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First Edition

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

KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES

KFF Health News: Food Stamp Work Rules Don’t Increase Employment, Researchers Say A half-dozen cars had been in the queue for nearly four hours by the time the House of Hope mobile food pantry line began to move. Seventy or so more idled behind them by 11:30 a.m., when the food distribution began. The plan was to begin handing out boxes of groceries at 11, but the Facing Hunger Foodbank truck delivering the food blew a tire en route. No one complained. (Sisk, 4/23)

KFF Health News: Medigap Premiums Leap, And Consumers Have Few Alternatives After decades of selling insurance, Illinois-based broker John Jaggi had never seen anything like it. More than 80 of his customers who were enrolled in the same Medicare supplemental plan from the insurer Chubb got hit last August with a 45% increase. (Appleby, 4/23)

KFF Health News: California Lawmakers Seek Protections For Patients In ICE Custody California lawmakers alarmed by the treatment of people brought to hospitals by federal immigration agents want to strengthen protections for detained patients receiving care at medical facilities, including by making it easier for their families and attorneys to find them. (Boyd-Barrett, 4/22)

RFK JR. AND VACCINES

The New York Times: RFK Jr. Says His Department Advises All Children To Get Measles Vaccine Over four days and nearly 20 hours of testimony, under harsh questioning from Democrats, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly backed away from his longstanding criticism of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. On Wednesday, he made his strongest statement yet — albeit on behalf of his department and not himself. “We promote the M.M.R.,” Mr. Kennedy told the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday morning, referring to the combined vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. “We have advised every child to get the M.M.R. That’s what we do.” (Gay Stolberg, 4/22)

Politico: Bill Cassidy’s Still Attacking RFK Jr. Now It’s About Abortion. Bill Cassidy, the foremost Republican critic of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Senate, is broadening his assault. Cassidy, who’s called out Kennedy repeatedly for Kennedy’s efforts to sow doubt about the importance of vaccination, attacked him Wednesday for not doing enough to stop people from taking abortion pills. (Levien, 4/22)

The New York Times: RFK Jr. Defends Trump’s Mathematically Impossible Drug Discount Claims Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended President Trump’s frequent incorrect calculations of percentages when talking about discounts on prescription drug prices, arguing on Wednesday that the president “has a different way of calculating.” “If you have a $600 drug, and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600 percent reduction,” Mr. Kennedy said during a congressional hearing. Mr. Kennedy is mathematically incorrect. A price reduction from $600 to $10 would be a discount of more than 98 percent. A price discount cannot be more than 100 percent, because that would lower the price to zero — or suggest that the company was giving you money for buying the product. (Cameron, 4/22)

CNBC: RFK Jr. Says He Would Support A Potential Ban On Junk Food TV Ads Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday said he would support a potential ban on junk food TV advertisements in the U.S. – an effort that would likely draw fierce backlash from major food manufacturers. (Constantino, 4/22)

COVID, FLU, AND MEASLES

The Washington Post: CDC Blocks Study Showing Covid Shots Cut Hospital Visits After Earlier Delay A report showing the efficacy of the covid-19 vaccine that was previously delayed by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been blocked from being published in the agency’s flagship scientific journal, according to three people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The report showed that the vaccine reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by about half this past winter. (Sun, 4/22)

MedPage Today: If It's COVID, Paxlovid? Studies Suggest A Rethink These Days Oral nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) failed to spare COVID-19-vaccinated individuals from the worst outcomes if they got sick, though it may have helped speed recovery time and cut viral loads, according to two community-based clinical trials. (Rudd, 4/22)

Military.com: Health Experts Weigh In On Effects Of DOD's Optional Flu Vaccine Policy Georges Benjamin, CEO of the American Public Health Association, told Military.com it is “an irresponsible decision that will undermine the medical readiness of our troops. ”He feels strongly about the issue because he is familiar with it. He is a former military physician who trained in the U.S. Army and was ER director for four years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He also served on the public health advisory committee of the Defense Health Board. “If you go back and look at the 1918 influenza, when we didn't know what it was, it had a devastating impact on our troops,” Benjamin said. “We know what flu does to troops who are quartered closely together, who share food, who share rooms, and contagious diseases like influenza can put a whole unit out of service. (Mordowanec, 4/22)

