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The U.S. government said on Monday the deadline for signing-up for 2020 insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act has been extended by three days to Dec. 18 to accommodate those who experienced issues while attempting to enroll. There were website glitches and call center delays reported on Sunday, the earlier deadline for the 2020 open enrollment, and the extension should help the final enrollment tally, said Evercore ISI analyst Michael Newshel. (12/16)

Federal officials said some consumers who logged in or created an account were routed to a waiting system but that it only impacted a portion of consumers for a few minutes. People who contacted the call center were instructed to leave their contact information and would be allowed to enroll in a plan after the Dec. 15 deadline, according to a spokeswoman with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “This additional time will give consumers the opportunity to come back and complete their enrollment for January 1 coverage,” CMS officials said Monday, referring to the deadline extension. (Armour, 12/16)

On Monday afternoon, the HealthCare.gov website displayed an alert telling people about the deadline extension. But it was in a small font, and a much larger banner directly below still said open enrollment was over, potentially creating confusion. The problems started Sunday, which was the original sign-up deadline. The last day of open enrollment is always the busiest, with hundreds of thousands of people going online or trying to reach the call center. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 12/16)

Charles Gaba, an analyst who tracks enrollment in Affordable Care Act exchanges, has a guess as to how many people may have had problems signing up on Sunday. "I'd estimate that it'll be somewhere in the range of around 100,000 people," he says. He notes 36 hours is not a lot of time to let those people know they still have a chance to sign up for coverage in 2020. But "it's better than nothing," he says. (Simmons-Duffin, 12/16)

Officials with the exchange waited until after the original deadline to announce the extension because they didn’t want people to put off selecting a plan and miss out on a month of coverage, said Michael Marchand, chief marketing officer for the exchange. (Blethen, 12/16)

These aren't the first HealthCare.gov glitches customers have experienced this year. Outages reported on Nov. 1, the first day of open enrollment, may have prevented about 100,000 from choosing a plan that day, according to nationwide campaign Get America Covered.(Livingston, 12/16)

Last week, Obama urged more people to sign up for Obamacare in a message in which he showed off his holiday shopping list of gifts for $10 or less -- which, he says, includes health care coverage. Obama called attention to the fact that two-thirds of those with coverage on the federal exchange can find 2020 plans with monthly premiums of $10 or less thanks to premium subsidies, according to federal data. (Cole and Luhby, 12/16)

As of Dec. 7, more than 3.9 million people had signed up for plans, a 6 percent drop compared to a similar time period last year. But the last few days of open enrollment typically bring a surge of sign-ups, and advocates expressed concern that the website was not able to handle the traffic of tens of thousands of people attempting to enroll. (Weixel, 12/16)

Georgia has a designated navigator organization, which received a $550,000 federal grant to help people sign up. This year it’s the Georgia Primary Care Association, which represents clinics across the state. The phone number to talk to a navigator is 1-844-442-7421. (Hart, 12/16)

Access Health workers are trying new approaches this year to reach the nearly 187,000 Connecticut residents who are still uninsured. Using tools that analyze census tracts, exchange workers identified neighborhoods within cities where a majority of the uninsured people live. In October, they began canvassing homes in those areas – knocking on doors to chat with people about the range of health plans, state subsidies and other available services. Thousands of homes in Hartford, Bridgeport, Norwalk and Fairfield were expected to be visited. (Carlesso, 12/16)

Christie DeNave is the spokeswoman for Florida Blue, the largest insurer in Florida. She said regardless of the reason why, the insurance company is excited to have the extra 36 hours of enrollment time. “We definitely find that there’s a lot of people that wait for the last minute no matter what, so some of them may have let these deadlines slip past them,” DeNave said. “We did experience a heavy rush over the weekend, like we do every year at the end of open enrollment. But we didn’t have any issues with actually getting people signed up. So we were a little surprised to hear that there may have been some problems, perhaps in other areas.” (Aboraya, 12/17)

As it has for the past several years, Florida has led the nation in Obamacare enrollment, which remains popular in the state despite efforts by the Trump administration to weaken the law, such as cuts to navigators who help Floridians enroll for ACA coverage and marketing efforts. Jodi Ray, project director of Florida Covering Kids & Families, a navigator group, said they witnessed a surge in traffic of people signing up for plans that may have been caused by technical glitches experienced throughout the enrollment period. (Conarck, 12/16)

Two health care companies hope that an order for them to stop selling health coverage in New Hampshire will be reversed. One of the companies, Trinity HealthShare, claims the order violates religious freedom rights under the Constitution. On Oct. 30, state Insurance Commissioner John Elias ordered Trinity and its third-party administrator, The Aliera Companies, to stop issuing new plans or renewing coverage in the state. In a statement at the time, Elias called the coverage “illegal health insurance.” (Phelps, 12/16)

Cigna, the nation’s fourth-largest health insurance company, on Monday said it would terminate its contract with Houston-based Memorial Hermann hospital system in March, dropping as many as 178,000 plan members and 1,460 affiliated doctors from its network. The move, which comes after months of negotiations over hospital billing rates, would affect anyone with an employer-sponsored Cigna plan. However, those covered under the insurer’s Medicare Advantage program for seniors will not be affected. The contract termination will take effect March 16. (Takahashi, 12/16)

