First Edition: July 26, 2022 – Kaiser Health News

KHN: Even Well-Intended Laws Can’t Protect Us From Inaccurate Provider Directories
If you have medical insurance, chances are you’ve been utterly exasperated at some point while trying to find an available doctor or mental health practitioner in your health plan’s network. It goes like this: You find multiple providers in your plan’s directory, and you call them. All of them. Alas, the number is wrong; or the doctor has moved, or retired, or isn’t accepting new patients; or the next available appointment is three months away. Or perhaps the provider simply is not in your network. (Wolfson, 7/26)

KHN: ‘American Diagnosis’: Two Indigenous Students Share Their Path To Medicine
A lack of Native physicians means many tribal communities rely on doctors who don’t share their lived experience, culture, or spiritual beliefs. In Episode 9, meet two medical students working to join the ranks of Indigenous physicians. (7/26)

KHN: A Sexual Assault And Years Of Calls From Debt Collectors
Edy Adams had just graduated from college when she was sexually assaulted in 2013. After getting examined at an ER, she received calls from debt collectors for years over a $131 bill. “I was being haunted by this zombie bill.” (Levey, 7/25)

AP: Indiana Abortion Debate Draws Protest Crowds, Vice President
“Maybe some people need to actually learn how a woman’s body works,” Harris said Monday, eliciting murmurs and laughs from the Democratic legislators. “The parameters that are being proposed mean that for the vast majority of women, by the time she realizes she is pregnant, she will effectively be prohibited from having access to reproductive health care that will allow her to choose what happens to her body.” (Davies and Rodgers, 7/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: Will Laws Requiring California Doctors To Report Abuse Put Out-Of-State Abortion Patients At Risk? Here’s What We Know
It’s rare for the San Francisco Police Department to encounter a case like the one in Indiana, Public Information Officer Kathryn Winters said. If it were to happen, the department wouldn’t tell out-of-state authorities the minor had an abortion, she said. The department also would not identify the mandated reporter in its referral to an out-of-state agency because California law forbids disclosing their identity, she said. (Bollag, 7/25)

Newsweek: Floating Abortion Clinic Off Gulf Coast Could Open In 2023, But Needs $20M
The idea is that patients in the southern parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas will be able to travel to the ship moored in federal waters to seek care at little to no cost. Those states have had abortion bans take effect since the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, although Louisiana’s ban has been blocked by a judge while a lawsuit challenging it is resolved. (Rahman, 7/25)

The Washington Post: People With Disabilities Weigh Medication, Pregnancy In Post-Roe World
People with disabilities — including psychiatric, chronic and physical — say they will be disproportionately affected by the loss of federal abortion protections and have been overlooked in the discussion surrounding abortion access. Studies have found that they experience higher rates of sexual violence — one situation that could lead to an abortion — in addition to higher rates of unplanned pregnancies and a higher risk of death during pregnancy compared to people without disabilities. They may also take medications known as teratogens that have harmful effects on pregnancy, including Depakote, which has the generic name valproate, in addition to topiramate and phenytoin, among other medications, according to neurology studies. (Venkataramanan, 7/25)

AP: Lawmakers Eye Exemptions To Tennessee’s Trigger Law
Tennessee’s attorney general’s office on Monday said it’s still unknown when the state’s anti-abortion “trigger ban” will go into effect, but some state lawmakers are raising alarm that the ban has no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. (Kruesi, 7/25)

AP: Lawsuit Seeks To Block Wyoming’s Imminent Abortion Ban
A lawsuit filed Monday by a Casper women’s health clinic and others seeks to block Wyoming’s new abortion ban just before it’s scheduled to take effect. The lawsuit claims the new law violates the state constitution with restrictions that will discourage potentially lifesaving pregnancy healthcare in Wyoming, forcing pregnant women to go to other states for necessary procedures. (Gruver, 7/25)

