health crisis. The ads at issue — purchased by pages affiliated with personal-injury lawyers and seen millions of times — linked drugs designed to stop the spread of HIV with severe bone and kidney damage. (Romm, 12/30)

Stat: 3 Stories To Watch In Health Tech In 2020 
Judging by the numbers, digital health companies had another huge year in 2019. Total investment in the sector was expected to reach a record $8.4 billion, as firms raked in cash to develop novel wearables, personalized digital services, and machine learning tools to improve treatment of debilitating diseases. Several companies also entered the public markets, and tech giants such as Apple (APPL), Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOGL), and Microsoft (MSFT) ramped up their health investments and recruitment of clinical leaders.  (Ross and Robbins, 12/24)

CNN: Top 10 Health Questions America Asked Dr. Google In 2019
Google users in the United States had a lot of questions about blood pressure, the keto diet and hiccups in 2019. Those topics were among the 10 most-searched health-related questions on the search engine this year, according to new data from Google. The list was based on search terms collected between January and early December. (Howard, 12/30)

The Washington Post: ‘Abortion Reversal’ Treatments Are Dangerous And Possibly Deadly For Women, New Study Shows
Several states now require women who seek medication abortions to be provided with dubious information that the procedure could be stopped, allowing a pregnancy to continue. But when researchers attempted to carry out a legitimate study of whether these “abortion reversal” treatments were effective and safe, they had to stop almost immediately — because some of the women who participated in the study experienced dangerous hemorrhaging that sent them to the hospital. (Epstein, 12/24)

The Associated Press: Mississippi Asks Appeals Court To Reconsider Abortion Ruling
Mississippi is asking a federal appeals court to reconsider a ruling that said the state’s ban on most abortions at 15 weeks of pregnancy is unconstitutional. The ruling was issued Dec. 13 by a panel of three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, dealing a blow to those seeking to overturn the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. The next day, Republican Gov. Phil Bryant said he wants the state to appeal to the Supreme Court. (12/27)

Houston Chronicle: Texas Has Spent Close To $6 Million Fighting Abortion. Here’s How.
State officials take pride in protecting Texas’ image as a defender of the unborn, but those fights have cost taxpayers $5.6 million to protect a law struck down as unconstitutional and others that have no resolution in sight. The legal fights over those state laws and administrative directives that have built additional restrictions on abortions and providers have led Texans to spend $3.1 million playing defense. The costs include staff salaries, travel expenses, filing fees and expert witnesses, according to state records released to Hearst Newspapers. In one case, Texas was also ordered to pay abortion providers $2.5 million for its attorneys’ fees. (Zelinski, 1/1)

NPR: A Visit To The Abortion Clinic At The Center Of A Supreme Court Case
On a recent Saturday morning at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, La., Kathaleen Pittman was preparing for a day of procedures, as a couple dozen patients sat quietly in the waiting area. Her clinic is challenging a law passed by Louisiana's state legislature in 2014, which requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital in case of an emergency. The case, June Medical Services, LLC v. Gee, is scheduled to go before the U.S. Supreme Court next year, and the court's decision has the potential to chip away at existing precedent protecting abortion rights. (McCammon, 12/29)

USA Today/The Fuller Project: Worried About Abortion Laws? More Catholic Hospitals Also Seen As Threat
In 1995, Lois Uttley was working as a reproductive rights advocate in New York when the merger of two hospitals in Troy, a city near Albany, caught her off-guard. One was secular, the other, Catholic. The secular hospital agreed to abide by rules written by Catholic bishops banning certain procedures deemed “immoral” by the church, like abortion, contraception, in-vitro fertilization and tubal ligation. (Rani, 12/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Hospitals Merged. Quality Didn’t Improve.
The quality of care at hospitals acquired during a recent wave of deal making got worse or stayed the same, new research found, a blow to a frequently cited rationale for tie-ups. Hospital merger-and-acquisition activity has surged in recent years, with executives involved in transactions making the case that greater size will boost quality with new investments and yield other improvements as deal makers benefit from each others’ strengths. (Evans, 1/1)