Lawmakers on Monday unveiled a dozen bills that would allocate $1.4 trillion in federal spending for the remainder of the fiscal year to prevent the government from shutting down at midnight on Friday. The legislation, divided into two packages, provides funding for all federal agencies and departments and for extending a number of community and health programs. The measures drew bipartisan support after months of gridlock, and gave members of each party something to brag about. (Cochrane, 12/16)

Congress would raise the U.S. tobacco purchasing age to 21 and permanently repeal several of the Affordable Care Act's taxes under a massive government spending bill unveiled on Monday. ... The crackdown on youth smoking, by changing the minimum age for cigarette and other tobacco purchases to 21 from the current 18, would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration six months to develop regulations. The agency would then have three years to work with states on implementing the change. (Cowan and Cornwell, 12/16)

The restriction on tobacco sales has long been a push by a somewhat odd compilation of members, ranging from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a Kentucky Republican, and Republican Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Todd Young of Indiana, and some of the chamber's top Democrats, including Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinois, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Brian Schatz of Hawaii. Those lawmakers have been looking for a means to get the prohibition across the finish line, and now they've found one by attaching it to a must-pass series of bills to avoid a government shutdown. (Mattingly and Kelly, 12/16)

Public health advocates praised the move, saying it would help reduce kids’ access to vaping products. But they stressed much more action is needed to reverse the youth vaping surge. And several expressed concern that the White House will use the “Tobacco 21” measure, as it is called, to avoid imposing the ban on flavored e-cigarettes that Trump announced in September but subsequently backed away from. (McGinley and Abutaleb, 12/16)

The change would lead to a "substantial reduction" in smoking among young people, according to the report from the National Academy of Medicine, and that by the time today's teenagers were adults it could decrease the prevalence of tobacco use by 12%, as well as decreasing health problems attributed to tobacco use. "It's both a positive step and we have to make it a very important caution," Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, told ABC News Live. (Ebbs and Turner, 12/16)

The deal would repeal a cost-control measure in “Obamacare” known as the Cadillac Tax, an unpopular levy on benefit-rich health insurance plans scheduled to take effect in 2022. That means Congress is upsetting the balance between expanding access and controlling costs that former President Barack Obama tried to strike in his signature law, said Kathleen Sebelius, who served as his health secretary. “President Obama thought it was very important to have additional access paid for,” said Sebelius. “This just takes a big step backwards.” (Alonso-Zaldivar, 12/16)

The repeal of the health-care taxes would be a windfall for the industry. Absent from the agreement is an effort to protect consumers from surprise, out-of-network medical bills despite a monthslong congressional effort to craft a workable, bipartisan proposal. (Duehren and Rubin, 12/16)

It is also expected to extend expiring health care programs through May 22, and notably, it doesn’t include a last-ditch effort from key committee leaders to pass legislation protecting consumers from getting slapped with “surprise” medical bills. The short-term extension could give surprise billing a vehicle to ride on next year, according to a senior House Democratic aide. And Congress is also aiming to ban the sale of tobacco products to people under 21. (Luthi and Emma, 12/16)

The legislation would also provide $41.7 billion for medical research at the NIH, a nearly 7 percent increase over current funding. Republican leaders are touting the fact that the deal does not include new funding or directives for international efforts to aid family planning and reproductive health. They are proud that the legislation would deliver a $22 billion increase in defense spending, as well as a 3.1 percent military pay increase — the largest bump in a decade. (Scholtes and Emma, 12/16)

Congress spent most of the year debating what to do about drug prices and “surprise” medical bills, but lawmakers largely punted on both issues in their year-end spending package. The minibus spending bill (H.R. 1865) — likely the last piece of legislation on which health provisions could hitch a ride this year — instead delivers a major gift to health care interests by killing three Obamacare taxes. (Roubein, 12/17)

Compromise legislation to address surprise medical bills and a major drug-pricing package, however, were left out of the year-end deal. And lawmakers delayed long-term action on funding expiration for several healthcare priorities until May 22, which provides another potential vehicle for those larger packages. Senate health committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), House Energy and Commerce Chair Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Energy and Commerce ranking Republican Greg Walden of Oregon on Dec. 8 released surprise billing legislation that the leaders wanted included in a year-end spending deal, but the effort petered out after leaders of the Ways and Means Committee released vague outlines of a rival proposal and called for the issue to be considered in the new year. (Cohrs, 12/16)

The deal does include one relatively small bill to lower drug prices, called the Creates Act, which cracks down on drug companies gaming the system to delay the introduction of cheaper generic competitors. (Sullivan, 12/16)

U.S. diplomats who mysteriously fell ill in Cuba and China would get long-term emergency health and other benefits under a $1.4 trillion spending bill lawmakers unveiled on Monday. Over 40 U.S. government employees were affected by the incidents, which started in 2017 and have not been explained. They helped lead President Donald Trump to reduce staffing at the country's mission in Havana. (12/16)

The deal would also extend the National Flood Insurance Program’s authorization to Sept. 30 and the Terrorism Risk Insurance program for seven years. The spending agreement includes the Bipartisan American Miners Act of 2019 to prevent insolvency of the 1974 UMWA Pension Plan. Further, this provision extends health retirement benefits to miners impacted by coal company bankruptcies that took place in 2018 and 2019. Without this provision, 92,000 coal miners’ pensions and the health care benefits for 13,000 miners would have been at risk. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin said last week he would delay all Senate business until the miner’s provision was inserted into the funding package. (Wasson and Davison, 12/16)

