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First Edition

Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.

KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES

KFF Health News: Ticked Off Over Preauthorization: Walk-In Patient Avoided Lyme Disease But Not A Surprise Bill Leah Kovitch was pulling invasive plants in the meadow near her home one weekend in late April when a tick latched onto her leg. She didn't notice the tiny bug until Monday, when her calf muscle began to feel sore. She made an appointment that morning with a telehealth doctor — one recommended by her health insurance plan — who prescribed a 10-day course of doxycycline to prevent Lyme disease and strongly suggested she be seen in person. So, later that day, she went to a walk-in clinic near her home in Brunswick, Maine. (Sausser, 11/18)

KFF Health News: Breast Cancer And Birth Control: A Huge New Study Shows How Science Can Be Distorted As misinformation about women's health spreads faster than ever, doctors say new research on the risks of hormonal birth control underscores the challenge of communicating nuance in the social media age. The massive study, which was conducted in Sweden and tracked more than 2 million teenage girls and women under age 50 for more than a decade, found that hormonal contraception remains safe overall, but also found small differences in breast cancer risk based on the hormones used in the formulation. (Gounder, 11/18)

FEDERAL REORGANIZATION AND FUNDING CUTS

MedPage Today: NIH Job Postings Raise Red Flags For Scientists The NIH has posted a dozen job openings for institute directors with very tight turnaround timelines and without convening search committees -- a departure from the past that's raising red flags among scientists. These high-level leadership positions include the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the National Human Genome Research Institute. (Fiore, 11/17)

MedPage Today: NIH Cuts Disrupted Hundreds Of Clinical Trials, Study Finds Hundreds of clinical trials and tens of thousands of participants were affected by NIH grant terminations earlier this year, a cross-sectional study indicated. Between February 28 and August 15, there were 11,008 clinical trials funded by NIH grants, and 383 of these trials (3.5%) subsequently lost funding, reported Anupam Jena, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, and colleagues. (Henderson, 11/17)

Axios: Public Still In The Dark Over Health Threats Post-Shutdown Some closely watched federal health websites and datasets that went dark during the government shutdown haven't been updated since the reopening. The pause in critical information leaves the public and providers in the dark about threats with the holidays approaching. (Bettelheim and Goldman, 11/18)

IMMIGRATION CRISIS

Politico: Trump Revives Policy Penalizing Immigrants For Using Safety Net Programs The Trump administration on Monday proposed giving immigration officers authority to deny permanent residency to lawfully present immigrants who use Medicaid or other food and housing assistance programs, arguing that "government benefits should not incentivize immigration" and that immigrants should be "self-reliant." It's a twist on the so-called public charge rule from Trump's first term, which the Biden administration stopped enforcing in 2021 and rescinded in 2022. (Ollstein, 11/17)

The 19th: Democratic Women's Caucus Demands Release Of Pregnant Immigrants In ICE Detention The Democratic Women's Caucus is demanding the release of any pregnant, postpartum and nursing immigrants who are being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and who don't pose a security risk. (Barclay, 11/17)

CAPITOL WATCH

NBC News: Senators Propose Bill To Require PPE For Wildland Firefighters, But Some Have Reservations For decades, federal firefighters have trudged and parachuted into wildfires with only "a bandana and a prayer," as the saying goes, to protect them from inhaling dangerous toxins. Meanwhile, studies increasingly connect smoke inhalation to lung cancer and premature death. A new bipartisan Senate bill would direct the U.S. Forest Service and the Interior Department to develop and implement mandatory respiratory protection for wildland firefighters and supporting staff. (Lozano, 11/17)

Bloomberg: US Congressional Commissions Rings Alarm Bells Over China's Grip On Drug Supply A US congressional commission is ringing alarm bells about China's growing dominance over America's drug supply, saying it is putting the country's health in the hands of an adversarial nation. Roughly one-in-four generic drugs taken by Americans rely on key ingredients from China, according to a report released Tuesday by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The often low-cost staples account for 90% of the medicines used by Americans. Some of the ingredients — found in blood thinners, antibiotics and cancer treatments — are produced only in China. (Edney, 11/18)

