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Fewer Americans are living in poverty but, for the first time in years, more of them lack health insurance. About 27.5 million people, or 8.5 percent of the population, lacked health insurance for all of 2018, up from 7.9 percent the year before, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday. It was the first increase since the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, and experts said it was at least partly the result of the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine that law. (Casselman, Sanger-Katz and Smialek, 9/10)

The data suggest that the current economic expansion, now the longest on record at more than 10 years, is still struggling to provide widespread benefits to the U.S. population. Solid gains in household incomes over the past four years have returned the median only to where it was two decades ago. And despite strong growth last year in the number of Americans working full time and year-round, the number of people with private health insurance remained flat. (Rugaber, 9/10)

The overall uninsured rate increased despite a lower poverty rate and growth in workers' earnings. A separate Census Bureau report also released Tuesday showed that the poverty rate in 2018 decreased 0.5 percentage points to 11.8% — the first time in 11 years the poverty rate was significantly lower than in 2007, the year before the most recent economic recession. (Livingston, 9/10)

Taken together, the census numbers paint a portrait of an economy pulled in different directions, with the falling poverty rate coinciding with high inequality and the growing cadre of people at financial risk because they do not have health coverage. As more Americans found jobs, the poverty rate fell last year to its lowest level since 2001, and middle-class income inched marginally higher. Median U.S. income — the point at which half of U.S. families earn more and half earn less — topped $63,000 for the first time, although it was roughly the same level as it was 20 years ago, after adjusting for inflation. (Goldstein and Long, 9/10)

For decades, getting more children to have health insurance was a cause with strong bipartisan support, and the uninsured rate has steadily declined. Now that trend is reversing. For the second year in a row, there was an uptick — 5.5% of children under age 19 did not have health insurance last year. "It's a very smart investment to make sure that kids get Medicaid when they need it," says Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, which has been tracking the decline in enrollment for the main health care safety net programs for children. "And that's exactly the opposite of what's happening today." (Simmons-Duffin, 9/10)

The growth in the uninsured population is bad news for the health-insurance industry. Insurers have benefited from overall expansion in their enrollment under the 2010 law, much of it in Medicaid, because states increasingly turn to private companies to manage the program. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, payments to Medicaid managed-care companies added up to $264 billion in fiscal 2017, or around 46% of total Medicaid spending. (Armour, 9/10)

Still, the nation’s uninsured rate isn't nearly as high as it was a decade ago, before Obamacare's enactment in 2010. However, the numbers show that insurance gains under the health care law have stalled and are appearing to reverse as the Trump administration focuses on paring back the law's insurance markets and shrinking enrollment in safety net programs like Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. (Pradhan, 9/10)

Kaiser Health News: Breaking A 10-Year Streak, The Number Of Uninsured Americans Rises

Chris Pope, a senior fellow with the conservative Manhattan Institute, also said he considered the change “fairly small” and likely due to increasing wages “pushing people above the income eligibility cutoff in Medicaid expansion states.” But he suggested that next year would be a better indicator of how changes in the ACA are playing out. (Galewitz, 9/10)

“Trump and Republicans sabotaged the Affordable Care Act at every turn,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), another White House hopeful, tweeted on Tuesday. “They played politics with health care and now Americans are paying the price.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who regularly polls in the top three among Democratic presidential candidates, said Trump has “lied” about strengthening the health care system. “Instead, he has done everything he can to sabotage the Affordable Care Act,” Sanders tweeted Tuesday. (Hellmann, 9/11)

Since taking office, Trump and the GOP have sought to dismantle the Affordable Care Act. The President cut the open enrollment period for the exchanges and slashed funding for advertising and enrollment assistance. Also, the Republican-led Congress effectively eliminated the mandate that Americans obtain insurance or pay a penalty, starting this year. (Luhby, 9/10)

Health insurers are expected to pay out a record $743 million to consumers this month under an Affordable Care Act rule that requires refunds if the companies don’t spend a big enough share of premium dollars on health care. The sum, which will go to about 2.7 million consumers who bought individual health policies from insurers, will be more than four times the amount paid out last year. The payout also dwarfs the next-highest total, $399 million in 2012, the first year of the refunds, according to a new analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which calculated the total rebate payments by reviewing federal filings. (Wilde Mathews and Armour, 9/10)

For a second consecutive year, more people in Texas were without health insurance in 2018 than any other state, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures released Tuesday. Texas leads the nation in uninsured residents, both in terms of raw numbers and as a percentage of the population, according to the report. The state's uninsured rate was about twice that of the nation overall. (Allen, 9/11)

The rate of Texans without health insurance rose for the second year in a row, making it once again the most uninsured state in the nation, according to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Census Bureau.In 2018, 17.7% of Texas residents — about 5 million people — had no health coverage, up from 17.3% in 2017. (Fernández, 9/10)

“There are lots of different factors that affect health insurance coverage, including changes in economic conditions, shifts in the demographic composition of the population, policy changes of the state and federal level,” said Laryssa Mykyta, a health and disability statistics official with the Census Bureau, during a phone call with news media Tuesday. (Chang ,9/10)

Oklahoma’s rate of residents without health insurance remained at 14.2% in 2018, the second highest rate of uninsured in the country, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Tuesday. An estimated 548,000 Oklahomans lacked health insurance in 2018, up from an estimated 545,000 in 2017, the Census Bureau reported.Only six states had a rate higher than 12%, according to the report. Of those, only Alaska has voted to expand Medicaid. (Casteel, 9/11)

Nebraska's rate of people without health insurance held steady in 2018. ... However, Nebraska's rank among the states for the number of uninsured people dropped from 28th in 2017 to 30th last year.Among states bordering Nebraska, only Iowa and Colorado have lower rates of uninsured residents. (9/10)