Los Angeles Times: UC And CSU Campuses To Provide Abortion Pills In California
Abortion pills will soon be easily and cheaply available to students at the University of California and California State University under a state law aimed at expanding access to the medication to college students, a move that could become a flashpoint for antiabortion groups vowing to challenge it. (Hernandez, 7/25)

AP: Michigan Medical Students Protest Anti-Abortion Speaker
Dozens of University of Michigan medical students walked out of a weekend ceremony to protest a speaker who publicly opposes abortion rights. Dr. Kristin Collier, an assistant professor of medicine, was the keynote speaker Sunday at an annual event where new medical students are formally welcomed and given a white lab coat. (Cappelletti, 7/25)

The Boston Globe: Mass. House, Senate Agree On Compromise To Change Later-Term Abortion Law; Baker Likely To Have Final Say
A key point of tension that divided the Democratic-controlled House and Senate was the circumstances under which abortions at or after 24 weeks of pregnancy should be allowed. The compromise bill, expected to pass both branches and be sent to Governor Charlie Baker in coming days, allows for later-term abortions in the case of a “a lethal fetal anomaly or diagnosis . . . or grave fetal diagnosis that indicates that the fetus is incompatible with sustained life outside of the uterus without extraordinary medical interventions,” according to the bill’s language. (Gross, 7/25)

AP: Kansas AG Tries To Tamp Down Fears About Abortion Measure
Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican running for governor who supports the measure, argues in a legal opinion issued Friday that treating miscarriages, removing dead fetuses and ending ectopic pregnancies do not fall under Kansas’ legal definition of abortion. The proposal on the ballot Aug. 2 would amend the Kansas Constitution to allow the Legislature to further restrict or ban abortion. It’s the first referendum on abortion policy by a state since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month. (Hanna, 7/25)

AP: After Ruling, W.Va. Lawmakers Advance Criminal Abortion Ban
A week after a Charleston judge barred West Virginia from enforcing an abortion ban law dating to the 19th century, lawmakers in the state’s Republican majority hurried to advance similar legislation that would criminalize abortion with few exceptions. The legislation, which breezed through the House health committee Monday, closely mirrors the 1800s-era abortion ban. It bars abortion in almost all cases and makes performing the procedure a felony. Physicians who provide abortions could face three to 10 years in prison. (Willingham, 7/26)

USA Today: Florida’s Matt Gaetz Mocks Abortion Rights Advocates As Unattractive
Rep. Matt Gaetz told a crowd of young people at a conference here Saturday that women protesting abortion access are less likely to get pregnant because they aren’t attractive. (Anderson, 7/24)

The Hill: WHO: No Guarantee Monkeypox Won’t Spread Beyond Specific Communities
The global outbreak of monkeypox should not be expected to stay confined to specific groups, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said Monday. Though cases of the virus have been predominantly reported among men who have sex with men, diseases commonly begin in one community before spreading to others. (Mueller, 7/25)

The Washington Post: Biden Administration Weighs Declaring Monkeypox A Health Emergency
The Biden administration is weighing whether to declare the nation’s monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency and also plans to name a White House coordinator to oversee the response as officials attempt to keep the virus from becoming entrenched in the United States. (Diamond, 7/25)

The New York Times: As Monkeypox Spread In New York, 300,000 Vaccine Doses Sat In Denmark
… But there was a catch: There were only 1,000 doses available. Within two hours, the only clinic offering the shots began turning people away. At that same moment, some 300,000 doses of a ready-to-use vaccine owned by the United States sat in a facility in Denmark. American officials had waited weeks as the virus spread in New York and beyond before deciding to ship those doses to the United States. (Goldstein and Otterman, 7/25)

The Washington Post: D.C. Shifts Monkeypox Vaccine Policy To Focus On First Dose
D.C. public health officials are shifting the city’s monkeypox vaccine strategy, using its limited stock of vaccine to give out first doses to the most at-risk population instead of reserving shots for the second dose of the two-shot regimen. The strategy, announced Monday, means the District will rely on the federal government to provide enough shots for second doses, according to a statement from the D.C. Department of Health. (Portnoy, 7/25)

