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As U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to deliver a long-anticipated speech on Friday on curbing prescription drug costs, health industry insiders expect little in the way of policies that would hurt the drugmakers he once accused of "getting away with murder." The speech will address the high prices set by drugmakers, rising costs for consumers and barriers to negotiating lower prices for seniors in the government's Medicare program, senior White House officials told reporters. (Abutaleb, 5/10)

Officials said the plan would increase competition, create incentives for drugmakers to lower initial prices and slash federal rules that make it harder for private insurers to negotiate lower prices. The result would be lower pharmacy costs for patients — a key Trump campaign promise. (Perrone, 5/11)

Asked if the plan would include direct negotiations by Medicare, the official said, “No, we are talking about something different.” “We are not calling for Medicare negotiation in the way that Democrats have called for,” the official said later. “We clearly want to make important changes that will dramatically improve the way negotiation takes place inside the Medicare program.” (Pear, 5/10)

Democrats have been pressuring Trump ahead of his speech to renew his call for Medicare to negotiate drug prices, something that Trump touted on the campaign trail in 2016, in a break with Republican party orthodoxy. (Sullivan, 5/10)

Officials also said the policy changes could happen sooner than later. The “vast majority” of the proposals will be regulatory actions the “president can direct the administration to take.” In the plan, Trump will address a quartet of issues the administration has identified, the officials said. “The blueprint focuses on four major problems: high list prices set by drug manufacturers, rising out-of-pocket costs for consumers and patients, foreign governments free-riding off American innovation, and government rules preventing private plans from negotiating better deals for our seniors, especially for high-cost medications,” one official said. (Mershon, 5/11)

The president will also propose changes to government rules that his administration contends have allowed drugmakers and pharmacy benefit managers to game the system, the officials said. He will also try to make foreign governments pay more to buy drugs created through U.S. innovation and further seek to accelerate the use of generic drugs in place of higher-cost brand names, they said. Low-income seniors could get free generic drugs, doctors might see reduced incentives to select more expensive drugs if cheaper alternatives exist, and health plans could be required to share rebates with beneficiaries, as part of the proposals. (Armour, Radnofsky and Burton, 5/10)

Trump will also move to rein in what his administration has characterized as “foreign freeloaders” — or first-world countries that use government controls or negotiations to hold down their drug costs. “The U.S. taxpayer, through our publicly funded research efforts as well as through patients and consumers … are largely paying for the vast majority of the R&D that goes into the development of new biologics,” a senior administration official said, lamenting that foreign countries get to “free ride” off of U.S. investment in drug development. (Cancryn and Pittman, 5/10)

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb kicked things off last year by expediting reviews of applications to bring new generic drugs to market. The agency has given priority to certain generic-drug applications that would fill gaps where there is little-to-no low-cost competition. The FDA approved a record-setting 1,027 new generic drugs last year. Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget request to Congress proposed speeding up generic drug approvals further. Currently, the first company to try and bring a generic to market gets six months to sell its drug before competitors drive down the price. If it has trouble making the cheaper drugs or getting approved, the process can drag out -- making consumers wait for the less expensive version. Trump’s proposal would allow the FDA to leapfrog the troubled application and move on to one ready to gain approval. (Edney, 5/10)

No one with a stake in drug prices — whether pharmaceutical companies, pharmacy benefit managers that negotiate on drug prices or health insurers — feels completely comfortable, given Trump's tendency to go off-script — including that time he accused drug companies of “getting away with murder.” But the administration has spent the past few weeks dropping clues about the policy directions it favors — including a slew of technical proposals that do little to threaten the pharmaceutical industry that would seem to be at greatest risk from any plan to lower drug prices. (Johnson, 5/10)

The near-term implications for biotechnology and pharmaceutical stocks remain murky on Wall Street. Cowen analysts said in a research note Thursday that they expect Trump’s speech will “be relatively benign, with more drastic proposals coming at a later date or not at all.” Wells Fargo & Co.’s David Maris, meanwhile, has cautioned that calls for lower prices and greater transparency have “never been louder." (Lipschultz, 5/10)

A coterie of the country’s most powerful and recognizable Democrats gathered Thursday to offer their early rebuttal to President Trump’s anticipated Friday address on drug prices. As one lawmaker put it, the group was “hopeful, but … not optimistic” that Trump would deliver on his early promises to lower prescription drug prices. What they want to see, however, is far broader than anything that top Trump administration officials have hinted at ahead of Trump’s Friday speech. (Mershon, 5/10)