The uninsured population grew 1.9 million nationally last year, marking the first increase since 2009, while median household income was relatively flat and the poverty rate dropped, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday. The percent of people without insurance for the entire year increased from 7.9%, or 25.6 million people, in 2017 to 8.5%, or 27.5 million in 2018, the Census Bureau estimated. (Exner, 9/10)

"The Center for Community Solutions is concerned that the number of uninsured Ohioans is climbing, but even more concerning is the increase in the number of children in the United States who are uninsured,” John Corlett, president and executive director of nonprofit think tank The Center for Community Solutions, said in a prepared statement. “Many of these kids were likely eligible for Medicaid coverage but weren’t enrolled either because of red tape or because of trimmed outreach efforts.” (Christ, 9/10)

Even as the economy added jobs, more people in Georgia and the U.S. went without health insurance all last year, according to figures for 2018 just released by the U.S. Census. The South in general saw a dramatic increase of uninsured children, the only region to see such a trend. (Hart, 9/10)

The number of Americans across the U.S. without health insurance rose for the first time in a decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. But in Louisiana, more people are covered than ever before, bucking the national trend. Louisiana’s uninsured rate declined slightly from 8.4% in 2017 to 8% percent in 2018, reflecting 19,000 newly covered residents, according the bureau's annual report on health insurance coverage released Tuesday. Nationally, the uninsured rate is 8.9%. (Woodruff, 9/10)

Nancy Pelosi is calling President Donald Trump’s bluff with her draft plan to bring down drug prices. Lifting key parts of Trump’s agenda and his campaign rhetoric, the House speaker is seizing the moment to push a series of populist policies like direct government negotiations with drugmakers that Republican lawmakers have long dismissed as price-fixing. (Karlin-Smith and Cancryn, 9/10)

A draft proposal by Speaker Nancy Pelosi would empower the federal government to negotiate lower prices for hundreds of prescription drugs, not only for Medicare but for the private market as well, injecting new urgency into Washington’s efforts to control the soaring price of pharmaceuticals. The plan would revive an idea loathed by most congressional Republicans but long embraced by Democrats; President Trump expressed support for it during his 2016 campaign. (Goodnough, 9/10)

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is floating a plan to lower drug prices aimed at winning over progressives, a move to shift the debate to the left. Progressives who had pressured Pelosi to go bolder for months reacted with cautious praise to a leaked version of her signature plan to lower drug prices, even as they warned they still had concerns. (Sullivan, 9/11)

Concern over high drug prices is driving proposals this fall from both Republicans and Democrats on an issue likely to be near the top of the 2020 election agenda. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) is preparing to reveal a bill likely to allow Medicare to negotiate hundreds of drug prices. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), meanwhile, is pushing a bipartisan drug-pricing bill that seeks to lower drug costs in Medicare and Medicaid. (Armour and Duehren, 9/10)

A familiar headache for drug investors is likely to soon reappear. A draft plan to lower prescription-drug prices from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was circulated around Washington on Monday. The contents of the draft, though preliminary, should get Wall Street’s attention. (Grant, 9/10)

House Democrats, seeking to seize the momentum after recent mass shootings and to pressure Republicans to embrace gun safety measures, will push forward on Tuesday with a new package of restrictions, including a bill that would ban the manufacture and sale of large-capacity magazines. The House Judiciary Committee is expected to approve the package, the first step toward bringing it to the floor for a vote. It includes a so-called red flag law aimed at making it easier for law enforcement to take away guns from those deemed dangerous by a judge; a measure barring people convicted of hate crimes from buying guns; and legislation barring, for civilian use, magazines that can accept more than 10 rounds. (Stolberg, 9/10)

Lawmakers remained divided on Tuesday over a legislative path to reduce mass shootings, with Republicans looking to the White House for guidance, and Democrats pledging to press ahead with their own measures. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) emphasized that he would only take up gun legislation that he knew President Trump would sign. “I’m going to wait and assess the proposal that actually could become law,” Mr. McConnell told reporters, declining to go into specifics on what he would support. (Andrews, Wise and Lucey, 9/10)

New Jersey intends to stop doing business with gun manufacturers and retailers that fail to adopt policies, like conducting background checks, to stop guns from falling into the wrong hands, becoming the first state to take such stringent action against the firearms industry. The state will also apply pressure on major financial institutions, seeking information from banks that do business with New Jersey about their relationships and policies involving gun makers and sellers. (Corasaniti, 9/10)

Substantial majorities of Americans — both those who own firearms and those who do not — support measures that would require first-time gun buyers and those wishing to carry a concealed weapon to demonstrate they can safely own and handle a gun, according to a new study. In a national survey conducted in January, researchers from Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Gun Policy and Research found that 84% of all respondents believe that first-time gun buyers should be required to pass a safety course on the safe handling and storage of a firearm. Close to three-quarters of gun owners surveyed shared this view. (Healy, 9/10)

After multiple mass shootings in recent weeks, a majority of Americans think it is more important to control gun violence than to protect gun rights, according to a new PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist poll. Policies with the strongest support include more funding for mental health screening and treatment, mandatory background checks and licensing for gun purchases, and passage of a national “red-flag” law, which would give a judge authority to order the removal of guns from a person who poses a risk to themselves or others, the poll suggests. (Santhanam, 9/10)

In this gun-friendly border city, where Tuesdays are “ladies’ nights” at the shooting range and pistols in hip holsters are a common sight, Representative Henry Cuellar is a proud defender of the Second Amendment, the lone House Democrat from Texas with an “A” rating from the National Rifle Association. “This is not New York, this is Texas,” Mr. Cuellar said in an interview. “So you talk about guns, you talk about God, you talk about trucks.” (Stolberg, 9/9)

