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The White House endorsed an emerging bipartisan agreement Monday on legislation aimed at curbing rising health care costs, including taking steps to limit “surprise” medical bills that can plague patients treated in emergency rooms. While the deal's fate remained uncertain, enactment could give President Donald Trump and lawmakers of both parties a chance to crow about a rare legislative achievement during a bitterly divisive period dominated by Democrats' drive toward impeaching Trump. (Fram, 12/9)

The deal would end the surprise bills and include a new system where independent arbitration would settle billing disputes. Hospitals and doctors have been concerned legislation would lower their reimbursements. “This compromise reflects the input of doctors and hospitals and is the result of months of delicate work to reach a deal among congressional members and the White House that protects patients,” a statement from the Trump administration read. (Armour, 12/9)

Under the compromise announced Sunday, bills under $750 would be paid at a default price, based on in-network charges in the same region. But bills over that amount could be brought to arbitration. The arbiter will collect information from both sides and make a price determination, which is binding. This is a political compromise. (Scott, 12/9)

Lawmakers on Sunday touted a bipartisan deal on protecting patients from surprise medical bills, but the effort still faces some tough questions before it can reach President Trump's desk. While the announced deal was a boost to efforts to address the complicated issue, supporters still face opposition from powerful industry groups and need to secure the backing of congressional leaders, who have yet to sign on. (Sullivan, 12/9)

A bipartisan group of lawmakers produced a deal on surprise billing legislation that is more provider-friendly than legislation previously passed by U.S. Senate and House committees, but hospitals still oppose the deal. Senate health committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), House Energy & Commerce Chair Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Energy & Commerce Ranking Member Greg Walden (R-Ore.) on Sunday announced a compromise on legislation to lower healthcare costs, including a ban on balance billing. (Cohrs, 12/9)

Health insurers and employer groups issued a statement Sunday lauding the inclusion of a market-based benchmark to resolve billing disputes. But even so, the Coalition Against Surprise Medical Billing, which includes health insurers and employers, also said that “we have significant and serious concerns about arbitration being abused by out-of-network providers and private equity firms.” Private equity firms own many doctor staffing companies that employ emergency room physicians. Two such companies, TeamHealth and Envision Healthcare, provided financial backing for ads this fall promoting arbitration. “These providers will exploit every loophole available to take advantage of patients,” the Coalition Against Surprise Medical Billing said. (Hansard and Ruoff, 12/9)

White House aides said President Trump stood by his embattled Medicare and Medicaid chief, Seema Verma, amid reports that she had requested that taxpayers reimburse her $47,000 for property stolen on a trip, including jewelry priced at more than $40,000. The reimbursement request, reported in Politico over the weekend, was the latest revelation in a string of reports that have portrayed the upper echelons of the Department of Health and Human Services as divided on policy and personality, and roiled by expenditures that have come under scrutiny. (Abelson and Goodnough, 12/10)

HHS said in a statement that it was “perfectly appropriate” for Verma to file the loss claim, which covered clothing, jewelry and other items in her luggage that were stolen while she was giving a speech in San Francisco in July 2018. The department said she was partially reimbursed under a government policy that provides coverage at a “discounted rate” for certain items based on their age and condition, but it does not reimburse for jewelry. (12/9)

An internal review by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services into news stories critical of its administrator found that officials at CMS’s parent agency may have been the source of some leaks, according to a copy of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The confidential investigation marks a new twist in a broader conflict between Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and CMS Administrator Seema Verma. (Armour, 12/9)

Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) Monday became the first lawmaker to call on the official overseeing Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare to resign over POLITICO reports he said reveal “a gross misuse of public funds.” ... “We have now seen a systemic effort by the administrator to use public funds to elevate her own position,” Kennedy said in an interview, adding that CMS has largely ignored his questions about Verma's PR contractors, which were revealed by POLITICO earlier this year. Verma testified in October that the outside contracting work was "consistent" with CMS practice and was intended to promote the agency's agenda. (Diamond, 12/9)

The acting HHS inspector general is stepping down, marking the second leadership transition this year atop the agency watchdog that is investigating a top federal health official. Joanne Chiedi, who's served as principal deputy inspector general for six years, will retire from the federal government Dec. 31, a spokesperson said. Chiedi became acting inspector general after the May 31 retirement of Daniel Levinson, who led the office for 15 years. (Diamond, 12/9)

The Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear oral arguments in the latest ObamaCare case to reach the justices, this time in a $12 billion dispute over payments insurers say they are owed by the federal government. At issue is a financial carrot that Congress dangled before insurers to encourage their participation in the early years of the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) health care marketplaces. The funding program in question, known as risk corridors, sought to mitigate risk by protecting insurers against unforeseeable losses in the new markets. (Kruzel, 12/9)

The HHS oversaw a “risk corridor” program from 2014 to 2016 through which it took payments from profitable insurers and redistributed them to companies that assumed greater risk by selling plans to sicker, previously uninsured people. The HHS stopped making the payments when Republicans in Congress declined to fund the program. (Dube, 12/9)

Kaiser Health News: Obamacare Back At The High Court — With Billions For Insurers On The Line

Health insurers say the government’s decision on the risk-corridor program amounts to a bait-and-switch. The health plans took a chance with the new marketplaces, where they had little knowledge of how sick or expensive new enrollees would be. They said they expected the risk-corridor funding would back them up. The latest data shows the government owes insurers more than $12 billion in payments to cover losses on the insurance exchanges between 2014 and 2016. (Galewitz, 12/9)

A handful of health insurers is slated to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday that the federal government owes the insurance industry more than $12.3 billion in outstanding Obamacare program funds. While legal experts say the law is on the insurers' side, there's a chance insurers will come up empty handed even if the high court rules that they are owed the "risk corridor" payments. Should insurers receive any award, the individuals enrolled in their health plans are unlikely to benefit much through either lower premiums or rebates under the Affordable Care Act's medical loss ratio rules, experts said. (Livingston, 12/9)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal by a convicted murderer who filed a civil rights lawsuit because Texas prison officials denied her request to be considered for gender reassignment surgery. The justices let stand a lower court's decision to reject the claim by inmate Vanessa Lynn Gibson that denying the surgery request violated the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. (12/9)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place a Kentucky restriction requiring doctors to show and describe ultrasound images to women seeking an abortion, turning away a challenge arguing that the measure violates the free speech rights of physicians. The justices declined without comment to hear an appeal by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of a lower court ruling that upheld the law after a federal judge previously had struck it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of free speech. (12/9)

The case was brought by the only licensed abortion clinic in the state and three doctors who work there. They challenged a 2017 law that requires doctors to give a detailed description of fetal ultrasound images, including “the presence of external members and internal organs.” Doctors are also required to make the fetal heartbeat audible if they can. This ordinarily takes place, the challengers’ petition seeking review said, while the woman “lies half-naked on the examination table with her feet in stirrups, and usually with a probe inside her vagina.” The law specifies that women may avert their eyes and ask that the volume of the audio of the heartbeat be turned down or off. (Liptak, 12/9)

Monday's ruling allows H.B. 2, Kentucky's forced, narrated ultrasound law, to take effect. The physicians at Kentucky's last abortion clinic will be forced to subject every patient to their ultrasound images, a detailed description of those images, and the sounds of the fetal heart tones prior to an abortion -- even if the patient objects or is covering their eyes and blocking their ears, and even if the physician believes that doing so will cause harm to the patient. (Dwyer, 12/9)

The one-line order, refusing to review a lower court decision, created no nationwide precedent, but suggests that states may be gaining greater leeway in regulating women’s rights to end their pregnancies. As typical in denied appeals, it was unsigned and included no explanation. It takes four votes on the nine-justice court to accept a case for review, and five to decide it. A federal-district court in Louisville, Ky., blocked the law from taking effect in 2017, finding that compelling doctors to express the state government’s antiabortion “ideology” violated the First Amendment and that, particularly for women who were victims of sexual assault, “appears to inflict psychological harm.” (Bravin, 12/9)

The law had been upheld by the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals, but that ruling was on hold pending the Supreme Court appeal. "As a First Amendment matter, there is nothing suspect with a State's requiring a doctor, before performing an abortion, to make truthful, non-misleading factual disclosures, relevant to informed consent, even if those disclosures relate to unborn life and have the effect of persuading the patient not to have an abortion," the appeals court held in its ruling. (De Vogue, 12/9)