CBS News: Possible Measles Exposure At Logan Airport In Boston, Health Officials Say There was a possible measles exposure at Logan Airport in Boston last week, Massachusetts health officials say. The Boston Public Health Commission and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health said Wednesday that a traveler with measles passed through Terminal C shortly after midnight on April 14. (Riley, 4/22)

CBS News: N.J. Health Officials Warn Of Possible Measles Exposure At Newark Airport Travelers at Newark Liberty International Airport may have been exposed to an individual with measles, New Jersey health officials warn. The state Department of Health announced Wednesday that a Hudson County resident was diagnosed with measles after traveling internationally. This is the first confirmed case of measles in the state so far this year. (Houlis, 4/22)

MORE ON THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Axios: Trump To Change Marijuana Rules, Easing Federal Research Limits The Trump administration is expected to move to reclassify marijuana as soon as Wednesday, per an administration official familiar with the matter. The move would make it easier to study medicinal applications of marijuana and could shore up support from influencers who support the research. (Walker and Caputo, 4/22)

Stat: New CDC Official Used To Work For Multinational Tobacco Firm A former tobacco industry executive has been appointed to senior leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alarming public health advocates and critics of industry influence on government. (Todd, 4/22)

The New York Times: Pace Of N.I.H. Funding Slows Further In Trump’s Second Year Spending on new medical research by the National Institutes of Health has fallen roughly $1 billion behind the pace of years past, delaying thousands of scientific projects and raising concerns within the agency that it may struggle to pay out the money it was allotted by Congress. Instead of canceling grants en masse, as the N.I.H. did in the first year of this Trump presidency, it is now vetting them before approval with a “computational text analysis tool” that scans for terms including “racism,” “gender” and “vaccination refusal,” according to documents obtained by The New York Times. (Mueller and Hwang, 4/22)

Bloomberg: Trump’s Plan To Cut US Drug Prices Backfires For Europe Frank Hennemann sometimes coughs 400 times a day. His airways are damaged by a lung condition called bronchiectasis, which he describes as feeling like two trucks are parking on his chest. After decades of research, there’s finally a medicine to alleviate his symptoms, but Hennemann lives in Germany. One reason he can’t get it there is Donald Trump. The company behind the new treatment, Insmed Inc., won’t launch in Europe until it can better understand the financial implications of a Trump directive that could upend the math drugmakers rely on to recoup their research investments. (Smith, Furlong, and Kinzelmann, 4/23)

Modern Healthcare: Why Smaller PBMs Fear The Labor Department's Transparency Rule A regulation billed as balancing the scales between the largest pharmacy benefit managers and the rest of the industry could have harmful consequences, smaller PBMs warn. The Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration proposed new transparency requirements for PBMs and benefits consulting firms in January. If finalized without changes, the rule would take effect in July. (Tong, 4/22)

MENTAL HEALTH

The New York Times: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation Of National Hotline Over the two and a half years following the 2022 rollout of the 988 national suicide prevention hotline, the rate of suicides among young people in the United States dropped 11 percent below projections, decreasing most sharply in states with a higher volume of answered 988 calls, a new study has found. The findings, published today as a research letter in JAMA, compared suicide deaths from July 2022 to December 2024 with sophisticated mathematical projections that were based on historical trends. This yielded good news, with 4,372 fewer suicides of adolescents and young adults, ages 15 to 34, than had been projected. (Barry, 4/22)

HealthDay: Bullying, Politics Harm Mental Health Of Gender-Diverse Teens Gender-diverse teenagers who are bullied are more likely to suffer escalating psychological distress than other teens, particularly if they live in a state with repressive gender identity laws, a new study says. These teens are more likely to experience psychotic-like episodes – feeling unusually suspicious of others, thinking others are laughing at them, feeling threatened or hearing sounds that others do not, researchers reported April 21 in JAMA Network Open. (Thompson, 4/22)

MedPage Today: Novel Antipsychotic Shows Promise In Acute Schizophrenia The investigational benzamide antipsychotic N-methyl amisulpride (LB-102) led to significant symptom improvement among hospitalized adults with acute schizophrenia, a randomized trial showed. (Monaco, 4/22)

TRANSGENDER CARE

The New York Times: Restrictions On Transgender Students Violated Law, New York Finds Two Long Island school districts violated New York State law in barring transgender students from bathrooms and locker rooms that aligned with their gender identity, the state’s Education Department ruled this week. Board members at both school systems, the Massapequa School District and the Locust Valley Central School District, had approved restrictions weeks apart that required students to use facilities that were gender neutral or corresponded with their sex assigned at birth. (Haag, 4/22)

