The New York Times: Trump’s $4.8 Trillion Budget Would Cut Safety Net Programs And Boost Defense
President Trump released a $4.8 trillion budget proposal on Monday that includes a familiar list of deep cuts to student loan assistance, affordable housing efforts, food stamps and Medicaid, reflecting Mr. Trump’s election-year effort to continue shrinking the federal safety net. (Tankersley, Sanger-Katz, Rappeport and Cochrane, 2/10)

The New York Times: In Trump’s Budget, Big Health Care Cuts But Few Details
Mr. Trump is running for re-election this year, so his budget can be read as a policy blueprint for his second term if he wins. The budget leaves to the imagination just what that vision is. Unlike in previous years, when the health care budget laid out specific plans to repeal large sections of the Affordable Care Act and replace it, this year’s proposal barely mentions President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. But the deep cuts enshrined in the budget’s numbers are not consistent with modest tweaks. Taken together with Medicaid changes recommended elsewhere in the budget, the proposal would strip about $1 trillion out of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s premium subsidies, the two pillars of the law’s expansion of insurance coverage. By 2029, the cuts to those programs in Mr. Trump’s budget would represent around 85 percent of the total that the Congressional Budget Office estimates would otherwise be spent on Obamacare coverage that year. (Sanger-Katz, 2/10)

The Associated Press: Mystery $844B Pot In Trump Budget Signals Medicaid Cuts
The budget does telegraph that the administration is taking aim at Medicaid. The $600 billion federal-state program covers more than 70 million low-income people, ranging from newborns to elderly nursing home residents. A passage in a dense tome called “Analytical Perspectives” accompanying the budget calls for “ending the financial bias that currently favors able-bodied working-age adults over the truly vulnerable” in Medicaid. Translation: Repeal “Obamacare's" generous federal matching for states that expand their programs to cover low-income adults. A senior administration official briefing reporters on the budget said it would allow states that want more flexibility in Medicaid to accept their federal share as a lump sum. For states staying with traditional Medicaid, the program would grow by 3% on average instead of 5%. Such limits, rejected by Congress in the past, lead to program cuts that compound over time. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 2/10)

The Washington Post: Trump Budget Cuts Funding For Health, Science, Environment Agencies
The budget request would trim funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by almost 16 percent. HHS officials said they want the CDC to focus on its core mission of preventing and controlling infectious diseases and on other emerging public health issues, such as opioid abuse. Officials propose to take the money that would normally go to fund individual disease prevention activities and funnel it into a single block grant to states. The budget says chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes have common risk factors, and thus consolidating funds “can help magnify the public health impact.” Although the budget reduces overall funding for global health, from $571 million to $532 million in 2021, officials carved out an extra $50 million for global health security, which are measures aimed at disease detection and emergencies. That bump comes at the expense of international HIV/AIDS programs, which is being cut by about $58 million. (Achenbach, McGinley, Goldstein and Guarino, 2/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump Proposes $4.8 Trillion Budget, With Cuts To Safety Nets
Mr. Trump’s plan also calls for a 6.5% funding cut for the National Institutes of Health, the primary driver of U.S. medical research. That includes a $430 million cut to the budget of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is seeking to produce a vaccine that could stop the spread of the deadly coronavirus and has a parallel program to test therapeutic products that could fight the outbreak. Separately, the administration has notified Capitol Hill that it might reprogram $136 million in funds from fiscal year 2020 to address the virus, the administration official said, though no decision has been made on whether the money is needed. (Davidson and Restuccia, 2/10)

Modern Healthcare: Trump Budget Punts On Healthcare Reform, Drug Pricing Policy
Trump also diverged from previous budgets by leaving drug-pricing reform up to Congress with an "allowance" of $135 billion for bipartisan policy to lower drug costs. The HHS budget generally says the administration supports an out-of-pocket cap for beneficiaries' pharmacy drug costs, policies to promote generic and biosimilar competition, increasing drugmakers' share of Medicaid rebates and authorizing innovative Medicaid drug payment models. (Cohrs, 2/10)

Stat: Trump Doesn't Want The FDA To Regulate Tobacco
The Trump administration is proposing to strip the Food and Drug Administration of all authority to regulate tobacco products, according to budget documents released Monday. Under the budget proposal, a new agency would be created within the Department of Health and Human Services dedicated solely to regulating tobacco, including e-cigarettes. It’s a striking proposal that directly bucks the will of both Congress and the FDA. (Florko, 2/10)

The Hill: Trump Administration Proposes Removing FDA's Authority Over Tobacco Regulation
"In addition, this reorganization would allow the FDA Commissioner to focus on its traditional mission of ensuring the safety of the Nation’s food and medical products supply," it continues. The FDA regulates tobacco products, including cigarettes and e-cigarettes, as well as prescription and over-the-counter drugs, food, dietary supplements, vaccines, medical devices and more. (Hellmann, 2/10)

CNN: Trump Budget Plan Could Push Tobacco Oversight Out Of The FDA 
"This is an effort plain and clear to install the tobacco industry as the wolf in the hen house," said Erika Sward, assistant vice president of national advocacy for the American Lung Association. "There's no need to do this," said Eric N. Lindblom, senior scholar at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law. (Nedelman and Christensen, 2/10)

Boston Globe: Trump Budget Proposes Ending State Medical Marijuana Protections
President Trump proposed ending an existing policy that protects state medical marijuana programs from Justice Department interference as part of his fiscal year 2021 budget plan released Monday. The rider, which has been renewed in appropriations legislation every year since 2014, stipulates the the Justice Department can’t use its funds to prevent states or territories “from implementing their own laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.” (Jaeger, 2/10)

Politico: The Quirky, The Odd And The Baffling In The Trump Budget Shuffle
Trump is adopting President Barack Obama’s approach to the politically tricky question of where to put the nuclear waste accumulating at power plants around the country. After promising in his previous three budgets to open the stalled Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada, Trump is now essentially conceding defeat in the face of widespread opposition in a state he hopes to win in November. His budget promises to “not stand idly by given the stalemate on Yucca Mountain” and to work with states to find a new location. (McCrimmon, 2/10)

Reuters: Trump's $4.8 Trillion Budget Gets Chilly Reception From Congress
Democrats said Trump's proposal upended his promise in last week's State of the Union speech to "always protect" the popular Social Security pension plan and the Medicare health plan for seniors. “Americans’ quality, affordable health care will never be safe with President Trump," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "Everyone knows the latest Trump budget is dead on arrival in Congress," said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee. (2/10)

The New York Times: Trump’s Budget Math Grapples With Economic Reality
President Trump’s budget proposals have been defined by a belief that the economy will grow significantly faster than most economists anticipate. The latest version, released on Monday, is a brief departure: It concedes, for the first time, that the administration’s past projections were too optimistic. Then it goes right back to forecasting 3 percent growth, for the better part of a decade. (Tankersley, 2/10)

The Washington Post: New Hampshire Voters Push Democratic Candidates On Health Care
In a union hall a mile from New Hampshire's gold-domed statehouse, Joe Biden was working a rope line, taking selfies, clapping voters on the shoulder, when a woman with a red plaid dress and a message got her turn. “Health care is so important,” Sheila Zakre told the former vice president running for the Democratic presidential nomination. A 61-year-old disability rights lawyer who works on her own, Zakre is part of the insured middle class. Still, she and her husband, Bob Sanders, are fighting an unexpected $2,400 hospital bill after a facility fee was tacked on for a scan in a doctor’s office. (Goldstein, 2/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Democrats Make Last Pitches In New Hampshire As Iowa Fight Continues
Mr. Buttigieg, appearing during a snowstorm in the northern college town of Plymouth, was critical of his rival. “We cannot risk alienating Americans at this critical moment, and that’s where I part ways with my friend, Sen. Sanders,” Mr. Buttigieg said before finding fault with the Vermont senator’s Medicare for All plan. He said that health-insurance proposal was too expensive, would require higher taxes on the middle class and would be unfair to people who are happy with their private insurance. (Jamerson and Day, 2/10)