San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco Monkeypox Vaccine Clinic Runs Out Of Vaccine Supply
The monkeypox vaccine clinic at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, one of the main public vaccination sites in the city, will close Tuesday due to lack of vaccine supply, the San Francisco Public Health Department said Monday. (Ho, 7/25)

Houston Chronicle: Houston-Area Leaders Call For More Monkeypox Vaccine Doses Amid Nationwide Shortage
There are 57 reported cases in the Houston area, including 10 in unincorporated Harris County. The Houston area recently received just over 5,000 doses of the JYNNEOS monkeypox vaccine from the state, but demand still far exceeds supply, health officials say. A two-dose series, administered four weeks apart, is required for full vaccination. (Gill, 7/25)

CNN: More Than 40% Of Parents Of Young Kids Say They Will Not Get Their Child A Covid-19 Vaccine, Survey Finds
New survey results published Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation indicate that 43% of parents of children under 5 in the US say they will not get their child vaccinated against Covid-19, the highest percentage in the year that KFF’s Vaccine Monitor survey has been asking the question. (Langmaid, 7/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: U.S. Vaccination Campaign For Children Under 5 Fizzles
Approximately 544,000 U.S. children under 5 received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose as of last week — that’s 2.8% of the 19 million children in the age group eligible for the shots, according to federal data analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation. A little over a month since the vaccines became available to the youngest Americans, uptake has peaked and is rapidly decreasing. … (Vaziri and Beamish, 7/25)

AP: Some Schools Hit Hard By Virus Make Few Changes For New Year
As a new school year approaches, COVID-19 infections are again on the rise, fueled by highly transmissible variants, filling families with dread. They fear the return of a pandemic scourge: outbreaks that sideline large numbers of teachers, close school buildings and force students back into remote learning. (Lurye and Binkley, 7/25)

ABC News: More Cities May Bring Back Mask Mandates As COVID Cases Rise
Cities and counties throughout the United States are considering reinstating mask mandates as COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations continue to rise. In Los Angeles County, 8,091 new infections were reported on Friday, the latest date for which data is available, according to the Department of Public Health. This is an increase of 50% from the 5,391 cases recorded at the beginning of the month. (Kekatos, 7/25)

Los Angeles Times: COVID Outbreaks Hit TSA, American And Southwest Airlines At LAX
COVID-19 outbreaks have hit Los Angeles International Airport with at least 400 confirmed cases among Transportation Security Administration staff and workers at American and Southwest airlines, according to county health officials. (Hernandez, 7/25)

The Hill: Fauci Holds Up BA.5 Booster As Best Approach To Handling COVID This Fall
Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said on Monday that a COVID-19 vaccine booster specific to the BA.5 omicron subvariant — which is currently dominant in the U.S. — is the “best guess” for dealing with the virus this fall amid the ever-evolving coronavirus pandemic. (Choi, 7/25)

Stat: Pushed By Right-Wing Doctors, Long Covid Patients Turn To Ivermectin
One patient posted that he started to feel better within two days of taking ivermectin. “Don’t believe all the media lies. It’s been around for many many years,” he wrote, adding that Big Pharma dismissed the drug because it’s cheap. Another patient said it cured her long-hauler symptoms in 24 hours. Though Karen Fritzemeier once worked as a respiratory therapist, is trained to weigh medical evidence, and knows to be skeptical of such anecdotes, she said for patients at a loss for treatment, it’s hard to resist these personal stories. (Goldhill, 7/26)

Stat: Senators Press For Answers On Prisons’ Scant Use Of Covid Therapeutics
Fourteen senators are demanding that the federal Bureau of Prisons explain its scant use of Covid-19 therapeutics. The letter is based on STAT’s May reporting showing that the agency used just a fraction of the Covid-19 drugs it was allotted by the federal government. It urges the bureau’s leadership to revamp its approach toward Covid-19 testing in an effort to catch more infections that could benefit from these drugs, which need to be given early in a person’s illness. (Florko, 7/26)

