First Edition: February 7, 2019

Kaiser Health News: Trump Pledges To End HIV Transmission By 2030. Doable, But Daunting.
It’s a goal long sought by public health advocates. But even given the vital gains made in drug therapies and understanding of the disease over nearly 40 years, it is not an easy undertaking. “The reason we have an AIDS epidemic is not just for a lack of the medication,” said Dr. Kenneth Mayer, medical research director at the Boston LGBT health center Fenway Institute. “There are a lot of social, structural, individual behavioral factors that may impact why people become infected, may impact if people who are infected engage in care and may impact or affect people who are at high risk of HIV.” (Heredia Rodriguez, 2/6)

Kaiser Health News: Measles Outbreak Sends Vaccine Demand Soaring, Even Among The Hesitant
Demand for measles vaccine has surged in the Washington county where the highly contagious virus is linked to more than 50 confirmed illnesses this year — including among people who had previously shunned the shots. Orders for two types of measles vaccines in Clark County were up nearly 500 percent in January compared to the same month last year, jumping from 530 doses to 3,150, according to state health department figures. (Aleccia, 2/6)

The New York Times: Democrats Unite To Begin Push To Protect Pre-Existing Condition Coverage
Democrats, claiming a mandate from voters, opened a legislative campaign on Wednesday to secure protections under the Affordable Care Act for people with pre-existing medical conditions, putting aside divisions over a more ambitious push for “Medicare for all” in favor of shoring up existing law.“ Health care was the single most important issue to voters in the 2018 election,” said Representative Anna G. Eshoo, Democrat of California, as she convened a hearing on a decision by a federal district judge in Texas that would invalidate the entire law. (Pear, 2/6)

The Hill: House Dems To Mull Bills To Overturn Trump ObamaCare Actions
Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday announced that they will hold a hearing next week to consider legislation to overturn conservative actions President Trump has taken on the Affordable Care Act. The panel will consider bills to overturn Trump’s expansion of cheaper, skimpier insurance plans that Democrats deride as “junk plans,” and to restore funding for outreach efforts to enroll people in ObamaCare plans, funding that was slashed by the Trump administration. (Sullivan, 2/6)

The Associated Press: With Anti-Abortion Push, Trump Woos Evangelicals Again
With a fierce denunciation of late-term abortions, President Donald Trump is making a move to re-energize evangelical voters whose support will be vital in heading off any possible 2020 primary challenge. Trump, at arguably the weakest point of his presidency, seized on abortion during his State of the Union address Tuesday to re-engage on a divisive cultural issue, using both religious rhetoric aimed at conservative Christians and scathing attacks on Democratic lawmakers who support abortion rights — in particular, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam. (LeMire and Reccardi, 2/6)

The New York Times: What Is Late-Term Abortion? Trump Got It Wrong
President Trump on Tuesday evening asked Congress to ban a type of abortion often referred to as “late-term abortion.” He said he wanted to protect “children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb.” He scorned New York’s recently passed Reproductive Health Act, saying that lawmakers had “cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.” It was an image he has used before, including in a campaign debate with Hillary Clinton. (Belluck, 2/6)

The Associated Press: Cuomo Defends NY Abortion Law After Criticism From Trump
Gov. Andrew Cuomo defended New York’s new abortion law Wednesday after it was criticized by President Donald Trump during the State of the Union address, saying Trump and his conservative allies are lying about the law as part of a broader assault on abortion rights. In an op-ed published in The New York Times on Wednesday, the Democrat also pushed back on Trump’s call for a ban on late-term abortion, saying he wants to roll back decades-old court rulings protecting access to the procedure. (Klepper, 2/6)

The Washington Post: Anti-Abortion Bills: Odds Good In GOP States, Not Congress
President Donald Trump’s call for a ban on late-term abortions is unlikely to prevail in Congress, but Republican legislators in several states are pushing ahead with their own tough anti-abortion bills that they hope can pass muster with the Supreme Court. Two bills proposing to outlaw abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, advanced out of House and Senate committees in the Mississippi Legislature this week, with GOP Gov. Phil Bryant pledging to sign either into law. (Crary, 2/7)