The Hill: Doctors Group Breaks From Health Care Industry With Support For 'Medicare For All'
But not the American College of Physicians (ACP). That group made waves last month when it broke with other leading health players to endorse Medicare for All, along with an optional government plan, as a way to get to universal coverage. The move by the ACP, which represents internal medicine doctors who are often a patient’s primary care physician, is a sign of changing attitudes among doctors. “A lot of this is driven from the grassroots membership,” Bob Doherty, senior vice president of governmental affairs and public policy for the ACP, said in an interview last week in the group’s Washington office. “Physicians are increasingly frustrated with paperwork,” he said, which stems in part from having multiple insurers all with different rules and documentation requirements. One possible solution is to have just a single payer: the government. (Sullivan, 2/11)

In other health care news —

Stat: In Reelection Bid, A GOP Lawmaker Campaigns On Pelosi’s Drug Pricing Bill
In the months before House Democrats passed their aggressive drug negotiation bill, GOP lawmakers derisively labeled it the “Fewer Cures Act,” and a conservative advocacy group spent millions on advertisements likening the legislation to a “socialist takeover of the health care system.” But in Washington state, one Republican lawmaker is effectively campaigning for reelection on her support for the bill. “Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler puts seniors ahead of drug companies,” according to mailing material that the GOP congresswoman’s office recently sent to constituents, which touts her support for the Democrats’ plan. “Jaime helped advance H.R. 3.” (Facher, 2/11)

The New York Times: A Grim Landmark As Official Death Toll In China Tops 1,000
The death toll from the coronavirus epidemic is continuing to climb, Chinese officials said Tuesday. The government put the nationwide figure at 1,016. That was up 108 from the day before, when it was 908. The number of cases of infection also grew, to over 42,638. The figure for the day before was put at 40,171. (2/10)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Deaths Climb As China Corrals Sick In Quarantine Facilities In Outbreak Epicenter
While Wuhan and Hubei province have been ravaged by the disease, Chinese officials say the number of new cases outside Hubei is declining, in a reflection of strict quarantine measures taking effect nationwide. (Shih, Horton and Iati, 2/10)

Reuters: Coronavirus Emergency 'Holds A Very Grave Threat' For World: WHO
China's coronavirus outbreak poses a "very grave threat for the rest of the world", the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday in an appeal for sharing virus samples and speeding up research into drugs and vaccines. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was addressing the start of a two-day meeting aimed at accelerating research into drugs, diagnostics and vaccines into the flu-like virus amid growing concerns about its ability to spread. (2/11)

The New York Times: ‘Let’s Not Shake Hands’: Xi Jinping Tours Beijing Amid Coronavirus Crisis
When he stepped inside the municipal office five miles north of the Forbidden City, China’s most powerful leader in decades pulled up the sleeve of his black overcoat and held out his wrist. A woman in a mask and surgical gloves then checked to see if he had a fever. It was Xi Jinping’s first public appearance since meeting the Cambodian prime minister last week, and one of only a handful since the epidemic exploded into a crisis last month. It showed him on what state media declared the “front line” of China’s efforts to combat the coronavirus epidemic — even if the actual center of the outbreak lies 600 miles south in the city of Wuhan. (Myers, 2/10)

The Wall Street Journal: President Xi Inspects Coronavirus Hospital In Beijing After Conspicuous Absence
At Chaoyang district’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Mr. Xi learned about how the district, on the eastern edge of central Beijing, was coping with the outbreak, CCTV reported. Mr. Xi in his remarks acknowledged that some medical workers had “sacrificed their lives,” an apparent indirect reference to a young Wuhan doctor, Li Wenliang, whose death last week triggered an emotional response across the country, much of it frustration directed at officials. Dr. Li had been taken in and interrogated by authorities in early January after warning about the dangers of the deadly new virus, before he contracted it himself. (Cheng and Mendell, 2/10)

The New York Times: ‘Like Europe In Medieval Times’: Virus Slows China’s Economy
Workers are stuck in their hometowns. Officials want detailed health plans before factories or offices can reopen. Assembly lines that make General Motors cars and Apple iPhones are standing silent. More than two weeks after China locked down a major city to stop a dangerous viral outbreak, one of the world’s largest economies remains largely idle. Much of the country was supposed to have reopened by now, but its empty streets, quiet factories and legions of inactive workers suggest that weeks or months could pass before this vital motor of global growth is humming again. (Bradsher, 2/10)

Reuters: Coronavirus May Be Over Soon In China, Expert Says, As WHO Warns Of Global Threat
China's coronavirus epidemic may peak in February and then plateau before easing, the government's top medical adviser on the outbreak said. In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Zhong Nanshan, a leading epidemiologist who won international fame for his role in combating the SARS epidemic in 2003, said the situation in some provinces was already improving, with the number of new cases declining. Zhong, who had previously predicted an earlier peak, said the forecast was based on modeling and developments in recent days, as well as government action. (Kirton, 2/11)

Reuters: Here Is What WHO Experts Are Watching On The Coronavirus' Spread
The World Health Organization (WHO) is tracking the epidemic of the new coronavirus in China and how it is spread abroad, as its advance team of international experts travel there to help investigate the outbreak. Here are some issues that WHO epidemiologists are probing to deepen understanding of the virus, believed to have jumped the species barrier at a seafood market in Wuhan in December, to help accelerate development of drugs, diagnostics and vaccines. (Nebehay, 2/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Wuhan Evacuees Hunker Down For Weeks In Quarantine
Tennessee resident David Mayes was in China visiting his girlfriend in Wuhan when officials locked down the city on Jan. 23, aiming to stop a rapidly spreading coronavirus that has killed hundreds there. Overnight, the city turned into a ghost town, Mr. Mayes said. Eight-lane highways were empty. Businesses were shuttered. But some Americans have made it out, on flights chartered by the U.S. State Department from an otherwise-closed airport. (Findell and Abbott, 2/10)

The Wall Street Journal: China’s Delivery Drivers Keep Supplies Flowing In Coronavirus Outbreak
Forced to stay home during the coronavirus outbreak, many residents of the central Chinese metropolis of Wuhan rely on delivery drivers such as Zhang Hao, who risks infection himself as he zooms around the city by moped to deliver groceries and other supplies. In return, some of his customers treat him as a potential carrier of the virus. One woman waited for Mr. Zhang, 36 years old, to back away from her package before she sprayed it with disinfecting alcohol and took it upstairs. Others ask why he is working and whether he worries about getting infected himself. (Woo and Deng, 2/11)

The Associated Press: Virus Storytellers Challenge China's Official Narrative
After nearly a week of roaming China's epidemic-struck city, filming the dead and the sickened in overwhelmed hospitals, the strain of being hounded by both the new virus and the country's dissent-quelling police started to tell. Chen Qiushi looked haggard and disheveled in his online posts, an almost unrecognizable shadow of the energetic young man who had rolled into Wuhan on a self-assigned mission to tell its inhabitants' stories, just as authorities locked the city down almost three weeks ago. (Leicester and Kang, 2/11)

