First Edition: August 13, 2018
Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
Kaiser Health News:
Medicaid Officials Target Home Health Aides’ Union Dues
Medicaid home care aides — hourly workers who help the elderly and disabled with daily tasks like eating, getting dressed and bathing — are emerging as the latest target in the ongoing power struggle between conservatives and organized labor. About half a million of these workers belong to the Service Employees International Union, a public-sector union that represents almost 1.9 million workers in the United States and Canada. The union is an influential donor to liberal politicians and boasted strong ties to the Obama administration. (Luthra, 8/13)
Kaiser Health News:
Advances In Treating Hep C Lead To New Option For Transplant Patients
After her kidneys failed from the same illness that took the lives of her mother and brother, Anne Rupp went on dialysis in May 2016, spending three hours a day, three times a week undergoing the blood-cleaning procedure. She hated it. Rupp, who had polycystic kidney disease, joined more than 95,000 other Americans on kidney transplant lists. She knew the wait could stretch out for years. (Appleby, 8/13)
The New York Times:
A Judge Blocked A Medicaid Work Requirement. The White House Is Undeterred.
Trump administration officials, whose push to impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries was dealt a blow by a federal judge in June, say they have found a way around the ruling and will continue to allow states to put the restrictions in place. The judge, James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court in Washington, stopped a Kentucky plan to introduce the work requirements after finding that the secretary of health and human services had failed to consider the state’s estimate that the new rules would cause 95,000 low-income people to lose Medicaid coverage. Limiting access to medical assistance does not promote the objectives of the Medicaid program, he said. (Pear, 8/11)
The New York Times:
How Trump’s Plan For Immigrants On Welfare Could Hurt A Million New Yorkers
Buying fresh vegetables for children, heating an apartment, using Medicaid to manage diabetes. Those are all legal means of support provided by the government for low-income residents of the United States. But a new rule in the works from the Trump administration would make it difficult, if not impossible, for immigrants who use those benefits to obtain green cards. New York City officials estimated that at least a million people here could be hurt by this plan, warning that the children of immigrants seeking green cards would be most vulnerable. (Robbins, 8/13)
The Hill:
States Fight Trump On Non-ObamaCare Health Plans
The Trump administration's new policy of expanding the sale of “short-term” insurance plans as a cheaper alternative to ObamaCare is quickly running into opposition from state regulators. The Department of Health and Human Services is urging states to cooperate with the federal government, but instead, insurance commissioners are panning the new plans as "junk” insurance and state legislatures are putting restrictions on their sales. (Weixel, 8/12)
The Hill:
Fearing ‘Blue Wave,’ Drug, Insurance Companies Build Single-Payer Defense
Powerful health-care interests worried that a Democratic “blue wave” could give new energy to single-payer health-care legislation have created a new group to take on the issue. The formation of the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future is a sign of the health-care industry’s alarm over growing support for a single payer health-care law within the Democratic Party. (Sullivan, 8/10)
The New York Times:
A Congressman, A Financial Deal And An Intricate Web Of Conflicts
Representative Christopher Collins once said that the success of an obscure Australian company’s drug would be carved on his tombstone. Instead, its failure has upended his congressional career. The three-term congressman’s infectious enthusiasm for Innate Immunotherapeutics, the tiny biotech firm, led to his indictment on Wednesday, when he and several other investors were accused of insider trading. Prosecutors said that he tipped off his son to the poor results of the company’s clinical drug trial for a notoriously intractable form of multiple sclerosis before they were public, allowing the son and others to dump their stock and save hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Thomas and Kaplan, 8/11)
The New York Times:
Representative Chris Collins Suspends Bid For Re-Election After Insider Trading Charges