President Trump’s goal of expanding short-term health plans will not harm the insurance marketplace, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday. Under questioning from Senate Democrats during a hearing on the HHS budget, Azar repeatedly defended a proposed rule from the administration that would allow the sale of short-term health plans for up to an entire year. (Weixel, 5/10)

President Donald Trump said Thursday that his administration would have “great health plans” coming out within four weeks. The president, who has tried unsuccessfully to get Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act, didn’t elaborate on his statement, made during a rally in Elkhart, Indiana. A White House spokesman didn’t immediately respond to requests to clarify the statement. (Talev, 5/10)

Nearly every insurer that has filed intentions to offer a plan on the Affordable Care Act’s exchange for 2019 predicts large cost spikes, with one going up nearly 85 percent. Some insurers, though, are predicting decreases, such as Anthem HealthKeepers and Optima Health Plan. (O'Connor, 5/10)

New York and Minnesota officials have settled a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its decision to slash federal funding for the states' health plan programs that cover certain low-income people. A federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed the case after the HHS agreed to pay $151.9 million to New York and $17.3 million to Minnesota by May 14 to fund the states' Basic Health Programs, which together cover 800,000 people. (Livingston, 5/10)

Kaiser Health News: Podcast: KHN’s ‘What The Health?’ The Politics Of Rising Premiums And Menu Labeling

Proposed insurance premium increases unveiled in Maryland and Virginia officially marked the start of finger-pointing on Capitol Hill this week, as Democrats and Republicans blamed each other for the dysfunction of the individual insurance market under the Affordable Care Act. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump sent to lawmakers a budget “rescission” package that would take back some $7 billion from the Children’s Health Insurance Program. And, after many delays and considerable controversy, new rules requiring calorie counts on menus at chain restaurants took effect this week. (5/10)

Native American tribes devastated by the U.S. opioid epidemic asked a judge set up a separate track for their lawsuits targeting makers and distributors of the painkillers for creating a public-health crisis. Santee Sioux Nation of Nebraska, the Winnebago Tribe and others feel “marginalized’’ by having their cases lumped in with states’ opioid claims, David Domina, a lawyer for the tribes, told U.S. District Judge Daniel Polster Thursday. Polster, who has been pressing for a quick resolution of the suits, said he’d consider the request. (Feeley, 5/10)

Members of the Seneca Nation of Indians and others from the surrounding western New York community gathered together in mourning.They rang a bell and lit lanterns, symbols of loved ones affected by the opioid epidemic. The bell tolled dozens of times, honoring the dead.Lanterns flew up into the evening sky. (Roubein, 5/10)

The federal judge overseeing more than 600 lawsuits filed by government entities collectively seeking billions of dollars to address the nation’s opioid crisis said Thursday he will continue to push for solutions to the problem while lawyers continue their settlement talks. U.S. District Judge Dan Polster held an open-court session in Cleveland on Thursday before meeting separately with attorneys for the government entities and those representing drug manufacturers, distributors and pharmacy companies blamed in lawsuits for helping create a crisis that killed 42,000 Americans in 2016. (Gillispie, 5/10)

San Francisco hands out millions of syringes a year to drug users but has little control over how they are discarded and that's contributing to thousands of complaints. The city distributes an estimated 400,000 syringes each month through various programs aimed at reducing HIV and other health risks for drug users. About 246,000 syringes are discarded through the city's 13 syringe access and disposal sites. But thousands of the others end up on streets, in parks and other public areas, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Thursday. (5/10)

A new report from Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) claims that staffing shortages at the country's ports of entry could be undermining federal efforts to seize a powerful synthetic opioid. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is currently about 4,000 port officers short of what the agency needs, according to a report from minority staff on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released Thursday. (Roubein, 5/10)

A federal agency recommended steering the $100 million Congress appropriated for rural counties to battle the opioid epidemic to those dealing with high rates of hepatitis C infection and HIV/AIDS instead. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) will award 75 available grants as part of the "Rural Communities Opioids Response Program," selecting counties considered "being at risk" from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s recommendations. The CDC prioritized counties based on confirmed acute hepatitis C infection rates rather than opioid overdose rates, according to emails obtained by Modern Healthcare. (Luthi, 5/10)

The Minnesota Senate passed a bill Thursday that imposes $20 million in annual fees on pharmaceutical companies to fund prevention and treatment programs and county social services to address the opioid addiction epidemic. The vote came after emotional pleas from lawmakers of both parties, who castigated the pharmaceutical industry for not engaging on the issue and failing to fund solutions to opioid abuse. (Collins, 5/10)

Rhonda Johnson knows addiction can turn you into a different person. How it can change your body, life, even your name. For years, she inhabited an alter ego named Mary. It helped keep her worlds separate. Rhonda was the mother, the sister, the wife. Mary was the addict, the hustler, the woman who would sell a used pen off the street to get the cash she needed for her next high. Drugs transformed the District, too. (Lang, 5/10)