The 19th: Senate Democrats Struggle To Find Footing On Trans Rights Messaging The Senate has been deadlocked on President Donald Trump’s priority voting bill, the SAVE America Act, for months. The measure hasn’t seen much floor action; the latest was a March amendment vote stemming from the president’s suggested change to prohibit transgender athletes from participating in girls’ or women’s sports. (Martinez, 4/22)

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

Chicago Tribune: Abortion Ban Religious Exemption Case Headed To Indiana Supreme Court A lawsuit for an additional exemption to Indiana’s near-total abortion ban allowing it as a religious right will head straight from a county courtroom to the Indiana Supreme Court. (Kukulka, 4/22)

Wyoming Public Radio: Wyoming Judge Hears Arguments About Six-Week Abortion Ban A Natrona County judge heard arguments on April 22 about the state's partial abortion ban. Abortion is still largely banned in Wyoming starting around six weeks, but Judge Dan Forgey could decide to temporarily allow it again as the lawsuit continues. He didn’t give any timing for when he’ll issue his decision on a temporary restraining order. (Merzbach, 4/22)

NBC News: Biological Parents Of Baby In Florida IVF Embryo Mix-Up Have Been Identified, Couple Says The biological parents of a baby at the center of an embryo mix-up have been identified, according to attorneys for the Florida woman who gave birth to the infant. Tiffany Score and Steven Mills sued the Fertility Center of Orlando and its head reproductive endocrinologist in January after learning that their newborn, Shea, was not genetically related to either of them. (Chuck, 4/22)

The New York Times: ‘Free Births’ Are A New Pregnancy Trend. Critics Warn About Serious Risks Emily Laszlo-Rath felt her first contraction when she was at home in her trailer outside Joshua Tree National Park. A first-time mother, she was living off the grid, far from medical help. At first, the labor pains were mild, like cramps. Over the next three days, as they intensified, she weathered them in bed and on the sofa, trusting her body to know what to do. Now, though, she felt chilled, feverish. (MacKeen, 4/22)

HealthDay: Male Infertility May Signal Higher Colon And Thyroid Cancer Risk Male infertility could be a warning sign for certain types of cancer, a new study says. Men with severely reduced fertility are more likely to develop colon cancer or thyroid cancer, researchers reported in the European Journal of Epidemiology. (Thompson, 4/22)

PHARMACEUTICALS

ProPublica and The Philadelphia Inquirer: Many Opioid Victims Will Be Shut Out Of Purdue’s $7.4B Bankruptcy Settlement Nearly 140,000 people filed claims against the company for the harm they said its drugs caused. Fewer than half of them will get any compensation. (McCoy and Fernandez, 4/23)

Modern Healthcare: 340B Faces Uncertainty As AbbVie Lawsuit Eyes 'Patient' Definition A novel legal argument could upend the 340B Drug Pricing Program. The drugmaker AbbVie sued the Health Resources and Services Administration this month alleging the agency’s 30-year-old regulatory definition of “patient” has enabled the program to grow beyond its original intent and given too many hospitals and other safety-net providers access to deeply discounted prescription medicines. (Early, 4/22)

Stat: Discount Telehealth Visits Raise Concerns About Pharma Company Ties The little pink pill recently got a retail boost. Addyi, a drug that treats low libido in premenopausal women, has been on the market for more than a decade after a controversial approval. But in December the Food and Drug Administration expanded its use, approving the daily drug for all women under 65. (Palmer, 4/23)

NPR: Hearing Restored With Gene Therapy For Rare Kind Of Deafness An experimental gene therapy appears safe and highly effective for restoring hearing to people born with a rare form of deafness, researchers reported Wednesday. The study, the largest and longest to date to evaluate a gene therapy for hearing loss, provides powerful new evidence that the approach may provide the first way to restore hearing to people who are deaf. (Stein, 4/22)

STATE WATCH

Chicago Tribune: Battle Escalates Between West Suburban Hospital Business Partners The owner of West Suburban Medical Center’s property is ramping up efforts to remove his business partner from the hospital, as more details emerge about the depths of the facility’s financial woes in the months leading up to its abrupt closure. (Schencker, 4/22)