The New York Times: Pangolins Are Suspected As A Potential Coronavirus Host
In the search for the animal source or sources of the coronavirus epidemic in China, the latest candidate is the pangolin, an endangered, scaly, ant-eating mammal that is imported in huge numbers to Chinese markets for food and medicine. The market in pangolins is so large that they are said to be the most trafficked mammals on the planet. All four Asian species are critically endangered, and it is far from clear whether being identified as a viral host would be good or bad for pangolins. It could decrease the trade in the animals, or cause a backlash. (Gorman, 2/10)

Reuters: Bat Meat Still Popular In Parts Of Indonesia, Despite Coronavirus Fears
Bat meat is still popular in some parts of Indonesia, despite research suggesting the coronavirus spreading from China might have originated in bats before being passed on to humans. Bats are traditionally eaten by the Minahasan people from North Sulawesi in the form of a curry-like dish called Paniki. Whole bats are used in Paniki, including the head and wings. (2/11)

CNN: Coronavirus Death Toll Surpasses 1,000 In Mainland China
A total of 108 people in mainland China died from the Wuhan coronavirus on Monday, according to the country's National Health Commission (NHC), marking the first time the single-day death toll has crossed into triple digits. The number of deaths per day in mainland China has steadily risen over the past few weeks, since the Chinese authorities began issuing daily updates. (Berlinger, Marsh and Woodyatt, 2/11)

PBS NewsHour: Can China’s Information About The Novel Coronavirus Be Trusted?
China is struggling to contain an outbreak of novel coronavirus that has now spread in small numbers to at least 25 other countries or territories. Both the official death toll and the number of confirmed cases have doubled in recent days, and there are doubts about the accuracy of data the Chinese government is reporting. (Brangham, 2/10)

Reuters: Coronavirus Case Confirmed In California, Takes U.S. Total To 13
The 13th case of coronavirus in the United States was detected in California in a person under federal quarantine after returning from Wuhan, China, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday. The adult patient was among U.S. nationals evacuated from Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease, who were under mandatory quarantine for 14 days at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, near San Diego, the CDC said in a statement. (2/10)

ABC News: 13th American Diagnosed With Coronavirus As Death Toll Tops 1,000 In China
Four patients under observation, who had previously tested negative, were taken for further testing Monday morning, with one now testing positive, according to the CDC. Another patient taken to UC San Diego Health still has test results pending. Both patients were "doing well and have minimal symptoms," the CDC said. (Winsor and Schumaker, 2/10)

San Francisco Chronicle: Coronavirus Live Updates: CDC Confirms New Coronavirus Case In San Diego, 13th Case In U.S.
The Santa Clara Board of Supervisors passed a formal proclamation of a local health emergency at its meeting Monday. The move is meant to help rally resources to help contain the new coronavirus and prevent it from spreading beyond the two cases already reported. Public health officials stressed that a local health emergency does not mean that there is an increased threat to county residents. (Allday and Bauman, 2/10)

The Associated Press: Nearly 200 Evacuees To Leave Coronavirus Quarantine In US
Nearly 200 evacuees prepared Tuesday to end their two-week quarantine at a Southern California military base where they have been living since flying out of China during a deadly viral outbreak. None of those who flew into March Air Reserve Base have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, health authorities said, although one evacuee at another base had been found to have the highly infectious virus and was in hospital isolation. (2/11)

CNN: First US Evacuee Infected With Coronavirus Was Mistakenly Released From Hospital
The first US evacuee from China known to be infected with the Wuhan coronavirus was mistakenly released from a San Diego hospital after an initial test found the person had not been infected, local health officials said Monday. The patient arrived in the US last week at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar on a State Department flight from Wuhan, China, and was hospitalized with three others after showing possible symptoms of the virus. After an initial CDC test showed all four patients did not have the novel coronavirus, they were released Sunday and returned to the 14-day federal quarantine at Miramar, the University of California, San Diego Health said in a statement. "This morning, CDC officials advised San Diego Public Health that further testing revealed that one of the four patients tested positive for (novel coronavirus)," UC San Diego Health said in a statement. "The confirmed positive patient was returned to UC San Diego Health for observation and isolation until cleared by the CDC for release." (Passantino, 2/11)

The New York Times: Some Experts Worry As A Germ-Phobic Trump Confronts A Growing Epidemic
When an outbreak of the Ebola virus touched the United States’ shores in mid-2014, Donald J. Trump was still a private citizen. But he had strong opinions about how America should act. Mr. Trump, who has spoken openly about his phobia of germs, closely followed the epidemic, and offered angry commentary about what he said was the Obama administration’s dangerous response. He demanded draconian measures like canceling flights, forcing quarantines and even denying the return of American medical workers who had contracted the disease in Africa. (Crowley, 2/10)

NBC News: Coronavirus Quarantine: As Some Americans Prepare To Leave, Workers On Air Force Base Face Harassment
But those who work at March Air Reserve Base have been harassed both in person and online by Riverside County residents who fear that the coronavirus — most cases of which have been in China — might take hold in the United States. Officials in Riverside County sent a letter to residents Monday, urging people to stop targeting base employees with "hurtful" statements online or in person. A few base workers have been "accosted in uniform," the letter read. "This is not acceptable, and needs to stop." According to the letter, those who work on the base have had no exposure to anyone who has been in quarantine. (Edwards, 2/10)

CNN: Families Trying To Adopt From China Are Facing Indefinite Delays Due To Coronavirus 
The Andersons are one of several American families whose adoption plans have been disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak in China. On January 30, the State Department advised all US citizens, including adoptive families, not to travel to China at this time, though adoption cases are still being processed. The department advised parents to contact their adoption service providers to discuss future plans, though it said services to US citizens and adoptive families would be "prioritized to the extent possible." Americans adopt more children from China than any other country, though US adoptions from China have declined significantly in the past two decades. In the 2018 fiscal year, the most recent year for which State Department data is available, Americans adopted 1,475 children from China. (Kaur, Chen and Cartaya, 2/10)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Misinformation Is Spreading Faster Than The Outbreak. The Problem Is Part Bad-Faith Actors, And Part Human Nature.
Meghan May, a university professor who researches emerging diseases, seemed an unlikely person to contribute to misinformation about the novel coronavirus. Yet last week, May shared a mea culpa on Twitter, owning up to unwittingly retweeting information that had origins in a Russian misinformation campaign. The story that managed to evade her typically discerning sensors: a claim that a Chinese Internet company had accidentally released death and infection totals — ones that exceeded official estimates — before quickly scrubbing evidence of them online. (Bellware, 2/10)

Kaiser Health News: When It Comes To The New Coronavirus, Just Who Is A ‘Close Contact’?
Even as U.S. authorities have taken the drastic steps of quarantining residents returning from China, and temporarily banning foreign visitors who recently traveled to affected Chinese regions, they have urged the vast majority of U.S. residents to go about their regular activities. But there are exceptions. People who returned from China on or after Feb. 3 have been formally quarantined or asked to stay home. And behind the scenes, local public health officials have launched painstaking efforts to reach “close contacts” of people with confirmed cases of the virus, dubbed 2019-nCoV, asking them to self-quarantine and submit to ongoing monitoring. (Barry-Jester, 2/10)

San Francisco Chronicle: ‘Huge Shortage’: Bay Area Clinics Seek Supplies Of Masks For Coronavirus
In late January, as the coronavirus continued spreading across the globe, the Foothill Community Health Center in San Jose had a problem. The center, a nonprofit network of medical and dental clinics, was running low on N95 masks — the respirator mask that officials recommend health care workers wear when coming in contact with patients who may have coronavirus. (Ho, 2/10)

Marketplace: What Employers Need To Know About The Coronavirus
As efforts to contain the coronavirus continue around the world, companies are thinking about how to reduce the risk to their workforce.It’s a good time for employers to be diligent about addressing illness prevention in the workplace, according to Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. (Brancaccio and Conlon, 2/10)