Days after federal prosecutors charged him with insider trading, Representative Chris Collins announced on Saturday that he was abandoning his re-election bid amid worries that his legal troubles could make vulnerable his otherwise solidly Republican district in western New York. How exactly the suspension of Mr. Collins’s campaign would play out was not immediately clear, as the process to get off the ballot can be onerous in New York, and Mr. Collins did not say how he would remove himself. (Goldmacher, 8/11)
The New York Times:
Outside Influence: The Veterans Agency’s Shadowy Leadership
A new secretary was sworn in at the Department of Veterans Affairs in late July, but the people actually in charge of the agency may not have changed, and they are not at the headquarters in Washington, but on the manicured grounds of Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s West Palm Beach estate. A shadowy threesome known in the department as the “Mar-a-Lago crowd” has been quietly empowered by the president to help steer the veterans agency, and the men are exerting their influence in ways that affect millions of veterans, according to interviews with four former senior officials at the department and a report by the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica. (Philipps, 8/10)
Politico:
Lax State Ethics Rules Leave Health Agencies Vulnerable To Conflicts
When Surgeon General Jerome Adams was the top health official in Indiana, he owned thousands of dollars in tobacco and pharmaceutical stocks which potentially conflicted with his state responsibilities. Those stocks were never revealed under lax Indiana disclosure laws. His investments became public only when he was required to divest them to serve as the nation’s top doctor — and HHS says he is in full compliance with federal ethics laws. (Ehley, Karlin-Smith, Pradhan and Haberkorn, 8/12)
The New York Times:
As Catholic Hospitals Expand, So Do Limits On Some Procedures
After experiencing life-threatening pre-eclampsia during her first two pregnancies, Jennafer Norris decided she could not risk getting pregnant again. But several years later, suffering debilitating headaches and soaring blood pressure, she realized her I.U.D. had failed. She was pregnant, and the condition had returned. At 30 weeks, with her health deteriorating, she was admitted to her local hospital in Rogers, Ark., for an emergency cesarean section. To ensure that she would never again be at risk, she asked her obstetrician to tie her tubes immediately following the delivery. The doctor’s response stunned her. “She said she’d love to but couldn’t because it was a Catholic hospital,” Ms. Norris, 38, recalled in an interview. (Hafner, 8/10)
Modern Healthcare:
CHI-Dignity Merger Approval May Hinge On Catholic Religious Rules For Care
Catholic religious rules could pose serious obstacles to the pending merger between Catholic Health Initiatives and Dignity Health, a deal that would create the nation's largest not-for-profit hospital company by revenue. Those rules, the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, substantially shaped the way the deal, initially announced in 2016, was structured. The reason is that 15 of Dignity's 39 hospitals are historically non-Catholic and provide services that are prohibited under Catholic doctrine, forcing the dealmakers to craft a merger model that worked around the directives. (Meyer, 8/11)
The New York Times:
‘So, So Jaded’: The Campaign To Stop Brett Kavanaugh Struggles For Liftoff
The two dozen or so liberal activists who had gathered in a darkened cafe on an unusually sticky evening recently were wrestling with a familiar challenge: how to persuade Susan Collins, Maine’s moderate Republican senator, to vote no. She had already helped sink her party’s effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and activists last Tuesday understood that they need to rally the same fervent clamor and rejectionist energy to pressure her to vote no again — this time on the nomination of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee. (Fandos and Edmondson, 8/11)
Politico:
Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings Set For Sept. 4
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's Senate confirmation hearings will start on Sept. 4 and last between three and four days, Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) announced on Friday. That scheduling tees up the GOP to meet its goal of getting President Donald Trump's pick seated on the high court by the time its term begins in early October, barring unforeseen obstacles or a breakthrough by Democrats who are pushing to derail Kavanaugh's confirmation. (Schor, 8/10)
The Washington Post:
White House Counts On Kavanaugh In Battle Against ‘Administrative State'