On Monday, Pelosi touted wins in the agreement. "All Democrats can take great pride in this strong appropriations package, which achieves critical victories for the health, financial security and well-being of the American people," Pelosi said in a statement Monday evening. "With this agreement, Democrats are protecting the quality, affordable health care of millions by permanently repealing health care taxes and preventing the President from waging further health care sabotage." (Grisales, 12/16)

A bipartisan deal on a government spending bill would for the first time in two decades provide money for federal research on gun safety. A law adopted in the 1990's has effectively blocked such research and prohibits federal agencies from engaging in advocacy on gun-related issues. The spending bill, set for a House vote as soon as Tuesday, would provide $25 million for gun violence research, divided evenly between the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (12/16)

While gun violence is one of the country’s leading causes of death, it receives little research funding. As many people die because of gun violence, for example, as of sepsis infection, yet funding for gun research is less than 1 percent of that for sepsis, a 2017 analysis found. “This is a deal of historic proportions,” said Mark Rosenberg, who was heading the CDC’s research on firearm violence in the 1990s when Congress abruptly cut off funding for the work. “It ends the horrendous position we’re in, where we don’t even know what works.” (Wan, 12/16)

While the Dickey Amendment did not outlaw gun violence research outright, the symbolic effect the amendment had was pronounced. Gun violence research effectively ground to a halt in the wake of the amendment and the field atrophied, as young scientists declined to focus their research in an area where they knew funding would be a continual struggle. "What has happened in the last 20 years is that there's been a battle raging between the gun-control people and the gun-rights people," said Rosenberg, who led the NCIPC at the time the Dickey Amendment passed. (Schumaker, 12/16)

The announcement "is a huge victory in our nation's commitment to addressing and solving the gun violence epidemic,'' said Christian Heyne, vice president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Students graduating from college this spring have never lived in a United States where the federal government studied this issue. That ends today." (Moe and Gregorian, 12/16)

Gun violence research funding was viewed as a top priority for the new Democratic House majority after years of deadly mass shootings in schools, churches and other public spaces. DeLauro said the funding will help the federal government understand the correlation between domestic violence and gun violence, how Americans can more safely store guns and how to reduce suicide by firearms. (Hellmann, 12/16)

The Supreme Court said on Monday that it would not hear a closely watched case on whether cities can make it a crime for homeless people to sleep outdoors. The case was brought by six people in Boise, Idaho, who said a pair of local laws violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. One prohibited “camping” in streets, parks and other public property. The other prohibited “lodging or sleeping” in any place, whether public or private, without the owner’s permission. (Liptak, 12/16)

The justices on Monday did not comment as they left in place a ruling that struck down a Boise, Idaho, ordinance. The ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals applies across several Western states where cities are struggling with homelessness brought on by rising housing costs and income inequality. Many have similar restrictions that aim to keep homeless people from sleeping on their streets. The appeals court held that Boise could not make it a crime for homeless people to sleep on the streets when no alternative shelter is available. The decision the justices refused to review found that the Boise ordinance violated the constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” (12/16)

Advocates for people who are homeless considered the decision a victory as news came down. Theane Evangelis, Boise’s lead counsel on the case, disagreed, saying in a statement that “the 9th Circuit’s decision ultimately harms the very people it purports to protect.” (Harding, 12/16)

The ruling, which applies in nine Western states, prompted an outpouring of calls for Supreme Court intervention from cities, states and local business associations. Los Angeles, which has 36,000 homeless people, said the decision “raises daunting practical issues” for large cities. (Stohr, 12/16)

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is starting to back away from a full-blown Medicare for All plan on the campaign trail, as she faces increased questions about whether her support for the proposal hurts her electability. After pushing the swift creation of a government-run health care system that would cover all Americans and eliminate private insurance, Warren is now emphasizing her calls for a transition period that would make it optional for most of her first term in office. (Egkolfopoulou, 12/17)

While the language is already a part of her transition proposal, it's a notable rhetorical shift on Warren's part after her moderate Democratic rivals -- namely South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg -- have criticized her plan that would eventually eliminate private health insurance.For the last two weeks, Warren has described the transition into her Medicare For All plan as a "choice" for Americans to try it. A new Fox News Poll released Sunday showed that support for government-run healthcare has dropped by double-digits among Democrats since October. At her town halls, Warren frequently fields questions from voters who tell her they've heard worries from friends or family about giving up their current private insurance. (Diaz and Reston, 12/16)

The bar for health care reform was set high in Democratic presidential politics, first by Bernie Sanders and more recently by Elizabeth Warren. She proposed $20.5 trillion in new federal spending to replace private health insurance with her version of “Medicare for All,” though she quickly hedged on how long it might take. On the ground in Connecticut, one of the nation’s insurance capitals, the administration of Gov. Ned Lamont is part of a new bipartisan working group exploring incremental changes aimed at halting, or at least slowing, the rising costs of health insurance premiums, prescription drugs and other elements of health care. (Pazniokas, 12/17)