The Associated Press: Trump Launching Campaign To End HIV Epidemic In US By 2030
President Donald Trump is launching a campaign to end the HIV epidemic in the United States by 2030, targeting areas where new infections happen and getting highly effective drugs to people at risk. His move is being greeted with a mix of skepticism and cautious optimism by anti-AIDS activists. State and local health officials are warning the administration not to take money from other programs to finance the initiative, whose budget has not been revealed. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 2/6)

NPR: Trump Plan To End HIV Spread By 2030 Faces Obstacles
Several HIV/AIDS advocates say that the goal is achievable, but only if the administration reverses course in several major areas of health care policy, including efforts to weaken the Affordable Care Act, cut funding for Planned Parenthood and limit LGBTQ and immigrant rights. The initiative’s fate will depend on Congress, which will decide whether to fund the new proposal and, if so, by how much. In a press call Wednesday, Dr. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health, declined to specify how much money the president would request from Congress for the program. Those details will be included in the administration’s overall budget request, he said. (Neel and Simmons-Duffin, 2/6)

The Hill: Trump’s AIDS Turnaround Greeted With Skepticism By Some Advocates
“It sounds very much like teleprompter Trump saying words but not being invested in the statement itself,” said Scott Schoettes, counsel and HIV project director for Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization focused on the LGBT community. (Hellmann, 2/7)

Stat: Trump Claims Drug Prices Have Fallen. But He’s Cherry-Picking That Data.
President Trump boldly asserted Tuesday that his administration’s efforts to bring down drug prices had led to the largest drop in those figures in nearly half a century. That’s not quite right. (Swetlitz, 2/7)

Reuters: Eli Lilly Backs U.S. Proposal On Drug Rebates To Lower Costs
Eli Lilly and Co on Wednesday embraced a U.S. government proposal to end a decades-old system of rebates drugmakers make to industry middlemen, saying it could lower the cost of insulin and other prescription drugs for patients. Lilly, along with other major insulin makers, Sanofi SA and Novo Nordisk, has been under mounting pressure from patients and politicians over the rising cost of the life-sustaining diabetes treatment. (2/6)

Reuters: Novartis CEO Says U.S. Rebate Plan Will Return Cash To Patients
Novartis AG Chief Executive Vas Narasimhan said his company’s prescription drug prices have been “flat to negative” over the last three years, and directed blame for high costs for U.S. patients on industry middlemen that manage drug benefits. In an interview with Reuters in New York on Wednesday Narasimhan, a 42-year-old U.S. doctor who has headed the Swiss drugmaker since Feb. 2018, threw his support behind a U.S. government proposal to end a system of rebates drugmakers pay to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and health insurers in order to get products on their lists of covered medicines. (2/6)

Stat: New York Biotech Debuts, Targeting Dormant Metastatic Cancer Cells
A biotech based on the frightening fact that some cancer cells spread throughout the body even before a tumor is detectable emerged from stealth mode on Thursday, announcing it had raised roughly $60 million from, among others, early-stage venture capital companies and one of biotech’s 800-pound gorillas. (Begley, 2/7)

The New York Times: Safe Injection Site For Opioid Users Faces Trump Administration Crackdown
The Justice Department is suing to stop a Philadelphia group from opening what some public health experts and mayors consider the next front in fighting the opioid epidemic: a place where people who inject fentanyl and other illicit drugs can do so under medical supervision. The nonprofit group, Safehouse, was formed last year to house the country’s first so-called safe injection site in Philadelphia, which has one of the nation’s highest rates of overdose deaths. Safehouse had been planning to open the site as soon as next month, and a law firm has been representing it pro bono in anticipation of a crackdown by the Trump administration. (Goodnough, 2/6)

The Associated Press: US Attorney In Philadelphia Sues Over Safe Injection Site
The lawsuit pits U.S. Attorney William McSwain’s stance on safe injection sites against those of Philadelphia’s mayor, district attorney and a former Pennsylvania governor. McSwain believes supporters should try to change the laws, not break them. “Normalizing the use of deadly drugs like heroin and fentanyl is not the answer to solving the epidemic,” McSwain said at a Wednesday news conference, while protesters gathered outside his office on Independence Mall. They said thousands of people could die of overdoses in Philadelphia in the time it might take to change the law. (Dale, 2/6)