Members of the Trump administration visited Los Angeles Tuesday to get a firsthand look at the city’s sprawling homeless encampments and efforts to control them, while President Donald Trump directed his staff to develop policy options to address the national crisis of people living on the streets. The visit by a delegation from several federal agencies came about two months after the Republican president called the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other big cities disgraceful and faulted the “liberal establishment” for the problem. (Blood, 9/10)

President Trump has ordered White House officials to launch a sweeping effort to address homelessness in California, citing the state’s growing crisis, according to four government officials aware of the effort. The planning has intensified in recent weeks. Administration officials have discussed using the federal government to get homeless people off the streets of Los Angeles and other cities and into new government-backed facilities, according to two officials briefed on the planning. (Stein, Jan, Dawsey and Parker, 9/10)

“The spike in homelessness we are seeing in places like L.A. and San Francisco is alarming,” a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “While there are many state and local issues at play here, we’re looking at a range of options available to us at HUD—as well as other agencies—for possible federal action, if and where appropriate,” a spokeswoman said. (Lazo, 9/10)

Local and state officials were skeptical. The offices of Garcetti and Gov. Gavin Newsom put out statements listing steps they said the administration could take right away if it truly intended to help solve the crisis. As he pursues reelection, Trump has used homelessness to bash leaders in California, where he remains deeply unpopular. (Oreskes, Smith and Queally, 9/10)

Newsom has sparred with President Donald Trump before over homelessness, and a spokesperson assailed the president's record in a statement that California "stands ready to talk" if Trump is willing to discuss "real investment" in housing. Newsom's first budget, passed earlier this year, committed billions of dollars to housing and homelessness." [Trump] could start by ending his plans to cut food stamps, gut health care for low-income people, and scare immigrant families from accessing government services," spokesperson Nathan Click said. (White and Marinucci, 9/10)

Sources told The Chronicle that the federal visitors to Los Angeles mentioned the possibilities of building new facilities and renovating existing ones, and that the federal government might play a large role in overseeing health care and housing. They also discussed how to crack down on street encampments. The latest Trump action was first reported by the Washington Post. (Fagan, Koan and Ravani, 9/10)

CMS Administrator Seema Verma on Tuesday called on hospitals to get on board with the Trump administration's transparency and value-based payment policies, warning they could face tougher times and more government insurance competition if they resist. Verma said the status quo is unacceptable and must change because Americans are "fed up" with high healthcare costs and surprise billing. She cautioned that these issues have led to calls for more government involvement in healthcare, which would ultimately harm hospitals' bottom lines and increase regulatory burden. (Brady, 9/10)

The drive for value-based payments continues to accelerate as the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission on Friday proposed a program that would tie quality to payments for skilled nursing facilities, home health services, inpatient rehabilitation facilities and long-term care hospitals. The program builds on the commission's previous work to develop a standard set of measures for post-acute care settings, as well as define and apply a set of principles that use Medicare payments to improve the quality of care. (Brady, 9/6)

BJC HealthCare is in the CMS’ flagship accountable care organization program and nine of its hospitals participate in the federal agency’s flagship bundled-payments program. Recently, the St. Louis-based not-for-profit health system learned that quite a few patients it treats under bundles are also attributed to its ACO. (Bannow, 9/10)

Kansas health officials have confirmed the first death in the state related to an outbreak of a lung disease linked to vaping. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment said in a news release Tuesday the recent death involved a Kansas resident over the age of 50 who had a history of underlying health issues. The unidentified patient was hospitalized with symptoms that progressed rapidly. (9/10)

As cases of the mysterious illness have begun to arise in Kansas, officials have sounded increasingly alarmed about e-cigarettes and vaping. Gov. Laura Kelly said in a statement that officials are working to determine a cause. She urged people to be careful. “Don’t put yourself in harm’s way, and please follow the recommendations of public health officials,” the governor said. (Shorman, 9/10)

"It is time to stop vaping," Kansas State Health Officer Dr. Lee Norman Norman said in a statement. "If you or a loved one is vaping, please stop." U.S. public health officials are investigating 450 cases of vaping-related lung illness across 33 states and one U.S. territory. The nationwide investigation led by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not linked the illnesses to any specific e-cigarette product. (Lavietes, 9/10)

More than 450 people have fallen ill across 33 states, and officials are focusing on possible contaminants and counterfeit products. New York health officials said they’re focusing their investigation on vitamin E acetate after they found high levels of it in nearly all of the cannabis-containing vapes tested. (Weixel, 9/10)

The Kansas death is at least the fourth reported in a middle aged or older person. Minnesota and Los Angeles county officials also reported deaths in older persons last week. The Minnesota patient was over 65 years old and died in August after a long and complicated hospitalization. (Sun, 9/10)

The first death from lung illness linked to vaping in the United States was reported in Illinois in August. The person who died was an adult. Oregon saw the second death in the nationwide outbreak, then Minnesota and Indiana. The fifth death, reported Friday, was in California. (Howard, 9/10)

The California Department of Public Health on Tuesday said it has identified 62 potential cases since late June of acute lung disease in people with a recent history of vaping. Some cases involve people who vaped using unlicensed or unregulated cannabis products. (Siegel, 9/10)

Health officials think that the majority of cases have occurred within the past several months. It is possible the condition has occurred before and is only now being recognized as related to vaping, but many investigators believe it is likely caused by something new, such as an additive or toxin in the products or devices. (Abbott, 9/11)

