General
New York City Council Members Move to Expand Health Care for Uninsured
Katie Honan, The Wall Street Journal
New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson unveiled a health-care plan that would expand a program Mayor Bill de Blasio recently launched to reduce emergency-room visits at public hospitals and provide services for the uninsured.
Obamacare’s Unpopularity Suggests Medicare For All May Be A Hard Sell
Dan Hopkins, FiveThirtyEight
The first and second Democratic debates have made one thing clear: A number of major policy reforms are on the table, including sweeping proposals on health care and climate change.
Lawmakers hoping to overhaul privacy rules for substance-use disorders
Susannah Luthi, Modern Healthcare
Lawmakers are hoping Congress can pass a proposed overhaul of addiction-related privacy laws now that the American Medical Association is no longer opposed. Hospitals badly want Congress to waive the statute known as 42 CFR Part 2 and its dictates that only substance-use disorder, or SUD, patients themselves can decide who sees their medical history.
Trump defended a pesticide linked to developmental disorders. California will ban it
Geoffrey Mohan, Los Angeles Times
California regulators on Wednesday took formal legal steps to ban a widely used pesticide that had been rescued from elimination by the Trump administration. The move by the state Environmental Protection Agency is all but certain to draw legal challenges from Corteva Agriscience (formerly Dow AgroSciences), which has pushed back at attempts by environmentalists to ban the chemical, chlorpyrifos, on a federal level.
Vaccination Foes Ask Judge to Strike Down Law Banning Religious Exemptions
Jimmy Vielkind, The Wall Street Journal
Antivaccination advocates packed a courtroom Wednesday in Albany and asked a state judge to stop a new law that bans religious exemptions to school-vaccination requirements.
Kids With Lead Poisoning Will Get Early Help in These States
Michael Ollove, Stateline
Illinois and Ohio this year made children with even low levels of lead in their blood automatically eligible for physical, developmental and other therapies at an earlier age, when those interventions are likely to have the most impact.
Public vote on new Missouri abortion law faces time crunch
Summer Ballentine, The Associated Press
Abortion-rights advocates beginning Wednesday can start collecting signatures to get a public vote on a new law restricting abortions, but they say a short deadline leaves them with an “impossible task.” Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft on Wednesday certified a petition to put the law on the 2020 ballot.
Most Kids On Medicaid Who Are Prescribed ADHD Drugs Don’t Get Proper Follow-Up
Patti Neighmond, NPR News
Most children enrolled in Medicaid who get a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder don’t get timely or appropriate treatment afterward. That’s the conclusion of a report published Thursday by a federal watchdog agency, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General.
U.S. Futures Rebound on Trade Comments, Earnings: Markets Wrap
Laura Curtis, Bloomberg
U.S. equity futures swung wildly as investors grappled with trade headlines from China and Walmart results topped estimates. Bonds rose as growth worries lingered.
Payers
GAO: Medicare Part D plans collect nearly all drug rebates
Susannah Luthi, Modern Healthcare
Medicare Part D health plans raked in nearly all of the drug rebates from manufacturers in 2016, leaving premiums relatively flat for price-conscious seniors with prescription drug plans, according to a government watchdog study on Wednesday.
Providers
Tufts Health Plan, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care are combining
Priyanka Dayal McCluskey, The Boston Globe
Tufts Health Plan and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care shook up the state’s medical industry Wednesday, saying that they plan to merge to create an insurer serving 2.4 million people across New England.
Federal appeals court limits hospitals’ disproportionate-share funding
Alex Kacik, Modern Healthcare
Hospitals that care for a large share of Medicaid, low-income and uninsured patients stand to receive less funding from the federal government after the D.C. Circuit reconsidered how Medicaid disproportionate-share hospital reimbursement is calculated.
Doctors Can Change Opioid Prescribing Habits, But Progress Comes In Small Doses
Julie Appleby and Elizabeth Lucas, Kaiser Health News
When they started practicing medicine, most surgeons say, there was little or no information about just how many pain pills patients needed after specific procedures.
