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Friday, October 13, 2017
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Good morning, folks! Here's what you need to know about health and medicine today.
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Trump targets the ACA with two major moves
President Trump is taking aim at the Affordable Care Act with two major new actions. Here's what you need to know:
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Trump is getting rid of health care subsidies for insurers.
The payments, known as cost-sharing reductions, help insurers pay out-of-pocket costs for low-income individuals purchasing coverage through the exchanges. Insurers have said if the payments — expected to reach $9 billion this year — were cut off, they would
have to push up premiums dramatically and might leave the exchanges. Congress may now act to set aside funding for the subsidies, which didn't happen under the Obama administration. Trump’s decision could also be challenged in court. For more on the impact,
read this Congressional Budget Office
analysis.
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Trump also issued an executive order yesterday about health care.
The order asks federal agencies including HHS and the labor department to come up with regulations that would expand the use of association health plans — which allow small
businesses to join forces to purchase health coverage together — and to expand the definition of short-term insurance, which typically offers less coverage and comes with higher out-of-pocket costs. It isn’t bound by the ACA’s coverage rules, and under Obama,
could only be purchased for three months. The new order could change that.
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What happens really depends on the regulations that get written.
That'll take some time. But there’s concern that encouraging the expansion of association health plans and short-term insurance could put the ACA markets on shaky ground
by exempting more plans from the health law’s requirements. If younger, healthier people leave the ACA markets for cheaper, skimpier plans, it could result in higher premiums and fewer options in the markets.
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Meet the brightest young minds in science
(jennifer keefe / STAT)
Today we're announcing the first crew of STAT Wunderkinds — the next generation of scientific superstars working to answer some of the biggest questions in medicine. There's Bridgette "Jeanne" Billioux,
who's studying Ebola survivors in Liberia with the NIH to understand the aftermath of the illness. Victoria Hall was instrumental in tracking how measles spread through a community of unvaccinated Somali people in Minnesota. And at MIT, Michael Mitchell is working
on ways to deliver drugs to one of the hardest spots to reach in the body: bone marrow. Check out the winners
here.
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Fighting in Syria destroys thousands of vaccines
Fighting in the Syrian town of Mayadeen might’ve destroyed at least 140,000 doses of vaccines, according to UNICEF, which could jeopardize an ongoing vaccination campaign in the area. The region has been
at the center of a government offensive against the Islamic State. Nearly 50 children have been paralyzed since March amid a polio outbreak driven by vaccine shortages. It’s the second outbreak of polio in the six-year civil war, which has caused vaccination
coverage in Syria to drop from just over 80 percent to just over 40 percent. The agency is working now to verify the report in full.
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Psychiatrists hold town halls on president's health
Psychiatrists and others who believe President Trump is mentally unstable and therefore a threat to the country are holding more than a dozen town halls on Saturday, the latest effort to win support for
removing Trump from office via the 25th Amendment. Mental health professionals and others will give speeches on what they see as Trump's malignant narcissism, paranoia, and other dangerous traits, says psychologist and co-organizer John Gartner, a contributor
to the new
book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.” Gartner says the town halls are a response to calls for psychiatrists to do more than talk about their belief that Trump is dangerous. He also recently formed a political action
committee, the 25th Amendment PAC, to raise money for candidates who support
legislation establishing a commission to evaluate a president’s mental and physical health.
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The NIH's new partnership with pharma
The NIH is
teaming up with 11 pharma companies in a bid to charge forward with its cancer moonshot. The Partnership for Accelerating Cancer Therapies, dubbed PACT, is a five-year agreement to spur research on biomarkers, measurable
markers of both disease and a patient’s response to treatment. The goal: “Advance new immunotherapy treatments that harness the immune system to attack cancer,” the NIH says in a statement. The $215 million public-private partnership comes shortly after the
FDA approved the first CAR-T immunotherapy, which involves harvesting a patient’s white
blood cells and rewiring them to attack tumors.
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Scientists make a compound plucked from sea creatures
Up until now, an experimental compound being tested to treat HIV, cancer, and Alzheimer’s has come from a single source: a red, fern-like sea creature. Bryostatin 1 is currently being tested by the biotech
company Neurotrope for its therapeutic potential, but for years, the compound has proven incredibly tricky to harvest. At one point, 14 tons of the organism Bugula neritina were gathered for research. The amount of bryostatin 1 that came from it? Just 18 grams.
But now, chemists have come up with a
way to synthesize the chemical that's considerably shorter than ast methods and could be scaled up if the compound proves useful in treating disease.
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A national diabetes commission could be on the horizon
A bipartisan bill that would set up a national commission of experts on diabetes care and prevention is headed to the president’s desk. An estimated 26 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, and another
79 million are pre-diabetic, the condition that often precedes type 2 diabetes. The bill was introduced by Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. The bill aims to bring together diabetes researchers, clinicians,
and public health experts to talk about how to improve type 2 diabetes prevention and how to deliver better care and improve outcomes for patients diagnosed with either form of the disease.
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What to read around the web today
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Investigation exposes inappropriate use of drug in nursing homes.
CNN
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The Bronx's quiet, brutal war with opioids.
New York Times
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Tennessee has insurance rules like the ones Trump proposed. It's not going well.
Vox
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Thanks for reading! Now, take our quiz
to test your knowledge of the week's health news. Have a wonderful weekend,
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