Anti-tobacco lawmakers and children’s health advocates are using the moment to demand more regulation of e-cigarettes, including industry powerhouse Juul. They want to go further than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s bill, which would raise the age for buying all tobacco to 21. And they want consistent national standards, not a state-by-state patchwork as some areas of the country plow ahead on flavor bans. (Owermohle and Roubein, 9/10)

One in 15 middle-school students in New York City public schools report having recently used an e-cigarette, according to a new report released Tuesday by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The report also shows nearly 15% of middle-school students reported having tried e-cigarettes, including one in five eighth-grade students. (West and Vielkind, 9/10)

A look at what we know so far about the outbreak as the investigation continues. (Johnson, 9/10)

Federal health authorities should strongly consider recalling e-cigarettes in the wake of a vaping-linked illness that’s killed at least six people and sickened hundreds, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said. In a letter sent Wednesday to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Romney expressed concern that experts don’t know what’s been causing people to become ill — aside from e-cigarettes. (Weixel, 9/11)

As the number of Ohioans who have suffered lung illness from e-cigarettes continues to rise, the Ohio Department of Health said it will target youth and parents with $4 million in new initiatives to prevent and reduce vaping. The Department of Health on Tuesday released the latest numbers of people who have suffered from severe pulmonary illness after vaping: 10 cases have been confirmed as being likely due to e-cigarettes. (Hancock, 9/10)

The Ohio Department of Health said Tuesday that it is spending $4.1 million over two years to increase education about e-cigarettes and provide communities with resources to help curb their use. The department also reported that 10 recent cases of severe lung illnesses in the state, including two in Franklin County, are likely due to vaping, with 14 additional cases being investigated as part of a nationwide outbreak. (Viviano, 9/10)

It’s been a bad week for Juul — which faces a growing health scare and federal accusations of false advertising to minors. But as of today, the San Francisco-based e-cigarette giant can rest assured that Sacramento legislators will not be adding to their woes anytime soon. Assemblyman Adam Gray, a moderate Democrat from Merced, announced that he was tabling his bill that would have placed new regulations on vendors of e-cigs and vape pens. His goal, he said, is to make the legislation stronger before bringing it back next year. (Christopher, 9/10)

A Wisconsin man is accused of manufacturing thousands of counterfeit vaping cartridges a day with THC oil for almost two years, running the operation with 10 employees, authorities said. Kenosha County prosecutors said the 20-year-old had employees make cartridges that were packaged to look professionally done. Authorities said the employees filled about 3,000 to 5,000 cartridges per day and were sold for $16 each. (9/10)

Michael R. Bloomberg, who has committed nearly $1 billion to aid anti-tobacco efforts, is now stepping into the campaign to combat vaping, announcing a $160 million push to ban flavored e-cigarettes. Mr. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, said that his Bloomberg Philanthropies would aim to ban the flavored e-cigarettes in at least 20 cities and states. His announcement on Tuesday was among a series of developments meant to heighten pressure and scrutiny on the vaping industry, amid a sudden and largely unexplained public health scare that has linked vaping to six deaths and hundreds of illnesses. (Wang, 9/10)

The vaping initiative is Bloomberg’s first anti-tobacco effort aimed at the United States, according to officials of Bloomberg Philanthropies. They said the money will be used to press local, state and federal governments to ban flavored e-cigarettes; to push the Food and Drug Administration to be more aggressive in reviewing vaping products and imposing standards on e-cigarette products; and to back local and state governments that might face industry opposition or lawsuits for supporting e-cigarette bans. (McGinley, 9/10)

Bloomberg was joined by Matthew Myers, the president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which will be responsible for coordinating the push. "The most important thing to understand is in this country we have 3.6 million kids who are using these products. Over a quarter of them are addicted," Myers said. "Most of them would never have used any tobacco product. We know that heavy doses of nicotine for those young people increases their risk of disease, increases their risk of smoking in the future and has a long-term harmful effect on their developing brain ... what we know is for our young people, who have never used any product, this product is harmful." (Kegu, 9/10)

Kayla Bergeron can still describe that morning in matter-of-fact detail: She was dutifully working at her desk on the 68th floor when the building lurched. Someone ran in and said that a plane had hit — a small plane, she assumed. She realized it must not have been just a Cessna. And then how she began a harrowing descent in a stairwell that was dark and wet because pipes had burst as the twin towers collapsed. (Barron, 9/11)

One afternoon in August, six days after Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell, Christi Phillips received a troubling message. Her husband, Mike, who is serving time at a state prison in Valdosta, Georgia, overheard his cellmate talk about killing himself. Mike watched his cellmate inform an officer that he was suicidal. When that officer apathetically replied, “So am I,” Mike asked Christi to call a prison supervisor. “I’ll have somebody check on it,” the supervisor said. (Blau, 9/10)

Facebook Inc will no longer allow graphic images of self-harm on its platform as it tightens its policies on suicide content amid growing criticism of how social media companies moderate violent and potentially dangerous content. The social network also said on Tuesday self-injury related content will now become harder to search on Instagram and will ensure that it does not appear as recommended in the Explore section on the photo-sharing app. (9/10)

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for young people between ages 10 and 24. That's much higher than the general population where it's the 10th leading cause of death according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's important to recognize the potential warning signs when someone intends to end their life as laid out here from the Suicide Prevention Lifeline. (Dawson, 9/10)

New funding in Ohio’s budget will expand resources for psychiatric crisis services across the state, like Stella Maris, helping those struggling with addiction and mental health emergencies. An additional $20.75 million in Gov. Mike DeWine’s biennium budget is targeted for expanding psychiatric crisis services networks and for providing clinical services and psychosocial supports such as transitional housing after hospitalization or home-based mental health services for families. (Christ, 9/10)