North Carolina Health News: Medicaid Deal Advances As Immigration Mandates Raise Concerns Lawmakers voted for a $319 million package on Wednesday to fully fund the state’s Medicaid program through the end of the fiscal year, settling a monthslong feud with the governor over how much it will cost to avert a projected shortfall in May. While the funding is designed to prevent cuts and maintain the current level of care for the more than 3 million beneficiaries of the subsidized health insurance program for low-income people, the bill adds mandates that immigrant rights advocates say could have “a chilling effect” and jeopardize the health of U.S.-born children in immigrant families — and others in those households who have legal status to be in the country. (Blythe, Fredde and Hoban, 4/23)

Wyoming Public Radio: Gordon Provides Funding For SUN Bucks After It Fails To Pass The Budget Gov. Mark Gordon approved one-time state funding for SUN Bucks, a federal program that helps supplement school lunches for families with low incomes during the summer months. Wyoming lawmakers voted to opt out of the program during the last three legislative sessions, with some critics citing concerns about over-reliance on government and government overreach. (Habermann, 4/22)

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Clinic 'Blindsided' By Cuts To Services For HIV Patients State officials have suspended some federally funded health care services for Missourians living with HIV, a surprise move one St. Louis provider called "terribly disruptive" to patients. The state informed providers of cuts to the Ryan White program last Monday, and ended support on Wednesday for mental health and substance use services, emergency rental and utility assistance. (Suntrup, 4/22)

AP: Chemical Leak At A West Virginia Plant Kills 2 People, Sends 30 More To Hospitals, Officials Say A chemical leak at a West Virginia silver recovery business on Wednesday killed two people and sent about 30 others to hospitals, including one in serious condition, authorities said. The leak occurred at the Catalyst Refiners plant in Institute as workers were preparing to shut down at least part of the facility, Kanawha County Commission Emergency Management Director C.W. Sigman said. (Raby, 4/23)

San Francisco Chronicle: San Mateo County Bans Kratom Sales — A First For The Bay Area San Mateo County on Tuesday banned the sale of kratom, citing concerns that the herbal substance marketed for its energy-boosting and pain relief properties can cause addiction, overdoses and other health harms. Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance banning the sale of kratom products in unincorporated parts of the county, becoming the first Bay Area county to do so. (Ho, 4/22)

CIDRAP: Delaware Becomes 37th State To Detect CWD Within Its Borders With Delaware reporting its first detection of chronic wasting disease (CWD) yesterday, the fatal neurodegenerative disease has now been found in 37 US states. The case was detected in a wild white-tailed deer harvested in Sussex County as part of routine surveillance efforts, the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) said in a news release. The infection was confirmed by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL). (Van Beusekom, 4/22)

AGING

The Conversation: HEPA Air Purifiers May Boost Brain Power In Adults Over 40 Using an in-home HEPA purifier for one month spurs a small but significant improvement in brain function in adults age 40 and older. That's the result of a new study we co-authored in the journal Scientific Reports. (Pellegrino, Brugge, Eliasziw, 4/22)

The New York Times: Aging In Place: How Technology Might Help You Grow Old At Home The budding field is turning dreams into reality for older adults who are eager to age in place, filling caregiving gaps and easing minds as America ages rapidly. (Shain, 4/22)

PUBLIC HEALTH

MedPage Today: Study Linking Fruits, Veggies To Lung Cancer Raises Eyebrows Outside experts expressed caution about a study suggesting a link between early onset lung cancer and diets rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Survey data on 187 lung cancer patients ages 50 and younger with molecular subtypes of non-small cell lung cancer mostly seen in low-risk groups -- such as women and non-smokers -- revealed that these patients on average had higher-quality diets than the general U.S. population, based on Healthy Eating Index (HEI) scores. (Bassett, 4/22)

CNN: Tap Water Safety: 1 In 5 People May Drink Nitrate Contaminants Over 62 million Americans — roughly 1 in 5 people — may be exposed to potentially dangerous levels of nitrates in their tap water, a new report has shown. (LaMotte, 4/23)

NBC News: Rectal Cancer Rates Rising Rapidly Among People In Their 30s And 40s: 'A Medical Crisis' Deaths from rectal cancer are rising rapidly among younger adults, an alarming trend that is confounding scientists trying to understand why millennials are so hard-hit. “The rate of rectal cancer seems to be increasing more than two to three times compared to colon cancer,” said Mythili Menon Pathiyil, lead author of a new study and a gastroenterology fellow at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. (Edwards, 4/23)

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