Stat: Republican Senator Offers Alternative To Extending ACA Subsidies Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) is pitching Democrats on his compromise to make Affordable Care Act marketplace plans affordable without extending the extra tax credits that currently lower premium payments. (Wilkerson, 11/17)

The Hill: Donald Trump Says He's Talking To Democrats About Health Care Repayment Plan President Trump said he is talking with Democrats about a direct health care payment plan Sunday amid negotiations to tackle rising health insurance premiums. "I've had personal talks with some Democrats," Trump told reporters in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday before returning to Washington. The president did not name the Democrats he said has been speaking to, but said he has talked to them "about paying large amounts of dollars back to the people." (Manchester, 11/17)

'MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN'

The Hill: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Plans To Release New Dietary Guidelines On Saturated Fats Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday that new dietary guidelines are expected to be released next month that will end the "war on saturated fats." Speaking at the Food Allergy Fund Leadership Forum, Kennedy discussed the actions the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has taken under his leadership, including incentivizing a reduction in petroleum-based food dyes and increasing oversight into infant formula. (Choi, 11/17)

Bloomberg: RFK Jr. Tries To Tie Aluminum In Vaccines To Food Allergies Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continued his campaign against the aluminum in some vaccines by suggesting at a conference on Monday that they may play a role in the rise of food allergies. Kennedy acknowledged there is no science backing the connection, but said he wanted researchers to study aluminum adjuvants in childhood vaccines because he believes their use "fit the timeline perfectly" with an increased prevalence of food allergies. He added that pesticides and ultraprocessed food also could be contributing factors, without providing evidence. (Cohrs Zhang, 11/17)

Stat: Vaccine Makers See Risk Of Shortages In Trump Reformulation Push As the Trump administration moves ahead on what could be its most wide-reaching vaccine changes yet, the makers of the shots are weighing their options — and privately warning that officials could severely limit access to key vaccines and upend the childhood vaccine schedule for years to come. (Payne, 11/18)

Stat: Inside Kennedy's Rise At HHS: Delivering On MAHA Priorities For Trump On Independence Avenue, inside a gray brutalist building regarded by many as this city's ugliest, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has constructed a monument to his family. (Cirruzzo, Ross and Todd, 11/18)

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

The Washington Post: Conservatives Want To Allow Pregnant Women To Park In Handicapped Spaces The conservative movement pushing for more U.S. births and bigger families has a new target for its vision: parking lots. Lawmakers, largely in red states, want to allow pregnant women to use parking spots set aside for disabled people under federal law, regardless of medical necessity. That has drawn opposition from disability advocates, who say the measures violate the Americans With Disabilities Act and allow people without disabilities to use special spaces that are already scarce. (Somasundaram, 11/18)

CNN: About A Quarter Of Pregnant Women In The US Don't Get Prenatal Care In Their First Trimester, Report Says Some women rush to their doctor just days after getting a positive pregnant test, but Dr. L. Joy Baker said she often sees patients for the first time just weeks or even days before they give birth. (Howard and Koda, 11/17)

Axios: Where Preterm-Birth Rates Are Highest And Lowest In U.S. The U.S. has earned a D+ for its preterm-birth rate for the fourth straight year in an annual report from March of Dimes, with the national rate stuck at 10.4%. (Mallenbaum, 11/17)

The 19th: As Abortion Opponents Target IVF, They're Promoting 'Restorative' Fertility Clinics Patients come to the Vitae Clinic to become moms. The peaks and valleys of the wooden wall art depict cardiac activity on an ultrasound. The waiting room of the third-floor clinic is full of toys and soft books for babies. To one side is a large box of formula that visitors are encouraged to take. And in the lobby, a sculpture of one of the world's most famous mothers: the Virgin Mary holding a fetus inside a bowl. (Luthra, 11/17)