Jarrid Wilson, a California church leader, author and mental health advocate, died by suicide Monday evening at age 30. Wilson, known as a passionate preacher, most recently was an associate pastor at megachurch Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, Calif. A co-founder of the mental health nonprofit Anthem of Hope, Wilson was open about his depression, often posting on his social media accounts about his battles with the mental illness. (Stone, Miller and Molina, 9/10)

Tiger would live another year after his foiled suicide attempt. His death served as a catalyst for the Phoenix Police Department, forcing it to take a closer look at post-traumatic stress disorder and the resources provided to officers after an on-duty shooting. (Burkitt, 9/11)

Since 1945, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation has recognized scientists and physicians who have contributed to fundamental biological discoveries, clinical research and improvements in public health. This year, the Lasker Awards were given to two researchers who discovered key cells of the immune system, a team that engineered the first antibody for breast cancer treatment and a nonprofit that helps get vaccines to the world’s poorest children. (Sheikh, 9/10)

Five scientists have won prestigious medical awards for creating an innovative breast cancer treatment and discovering key players of the disease-fighting immune system. They will share two $250,000 awards from the Lasker Foundation, to be presented this month in New York, the foundation announced Tuesday. One prize honors the invention of Herceptin, a breast cancer treatment. The award will be shared by Dr. Dennis Slamon, director of Clinical/Translational Research at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, and by H. Michael Shepard and Axel Ullrich, who were with the biotech company Genentech when they did the research. (9/10)

Two scientists who discovered the roles of key immune cells have won one of the 2019 Lasker medical-research awards — prizes often dubbed the American Nobels. Immunologists Jacques Miller, at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, and Max Cooper, at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, will split the US$250,000 prize for basic medical research. (Callaway, 9/10)

When researchers at the University of Kentucky compare brains donated from people who died with dementia, very rarely do they find one that bears only Alzheimer's trademark plaques and tangles — no other damage. If they do, "we call it a unicorn," said Donna Wilcock, an Alzheimer's specialist at the university's aging center. Contrary to popular perception, "there are a lot of changes that happen in the aging brain that lead to dementia in addition to plaques and tangles." (Neergaard, 9/10)

The National Institute on Aging has awarded a five-year grant worth up to $53.4 million to Boston’s Hebrew SeniorLife and Brown University to find ways to improve the hodgepodge of care now available for people with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. (Weisman, 9/10)

For generations, it was a basic tenet of donating sperm: Clinics could forever protect their clients’ identities. But, increasingly, donor anonymity is dead. The rise of consumer genetic tests — which allow people to connect with relatives they never knew they had, including some who never intended to be found in the first place — is forcing sperm donation clinics to confront the fact that it is now virtually impossible to guarantee anonymity to their clients. Instead, sites like 23andMe and Ancestry.com are giving customers the genetic clues they need to identify biological parents on their own. (Keshavan, 9/11)

Earlier this year, the biotech community mourned the loss of Michael Becker, a former pharmaceutical industry executive who turned his cancer into a teaching moment. In 2018, we watched on his blog as cancer drugs failed him, as he became hale and hearty as he stopped chemo, and then as the cancer returned. The tumors invaded his bones, so he needed a cane. In July, his cancer killed him. (Herper, 9/11)

The Federal Trade Commission is taking aim at certain companies that sell cannabidiol, or CBD, and have claimed their products can treat or cure serious diseases and health conditions. The FTC said on Tuesday that it sent warning letters to three companies that sell CBD oils, tinctures, capsules, gummies and creams. The letters warned that it is illegal to advertise a product that can prevent or cure a disease without reliable scientific evidence to support such claims. (Thomas, 9/10)

The expanding gap between rich and poor is not only widening the gulf in incomes and wealth in America. It is helping the rich lead longer lives, while cutting short the lives of those who are struggling, according to a study released this week by the Government Accountability Office. Almost three-quarters of rich Americans who were in their 50s and 60s in 1992 were still alive in 2014. Just over half of poor Americans in their 50s and 60s in 1992 made it to 2014. (Fadulu, 9/10)

Ask Tom Yendell how he learned to eat, use a computer, place phone calls or do anything else with his feet, and he’ll turn the question around. “How did you figure out how to do things with your hands?” he said recently. “You don’t need to be shown how to do it. You just do it naturally.” Mr. Yendell, 57, is a painter in Hampshire, England. He was born without arms, after his mother was prescribed the drug thalidomide during her pregnancy, which was later found to cause birth defects. (Diep, 9/10)

A single new fossil can change the way we think about human origins, but discovering it — deep in a cave or buried in rock — remains a daunting struggle for hammer-wielding paleoanthropologists. “It can take years and luck to find the right one,” said Aurélien Mounier, a paleoanthropologist at the French National Museum of Natural History. (Zimmer, 9/10)

Democrats running for president have said they would support extending government health care coverage to undocumented immigrants -- a big shift, since undocumented immigrants currently have little access to federal programs. They don't qualify for Medicare, aren't eligible for federal Affordable Care Act subsidies and generally can't enroll in Medicaid, which provides coverage for low-income people. Even many green card holders typically have to wait five years before they can enroll in Medicaid -- and President Donald Trump has changed immigration policy that could discourage even eligible immigrants from signing up. (Luhby, 9/11)

According to a new WBUR poll, voters in this region say health care, immigration, jobs and the economy, as well as climate change, are the issues they most want 2020 presidential candidates to address.The poll is part of a new WBUR election season effort to bolster coverage of presidential politics with input from our listeners. (Brooks, 9/11)

Congressional lawmakers are holding an inquiry into the Trump administration's decision to stop considering requests from immigrants seeking to defer deportation for medical treatment and other hardships. A subcommittee of the House Oversight and Reform Committee has called an emergency hearing Wednesday on the Aug. 7 decision. Immigration officials and medical and legal experts are scheduled to testify. (9/11)