The Hill: Biden’s COVID Symptoms ‘Almost Completely Resolved,’ Doctor Says
President Biden’s COVID-19 symptoms are almost completely resolved, his physician Kevin O’Connor said in a memorandum released by the White House on Monday. The president, who completed his fourth day of the antiviral Paxlovid on Sunday evening, only has residual nasal congestion and minimal hoarseness, O’Connor said. (Gangitano, 7/25)

AP: Sen. Manchin Isolating After Positive COVID Test
Sen. Joe Manchin has tested positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing mild symptoms, the West Virginia lawmaker tweeted Monday. The 74-year-old Democrat said he’s fully vaccinated and boosted. “I will isolate and follow CDC guidelines as I continue to work remotely to serve West Virginians,” he said. (7/25)

AP: Maryland Rep. Ruppersberger Tests Positive For COVID-19
The Democrat who represents Maryland’s 2nd District tested positive for the virus on Sunday evening, according to a news release. The congressman’s symptoms are mild and he is working from home while isolating, his office said. He is fully vaccinated and has had a booster shot. (7/25)

The New York Times: Biden Rule Would Strengthen Health Protections For Gay And Transgender People
The Biden administration said Monday that it intends to enshrine anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender people in the Affordable Care Act — a proposal that would officially reverse a policy adopted by the Department of Health and Human Services under former President Donald J. Trump. (Gay Stolberg, 7/25)

Modern Healthcare: HHS To Restore, Strengthen ACA Nondiscrimination Rules
“We want to make sure that whoever you are, whatever you look like, wherever you live, however you wish to live your life, that you have access to the care that you need,” Becerra said during a call with reporters. (Goldman, 7/25)

The New York Times: Biden’s Drug Czar Is Leading The Charge For A ‘Harm Reduction’ Approach
Support for supervised consumption from the Biden administration would be a major turning point in how the government addresses an epidemic of addiction and overdoses that has endured for decades and now claims more than 100,000 lives a year. Instead of discouraging drug use, such sites aim to keep users from dying, with trained personnel providing syringes and other sterile equipment for using drugs and working to reverse overdoses on the spot. (Weiland, 7/26)

Roll Call: House Democrats Add Child Nutrition To Legislative Menu
The House Education and Labor Committee is making a late-session push to renew child nutrition programs and incorporate changes made to cope with the pandemic, but disagreements could slow the reauthorization of a nutrition law that expired in 2015. (Ferguson, 7/25)

The Hill: Manufacturers Knock Drug Pricing Bill In Ad Blitz
The National Association of Manufacturers launched a six-figure ad campaign over the weekend opposing Democrats’ proposal to regulate drug prices in their budget reconciliation package. The lobbying group, which represents Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and other top drugmakers, is airing ads arguing that price controls on popular drugs amount to a “hidden tax” that will hurt U.S. competitiveness. (Evers-Hillstrom, 7/25)

Reuters: Pfizer Loses U.S. Appeal Over Co-Pays For Heart Failure Patients
A federal appeals court on Monday rejected Pfizer Inc’s (PFE.N) challenge to a U.S. anti-kickback law the drugmaker said prevented it from helping heart failure patients, many with low incomes, afford medicine that cost $225,000 per year. (Stempel, 7/25)

Axios: Affordable Care Act Lawsuit Threatens Contraception Access And Other Preventive Services
The Affordable Care Act is once again being challenged in federal court, this time with big implications for the private insurance market that dovetail with concerns about contraception access in the post-Roe world. Why it matters: A pending federal case takes up whether part of the law requiring coverage of preventive services is unconstitutional. If the plaintiffs are successful, millions of people could lose access to free services like cancer screenings, immunizations and contraception. (Owens, 7/26)