ProPublica: Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos Continues To Block Postpartum Medicaid Expansion The most powerful Republican in Wisconsin stepped up to a lectern that was affixed with a sign reading, "Pro-Women Pro-Babies Pro-Life Rally." "One of the reasons that I ran for office was to protect the lives of unborn children," Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the cheering crowd gathered in the ornate rotunda of the state Capitol. (O'Matz, 11/17)

MEDICAID

The New York Times: When The G.O.P. Medicaid Cuts Arrive, These Hospitals Will Be Hit Hardest Republicans created a special $50 billion fund to help rural hospitals stay afloat, but the biggest impacts may be in cities. (Badger, Parlapiano and Sanger-Katz, 11/18)

The Wall Street Journal: Medicaid Insurers Promise Lots Of Doctors. Good Luck Seeing One. Late on a cold afternoon in March, a motorist in Belleville, Ill., came upon a young boy wandering down a busy street without shoes and wearing only a T-shirt and pajama bottoms. She called the police. It was at least the fourth time in less than a year that then 8-year-old Trent Davis, who has autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, had run away from home, police reports show. (Weaver, Wilde Mathews and McGinty, 11/17)

Modern Healthcare: Medica Proposes Acquisition Of UCare's Medicaid, Exchange Arms Nonprofit health insurance company Medica has offered an undisclosed sum for rival UCare's Medicaid and exchange businesses, the companies announced in a joint news release on Monday. Medica, which counts more than 1.4 million members across nine states, would gain nearly 262,300 covered lives from the acquisition. UCare will wind down its operations in 2026, a company spokesperson said in an email. (Tepper, 11/17)

HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY

Fierce Healthcare: Medical Orgs Press Anthem To Pull Back Out-Of-Network Policy Three major medical organizations are urging Anthem to withdraw a policy that would penalize hospitals and outpatient facilities that use out-of-network providers. The American Society of Anesthesiologists, American College of Emergency Physicians and American College of Radiology sent a joint letter to the insurer calling for it to rescind the policy, calling it "deeply flawed and operationally unworkable." (Minemyer, 11/17)

Modern Healthcare: Hospital-At-Home Waiver Uncertainty Remains After Shutdown Health systems are reevaluating hospital-at-home programs in the aftermath of the government shutdown. Providers are delaying the start of programs on hold, delaying expansions of existing ones and trying to find other ways to deliver acute-level care to people where they live. Stopgap legislation signed into law last week continues the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Acute Hospital Care at Home waiver until the end of January. (Eastabrook, 11/17)

San Francisco Chronicle: Sutter Health Plans Major New South Bay Hospital Sutter Health plans to open a major new hospital in Santa Clara by 2031, the provider announced Monday. The eight-story, 850,000-square-foot facility from one of Northern California's largest hospital systems will include 272 beds, an emergency department, intensive care unit, labor and delivery department and other services. It will be located at 2831 and 2841 Mission College Blvd. near Levi's Stadium, and replace an existing office park. (Ho, 11/17)

Becker's Hospital Review: Healthcare Wage Gaps Narrowed After COVD-19: Study U.S. healthcare wage disparities modestly narrowed during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new analysis of wage data. The study, published Nov. 3 in Health Affairs, examined data from the Current Population Survey to identify trends in median earnings among healthcare workers between 2015 and 2024. (Gooch, 11/17)

AP: Families Sue Over 2 Deaths In Philadelphia Crash Of Mexico-Bound Air Ambulance The families of two of the eight people killed earlier this year when an air ambulance crashed in Philadelphia filed a lawsuit on Monday, claiming the medical air transport company and others negligently caused their deaths. The wrongful death case was filed by the estates of Dr. Raul Meza Arredondo, a pediatrician, and Lizeth Murillo Osuna, the mother of a girl who was flying home to Mexico after being treated at a Philadelphia hospital. All six people on board the Learjet 55 were killed, along with two people on the ground. More than 20 people were hurt. (11/17)