ProPublica: What It Looks Like When A Hospital We Investigated Erases $11.9 Million In Medical Debt
When Danielle Robinson got a letter in the mail from Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare in October, she braced herself. She’d missed a court-ordered payment to the hospital after she was laid off from her job in September. In 2018, the massive nonprofit health care system sued her for just over $11,500 in unpaid hospital bills, plus $3,800 in attorney’s fees. In April, a Shelby County General Sessions Court judge ordered her to pay $150 per month toward the debt. (Thomas, 12/24)

Kaiser Health News: Hospital Group Mum As Members Pursue Patients With Lawsuits And Debt Collectors
The American Hospital Association, the biggest hospital trade group, says it promotes “best practices” among medical systems to treat patients more effectively and improve community health. But the powerful association has stayed largely silent about hospitals suing thousands of patients for overdue bills, seizing homes or wages and even forcing families into bankruptcy. Atlantic Health System, whose CEO is the AHA’s chairman, Brian Gragnolati, has sued patients for unpaid bills thousands of times this year, court records show, including a family struggling to pay bills for three children with cystic fibrosis. (Hancock, 12/28)

Seattle Times: Amid Serious Violations At Washington’s Private Psychiatric Hospitals, A Regulator Remained On The Sidelines 
The patient had been admitted to Smokey Point Behavioral Hospital on a 90-day involuntary commitment order. But when his health-insurance plan sent a team to check on him, some 20 days into his stay, he was gone. Representatives of the Community Health Plan of Washington, which provides health services for Medicaid clients, went to the Marysville psychiatric hospital with concerns after reading a Seattle Times investigation of Smokey Point and its parent company, US HealthVest, published three days earlier. (Gilbert, 12/30)

Seattle Times: Washington Health Department Seeks Greater Power To Regulate Private Psychiatric Hospitals 
The Washington State Department of Health is putting together legislation to give it greater enforcement power over private psychiatric hospitals, including the authority to immediately halt patient admissions and to levy fines of up to $10,000 per violation. The agency also wants the Legislature in the session that begins Jan. 13 to create a provisional, two-year license for new facilities that would bring more frequent inspections, and require psychiatric hospitals to report every escape and death of a patient within three days, according to a draft reviewed by The Seattle Times. (Gilbert, 12/29)

ProPublica: Chicago Psychiatric Hospital Will Lose Federal Money, And Its License Is Threatened After Allegations Of Abuse
After more than a year of lawsuits and government extensions, federal authorities this week ended their Medicare agreement with a Chicago psychiatric hospital plagued by allegations of abuse and safety violations. The Illinois Department of Public Health said Thursday it is moving forward with plans to revoke the hospital’s license. (Eldeib, 12/27)

Seattle Times: Data Shows Hundreds Of Aspergillus Infections At Hospitals, But Hospitals Say They’re Not The Source 
When Seattle Children’s Hospital revealed last month that 14 children dating back to 2001 had been infected with Aspergillus mold, six of them fatally, the cases had an unusual feature in common. They all involved patients who had contracted the infection during surgery, ostensibly as spores from the fungus contaminated the operative wound. It is the rarest way of getting such an infection, according to medical experts, that almost by definition can only happen in a hospital. (Gilbert, 12/27)

Houston Chronicle: No Contract In Sight For Houston Methodist And UnitedHealthcare
With a week left until 100,000 UnitedHealthcare plan members lose in-network access to Houston Methodist’s hospitals and outpatient clinics, there’s still no contract in sight between the health care provider and insurance giant. ...The two entities have just over a week to reach a deal before the contract ends Dec. 31. The termination, which comes after a two-decade relationship between UnitedHealthcare and Houston Methodist, is expected to affect anyone covered by a UnitedHealthcare employer-sponsored plan or enrolled in its Medicare Advantage program for seniors. (Wu, 12/24)

The Advocate: Our Lady Of Lourdes Finalizing Complete Purchase Of The Heart Hospital Of Lafayette 
Our Lady of Lourdes will be finalizing its purchase of the Heart Hospital of Lafayette early next month. KATC reports that Our Lady of Lourdes CEO Bryan Lee sent at letter to staff Friday congratulating OLOL employees on their hard work that led to the deal. In the letter, he said that a purchase agreement was reached with Lafayette Cardiologists and that Friday marked the first day of "go-live" preparations to have the Heart Hospital of Lafayette join their network as Our Lady of Lourdes Heart Hospital. (Boudreaux, 12/27)