The New York Times: Cruise Ship’s Coronavirus Outbreak Leaves Crew Nowhere To Hide
In the passenger decks of the quarantined Diamond Princess cruise ship, more than 2,500 travelers are carefully isolated. Meals are delivered to their cabins. They have permission to walk on deck, six feet apart, for a few minutes a day. Down below, more than 1,000 crew members live and work elbow-to-elbow, preparing the passengers’ dishes and eating simple buffet-style meals together, with as many as four sharing a bathroom — and sharing the risk of possible infection from the coronavirus. (Dooley and Rich, 2/10)

The Washington Post: Cruise Ship Coronavirus Infections Double, Exceeding The Total For Any Country But China
Karey Maniscalco, a real estate agent from St. George, Utah, who is traveling on the ship with her husband, said tensions increased as news spread of the sharp jump in the number of people on the ship with the respiratory infection. It “caused us to be a bit rattled and concerned,” Maniscalco said in a phone call from her room Monday. The spike in infections also triggered criticism of Japan’s handling of the outbreak, which was traced to a man from Hong Kong who had spent five days aboard the ship and was diagnosed with the infection Feb. 1. While a quarantine may have been a reasonable strategy when it was imposed Feb. 5, experts said it is no longer effective and perhaps dangerous. (Denyer, Johnson, Sampson and Bernstein, 2/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Coronavirus Cases On Cruise Ship Climb To 135
he outbreak on the ship, docked in Yokohama south of Tokyo, has emerged as one of the most difficult virus challenges outside of China, with passengers on board increasingly anxious as the news each day gets worse. Officials have attributed the outbreak to a passenger who got off the cruise in Hong Kong and was later diagnosed with the virus. But it isn’t known how so many people got infected and whether there could be another source of infection. (Bhattacharya and Inada, 2/10)

CNN: Cruise Ship Docked In New Jersey Sets Sail After Family Tests Negative In Coronavirus Scare
A cruise ship finally set sail Monday from Bayonne, New Jersey, after a coronavirus scare had kept it docked -- and its passengers waiting -- for days. The ship was supposed to leave for a Caribbean voyage Saturday night, but was delayed after passengers still aboard the ship from a previous became ill when it returned Friday. The Anthem of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, left port at 3 p.m. Monday, and headed for Bermuda, according to a revised itinerary from the cruise line. The four passengers evaluated for coronavirus all tested negative and were discharged from the hospital, according to a statement from New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy. (Holcombe, 2/10)

Bloomberg: What Happens When A Virus Runs Rampant On A Cruise Ship
For 3,700 passengers quarantined on a cruise liner off Japan, it began as a carefree voyage. For the new coronavirus, it was an opportunity to run rampant. As the number of confirmed cases aboard the Diamond Princess nearly doubled to 135, health authorities evacuated infected travelers. The rest hunkered in their cabins, waiting to find out whether they’d come down with an illness that has killed more than 1,000 people in China and beyond. Operator Carnival Corp. stepped up efforts to disinfect the liner. (Ha, 2/10)

In other news —

The Associated Press: Virus Stretches Limits Of Strained Public Health Systems
The virus outbreak that began in China and has spread to more than 20 countries is stretching already-strained public health systems in Asia and beyond, raising questions over whether everyone can get equal access to treatment. Authorities in Wuhan, the city at the center of the outbreak, have been ordered to confine people suspected of having the illness in “quarantine camps" reminiscent of makeshift hospitals seen a century ago during the outbreak of Spanish flu. (Kurtenbach, 2/10)

The Washington Post: Coronavirus Fears Force Cancellations, Precautions At Big Tech Conferences
Coronavirus has already halted countless factories in China and grounded flights to and from the country. Now it’s hitting the global conference circuit, too. Several big tech companies are pulling out of the telecom industry’s largest annual meeting in Barcelona later this month, citing worries about a virus that has killed more than 1,000 people worldwide. Many Chinese researchers are unable to attend a major artificial-intelligence gathering in New York this week, and a number of conferences in Asia have been canceled or postponed. (Whalen, 2/11)

Stat: Biotechs Fear Coronavirus Outbreak Will Delay China-Based Research
Biotech investors and executives are growing worried that restrictions intended to contain the coronavirus epidemic in China could delay the work Chinese contract research organizations perform for American startups — particularly if those restrictions last for several months. The impact on biotechs so far appears to be minor, in part because the restrictions — including travel bans and workplace closures — coincided with the Lunar New Year, when many businesses expect employees to be away from work anyway. But the longer restrictions are in place, the more likely that crucial experiments and drug development work will be affected, industry insiders said in interviews — and some decision-makers believe they can’t afford to wait and see. (Sheridan, 2/11)

Stat: Priscilla Chan Charts An Ambitious, Unglamorous Course To Fight Disease. (Her Husband Is Involved, Too.)
Three and a half years later, Chan, who turns 35 this month, insists that the goal she and Zuckerberg have set for themselves — to “cure, prevent, or manage all diseases” by the year 2100 — is a realistic one. “We are serious about it,” Chan told STAT in an interview. “We think that if that’s our north star, we think it’s not impossible.” Today, Chan presides over the 400-person organization tasked with gradually giving away almost all of the couple’s fortune, which is currently worth about $80 billion. During a period in which her husband’s public image has been dented by a series of controversies involving privacy and disinformation, Chan has emerged as one of the most influential philanthropists in science — and as the key day-to-day decision-maker shaping an unusual approach to supporting research. (Robbins, 2/11)

The Wall Street Journal: A Transplant Surgeon Is Operating Again—With A New Heart
Robert Montgomery was performing his first kidney transplant as the lead surgeon since his own heart transplant in September of 2018. “I’m super excited, totally excited,” the 60-year-old surgeon said shortly before operating on a recent Friday morning. His patient, Daniel Flori, had had a heart transplant about 12 years ago, and the two swapped stories about their experiences before the kidney operation. Mr. Flori, who is 59 and lives in New Hyde Park, N.Y., asked how Dr. Montgomery, the director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute here, was doing with his new heart. (Reddy, 2/10)

NPR: Michael Pollan On Caffeine Addiction's Upside — And Ugly History
After wrapping up his book about the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs, author Michael Pollan turned his attention to a drug that's hidden "in plain sight" in many people's lives: caffeine. "Here's a drug we use every day. ... We never think about it as a drug or an addiction, but that's exactly what it is," Pollan says. "I thought, 'Why not explore that relationship?'" (Gross, 2/10)

The New York Times: New Campus Sexual Misconduct Rules Will Tackle Dating Violence
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s pending rules on sexual misconduct at the nation’s schools and colleges will include provisions to shore up protections for victims of stalking and dating violence, a response to lethal attacks that have underscored the weakness of current policies. The rules will for the first time cement domestic violence, dating violence and stalking as forms of gender discrimination that schools must address under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in education programs that receive government funding. (Green, 2/10)

NPR: Got A Cold? A Body Of Research Shows Zinc Supplements Can Help
The common cold is a top reason for missed work and school days. Most of us have two or three colds per year, each lasting at least a week. There's no real cure, but studies from the last several years show that some supplement containing zinc can help shorten the duration of cold symptoms by up to 40% — depending on the amount of the mineral in each dose and what it's combined with. (Aubrey, 2/10)

The New York Times: A Daily Aspirin For Pregnancy?
Pregnant women who take a daily baby aspirin may reduce the risk for premature birth. Researchers did a randomized, double-blinded placebo-controlled study of 11,976 women in six countries with high rates of premature birth: India, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guatemala, Kenya, Pakistan and Zambia. Beginning in the first trimester of pregnancy, half the women received a daily 81 milligram aspirin tablet, while the rest took a placebo. (Bakalar, 2/11)

Boston Globe: More Beer Outlets Could Mean More Violence, Researchers Say
The Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure Committee held a hearing on the legislative version of the ballot initiative that would, as described in the attorney general’s official summary, “create a license allowing food stores to sell wine and beer for off-premises consumption, progressively increase and then eliminate the limit on the number of licenses for the sale of alcoholic beverages consumed off-premises that any one retailer could own or control.” In effect, the proposal would allow more food stores — think Cumberland Farms stores, Targets or Walmarts that sell groceries — to sell beer and wine. Under current law, food store companies can hold up to nine alcohol retail licenses in Massachusetts as of the start of this year. (Young, 2/10)

CNN: Don't Trust Your Memories If You're High On Weed, Study Says
A new study published Monday found people who took just one hit of weed doubled their number of "false memories" in a virtual reality scenario compared to those who puffed on a placebo, said study author Johannes Ramaekers, a professor of psychopharmacology at Maastricht University in The Netherlands. A false memory is a recollection of something that didn't occur or a memory that is different from the way it actually happened, often triggered by suggestions from others. "We are all prone to the formation of false memories, independent of cannabis use," Ramaekers said. "The susceptibility for false memory, however, increases with cannabis. Under cannabis, users can easily accept fake truths for true memory." (LaMotte, 2/10)

KQED: Psychedelic Therapy Available To More People Before Clinical Trials End
Until recently, only participants in clinical trials could qualify for MDMA-assisted therapy. Now the federal Food and Drug Administration has granted researchers what it calls “expanded access.” That means people who can’t find relief other ways — who are “treatment-resistant” — can get this therapy before the FDA approves it. (Klivans, 2/10)

NPR: Antidepressant Prescribing Could Get More Precise With AI, Research Finds
Scientists have taken a small step toward personalizing treatment for depression. A study of more than 300 people with major depression found that brain wave patterns predicted which ones were most likely to respond to the drug sertraline (Zoloft), a team reported Monday in the journal Nature Biotechnology. If the approach pans out, it could offer better care for the millions of people in the U.S. with major depression. (Hamilton, 2/10)

The Boston Globe: For Homebound People, Smarter Speakers To Track Their Health
Every day, Kathleen McVicar of Cotuit, Mass., has a few simple questions for her 85-year-old mother in Virginia. How well did she sleep? Did she remember to eat breakfast, to take her meds, to check her voicemails? McVicar could get the answers by making an endless series of phone calls throughout the day. Instead, she just checks her email every morning. The previous day’s answers are there, rounded up and compiled by her mother’s voice-activated personal assistant, a device called LifePod which is programmed to ask questions instead of just answering them. “It’s a major improvement because it gives me peace of mind,” said McVicar, a 58-year-old retiree. “It gives you a sense of comfort that she’s OK.” (Bray, 2/10)

The New York Times: More Than 100 Troops Have Brain Injuries From Iran Missile Strike, Pentagon Says
More than 100 American service members have traumatic brain injuries from Iranian airstrikes on Al Asad Air Base in Iraq in January, the Defense Department said, a number that was more than 50 percent higher than previously disclosed. Of the 109 troops who have been diagnosed with brain injuries, 76 had returned to duty, officials said Monday. (Zaveri, 2/10)

The Associated Press: Pentagon: 109 Troops Suffer Brain Injuries From Iran Strike
The number of injuries has been steadily increasing since the Pentagon began releasing data on the injuries about a week after the Jan. 8 attack at al-Asad Air Base in Iraq. Pentagon officials have warned that the number would continue to change. The department said 76 of the service members have returned to duty, while 26 are in Germany or the United States for treatment, and another seven are on their way from Iraq to Germany for evaluation and treatment. (Baldor, 2/10)

NBC News: Number Of U.S. Troops With Brain Injuries From Iranian Missile Attacks Now 109
Dozens more U.S. service members have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries following last month's Iranian missile attacks that targeted American forces at two Iraqi bases, the Defense Department said Monday, bringing the total to 109. Of those, 76 patients have since been returned to duty, the Pentagon said in a statement. There were 45 more cases since the department's last report, and all 109 patients have been diagnosed with what it called "mild traumatic brain injury." "This is a snapshot in time and numbers can change," the Defense Department said.Iran launched ballistic missiles against the two Iraqi bases on Jan. 8 in retaliation for the United States' killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who was commander of Iran's elite Quds Force, in a drone operation outside Baghdad's airport. In late January the Pentagon had reported a total of 64 cases. (Gains and Helsel, 2/10)

Bloomberg: Trump Downplays Brain Injuries In Iran Attack With Toll At 109
President Donald Trump again downplayed the severity of head injuries suffered by U.S. troops during an Iranian missile attack, as the injury total rose to 109. Trump spoke to Fox Business in an interview Monday, after the Defense Department said that 109 U.S. service members, or 45 more than previously disclosed, had been diagnosed with a “mild traumatic brain injury” after the Jan. 8 Iranian strike on the Al Asad airbase in Iraq. That strike was in retaliation for the U.S. killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, an act Trump has regularly touted on the campaign trail. “They landed in a way that didn’t hit anybody,” Trump said of Iran’s missile strike. “And so when they came in and told me that nobody was killed, I was impressed by that and, you know, I stopped something that would have been very devastating for them.” He didn’t specify what he stopped. He said he later found out that there were “head trauma” injuries. Trump last month described the injuries as “headaches” and said he didn’t consider them similar to other injuries, such as losing a limb. He echoed that sentiment on Monday. (Wingrove, 2/10)

The New York Times: An ICE Officer Shot A Man In The Face. Who Is To Blame?
Gaspar Avendaño Hernández left his home in Brooklyn early last Thursday to go to his construction job. But Mr. Avendaño, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who had previously been deported in 2011 after pleading guilty to an assault charge only to return, did not get far. He was confronted outside his house by federal immigration officers who were there to arrest him. (Correal and Shanahan, 2/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Justice Department Sues New Jersey, Washington County Over Sanctuary Policies
The Justice Department sued New Jersey and a Washington county Monday over their laws and policies limiting local cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The moves escalated a Trump administration battle with liberal states and localities that adopt so-called sanctuary policies intended to protect unauthorized immigrants from deportation. (Hackman, 2/10)

The Associated Press: Drugs Fail To Slow Decline In Inherited Alzheimer's Disease
Two experimental drugs failed to prevent or slow mental decline in a study of people who are virtually destined to develop Alzheimer's disease at a relatively young age because they inherited rare gene flaws. The results announced Monday are another disappointment for the approach that scientists have focused on for years -- trying to remove a harmful protein that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's, the leading cause of dementia. (Marchione, 2/10)

The New York Times: An Alzheimer’s Treatment Fails: ‘We Don’t Have Anything Now’
For five years, on average, the volunteers received monthly infusions or injections of one of two experimental drugs, along with annual blood tests, brain scans, spinal taps and cognitive tests. Now, the verdict is in: The drugs did nothing to slow or stop cognitive decline in these subjects, dashing the hopes of scientists. Dr. Randall Bateman, a neurologist at Washington University in St. Louis and principal investigator of the study, said he was “shocked” when he first saw the data: “It was really crushing.” (Kolata, 2/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Lilly, Roche Drugs Fail To Stymie Inherited Form Of Alzheimer’s
The Lilly and Roche drugs are designed to work by reducing a sticky substance called beta amyloid that builds up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Lilly and Roche have previously tested their drugs in clinical trials of patients with the more common form of Alzheimer’s that typically affects people 65 and older. Lilly’s drug failed to significantly help patients and Roche halted two studies of its drug after concluding it wouldn’t help. Lilly said it won’t pursue an application for regulatory approval of solanezumab to treat dominantly inherited Alzheimer’s. (Loftus, 2/10)