WEIGHT LOSS DRUGS

CNN: Novo Nordisk Further Lowers Prices For Weight Loss, Diabetes Drugs For Those Who Pay Cash Facing increased competition in the weight loss market and intense pressure from President Donald Trump, Novo Nordisk announced Monday that it is lowering prices for its blockbuster obesity and diabetes drugs for cash-paying patients. (Luhby, 11/17)

Modern Healthcare: GoodRx Launches GLP-1 Telemedicine Subscription Service GoodRx, a consumer drug pricing and digital health company, has become the latest company to offer a telehealth weight loss program. The program connects consumers with clinicians who can prescribe glucagon-like peptide-1 agonist weight loss drugs, GoodRx said in a news release Monday. On top of access to popular GLP-1 drugs such as Novo Nordisk's Wegovy or Eli Lilly's Zepbound, the program includes ongoing clinical support to track a user's progress and potential side effects, the company said. (Perna, 11/17)

The Wall Street Journal: The Weight-Loss Craze Is About To Mint A Trillion-Dollar Company The trillion-dollar club has become crowded with mostly tech names riding the AI boom. Eli Lilly might soon join them for a far different reason: the weight-loss bonanza. Crucially, Lilly's trajectory doesn't hinge on artificial-intelligence sentiment or cloud-spending cycles that investors are suddenly questioning. In fact, it could even benefit from an investor rotation away from technology into other sectors. Its staying power above a $1 trillion market value will come down to two questions: how quickly it can expand the obesity-drug market and how completely it can dominate it. (Wainer, 11/18)

PHARMA AND TECH

Stat: Johnson & Johnson Acquires Halda Therapeutics For $3 Billion Johnson & Johnson said Monday it will purchase Halda Therapeutics and its experimental prostate cancer drugs for $3.05 billion, marking the first major buyout for a startup built around a field that has attracted significant investment but not yet secured any drug approvals. (Mast, 11/17)

CIDRAP: New Test Bests Culture Method By Quickly Detecting 3 Fungal Pathogens At Once, Researchers Say Researchers at Indiana University have announced that they developed a molecular test that can simultaneously detect three major disease-causing fungi much faster than traditional methods, speeding treatment. The research was presented at the recent Association for Molecular Pathology 2025 Annual Meeting and Expo in Boston. (Van Beusekom, 11/17)

Stat: FDA Clears Onward Medical's Spinal Cord Stimulator For Home Use The Food and Drug Administration has green-lit home use of a device that helps people with spinal cord injuries regain mobility and functioning. Onward Medical announced Monday that the company had received clearance to expand the use of its spinal cord stimulator outside of clinics. (Broderick, 11/17)

Stat: Countries Used To Test Drugs Often Don't See The Approved Medicines, Study Finds Numerous medicines are not accessible in many of the countries where they were tested before approval by the Food and Drug Administration, raising concerns about whether pharmaceutical companies are adhering to ethical standards, a new study finds. (Silverman, 11/17)

NBC News: New Heart Disease Calculator Predicts 30-Year Risk For Young Adults While the average age for being diagnosed with heart disease in the United States is typically in the mid-60s for men and early 70s for women, the factors, such as high blood pressure, diabetes and bad cholesterol levels, can start years, sometimes decades, earlier. A new online heart risk calculator could help younger adults learn whether they're likely to develop heart disease, as much as 30 years in the future, according to a study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology on Monday. (Sudhakar, 11/17)

AP: Judge To Explain Why He's Approving Purdue Pharma Settlement Plan A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge is set to give his reasoning Tuesday for approving OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma's plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids. The deal calls for members of the Sackler family who own the company to pay up to $7 billion over time. Judge Sean Lane said last week that he would accept the plan, which ranks among the largest opioid settlements ever and would do something other major ones don't: Pay some victims of the crisis. (Mulvihill, 11/18)

