Shadowy Threesome Known As ‘Mar-A-Lago Crowd’ Have Been Silently Exerting Influence On Veterans Affairs

The New York Times: Outside Influence: The Veterans Agency’s Shadowy Leadership
A new secretary was sworn in at the Department of Veterans Affairs in late July, but the people actually in charge of the agency may not have changed, and they are not at the headquarters in Washington, but on the manicured grounds of Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s West Palm Beach estate. A shadowy threesome known in the department as the “Mar-a-Lago crowd” has been quietly empowered by the president to help steer the veterans agency, and the men are exerting their influence in ways that affect millions of veterans, according to interviews with four former senior officials at the department and a report by the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica. (Philipps, 8/10)

In other national health care news —

The New York Times: A Judge Blocked A Medicaid Work Requirement. The White House Is Undeterred.
Trump administration officials, whose push to impose work requirements on Medicaid beneficiaries was dealt a blow by a federal judge in June, say they have found a way around the ruling and will continue to allow states to put the restrictions in place. The judge, James E. Boasberg of the Federal District Court in Washington, stopped a Kentucky plan to introduce the work requirements after finding that the secretary of health and human services had failed to consider the state’s estimate that the new rules would cause 95,000 low-income people to lose Medicaid coverage. Limiting access to medical assistance does not promote the objectives of the Medicaid program, he said. (Pear, 8/11)

The Hill: States Fight Trump On Non-ObamaCare Health Plans 
The Trump administration's new policy of expanding the sale of “short-term” insurance plans as a cheaper alternative to ObamaCare is quickly running into opposition from state regulators. The Department of Health and Human Services is urging states to cooperate with the federal government, but instead, insurance commissioners are panning the new plans as "junk” insurance and state legislatures are putting restrictions on their sales. (Weixel, 8/12)

The Hill: Fearing ‘Blue Wave,’ Drug, Insurance Companies Build Single-Payer Defense
Powerful health-care interests worried that a Democratic “blue wave” could give new energy to single-payer health-care legislation have created a new group to take on the issue. The formation of the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future is a sign of the health-care industry’s alarm over growing support for a single payer health-care law within the Democratic Party. (Sullivan, 8/10)

Politico: Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings Set For Sept. 4
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's Senate confirmation hearings will start on Sept. 4 and last between three and four days, Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) announced on Friday. That scheduling tees up the GOP to meet its goal of getting President Donald Trump's pick seated on the high court by the time its term begins in early October, barring unforeseen obstacles or a breakthrough by Democrats who are pushing to derail Kavanaugh's confirmation. (Schor, 8/10)

Politico: Lax State Ethics Rules Leave Health Agencies Vulnerable To Conflicts
When Surgeon General Jerome Adams was the top health official in Indiana, he owned thousands of dollars in tobacco and pharmaceutical stocks which potentially conflicted with his state responsibilities. Those stocks were never revealed under lax Indiana disclosure laws. His investments became public only when he was required to divest them to serve as the nation’s top doctor — and HHS says he is in full compliance with federal ethics laws. (Ehley, Karlin-Smith, Pradhan and Haberkorn, 8/12)

The Wall Street Journal: IBM Has A Watson Dilemma
Can Watson cure cancer? That’s what International Business Machines Corp. asked soon after its artificial-intelligence system beat humans at the quiz show “Jeopardy!” in 2011. Watson could read documents quickly and find patterns in data. Could it match patient information with the latest in medical studies to deliver personalized treatment recommendations? (Hernandez and Greenwald, 8/11)

Stat: That Pathetic Alzheimer's Pipeline? It's Even Worse Than You Think
If it were any other disease, outraged patients and their families would be writing their legislators and demonstrating in front of drug makers’ headquarters. But Alzheimer’s is no ordinary disease, so the latest revelation that very few experimental drugs are being tested to see whether they might help people with moderate, let alone severe, dementia passed this week without so much as an indignant press release from advocacy groups or other Alzheimer’s organizations. (Begley, 8/10)

Stat: Gottlieb: FDA Will Streamline Drug Safety Evaluations 
The Food and Drug Administration will soon standardize the way it handles data on the safety and effectiveness of drugs in an effort to reduce inconsistencies in the drug review process, agency Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Friday. “Rather than just looking at drug safety parameters in terms of the tables that are submitted to us, we’re going to actually take the raw data and evaluate it into custom tables, that the agency’s going to develop, that are going to be standardized across all our review divisions,” Gottlieb said. (Swetlitz, 8/10)