The White House did not mince words when it introduced Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh to business and industry leaders on the occasion of his nomination to the Supreme Court this summer. “Judge Kavanaugh has overruled federal agency action 75 times,” the administration said in a one-page unsigned memo touting what it considered the highlights of Kavanaugh’s 12 years as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. (Barnes and Mufson, 8/12)
The Wall Street Journal:
IBM Has A Watson Dilemma
Can Watson cure cancer? That’s what International Business Machines Corp. asked soon after its artificial-intelligence system beat humans at the quiz show “Jeopardy!” in 2011. Watson could read documents quickly and find patterns in data. Could it match patient information with the latest in medical studies to deliver personalized treatment recommendations? (Hernandez and Greenwald, 8/11)
The New York Times:
U.S. Ambassador Denies Threatening Ecuador Over Breast-Feeding Resolution
An American diplomat involved in an effort by the Trump administration to prevent the introduction of a breast-feeding resolution at a global health conference this spring denied making threats to Ecuador, the country that initially sponsored the resolution. In an interview, Todd C. Chapman, the United States ambassador to Ecuador, said that allegations reported by The New York Times on July 8 that he threatened Ecuadorean officials with trade sanctions and withdrawal of some military assistance were “patently false and inaccurate.” (Jacobs and Belluck, 8/12)
Reuters:
Monsanto Ordered To Pay $289 Million In Roundup Cancer Trial
A California jury on Friday found Monsanto liable in a lawsuit filed by a school groundskeeper who said the company’s weedkillers, including Roundup, caused his cancer. The company was ordered pay $289 million in damages. The case of the groundskeeper, Dewayne Johnson, 46, was the first lawsuit to go to trial alleging that Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers cause cancer. Monsanto, a unit of the German conglomerate Bayer following a $62.5 billion acquisition, faces more than 5,000 similar lawsuits across the United States. (8/10)
The Associated Press:
Jury Awards $289M To Man Who Blames Roundup For Cancer
"I'm glad to be here to be able to help in a cause that's way bigger than me," Dewayne Johnson said at a news conference Friday after the verdict was announced. Johnson, 46, alleges that heavy contact with the herbicide caused his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The state Superior Court jury agreed that Roundup contributed to Johnson's cancer and Monsanto should have provided a label warning of the potential health hazard. (Elias, 8/11)
The Wall Street Journal:
Monsanto Hit By $289 Million Verdict In Cancer Case
Monsanto said it would appeal. Punitive damages, especially those many times higher than the compensatory awards, are often reduced by the trial judge or reversed on appeal. “We are sympathetic to Mr. Johnson and his family,” Monsanto vice president Scott Partridge said in a statement. However, he said numerous scientific studies and health authorities in the U.S. and other countries found that glyphosate didn’t cause cancer. (Armental, 8/10)
Stat:
Gottlieb: FDA Will Streamline Drug Safety Evaluations
The Food and Drug Administration will soon standardize the way it handles data on the safety and effectiveness of drugs in an effort to reduce inconsistencies in the drug review process, agency Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Friday. “Rather than just looking at drug safety parameters in terms of the tables that are submitted to us, we’re going to actually take the raw data and evaluate it into custom tables, that the agency’s going to develop, that are going to be standardized across all our review divisions,” Gottlieb said. (Swetlitz, 8/10)
The Wall Street Journal:
New Kind Of Drug, Silencing Genes, Gets FDA Approval
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the first drug that combats disease by silencing the genes driving it, the newest technology transforming the arsenal of medicines. Onpattro, from Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc., is the first treatment approved to treat nerve damage caused by a genetic disorder that also causes heart and digestive disease and can be fatal. It is based on Nobel Prize-winning research that drugmakers have had a tough time translating into effective medicines. (Loftus, 8/10)
Stat:
Amicus' Rare Disease Drug, Once Indefinitely Delayed, Wins FDA Approval
After 12 years, millions of dollars, and a major reversal of fortune, Amicus Therapeutics won Food and Drug Administration approval on Friday for its first therapy, a treatment for a rare and sometimes deadly disease. The drug, called Galafold, targets Fabry disease, an inherited disorder in which the lack of a key enzyme leads to buildups up fats that can cause fatal organ damage. As it stands, Fabry patients rely on costly, bimonthly injections of synthetic enzymes to keep symptoms at bay. Amicus’s drug is an every-other-day pill that works not by replacing the missing enzyme but by boosting the effects of what patients already produce. (Garde, 8/10)
