Evangelicals Inside HHS Have Critics Worrying About Blurred Lines Between Church And State

Politico: The Religious Activists On The Rise Inside Trump's Health Department
A small cadre of politically prominent evangelicals inside the Department of Health and Human Services have spent months quietly planning how to weaken federal protections for abortion and transgender care — a strategy that's taking shape in a series of policy moves that took even their own staff by surprise. Those officials include Roger Severino, an anti-abortion lawyer who now runs the Office of Civil Rights and last week laid out new protections allowing health care workers with religious or moral objections to abortion and other procedures to opt out. Shannon Royce, the agency's key liaison with religious and grass-roots organizations, has also emerged as a pivotal player. (Diamond, 1/22)

In other national health care news —

The Associated Press: Deportation Fears Have Legal Immigrants Avoiding Health Care
The number of legal immigrants from Latin American nations who access public health services and enroll in federally subsidized insurance plans has dipped substantially since President Donald Trump took office, many of them fearing their information could be used to identify and deport relatives living in the U.S. illegally, according to health advocates across the country. (1/21)

The New York Times: Trump Tells Anti-Abortion Marchers ‘We Are With You All The Way’ And Shows It
In the daily din of scandal and turmoil that has dominated President Trump’s first year in office, it can be easily overlooked how transformative he has been in using his executive powers to curtail abortion rights. As thousands of anti-abortion marchers gathered on the National Mall in Washington in the annual March for Life on Friday, Mr. Trump ordered his administration to make it easier for states to cut off money for Planned Parenthood clinics that offer health care to low-income women. (Peters, 1/19)

The Wall Street Journal: How Hospitals’ Woes Are Making Health Lines Blur
Hospital chains are responding to continued health-care consolidation with some vertical integration of their own. It is the latest sign that traditional industry borders are starting to break down. Four large systems, comprising about 300 hospitals in total, said this week that they are banding together to create a nonprofit generic-drug company. The goal is to curb shortages of commonly used medicines in hospitals as well as to pre-empt financial damage from sudden price increases on them. (Grant, 1/19)

The New York Times: 1 Son, 4 Overdoses, 6 Hours
The first time Patrick Griffin overdosed one afternoon in May, he was still breathing when his father and sister found him on the floor around 1:30. When he came to, he was in a foul mood and began arguing with his father, who was fed up with his son’s heroin and fentanyl habit. Patrick, 34, feeling morose and nauseated, lashed out. He sliced a love seat with a knife, smashed a glass bowl, kicked and broke a side table and threatened to kill himself. Shortly after 3, he darted into the bathroom, where he shot up and overdosed again. He fell limp, turned blue and lost consciousness. His family called 911. Emergency medical workers revived him with Narcan, the antidote that reverses opioid overdoses. (Seelye, 1/21)

The Hill: HHS Extends Trump's Emergency Declaration For Opioids 
The Trump administration has extended the opioid public health emergency issued by President Trump, days before that declaration was set to expire. In October, President Trump announced in the White House’s East Room that he was declaring the opioid epidemic a national public health emergency. The move was without precedent, as such declarations had in the past been reserved for natural disasters and the outbreak of infectious diseases. (Roubein, 1/19)

The New York Times: Yes, People Really Are Eating Tide Pods. No, It’s Not Safe.
It seems every few weeks another challenge takes social media by storm. Some, like the “Ice Bucket Challenge,” promote a cause. Others, like the bottle-flipping craze, are benign. But then there are those fads that are ill-informed or, worse, dangerous. The latest, the “Tide pod challenge,” belongs in that category. It involves biting down on a brightly colored laundry detergent packet of any brand and spitting out or ingesting its contents, an act that poses serious health risks. (Chokshi, 1/20)

The Wall Street Journal: What If Children Should Be Spending More Time With Screens?
Imagine someone traveling through time to the days before the internet, regaling audiences with fantastical tales of a future in which children can access devices containing the sum of all human knowledge and which gain new powers daily to instruct, create and bring people together. Now imagine this time traveler describing the reactions of most parents to these devices—not celebration, but fear, guilt and anxiety over how much time their children spend with them. That’s where we are today. Parents are frequently admonished that the most important thing to do with iPhones, iPads and computers is limit children’s access to them. (Mims, 1/22)