Modern Healthcare: 340B Supreme Court Ruling Fix Divides Providers
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’s potential response to a Supreme Court decision that invalidated cuts to 340B payments spotlights the divide between providers that participate in the drug-discount program and those that don’t. While the informal policy proposal drew cheers from 340B hospitals for reversing payment cuts, some who don’t use the program described the agency’s road map as “irresponsible” and argue CMS would be justified paying even less for 340B drugs. (Goldman, 7/25)

Press Association: Long Covid: Hair Loss, Reduced Sex Drive Among Wider List Of Symptoms In Study
Hair loss and a reduced sex drive are among a wider set of long Covid symptoms than previously thought, new research suggests. The study found that while the most common symptoms include loss of smell, shortness of breath and chest pain, others include amnesia, an inability to perform familiar movements or commands, and hallucinations. (Massey, 7/25)

The Atlantic: Could Genetics Be The Key To Never Getting The Coronavirus?
The idea of coronaviral resistance is beguiling enough that scientists around the world are now scouring people’s genomes for any hint that it exists. If it does, they could use that knowledge to understand whom the virus most affects, or leverage it to develop better COVID-taming drugs. For individuals who have yet to catch the contagion—a fast-dwindling proportion of the population—resistance dangles “like a superpower” that people can’t help but think they must have, says Paula Cannon, a geneticist and virologist at the University of Southern California. (Wu, 7/25)

CIDRAP: COVID-19 Antivirals May Cut Risk Of Hospitalization, Death
A study today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal suggests that use of the oral antiviral drugs molnupiravir and Paxlovid in patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 lowered the risk of hospitalization and death without raising the risk of adverse events. (Van Beusekom, 7/25)

CIDRAP: Fully Vaccinated COVID-19 Patients Less Likely To Have Heart Attack, Stroke
Fully vaccinated COVID-19 patients in South Korea were less likely than their unvaccinated peers to be hospitalized for a heart attack or ischemic stroke 31 to 120 days after diagnosis, despite being older and having more underlying illnesses, finds a study published late last week in JAMA. (7/25)

The Wall Street Journal: Mysterious Hepatitis Cases In Children May Have Complex Cause 
An international effort to find the cause of mysterious hepatitis cases among children in dozens of countries yielded a new hypothesis on Monday, with research now suggesting that the cases were caused by a pair of viruses working in concert to trigger the liver inflammation in children with a certain genetic susceptibility. (Roland, 7/25)

Reuters: Studies Find More Clues To Potential Cause Of Severe Hepatitis Cases In Children 
Studies led by University of Glasgow and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London have suggested that another common virus, adeno-associated virus 2 (AAV2), was present in most cases, and is likely involved in the rare but severe liver complications. The studies were posted on pre-print servers ahead of peer review. (Rigby, 7/25)

USA Today: Is Napping Bad For You? Naps Linked To High Blood Pressure, Stroke
Frequent or even usual napping during the day was linked with an elevated risk of developing high blood pressure and having a stroke, according to a new study. The peer-reviewed study, published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension, found that frequent or usual daytime napping in adults “was associated with a 12% higher risk of developing high blood pressure and a 24% high risk of having a stroke compared to never napping,” according to a news release Monday. (Pitofsky, 7/25)

CIDRAP: VA Intervention Linked To Better Treatment For Asymptomatic Bacteriuria
An antibiotic stewardship intervention for asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB) was associated with a reduction in urine cultures and antibiotic use at four Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, researchers reported today in JAMA Network Open. (7/25)

CNN: Highly Potent Weed Creating Marijuana Addicts Worldwide, Study Says
Higher concentrations of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC — the part of the marijuana plant that makes you high — are causing more people to become addicted in many parts of the world, a new review of studies found. (LaMotte, 7/25)

The Boston Globe: Key Elements Of Influential Alzheimer’s Study May Have Been Fabricated, Report Says
Now the field of Alzheimer’s research has received another black eye. An investigative report in the journal Science said that an influential paper published in Nature in 2006 allegedly contained fabricated data and that it fueled a popular but unproven theory into the causes of the disease. (Saltzman and Cross, 7/25)