The top White House official responsible for leading the U.S. response in the event of a deadly pandemic has left the administration, and the global health security team he oversaw has been disbanded under a reorganization by national security adviser John Bolton. The abrupt departure of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer from the National Security Council means no senior administration official is now focused solely on global health security. Ziemer’s departure, along with the breakup of his team, comes at a time when many experts say the country is already underprepared for the increasing risks of a pandemic or bioterrorism attack. (Sun, 5/10)

President Donald Trump takes great pride in his efforts to roll back regulations conceived by the administration of his predecessor, Barack Obama. So the implementation, on May 7, of new menu labeling requirements at chain restaurants was outside the norm. Perhaps even more so was the cheerleading of the agency implementing the new rules, the Food and Drug Administration, despite the opposition to the rule of virtually every Republican in the House. (Zeller, 5/14)

The CMS is taking steps to make it easier to sort through Medicare coverage options, after a report said its current search options were badly presented and confusing and could lead some to make poor plan selections. The CMS will tweak Medicare.gov before open enrollment starts on Oct. 15, making changes to help beneficiaries understand their coverage options, CMS Administrator Seema Verma said Wednesday during a Medicare Advantage and Prescription Drug Plan Conference. (Dickson, 5/9)

Kaiser Health News: Under Trump Proposal, Lawful Immigrants Might Be Inclined To Shun Health Benefits

The Trump administration is considering a policy change that might discourage immigrants who are seeking permanent residency from using government-supported health care, a scenario that is alarming some doctors, hospitals and patient advocates. Under the proposed plan, a lawful immigrant holding a visa could be passed over for getting permanent residency — a green card — if they use Medicaid, a subsidized Obamacare plan, food stamps, tax credits or a list of other non-cash government benefits, according to a draft of the plan published by The Washington Post. Even the use of such benefits by a child who is a U.S. citizen could jeopardize a parent’s chances of attaining lawful residency, according to the document. (Jewett, Bailey and Andalo, 5/11)

Nearly half of U.S. cancer doctors who responded to a survey say they’ve recently recommended medical marijuana to patients, although most say they don’t know enough about medicinal use. The results reflect how marijuana policy in some states has outpaced research, the study authors said. All 29 states with medical marijuana programs allow doctors to recommend it to cancer patients. But no rigorous studies in cancer patients exist. That leaves doctors to make assumptions from other research on similar prescription drugs, or in other types of patients. (Johnson, 5/10)

“The majority feel like it has medical utility for some indications,” said Dr. Ilana Braun, chief of the division of adult psychosocial oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, who led the new research. As an oncologist, Braun said, she hears a growing number of her own patients asking about medical marijuana. “I occasionally recommend it, but very carefully and it’s on an individual patient basis,” she said. (Weintraub, 5/10)

Anecdotal reports suggest marijuana is helpful in managing symptoms of chemotherapy, like pain and nausea. But it's unlikely curious patients are getting clear guidance from their doctors on whether they should try marijuana, which form might work best and how much to take. A new survey of 237 oncologists from around the country finds that while roughly 80 percent talk with their patients about marijuana, fewer than 30 percent feel they have sufficient knowledge to advise them about its medicinal use. (Herman, 5/10)

As recently as a year ago, artificial intelligence was still an amorphous concept in medicine. Almost every major hospital was tinkering with it, but hype about algorithms replacing doctors — or curing cancer — was outrunning reality. Now many hospitals are moving swiftly to incorporate the technology into daily practice, promising to harness patient data to improve certain aspects of care and make medical services cheaper and more efficient. (Ross, 5/11)

Cancer drugs that unleash a patient’s immune system to attack tumors have rapidly won accelerated approval from the Food and Drug Administration. These checkpoint inhibitors have also quickly gained acceptance from oncologists. That’s the goal of fast-track approval granted by the Food and Drug Administration to Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Opdivo and Merck’s Keytruda — to speed drugs to people who have not found success with other cancer therapies. (Cooney, 5/10)

When it comes to treating anxiety in children and teens, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook are the bane of therapists' work. “With (social media), it's all about the self-image — who's 'liking' them, who's watching them, who clicked on their picture,” said Marco Grados, associate professor of psychiatry and clinical director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital. “Everything can turn into something negative ... [K]ids are exposed to that day after day, and it's not good for them.” (Nutt, 5/10)

At a high school in Maryland’s capital city of Annapolis, the principal ordered doors removed from bathrooms to keep students from sneaking hits in the stalls. A school system in New Jersey installed detectors in its high schools to digitally alert administrators to students looking for their next “rip.” And recently in Fairfax County, students broke into Virginia vape shops looking to score some nicotine. (Bui, 5/10)

Fatal falls are on the rise in the United States, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2016, a total of 29,668 Americans ages 65 and older died as a result of a fall. In other words, falls ended the lives of 61.6 out of every 100,000 senior citizens that year. Back in 2007, there were 47 fall-related deaths for every 100,000 senior citizens. (Kaplan, 5/11)

The prevalence of kidney stones in the United States has increased 70 percent since the 1970s, and a new report suggests that the use of oral antibiotics may be part of reason. The study, in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, used health records of 13.8 million patients of general practitioners in Britain. The researchers had 25,981 people with kidney stones matched for sex and age with 259,797 controls. They tracked antibiotic exposure three to 12 months before the diagnosis. (Bakalar, 5/10)

On his final day, before he went to a Swiss clinic to die, David Goodall spoke about his 104 years of life — and his scheduled death. The Australian scientist, who had traveled to Switzerland to end his life because euthanasia isn't legal in his homeland, answered questions about his well-publicized plans for an assisted suicide: Did he want to eat anything in particular for his last meal? He didn't know. Did he want any special song played at his bedside? He wasn't sure — but if he had to choose one, it would be the final movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. (Bever, 5/10)

In 2016, about 32 percent of babies were born via C-section, according to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That's practically one in three births, up slightly from 2005. (Motsinger and Sparling, 5/10)

Kaiser Health News: Living Apart Together: A New Option For Older Adults

Three years ago, William Mamel climbed a ladder in Margaret Sheroff’s apartment and fixed a malfunctioning ceiling fan. “I love that you did this,” Sheroff exclaimed as he clambered back down. Spontaneously, Mamel drew Sheroff to him and gave her a kiss.“I kind of surprised her.  But she was open to it,” he remembered. (Graham, 5/11)

Kevin Kamenetz, a top Democratic candidate for Maryland governor, was just 60, trim and so health conscious he would trot up stairs and routinely tease colleagues about eating doughnuts and other junk food. “He was a yogurt, granola and salad kind of guy,” said Don Mohler, Kamenetz’s chief of staff. So his sudden death Thursday after going into cardiac arrest sent a palpable sense of unease through Baltimore County’s executive offices, based partly on uncertainty about the future but mostly on the knowledge of what they just lost. (McFadden, 5/10)

The sudden death of Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz from cardiac arrest early Thursday underscores the need for anyone experiencing discomfort that could be related to a heart attack to quickly seek emergency medical care, experts said. “Time is critical,” said Dr. Michael Millin, associate professor of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University. The first step for anyone experiencing symptoms of a heart attack — including chest pain, shortness of breath and fatigue — should be to call 911, he said. (Chason, 5/10)

The sheriff's department estimates at least 40 percent of the approximately 1,000 people in the Polk County Jail on any given day are taking medication for mental illness. A recent federal report found that 26 percent of people in American jails and 14 percent of people in prison had suffered "serious psychological distress" in the previous 30 days. That's compared to 5 percent of people in the general population.  (Leys, 5/10)

Iowa's new mental-health law could reduce the need for sheriff’s deputies to ferry patients around the state in patrol cars — but not yet.  The law Gov. Kim Reynolds signed in March allows magistrates to hold mental-health commitment hearings by video-conferencing instead of in person. Iowa sheriff’s deputies routinely drive hours to retrieve local residents from faraway hospitals, where the patients are being treated because local psychiatric units were full. The deputies pick up the patients and drive them back to their home counties for court hearings to determine if they need to be committed for continued treatment. (Leys, 5/10)

Iowa families seeking court-ordered mental health treatment for loved ones must file formal papers with their county clerk of court office. To gain such an order, two people must sign notarized statements saying the person has a mental disorder that poses immediate danger to themselves or others. A doctor can be one of the two people signing the statements seeking the order. (Leys, 5/10)

Nearly three-quarters of Iowans believe the state’s mental-health system is in crisis or is a big problem, a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows. The mental-health system is by far the leading area of concern for Iowans among nine possibilities tested, according to the poll. Thirty-five percent of Iowans say the lack of mental-health services is a crisis, and 38 percent believe it's a big problem. (Leys, 5/10)

The recording of Richard Lee Quintero's 911 call in late March went viral.  After all, Quintero reported he was Jesus Christ and turned himself in for breaking into a Pizza Hut, where he ate a pizza and drank a Mountain Dew. The story since then for the Greensboro, N.C., man is far from funny. Quintero, who suffers from chronic paranoid schizophrenia, amputated his own tongue after spending three weeks in jail. That got him hospitalized for about a week until he was sent to Raleigh's maximum security Central Prison, where he was under what's known as "safekeeping" until an expected May 18 court date. (O'Donnell, 5/10)

California prison officials need to find new ways to prevent illegal opioid drugs from entering the prison system, according to the lawmaker who runs the state legislative committee that oversees the state's correctional system. State Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), who chairs the Senate's Public Safety Committee, says she wants the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to explain what it's doing to reduce inmate overdoses. (Goldberg, 5/10)

For many people looking for non-emergency medical treatment, choices are as close as their local shopping center. Hospitals and other health care providers are striving to bring medical care nearer to where people live, with less cost and wait. (Lang, 5/10)

Boston and its environs are internationally renowned for their medical facilities, which are considered among the best in the world for treating illness, injuries and chronic conditions. But increasingly, medical care goes beyond the examination room or the surgical ward. Through initiatives ranging from mentoring programs to smartphone apps to mindfulness groups, hospitals are finding innovative ways to put the “health” in health care, not only making patients well but helping them to stay that way and providing support for patients far beyond their primary mode of treatment. (Shohet West, 5/10)

As cases of hepatitis C boom across Colorado and doctors work furiously to guide patients from diagnosis to cure, there is one challenge that can be surprisingly difficult. Patients have to take their medicine. So now, as part of three ambitious studies that could radically improve the detection of hepatitis C and care for people who have it, researchers at Denver Health are trying something futuristic: a pill that will tell doctors whether a patient took it. (Ingold, 5/10)

Three companies found to have sold toxic lead paint for decades -- despite knowing it posed health hazards for children -- are waging a major battle to avoid paying the several hundred millions of dollars in liability that California courts have slapped on them. ...The companies have hired a slew of lobbyists to push their agenda in the state Legislature and poured $6 million into a campaign to put an initiative on the November ballot that would shift clean-up costs to taxpayers. (Rosenhall, 5/10)

The group, organized by Planned Parenthood Advocates in Missouri, was protesting two House budget bills that would restrict care at Planned Parenthood health centers. The bills would prevent patients insured through MO HealthNet, Missouri’s Medicaid program, from using their insurance at Planned Parenthood or other health facilities that provide abortion services. (Achenbach, 5/10)

An Indiana University scientist is getting a $9 million boost from a biotech company to further his research into ways to use animal organs in humans. The IU School of Medicine says Dr. Burcin Ekser’s four-year grant comes from Silver Springs, Maryland-based Lung Biotechnology PBC. That company was founded in 2015 by United Therapeutics Corp. to address the acute national shortage of transplantable lungs and other organs. About 20 Americans die every day awaiting organ transplants. (5/11)

Commonwealth Fund’s Chief Scientist David Radley who collected the data, says the state scores lowest when it comes to patients’ access to affordable care. ...Florida outperformed only three other states, including Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Mississippi. More than 270,000 people enrolled in Medicaid in Orange County alone this past year. (Prieur, 5/10)

The Missouri Legislature has retaliated against the state health department by including what some called drastic cuts to the agency in next year’s budget. Lawmakers approved the cuts, totaling in eight eliminated positions, after the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services refused to reveal the number of state parks employees who had tested positive for antibodies for a mysterious virus. (Fentem, 5/10)

In the past year, changes at Multnomah County's downtown jail have improved inmate access to health care and the amount of time prisoners assigned to the mental health unit are allowed out of their cells, a new report has found. The report by Disability Rights Oregon follows a year after the advocacy group released a scorching assessment of the jail, highlighting rampant use of solitary confinement, punitive use of restraints and routine use of force against people with mental illness. (Bernstein, 5/10)  

Seven days into a hunger strike to protest the lack of health care coverage for full-time substitute teachers in Milwaukee Public Schools, Alex Brower said Thursday that he'll continue his fast until the district adds the benefit into the 2018-'19 budget. (Johnson, 5/10)

Four mornings a week, Broadlawns Medical Center doubles as a courthouse. The Polk County hospital has a courtroom, where magistrates determine whether people with mental illnesses or addictions are such threats to themselves or others that they need to be held for treatment. ... Iowa and other states passed laws saying that officials wanting to lock up patients for mental health care had to show that the patients would pose significant dangers to themselves or others if left in the community. State laws now guarantee each patient has legal representation. The laws also say medical authorities must make regular, specific reports on why they continue to keep patients committed. (Leys, 5/10)

A focus on the educational needs of foster kids increased with the implementation of Every Student Succeeds: the federal act that replaced No Child Left Behind. The new guidelines required Wyoming school districts to implement foster care plans. (Watson, 5/10)

University Medical Center in New Orleans said Thursday (May 10) its 2,400 employees will not yet receive notices warning of layoffs in July, despite not being happy with the money it's expected to receive in the most recent version of the state budget. Hospital officials previously threatened to send such notices in early May if not satisfied with the funding level set by lawmakers. That doesn't mean those notices couldn't go out at some point in the next few weeks, if the hospital operator doesn't think it will get the support it needs from the Louisiana Legislature. (O'Donoghue, 5/10)

A young child who attended a Quincy day-care center came down with typhoid fever, forcing the center to close temporarily while teachers get tested. Parents were advised to have their children tested if they were in the same classroom as the child who became ill at Bright Horizons day care. (Takahama and Freyer, 5/10)

The Trump administration has reversed cuts that jeopardized operations of all but a handful of leprosy clinics nationwide, restoring funding to clinics in Arizona and six other states for Americans afflicted with the centuries-old disease. The federal agency that oversees the leprosy program had paid for only six of 17 regional clinics this year. (Alltucker, 5/10)

he owner of the Carlton Palms Educational Center, where two autistic clients have died in the past five years, told state authorities they plan to close the facility in rural Lake County May 31 “to the extent possible” without leaving about 130 severely disabled people with nowhere to live. The state Agency for Persons with Disabilities said Thursday it filed for a receivership of the business to “ensure a safe transition of all residents” when parent Bellwether Behavioral Health shutters the facility outside Mount Dora along with two other smaller, six-bed homes in Central Florida. (Fallstrom, 5/10)

A nurse was charged Thursday in the death of the father of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser after authorities said she failed to give him a series of neurological exams following his fall at a Philadelphia senior care facility. Christann Shyvin Gainey, 30, was charged with involuntary manslaughter, neglect and records tampering in the death of H.R. McMaster Sr. (Villarreal and Rubinkam, 5/10)

Direct Primary Care is a model of healthcare in which patients pay a monthly fee to get direct, basic medical services without making insurance claims. There are more than 70 DPC practices nationwide in 32 states, according to the Direct Primary Care Coalition, including Infinity Family Care in Mansfield, founded in 2016 by business partners Dr. Wendy Cohen of Foxborough and Dr. David Cunningham of Sharon. (Kandarian, 5/11)

What is the overall association of efficacy of resistance exercise training with depressive symptoms, and which logical, theoretical, and/or prior empirical variables are associated with depressive symptoms? ...The available empirical evidence supports resistance exercise training as an alternative and/or adjuvant therapy for depressive symptoms. (Gordon, McDowell, Hallgren et. al., 5/9)

The American Red Cross implemented investigational screening of donated blood for ZIKV RNA by means of transcription-mediated amplification (TMA). ...Among the 9 confirmed ZIKV-positive donations, only 4 were IgM-negative; of these donations, all 3 that were tested were reactive on minipool TMA. (Saá, Proctor, Foster et. al., 5/10)

Among students with psychological distress (N=1,557), 28% reported prior in-person service use and 3% reported online mental health services use; most (60%) reported willingness to use online services. Students with no prior in-person treatment were less likely than those with history of in-person treatment to endorse preferences for in-person services (adjusted odds ratio=.54). (Dunbar, Sontag-Padilla, Kase et. al., 4/24)

Do older adults with chronic pain benefit from psychological therapies? ...Among older adults with chronic pain, psychological therapies have a small, but statistically significant, benefit for reducing pain and catastrophizing beliefs and improving self-efficacy for managing pain. (Niknejad, Bolier, Henderson et. al., 5/7)

The cancer burden among PLWH is projected to shift, with prostate and lung cancer expected to emerge as the most common types by 2030. Cancer will remain an important comorbid condition, and expanded access to HIV therapies and cancer prevention, screening, and treatment is needed. (Shiels, Islam, Rosenberg et. al., 5/8)

Here’s a Mother’s Day idea for the Trump administration: Stop undermining the nation’s future by disinvesting in millions of women, mothers and their families. A few facts help to frame the analysis. Compared with men, women are more likely to have low incomes and be the primary caretakers of their children. Most low-wage workers, about 60 percent, are women. Because there are so many more poor, single mothers than fathers, these moms are particularly vulnerable to cuts in safety-net programs.Several policy actions by the administration and congressional Republicans are building toward a wholesale attack on many of the programs that have supported women and families’ health and economic mobility. They have proposed slashing nutrition assistance programs, taken steps to undermine access to health care for many low-income families, and cut holes in the economic safety net. And they have consistently failed to enact tax and labor market policies that would support low-income mothers. (Jared Bernstein and Hannah Katch, 5/11)