With its refusal to review the lower court decision, the Supreme Court "has rubber-stamped extreme political interference in the doctor-patient relationship,” said Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “This law is not only unconstitutional, but as leading medical experts and ethicists explained, deeply unethical." (Ollstein, 12/9)

Jeanne Mancini, the president of March for Life, celebrated the court's decision on Monday. "Women facing an unexpected pregnancy deserve to have as much medically and technically accurate information as possible when they are making what could be the most important decision of their life," the statement said. (Smith, 12/9)

Kentucky's 2017 ultrasound law marked the beginning of a wave of anti-abortion legislation that began after Republicans seized control of the state House of Representatives.  During this year's legislative session, four major bills were passed to try to restrict or eliminate abortion in Kentucky. Some were blocked by the courts. (Kenning, 12/9)

[The law] was signed by Gov. Matt Bevin, an anti-abortion Republican who lost his bid for re-election last month. "This is a HUGE win for the pro-life movement!" the Kentucky GOP tweeted on Monday, thanking Bevin and Republican lawmakers. "This decision by SCOTUS to allow the lower court ruling to stand is a victory for the unborn!" (Li, 12/9)

In March, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in June Medical Services LLC v. Gee, which challenges a Louisiana law that requires abortion-performing physicians to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. (Kruzel, 12/9)

Government funding for Missouri Planned Parenthood clinics is at stake in a lawsuit set to be argued before the state Supreme Court on Tuesday. State attorneys are asking Supreme Court judges to back the Republican-led Legislature's decision to block funding from Planned Parenthood. The Attorney General's Office appealed to the high court after a lower court in June ruled the move was unconstitutional. (Ballentine, 12/10)

The Justice Department on Monday said that the man accused of killing three people when he opened fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado in 2015 has been indicted on federal charges, including some that could carry the death penalty. Robert Lewis Dear Jr. faces 68 counts in the new indictment, mostly alleged violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which the Justice Department says protects people seeking and providing care at reproductive health facilities. The indictment also includes three counts of using a firearm during a crime of violence that results in a death where the killing is a murder. (Berman, 12/9)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away a novel case by Arizona seeking to recover billions of dollars that the state has said that members of the Sackler family - owners of Purdue Pharma LP - funneled out of the OxyContin maker before the company filed for bankruptcy in September. (Raymond, 12/9)

The state accused the the Sacklers of transferring $4 billion to themselves since 2008, and at least another $2 billion to companies under their control, in violation of a fraud statute on the books in 43 states. The Sackler family has denied Arizona’s allegations. The court announced that it will not hear the case in an order with no explanation and no noted dissents. (Higgins, 12/9)

When Purdue Pharma LP cut the last of its sales force in June 2018, some analysts figured the move by the maker of OxyContin painkillers would help address a U.S. opioid-addiction epidemic the company had been accused of creating. But documents filed Monday by a group of state attorneys general in the company’s bankruptcy suggests the maneuver wasn’t quite the sacrifice it seemed. (Larson, 12/9)

A star of the local addiction recovery scene — who emerged from crippling opioid dependence to launch a successful chain of area rehab centers — has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after admitting he illegally profited from the struggles of the patients he had pledged to help. Joseph Lubowitz, former CEO of Humble Beginnings Recovery Centers in Willow Grove and Cherry Hill, apologized for his transgressions during a federal court hearing Friday in Palm Beach County, Fla., and attempted to convince a judge that he was serious about making amends. (Roebuck, 12/9)

Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren defended her Medicare for All healthcare proposal on Monday, telling members of an influential Nevada labor union that she wants all Americans to have coverage that is as good as theirs. Union members throughout the U.S. are worried about losing hard-won health coverage under plans by Massachusetts Senator Warren, and rival Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who have proposed doing away with private insurance. (Bernstein, 12/10)

Warren spoke at a town hall in front of several hundred members of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 and its national affiliate, Unite Here, after touring the union’s health center earlier in the day. Warren said under her plan, the health care that the union members experience and count on is “not supposed to change.” “To me, what you’ve got is not something we want to make harder. What you’ve got is something I want to see replicated all around America,” Warren said to applause. “The part that changes is the money and where the money comes from.” (12/10)