The CT Mirror: Hospital Agreement Is A Road Map For Funding Community Nonprofits
The state’s settlement providing $872 million to Connecticut’s hospitals over seven years negotiated by the governor and approved by the General Assembly last month at long last moves policymakers past a thorny fiscal issue that has taken up significant airspace in the state capitol for the last few years. (Casa, 1/2)

The New York Times: Chinese Scientist Who Genetically Edited Babies Gets 3 Years In Prison
A court in China on Monday sentenced He Jiankui, the researcher who shocked the global scientific community when he claimed that he had created the world’s first genetically edited babies, to three years in prison for carrying out “illegal medical practices.” In a surprise announcement from a trial that was closed to the public, the court in the southern city of Shenzhen found Dr. He guilty of forging approval documents from ethics review boards to recruit couples in which the man had H.I.V. and the woman did not, Xinhua, China’s official news agency, reported. (Wee, 12/30)

The Wall Street Journal: Chinese Scientist Who Gene-Edited Babies Is Sent To Prison
On Monday, a Shenzhen court convicted Dr. He and two others on charges of illegally practicing medicine related to carrying out human-embryo gene-editing intended for reproduction, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The court said Dr. He hoped to profit by commercializing the technology and that he forged documents and concealed the true nature of the procedures from both the patients he recruited and doctors who performed them, according to Xinhua. The report said all three defendants pleaded guilty. (Wen and Marcus, 12/30)

BuzzFeed News: China Sentences He Jiankui For CRISPR Twin Babies Experiment
“The prison sentence and stiff financial penalty sends a message to other Chinese scientists that unsanctioned efforts at human germline editing will not be tolerated,” University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine researcher Kiran Musunuru told BuzzFeed News, by email. “I expect that it will have a deterrent effect, certainly in China and possibly elsewhere.” (Vergano, 12/30)

CNN: He Jiankui: Chinese Gene-Editing Scientist Jailed For 3 Years
In January this year, investigators from Guangdong Province Health Commission said that He had conducted the work "in pursuit of personal fame and fortune, with self-raised funds and deliberate evasion of supervision and private recruitment of related personnel." The authorities also said He forged ethical review documents and blood tests to circumvent a ban on assisted reproduction for HIV-positive patients. (Hollignsworth and Yee, 12/30)

Reuters: Chinese Court Sentences 'Gene-Editing' Scientist To Three Years In Prison
In November 2018, He Jiankui, then an associate professor at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, said he had used gene-editing technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to change the genes of twin girls to protect them from getting infected with the AIDS virus in the future. The backlash in China and globally about the ethics of his research and work was fast and widespread. (12/30)

CBS News: Chinese Scientist He Jiankui, Doctor Who Touted CRISPR-Edited Babies, Sentenced To Three Years In Prison
Gene-editing for reproductive purposes is illegal in most countries. China's health ministry issued regulations in 2003 prohibiting gene-editing of human embryos, though the procedure is allowed for "non-reproductive purposes". (12/30)

The Associated Press: Scientist Who Claimed To Make World's First Gene-Edited Babies Sentenced To 3 Years
Two other researchers involved in the project received lesser sentences and fines. Zhang Renli was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 1 million yuan. Qin Jinzhou received an 18-month sentence, though he got a two-year reprieve, and a 500,000-yuan fine. (12/30)

The Washington Post: He Jiankui, The Chinese Scientist Who Said He Created Gene-Edited Babies, Is Sentenced To Prison
Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist at the University of California at Berkeley who co-invented CRISPR, the gene editing technology that He utilized, has been outspoken in condemning the experiments and has repeatedly said CRISPR is not ready to be used for reproductive purposes. “When I saw the announcement from Dr. He, initially, one of my very early thoughts was, ‘Gosh, I wonder if this is just the first of multiple such announcements that will start to be made by fertility clinics in various countries,’" Doudna recalled Monday. “That hasn’t happened — and I think that is good.” (Johnson, 12/30)

NPR: Listen: Chinese Scientist He Jiankui Sentenced To 3 Years In Prison For Editing Human Genes
Chinese scientist He Jiankui has been sentenced to three years in prison for conducting gene-editing experiments on human embryos. (Stein, 12/30)