Bloomberg: Tylenol Maker Falls As US Court Weighs Reviving Autism Lawsuits Shares of Kenvue Inc. fell Monday as an appeals court weighed whether to revive lawsuits claiming the company concealed the risks of autism for children if mothers take Tylenol during pregnancy. A three-judge panel raised the possibility Monday that a lower-court judge who blocked 500 cases from going to trial erred in rejecting the scientific evidence behind the autism allegations and the analysis by experts supporting it. (Feeley and Wilmer, 11/18)

OUTBREAKS AND HEALTH THREATS

CIDRAP: Multistate Infant Botulism Outbreak Adds 8 More Cases, 23 Total The outbreak of infant botulism tied to infant powder formula has grown by eight cases in just three days, according to the latest updates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The multistate outbreak, which is linked to ByHeart Whole Nutrition Infant Formula, now stands at 23 cases, all involving hospitalization. Infants in thirteen states have been affected, which means one new state is now affected. No deaths have been reported. (Dall, 11/17)

The New York Times: C.D.C. Links Measles Outbreaks In Multiple States For First Time Health officials on Monday linked for the first time the measles outbreak that began in Texas with another in Utah and Arizona, a finding that could end America's status as a nation that has eliminated measles. The news came in a phone call, a recording of which was obtained by The New York Times, among officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments. (Mandavilli and Rosenbluth, 11/17)

Chicago Tribune: Bird Flu Cases Are Rising Again. Will That Affect Your Thanksgiving? Out on his farm in Dundee Township, Cliff McConville sees geese landing in the fields where his turkeys and chickens graze. It's a sight that often unnerves poultry producers, as migratory waterfowl carry and spread a highly infectious strain of bird flu that has been resurging in the United States for the last three years. (Perez and Malon, 11/17)

San Francisco Chronicle: Tuberculosis Case Confirmed At San Francisco High School The San Francisco Department of Public Health on Monday confirmed a case of active tuberculosis in an individual connected to Archbishop Riordan High School. Health officials said the person is in isolation and emphasized that the risk to the broader public remains low. They did not specify whether it was a student or a faculty member. (Vaziri, 11/17)

STATE WATCH

North Carolina Health News: Psych Commitment Process Under Scrutiny After Iryna's Law North Carolina lawmakers are now taking a closer look at how people with mental health issues can be involuntarily committed for treatment in the wake of a new law they passed — in September. (Knopf, 11/18)

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Overdose Deaths Drop, But Officials 'Not At All Satisfied' San Francisco saw at least 36 people die of drug overdoses in October, marking the second consecutive month in which the city recorded one of its lowest totals since the medical examiner began releasing preliminary death figures in 2020. If overdoses continue at a similar level the next two months, the city could record its lowest annual overdose death toll since 2019, when its fentanyl crisis exploded. (Angst, 11/17)

NPR: Dementia Care Without Locked Doors? Inclusion Is Becoming More Common A few years ago, Janice Rogers of Belchertown, Mass., made a decision many adult children dread. Her mother, Rita, was then 91, living alone in her mobile home, and her health was going downhill. "I didn't feel I could take care of my mom, which is an awful thing to say," says Rogers. "I felt I needed to 'put' her somewhere." (Milne-Tyte, 11/17)

SCIENCE AND INNOVATIONS

Medical Xpress: Evidence Builds For Disrupted Mitochondria As Cause Of Parkinson's For decades, scientists have known that mitochondria, which produce energy inside our cells, malfunction in Parkinson's disease. But a critical question remained: do the failing mitochondria cause Parkinson's, or do they become damaged when brain cells die during the course of disease?Many studies have sought to answer this question over the years. Yet, progress has been slow—in large part due to the limitations of animal models used to research this highly complex disease. (Williams, 11/17)

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