More Than 4 In 5 Democrats Want Congress To Enact A Taxpayer-Funded National Health Care Plan, Poll Finds
A Harvard/Politico poll geared to take the temperature of Americans' health care views found that while support for a plan like "Medicare for All" was mostly coming from Democrats, even Republicans were receptive to allowing Americans under 65 to buy into Medicare as another option. Americans from both parties were also in overwhelming agreement that lawmakers should make sure insurance companies provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions
Politico:
POLITICO/Harvard Poll: Many Democrats Back A Taxpayer-Funded Health Care Plan Like Medicare For All
More than 4 in 5 Democrats want Congress to enact a taxpayer-funded, national health care plan such as Medicare for All, according to a new Harvard/POLITICO poll gauging the public’s health and education priorities for 2019. Some 42 percent of Democratic respondents to the poll supported repealing and replacing Obamacare — mostly in the interest of building on the health law's coverage gains and creating a new system so that more Americans have health insurance. (Roubein, 1/7)
In other national health care news —
The Hill:
DOJ Asks For Extension In ObamaCare Lawsuit Due To Shutdown
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking a federal judge to pause all briefings related to a motion filed by House Democrats in an ongoing ObamaCare lawsuit, saying they cannot complete their work properly due to the government shutdown. Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt said DOJ lawyers “are unable to prepare their opposition at this time due to the lapse in appropriations.” The motion was filed on Friday but appeared in the docket on Monday. (Weixel, 1/7)
Stat:
SCOTUS Seems Unlikely To Overhaul Popular Drug Industry Legal Strategy
Several Supreme Court justices seemed to side with the drug industry in a case that examined a popular defense that companies use to ward off patient lawsuits. They heard oral arguments Monday in a case that has high stakes for pharmaceutical companies, which often wriggle out of patient lawsuits by arguing that the Food and Drug Administration limits their ability to warn patients about the side effects of their medicines, therefore absolving them of responsibility to do anything other than exactly what the FDA mandates. Patients, on the other hand, want drug makers to be more explicit about the potential risks of their medicines and argue that state law supports them. (Swetlitz, 1/7)
Stat:
FDA Plans To Create A New Office To Leverage Cutting-Edge Science
The Food and Drug Administration plans to create a new office to improve the review of new medicines — one that will develop a standardized approach to using personalized medicine, digital data, and patients’ own reports, according to Commissioner Scott Gottlieb. Gottlieb will outline the plan for the new 52-person group, called the Office of Drug Evaluation Science (ODES), as part of a talk at the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference on Tuesday. Because of the government shutdown, he will deliver the talk via videoconference. (Herper, 1/7)
The New York Times:
When The Illness Is A Mystery, Patients Turn To These Detectives
They are patients with diseases that mystify doctors, people whose symptoms are dismissed as psychosomatic, who have been given misdiagnosis upon misdiagnosis. They have confounded experts and have exhausted every hope save one. And so they wind up in the Undiagnosed Diseases Network, a federally funded project that now includes 12 clinical centers, including one at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. (Kolata, 1/7)
Stat:
New Study Shows AI Can Diagnose Some Gene Mutations From A Photo
Some people’s faces — or even just a photo of them — hint at the genes they carry. And now, an algorithm can predict not only whether they carry a genetic mutation, but which genes were mutated. The study, published Monday in Nature Medicine, is the latest from a Boston-based company called FDNA, one of a few organizations creating software that can help physicians diagnose genetic syndromes based just on a face — and may serve an important validation of the company’s technology, said Yaron Gurovich, the company’s chief technology officer. (Sheridan, 1/7)
Los Angeles Times:
Smoking Is At A Record Low In The U.S., But The Benefits Aren't Shared Equally
Cigarette smoking is at an all-time low in the United States, but the benefits of this public health achievement are not being shared equally by all Americans. A new analysis of health data from the nation’s 500 largest cities shows that the people who live in neighborhoods with the highest smoking rates are more likely to be poor, less likely to be white, and more likely to have chronic heart or lung diseases. (Kaplan, 1/7)