The New York Times: As More Mothers Fill Prisons, Children Suffer ‘A Primal Wound’
Every month, Lila Edwards wakes up early for a two-hour road trip with a group of girls that ends with them walking single file through a metal detector. Inside an empty classroom, Lila eagerly and anxiously awaits Inmate 01740964. When the inmate, a woman serving a 40-year sentence for murder, walked in during a recent visit, Lila collapsed into her arms and didn’t let go for more than a minute. These monthly visits at a minimum security prison are the only times that Lila, who is 10 years old and in the fifth grade, touches her mother. (Levin, 12/28)

Stat: What Will 2020 Bring For Medicine And Science? 
Last year, when we asked science and health care soothsayers to peek ahead to 2019, they told us that methamphetamine use would rise (it did), tumor organoids would near clinical use for personalizing cancer treatment and better targeting clinical trials (that’s happening), and price transparency wouldn’t bring lower health spending (that’s true, too). But nobody predicted the outbreak of lung injuries tied to vaping, the failure and attempted resurrection of Biogen’s Alzheimer’s drug aducanumab, or the restoration of cellular functions in pig brains after death. We’re back with a new set of predictions for 2020. Let’s see how our experts do this time. (12/30)

ProPublica: The Family Wanted A Do Not Resuscitate Order. The Doctors Didn’t.
Three weeks after his heart transplant, Andrey Jurtschenko still had not woken up. A towering figure at 6 feet, 3 inches, with salt-and-pepper hair and matching mustache, Jurtschenko — known to one and all as Andy — delighted friends and family with his seemingly endless supply of wisecracks and goofball humor. On April 5, 2018, he went into surgery at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey, for a new heart and what he hoped would be renewed energy. He dreamed of returning to his carpet business and to enjoying New York Mets games on the weekends after years of exhaustion and strain caused by congestive heart failure. (Chen, 12/31)

The Associated Press: 'Tough Year' For Measles And Other Infectious Diseases In US
This year, the germs roared back. Measles tripled. Hepatitis A mushroomed. A rare but deadly mosquito-borne disease increased. And that was just the United States. (12/27)

The Washington Post: 2019 Was A Year Of Deadly Health Crises. These Were Some Of The Worst Outbreaks.
Over the past year, health crises have sparked fears and dominated headlines across the globe. In Congo, an Ebola crisis that erupted the year before continued to grow, and violence against health workers hindered efforts to control it. (O'Grady, 1/1)

The Washington Post: 19 Good Things That Happened In 2019
No. 2 from The Washington Post's list of 19 good things that happened in 2019: Another frightful disease may be checked by a new vaccine protecting people from the Ebola virus. The director-general of the World Health Organization called the progress in vaccine development “a triumph for public health, and a testimony to the unprecedented collaboration between scores of experts worldwide.” (12/30)

NPR: Sickle Cell Therapy With CRISPR Gene Editing Shows Promise
When Victoria Gray was just 3 months old, her family discovered something was terribly wrong. "My grandma was giving me a bath, and I was crying. So they took me to the emergency room to get me checked out," Gray says. "That's when they found out that I was having my first crisis." It was Gray's first sickle cell crisis. These episodes are one of the worst things about sickle cell disease, a common and often devastating genetic blood disorder. (Stein, 12/25)

The Wall Street Journal: What To Know Before Resolving To Eat Less Meat
Becky Talbot has pledged to go vegan for a month, joining almost 30,000 people across the U.S. who signed up for Veganuary, a campaign encouraging people to do without meat in January. Veganuary—which, like the popular Dry January no-alcohol regimen, also originated in the U.K.—is one take on New Year’s resolutions to cut back on meat because of health, environmental or animal-welfare concerns. (Reddy, 1/1)

The Washington Post: Out Of Prison And Trying To Build A New, Healthy Life
Justin Jones got hooked on painkillers after he flipped his truck as a teenager, put his head through the windshield and fractured his wrist and sternum. When doctors would no longer write prescriptions for him, he began buying — and selling — drugs on the streets of Durham and Hillsborough, N.C. His first arrests occurred before he turned 20. (Waters, 12/28)

The Associated Press: In A 24/7 Food Culture, Periodic Fasting Gains Followers
On low-carb diets, meat and cheese are OK. On low-fat diets, fruit and oatmeal are fine. With the latest diet trend, no foods at all are allowed for long stretches of time. A diet that forbids eating for hours on end might seem doomed in a culture where food is constantly available, but apps and Facebook groups are popping up for people practicing "intermittent fasting." Bri Wyatt, a 32-year-old Tennessee resident, tried it this summer. “At first I was like, there’s no way,” she said. (1/1)