Stat: Two More Failed Alzheimer’s Drugs Sharpen Focus On Biogen’s Chances
The focus quickly shifted to Biogen (BIIB), which made global headlines last year after claiming a controversial victory with an amyloid-targeting therapy of its own. With that treatment expected to undergo Food and Drug Administration review this year, do the results from Lilly and Roche poke holes Biogen’s case for approval? There’s a compelling argument to be made. (Garde, 2/10)

Politico: How The Debate Over The ERA Became A Fight Over Abortion
Conservative activists waged a successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment decades ago by warning it would force women into combat, legalize gay marriage and erode gender roles. But in 2020, opponents are zeroing in on one line of attack: a claim that ERA would require taxpayer-funded abortions. The House will vote later this week on a bill that would remove the deadline for ratifying the ERA, which permanently bans discrimination on the basis of sex. (Mueller and Ollstein, 2/11)

The Hill: Anti-Abortion Group Backs Loeffler's Election Campaign After Opposing Her Senate Appointment
A key anti-abortion group is backing Sen. Kelly Loeffler's (R-Ga.) election campaign after opposing her appointment to the Senate last year. Loeffler was appointed by Georgia's Republican governor to replace former Sen. Johnny Isakson (R), who retired in December. The decision was opposed by the Susan B. Anthony List, who viewed Loeffler as not supportive of restrictions on abortion. But on Monday the group endorsed Loeffler, calling her a "strong pro-life, pro-woman leader." "Her voice is needed in the Senate more than ever at this pivotal moment," said Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. Dannenfelser cited Loeffler's decision to co-sponsor three anti-abortion bills in the Senate, including one that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. (Hellmann, 2/10) 

The Associated Press: West Virginia Senate Passes 'Born Alive' Abortion Bill
After acknowledging that murder is already a crime, the West Virginia Senate on Monday passed a bill to penalize physicians who don't provide medical care to a baby born after an abortion attempt. Senators unanimously approved the measure following lone testimony from a Democrat who said lawmakers have wasted time angling for political points on a bill that has no impact instead of working on the state's more serious problems. (2/10)

Modern Healthcare: Insurers Counter CMS Transparency Rule With Price Estimator Initiative
Hoping to deflect the Trump administration's proposed price transparency rule, the Alliance of Community Health Plans is calling for expanding and certifying voluntary price estimator tools offered by health plans. On Tuesday, the trade group for not-for-profit plans presented a framework for certifying online tools that provide personalized, accurate and easily understandable price and quality information to consumers shopping for medical services. While many health plans and some hospitals already offer price estimators, there isn't a certification process in place. (Meyer, 2/11)

Marketplace: Middle-Aged Americans Worried About Health Care Costs Less Likely To Seek Care
Many Americans in their 50s and early 60s are concerned about meeting health care costs, according to a new study from the University of Michigan. A quarter of adults aged between 50 and 64 are worried about their ability to afford health insurance in the next year, and just under half have low confidence in their ability to afford it once they retire. (Ben-Achour and Conlon, 2/10)

Kaiser Health News: One Defensive Strategy Against Surprise Medical Bills: Set Your Own Terms
When Stacey Richter’s husband recently landed in a New Jersey emergency room, fearing a heart attack, she had an additional reason for alarm: a potential big bill from the hospital if the ER wasn’t in his insurer’s network. So she took an unusual step. Instead of simply signing the hospital’s financial and treatment consent form, Richter first crossed out sections calling for her to pay whatever amount the hospital charged. She wrote in her own payment rate of a “maximum of two times” what the federal government would pay under Medicare, which is in the ballpark, experts said, of what hospitals might consider an acceptable rate. (Appleby, 2/11)

Bloomberg: Holmes Argues To Throw Out Theranos Criminal Fraud Case
Theranos Inc. founder Elizabeth Holmes mounted an attack Monday against charges that she defrauded patients who used her company’s blood tests. The former chief executive of the blood-test startup that imploded after reaching a $9 billion valuation argues that allegations she misled patients should be dismissed as too vague and because the government can’t prove that people who got inaccurate test results were actually harmed. Prosecutors say they’ve got plenty of proof that Holmes and ex-Theranos President Sunny Balwani duped patients into relying on technology they knew was faulty, and put some of those people in peril by providing false lab results. A trial is scheduled for August in San Jose, California. (Rosenblatt, 2/10)

NBC News: How Moms Are Quietly Passing Gun Safety Policy Through School Boards
A few years ago, Finkelstein concluded that one of the most efficient ways to teach parents about keeping their guns safely stored would be to have public schools distribute the information. She met with Los Angeles school board members and the district superintendent and spoke before a school safety panel convened by City Attorney Mike Feuer. Last June, the school board unanimously endorsed a resolution asking parents to attest that any firearms they own are safely stored — becoming the largest school district nationally to do so. Since then — driven by activists like Finkelstein with the groups Women Against Gun Violence and Moms Demand Action — several other school districts have passed similar policies asking parents to sign letters saying they know why it's important to keep guns securely stored. Last Thursday, the Phoenix Union High School District became the latest to enact a policy that mirrors the Los Angeles one, and St. Louis Public Schools will vote on a similar proposal Tuesday. In addition, five school districts in Southern California, as well as Denver Public Schools, have launched secure gun storage awareness campaigns, and the Brady campaign said it's working on one with Marin County, in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Kingkade, 2/10)

And in Texas —

Texas Tribune: For Texas U.S. Senate Candidate Amanda Edwards, Gun Violence Is Personal
Now 38 and jockeying to win Texas’ Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, the former Houston City Council member holds the memory close as she grapples with the lasting effects of gun violence and how best to prevent it. Edwards rarely talks about her family’s loss in public statements, but she recently opened up about the experience in an interview with The Texas Tribune. (Sparber, 2/11)

The Associated Press: Mississippi Inmate Death Toll Rises Amid Emergency Extension
Another Mississippi inmate died Monday, the same day the governor extended an emergency order allowing the state to quickly spend money to try to resolve problems in a prison system beset by violence and poor living conditions. The two developments were announced separately, and there was no indication that Gov. Tate Reeves’ extension of the emergency order was in response to the latest death. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Mississippi prisons after a string of inmate deaths. The death Monday brings the total to at least 16 since late December. (Pettus, 2/10)

The Hill: Mississippi Records 16th Inmate Death
James Allen Brown, 54, died at the hospital at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, the Mississippi Department of Corrections confirmed in a release. He is the 10th to die at Parchman since the end of December. There was no foul play suspected in the first death in more than a week, according to the Sunflower County coroner. “The official cause and the manner are pending an autopsy,” the release said. Brown was in prison for murder/homicide and residential burglary. He was sentenced in June of 1993. Gov. Tate Reeves (R) addressed the state’s ongoing problem in his State of the State speech, in which he promised to shut down Parchman’s Unit 29, where a majority of deaths in the prison have occurred. (Coleman, 2/10)

CNN: A Terminally Ill Inmate Died At Mississippi's Parchman Prison. He's The 10th To Die There In 6 Weeks
A Mississippi inmate serving a life sentence for murder died Monday, officials said. "The offender was in the inpatient department and had been receiving treatment for a terminal illness," according to a news release from the Sunflower County Coroner Heather Burton. No foul play is suspected, Burton said. The cause of death is pending. The inmate is the 10th to die in the past six weeks who was serving time at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. At least three of the previous inmate deaths were attributed to violence, according to a tweet from the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Last week, the Justice Department announced it was launching an investigation into several of the state's prisons after the deaths and inmate descriptions of conditions behind prison walls. (Maxouris and Moshtaghian, 2/11)