Like many primary care doctors working in large medical systems, [Emilie] Scott was encouraged to see a new patient every 20 minutes. But that was barely enough time to talk and do a physical. She eventually quit her job to try a new approach aimed at eliminating many of the headaches of traditional health care: tight schedules, short appointments and piles of insurance paperwork. Instead of billing insurers, Scott now charges patients a $79 monthly fee that covers office visits, phone calls, emails, texts and certain medical tests and procedures. (12/10)

The chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee has called on the largest health care system in Memphis, Tennessee, to explain its debt collection, charity care and billing practices after an investigation by MLK50 and ProPublica found that it was aggressively suing poor patients, including its own employees. In a letter sent last week, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who has been a leading critic of nonprofit hospitals that misuse their tax-exempt status, asked Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare how it intended to carry out promised reforms of its financial assistance system. (Thomas, 12/10)

UnitedHealth plans to acquire Diplomat Pharmacy at a steep discount about a month after the specialty drug provider said it may not be able to make its debt payments. United Health Group's OptumRx said Monday that the company will spend $4 for each share of Diplomat in a cash tender offer. That’s 31% cheaper than the stock’s closing price of $5.81 on Friday. Shares of Diplomat tumbled in early trading. (12/9)

Diplomat provides specialty pharmacy and infusion services nationwide, specializing in managing medications that treat patients with complex chronic diseases. It entered the PBM business at the end of 2017 but has had trouble holding on to clients. In August, Diplomat said it was considering a sale or merger of the company. OptumRx said the combination would help improve health outcomes and reduce prescription drug costs. Evercore ISI analyst Michael Newshel noted in a research report that the deal would help Optum expand its specialty business while building out a national network of lower cost infusion centers. (Livingston, 12/9)

The acquisition price of $4 per share is roughly a 30% discount to Diplomat's market value on Friday, and the acquired company's stock traded down sharply on Monday. Diplomat has a track record of providing specialty pharmacy and infusion services, analysts said, but ran into trouble developing a pharmaceutical benefits management (PBM) business. (Snowbeck, 12/9)

Tobacco-free investing is an old story, dating back to at least the 1980s. But the volume of cash actively avoiding the industry is becoming harder for cigarette bosses to ignore. Almost 130 companies from the banking and insurance sectors have signed the United Nations Tobacco-Free Finance Pledge since its launch late last year. The signatories manage $8 trillion of assets—around 10% of the funds managed by the global asset management industry. And in a sign that tobacco aversion is spreading beyond the public markets, French bank BNP Paribas promised to withdraw all corporate lending to the big cigarette manufacturers. AXA, one of the world’s largest insurers, will no longer underwrite them. (Ryan, 12/10)

The first person charged in the ongoing fraud investigation into Outcome Health pleaded guilty today in federal court. Ashik Desai, who was in charge of business development at the healthcare advertising company, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud this morning before U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin. Desai faces up to 10 years in prison as part of the plea agreement, prosecutors said. (Pletz, 12/9)

Banner Health has agreed to pay up to $6 million to victims of a massive data breach the Arizona health system experienced in 2016, according to court documents filed last week. The plaintiffs in the case filed the motion for preliminary approval of a settlement to end a proposed class action over the cyberattack in federal court in Arizona. Under the deal, nearly 3 million people who Banner notified after a 2016 data breach would be able to request reimbursement claims for expenses from the incident. (Cohen, 12/9)

When Shane Burcaw flies on an airplane, he brings along a customized gel cushion, a car seat, and about 10 pieces of memory foam. The whole arsenal costs around $1,000, but for Burcaw it’s a necessity. The 27-year-old author and speaker — who, alongside his fiancée, Hannah Aylward, is one half of the YouTube duo Squirmy and Grubs — has spinal muscular atrophy, a genetic disorder that affects motor neurons and causes muscle wasting and weakness. The disorder contorted his limbs and he has used a wheelchair for mobility since he was 2 years old. Today, he uses a motorized wheelchair custom-fitted to his diminutive, 65-lb. frame, but to board an airplane, he’s required to give it up. Instead, Aylward must carry Burcaw onto the plane, and from there, transfer him into a child’s car seat, which provides limited support and does not fit his body (thus, the foam). (Schulson, 12/3)