Like most of us, William Murphy dreads calling health insurance companies. They route him onto a rollercoaster of irrelevant voice menus, and when he finally reaches a human, it’s a customer service rep who has no idea what he’s talking about. Then it can take days to hear back, if anyone responds at all. The thing is, Murphy isn’t a disgruntled patient. He prosecutes medical fraud cases for the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office in Oakland, California. And when he calls insurers, he’s in pursuit of criminals stealing from them and their clients. But, he said, they typically respond with something akin to a shrug. “There’s no sense of urgency, even though this is their company that’s getting ripped off.” (Allen, 9/10)

In most states, laws require private health insurers to submit information to regulators about suspected fraud in their networks. Such reporting helps everyone by highlighting scammers and their schemes. For instance, a doctor could be billing several insurers for services that weren’t provided, a hospital could be uniformly gaming billing codes to pad profits or a fraudster could be targeting several insurers pretending to be a medical professional. (Allen, 9/10)

Gov. Jared Polis, standing before a crowd in Keystone, unveiled an eye-popping number on Monday. $14,000. That is how much he said a family of four in Summit County will be able to save on their health insurance next year through the new Peak Health Alliance, compared with what they’re paying now. ... he used the announcement on Monday to again talk about taking the idea statewide, fundamentally changing the leverage points in the Colorado health insurance market. ... Hospitals, which have been supportive publicly of the Peak Health Alliance’s work, say they’re not sure people across the state can get the same kind of deal the folks in Summit County are getting. (Ingold, 9/10)

Kaiser Health News: Investors’ Deep-Pocket Push To Defend Surprise Medical Bills

As proposals to ban surprise medical bills move through Congress and state legislatures with rare bipartisan support, physician groups have emerged as the loudest opponents. Often led by doctors with the veneer of noble concern for patients, physician-staffing firms — third-party companies that employ doctors and assign them out to health care facilities — have opposed efforts to limit the practice known as balance billing. They claim such bans would rob doctors of their leverage in negotiating, drive down their payments and push them out of insurance networks. (Bluth and Huetteman, 9/11)

Kaiser Health News: Virginia Governor And UVA Vow To Revamp Practice Of Suing Patients As CEO Exits

Gov. Ralph Northam and the president of the University of Virginia committed to changing UVA Health System’s collections practices a day after Kaiser Health News detailed its aggressive and widespread pursuit of former patients for unpaid medical bills. At the same time, the health system announced the departure of CEO Pamela Sutton-Wallace, who will leave in November to join New York-Presbyterian Hospital as a senior vice president. (Hancock and Lucas, 9/10)

A team of researchers from top medical schools is moving closer to developing a blood test that promises to quickly and accurately help diagnose combat troops with post-traumatic stress disorder, even those who try to hide the effects, the team said in a journal article released Monday. The Pentagon-funded effort has pinpointed a handful of telltale indicators at the molecular level that the body produces when soldiers have been exposed to battlefield trauma and are likely to have problems coping with lingering stress, according to the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Molecular Psychiatry. (Kesling, 9/10)

Gently lifting a wooden frame containing dozens of Italian honeybees, Vince Ylitalo seemed transfixed as he and several other veterans inspected the buzzing insects. "This is really cool," he said, pointing to a bee with blobs of orange pollen on its hind legs. Ylitalo, who has battled PTSD after serving nearly 40 years in the military including two tours in Iraq, didn't seem bothered by the bees swarming around his head or crawling all over the entrance to their hive. (Casey and Householder, 9/11)

The House will hold a hearing this fall to investigate how Veterans Affairs awards credentials to its doctors amid concerns that the agency failed to stop an Arkansas pathologist who is alleged to have misdiagnosed thousands of veterans while impaired, lawmakers said Tuesday. House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mark Takano (D-Calif.) said lawmakers will “do oversight on a bipartisan basis” to scrutinize both the Arkansas case and VA’s broader system of giving credentials and hospital privileges to physicians in its vast heath-care system, which has come under growing scrutiny in recent weeks. (Rein, 9/10)

Mayo Clinic, one of medicine’s most prestigious brands, announced Tuesday that it has struck a sweeping partnership with Google to store patient data in the cloud and build products using artificial intelligence and other technologies to improve care. The 10-year partnership is a testament to Google’s expanding role in the U.S. health care system and gives Mayo greater access to the engineering talent and computing resources it needs to embed its expertise in algorithms and commercial devices. (Ross, 9/10)

Financial terms were not disclosed. As part of the 10-year agreement, Google will store the clinic’s data and open an office in Rochester for research with Mayo on solving complex health care problems. “If this is done well, we believe we’ll have the opportunity to bring some transformative kinds of answers to patients,” Christopher Ross, Mayo’s chief information officer, said in an interview. “And we think we’ll be able to increase innovation substantially.” (Snowbeck, 9/10)

Mayo's chief medical information officer, Dr. Steve Peters, said the collaboration will use Mayo’s medical data to develop machine-learning models aimed at improving health care. "You can have a big data set, and you can have a data scientist analyze it,” said Peters. “But without clinical knowledge, medical knowledge or our research knowledge about what it might mean and how it might be applied, you'd not go as far." (Richert, 9/10)

Some hospital-system and company officials said they expect to jointly develop new software by combining data and expertise of health-care companies with tech giants’ computing power and engineering know-how. “Google can’t do this alone. We can’t do this alone,” said Cris Ross, Mayo’s chief information officer. The terms weren’t disclosed. Patient records will be kept private and access will be controlled by Mayo, Mr. Ross said. Data used to develop new software will be stripped of any information that could identify individual patients before it is shared with the tech giant. (Evans, 9/10)