USA Today: Autism Center: Autistic Kids Spell To Communicate, Advocate To Police
On a humid morning this past summer, three college-age boys walked to their local river to make mud together for an eco-friendly art project. Mixing dirt and water using sticks, and pushing a paint roller back and forth in the slimy liquid, they practiced a skill they want to improve: movement. By filling in stencils, the boys transformed their motions into communication, even though they weren't speaking. (Thornton, 1/2)

Kaiser Health News: Extending ‘Healthspan’: Brain Scientists Tap Into The Secrets Of Living Well Longer
Retired state employees Vickey Benford, 63, and Joan Caldwell, 61, are Golden Rollers, a group of the over-50 set that gets out on assorted bikes — including trikes for adults they call “three wheels of awesome” — for an hour of trail riding and camaraderie. “I love to exercise, and I like to stay fit,” said Caldwell, who tried out a recumbent bike, a low-impact option that can be easier on the back. “It keeps me young.” (Jayson, 1/2)

CNN: Volunteering And Other Good Deeds Reduce Physical Pain, A Study Finds
We've long been taught that helping others helps ourselves. As Charles Dickens wrote, "No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another." And science has shown that altruistic behaviors -- defined as putting the well-being of others before our own without expecting anything in return -- actually do improve our health. (LaMotte, 12/30)

ProPublica/Anchorage Daily News: How A Police Officer In Iowa Helped Protect An Alaskan Police Force — From Thousands Of Miles Away
On Michael Wongittilin’s first day in uniform as a police officer in Savoonga, Alaska, 11 years ago, a man walked into the village’s public safety office and pointed a gun at him. Wongittillin jumped behind a desk and then lurched out, ran toward the assailant and bombarded him with pepper spray — the strongest weapon that Savoonga officers carry. (Williams, 12/24)

The New York Times: More People Are Dying On New York City’s Streets. What Went Wrong?
As New York City tackled the stubborn problem of street safety in recent years, it earned praise for pushing down traffic deaths to their lowest level in a century and helped begin a national movement to make roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists. But years of progress could be in jeopardy: The number of traffic deaths rose in 2019, fueled by a spike in cyclist fatalities that has devastated and angered the city’s vibrant biking community. (Fitzsimmons, 1/1)

The Washington Post: States Have So Many Foster Children They're Putting Them In Jails
Though he's never been convicted of a crime, Geard Mitchell spent part of his childhood in a juvenile detention center, at times sleeping on cement floors under harsh fluorescent lights left on through the night during lockdowns. He attended high school by clicking through online courses and had “no one to talk to but the walls” because of restrictions on phone calls. (Wax-Thibodeaux, 12/30)

KCUR: Kansas Sees Shortage Of Psychiatrists And Other Mental Health Providers
Like the rest of the United States, Kansas is seeing an increase in patients seeking mental health treatment. But the state can’t find enough doctors, nurses and therapists to treat them. Providers say the problem is worse in the state’s least-populated rural areas, where clinic jobs can stay open for years at a time. ...One measure from the federal government suggests only nine of the counties in Kansas have enough psychiatrists, and they’re mostly in urban areas: Johnson, Wyandotte, Shawnee, Douglas, Harvey, Sedgwick, Marion, McPherson and Miami counties. (Ujiyediin, 12/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Wave Of Blazes Strains Firefighting Network, From Australia To California
For years, the U.S. and Australia shared firefighting resources—such as specialist firefighters—in each of their off-seasons. But that tradition is coming under pressure as fire seasons start earlier and run for longer, due in part to climate change, scientists say, as well as drought and extreme temperatures. Major fires broke out in Australia within days of a wildfire north of San Francisco in late October, a period of extreme fire weather that had California utilities collectively cutting power to millions of people. (Pannett and Cherney, 1/2)

Los Angeles Times: California, Climate Change And The Trauma Of The Last Decade
The wildfires were more destructive. The drought was the longest on record. And the storms, when they finally came, unleashed more water than our dams could contain. To live in California over the last decade has meant enduring a steady procession of weather-related disasters, each one seemingly worse than the last. Five of the 10 largest fires in state record books have occurred since 2010. (Netburn, 12/26)

