Happy Friday! We have officially made it through the dog days of summer. (Fun fact: Apparently those are set dates and not just … a vague concept of “sometime in August when it’s hot.” I was today-years-old when I learned that.) But that doesn’t mean we’ve had even close to a dearth of health care news. So buckle up, here’s what you may have missed this week.
Planned Parenthood officially rejected Title X funding rather than comply with what it deemed a “gag rule” on its providers. The price tag on that decision? About $60 million annually. Clinics across the country are bracing for the financial hit, and the organization is leaning heavily on donors to try to stanch the wound.
The New York Times: Planned Parenthood Refuses Federal Funds Over Abortion Restrictions
The Associated Press: Planned Parenthood Sees Swift Fallout From Quitting Program
Meanwhile, it was a bit of a roller-coaster week in terms of whether President Donald Trump would be pushing for background checks in his proposal to stem gun violence. After the dual mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Trump seemed open to the strategy, despite it being less than popular with his party. Then The Atlantic reported that following a phone call with NRA chief Wayne LaPierre, Trump softened that stance. Then Trump claimed the media reports were inaccurate and that some kinds of background checks were still on the table.
Pretty much nothing seems set in stone yet (at least publicly), and we should all just wait to see what comes in the official proposal likely to coincide with Congress’ return in September.
The Atlantic: Trump’s Phone Calls With Wayne LaPierre Reveal NRA’s Influence
Politico: Trump to Release Gun Control Proposals, Including Background Check Updates
We did find out this week exactly what was in the Parkland students’ plan, though. And let me tell you, they swung for the fences with it. Included in the roadmap: a national licensing and gun registry; a mandatory gun buyback program for assault-style weapons; a limit of one firearm purchase a month per person; the establishment of a national director of gun violence prevention; and a new multistep gun licensing system that would include in-person interviews and a 10-day waiting period before gun purchases are approved.
USA Today: Parkland Students Announce Gun Control Plan, Aim to Halve Gun Violence Rate in 10 Years
The Trump administration (and the Obama administration, as well) has long chafed at the restrictions that come with the Flores Settlement Agreement, which offers protection to detained immigrant children in U.S. custody. So, this week it released a new set of rules that effectively replace those regulations. Among other things, the new standards allow the government to detain children indefinitely instead of for 20 days, as laid out in the Flores agreement.
Reuters: Trump Imposes Rule Allowing U.S. to Detain Migrant Families Indefinitely
What’s definitely worth a read: the history behind the agreement and the story of the lawyers who have been defending it for decades. (“If someone had told me in 1985 that our work to protect children would continue into 2019, there is no way I would have believed it,” says Carlos Holguin, one of those original lawyers.)
The New York Times: The Flores Agreement Protected Migrant Children for Decades. It’s Under Threat.
Thirteen years ago, then-U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona was warned about some “disturbing” data that top federal scientists had discovered. It turned out that opioids were addictive and dangerous. The scientists recommended urgent action be taken to address the startling statistics, which hinted at a brewing crisis. Carmona agreed.
Yet the public was never told, and the momentum to do so fizzled. So what happened?
Politico: Federal Scientists Warned of Coming Opioid Crisis in 2006
Seemingly to further emphasize that the opioid epidemic’s early days were marked by (in retrospect) devastating missed opportunities and deep regret, another story looks at a little town in Appalachia in the late 1990s. There, a nun, a doctor and a lawyer were among the nation’s first activists to sound the alarm. Their efforts were ultimately crushed by Purdue Pharma.
Meanwhile, a study links states’ expansion of Medicaid and the uptick of opioid treatment prescription rates.
The New York Times: Opioid Treatment Is Used Vastly More in States That Expanded Medicaid
And HHS is going to relax privacy regulations around how patients’ history with addiction is noted in their charts. The rules were put in place so that patients felt comfortable seeking medical help without law enforcement being alerted, but HHS Secretary Alex Azar said they’ve become a barrier to proper care.
The Associated Press: Feds to Revamp Confidentiality Rules for Addiction Treatment
The FDA is stepping in to join the CDC’s investigation into cases of lung disease across the country that seem linked to vaping.
The New York Times: Vaping Sicknesses Rising: 153 Cases Reported in 16 States
And don’t miss the story from KHN’s own Victoria Knight about a West Virginia physician who all the way back in 2015 filed a paper on a patient with a lung disease he suspected was tied to vaping.
Years Ago, This Doctor Linked a Mysterious Lung Disease to Vaping
In this week’s miscellaneous file:
- Emergency care in financially depressed areas has become a standoff between insolvent rural hospitals and patients who don’t have the money to pay their ER bills. That fight is ending up in court so often that locals in a small Missouri town call it the “follow-up appointment.”
The Washington Post: The ‘Follow-Up Appointment’
- One of the side effects of the growing popularity of at-home DNA tests? More and more, people who were born using artificial insemination are finding out that their fathers aren’t the sperm donors their mothers chose but rather the doctor who performed the procedure.
The New York Times: Their Mothers Chose Donor Sperm. The Doctors Used Their Own.
Also, be sure to check out the Dallas Morning News’ original reporting from April on one of the women featured in the story.
- The patient suffers from tremors, difficulty walking and loss of balance. If the patient is a man, his symptoms would be enough to have doctors start wondering if it’s Parkinson’s. But if it’s a woman, it’s chalked up to the modern-day version of what Victorians called female “hysteria.”
ProPublica: In Men, It’s Parkinson’s. In Women, It’s Hysteria.
- For years, residents of a Newark neighborhood have been saying their water tastes funny because of the dangerous levels of lead. And yet little has been done to fix it.
The New York Times: ‘Tasting Funny for Years’: Lead in the Water and a City in Crisis
That’s it for me, and have a great weekend!