The new understanding is surprising because Huntington’s has long seemed like a prototypical neurodegenerative disease, one in which the brain’s circuits, especially those that control movement and cognition, begin to fall apart in early to middle adulthood. Exactly when that happens depends on the severity of the genetic mutation, which is a sort of DNA stutter — repeats of the nucleotide sequence CAG in a gene named HTT, which makes a protein called huntingtin. (Begley, 12/10)

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday that eradicating HIV is no longer an aspirational goal — it’s doable. Redfield made the remarks while visiting an HIV clinic in DeKalb County. The county is the focus of an intense effort aimed at preventing the spread of the virus and was one of three sites chosen earlier this year by the CDC to receive $1.5 million for a pilot program. Baltimore and East Baton Rouge are the other locations. (Oliviero, 12/9)

California’s Salinas Valley is grappling with a new outbreak of E. coli contamination linked to packaged salads. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that the latest multistate outbreak, which sickened eight people in upper-Midwest states and 16 in Canada, involves a different E. coli strain than the one involved in a previous set of illnesses announced before Thanksgiving. The outbreaks, however, share a common geographical origin: lettuce harvested in California’s Salinas Valley, according to the CDC. (Mohan, 12/9)

New results from the largest long-term study of brain development and children’s health raise provocative questions about obesity and brain function. Does excess body weight somehow reduce brain regions that regulate planning and impulse control? Is obesity a result of that brain difference? Or are eating habits, lifestyle, family circumstances and genetics to blame? (12/9)

Officials are increasingly recognizing that integrating nature into cities is an effective public health strategy to improve mental health. Doctors around the world now administer “green prescriptions” — where patients are encouraged to spend time in local nature spaces — based on hundreds of studies showing that time in nature can benefit people’s psychological well-being and increase social engagement. Much of this research to date has focused on the role of green space in improving mental health. But what about “blue” space — water settings such as riverside trails, a lake, a waterfront or even urban fountains? (Roe, 12/10)

Many dating apps continue to ghost health officials and advocacy groups who seek their help fighting the epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases the platforms have helped bring about. Some of the sites, however, are starting to swipe right. Even as rates of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia have climbed to record levels over the past few years, major dating apps and sites like Tinder have avoided taking action or even speaking up about the problem. (Ravindranath and Ollstein, 12/9)

William Borten had no idea his wife’s colorectal surgery could affect her mind. But a day later, Judith Sue Borten couldn’t remember her birthday or who the president was. She was experiencing symptoms of delirium, a confused state that is common in elderly patients after surgery or during intensive care stays. The delirium went away after a few days. But Mrs. Borten’s cognitive abilities, which were already impaired, declined rapidly afterward, says her husband, who is 84 and lives in Bethesda, Md. (Reddy, 12/9)

Kaiser Health News: ‘Food Pharmacies’ In Clinics: When The Diagnosis Is Chronic Hunger

There’s a new question that anti-hunger advocates want doctors and nurses to ask patients: Do you have enough food? Public health officials say the answer often is “not really.” So clinics and hospitals have begun stocking their own food pantries in recent years. One of the latest additions is Connectus Health, a federally qualified health clinic in Nashville, Tenn. This month, part of LaShika Taylor’s office transformed into a community cupboard. (Farmer, 12/10)

Gov. Ralph Northam on Monday proposed spending nearly $22 million over two years to help reduce maternal mortality rates among women of color, previewing the stamp he’ll put on the state’s budget when it comes out next week. Northam (D) plans to announce funding for early-childhood education programs on Tuesday, followed by expanding the use of renewable energy and boosting jobs and inclusivity later in the week, each day highlighting a different aspect of his proposed two-year budget. (Schneider, 12/9)

In April 2017, partners from McKinsey & Company sent a confidential final report to the New York City corrections commissioner. They had spent almost three years leading an unusual project for a white-shoe corporate consulting firm like McKinsey: Attempting to stem the tide of inmate brawls, gang slashings and assaults by guards that threatened to overwhelm the jail complex on Rikers Island. The report recounted that McKinsey had tested its new anti-violence strategy in what the firm called “Restart” housing units at Rikers. The results were striking. Violence had dropped more than 50% in the Restart facilities, the McKinsey partners wrote. (MacDougall, 12/10)