In medicine, death is a reality. But in obstetrics, where patients are relatively young and healthy, the death of a mother should be so rare that you might never see one in training. However, that is not the case in this country, where the maternal death rate is the highest among all developed nations. (Allison Schneider, 5/11)

On Mother's Day we pay tribute to the women to whom we owe our lives. While it's a heartwarming celebration, the chances to enjoy pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood differ vastly, with African-American women at a distinct disadvantage. Many African-American women will never celebrate Mother's Day, as they are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes than white women. Their chances of surviving pregnancy are the same as if they lived in Uzbekistan, according to the World Health Organization. African-American women are also 49% more likely to deliver prematurely, which can have long-term effects for their babies. (Delvecchio Finley, 5/9)

In 1988, alcohol was declared a class 1 carcinogen by the World Health Organization. The National Cancer Institute says alcohol raises breast cancer risk even at low levels of drinking. And in the United States, an estimated 15 percent of breast cancer cases are related to alcohol.Public health officials in some countries, including England and Australia, have launched ad campaigns warning of alcohol's links to cancer. One ad, aired in western Australia in 2010, features a glass of red wine spilling on a white table cloth: Mother Jones investigative reporter Stephanie Mencimerdiscovered all this after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and decided to dig into the causes of the illness. (5/10)

For the past several years, a certain cultural panic around the drinking habits of affluent, educated women has taken hold, with no obvious corollary for men from a similar demographic position, even though the men seem to be causing all the trouble. Recently the magazine Mother Jones ran a piece that circulated widely online titled “Did Drinking Give Me Breast Cancer?” Generating a lot of anxiety, it argued that women ought to be gravely worried about the health effects of moderate drinking, even though the author of the article had no proof that drinking caused her illness. (Ginia Bellafante, 5/9)

That the responsibility for preventing unintended pregnancy still lies almost exclusively with women remains one of the world’s great health inequities. Beyond condom use, vasectomy, and withdrawal, there are no other male-controlled methods of contraception, even though it’s an entirely feasible option. One of the biggest obstacles to the development of male contraceptives has been the lack of interest and involvement from pharmaceutical companies. (Regine Sitruk-Ware, 5/11)

If not for naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal medicine, I wouldn’t be here today. My story can be instructive to President Trump as he launches a drive to reduce drug prices and make sure everyone has access to the medicines they need. My girlfriend and I are both past heroin users. We live in a one-bedroom apartment in Baltimore. One night eight months ago, we finished dinner, snorted some opioids and went into the kitchen. I was washing dishes and she was putting food away when I passed out, falling face-first into the sink. Fortunately, we had naloxone, in an easy-to-administer nasal spray called Narcan. (Perry Hopkins, 5/11)

Our country’s opioid epidemic is killing West Virginians and tearing families apart. Our small state has suffered the highest overdose death toll in the nation and is shouldering the biggest economic burden. A recent study by the American Enterprise Institute estimates that the opioid epidemic is costing West Virginia $8.8 billion a year, with 12 percent of the state’s gross domestic product dedicated to costs related to the epidemic. So why would West Virginia’s attorney general and U.S. Senate candidate, Patrick Morrisey, settle for pennies on the dollar with Cardinal Health, the drug distributor that pumped more than 241 million prescription painkillers over a six-year period into our state of 1.8 million people? Morrisey’s ties to big pharma have been well documented. We have known that Morrisey himself lobbied for the pharmaceutical industry before becoming attorney general. But recent news confirming that his wife was lobbying federal lawmakers on opioid-related issues for Cardinal Health — the state’s leading supplier of prescription painkillers — during his first three years in office should be a wake-up call for voters in our state. (Ken Hall, 5/10)

We need to talk about the Iowa Legislature’s opioid bill (HF 2377). Passing through the Senate and the House unanimously this past session, the legislation is a well-intentioned attempt to respond to the opioid crisis. But the Iowa Legislature’s attempt is far too narrow in its scope. The bill misses its intended target in several places, while failing to recognize the realities of Iowa’s current drug crisis. Advocates around the state have supported Good Samaritan provisions for several legislative sessions. This component of the bill allows immunity from arrest when an individual calls 911 in the event of an opioid overdose. (Sarah Ziegenhorn, 5/11)

Political campaigns are not known for nuanced discussions or long-term thinking. This year will be worse than most. That's why, during this year's campaign, someone, somewhere needs to start talking about the long-term implications of the tax law, which will reduce the federal tax take by $1.6 trillion over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Forget populist railing against lining the pockets of the wealthy and corporations. The real issue is much simpler and far more frightening. How can the federal government meet its Medicare obligations to retirees—half of whom have no personal savings or pensions—when it continually reduces taxes? (Merrill Goozner, 5/5)