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear on Monday halted his Republican predecessor's efforts to impose work requirements as a condition for some able-bodied adults to receive Medicaid health coverage, calling his action the “moral, faith-driven thing to do." The new Democratic governor signed an executive order rescinding former Gov. Matt Bevin's plan to require that the affected recipients either work, study, volunteer or perform other “community engagement" activities to qualify for Medicaid coverage. A federal judge blocked the requirements before they took effect, but Bevin's administration had appealed. (Schreiner, 12/16)

Under Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear—Mr. Beshear’s father, who held office from 2007 to 2015—Kentucky expanded Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, and created a health exchange. But Republican Gov. Matt Bevin dismantled the exchange after taking office in 2015 and proposed changes to Medicaid that he said were necessary to keep costs down. Among the policies he pursued was a requirement that recipients perform a minimum number of hours of work or other activities like volunteering. CMS, which has supported work requirements under President Trump, approved the plan in 2018, triggering a lawsuit challenging it. (Campo-Flores, 12/16)

Protracted legal challenges brought by Medicaid recipients have kept Bevin’s plan from taking effect even though the federal government has twice approved it. Days before Bevin’s plan was to take effect in June of 2018, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. blocked the implementation of Kentucky HEALTH, criticizing President Donald Trump’s approval of the waiver as “arbitrary and capricious.” (Acquisto, 12/16)

The news was greeted with enthusiasm by health care advocates and others who attended the event, including some of the individual Kentuckians represented in the federal lawsuit challenging Bevin's plan. Among them was Debra Wittig, 63, of Frankfort, who said getting health coverage through Medicaid likely saved her life after she suffered for years from severe, untreated arthritis that left her bedridden and in such excruciating pain she no longer wanted to live. (Yetter, 12/16)

Thirty-six states and Washington, D.C., expanded Medicaid to cover more low-income adults under ObamaCare. But lawmakers in Republican-led states looking to curtail rising health care spending have turned to work requirements as a way to trim Medicaid rolls; since Kentucky’s 2018 approval, the Trump administration has approved work requirements in close to a dozen states. (Weixel, 12/16)

Medicaid funding has continued to flow to dozens of senior care-home operators in four states cited for stealing workers’ wages or breaking other labor laws, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found. Earlier this fall, Medicaid funding went to at least 45 care homes previously cited for labor violations in California, Florida, Oregon and Wisconsin. (Gollan, 12/16)

A senior official at the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) approved thousands of dollars in payments to a private organization while he was serving on its board of directors. Documents obtained by the Star Tribune show that former Assistant Commissioner Nathan Moracco signed contracts and payment authorizations with the nonprofit Minnesota Health Action Group, an organization that ran a quality improvement program to provide better care for Medicaid enrollees. (Howatt, 12/16)

Gov. Mike Parson sat down in the Governor’s Mansion to read the children a story. They were in Missouri’s capital city on a school tour, and the governor thought he’d teach them some history. He pulled out a book that was written before the children were born. “The Great Medicaid Cuts Caper of 2005” was its title. (Messenger, 12/16)

Texas health officials violated state law when it said it would award a multibillion dollar series of health insurance contracts to for-profit companies while overlooking nonprofit health plans, a lawsuit brought by two nonprofit health insurers alleges. Up for grabs is a piece of roughly $10 billion, doled out to health plans that insure patients in Texas’ privatized Medicaid system who are blind, disabled or older than 65. The Texas Health and Human Services Commission announced tentative winners in October. (Walters, 12/17)

As scrutiny of Purdue Pharma’s role in the opioid epidemic intensified during the past dozen years, its owners, members of the Sackler family, withdrew more than $10 billion from the company, distributing it among trusts and overseas holding companies, according to a new audit commissioned by Purdue. The amount is more than eight times what the family took out of the company in the 13 years after OxyContin, its signature product, was approved in 1995. The audit is likely to renew questions about how much the Sacklers should pay to resolve more than 2,800 lawsuits that seek to hold Purdue accountable for the opioid crisis. (Hoffman and Hakim, 12/16)

While the audit offers new insight into Purdue’s operations and profitability, the report doesn’t shed light on how wealthy the Sacklers are today, or the location of family members’ assets. The Sacklers have offered to return $3 billion in cash and surrender ownership of Purdue to resolve lawsuits by states, counties, cities and Native American tribes that accuse the company of hiding OxyContin’s addictive risks and contributing to the opioid epidemic. (Scurria, 12/16)

A central question in the proceedings is what happened to the many billions taken out of the company by the Sacklers, who controlled the company for years. One set of overseas cash transfers of $312 million came in 2017, the same year states and counties began filing lawsuits against the company, accusing it of stoking America’s opioid epidemic with misleading marketing, according to the report. But the money was subsequently characterized as a loan and paid back to Purdue, the report said. (Rowland, 12/16)

Purdue Pharma, the embattled opioid maker, has quietly split ways with PhRMA, the powerful lobbying organization charged with representing the drug industry in Washington. The break is the latest demonstration that the drug maker, which has filed for bankruptcy and is inundated by lawsuits across the country for its role in marketing OxyContin, is retreating from attempts to influence federal drug policy or restore its reputation. (Florko, 12/17)

