Weekly Edition June 14, 2019

Must-Reads Of The Week From Brianna Labuskes
By Brianna Labuskes Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes wades through hundreds of health care policy stories each week, so you don't have to.

In Combating Surprise Bills, Lawmakers Miss Sky-High Air Ambulance Costs
By Rachel Bluth The median cost of an air ambulance bill is more than $36,000 and seldom covered by insurance, sparking many consumer complaints. Yet none of the proposals introduced or circulating in Congress to fix surprise medical bills address these services.

Trump Administration Rule Would Undo Health Care Protections For LGBTQ Patients
By Emmarie Huetteman Supporters of the rule say it would strengthen health care professionals’ freedom of conscience, but opponents say it “empowers bad actors to be bad actors.”

FDA Overlooked Red Flags In Drugmaker’s Testing of New Depression Medicine
By Emmarie Huetteman In March, a chemical cousin of the anesthetic and club drug ketamine was approved for the treatment of patients with intractable depression. But critics say studies presented to the FDA provided at best modest evidence it worked and did not include information about the safety of the drug, Spravato, for long-term use.

A Proposal To Make It Harder For Kids To Skip Vaccines Gives Powerful Voices Pause
By Anna Maria Barry-Jester California lawmakers are debating whether to tighten the rules on childhood vaccinations and give the ultimate say to state public health officials. But questions are emerging from unexpected quarters: the state medical board and Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

How Measles Detectives Work To Contain An Outbreak
By Jenny Gold Across the nation, public health departments are redirecting scarce resources to try to control the spread of measles. Their success relies on shoe-leather detective work that is one of the great untold costs of the measles resurgence.

Why So Many Older Americans Rate Their Health As Good Or Even Excellent
By Judith Graham As people advance in age, the expectations for what constitutes good health change. People focus on positive emotions and satisfaction with life, while physical ailments play a less important role.

Why Your Perception Of ‘Old’ Changes As You Age
By Bruce Horovitz Boomers are aging reluctantly but, for the most part, gracefully. Many even have found the secret to shaving a decade or more off their physical age.

KHN’s ‘What The Health’: Who Will Pay To Fix Problem Of Surprise Medical Bills?
Lawmakers and patients want to eliminate “surprise” out-of-network medical bills. Hospitals, doctors and insurers say they want to eliminate them, too, but their opposition to one another’s proposals could complicate legislative efforts. Stephanie Armour of The Wall Street Journal, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico and Kimberly Leonard of the Washington Examiner join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss this, plus the latest in news about reproductive health and health care sharing ministries.

‘An Arm And A Leg’: Forget The Shakedown. To Get Paid, Hospitals Get Creative.
By Dan Weissmann An unexpected hospital bill can bust the family budget. That leaves lots of people with bills they can’t pay. Turns out, that’s a crisis for hospitals too, and some are getting creative about collecting debt.

Never Say ‘Die’: Why So Many Doctors Won’t Break Bad News
By JoNel Aleccia It’s never easy to tell a patient about a terminal illness, but a longtime doctor whose own diagnosis was botched says physicians must do better.

Drug Users Armed With Naloxone Double As Medics On Streets Of San Francisco
By Brian Rinker The widespread availability of naloxone, which reverses overdoses, has radically changed the culture of opioid use on the streets, giving drug users a sense of security and inducing them to seek out the more powerful high of the synthetic opioid fentanyl.

Mini-Biographies Help Clinicians Connect With Patients
By Bram Sable-Smith Some Veterans Affairs hospitals around the country use writers to record patients' life stories, then place a short biography in each vet’s medical record. The My Life, My Story program gives clinicians another way to get to know their patients.

Readers And Tweeters: No Rush To Judge Patients Who Leave The ER Without OK
Kaiser Health News gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories.