51��Ƶ

The fight over state abortion bans moved to Congress on Tuesday with Democrats holding a hearing to declare an ongoing “crisis” in states across the country. “This country has reached a crisis point for women’s constitutional rights to control their own bodies and their own reproductive choices,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said at a hearing Tuesday. (Hellmann, 6/4)

The debate over abortion continues to heat up as a House panel sparred Tuesday over the slew of new state restrictions that conservatives hope could lead to a court challenge that would undermine the nationwide guarantee of a right to abortion. The congressional dispute came soon after the nation’s top anti-abortion group outlined on Monday night its main goals for the 2020 elections, and Missouri state officials and Planned Parenthood went to court Tuesday over the future of the state’s last abortion clinic. (Raman, 6/4)

Democratic Louisiana State Rep. Katrina Jackson appeared in a series of interviews over the last few days defending her state's new anti-abortion law, saying she thinks of the procedure as "modern-day genocide." Louisiana last month became the sixth state to recently pass a ban on abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually at about six weeks of pregnancy. (Rodrigo, 6/4)

For nearly three years, Jill Dinwiddie worked quietly. She talked to potential donors about how desperately Planned Parenthood needed a new health center, one large enough to add abortion to the clinic’s services for the first time in three decades. She needed to raise $10 million, find a building in the city’s competitive real estate market and renovate it — all without media outlets or protesters finding out. Dinwiddie and her co-chairs of the capital campaign committee, Crandall Bowles and Linda Hudson, conducted an under-the-radar search for a real estate agent, purchased a building with a limited-liability company set up to mask the buyer and built a password-protected donation website. (Valade, 6/4)

Stacey Abrams, the Democrat from Georgia who earned national attention after narrowly losing her bid for governor last year, is urging Hollywood not to abandon the state over its new and more restrictive abortion law. Some of the biggest names in film and television — including Walt Disney and WarnerMedia — have suggested they might boycott Georgia if the legislation survives court challenges. But Abrams, political allies and business leaders contend an economic boycott would serve to only deprive working-class people of jobs with no guarantee it would reverse a law that is being teed up to challenge Roe v. Wade. (Shaban, 6/4)

The fate of Missouri's only abortion clinic is at stake in a hearing scheduled for Wednesday in St. Louis. Circuit Judge Michael Stelzer will hear testimony in a hearing on Planned Parenthood's request for a preliminary injunction that would keep open its abortion clinic in St. Louis. Missouri's health department last week declined to renew the clinic's license to perform abortion procedures, citing concerns about patient safety, including allegations of "failed abortions" and legal violations. Clinic leaders say the allegations are part of an effort by an anti-abortion administration to eliminate the procedure in the state. (Salter, 6/5)

A judge in St. Louis ruled Tuesday that four doctors who trained at Missouri's only abortion clinic will not have to testify in an ongoing case that will determine if the facility can continue providing abortions. Circuit Court Judge Michael Stelzer ruled Tuesday that complying with the subpoenas to testify filed by the state would cause an undue burden for the doctors. (Hellmann, 6/4)

Outside the St. Louis courthouse, a group of anti-abortion activists silently protested Tuesday, with "LIFE" written on tape covering their mouths. If the Planned Parenthood clinic is forced to stop providing abortions, Missouri would be the first state in the nation to block the procedure in more than 45 years. (Yan, 6/4)

Colleen McNicholas, an attending physician and OB-GYN at the clinic, called keeping the clinic open a “day-to-day” fight. She called the subpoenas to doctors unnecessary abuse from anti-abortion state regulators. “Planned Parenthood is also relieved that doctors in training will not have to come to court and face the unwarranted harassment we’ve long said is inappropriate,” McNicholas said. “We look forward to another day in this fight.” (Fentem, Davis and Hundsdorfer, 6/4)

Assistant House Speaker Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) on Tuesday announced his support for "Medicare for All" legislation, becoming the highest-ranking Democrat to co-sponsor the bill. The bill from Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) now has 112 co-sponsors in the House. (Weixel, 6/4)

The House Ways & Means Committee will hold a hearing next week on "Medicare for all," the proposal that would shift the U.S. to a single-payer health care system. The June 12 hearing will mark the first time the proposal is considered by a committee that has jurisdiction over health care issues.A spokeswoman for committee Democrats said the hearing would cover Medicare for all and "other potential pathways to universal coverage." (Hellmann, 6/4)

Some healthcare experts view the Senate health committee's proposed reforms to hospital and insurer contracts as essential to try to sustain the employer-based insurance system in the face of bloating costs. Yet even as the healthcare industry seems bent on defending the commercial market against calls for a single-payer system, hospitals are poised to fight at least some of these policies. (Luthi, 6/4)

A bipartisan effort to renew popular community health programs could become stalled by a debate over how to handle pending payment cuts to hospitals that serve poorer populations. Those tensions surfaced Tuesday as the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee considered 11 bills that would renew funding for things like community health centers and doctor training programs, which have funding authorizations that expire at the end of September. (Siddons, 6/4)

The House today sent to President Donald Trump a bill to reauthorize HHS efforts to respond to disasters and threats from emerging infectious diseases and chemical or biological agents. The Senate passed the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act, S. 1379 (116), in May. Today's voice vote in the House capped repeated efforts to renew the health agency's pandemic response unit dating to the last session. (Owermohle, 6/4)

The bill, approved by voice vote, would continue the authorizations for billions in funding for programs that help prepare for disease outbreaks and the public health fallout from disasters. Lawmakers have been debating the measure since February 2018, and the House originally passed a version in September. The bill directs “federal agencies to respond to new and emerging threats,” and “naturally occurring and man-made disasters,” citing the recent measles outbreak, wildfires, hurricanes, Ebola and “the constant looming threat of a biological attack,” said House sponsor Anna G. Eshoo, D-Calif. The measure would renew the funding through 2023 and increase the authorized funding levels for programs like the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which invests in early-stage research for vaccines and disease treatments. That program’s authorized funding level will increase from $415 million to $612 million per year. (Siddons, 6/4)

House appropriators on Tuesday defeated a bid to raise the tobacco purchasing age to 21 nationwide and strengthen age requirements for online e-cigarettes sales. The House Appropriations Committee rejected, 23-27, an amendment from Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) and Juan Vargas (D-Calif.) after Chairwoman Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) criticized the way it wouldn't take effect for two years. The language was offered during debate on a fiscal 2020 Agriculture-FDA spending bill. (Owermohle, 6/4)

A congressional committee voted Tuesday to continue a federal ban on creating genetically modified babies in the United States. The House Appropriations Committee voted to retain the ban after the prohibition had been lifted last month by a subcommittee. The vote was part of debate over routine funding legislation for the Food and Drug Administration. "This is a prohibition that is accepted by nearly every nation in the world due to the unknown risks," said Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, R-Neb., during a hearing where the ban was restored. "The risks of harm are real." (Stein, 6/4)

Lifting the prohibition could have opened the door to clinical trials of babies being made with genetic material from three people or with genomes that had been changed in ways that would be passed on to future generations. The ban has been attached to bills that fund the Food and Drug Administration in the form of an amendment, or rider, since December 2015. But last month, a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee dropped the ban from the legislation. (Joseph, 6/4)

A draft bill aiming to broadly reform how patents are granted wouldn’t allow for the patenting of individual, isolated genes, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said today. Critics have warned that the bill would overturn legal precedent preventing gene patents. The draft would eliminate a restriction on patenting broad categories of intellectual property such as “abstract ideas,” “laws of nature” or “natural phenomena.” It would establish a new benchmark involving “specific and practical utility in any field of technology through human intervention.” (Ravindranath, 6/4)

CVS Health Corp said it would offer expanded health services such as nutrition counseling and blood pressure screenings in 1,500 stores by the end of 2021, following through on plans announced during the pharmacy chain's 2018 acquisition of health insurer Aetna. The company plans to convert a total of 50 stores this year in Houston, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Tampa, representing about 15% of the stores in each of the markets, it said ahead of a meeting on Tuesday with Wall Street analysts and investors in New York. The bulk of the expansion will be split between 2020 and 2021. (6/4)

CVS' roughly 1,100 MinuteClinic sites currently focus on low-acuity services like colds and immunizations, and the company realized half of the patients who visit them don't have primary-care providers. The HealthHUB model will cater more to everyday needs, with a special focus on chronic disease management, offering services like blood draws and sleep apnea assessments. Some of CVS' MinuteClinic sites will be converted into HealthHUBs, although the company isn't saying exactly how many, CVS spokesman Joe Goode wrote in an email. A MinuteClinic typically has one to two exam rooms, while HealthHUBs will have three to four. The company plans to convert about 15% of its existing clinics into HealthHUBs, Goode said. HealthHUBs will be more staff-intensive to offer customers a more personalized experience and medical advice specific to their needs, Hourican said. (Bannow, 6/4)

CVS Health Corp., under pressure to reassure skeptical investors after its merger with Aetna Inc., said it would return to profit growth next year and detailed a vision for a health-care behemoth that drives down medical costs. After warning earlier this year that 2019 profits would decline, CVS gave longer-term projections for the first time since the Aetna merger. The company said Tuesday it expects adjusted earnings per share of at least $7 in 2020, growing by a mid-single-digit percentage in 2021 and larger increases the years following. (Terlep, 6/4)

A federal judge who has refused for months to sign off on the $69 billion CVS-Aetna merger reiterated on Tuesday that he wants to look at any potential harm that the deal might cause for the public. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., kicked off a three-day hearing as he considers whether to sign off on the U.S. Justice Department's approval of the merger. The judge must finally authorize the government's decision under the Tunney Act, but it isn't clear whether he can actually stop the CVS-Aetna deal as the two companies are largely operating as one. (Luthi, 6/4)

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon was near the end of his first day in what is scheduled to be a three-day hearing on the proposed merger of CVS and Aetna when he began marveling over the power that CVS’ pharmacy benefit manager has. (Wehrman, 6/4)

Monthly health insurance premiums in Summit County were higher than mortgage payments. Residents were toughing out illnesses and injuries at home rather than going to the doctor. Families were packing up and moving to find more affordable coverage. But now, [Tamara Drangstveit] and other Summit County leaders have led a first-of-its-kind effort in Colorado that is poised to lower health insurance prices for many in the county — and could become a model for communities across the state to gain leverage over a health care system that often feels suffocating. (Ingold, 6/4)

An emergency department in 2030 is poised to look much different as automation takes hold, and those changes are likely to disproportionately affect women in healthcare, according to a new report. Automation will displace as many as 1 in 4 female workers across all sectors, or 160 million women, but that will be offset by an increase in demand and productivity, according to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute. That does not account for "frontier" jobs that one could not even imagine today, said Kweilin Ellingrud, a senior partner at McKinsey and co-author of the report. (Kacik, 6/4)

Kaiser Health News: Dropped From Health Insurance Without Warning: Was It Legal?

Caitlin and Corey Gaffer know they made a mistake. Anyone could have done the same thing, the Minneapolis couple says. Still, they can’t believe it cost them their health insurance coverage just as Caitlin was in the middle of pregnancy with their first child. “I was like ‘What?’ There’s no way that’s possible,” said Caitlin, 31, of her reaction to the letter she opened in early October telling them the coverage they had for nearly two years had been canceled. It cited nonpayment of their premium as the reason. (Appleby, 6/5)

Kaiser Health News: ‘An Arm And A Leg’: They Thought They Had ‘Adulted’ Properly

Find out what happened to the Minneapolis couple in the first episode of “An Arm and a Leg” Season 2, a co-production of Kaiser Health News and Public Road Productions. (Weissmann, 6/4)

A team of researchers inside Pfizer made a startling find in 2015: The company’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis therapy Enbrel, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 64 percent. The results were from an analysis of hundreds of thousands of insurance claims. Verifying that the drug would actually have that effect in people would require a costly clinical trial — and after several years of internal discussion, Pfizer opted against further investigation and chose not to make the data public, the company confirmed. (Rowland, 6/4)

This is the tantalizing promise of gene therapies, the potential cures for dozens of once-incurable illnesses. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued its first approval of a systemic gene therapy, a Novartis AG treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, on May 24 and says it expects to approve 10 to 20 therapies a year starting in 2025. There are more than 800 trials under way, targeting diseases including rare metabolic disorders, sickle cell anemia, hemophilia, and Parkinson’s. As the list grows, such treatments have the potential to fundamentally remake the health-care system at every level. (Cortez, 6/5)

It was, by all accounts, a pretty slow year at the annual meeting of the American Society of Oncology. But the pace of cancer research is so fast that even during a slow year a lot happens. Here’s our review of some of the most important developments revealed at the largest annual meeting of cancer doctors. For a few years, most big cancer meetings have been all about immunotherapy, with the spotlight on big, practice-changing clinical trials showing how the immune system can be directed to kill cancer cells. (Feuerstein and Herper, 6/4)

Veterans can expect some glitches in the June 6 rollout of the new community care system but, for most who are eligible, getting an appointment with a private doctor should come down to "punching a button," according to Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie. There will be "a few hiccups," but "I'm confident our team is ready across the country" for the long-awaited implementation of the VA Mission Act, said Wilkie, who has billed the new system as the most transformative veterans care initiative in a generation. (Sisk, 6/3)

The Department of Veterans Affairs on Tuesday finalized rules governing how veterans can access non-VA doctors, sticking with parameters the department originally proposed in January over objections from some advocates. Under one of the two rules, which both take effect Thursday, veterans can access non-VA providers if their drive time to a VA facility exceeds 30 minutes for primary care, mental health or home health services, and 60 minutes for specialty care. The standards also allow VA patients to see private providers if appointment wait times exceed 20 days for primary care, mental health or home health, and 28 days for specialty care. (Clason, 6/4)

NPR's Ari Shapiro talks to Robert Wilkie, secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, about a new program that launches June 6 that would allow more veterans to seek private health care. (6/4)

The former head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct violation related to his arrest last year for alleged sexual misconduct. Dr. Thomas Frieden appeared Tuesday in Brooklyn Criminal Court. Frieden is also a former New York City health commissioner. Frieden was arrested in August. (6/4)

After turning himself in to the New York Police Department in August last year, Dr. Frieden was charged with forcible touching, third-degree sexual abuse and second-degree harassment. The alleged victim told a detective that on Oct. 20, 2017, in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, Dr. Frieden touched and squeezed her buttocks without her consent, according to a criminal complaint. The complaint, which didn’t name the victim, said she told the detective she was “alarmed and annoyed.” A lawyer for Dr. Frieden declined to comment on Tuesday. (Gravely and Ramey, 6/4)

Dr. Thomas Frieden, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, settled charges of sexual harassment Tuesday with a guilty plea to a lesser violation. Frieden, who led the CDC from 2009 to 2017, pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct, striking a deal that will leave him with no criminal record if he stays out of trouble for a year, according to press reports. (Garde, 6/4)

Frieden is currently president and CEO of the global health nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives. The organization did not respond to a request for comment. (Weixel, 6/4)

The Trump administration is considering sheltering unaccompanied immigrant children apprehended along the southwest border at Fort Benning, the sprawling Columbus-area military installation, according to the Pentagon and U.S. Health and Human Services Department.It is unknown how many children could be housed there and for how long. But Acting Defense Secretary Pat Shanahan approved a request from the Department of Health and Human Services in April for the Pentagon to find space for up to 5,000 at military bases. (Redmon, 6/4)

The new top immigration official signaled Tuesday his agency is looking to step up deportations of families who are in the United States illegally, actions that would likely run into logistical hurdles and face strong public opposition. Mark Morgan, acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency would continue to prioritize deportations of people who have criminal histories, but that no one should be exempt from enforcement. (6/4)

The health care skills gap would be even larger without American immigrants. In 2017, immigrants accounted for 18.2 percent of health care workers, according to a study published in Health Affairs. As the U.S. faces a shortage of health care workers, immigrants have helped fill some of the gaps. Migrants, in particular, are covering key shortage positions such as rural physicians, wrote Leah Zallman, an assistant professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the study. A growing elderly population and strict licensing requirements required of many health care workers has contributed to the shortage. (Hagan, 6/3)

When nearly two dozen Republican legislators voted last year to expand Medicaid in Virginia — a stunning flip on a marquee pledge to resist “Obamacare” — outraged conservatives vowed to oust them in party primaries. The conservative powerhouse Americans for Prosperity targeted them with radio and Facebook ads, organized “Stop Obamacare” meetings across the state and warned through a spokesman, “Politicians usually pay a price when they ignore their constituents.” (Vozzella, 6/4)

This year has been a political roller coaster for the state’s transgender population. A March state Supreme Court decision overturned a ban on using state Medicaid dollars for transition-related surgery. Then lawmakers enacted a provision that would alter the Civil Rights Act so Medicaid could once again opt out of paying.This has left many transgender Iowans -- who make up just 0.3 percent of the state's population -- suddenly in limbo. (Krebs, 6/4)

Republican lawmakers voted Tuesday to add $588 million in new state funding for health care programs in Wisconsin under a spending plan that won't include Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ plan to expand Medicaid by tapping into $1 billion of federal funds. Lawmakers who write the state budget approved an overall $1.6 billion spending increase for the state Department of Health Services that includes a mix of state and federal funding. (Beck and Marley, 6/4)

Plenty of health-tech startups have been buoyed by early data suggesting that their coaching and monitoring tools are generating improvements in patients with chronic diseases. But a big question remains: Just how durable are those gains? New data from one such company, Virta Health, underscore a tricky challenge for the burgeoning field: Even when an intervention looks promising, the apparent benefits often erode over time. (Robbins, 6/5)

From smart pacemakers to diagnostic algorithms and digital therapeutics, medicine is becoming more digitized every year. Digital medicine tools offer the possibility of improved health outcomes, lower costs, and better access to care. But the evidence base for the safety and effectiveness of these new products has not kept pace with their development. Given the great divide between the promised benefits of digital medicine and its potential risks, we need to know — not just believe — that the tools we use are trustworthy. (Jen Goldsack, Beau Woods and Eric Perakslis, 6/5)

The 3-year-old boy who could upend a 40-year-old law aimed at protecting Native American children barreled into the suburban living room, merrily defying his parents’ prediction that he might be shy. He had a thatch of night-black hair and dark eyes that glowed with mischievous curiosity. As he pumped a stranger’s hand and scampered off to bounce on an indoor trampoline, his Superman cape floated behind him, as if trying to catch up. Zachary, or A.L.M. as he is called in legal papers, has a Navajo birth mother, a Cherokee birth father and adoptive parents, Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, neither of whom is Native American. (Hoffman, 6/5)

With rising numbers of children under state supervision and a worsening shortage of foster families, more states have made it easier for parents whose rights to their children were terminated to renew those relationships, sometimes years after a court terminated legal ties. Severing parental rights is the nuclear option of child protective services: The adult can no longer visit or contact their children, and the kids are known as “legal orphans,” because in the court’s eye, they have no parents. Still, the situation is becoming more common: In 2017 nearly 70,000 such orphans across the country were awaiting adoption, nearly a fifth more than in 2013. (Wiltz, 6/5)

As the population ages, the number of older Americans who die following a fall is rising. A study published Tuesday in the medical journal JAMA found that for people over 75, the rate of mortality from falls more than doubled from 2000 to 2016. Researchers analyzed information obtained from death certificates maintained by the federal government’s National Center for Health Statistics. In 2016, the rate of death from falls for people 75 and older was 111 per 100,000 people, they found. In 2000, that rate was 52 per 100,000 people. (Hafner, 6/4)

How many steps should people take every day for good health? A new study of activity and mortality in older women finds that the total could be lower than many of us expect and that even small increases in steps can be meaningful. The study also side-eyes the validity, utility and origin of the common 10,000-step-a-day exercise goals built into so many of our phones and activity monitors and suggests, instead, that any moving, whether or not it counts as exercise, may help to extend people’s lives. (Reynolds, 6/5)

Emerging from a theater on a recent Sunday, I turned on my phone and found a flurry of texts from my daughter. My 2-year-old granddaughter had just smashed her thumb in a closing restaurant door. Wincing, I read on: They were headed for an urgent care clinic. They were waiting for X-rays.The thumb was broken and needed a splint. (Span, 6/5)

A federal appeals court appeared torn Tuesday over a lawsuit by 21 young people demanding government action against climate change — unmoved by Trump administration arguments that the case was a fabrication, but uncertain about judicial authority to chart a new course. The issue before a panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, meeting in Portland, was whether to allow the youths and their environmental supporters to go to trial on claims that their constitutional rights to life and liberty are being violated by government-sanctioned oil, coal and gas development. (Egelko, 6/4)

Most people know that caffeine close to bedtime can interfere with sleep and that tossing back cocktails in the evening can cause a person to wake up a few hours later when the alcohol is metabolized. But less research has been done to understand the effects of food on sleep. One expert, Marie-Pierre St-Onge, an associate professor of nutritional medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York—and director of the university’s Sleep Center of Excellence—explains the sleep-diet relationship and what foods may disturb your slumber. (Mitchell, 6/4)

Kids with obesity face a host of health problems related to their weight, like high blood pressure, diabetes, and joint problems. Research points to another way heavier children and teens are at risk: their own doctors' bias. This prejudice has real health consequences for kids, making families less likely to show up for appointments or get recommended vaccines. (Gordon, 6/5)

It seemed like business as usual when a new season of “Love Island” aired here Monday night. All the familiar elements of the cult reality show were there, with the luxury villa in Spain and the skimpy swimsuits. But as the credits rolled, the sunny atmosphere darkened and a black screen appeared with a photograph of Michael Thalassitis, a former contestant who killed himself in March. The episode had been dedicated to his memory. (Codrea-Rado, 6/4)

A deeply diluted version of an ambitious public option health care bill moved through the House Tuesday, drawing bipartisan support but abandoning once-hopeful plans to impose a state mandate and arrange discounted coverage for small businesses and individuals. The final measure included a requirement that health care providers submit annual reports on the prices they impose, the costs they incur and the payments they receive. (Carlesso, 6/4)

The Maine Legislature voted Tuesday to legalize assisted suicide, with supporters declaring it in line with the state's tradition of individualism and opponents insisting the practice tempts fate. The bill now goes to Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who has 10 days to act on the bill and has not indicated whether she will let it become law. Her office said she has not yet taken a position. (6/4)

After a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007, a bill to require mandatory background checks for arms purchases at gun shows failed to make it out of committee in the Virginia State Senate. It was blocked by all of the Republicans on the committee and two Democrats, who controlled the chamber at the time. Now, more than a decade later, and after a gunman killed 12 people in Virginia Beach last week, a similar background check bill is being proposed as part of a package of legislation to be considered in a special session, which Gov. Ralph Northam called for on Tuesday. (Robertson, 6/4)

The proposed state budget up for a vote this week in the N.H. Senate includes money to address PFAS chemical contamination issues. The increasing awareness of PFAS contamination has already been costly for the state, towns and water utilities. (Ropeik, 6/4)

State and federal officials say Nashua’s drinking water supplies are safe from contamination by a long-dormant Superfund site.That's despite recent tests showing elevated levels of toxic PFAS chemicals in the groundwater at what's called the Sylvester site. (Ropeik, 6/4)

In his first public bill signing following the end of this year's legislative session, Gov. Greg Abbott signed five bills Tuesday, measures that aim to combat human trafficking, eliminate the state's rape kit backlog, and expand resources for survivors of sexual assault. (Byrne, 6/4)

Senate negotiators on a six-member conference committee will try to convince their House colleagues to agree to a $5 million program aimed at reducing the death toll from the opioid epidemic. The proposals, including greater access to overdose-reversing drugs and ways to test for the presence of deadly opioid fentanyl, stem from recommendations made this year by a high-level commission that explored possible new steps state government could take. (Lisinski, 6/4)

It’s been an unenviable position for years: Workers at the Division for Children, Youth and Families have some of the highest average workloads in the country. This week, a bill hoped by lawmakers to address that became law. On Monday, Gov. Chris Sununu and Senate President Donna Soucy signed off on Senate Bill 6, a measure to dramatically increase the staffing at the agency, adding funding for 77 new positions over two years. The governor also signed a second bill, Senate Bill 14, seeking to fund preventative programs to better divert children from dangerous situations. (DeWitt, 6/4)

As court battles continue about whether the state is properly carrying out a 2016 constitutional amendment that broadly legalized medical marijuana, the Florida House is again trying to weigh in. House attorneys Friday gave notice that they will appeal a Leon County circuit judge’s ruling that blocked the House from intervening in a lawsuit to help defend a controversial 2017 law that was designed to carry out the constitutional amendment. The move came as the House also is asking the 1st District Court of Appeal to allow it to intervene in another case about the 2017 law. (Saunders, 6/4)

Nine months and a long Arctic winter have come and gone since the abduction, sexual assault and murder of 10-year-old Ashley Johnson-Barr in the northwest Alaska hub community of Kotzebue. Signs of Ashley can be found everywhere in this town of 3,200. At the cemetery, groups of kids gather at the purple-painted wooden cross marking her grave. They leave trinkets, teddy bears, necklaces, even sports medals. People slip bouquets of artificial flowers through the chain link fence at Rainbow Park, where the fifth grader was last seen playing on a Thursday evening in September. (Theriault Boots, 6/4)

Beverly Hills has become the first U.S. city to end most tobacco sales. The City Council on Tuesday unanimously voted to snuff out sales of cigarettes, cigars, e-cigarettes and other tobacco products beginning in 2021. The ban covers sales at gas stations and pharmacies as well as convenience and grocery stores. But it exempts hotels and three plush cigar lounges in the wealthy and glamorous Los Angeles suburb. (6/4)

Questions abound after Michigan authorities executed search warrants in recent weeks to seize from government storage the state-owned mobile devices of former Gov. Rick Snyder, top aides and other government employees in a long-running criminal investigation of Flint's water crisis. The three-year probe of lead contamination in the city's water supply and a deadly Legionnaires' disease outbreak has led to charges against 15 people, including two members of Snyder's Cabinet along with two state-appointed emergency managers effectively ran Flint due its financial troubles. (6/4)

Most of us will continue to pay a tax every time we visit the doctor, a clinic and other health care providers in Minnesota. A major accomplishment of the legislative session was a bipartisan agreement to extend a tax on health care providers but at a lower rate, after it had been set to disappear at the end of the year. (Zdechlik, 6/4)

A judge held Oregon’s public psychiatric hospital in contempt of court on Tuesday, ruling that hospital leaders “willfully violated” court orders to quickly admit defendants in need of mental health evaluations and treatment. The contempt ruling, issued by Judge D. Charles Bailey of the Washington County Circuit Court, is the clearest rebuke yet of the state’s lapses in handling the rise in criminal cases with mentally ill defendants. (Friedman, 6/4)

Partners HealthCare on Tuesday halted its two-year effort to acquire Care New England Health System, Rhode Island’s second-largest hospital operator, after Governor Gina Raimondo called on local hospitals to come up with a solution for health care in the state. With Raimondo’s urging, Care New England, Lifespan, and Brown University said they would begin negotiations to create a Rhode Island-based academic health care system. (Dayal McCluskey and McGowan, 6/4)

Health officials in Ohio say 10 people have now been diagnosed with Legionnaires' disease amid an outbreak at a recently opened hospital near Columbus. Franklin County's health department said Tuesday that's up from seven. One of those patients died Sunday. (6/4)

Partners HealthCare says it is withdrawing efforts to acquire Care New England, the second-largest health care network in Rhode Island.The move comes at the request of Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, who says she wants the two top health care networks in her state and Brown University to resume efforts to create a more unified, local system. (Bebinger, 6/4)

San Francisco officials decided Tuesday to force some people with serious mental illness and drug addiction into treatment, even if it goes against the spirit of a city known for its fierce protection of civil rights. Several members of the Board of Supervisors voiced deep concerns Tuesday about the possibility of taking away a person’s civil liberties, but the proposal for a pilot program passed 10-1. Mayor London Breed and other supporters say the move — known as conservatorship — is necessary to help people who are often homeless, addicted to drugs and have a mental illness, making them a danger to themselves. (Har, 6/4)

The number of homeless people counted across Los Angeles County jumped 12% over the past year to nearly 59,000, with more young and old residents and families on the streets, officials said Tuesday. The majority of the homeless were found within the city of Los Angeles, which saw a 16% increase to 36,300, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said in presenting January's annual count to the county Board of Supervisors. (6/4)

A nonprofit medical clinic wants to turn $350,000 from Pasco County into $900,000 worth of health services for the needy. Pasco’s response? Go ask the hospitals for help. The scene played out Tuesday morning when Premier Community HealthCare Group asked commissioners for $350,000 in the upcoming county budget. The local government dollars allow Premier to tap an additional $556,000 from the federal government in what is known as the Low-Income Pool. Money from the private sector does not qualify for the federal match. (Bowen, 6/5)

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a controversial law Tuesday that will allow the city to force about five people who are severely mentally ill and addicted to drugs into inpatient treatment.After months of intense debate in City Hall, the board voted 10-1, with Supervisor Shamann Walton dissenting, to adopt state law SB 1045. (Thadani, 6/4)

Letters sent to a federal judge in May claimed women at an all-women state prison were not receiving adequate maternal healthcare. The letters mentioned stories of miscarriages, poor diets and a woman giving birth alone in her cell. The Arizona Department of Corrections is under scrutiny for not providing adequate health and dental care to inmates. (Castle, 6/4)

Improvements to Sacramento County jails stemming from a lawsuit alleging “inhumane” solitary confinement conditions made up the bulk of new spending recommended to the Board of Supervisors for the county’s 2019-20 budget. Released Tuesday, the $4.4 billion spending plan is a 2.4 percent increase from last year’s budget, with county departments angling to get about $33.1 million for new or improved programs. (Yoon-Hendricks, 6/4)

East Jefferson General Hospital is one step closer to being taken off Jefferson Parish's hands. Hospital leaders announced Tuesday that they have signed an agreement to discuss a potential takeover by LCMC Health, the New Orleans-based hospital operator that already leases West Jefferson Medical Center and runs several other local hospitals. The agreement, known as a memorandum of understanding, is nonbinding, but it commits the board of EJGH and leaders of LCMC to negotiating in secret over the next several months on the terms of a potential takeover. (Roberts, 6/4)

Nine nursing homes in Kansas and 14 in Missouri are among nearly 400 nationwide with a “persistent record of poor care” whose names had been withheld from the public, according to a U.S. Senate report released Monday. The facilities are not included on a shorter list of homes that get increased federal scrutiny because of health, safety or sanitary problems. (Margolies, 6/4)

Northeast Georgia Health System has sent letters to 40,000 patients, warning them that its contract with Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield may end Sept. 30 without a new agreement. The Gainesville-based system said that Anthem is seeking “drastic cuts’’ in payments for medical services. (Miller, 6/4)

Ashley Flores was at home on Christmas Eve 2017, anticipating the gifts she and her siblings would soon open, when she began having difficulty breathing. The 11-year-old’s older sister dialed 911 and was put on hold by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, her relatives said. The next four times her sister and other family members called, the same deputy failed to properly transfer the emergency calls and eventually routed them to an empty fire station where no one picked up, the family alleged in a lawsuit. (Lau, 6/4)

Coal ash found in the sediment at the bottom of Lake Sutton suggests multiple, unreported and unmonitored spills have occurred for years at Duke Energy’s former coal-fired plant near Wilmington, according to a new study conducted by researchers at Duke University. Sediment samples collected from the lake in 2015 and again last year after Hurricane Florence detected contaminants including arsenic, selenium, thalium and copper – metals found in coal. (Talton, 6/4)

By the time the doors open 15 minutes early this Saturday night, dozens are lined up to get inside. Women wear wedges and bodysuits that hug their curves. Men sport collared shirts and their favorite sneakers. Some have caregivers guiding them; others need wheelchairs. Many wear the signature T-shirts stamped with the logo, Club 1111. It’s the long-awaited evening when the League for People with Disabilities transforms into a glittering nightclub for disabled adults. The classrooms become dance floors, with DJs playing pounding club music. Merchandise, such as sunglasses and blinking rings, is stacked up and ready to be sold, and volunteers wait in a makeshift spa to do fingernails and apply temporary tattoos. A lounge with dim lights is set up for chilling. (Wenger, 6/4)

Oakland on Tuesday became the second U.S. city to decriminalize magic mushrooms after a string of speakers testified that psychedelics helped them overcome depression, drug addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder. The City Council voted unanimously to decriminalize the adult use and possession of magic mushrooms and other entheogenic, or psychoactive, plants and fungi. Denver voters in May approved a similar measure for people 21 and older. (Maldonado, 6/5)

When it comes to concerns over the rising costs of prescription drugs, it's not just an isolated few that should be grabbing the headlines. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which examined prices for the 49 top-selling drugs between January 2012 and December 2017, found virtually all of them rose in price on a regular basis. The median price among those drugs rose 76% over the time period, and 78% of the drugs in the study saw price hikes of at least 50%. More than 4 of 5 products in the study more than doubled in price. (Kuhrt, 6/3)

The costs for certain widely used medicines continue to rise in the United States even amid competition from similar products, according to a new study. The results run contrary to normal expectations about market forces on prices. "That was one of the more disheartening findings" of the study, lead author Nathan E. Wineinger, PhD, from Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, told Medscape Medical News. (Young, 5/31)

The cost of many popular prescription drugs has increased substantially in the U.S. in the past six years, and the trend may continue if bold bipartisan action isn’t taken, according to a study published Friday. The study, in the journal JAMA Network Open, found a substantial industry-wide rise in insurer and out-of-pocket costs for top-selling, brand-name prescription drugs, highlighting one of the foremost problems in health care today: unimpeded price increases in the pharmaceutical market. (Charles, 5/31)

The prescription drugs that have seen the most rapid growth in cost in the U.S. don’t treat depression, cholesterol or even autoimmune diseases. Blockbuster male libido treatments Viagra and Cialis saw the biggest price hikes among the 17 top-selling brand-name drugs that have seen costs surges from 2012 through 2017, according to a new study published Friday in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association. (Lovelace, 5/31)

In the latest state effort to peel back the curtain on drug pricing, Nevada has adopted a law that requires pharmaceutical companies to disclose prices and costs associated with their asthma medicines, a step that mirrors action taken two years ago on diabetes treatments. Specifically, drug makers must submit reports to the state detailing costs for producing or acquiring medicines used to treat asthma, as well as profit margins, any financial assistance provided to patients, and the factors contributing to recent, significant price increases. (Silverman, 6/4)

When the first HIV drug, AZT, came to market in 1987, it cost $10,000 a year.That price makes Peter Staley laugh today. "It sounds quaint and cheap now, but $10,000 a year at that time was the highest price ever set for any drug in history," he says. At the time, the price Burroughs Wellcome set for the drug sparked outrage. The AIDS epidemic was an urgent national crisis. For many, the diagnosis was a death sentence. The TV-viewing public was horrified by endless images of young men, suddenly sick and dying. A lost generation. (Simmons-Duffin, 5/30)

Some Big Pharma investors wanted to know whether drug prices are rising because executives personally benefit from the hikes. But when they put that question up for a vote, their fellow shareholders turned them away. In a series of annual meetings at top drugmakers, shareholders rejected calls for more information on executive compensation—namely, whether price hikes directly fueled increases in C-suite pay. (Sagonowsky, 5/30)

If you’re an avid follower of #healthpolicytwitter, you may have seen a pretty head-turning statement from former CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt: “Yes, I went full socialist.” The eyebrow-raiser came after Slavitt endorsed a plan to nationalize insulin and make it a “public good” — and when I caught up with Slavitt for a brief interview, he didn’t back down. He made the argument that insulin is an essential part of life for people with type 1 diabetes, much like water. “We wouldn’t sell bottled water at $80 a bottle,” he told me. He also isn’t buying the argument that tweaks around the edges can solve the insulin affordability issue. (Florko, 6/4)

The calamity engulfing generic-drug stocks has many causes, but they are all made worse by one simple malady: too much debt. Solving the problem is much tougher than identifying it. Years of weak performance for these companies has lately broken into a share-price crisis. In the past month alone, shares of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and Mylan have plunged by about 40%. Smaller rivals, such as Mallinckrodt and Lannett haven’t fared any better. (Grant, 6/2)

As a long-running battle over access to a pricey cystic fibrosis drug grinds on in the U.K., an advocacy group and several families have formed a buyer’s club in order to make a lower-cost version of a Vertex Pharmaceuticals treatment available to patients in the next few weeks. The new buyer’s club is working with Gador, a drug maker based in Argentina, which will ship a generic version of the Orkambi medication to the U.K., where cystic fibrosis patients and their families can expect to pay roughly $25,000 a year, depending on how many people sign up. This would be 80 percent less than the approximately $132,000 that Vertex reportedly wants to charge the National Health Service in England. (Silverman, 6/4)

Prescription drug prices continue to soar, and the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing is calling for transparency and accountability. Former State Senator Leticia Van de Putte says some people are reducing the dosage of medications or doing without them because of the skyrocketing prices. “Blood pressure medicine, diabetes, cholesterol, seizure medication–these are medications that people absolutely need to stay alive, and that’s where we’re seeing these huge increases,” said Van de Putte, a longtime pharmacist in San Antonio. (Ruiz, 6/3)

New Jersey-based Heritage Pharmaceuticals, Inc., has agreed to pay over $7 million to settle allegations that it schemed to fix prices for several of its drugs. Federal prosecutors say the generics drug maker conspired with competitors between 2012 and 2015 to artificially inflate the price of pharmaceuticals, rig bids, and allocate customers. The drugs, including those to treat high blood pressure, asthma, and diabetes — were supplied to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Department of Defense. (Wood, 5/31)

If the Empire State Building happened to be hollow, could you fill it with 1 billion ping pong balls? Would that number fall short, or would you have leftovers? How many ping pong balls do you think it would take exactly? I know, it’s a hard question. It’s hard to know even where to start. A half a century ago, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and his lifelong colleague Amos Tversky described what they called anchoring. When offered a number about an intuitively unknowable quantity, like how many ping pong balls could fill the Empire State Building, the guesser is pulled toward that number. (Peter B. Bach, 6/4)

As someone who has lived with spinal muscular atrophy for all 30 years of my life, I was perplexed and disappointed that the recent approval of Novartis’ gene therapy Zolgensma was immediately overshadowed by outrage over the drug’s price: $2.125 million.The Food and Drug Administration’s decision was a pivotal day for those of us in the SMA community. Zolgensma, approved for children under 2, is the only one-dose treatment option for any category of SMA patients and has been highly effective in clinical testing so far. (Nathan Yates, 5/31)

Americans have heard politicians talk about high drug prices for years. It’s one of the main problems in health care that both President Donald Trump and I, as his health secretary, have talked about a great deal too. But the Trump administration isn’t offering up just talk — we’re delivering results. In December for the first time in 46 years, the official government measure of inflation in drug prices actually dropped for all of 2018. More than a dozen companies last year cut their prices, froze prices or rolled back price increases. (HHS Secretary Alex Azar, 5/30)

Recently, the Trump administration finalized a rule to require drug companies to disclose the list prices of their drugs in direct-to-consumer advertisements. It appears to be a step toward greater transparency in the pharmaceutical market, but its impact is likely to be overshadowed by a much deeper problem: the billions of dollars in drug rebates captured by pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) that should be used to lower consumer prices at the pharmaceutical counter. A recent survey of 1,000 heads-of-household finds the vast majority of consumers agree. (Liam Siguad, 6/1)

Prescription drug costs, which have risen substantially in recent years, now account for a fifth of all health care spending. As a result, a quarter of Americans say they have a difficult time paying for their prescription medications and nearly one in 10 say they do not take their medication as prescribed to save money. This is not sustainable. There are efforts in Congress and the Maine Legislature to slow the cost increases to ensure that people don’t go without needed medication. (6/4)

Almost every conversation we have at the kitchen table or in our public discourse in the context of our prescription medicines is regarding price, and for good reason. Profiteering among some within in the pharmaceutical industry compels many of us into situations where we are forced to make a decision between putting food on the table versus cutting our prescription pills in half. This is clearly unacceptable.  A significant outcome of this dilemma is addressed by generic drugs that are on the other end of the pricing spectrum. (Dinesh Thakur, 5/30)

So why did the bill, which had bipartisan support, fail to pass this year? Some legislators said they had concerns about the program's logistics, while others were worried about the funding source. But the proposal's fate was ultimately decided in complex end-of-session negotiations that happened outside the public eye. Rep. Tina Liebling, the House DFL chairwoman for the health and human services committee, said that during one of the final negotiating sessions she asked her Senate counterpart, Republican Sen. Michelle Benson, whether the insulin provision was going to end up in the final version of the massive health and human services bill. (Van Berkel, 5/29)

Chemicals giant Bayer AG is reeling after a jury awarded $2 billion in damages to people who say they contracted cancer after years of using Roundup, a popular weed killer manufactured by Bayer subsidiary Monsanto Co. Bayer probably won't pay out the full $2 billion. But more than 10,000 further cases are pending, worrying Bayer investors as well as farmers who rely on the product as a cheap, effective herbicide. Cancer may only be part of the story. Studies over the past decade suggest that glyphosate — the active ingredient in Roundup — pollutes water sources, hangs around in soil far longer than previously suspected, and routinely taints human food supplies. (Mark Buchanan, 6/4)

Over the weekend, a reporter asked Gov. Newsom his opinion of a Senate bill to tighten the regulations concerning medical exemptions for child vaccinations. His answer was a huge blunder. Newsom’s response fed into the anti-vaccination fever swamp. He undermined a necessary effort to place oversight on the distribution of medical exemptions, which have soared sharply enough in the last two years to raise suspicions about whether some are not legitimate. (Michael Hiltzik, 6/4)

Shares of CVS Health Inc. have been battered in recent months along with other health-care companies amid stepped-up scrutiny of the industry’s pricing practices�����Ի� calls from lawmakers and the Trump administration to overhaul the current complicated�����Ի� costly U.S. health system. CVS also has had the added task of integrating Aetna Inc., the insurer it bought for  $69 billion in November as part of an ambitious plan to transform itself from a pharmacy giant into a more complete provider of health-care services. It was against this backdrop, and with CVS’s shares down 31% since completing the Aetna deal, that the company held its much-anticipated investor day Tuesday. It marked the first comprehensive update of CVS post-merger, and was a chance for management to convince shareholders that the combined company was up to the challenges ahead and moving in the right direction. Based on the stock’s initial positive reaction, investors seem to have liked what they heard. That upbeat vibe isn’t misplaced. (Max Nisen, 6/4)

If the pro-choice and pro-life camps share anything in common, it’s an inability to see any merit in the other’s case. Pro-choice advocates, however, have benefited from a trend toward gender equality around the world. Pro-lifers believe feminism changes nothing about the issue—for them, a life is at stake—but they’ve had to respond to charges that women have been underrepresented in the public debate. The right to terminate a pregnancy, after all, is one that only women are in position to claim. On both sides, rising female empowerment is newly centering women in the abortion debate. (6/5)

Until recently, the only way to make eggs or sperm was the old-fashioned way: in the ovaries and testes. In the not-too-distant future, it may be possible to use cells from almost any part of the body to create these germ cells, also known as gametes.This process, called in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), raises the possibility that babies could be made using muscle or liver or blood cells. While not yet ready for prospective human parents — so far it has only been accomplished successfully in mice — it raises major ethical and legal questions that we should start thinking and talking about now. (I. Glenn Cohen and Alex Pearlman, 6/5)

It is time to act effectively and quickly to confront homelessness and provide shelter for people who are living outside. This Thursday, the Austin City Council can take concrete steps to make this a reality by approving a Housing-Focused Shelter project. (Ann Kitchen, 6/4)

Some of them are flat broke, some are sick, some work, some have given up hope. They are homeless in Los Angeles, where mega-mansions and shantytowns share the same ZIP code, and where the dark underbelly of a colossal social breakdown is on full display. In L.A. city and county, you taxed yourselves to do something about it, and last year alone $619 million was poured into housing and services. (Steve Lopez, 6/4)

The blue couch appeared one evening at the dumpster across the alley behind my house. Over the course of the next two days, the couch was moved around a bit. By the third day, someone had dragged the couch to the side of my house, a not particularly private space. (Robin Abcarian, 6/4)

While we recognize the many contributions of seniors in our community, we are also faced with the fact that, nationally, hunger among those 60 and older has been steadily increasing, growing by 45 percent between 2001 and 2017. Of the more than 300,000 individuals served by the Greater Cleveland Food Bank and our nearly 1,000 partners each year, 24 percent are seniors. Despite the economic recovery, food insecurity remains prevalent on our front lines, especially among children, working poor families and an increasing number of older adults. (Kristin S. Warzocha, 6/4)

Water is a basic necessity of life, but over one million Californians lack access to clean, safe and affordable drinking water, says Gov. Gavin Newsom. Six million Californians receive their water from operators who have been fined for violating the state’s clean water laws in recent years, according to a 2018 investigation by McClatchy. (6/4)