NBC News: Alzheimer’s Theory Undermined By Accusations Of Fabricated Research
The findings have thrown skepticism on the work of Sylvain Lesné, a neuroscientist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, and his research, which fueled interest in a specific assembly of proteins as a promising target for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Lesné didn’t respond to NBC News’ requests for comment, nor did he provide comment to Science magazine. (Bendix and Chow, 7/25)

Axios: Health Disparities Percolate Into Work-Based Coverage
The more than 150 million Americans who get their health coverage through work face significant inequities by race and ethnicity while managing complex health conditions, a new analysis from Morgan Health and NORC at the University of Chicago finds. Why it matters: While there’s a perception employer-sponsored insurance delivers robust coverage, researchers found major gaps in how certain socioeconomic groups in plans managed chronic disease, accessed care and dealt with behavioral and substance use issues. (Bettelheim, 7/25)

Stat: Despite Anger Over Drug Prices, Americans Credit Pharma On Covid-19
A new survey, conducted by the Harris Poll for STAT, asked more than 4,000 people what industries they credit for helping contain the coronavirus, and 71% of those surveyed said that the pharmaceutical industry deserves credit — more than the number who gave credit to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, or the White House. The only entities that received a statistically significant amount more credit were hospitals, makers of protective equipment, scientists, doctors, and nurses. (Florko, 7/26)

Houston Chronicle: MD Anderson, Houston Methodist Ranked Among Top Hospitals
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has once again been named the top cancer hospital in the nation in this year’s U.S. News & World Report rankings, which also recognize Houston Methodist as one of the overall best hospitals in the country. (MacDonald, 7/25)

Stat: Cerner’s VA Rollout Offers Rare Look Into Hidden Harms Of Health Records
The rollout of Cerner’s electronic health record in Veterans Affairs hospitals has been a high-profile struggle: outages, training troubles, and now, an alarming report showing it directly harmed scores of patients. And while the system’s stumbles are noteworthy, they’re far from rare. Health informatics and patient safety experts acknowledge that electronic health records regularly break, in ways big and small — and largely, those problems and the harms they cause go unrecorded. (Palmer, 7/25)

Bloomberg: Monkeypox Vaccine Maker Bavarian Nordic Considers 24-Hour Emergency Production
Bavarian Nordic A/S, the only company with a vaccine approved for monkeypox, said it’s preparing to run production through the night to meet surging demand after the virus outbreak was declared a global emergency. (Wienberg, 7/25)

The Washington Post: U.S. Heat Wave: Record Highs Target Pacific Northwest; Northeast Cools
Heat alerts blanket the Pacific Northwest, including much of Oregon and Washington state, where temperatures are set to spike to 110 degrees in the days ahead. Northern California will also be affected, the atmospheric blowtorch coming as wildfires, including the swiftly moving Oak Fire, have triggered evacuations and a state of emergency. (Cappucci, 7/25)

AP: Defense Seeks Sanctions Against State In Flint Water Case
Lawyers for Michigan’s former health director asked a judge Monday to sanction prosecutors who are trying to instantly turn invalid indictments into a fresh round of charges in the Flint water scandal. (White, 7/25)

Bloomberg: Texas School Mask Mandate Ban Upheld By Federal Appeals Court
Texas Governor Greg Abbott can maintain his ban on school mask mandates, a federal appeals court ruled. A three-judge panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday said that a group of disabled students failed to show that their allegedly increased risk of contracting Covid-19 due the mask mandate ban was an injury the courts could address. (Brubaker Calkins, 7/25)

CBS News: Major Rent Surge Pushing Some Tampa Residents Toward Homelessness: “It’s No Different From A Hurricane”
Fueling Tampa’s rent increases are thousands of people relocating to the area during the pandemic, as well as rising interest rates that discourage buyers and few protections for tenants.  But it’s not just Tampa — rents have been soaring throughout much of the U.S. (Strassman, 7/25)