The Washington Post: An Ohio City Known For Helping The Homeless Now Questions Its Limits
This small heartland city, situated almost halfway between Dayton and Cincinnati, has long had a heart. In good times and bad, it has offered a generous network of privately funded homeless shelters, drug rehabilitation facilities and soup kitchens, plus a library that promotes access for all. Yet in recent months, officials and residents have begun to question whom those services are benefiting and how to shoulder the cost. (Williams, 1/1)

The Associated Press: Judge Blocks California Law On Dialysis Clinics
A federal judge on Monday blocked enforcement of a California law aimed at preventing increased billing costs at dialysis clinics. There is "a dire public interest" in granting a preliminary injunction that would bar enforcement for months while a lawsuit against it proceeds through the courts, Judge David O. Carter said. (12/31)

NH Times Union: Norovirus Contributed To Death Of Adult Who Got Sick After Event At Puritan Backroom, Health Officials Say 
Norovirus was contributing cause in the death of a Hillsborough County resident who died after attending an event at a Puritan Backroom function hall Nov. 24, the state chief medical examiner's office said Tuesday. The office completed its final report Tuesday after conducting an autopsy last month. The person who died was among more than a dozen who fell ill with a gastrointestinal illness after attending a private event at the popular restaurant and conference center, according to health officials. (Hayward and Feely, 12/31)

The Oregonian: Family Sues Bend Hospital For $26.5 Million After Woman Died Following Breast Infection
St. Charles Health System is facing a $26.5 million wrongful death lawsuit from the estate of a Jacksonville woman who died of septic shock following a breast infection in 2017. The Bend Bulletin reported that the family of Casey Gwenyth Galusha-Beck filed suit Dec. 24 in Deschutes County Circuit Court, naming two St. Charles doctors as co-defendants. The suit alleges that after Galusha-Beck’s infection was successfully treated, hospital staff missed obvious signs of adrenal insufficiency, which led to circulatory collapse and death. (Andrews, 12/31)

Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Woman Goes From Being Homeless To Helping Those In Need Get Health Care 
When Aakifah Sheares applied for an administrative assistant job, she had no idea her experience being homeless or surviving domestic violence would help her land an entirely different gig. For almost two years now, Sheares has been a community health worker for Mount Carmel Health System. ...Sheares, 47, of the South Side, works with people in some of Columbus’ more in-need communities. Some days she’s based in Mount Carmel’s Franklinton location, but other days she travels directly to the homes of the people she helps. She guides her clients through the complexities of the health care system, including paperwork and finding the right doctors and specialists. She also checks in with them on a regular basis to offer support in the form of being someone to talk to. (Filby, 12/27)

Texas Tribune: In Rural Texas, People Experiencing Homelessness Are Invisible
Rural counties don’t typically conduct the homelessness counts that urban areas like Austin, Dallas or Houston organize each January. But the Texas Homeless Network estimates that in 2019 more than 8,000 people experienced homelessness in 215 Texas counties outside the state’s urban regions. That’s almost how many people experience homelessness in Dallas and Houston combined. (Garnham, 1/2)

The Baltimore Sun: Slow Burn: Maryland Medical Marijuana Companies Fume As Licensing Process Drags On 
When Maryland launched its medical cannabis industry, the first companies to nab coveted licenses for growing, processing and selling the drug were overwhelmingly white-owned. So, state lawmakers ordered more licenses to be issued, with the goal of getting more black people and women into the industry. But a year and a half later, those new licenses are on hold amid five lawsuits and accusations from applicants that the process was botched or biased. (Wood, 12/27)

Belleville News-Democrat: Legal Marijuana Sales Start In Collinsville And Across Illinois
The first day of 2020 has been highly anticipated for many — from baby boomers who remember smoking pot before the government declared the drug wasn’t safe to Medicaid patients who have waited to use cannabis for pain management in place of pills. It is the first time anyone 21 years old or older can legally buy marijuana in Illinois, the 11th state to legalize weed for people other than medical cannabis patients. (Cortes, 1/1)

San Francisco Chronicle: Lab Says Its Marijuana Breath Analyzer Will Hit The Market In 2020
Despite marijuana’s growing acceptance nationwide and its legality for recreational use in California, there is no consensus on how THC, its psychoactive ingredient, affects drivers or what levels constitute driving under the influence. That has left lawmakers, police and users grappling with a critical question: If you’re using marijuana, when is it safe to get behind the wheel? An Oakland company believes it’s solved one piece of that puzzle. (Cassidy, 1/1)