Epic Systems, which took over Mayo Clinic electronic health records in 2018, will still store the primary records at its data center in Verona, Wis., and will  store backups at its Rochester data center on West Circle Drive Northwest. (Kiger, 9/10)

More than 300,000 patients had data compromised in a July ransomware attack at Premier Family Medical, the physician group disclosed to the federal government last week. On Saturday, the physician group reported to the federal government that data on 320,000 patients had been compromised as a result of the breach, according to a submission posted by the HHS' Office for Civil Rights, the agency that maintains the government's database of healthcare breaches. (Cohen, 9/10)

Carol and Hank Skinner of Alexandria, Va., can talk about pain all day long. Carol, 77, once had so much pain in her right hip and so little satisfaction with medical treatment she vowed to stay in bed until she died. Hank, 79, has had seven shoulder surgeries, lung cancer, open-heart surgery, a blown-out knee and lifelong complications from a clubfoot. He has a fentanyl patch on his belly to treat his chronic shoulder pain. He replaces the patch every three days, supplementing the slow-release fentanyl with pills containing hydrocodone. (Achenbach and Bernstein, 9/10)

The next generation of doctors will start their careers at a time when physicians are feeling pressure to limit prescriptions for opioid painkillers. Yet every day, they'll face patients who are hurting from injuries, surgical procedures, or disease. Around 20% of adults in the U.S. live with chronic pain. That's why some medical students felt a little apprehensive as they gathered recently for a mandatory, four-day course at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore — home to one of the top medical schools in the country. (Greenfieldboyce, 9/11)

Targeting some of the epicenters of the national opioid epidemic, the Appalachian Regional Commission announced a plan to revitalize the workforce in communities ravaged by addiction. The agency, whose mandate is to promote economic prosperity in 420 counties in 13 states, including North Carolina, outlined a plan to bolster and link programs that support people struggling with substance use disorders to recovery and career-readiness skills. The federal-state partnership has also made it a priority to support initiatives that document and duplicate successful efforts across communities. The exact sum of money the agency will dedicate to these efforts in fiscal year 2020 isn’t yet finalized, pending congressional budget approval, an agency spokeswoman said this week. (Engel-Smith, 9/11)

California’s health care services director announced her resignation Tuesday, a move that came after she mocked opponents of mandatory childhood vaccinations as “flat-earthers” on social media. Jennifer Kent is director of the state Department of Health Care Services, which oversees the state’s massive Medi-Cal system. (Gardiner, 9/10)

“The Capitol is filled with a bunch of flat-earthers today,” Kent’s post said before referencing the large bear statute outside the governor’s office that is often jokingly referred to as “Bacteria Bear” because so many statehouse visitors touch it. “My poor sweet Bacteria Bear is dripping with unvaccinated booger-eater germs,” Kent wrote before using two hashtags: "#believeinscience” and "#vaccinateyourgoddamnkids.” (Gutierrez, 9/10)

A federal judge in North Dakota on Tuesday blocked a state law enacted earlier this year that required physicians to tell women they may reverse a so-called medication abortion if they have second thoughts. North Dakota is among eight states to pass or amend laws requiring doctors to tell women undergoing medication abortions they can still have a live birth after the procedure. (9/10)

The fate of nine financially troubled Connecticut nursing homes could hinge on the answer to one question: Did legislators know their approval of a new budget last fall would trigger immediate cutbacks in state aid to homes with high vacancy rates? Gov. Ned Lamont and the top Republican in the Senate said the Democrat-controlled insist legislature knew the risks, but the Senate co-chair of the budget committee and the state’s largest nursing home association disagree. (Phaneuf, 9/10)

The number of new HIV diagnoses in San Francisco has dropped to a record low, but the news was more sober for four groups with a rising number of new cases: black and Latino residents, as well as homeless people and intravenous drug users, the city reported Tuesday. The overall improvement comes five years after a consortium of city health officials, UCSF and local nonprofits launched an aggressive “Getting to Zero” campaign aimed at eliminating new HIV cases altogether by expanding testing, treatment and care. (Bauman, 9/10)

For nearly a year, city and county officials across the West have lamented a federal appeals court’s ruling last September barring municipalities from prosecuting homeless people for sleeping on the streets if there are no available shelter beds. Now, Sacramento County and the city of Sacramento have joined the fight to overturn the ruling. They will share the impacts of the ruling on homelessness efforts in an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” brief to the U.S. Supreme Court later this month. (Yoon-Hendricks, 9/10)

Maryland health officials confirmed Tuesday the first case of West Nile virus in the state this year. A statement from Maryland Department of Health identified the infected person only as “an adult living in the National Capital Region in Maryland.” West Nile is a mosquito-borne virus that does not cause symptoms in four out of five infected people, the statement said. Those who do get sick may develop fever, headache, body aches, skin rash vomiting or diarrhea two to 14 days after being bitten, officials said. (Moyer, 9/10)

Kaiser Health News: California Hospitals And Nursing Homes Brace For Wildfire Blackouts

California has seen a relatively slow start to this year’s wildfire season, but Wanda Chaney still frets every time it’s hot and windy in Chico, a college town about two hours north of Sacramento. She’s far less worried about an actual wildfire than the power company shutting off her electricity to prevent one. Chaney, 70, uses an oxygen machine at her apartment to treat chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a lung disorder that makes it difficult to breathe. (Ostrov, 9/11)