The cost of treatment for infants in US hospitals who had been exposed to opioids rose by more than $250 million over four years, according to a study published Monday. In 2012, total hospital costs to treat neonatal abstinence syndrome were $316 million. By 2016, according to the study published in the Journal of the America Medical Association Pediatrics, that number was up to $572.7 million. (Holcombe and Erdman, 12/17)

Substance abuse treatment providers in New Hampshire, with the help of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, got their top wish granted in an omnibus federal spending bill: more flexibility in how they can spend federal grant dollars. The global compromise bill to finance all of the federal government through next September includes this provision that for the first time will allow providers to use state opioid response (SOR) grants for clients who have become addicted to methamphetamine or cocaine. (Landrigan, 12/16)

Patients who seek care at in-network hospitals have a significant risk of being treated by and receiving a surprise bill from out-of-network anesthesiologists, pathologists, radiologists or assistant surgeons, a new study by Yale University researchers found. The ability of these four specialties to send patients out-of-network bills allowed them to negotiate high in-network payments from insurers, which leads to higher insurance premiums for individuals, according to the study published Monday in Health Affairs. (Livingston, 12/16)

Kaiser Health News: Surprising Swings In Momentum For Legislation On Surprise Medical Bills

After months of hearings and negotiations, millions of dollars in attack ads, full-court press lobbying efforts and countless rounds of negotiations, Congress appeared to be moving toward a solution to the nation’s surprise medical bill problem. Sort of. Surprise bills, the often-exorbitant medical bills that come when a patient doesn’t realize they’ve been seen by a provider outside their insurance network, have in recent months been viewed as public enemy No. 1 on Capitol Hill. (Bluth, 12/17)

Beaumont Health and Universal Health Services broke ground on a new mental health hospital in Dearborn, Mich., the not-for-profit and for-profit health systems announced Monday. Construction is slated to start in early 2020 on the $40 million, 150-bed hospital that will double Beaumont's inpatient mental health capacity. The 100,000-square-foot facility, which includes substance use disorder treatment and an integrated assessment and referral center, will open by mid-2021. (Kacik, 12/16)

A federal judge on Monday denied hospitals' request to halt the CMS' plan to implement its so-called site-neutral payment policy in 2020. U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer had ruled against the policy in September for 2019 payments because it wasn't budget-neutral. Despite that ruling, the CMS built it into next year's Outpatient Prospective Payment System rule. (Cohrs adn Brady, 12/16)

Several months ago, Eli Lilly (LLY) launched a new version of its Humalog insulin at half of the list price, a move the company claimed would help lower costs for people with diabetes and blunt criticism of its pricing. But a new survey by a pair of lawmakers finds the new version is often out of stock at pharmacies, many of which were unaware the product was available. The findings prompted renewed criticism of the drug maker for failing to take steps to ensure its strategy would lower costs for consumers. (Silverman, 12/16)

A treatment for the most common cause of dwarfism met its goal of increasing height in a pivotal study, the drug’s maker said Monday, setting the stage for Food and Drug Administration approval. The company, BioMarin, enrolled 121 children with achondroplasia, the most common cause of dwarfism. Those who got the treatment, called vosoritide, grew 1.6 centimeters more over the course of a year than those who received placebo, BioMarin said. That’s enough to declare the trial a success, but it falls below the 2 centimeters that Wall Street analysts had expected. The company didn’t disclose any other data from the study but said there were no serious side effects associated with vosoritide. (Garde, 12/16)

Bankrupt microbiome-testing startup uBiome, once valued at $600 million by Silicon Valley investors, preliminarily sold its patents at auction to a DNA-testing outfit called Psomagen for less than 1% of the company’s original value on Monday, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told STAT. Psomagen is a genetic sequencing company that sells personal DNA tests including a gut health test, according to its website. A subsidiary of South Korean biotech Macrogen, the company has at least 25 U.S. employees, all based in Maryland, according to LinkedIn. On Monday, Psomagen offered $7 million for uBiome’s patents portfolio and related intellectual property, according to the source and public bankruptcy documents. (Bodwin, 12/16)

Swiss drugmaker Roche has won U.S. antitrust approval for its $4.3 billion deal to buy gene therapy specialist Spark Therapeutics clearing the way for Roche's push into treating rare diseases including hemophilia A. The Federal Trade Commission said on Monday it had approved the deal, which was originally announced in February, without requiring any asset sales to ensure the planned merger complies with antitrust law. (12/16)

The whole point of a biotech venture capital firm is to make money for itself and its investors. But one fund is doing something counterintuitive: giving away some of its money. On Tuesday, Boston-based venture firm MPM Capital and the American Association for Cancer Research announced the first grants from the AACR-MPM Transformative Cancer Research Grants Program. The program is entirely funded with money MPM Capital collects for managing the $471 million UBS Oncology Impact Fund. (Sheridan, 12/17)

A leukemia drug may have cleared another hurdle as a potential treatment for Parkinson's disease. But critics say it's still not clear whether the drug, nilotinib (brand name Tasigna), is truly safe or effective for this use. In a study of 75 people with Parkinson's, nilotinib appeared to improve quality of life and boost the chemical dopamine, a team from Georgetown University Medical Center reported Monday in JAMA Neurology. (Hamilton, 12/16)