The Wall Street Journal: Federal Prosecutors Aim To Block Safe-Injection Sites In Philadelphia
Ronda Goldfein, vice president of Safehouse, said the government’s lawsuit wouldn’t stop the nonprofit from continuing its efforts to open an injection site. It doesn’t have funding or a location. She also said the suit could help lift legal uncertainty nationally surrounding safe-injection sites. “This is one of the issues that needs to be resolved before we can move forward with this initiative, both in Philadelphia and with our harm-reduction colleagues across the country,” she said. (Kamp, 2/6)

NPR: U.S. Prosecutors Block Opioid ‘Safe Injection Site’ In Philadelphia
According to the suit, a supervised injection site would violate a section added to the Controlled Substances Act in the 1980s during the height of the crack epidemic. That section of law was written to close crack houses, but legal experts say it has been used more expansively in the past. McSwain’s comments affirm remarks made last year by Rod Rosenstein, deputy U.S. attorney general, who said in an interview with WHYY that swift and aggressive action would follow the opening of a supervised injection site. Such facilities operate in Canada and Europe, but none exist in the United States. That has not stopped other cities like New York, Denver and Seattle from publicly debating similar proposals. (Allyn, 2/6)

The Washington Post: Opioid Epidemic: Justice Department Sues Philadelphia Over Supervised Injection Facility That Aims To Prevent Fatal Drug Overdoses
Advocates say that such drug sanctuaries could be an important tool in the fight to stem the opioid epidemic. Philadelphia, which has one of the nation’s most active heroin markets, has seen a high toll from opioid abuse. Supervised injection facilities exist in other countries, and advocates contend they save lives by allowing drug users to use in sanitary conditions where they are monitored for signs of overdose rather than overdosing on the street, where help might not be available. Advocates also believe safe injection sites curb the spread of HIV and hepatitis C by limiting needle sharing. (Zezima, 2/6)

The Wall Street Journal: Where Will Drug Overdoses Hit Next? Twitter May Offer Clues
The battle against opioid abuse could have a new tool in its arsenal: Twitter. Research indicates that the site provides a quick, reliable snapshot of who’s using what drugs and where throughout the country. Traditional epidemiological studies, by contrast, can take years to yield information. (Ward, 2/6)

The Hill: Google Parent Company Looking To Partner On Opioid Rehab Campus In Ohio
Google parent company Alphabet is partnering with a local health care provider in Ohio to back a treatment facility for those affected by the opioid epidemic. Verily, an experimental health care spin-off from Alphabet, said in a blog post on Wednesday that it will help launch OneFifteen in Dayton, Ohio. The facility will take a tech-focused approach to treating individuals with substance-abuse disorders. (Samuels, 2/6)

The Associated Press: Family Says Woman’s Death Led To Accused Ohio Doc’s Removal
An Ohio patient died minutes after she was given a “grossly excessive” dose of pain medication ordered by a doctor who was removed from patient care the following day and is now under investigation in connection with previous deaths, the patient’s family and their lawyers said Wednesday. The Columbus-area Mount Carmel Health System removed intensive care doctor William Husel from patient care Nov. 21, the day after 82-year-old Melissa Penix died. He was fired two weeks later. (2/6)

NPR: SSRIs Can Undercut Some Opioids’ Effectiveness, Study Says
Antidepressants may dampen the effects of some common opioids, resulting in less effective pain management according to research findings published Wednesday. The researchers suggest physicians should consider alternative pain management strategies for patients on antidepressants. Opioids come in two broad varieties: those that act directly and others that have to be chemically processed by the body before they can begin to relieve pain. Direct-acting opioids, like morphine or oxycodone, can get right to work. (Lambert, 2/6)

The Hill: 2020 Dems Walk Fine Line With Support For ‘Medicare For All’
Democratic presidential contenders face a dilemma on how far to go in championing “Medicare for all.” Stopping short of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s fully government-run system risks alienating progressives, but embracing the Vermont independent’s bill opens up lines of attack around eliminating the private insurance coverage most people already have. (Sullivan, 2/7)

Politico: Groups Quietly Mount Medicaid Expansion Ballot Campaign In Florida
Obamacare supporters are mounting a campaign to get Medicaid expansion on the Florida ballot in 2020, potentially elevating the Obamacare program as a key election issue in the presidential swing state. A mix of national and local health care groups, energized by the approval of Medicaid expansion ballot initiatives in three conservative states in November, have been collecting signatures for weeks to support a voter referendum that could cover an additional 700,000 low-income Florida adults. For now, however, the groups aren’t saying much publicly about the effort. (Pradhan, 2/6)

