Weekly Edition May 24, 2019

Sen. Alexander Releases Bipartisan Plan To Lower Health Costs, End Surprise Bills
By Rachel Bluth The Republican’s legislation, prepared with Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on Alexander’s health committee, would be an ambitious lift because it also deals with prescription drug patents, health transparency and vaccine messaging.

Are Surprises Ahead For Legislation To Curb Surprise Medical Bills?
By Rachel Bluth This high-profile issue has gained bipartisan attention, but it remains unclear if that’s enough to move it to the finish line. Here’s a review of the current state of play.

House Hagglers Zero In On Single-Payer And It All Comes Down To Two Little Words
By Shefali Luthra At Wednesday’s House Budget Committee, Congressional Budget Office experts outlined the complexities of implementing an overhaul of America’s health insurance system.

Analysis: A Health Care Overhaul Could Kill 2 Million Jobs, And That’s OK
By Elisabeth Rosenthal Reform has a cost. But the point of a health care system is to treat patients, not to buttress the economy.

Why Missouri’s The Last Holdout On A Statewide Rx Monitoring Program
By Lauren Weber For the seventh year in a row, Missouri will retain its lonely title as the only state without a statewide prescription drug monitoring program. Fears about privacy violations and gun control scuttled the bill yet again, leaving a pastiche of half-step measures in place to fill the void in the fight against prescription drug abuse.

Opioid Prescriptions Drop Sharply Among State Workers
By Marla Cone New data from the California agency that manages health benefits for 1.5 million public employees, retirees and their families shows that doctors are writing far fewer opioid prescriptions, reflecting a national trend of physicians cutting back on the addictive drugs.

Use Of Buprenorphine To Treat Opioid Addiction Proliferates In California
By Harriet Blair Rowan Buprenorphine is becoming an increasingly popular choice among doctors in California for treating opioid addiction. Use of methadone, while still more common, has not gained ground in recent years.

‘Stonewall Generation’ Confronts Old Age, Sickness — And Discrimination
By JoNel Aleccia and Melissa Bailey For a generation of LGBTQ people who lived through unprecedented social change, getting older poses new challenges — lack of services, discrimination, neglect and even abuse.

Facebook Live: Inclusive Care at the End of Life: The LGBTQ+ Experience
For a generation of LGBTQ+ people who lived through unprecedented social change, getting older poses new challenges. When it comes to seeking elder care, concerns about lack of services, discrimination, neglect and even abuse threaten to reverse recent progress.

Heat And Violence Pose Twin Threats For Asylum-Seekers Waiting At Border
By Anna Maria Barry-Jester For Central American migrants who follow U.S. government rules for pursuing asylum, conditions on the Mexican side of the border are sweltering, filled with anxiety and illness. Few people have a clear timetable for when it will get any better.

A Medical Sanctuary For Migrant Farmworkers
By John M. Glionna A former farmworker, now a doctor, runs two clinics in California’s Central Valley providing care — often free of charge — for migrants who don’t have money and are deeply worried about the federal government’s hard-line stance on immigration.

Hidden Reports Masked The Scope Of Widespread Harm From Faulty Heart Device
By Christina Jewett The Food and Drug Administration allowed one company to send 50,000 reports of harm or malfunctions to an internal database even as patients worried about faulty defibrillators lodged in their hearts.

Escalating Workplace Violence Rocks Hospitals
By Marlene Harris-Taylor, Ideastream Incidents of serious workplace violence are four times more common in health care than in private industry, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Supreme Court Declines To Hear Military Medical Malpractice Case
By JoNel Aleccia Justices won’t alter the rule that prevents active-duty military members from suing the government for negligence. The challenge came from the family of Navy nurse Lt. Rebekah “Moani” Daniel, who died in 2014 after bleeding to death following childbirth.

Podcast: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’ Is ‘Medicare For All’ Losing Steam?
Joanne Kenen of Politico, Stephanie Armour of The Wall Street Journal and Kimberly Leonard of the Washington Examiner join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss the latest Democratic efforts to push “Medicare for All” in the U.S. House. They also review new initiatives to raise the federal minimum age to purchase tobacco to 21 and new lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s actions on reproductive health. Also, for extra credit, the panelists suggest their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.

Coming Soon: ‘An Arm And A Leg’ Season Two
By Dan Weissmann Health care — and how much it costs — is scary. But you’re not alone with this stuff, and knowledge is power. "An Arm and a Leg" is a podcast about all these issues, and its second season, co-produced by Kaiser Health News, starts on June 4.

For Civilians, Finding A Therapist Skilled In PTSD Treatments Is A Tough Task
By Caroline Covington Many therapists are not familiar with two key treatment options for trauma recommended by the American Psychiatric Association and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Did The ACA Create Preexisting Condition Protections For People In Employer Plans?
By Julie Rovner Not exactly. We found that protections for preexisting conditions for most people with job-based insurance predated the Affordable Care Act by more than a decade.

Listen: Answering Questions About New Abortion Laws
KHN’s Julie Rovner is among a panel of experts who take questions about the future of abortion restrictions from listeners on WAMU’s “1A.”