It’s been almost a year since President Trump announced that Mecklenburg would be a target for a national initiative to eradicate new HIV diagnoses and four years since Mecklenburg County Public Health started organizing its “Getting to Zero” initiative with a similar goal. In a two-year project, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Mecklenburg County Public Health have started looking at the demographics of people taking pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, the drug which has been shown to almost completely prevent HIV transmission. (Duong, 12/17)

Kurt Eichenwald sat down at the desk in his Dallas home office and logged onto Twitter. The prominent journalist and author was used to Internet invective — especially then, in the weeks after he posted a particularly inflammatory tweet about President Trump. More than 170 notifications awaited him when he signed on that evening, Dec. 15, 2016. But he didn’t make it past the first one: A GIF that strobed violently across his computer screen, flashing a red, yellow and blue geometric pattern behind the words “YOU DESERVE A SEIZURE FOR YOUR POSTS.” (Thebault, 12/16)

The children who experience a school shooting but live to see their parents and friends again are often called survivors. But by at least one measure of mental health, they too are among a gunman’s victims, new research finds. In the two years after a fatal school shooting, the rate at which antidepressants were prescribed to children and teens rose by 21% within a tight ring around the affected school. The increase in antidepressants prescribed to kids grew more — to nearly 25% — three years after a school shooting, suggesting that survivors’ depression lingers long after the incident has begun to fade from a community’s memory. (Healy, 12/16)

HHS on Tuesday will announce new rules intended to expand the pool of organ donors and crack down on wasted donations, four individuals familiar with the rules told POLITICO. The efforts are part of the Trump administration’s sweeping kidney care initiative, an overhaul of a market in which the federal government spends more than $100 billion per year. The plan, announced by President Donald Trump in July, has attracted bipartisan support. (Diamond and Roubein, 12/16)

Coughing, sneezing and suffering from an achy breaky body? While having the flu is the worst, here's a bit of good news you can take to bed with you: You won't suffer from a cold simultaneously. That's the conclusion of a new study that analyzed viral test results of more than 44,000 patients in Glasgow, Scotland, between 2005 and 2013. The study was published Monday in the journal for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (LaMotte, 12/16)

This flu season is taking off sooner than usual, with more cases than have typically been reported by this point in the year. This trend holds true for Washington state and the country as a whole, but the numbers are worse in Washington than in most other states. In the first week of December, 3.2% of doctor visits nationwide were from people with an influenza-like illness, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Blethen, 12/16)

The Marlborough-based medical device maker Boston Scientific on Friday won approval for the first single-use duodenoscope. Company executives say the device, called EXALT, solves the problem of scopes that retain microbes despite cleaning. (Saltzman, 12/16)

Are men more impressed with their own scientific research than women? Or are women warned off “overstating” their work? A new analysis suggests it might be a little of both. Women were 12.3% less likely than men to frame their work with positive words like “novel” or “excellent” in abstracts, according to a new study of 15 years of clinical research publications. In the case of only top-tier journals — there are numbered rankings for this in the arcane world of scientific publishing  — the gap widened to 20.4%. (Cooney, 12/16)

Before you head out the door each morning, you probably use cosmetic products like shampoo, deodorant and toothpaste. But the regulations that guarantee the safety of those products in the United States haven’t been updated since 1938. (Isaacs-Thomas, 12/16)

A growing movement to decriminalize prostitution in cities and states across the country — recently embraced by US Representative Ayanna Pressley — has feminists and women’s advocates sharply divided on the best way to protect women’s rights. Should prostitution be considered a job like any other, whose practitioners could be empowered by workplace protections if it were made legal? (Ebbert, 12/16)

The extreme cases of lung injury caused by vaping have raised awareness of the potential harms of electronic cigarettes. Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began tracking the problem last March, there have been 52 confirmed deaths and about 2,400 hospitalizations. Many of these acute illnesses are linked to black market THC products, but a growing body of evidence points to the risks associated with vaping nicotine. (Aubrey, 12/16)

The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine on Monday, is among the first bodies of research to examine the link between e-cigarette use and respiratory disease in the long-term, by analyzing e-cigarette use and respiratory disease during a three-year period. "I was a little surprised that we could find evidence on incident lung disease in the longitudinal study, because three years is a while but most studies that look at the development of lung disease go over 10 to 20 years," said Stanton Glantz, senior author of the study and director of University of California, San Francisco's Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. (Howard, 12/16)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday signed into law a bill that bans the retail sale of nearly all flavored e-cigarette products, which health officials have said are popular among young people. New York joins some 230 municipalities and states across the country that have enacted restrictions on the sale of the products. The New York City Council passed the ban in late November. Mint and wintergreen flavors are included in the ban, but not tobacco-flavored products. (West, 12/16)

In North Texas’ Coppell Independent School District, “vape-detecting technology” — sensors akin to smoke alarms — are tucked in secret locations on campuses. They automatically ping administrators when suspicious chemicals wafting in the air indicate students might be vaping. In other Texas school districts, students must sign out to use the bathroom during class, and drug-sniffing dogs are making the rounds. (Swaby and McCullough 12/17)

New Jersey's Assembly on Monday passed a measure to eliminate religious exemptions for vaccines for schoolchildren, but the bill stalled in the state Senate as opponents shouted so loudly they drowned out the session. The Democrat-led Assembly passed the bill 45-25, with six abstentions, but the Democrat-controlled state Senate postponed a vote because there weren't enough yes votes, according to the bill's sponsor and Senate President Steve Sweeney. (Catalini, 12/16)