Pharma, Biotech and Devices
Investors Heart Edwards Lifesciences
Charley Grant, The Wall Street Journal
Shares of the cardiovascular-focused company have surged this year, but they have more room to run if a new procedure catches on.
Somerville Mayor Plans To Open A Supervised Consumption Site Next Year
Bob Oakes and Martha Bebinger, WBUR
Despite opposition from federal prosecutors, the mayor of Somerville is pledging to open a clinic next year where doctors and nurses would monitor illegal drug use and could reverse an overdose. Joseph Curtatone says a supervised consumption site (SCS) in his city will save lives during the opioid crisis.
Modern science has delivered the world powerful tools to defeat Ebola. It is not enough
Helen Branswell, Stat News
By some measures, the world has at last reached a tipping point in the decades-long fight against Ebola, one of the most treacherous infectious diseases known to mankind.
A battle over verifying online Canadian pharmacies goes to court
Ed Silverman, Stat News
As more Americans look to Canada for cheaper medicines, a company whose website devoted to verifying prescription drugs sold by online pharmacies is suing five organizations, including two with ties to the pharmaceutical industry, for allegedly running a campaign to manipulate and suppress information available to consumers.
Allergan CEO Saunders lines up for $39M parachute after AbbVie buy
Carly Helfand, FiercePharma
Allergan CEO Brent Saunders’ meteoric rise through pharma’s chief exec ranks is paying off, and in a big way. If he’s let go after AbbVie’s $63 billion takeover of the California company goes through, Saunders will net a cool $38.7 million.
MDMA, Or Ecstasy, Shows Promise As A PTSD Treatment
Will Stone, NPR News
Scientists are testing how pharmaceutical-grade MDMA can be used in combination with psychotherapy to help patients who have a severe form of PTSD that has not responded to other treatments. Unlike street drugs which may be adulterated and unsafe, researchers use a pure, precisely dosed form of the drug.
Health IT
Hospital, health tech stocks fall faster than the market
Tara Bannow and Jessica Kim Cohen, Modern Healthcare
Shares in nearly all the investor-owned hospital chains shed value at higher rates than the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 on Wednesday, which declined 3.1% and 2.9%, respectively.
Opinions, Editorials and Perspectives
Ending Surprise Billing Protects Patients and Honesty in Health Care
Karen Kerrigan and Katy Talento, Morning Consult
Most of us take great pains to ensure in advance that the doctors and hospitals we use are in network by our insurance plan. We assume that, when we go to an in-network hospital, that everyone who sees us, from the emergency room doctor to the radiologist who reads our X-rays, is also in network.
Research Reports
Medicare Part D: Use of Pharmacy Benefit Managers and Efforts to Manage Drug Expenditures and Utilization
U.S. Government Accountability Office
Medicare Part D plan sponsors used pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) to provide 74 percent of drug benefit management services and performed the remaining 26 percent of services themselves in 2016—the most recent year of data at the time of our analysis.
The Relationship Between Health Spending And Social Spending In High-Income Countries: How Does The US Compare?
Irene Papanicolas et al., Health Affairs
There is broad consensus that the US spends too much on health care. One proposed driver of the high US spending is low investment in social services. We examined the relationship between health spending and social spending across high-income countries.
Secondhand Smoke Exposure Among Nonsmoking Youth: United States, 2013–2016
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
In 2013–2016, more than one-third (35.4%) of U.S. nonsmoking youth aged 3–17 years were exposed to secondhand smoke (SHS) from tobacco, as measured by cotinine in the blood.
Risk of Psychosis Among Refugees: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Lasse Brandt et al., JAMA Psychiatry
In this systematic review and meta-analysis of 9 studies, refugees were at a higher relative risk of developing non–affective psychoses compared with the native population and nonrefugee migrants.
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