On the afternoon of Dec. 3, workers at the Oceanview Manor Home for Adults found resident Ann McGrory, 58, lying on the floor, lifeless, with her pants down around her ankles. She had cuts and bruises on her hands, head and face. By her side, seated atop his bed in Room 512, was resident Frank Thompson, 64, her sometimes-boyfriend who had a reputation at the home as a heavy drinker with a short temper. The aides called police. Thompson was brought into custody for questioning later that day and placed under arrest on Wednesday. (Sapien, 12/9)

The Iowa Department of Corrections has been rolling out a new policy in the past year aimed at addressing racial disparities in the state’s prison system.Iowa disproportionately incarcerates African-Americans at a higher rate than almost all other states in the nation. Iowa’s population is less than 4 percent African-American, and the state prison population is about 25 percent African-American. The state’s prison system has started using specific strategies to try to mitigate that ongoing problem. (Sostaric, 12/9)

Thirty-one people have been sickened by salmonella at four health-care facilities in Southeastern Pennsylvania, in many cases after eating pre-cut fruit from a New Jersey distributor, state and federal health officials said. Tailor Cut Produce of North Brunswick has agreed to recall its mix of cantaloupe, honeydew melon, pineapple, and grapes distributed between Nov. 15 and Dec. 1 as it has been “potentially linked” to the illnesses, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said. (Avril, 12/9)

Justice Yoder always hoped he’d be able to donate his organs to a person in need one day, but he’ll never know how he made medical history by giving his heart to someone. Yoder, 26, of Bellefontaine, went into sudden cardiac arrest Nov. 25. He was transported to Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center, where he died Dec. 1. Six of Yoder’s organs — including his heart, kidneys, lungs and liver — were transplanted into others, according to Lifeline of Ohio, a nonprofit group that coordinates the donation of human organs and tissue. Yoder’s heart, which had completely stopped circulating blood in him, was flown to Duke University hospital, where it was given to someone in need. (Filby, 12/9)

A new bill in the General Assembly aims to increase mental health and addiction treatment covered by Ohio insurance companies, after a recent report showed patients are increasingly going out-of-network for care. (Hancock, 12/9)

Missouri health officials want to spend more money combating Legionnaires’ disease, the severe form of pneumonia that has sickened more than 800 people in the state over the last five years. The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, according to documents submitted to state budget officials, said Missouri’s response to Legionnaires’ has grown and that existing state laboratory staff can no longer absorb all duties. (Suntrup, 12/9)

The racial disparities are more pronounced in North Carolina than much of the country, both for maternal health and infant mortality rates. Those data and how to drive down the numbers were part of a three-hour discussion on Friday when the Early Childhood Advisory Council met in Raleigh. Even though North Carolina has decreased the rate of infant deaths by 47 percent since the advisory council was formed in 1991, African American births result in infant mortality at a rate 2.5 times the rate of white births. (Blythe, 12/10)

Illinois residents living about a mile away from a medical sterilization facility have levels of the cancer-causing gas ethylene oxide in their blood that are about 50% higher than those who live farther away, according to newly released test results. The testing was limited, involving blood samples from just 93 people who responded to fliers and social media posts about the project. Participants were not randomly selected, which may have introduced bias. The results have not been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. (Goodman and Miller, 12/9)

More than a year after a Department of Correction investigator concluded that a series of missteps led to a teenager giving birth behind bars – and days after her report was made public – neither the DOC nor the governor’s office would say whether the state had implemented reforms to prevent the situation from happening again. (Lyons and Carlesso, 12/10)

While the U.S. has moved away from the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change, the state of California has dug in. Alongside New York and Washington, it created the United States Climate Alliance, a coalition looking to uphold the agreement through state actions. It’s also fighting with the Trump administration over the state’s long-standing restrictions on car emissions, which traditionally have been more stringent than federal standards. The state, with its range of climates and landscapes, faces multiple threats from climate change. More frequent and larger wildfires are among the most visible, but flooding, increased air pollution, the spread of infectious diseases and more days of extreme heat also are looming. (Barry-Jester, 12/9)

Life-sciences jobs are opening up faster in Massachusetts than employers can fill them, according to a report that says colleges aren’t preparing enough qualified graduates for such positions. Despite a nationwide push in recent years to encourage young people to pursue degrees in science, technology, engineering or mathematics, or STEM, the growth of life-sciences jobs in the state far outstrips the growth in the number of qualified candidates, the report says. (Saltzman, 12/10)