“They can cheer all they want. We’re not walking away from it,” Senate President Stephen M. Sweeney said about the jubilant roar in the chamber after the Senate adjourned without voting on the bill. He added, “It’s just remarkable how people are looking at this and not trusting the science on it at all. They’re trusting the internet.” Sue Collins, co-founder of the New Jersey Coalition for Vaccine Choice, which rallied against the bill, was triumphant. “The parents of New Jersey had a victory today,” she said. “The Legislature stood with us.” (Otterman and Tully, 12/16)

Around 94 percent of New Jersey children meet all of the state’s necessary vaccine requirements. That includes for measles, which requires between 93 percent to 95 percent of the population to be vaccinated to generate the necessary herd immunity. The number of children who have been able to obtain exemptions has risen slowly over time, particularly over the last decade as anti-vaccination propaganda spouted by religious leaders and political activists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. developed a following. (Sutton, 12/16)

Three people with measles passed through Los Angeles International Airport last week, Los Angeles County health officials said Monday — and it is unclear how many people were exposed to one of the most contagious viruses in the world. The infected people, who were not Los Angeles County residents, were at the airport and could have exposed other travelers on Wednesday within Terminals 4 and 5 between 6:50 a.m. and noon. (Brice-Saddler, 12/16)

Anyone who was in those terminals during that time may be at risk of developing measles within the next 21 days, according to public health officials. They advised that people check if they are immunized against measles and to monitor themselves for symptoms. There is no known risk of contracting measles at LAX currently, officials said. (Karlamangla, 12/16)

Dozens of members of Congress on Monday called upon US Customs and Border Protection to reverse its decision not to vaccinate migrants against the flu. The agency's decision not to vaccinate is "unconscionable and continues to endanger the health and safety of migrant families, CBP personnel, and the American public," according to a letter sent by 65 Democratic legislators to US Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan. (Cohen and Bonifield, 12/17)

A federal watchdog released a report Monday that cast doubt on the public health assurances made after Hurricane Harvey unleashed an environmental assault on the country’s largest petrochemical corridor, saying officials relied on limited data to offer residents peace of mind and that Houston’s air quality monitors had been offline to prevent storm damage. The report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General paints a picture of state and federal regulators telling those who live in and around the nation’s fourth-largest city — which was inundated with more than 50 inches of rainfall — that there were no public health risks even though it lacked a full range of data to make such a determination. (Weber, 12/16)

Dozens of people in Houston potentially were exposed to the toxic metal mercury after it was spilled outside a Walmart, a Sonic Drive-In and a gas station, officials said. Federal and local investigators were trying to determine if the spills were intentional. Fire Chief Sam Pena said up to 60 people were asked to take decontamination showers and a pregnant woman was taken to a hospital as a precaution. (12/16)

Few details are being released about an investigation conducted by civil rights officials from the U.S. Department of Justice into possible human experiments focused on sexual arousal at a state-run Iowa institution for disabled residents, but Gov. Kim Reynolds recently acknowledged that the state’s response to long-term issues at Glenwood Resource Center was inadequate. (12/16)

A Shawnee County district judge was named Monday to one of the vacancies on the Kansas Supreme Court. Though the state’s most prominent anti-abortion group opposed Shawnee County District Court Judge Evelyn Wilson, Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly Chose Wilson from among the three candidates recommended by the Supreme Court Nominating Commission. It’s a choice that could fuel efforts to change how Kansas’ Supreme Court justices get their seats. (Koranda, 12/16)

The Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission has appointed William Tilburg as its executive director after serving as its acting director for several months. In a news release, the commission wrote that Tilburg had been serving as the acting executive director since 2019 and previously served as its director of government affairs and policy. (Davis, 12/16)

Four thousand mental health clinicians are walking off their jobs at Kaiser Permanente today, affecting care at more than 100 clinics across the state. The week-long strike is the second in a year, as the workers’ union and Kaiser management remain deadlocked on a new contract. Therapists’ main complaint is long wait times for patients. While industry best practice is to see clients every one to two weeks, the majority of Kaiser clinicians say their patients with anxiety and depression are forced to wait four to eight weeks between appointments. (Dembosky, 12/16)

Kaiser Health News: Despite Quick Fixes, Kaiser Permanente Mental Health Care Still Lags

After years of state sanctions and fines, Kaiser Permanente claims it has gone a long way toward improving its mental health care. The national managed-care giant — California’s largest insurer with 9 million members — touts more than 1,200 therapist hires since 2016, improved patient access to appointments and an expanded training program for mental health professionals. Regulators at California’s Department of Managed Health Care report that Kaiser is meeting the benchmarks laid out in a 2017 settlement agreement that resulted from two years of negotiations. (Gold, 12/17)

Three empty chairs at a community meeting epitomized the mistrust between the leaders of Ascension Wisconsin and the St. Joe’s Accountability Coalition. The coalition, composed primarily of community leaders from Milwaukee’s north side, invited Ascension Wisconsin to that Oct. 1 meeting to press the health system to sign a legal contract binding it to a list of commitments. The commitments included keeping Ascension St. Joseph hospital open and providing an urgent care clinic, affordable housing assistance, local hiring, more employee training and living wages for all employees. (Shelbourne, 12/16)