American Academy Of Pediatrics: National Instant Criminal Background Check And Youth Gun Carrying
Adolescents in states that require U/BCs on all prospective gun buyers are less likely to carry guns compared with those in states that only require background checks on sales through federally licensed firearms dealers. The NICS was only effective in reducing adolescent gun carrying in the presence of state laws requiring U/BCs on all prospective gun buyers. However, state U/BC laws had no effect on adolescent gun carrying until after the NICS was implemented. (Timsina et al, 1/1)

The New York Times: Antibiotics May Raise The Risk Of Allergies
Giving antibiotics to infants may increase their risk for developing allergies, a new study suggests. Researchers used records of 798,426 children in the Military Health System database from 2001 to 2013, tracking their antibiotic prescriptions in infancy and allergy diagnoses in childhood. About 17 percent of them were treated with one or more courses of antibiotics. (Bakalar, 12/31)

JAMA Psychiatry: All-Cause And Cause-Specific Mortality Among People Using Extramedical Opioids: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis
The findings suggest that people using extramedical opioids experience significant excess mortality, much of which is preventable. The range of causes for which excess mortality was observed highlights the multiplicity of risk exposures experienced by this population and the need for comprehensive responses to address these. Better data on cause-specific mortality in this population in several world regions appear to be needed. (Larney et al, 12/26)

JAMA Internal Medicine: Association Between Automotive Assembly Plant Closures And Opioid Overdose Mortality In The United States: A Difference-In-Differences Analysis
From 1999 to 2016, automotive assembly plant closures were associated with increases in opioid overdose mortality. These findings highlight the potential importance of eroding economic opportunity as a factor in the US opioid overdose crisis. (Venkataramani et al, 12/30)

The New York Times: Long-Term Insecticide Exposure Tied To Heart Disease
Prolonged exposure to a widely used household insecticide may increase the risk for cardiovascular disease and early death, new research suggests. Pyrethrin and its synthetic derivatives are used in garden insecticides, pet sprays, mosquito repellents and lice shampoos. They are extremely effective and cause no acute reactions in humans, but they are absorbed by the body and then metabolized and excreted in urine. (Bakalar, 12/30)

Des Moines Register: America Needs A Bold Yet Pragmatic Vision On Health Care
In living rooms and coffee shops across all of Iowa’s 99 counties, I am forever reminded that health care is the paramount issue facing Americans. Our current system is deeply broken, and our country needs a bold vision and a pragmatic approach for improving health care. In many ways, a candidate’s approach to health care defines their governing and leadership style. It answers important questions about their values, vision, pragmatism and management style. The Democratic Party should have as its true north universal access — where every American has health care coverage as a right of citizenship. We should support plans that encourage innovation — curing diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s — and that create a framework for getting costs under control. My BetterCare Plan uniquely achieves all of these goals. (John Delaney, Democratic presidential candidate, 1/1)

The Washington Post: Why Democrats Can’t Run Only On Protecting Obamacare 
Now that a federal appeals court has in all likelihood pushed the final reckoning for the Affordable Care Act past November 2020, many Democrats would like to turn the upcoming presidential and congressional elections into a defense of Obamacare, and leave behind that pesky and unpleasant debate over Medicare-for-all. As Politico reported last week, “Democratic strategists and candidates are eager to run a health care playbook that mirrors that of the party’s House takeover in 2018.” But simply promising to build on, strengthen and protect the ACA won’t be enough in 2020. (Helaine Olen , 12/30)

Stat: Addiction Treatment Is Broken. Here's What It Should Look Like
“If you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply just to a baseball stadium in a cornfield. I believe that the same principle will work for creating affordable, effective treatment for addiction in the United States. Despite well-meaning rhetoric and funding from sources both public and private, the U.S. has an appalling dearth of person-centered care for the millions of Americans living with addiction, the biggest public health crisis of our time. I have worked in the recovery field for more than 30 years. (William Stauffer, 2/2)