China has become the world’s largest producer and exporter of “active pharmaceutical ingredients,” the base components drug companies use to manufacture most of the medications we rely on. China’s dominance puts both the health of Americans and our national security at risk. According to the findings of a new report from the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission, which was established by Congress in 2000, China’s pharmaceutical industry “is not effectively regulated by the Chinese government” and has been responsible for a number of drug safety scandals. (Henry I. Miller and John J. Cohrssen, 12/10)

Civil servant Steffen Thewes of Hamburg, Germany, learned that his daughter, desperately ill with a rare spinal condition, would be dead by Christmas. Her only hope was a $330,000 operation at a specialized clinic in Colorado. Yet Thewes’s health insurance refused to cover it. An online fundraising campaign failed. Desperate — and possibly imitating “John Q.,” the title character of a 2002 film in which Denzel Washington takes hostages and demands a heart transplant for his son that insurance had refused to cover — Thewes hatched an elaborate extortion scheme to pay for the operation. Alas, he killed someone as part of the crime and ended up under arrest. (Charles Lane, 12/9)

A proposed rule by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that allegedly aims to strengthen transparency in regulatory science suggests that science is broken. It isn’t. We know it works because we can see the life-saving transplant technologies, hurricane forecasts, new medications, pest-resistant crops, and countless other breakthroughs that exist because of science. This discipline isn’t perfect, but it is the best tool available to safeguard the planet and its people. (Lenny Teytelman, William Gunn and Joanne Kamens, 12/9)

Volunteers in the New Zealand city of Rotorua are in the process of sending two dozen handcrafted, infant-size coffins to the Pacific island of Samoa, which is currently in the midst of a deadly measles outbreak. The coffins are gifts to Samoan families who can’t afford them but suddenly need them. The smallest are decorated with felt flowers and butterflies. That is one form of Samoa’s contact with the world. Another is anti-vaccination propaganda, much of it generated in the United States, that arrives through social media and discourages Samoan parents from vaccinating their children. This type of import has helped turn Samoa into a case study of “anti-vax” success — and increased the demand for tiny coffins decorated with flowers and butterflies. (Michael Gerson, 12/9)

This is the time of year when many of us travel, reconnect, and exchange gifts with those we love most. It is also the time when we help take care of family concerns: Grandma’s eyesight is getting worse, our favorite aunt has food in her fridge more than two years out of date, the old family home is in need of some serious repairs. One concern that often goes unaddressed is what’s in the medicine cabinet or the kitchen cupboard. Not so long ago, it was common for physicians to write a prescription for a 30-day supply of pain medication. It was also common for pharmacies to fill them even though only a day or two of treatment was needed to address the pain. That practice left a ticking time bomb in many of our medicine cabinets — even Grandma’s. (Blake Fagan and Anne Seaman, 12/9)

Sixteen-year-old Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez died horribly and needlessly. The Trump administration’s policy of deliberate, punishing cruelty toward Latin American migrants killed him. That is the only conclusion to be drawn from a shocking report by the nonprofit newsroom ProPublica about Hernandez’s death in May at a U.S. Border Patrol station in Texas. I assume the agents and health-care workers who should have given Hernandez lifesaving attention are decent human beings, not monsters. But they work within an intentionally monstrous system that assigned no value to a young Guatemalan boy’s life. (Eugene Robinson, 12/9)

As I returned home from this year’s Women in Statistics and Data Science Conference, one word rang loudly in my ears: patriarchy. In a presentation on the impact of gender on women’s careers, Carnegie Mellon statistician Dalene Stangl boldly claimed that although the term may be out of favor, patriarchy is “alive and well” and that “it happened to me.” (Emma Thomas, 12/10)

People are confined to county jails for all kinds of reasons, including alleged crimes that haven’t yet been proven or convictions for minor offenses. But whatever the reason, there are — or should be — basic standards of reasonable daily hygiene available: shampoo, soap, feminine hygiene products and the like. These aren’t luxuries but necessities. Denying them to inmates (including those not yet convicted of anything) isn’t something that should ever happen in 21st Century America.Yet in Missouri, it does. Unlike the majority of U.S. states, Missouri has no statewide minimum jail standards, including any uniform rules regarding what personal supplies must be available to county jail inmates. (12/10)