The Cobb County Medical Examiner’s Office has finalized the autopsies of two inmates who died after experiencing medical emergencies at the Adult Detention Center. The autopsies on Steven Davis and William John Kocour show the manner of death for both men to be natural causes. However, that’s where the similarities end. (Dixon, 12/16)

RWJBarnabas Health and St. Peter's Healthcare System have signed a letter of intent to join forces, the New Jersey-based not-for-profit health systems announced Monday. The letter of intent—the exact structure of which is still undetermined—follows St. Peter's request for proposals in October 2018. In Middlesex County, and across the country, it has been increasingly hard to operate an independent hospital, said Leslie Hirsch, president and CEO of St. Peter's, which owns the 478-bed acute-care teaching hospital, St. Peter's University Hospital. (Kacik, 12/16)

Valley fever cases are on the rise in California and across the arid Southwest, and scientists point to climate change and population shifts as possible reasons. California public health officials documented 7,768 reports of confirmed, suspected and probable new cases of the fungal disease as of Nov. 30, 2019, up 12% from 6,929 in the first 11 months of 2018. (Feder Ostrov and Rowan, 12/16)

Congress is likely this week to eliminate two taxes designed to help pay for Obamacare, one of which has never even taken effect. Ironically, that’s the one Congress should keep. It’s a mistake to repeal the so-called Cadillac tax, which has never actually been collected, because it would have made the tax code more progressive and health insurance more affordable. By contrast, eliminating the medical-device tax, which was in effect only from 2013 to 2015, is a sensible move that will encourage growth and sacrifice little revenue. (Karl W. Smith, 12/17)

All the Democrats running for president, even the more moderate ones, are proposing sweeping health insurance reform should they take the White House. If you want a lesson in how difficult it’s going to be to pass that reform through Congress, you need only look at what just happened there — the story of something the health-care industry didn’t want and something else it wanted very much.In both cases, the industry got its way, which is good for it but not so good for the rest of us. (Paul Waldman, 12/16)

When Democrats passed Obamacare in 2010, they beat their chests and bragged that the massive raft of mandates, subsidies, regulations, and spending hikes would be “paid for.” Their “pay-fors,” to use the parlance of Capitol Hill, included taxes on health insurers, employers, and the makers of medical devices. If you know how Congress works, you’re not surprised by what’s happening in the bipartisan spending bill set to sail through Congress this week: All three taxes will be repealed, while Congress keeps in place the subsidies, handouts, and spending the taxes supposedly financed. (12/17)

The U.S. Supreme Court did the right thing Monday when it refused to reconsider an appeals court decision that homeless people may not be prosecuted for sleeping on public property if there is no other shelter available. In Martin vs. City of Boise, six homeless people had challenged that city’s enforcement of ordinances prohibiting sleeping or camping on public property at night. (12/17)

It seemed like food poisoning. All weekend, I lay in bed with such abdominal pain that I cried, moaned, even yelled. It was the worst stomach bug I had experienced in my 40 years. By Sunday, I began to improve. I held down fluids, I ate a banana. But that night I grew sicker. No matter how much water and sports beverage I drank, my mouth dried out and my fever rose. Instead of immersive fever dreams, my dreams were of a single object, receding into the distance, emptiness all around me. (Jeff Rawson, 12/16)

Paul Krugman of The New York Times has posited a theory: Red states cause depression and suicide. In a column titled "America's Red State Death Trip," Krugman wrote: "In 1990, today's red and blue states had almost the same life expectancy. Since then, however, life expectancy in Clinton states has risen more or less in line with other advanced countries, compared with almost no gain in Trump country. At this point, blue-state residents can expect to live more than four years longer than their red-state counterparts." On this basis, Krugman blasts Attorney General William Barr, who suggested this year that militant secularism lies behind rising mortality in the United States. Instead, Krugman suggested that "these evils are concentrated in states that voted for Trump, and have largely bypassed the more secular blue states." (Ben Shapiro, 12/15)

The closest grocery store is a few miles away and your paycheck doesn't clear until Friday. You even skipped lunch. With no car, only a few dollars and kids at home, you decide dinner will have to, yet again, be the local fast-food restaurant within walking distance. It's cost-effective, but you're already bracing for the "healthy weight" conversation at the pediatrician's next month. Over 11% of all households in the United States are food insecure. They worry about running out of food and rationing what they do have. It is clear food insecurity leads to poorer health. (Elsa Pearson, 12/16)

I recently took a panicked call from a friend who’d just received a text from his 22-year-old brother that sounded like a suicide note. “Thank you for all that you’ve done to try to help me,” it read. “Nothing has gone right for me in life. I don’t have a job, any friends or a girlfriend. I hate being alone all the time. I feel like a failure. You and everybody else would be better off without me.” My friend didn’t know what to do, so he called me because I’m a clinical psychologist. (Inger E. Burnett-Zeigler, 12/16)

Cheryl knows what a lot of people think of drug addicts. They think you’re stupid because you started and weak because you can’t stop. They stigmatize you. “They call you ‘junkie,’ ” she said. Cheryl, 62, is an alumna of N Street Village, a nonprofit near Logan Circle that helps women who have experienced homelessness and is a partner in The Washington Post Helping Hand. (John Kelly, 12/16)