Politico: Pulse Check: Planned Parenthood’s Leana Wen
Planned Parenthood’s new president vows to fight the Trump administration’s latest proposal and reflects on her health care career. (2/7)

The Associated Press: AP Source: Former Michigan Rep. John Dingell In Hospice Care
Former Rep. John Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress in American history, is receiving hospice care, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday. The person was not authorized to speak publicly but told The Associated Press about the 92-year-old Dingell’s condition.Dingell posted on Twitter Wednesday evening, telling his followers, “I want to thank you all for your incredibly kind words and prayers. You’re not done with me just yet.” (Taylor and Karoub, 2/6)

The Associated Press: Blackface Photo Reopens Long History Of Bigotry In Medicine
The racist photo on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s yearbook page wasn’t the only thing that disgusted Monifa Bandele. She was especially appalled that the image was published as he was graduating from medical school on his way to becoming a pediatrician. The 1984 photo has stirred a national political furor and reopened the long history of bigotry in American medicine. The revelations about Northam gave many African-Americans a new reason to be distrustful of doctors. (Hajela, 2/6)

The Wall Street Journal: Hospitals Turn To Biometrics To Identify Patients
Biometric technology is coming to the hospital. Biometric systems, which identify people through fingerprints or other physical characteristics, have long been in use in sectors like law enforcement and consumer electronics. Now hospitals are using iris and palm-vein scanning to overcome a growing patient-identification problem. (Gormley, 2/6)

The Associated Press: Telemedicine’s Challenge: Getting Patients To Click The App
Walmart workers can now see a doctor for only $4. The catch? It has to be a virtual visit. The retail giant recently rolled back the $40 price on telemedicine, becoming the latest big company to nudge employees toward a high-tech way to get diagnosed and treated remotely. But patients have been slow to embrace virtual care. Eighty percent of mid-size and large U.S. companies offered telemedicine services to their workers last year, up from 18 percent in 2014, according to the consultant Mercer. Only 8 percent of eligible employees used telemedicine at least once in 2017, most recent figures show. (Murphy, 2/6)

The Wall Street Journal: Virtual Reality May Reduce The Pain Of Childbirth
Virtual reality may be coming to the delivery room. Researchers are studying the use of virtual reality to alleviate pain and anxiety during labor, and a handful of doctors and hospitals are already offering it to women. (Petersen, 2/6)

The Washington Post: ‘It Will Take Off Like A Wildfire’: The Unique Dangers Of The Washington State Measles Outbreak
Amber Gorrow is afraid to leave her house with her infant son because she lives at the epicenter of Washington state’s worst measles outbreak in more than two decades. Born eight weeks ago, Leon is too young to get his first measles shot, putting him at risk for the highly contagious respiratory virus, which can be fatal in small children. Gorrow also lives in a community where she said being anti-vaccine is as acceptable as being vegan or going gluten free. Almost a quarter of kids in Clark County, Wash., a suburb of Portland, Ore., go to school without measles, mumps and rubella immunizations, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) recently declared a state of emergency amid concern that things could rapidly spin out of control. (Sun and Hagan, 2/6)

Stat: Blood Test For Alzheimer’s Aims To Give Drug Makers A Neeeded Tool
It would seem difficult to put up worse numbers than experimental Alzheimer’s drugs, 99 percent of which have failed in clinical trials since 2002. But another corner of Alzheimer’s research has managed it: blood tests to either diagnose the disease in asymptomatic patients or predict which healthy people will develop it years in the future. Although you wouldn’t know it from frequent headlines proclaiming, “Blood test can predict Alzheimer’s,” the percentage of tests that looked promising in a (usually small) study but eventually fell flat is … 100 percent. (Begley, 2/6)

The Washington Post: Wildfires, Hurricanes And Other Extreme Weather Cost The Nation 247 Lives, Nearly $100 Billion In Damage During 2018
The number of billion-dollar weather disasters in the United States has more than doubled in recent years, as devastating hurricanes and ferocious wildfires that experts suspect are fueled in part by climate change have ravaged swaths of the country, according to data released by the federal government Wednesday. Since 1980, the United States has experienced 241 weather and climate disasters where the overall damage reached or exceeded $1 billion, when adjusted for inflation, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (Dennis and Mooney, 2/6)