Earlier this year in his State of the Union speech, President Trump reaffirmed that one of his highest priorities is to reduce the price of prescription drugs. “In many other countries, these drugs cost far less than what we pay in the United States,” Trump said. “That is why I have directed my Administration to make fixing the injustice of high drug prices one of our top priorities. Prices will come down.” Even though both political parties agree that Americans are paying too much for their medications, very little has been done over the past 15 years to solve the problem. (Jerry Rogers, 5/10)

One of the laws of health care baked into the heads of every policy analyst is that health care spending almost always rises much faster than GDP. Except it hasn’t really been doing that since 2010, and the gap between health spending and GDP growth is projected to continue to be small through 2026. What we don't know: The cause. We don’t know why the gap has closed (experts disagree and emphasize different factors), and we don’t know if the narrowing is permanent or if the gap will widen again. The big picture: Health spending is still growing somewhat faster than GDP, meaning it will continue to gobble up more and more of our GDP. (Drew Altman, 5/11)

In general, Donald Trump is notoriously uninterested in policy details. ... But there are some policy issues he really does care about. By all accounts, he really hates the idea of people receiving “welfare,” by which he means any government program that helps people with low income, and he wants to eliminate such programs wherever possible. Most recently, he has reportedly threatened to veto the upcoming farm bill unless it imposes stringent new work requirements on recipients of SNAP — the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, still commonly referred to as food stamps. Let me be upfront here: There’s something fundamentally obscene about this spectacle. (Paul Krugman, 5/10)

One in seven Kentuckians has food on their table in part thanks to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The program lifts 164,000 Kentuckians, including 73,000 children, out of poverty. It sends nearly $1 billion a year to grocery stores and our state economy, and injects even more into our local communities during hard times when they most need it. For decades, SNAP has been a program with broad-based, bipartisan support, because all of us value making sure everyone has enough to eat. But this vital assistance is in jeopardy if Congress agrees to the $17 billion in cuts to SNAP in the proposed Farm Bill. (Dustin Pugel, 5/10)

Stigma prevents people from getting tested for HIV. Stigma prevents people from coming to the clinic and engaging in care. (Parker Hudson, 5/10)

In their 1983 punk rock ode to gluttony “I Like Food,” Descendents’ lead singer Milo Aukerman yelps that he’s “gonna turn dining back into eating!” Thirty-five years later, the federal government has stepped in to do just that. This week, a new federal rule went into effect mandating virtually all businesses that serve food prominently display the calorie count for the items they sell. Advocates of the new rule, passed in 2010 as a part of the Obamacare health care bill, say calorie labeling will allow consumers to make healthier choices. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb believes the mandatory calorie counts will have “a  profound and generational impact on human health,” helping to reduce the instances of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. (Christian Schnieder, 5/10)

I deeply resent the idea that my identity gets to be “debated” in the first place. I’m not alone in this; a number of activists in Britain protested the show for this very reason. (Others boycotted it because of Ms. Jenner herself.) As Dr. Adrian Harrop — a trans advocate who declined an invitation to be part of the show — told the website Pink News: “This debate is not about incorporating trans people into mainstream society and improving their lives and making sure they can access and engage with society on a meaningful level. This is a very basic debate around whether existing as a trans person is a valid, legitimate way to live one’s life.” (Jennifer Finney Boylan, 5/9)

Nearly every piece of legislation has a tipping point — that moment in time when its passage simply makes sense. That moment has come for a statewide bill to raise the legal age for buying tobacco products from 18 to 21. After all, Boston raised the legal age for buying tobacco in 2016. About 170 communities, representing 70 percent of the state’s population, according to the advocacy group Tobacco 21, have acted on their own to ban sales of the product to those under the age of 21. Additionally, some 160 communities have banned the sale of tobacco in pharmacies. (5/11)

It's official: Coffee sold in California must carry cancer warnings, a Los Angeles judge ruled this week. The warnings are required by California law, Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said, because of the presence of acrylamide, a chemical that is formed when coffee beans are roasted and that remains in the final beverage. The decision finalized a tentative ruling Berle had made in March. Since the initial ruling, an outpouring of commentary has suggested that, as one opinion writer put it, California has gone off the "deep end." There is no evidence that coffee causes cancer, many pointed out, and warnings about trivial risks could cause more serious notifications to lose resonance. (Jennifer Liss Ohayon and Claudia Polsky, 5/10)