Stat:
New Ads Attack Rep. Anna Eshoo For Being 'In The Pocket Of Big Pharma'
A group that’s buying ads to try to elevate the issue of high drug prices in the midterm elections has identified its latest target: a Democratic congresswoman from Silicon Valley who wants to lead on health care issues. Patients For Affordable Drugs Action will spend $500,000 on ads attacking Rep. Anna Eshoo for her legislative record and for accepting campaign contributions from the drug industry, the group announced Friday. Eshoo is expected to be re-elected easily in November. (Robbins, 8/10)
The Hill:
Drug Pricing Watchdog Group Targets California Dem In $500K Ad Buy
“Anna Eshoo’s record on drug prices is terrible, and the reason why is obvious,” said David Mitchell, founder of Patients For Affordable Drugs Action. “She’s taken enormous sums of money from drug corporations, and she does their bidding in Washington." (Hellmann, 8/10)
Stat:
That Pathetic Alzheimer's Pipeline? It's Even Worse Than You Think
If it were any other disease, outraged patients and their families would be writing their legislators and demonstrating in front of drug makers’ headquarters. But Alzheimer’s is no ordinary disease, so the latest revelation that very few experimental drugs are being tested to see whether they might help people with moderate, let alone severe, dementia passed this week without so much as an indignant press release from advocacy groups or other Alzheimer’s organizations. (Begley, 8/10)
The Washington Post:
CRISPR: Are Gene-Edited Ingredients Already In Your Food?
In a gleaming laboratory hidden from the highway by a Hampton Inn and a Denny’s restaurant, a researcher with the biotech firm Calyxt works the controls of a boxy robot. The robot whirs like an arcade claw machine, dropping blips of DNA into tubes with pipettes. It’s building an enzyme that rewrites DNA — and transforming food and agriculture in the process. (Dewey, 8/11)
Stat:
Glaucoma May Be An Autoimmune Disease, Study Finds
Researchers at Massachusetts Eye and Ear were stumped when they saw T cells in the retinas of mice with glaucoma, so they called in an immunologist. Now their collaboration has produced the intriguing conclusion that glaucoma might be an autoimmune disease. In a paper released Friday, they reported that T cells, key soldiers in the immune system’s defense against microbes, play a role in the prolonged retinal degeneration seen in glaucoma. They also identified the target of the T cells: heat shock proteins, manufactured by both human cells and the bacteria residing within us. (Farber, 8/13)
NPR:
'Human Cell Atlas' Helps Scientists Trace Building Blocks Of Disease
If you flip open a biology textbook or do a quick search on Google, you'll quickly learn that there are a few hundred types of cells in the human body. "And it's true, because in broad categories, a few hundred is a good characterization," says Aviv Regev, a core member of the Broad Institute, a genetics research center in Cambridge, Mass. But look a little closer, as Regev has been doing, and a far more complicated picture emerges. (Weintraub, 8/13)
The Washington Post:
Empathy Researcher Tania Singer Created An Intimidating Work Environment, Former Colleagues Say
If there is anyone who knows the potentially devastating effects of hurt feelings, it is Tania Singer. The 48-year-old neuroscientist has spent her career looking at the physical, social, even economic benefits of making people more empathetic. She has mapped the brains of people watching their loved ones experiencing pain, for example, and sought scientific answers to questions about the roots of good and evil that have puzzled humans since the dawn of sentience. (Wootson, 8/12)
Stat:
FDA Clears Natural Cycles, Controversial App For Contraception
The FDA on Friday cleared the first-ever app to prevent pregnancy — but not everyone is convinced it works. The app, Natural Cycles, isn’t your typical form of contraception. It asks women to take their temperature upon waking and keep a daily log in its interface. It uses that data to help women keep track of when they’re ovulating. (Sheridan, 8/10)
Los Angeles Times:
In The Game Of Online Dating, Men And Women Try To Level Up, Study Finds
In the world of online dating, men and women are looking to find someone a little out of their league, according to a new study. Scientists who analyzed user data from a popular dating site have found that heterosexual men and women reach out to potential dating partners who are on average about 25% more attractive than they are. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, shed new light on the patterns and priorities of men and women when playing the online dating game. (Khan, 8/10)