Stat: In Flickering Brain Signals, Scientists May Detect Consciousness
As a child, Enzo Tagliazucchi was terrified of going to sleep. His self seemed so fragile, so easy to lose. He worried that if he let himself drift off, he might wake up as someone else. So he tried to stay alert, to keep moving, tapping his fingers as he lay in bed, taking nocturnal trips through his family’s house in Buenos Aires. But it never worked. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop his eyes from eventually fluttering closed. In the morning, when they opened again, he wondered where he’d been. (Boodman, 2/6)

The New York Times: China Investigates Reports Of H.I.V.-Tainted Blood Plasma Treatment
Officials in Shanghai are investigating reports that a Chinese pharmaceutical company may have sold more than 12,000 units of a blood plasma product contaminated with H.I.V., potentially the latest in a series of scandals that have threatened to undermine public trust in China’s medical institutions and health care system. In a statement on its website, the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday night that authorities had ordered the company, Shanghai Xinxing Medicine Company, to begin an emergency recall of the potentially tainted batch of intravenous immunoglobulin, a treatment made from pooled blood plasma that is often used to treat immune disorders, and halt its production. (Qin, 2/6)

The Wall Street Journal: Do E-Cigarettes Do More Good Than Harm?
The rise of e-cigarettes is often seen through two completely different lenses. On one side: Their surging use among teenagers has caused widespread alarm because of health concerns about e-cigarettes themselves and worries that they encourage youngsters to eventually smoke tobacco. (2/6)

The Associated Press: Arizona May Require License For Care Facilities After Rape
Arizona may boost state oversight of long-term care facilities like the one in Phoenix where an incapacitated woman was raped and later gave birth, reversing a decision more than 20 years ago to drop state regulation. Lawmakers are considering legislation that would require intermediate care facilities like Hacienda Healthcare to apply for a state license and conduct background checks of employees that care for clients. (2/6)

The Hill: Arizona Governor Orders Increased Regulations After Assault Of Woman In Care Facility
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) on Wednesday issued an executive order directing state agencies to increase protections for people with disabilities in long-term care facilities, and requiring state-funded care facilities to train employees on how to prevent and report abuse. “All Arizonans deserve to be safe — and we have a special responsibility to protect those with disabilities,” Ducey said in a statement. (Samuels, 2/6)

The New York Times: Ex-Nurse Pleads Not Guilty To Sexually Assaulting Incapacitated Woman At Nursing Home
A former nurse accused of raping and impregnating an incapacitated woman under his care last year at a Phoenix nursing home pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to charges of sexual assault and child abuse. In a brief arraignment hearing, the former nurse, Nathan D. Sutherland, who appeared in an orange jumpsuit, spoke only to provide his name and date of birth. The judge announced that a not guilty plea had been entered by Mr. Sutherland, 36, who was swiftly taken back to the Maricopa County Jail, where he has been held since his arrest on Jan. 23. (Haag, 2/6)

The Associated Press: Judge: Give Me Weeks For Decision In Big Flint Water Case
A judge said Wednesday it will likely take weeks for him to decide whether Michigan’s former health director will continue to face involuntary manslaughter charges arising from the Flint water crisis. The issue for Genesee County Judge Joseph Farah is whether to overturn a ruling last summer by a judge in a lower court. Nick Lyon, who led the Department of Health and Human Services until Jan. 1, has been ordered to trial in the deaths of two men who had Legionnaires’ disease. (2/6)

Los Angeles Times: California Lawmakers Try Once Again To Make It Easier To Prosecute Police Officers For Killing Civilians
A year after the failure of legislation that would have made it easier to criminally prosecute police officers for killing civilians, California lawmakers will once again debate stricter legal standards for officers who use deadly force. This week, legislators are introducing two competing bills on the issue, setting up a renewed clash between civil-liberties organizations and law-enforcement groups. One bill, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and similar groups, would allow district attorneys to more easily prosecute police officers for killing civilians. The other, which has the support of police unions and management, would instead focus on internal department policies and training. (Dillon, 2/6)