The New York Times: The Patriarchy Of Alcoholics Anonymous
I got sober in 2013. It took me about six months to transition from throwing back a few bottles of wine or pints of cheap whiskey a night to total abstinence. I didn’t go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn’t go to 90 meetings in 90 days. I didn’t have a sponsor. I didn’t work the steps. Most important: I wasn’t required to enumerate my character defects and work to eliminate them, or to buy into the idea that an outsize ego and lack of humility were the causes of my need to numb myself with alcohol. (Holly Whitaker, 12/27)

Stat: He Jiankui Is Going To Jail. Would The U.S. Criminally Prosecute A Rogue Gene-Editing Researcher? 
On Monday, 13 months after He Jiankui announced that he had created the world’s first gene-edited babies, the Chinese scientist was sentenced to three years in prison and fined $430,000. Working with two embryologists, who were also sentenced to fines and imprisonment, and an “unsuspecting doctor,” He used in vitro fertilization to create single cell embryos, whose DNA he then altered with the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 to carry a gene variant thought to confer resistance to HIV. (Josephine Johnston, 12/31)

The New York Times: Why Is America So Depressed?
Everyone has his or her own definition of a political crisis. Mine is when our collective mental health starts having a profound effect on our politics — and vice versa. It cannot be a simple coincidence that the two have declined in tandem. The American Psychiatric Association reported that from 2016 to 2017, the number of adults who described themselves as more anxious than the previous year rose 36 percent. (Lee Siegel, 1/2)

St. Louis Post Dispatch: Tale Of The Gut-Shredding Magnets Shows Where De-Regulation Zealotry Can Take Us.
Three years ago, a type of small, powerful magnet used in children’s toys was returned to the market after a federal court lifted a government ban. The magnets can be lethal when kids swallow them, but manufacturers said they would address that concern through voluntary industry standards — an increasingly popular way of policing the marketplace that effectively curtails government regulators.It also curtails safety. A Washington Post investigation found that in the three years since the magnets returned to the market under the supposedly careful eye of manufacturers’ self-regulation, emergency rooms are seeing record numbers of kids for related injuries. (1/1)

The Washington Post: Diabetes Brings Constant Worries — Especially When Deductibles Reset
If a night goes by and I make it until morning without hearing an alarm sounding from my daughter’s room, I rise with a slight tinge of panic, wondering whether she is okay. If I’m lucky, a week will pass without me waking at 2, 3 or 4 a.m. But even on those nights when I do slip from the covers, I often return with emotions that keep me from returning to sleep. (Erinne Magee, 12/30)

NPR: For Healthy New Year's Habits, Learn From The World's Longest-Lived Peoples
As a doctor, I'm often asked for medical advice by friends, family members, even new acquaintances: What about this diet? What should I do about this symptom? What about this medication? People are usually disappointed when I don't share their enthusiasm about the latest health fads. Members of my family, in particular, are often underwhelmed by my medical advice. (John Schumann, 1/1)

NPR: Placenta-Eating's Disputed Science Gets A Lift From 'Highly Medicalized' Childbirth
When Brooke Brumfield wasn't battling morning sickness, she craved nachos. Like many first-time expectant mothers, she was nervous and excited about her pregnancy. She had just bought a house with her husband, a wildland firefighter who had enrolled in paramedic school to transition to firefighting closer to home. Everything was going according to plan until 20 weeks into Brumfield's pregnancy, when she lost her job at a financial technology startup and, with it, her salary and three months' paid maternity leave. (Daniela Blei, 12/27)

Boston Globe: DeVos Restores Fairness To Campus Sexual Misconduct Cases
Perhaps the federal Department of Education shouldn’t micromanage college disciplinary procedures at all. But policy makers like DeVos are right to remind schools that, although federal law prohibits schools from responding to claims of sexual misconduct in a discriminatory way, schools should take care to handle all claims fairly and with due process. (Jennifer Braceras, 1/2)

Des Moines Register: Iowa Needs An Immunization For Officials Against Ignorance On Vaccines
A thistle to Rep. Jeff Shipley for spreading his painful ignorance about vaccines. The Republican from Fairfield should either get educated or get off social media. He felt compelled to respond on Twitter to a California lawmaker who has written laws strengthening oversight of school vaccine exemptions and limiting parents’ ability to opt out of vaccinating their children. Shipley called him “a medical rapist” before saying “pharma fascist” or “corporate vaccine whore" would be more appropriate terms. (12/31)