The Associated Press: Ban On Treatments For Transgender Kids Fails In South Dakota
Legislation aimed at stopping South Dakota physicians from providing puberty blockers and gender confirmation surgery to transgender children under 16 failed to get enough support Monday in a Senate committee. A Republican-dominated Senate committee voted 5-2 to kill the proposal, likely ensuring the issue won't be considered by the Legislature again this year. (2/10)

CBS News: Coffeyville, Kansas Medical Debt: County In Rural Kansas Is Jailing People Over Unpaid Medical Debt 
Tres Biggs was working two jobs but they fell behind on their medical bills, then the unthinkable happened. "You wouldn't think you'd go to jail over medical bills," Tres Biggs said.  Tres Biggs went to jail for failing to appear in court for unpaid medical bills. He described it as "scary." "I was scared to death," Tres Biggs said. "I'm a country kid  — I had to strip down, get hosed and put a jumpsuit on." Bail was $500. He said they had "maybe $50 to $100" at the time. In rural Coffeyville, Kansas, where the poverty rate is twice the national average, attorneys like Michael Hassenplug have built successful law practices representing medical providers to collect debt owed by their neighbors. "I'm just doing my job," Hassenplug said. "They want the money collected, and I'm trying to do my job as best I can by following the law." (CBS News, 2/9)

The Hill: Maryland Will Ban Disposable E-Cigarettes Exempt From Trump Policy
Maryland will become the first state to ban all flavors of disposable e-cigarettes except for tobacco and menthol, the state’s comptroller announced Monday. Comptroller Peter Franchot (D) said the policy will close a loophole in the Trump administration’s limited e-cigarette flavor ban. The administration’s flavored vaping product guidance, which took effect last week, banned popular cartridge-based fruit and mint flavors but not tobacco and menthol. Disposable e-cigarettes, open tank systems and e-liquids of any flavor, including those mixed in vape shops, remain available under the policy. The administration's decision left public health advocates and many lawmakers unsatisfied with what they saw as a gigantic exemption for the industry. (Weixel, 2/10)

The Washington Post: Northern Virginia Student Dies After Contracting Flu, Mother Says
A student at a high school in Loudoun County, Va., died last week after contracting the flu, her mother said. Katie Giovanniello, 16, a sophomore at Heritage High School in the Leesburg area, died at a hospital Friday morning, said her mother, Colette Giovanniello. The county health director and a spokesman for the county school system both confirmed the death but gave no cause. (Weil, 2/10)

Texas Tribune: Texas Asks Supreme Court To End California Law Banning State-Funded Travel
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to strike down a 2016 California law that bans state-funded travel to states with discriminatory laws — a list Texas landed on nearly three years ago after the Legislature approved a religious-refusal law for adoptions in the state. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, whose office maintains a list of qualifying discriminatory laws, said in June 2017 that the Texas law "allows foster care agencies to discriminate against children in foster care and potentially disqualify LGBT families from the state’s foster and adoption system." (Platoff, 2/10)

KQED: California Lawmakers Have Refused To Restrict Flavored Vaping — Is That About To Change?
Yet California is behind some other states and the Trump administration when it comes to cracking down on flavored tobacco and e-cigarette use — nor has it moved to block the sale of flavored vape products containing cannabis. San Francisco-based Juul Labs Inc., maker of vape pens and nicotine pods, poured hundreds of thousands into lobbying and political campaigns — and until now successfully quashed bills to ban flavored tobacco in California.This year could change that. (Aguilera, 2/10)

California Healthline: Newsom Touts California’s ‘Public Option.’ Wait — What Public Option?
Several Democratic presidential hopefuls are pitching a federal “public option” as a way to expand health coverage and make it more affordable. The details of their proposals vary, but the general idea is to create a government-sponsored plan that could compete with private insurance. “We have a public option, just so folks know,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed last month as he unveiled his proposed 2020-21 state budget. “It’s called Covered California.” (Ibarra, 2/10)

The Baltimore Sun: Mayor Young Signs Bill Named After Elijah Cummings To Make Baltimore A ‘Trauma-Responsive City’ 
Nearly a year to the day after a former assistant basketball coach was shot inside Frederick Douglass High School, city officials joined students from the school as Baltimore Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young signed into law a bill that will look to address the trauma the city’s children suffer on a regular basis. Inside the high school Sunday afternoon, Young signed into law the Elijah Cummings Healing City Act, a bill that creates a “Trauma-Informed Care Task Force” to train employees how to lessen the impact of trauma while performing their jobs. (Davis, 2/9)

The CT Mirror: Fiscal Cure Sought For UConn Health
Escalating costs and ongoing deficits at UConn Health are forcing the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont to question whether the state can afford to continue subsidizing the public teaching hospital, a vast complex of 26 buildings spread across 209 acres in Farmington. The state last year picked up $244 million of UConn Health’s $1 billion budget. (Thomas, 2/11)

San Francisco Chronicle: In A First, Court Says A State Must Provide Gender-Confirmation Surgery To Inmate
A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Monday affirmed its ruling, the first by any appellate court, ordering a state to provide gender-confirmation surgery to a transgender inmate. Ten Republican-appointed judges dissented, including the court’s first openly gay judge. (Egelko, 2/10)

The Associated Press: Rural Maine Hospitals Hope To Fix Worker Shortage With EMTs
A legislative committee in Maine approved a proposal designed to help rural hospitals in the state hire more emergency medical technicians. (2/10)

San Francisco Chronicle: SF Rescues Homes For Elderly, Homeless And Mentally Ill On The Verge Of Closing
San Francisco has lost more than a quarter of its board-and-care beds since 2012, according to city data. Many operators have blamed their woes on the city’s high cost of doing business, trouble with hiring and retaining staff, and exhaustion from taking care of a demanding population for often little pay in return. Those factors also increase temptations to sell the homes in San Francisco’s hot real estate market. (Thadani, 2/10)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Lawsuit Says Cuyahoga County Corrections Officers Did Not Properly Handle Woman’s Mental Health Issues
A Lakewood woman said in a lawsuit that Cuyahoga County Jail staff did not properly tend to her mental health issues while she was behind bars in 2018, exacerbating her already acute problems.Heather Bottum, 47, sued the county and 19 current and former jail employees Friday in federal court. The lawsuit says she was placed in isolation and put in a restraint chair while her mental condition deteriorated, and that staff punished her instead of giving her access to programs she needed. (Heisig, 2/10)

Reveal: Pennsylvania Investigates Jehovah’s Witnesses For Child Sex Abuse
The Pennsylvania attorney general’s office has opened a grand jury investigation into how Jehovah’s Witnesses leaders handle allegations of child sexual abuse, according to three people who have been called to testify in closed-door hearings. Mark O’Donnell, a former Jehovah’s Witness, told Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting that Pennsylvania investigators visited his home in Baltimore in June and interviewed him for three hours. (Bundy, 2/10)

St. Louis Public Radio: Overwhelmed By Demand, Collinsville Marijuana Dispensary Finds A Fix For Lack Of Parking
The first month of recreational marijuana sales at Illinois Supply and Provisions brought hordes of people and their vehicles to a store that didn’t have enough parking for them. The dispensary reserved its 45-space parking lot for medical patients and handicapped recreational customers. A maze of metal barriers occupied the spaces directly in front of the store to contain crowds of people wanting to buy recreational cannabis. (Schmid, 2/10)