The Washington Post:
Short Boys May Get Growth Hormones But The Decision Is Difficult
Erica Nicholson knew that her son, Sam, was small. Considering that she was barely 5 feet and 100 pounds and that his older sister was a “peanut,” it didn’t seem unusual. “I make small babies,” Nicholson said. But her daughter was growing. Sam, however, was so small that he looked like a baby compared with his peers, she said. When he was 4, his feet did not touch the ground on a training bike his sister had used at the same age. (Vander Schaaff, 8/12)
The Washington Post:
Teens Don’t Get Enough Sleep, And That Can Affect Their Health
Did you sleep well last night? If not, you’re in good company. About a third of American adults don’t get the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many people don’t get enough sleep or sleep poorly because of their jobs or hectic schedules: They work long shifts at night or have to rush to get their kids ready to catch a 6 a.m. school bus. Some 50 million to 70 million Americans have a chronic sleep disorder such as insomnia or sleep apnea, a condition in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts throughout the night. (Underwood, 8/11)
The Washington Post:
New School Year Nerves Can Sometimes Be Dangerous Anxiety
Back-to-school season is upon us, and while some kids look forward to returning to class, others are a bundle of nerves. Parents may reassure and soothe, but they may also worry: Does my anxious child have a real problem? “Anxiety is a normal, healthy human emotion,” says John Walkup, a psychiatrist at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. (Adams, 8/12)
The Associated Press:
List Grows Of People Said To Know Of Ohio St. Doctor's Abuse
Several former students and student-athletes at Ohio State University have described sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of Dr. Richard Strauss, who worked at the university from 1978 until he retired in 1998. Interviews with Strauss' victims and lawsuits filed on their behalf have named several Ohio State officials alleged to have known about the abuse but done nothing about it. (8/11)
The New York Times:
Containers Of Hurricane Donations Found Rotting In Puerto Rico Parking Lot
At least 10 trailers full of food, water and baby supplies donated for victims of Hurricane Maria were left to rot at a state elections office in Puerto Rico, where they broke open and became infested by rats. Radio Isla, a local radio station, posted a video Friday showing cases of beans, water, Tylenol and other goods covered in rat and lizard droppings. (Robles, 8/10)
The Associated Press:
Pennsylvania Health Aide Sentenced For Scalding Disabled Man
A Pennsylvania health aide who authorities say poured scalding water on a disabled man in his care, leaving him with burns on 20 percent of his body has been sentenced to serve up to five years in prison. The state attorney general's office has announced that 27-year-old Akeem Nixon of Erie, Pennsylvania, was sentenced Thursday to serve between two and a half and five years in prison. Nixon had pleaded guilty in June to neglect of a care-dependent person and aggravated assault. (8/10)
The Associated Press:
Mayo Clinic Names Head Of Florida Campus As New CEO
Mayo Clinic will get a new president and chief executive at the end of the year when Dr. Gianrico Farrugia takes over from Dr. John Noseworthy, the world-renowned health care organization announced Friday. Farrugia, the CEO of Mayo's campus in Jacksonville, Florida, since 2015, told The Associated Press that he will work closely with Noseworthy during the transition period. Noseworthy announced his plan to retire in February in keeping with Mayo's tradition of rotating its top leadership position every eight to 10 years. (8/10)
San Diego Union-Times:
Email Reveals Former Salk President's Efforts To Discourage Gender Discrimination Suit
The former president of the Salk Institute discouraged one of her professors from suing for gender discrimination, saying in a private email that legal action could damage the La Jolla science center’s reputation — and suggested it might harm the researcher’s career. Elizabeth Blackburn, a Nobel laureate, sent the email to biochemist Beverly Emerson on June 30, 2017. (Fikes and Robbins, 8/13)
The Associated Press:
High Number Of Cape Cod Mosquitoes With West Nile Virus
Public health officials say an unusually high number of mosquitoes have tested positive for West Nile virus on Cape Cod. The Cape Cod Times reports that state Department of Health said Thursday 14 mosquito samples from Falmouth, Barnstable, Dennis, Bourne and Yarmouth tested positive for the virus after being trapped Tuesday and July 31. (8/10)