The New York Times: The Urgent Questions Scientists Are Asking About Coronavirus
Around the world and around the clock, scientists are trying to figure out what must be done to end the global health emergency unleashed by the new coronavirus. As the outbreak accelerates and spreads, dozens of countries have deployed increasingly stringent measures to try to contain the epidemic. Almost as quickly, in a herculean effort, an international network of researchers at data and wet laboratories has started gathering and analyzing data to unmask and disarm this perplexing new disease. (Gabriel Leung, 2/10)

USA Today: Coronavirus: What Is China Not Telling Us?
Many experts are saying the virus from Wuhan, China, is turning into a global pandemic, with a mortality rate (based on official statistics) of roughly 2%. By contrast, the mortality rate of the 1918 Spanish Flu was 2.5%. The Spanish Flu was a global catastrophe, killing more people than World War I.Will Wuhan be the same? Unclear.Writing in The New York Times, Frankie Huang, an American in quarantine in Shanghai, reports that the problem is in trusting the official numbers: “Yesterday, I saw on social media that someone noticed that the ratio in the official figures for the total dead to the total diagnosed cases has remained exactly 2.1% every day since Jan. 30. ‘This magical virus is very good at math!’ (Glenn Harlan Reynolds, 2/10)

The New York Times: How Fear Distorts Our Thinking About The Coronavirus
When it comes to making decisions that involve risks, we humans can be irrational in quite systematic ways — a fact that the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman famously demonstrated with the help of a hypothetical situation, eerily apropos of today’s coronavirus epidemic, that has come to be known as the Asian disease problem. (David DeSteno, 2/11)

Fox News: Coronavirus Could Break 'Medicare-For-All' — Single-Payer Systems Struggle With Outbreaks 
Countries with single-payer health care may have a more difficult time. In the not-too-distant past, Canada and the United Kingdom have struggled to handle outbreaks of everything from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) to the seasonal flu. That’s largely because these countries’ government-run, “Medicare-for-all”-style systems lack enough health care personnel, hospital beds and other resources to meet the needs of their populations even in good times. A public health threat like a pandemic can stretch single-payer health care to its breaking point. (Sally Pipes, 2/10)

Lexington Herald: Flu Wlll Kill More Kentuckians Than Coronavirus This Winter
While there has been plenty of news coverage regarding the spread of novel coronavirus, there’s a much more prevalent and potentially deadly virus already wreaking havoc across Kentucky, resulting in more than 10,000 confirmed cases and 21 deaths already this season. That virus is influenza, and it poses a substantial risk to even healthy adults. Flu comes on suddenly, most often accompanying a fever, aches, chills, cough, a sore throat and fatigue. Complications can include bacterial pneumonia, ear infections, sinus infections and worsening of chronic medical conditions, such as congestive heart failure, asthma, or diabetes. (R. Brent Wright and Ben Chandler, 2/10)

Los Angeles Times: Trump Takes Aim At The Poor, The Sick And The Elderly
In accordance with the old adage that budgets are political documents, President Trump’s budgets are windows into his political id. Trump’s proposed $4.8-trillion budget for the 2021 fiscal year makes his intentions crystal clear: He means to shred the federal safety net for the poor and the sick. The budget proposal released Monday calls for drastic cuts in Social Security and Medicaid benefits, as well as in a program protecting defrauded student loan borrowers. (Michael Hiltzik, 2/10)

The Washington Post: Trump’s Budget Reveals A Tremendous Fraud
For once, President Trump spoke the truth.“We’re doing a lot of things that are good, including waste and fraud,” he said Monday, as his administration released its proposed budget. “Tremendous waste and tremendous fraud.” No question about it! Trump’s budget is a tremendous fraud — and it lays tremendous waste to his promises. (Dana Millbank, 2/10)

The Wall Street Journal: Medicare For All Could Mean Doctors For None
Professional groups representing doctors are buying into Democratic plans to remake health care—and thereby acting against the interests of their members. The American College of Physicians, the second-largest organization of U.S. doctors, recently came out in support of either a public option or single payer. At the American Medical Association’s annual meeting last year, some 47% of delegates voted to reverse the organization’s opposition to single payer. A new organization styling itself Physicians for a National Health Program has attracted some 20,000 members. (Sally C. Pipes, 2/10)

Stat: What An 1890s Opioid Epidemic Can Teach Us About Addiction Today
In the ’90s, chronic pain was rampant in America. Opioids, which had previously been taboo, were suddenly being prescribed by doctors. A supposedly safer opioid had been developed which, as a physician wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, was “not a hypnotic” and carried no “danger of acquiring the habit.”This movement created a monster, addicting millions of Americans to opioids. Global overproduction fueled even more demand and, as authorities clamped down, many of those addicted to these medicines turned to more potent ones, making an overdose only a minor miscalculation away. I’m referring, of course, to the eighteen nineties, which eerily echo how the modern opioid epidemic emerged a century later. (Haider J. Warraich, 2/11)

The Washington Post: Transgender Children Need Options And Support. Lawmakers Are Doing The Opposite.
Lawmakers in more than half a dozen states are considering ways to block medical treatment for transgender teenagers. They cast their efforts as a crusade against forced sterilization, “mutilation” and child abuse. Yet the greatest harm to these adolescents may come from the rules purported to protect them. South Dakota’s Republican-supermajority House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would ban medical professionals from providing hormones or gender confirmation surgery to children younger than 16, with a penalty of one year’s jail time and a fine as high as $2,000. Legislators in Florida, South Carolina, Colorado, Missouri, Oklahoma and Kentucky have filed similar proposals. Missouri’s bill would report consenting parents to child welfare officials. (2/10)

Stat: A Strategy To Secure Religious Freedom And Tolerance In Health Care
A new rule proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services in mid-January, “Ensuring Equal Treatment of Faith-Based Organizations,” is intended to provide clarity about the rights and obligations of faith-based organizations and also eliminate certain requirements previously imposed on those organizations. The rule, according to HHS, ensures that faith-based organizations have the rights and freedoms to which they are entitled under both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. ...As a bioethicist and a rabbi, I believe that Jewish medical ethics can provide a means to think about securing both religious freedom and the rights of nonreligious Americans. (Ira Bedzow, 2/11)

Boston Globe: Go The Distance For Mental Health Parity 
Mental health parity — treating mental and physical illnesses with equal seriousness, concern, and coverage — has been the law of the land for decades. But changing laws is easy; changing actual clinical practice and the health care system that supports it is far more difficult. This week the Massachusetts Senate is scheduled to vote on a package of legislation aimed at bringing actual practice into the 21st century. The Mental Health ABC Act: Addressing Barriers to Care seeks both to “erase the stigma of mental illness” and “build an affordable integrated system,” Senate President Karen Spilka said in introducing the legislation last Thursday. (2/11)

Cincinnati Enquirer: Gov. Beshear's Proposal To Help Growing Number Of Uninsured Kids
Kentucky is among the 11 states where both the number and rate of uninsured young children has increased significantly in that two-year period. Uninsured children under age six in our state increased by a devastating 50.7%, which translates to 12,973 of our youngest children without access to care. The implications are profound for these children and their families. Without access to health coverage, kids could miss the routine and necessary care that will help them thrive. (Beauregard, 2/10)

Nashville Tennessean: Tennessee Should End Restrictions On Advanced Practice Nurses
The solution is to clear the way for advanced practice registered nurses (nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, nurse anesthetists, clinical nurse specialists) to do what they are educated and trained to do: serve communities and patients independently. This legislative session, the Tennessee Nurses Association will be introducing state legislation to update the Nurse Practice Act and do just that. The fact is nurse practitioners are already trained and qualified to perform many primary care tasks. The problem is, however, Tennessee state laws do not permit them to do so — except with physician oversight. (Tina Gerardi, 2/10)