President Donald Trump is off the mark in taking credit for a drop in drug prices that he calls unprecedented in half a century. TRUMP: “Our ambitious campaign to reduce the price of prescription drugs has produced the largest decline in drug prices in more than 51 years.” — remarks at North Carolina rally Monday night. THE FACTS: He’s exaggerating his influence on drug prices, which haven’t fallen for brand-name drugs, the area that worries consumers the most. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 9/10)

The sprawling trade association for companies making everything from weed killer to CAR-T cancer therapies, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, has new leadership. But it’s still not apologizing for the toxic reputation many of its member companies have on Capitol Hill, and in the minds of Americans, more generally. BIO elected Dr. Jeremy Levin, CEO of Ovid Therapeutics (OVID), to be its new board chair in June. (Florko, 9/10)

The experimental lung cancer drug that led Eli Lilly to spend $8 billion on a smaller biotechnology firm, Loxo Oncology, delivered impressive results Monday in a study being presented at a conference in Barcelona. A total of 68% of 105 patients — all of whom had been previously failed by chemotherapy — saw a response after taking selpercatinib, previously known as LOXO-292, meaning that their tumors decreased in size by at least 30%. (Herper, 9/9)

Over the past few years, excitement over a coming wave of potentially curative gene therapies has given way to concern over their million-dollar price tags. Paying over a period of time and for good outcomes have been mulled as strategies to help more patients get access to the drugs, but there's been slow adoption. Last week, insurer Cigna Corp. introduced a program designed to "take away all the excuses by which anyone would not want to participate." (Livingston, 9/6)

At first, it sounded like a breakup. “It’s not working, and it won’t work in the future,” said Dr. Janet Woodcock, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator. She was speaking to an audience of about 150 researchers who are toiling to discover new medicines that will save lives. The room was silent. “I don’t want to bum everyone out,” she said. “The science is fabulous, but that’s not enough.” (Baumgaertner, 9/7)

Enter the online retail drug discount company GoodRx, which launched in 2011 as a way to show consumers how to get their prescriptions filled at the lowest price. The company reports that 100 million people have used the service to find the cost of medicines at local pharmacies. The service, which is mainly intended for people without health insurance, is one of many drug discount programs available. Thomas Goetz, director of research at GoodRx, said that what the Santa Monica, California-based company offers is transparency in a broken market. “When that transparency is in the hands of consumers, consumers start to change behavior,” said Goetz. “And that starts to change the economics of the system. It’s very slow-going, but that’s in general what we’re all about.” (Young, 9/9)

pecialty drugs are typically used to treat such complex conditions as hepatitis, cystic fibrosis, HIV and some cancers. Sometimes they require special handling, such as refrigeration.So why the big price changes on New Year’s Day? Critics provide a simple explanation: New restrictions by the state Medicaid department starting Jan. 1 spurred pharmacy benefit managers to find a new way to make money. And specialty drugs were the ticket. (Rowland, 9/8)

Kaiser Health News: States Pass Record Number Of Laws To Reel In Drug Prices

Whether Congress will act this year to address the affordability of prescription drugs — a high priority among voters — remains uncertain. But states aren’t waiting. So far this year, 33 states have enacted a record 51 laws to address drug prices, affordability and access. That tops the previous record of 45 laws enacted in 28 states set just last year, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy, a nonprofit advocacy group that develops model legislation and promotes such laws. (Findlay, 9/9)

Swiss drugmaker Roche sees medicines in its own pipeline driving sales growth over the longer term, Chief Executive Severin Schwan told Reuters on Friday, adding he will not pursue takeovers simply to keep revenue rising. In an interview at Roche's Basel headquarters, Schwan also said ongoing U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) scrutiny of Roche's $4.3 billion takeover of Spark Therapeutics came as a surprise, forcing delays. (Miller and Arnold, 9/6)

Reflecting an intensifying effort to conquer cancer, the portion of new oncology treatments approved by the Food and Drug Administration swelled over the past decade, reaching 27% of all drug approvals compared with just 4% during the 1980s, according to a new analysis. Between 2010 and 2018, FDA approvals for cancer therapies outstripped endorsements for antibiotics and drugs used to treat central nervous system disorders and cardiovascular ills, all of which are also major therapeutic categories. (Silverman, 9/5)

Details of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s closely guarded drug-pricing plan are now out, and she’s not messing around. The draft proposal, outlined in a document first obtained by Bloomberg Government, would give Medicare the power to directly negotiate the price of 250 expensive drugs – focusing mostly on medicines that lack robust competition – and grant the government sharp teeth in those talks. Drug prices would be tied to their average cost in a basket of developed countries that have more affordable medicines, and pharmaceutical companies that refused to negotiate or extend lower prices to other parts of the health system would face significant fines. (Max Nisen, 9/10)

If you take a pill every day to treat high blood pressure or high cholesterol, you probably don’t spend much time thinking about where those drugs come from or what you would do if your pharmacy suddenly couldn’t fill your prescription. But when it comes to the sources of their prescription drugs, what Americans don’t know can hurt them. Most of the drugs Americans take — as much as 90 percent — are generics. But before such drugs arrive at pharmacies in pill form, they start as active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). China now dominates that market globally. And though India is a large manufacturer of the finished product along with China, Indian companies get 80 percent of their ingredients from China. (Reps. Anna G. Eshoo and Adam B. Schiff, 9/10)

When Frederick Banting, Charles Best, and James Collip filed for a U.S. patent on insulin in 1923 and sold it to the University of Toronto for $1 each, they did it because, as Best once said, “insulin belongs to the world. ”They also believed that securing the patent was a form of publication, and wrote to the university president, “When the details of the method of preparation are published anyone would be free to prepare the extract, but no one could secure a profitable monopoly. ”Sadly, they were mistaken. (Dana Brown and Elizabeth Pfiester, 9/10)

A targeted bargaining strategy using tried and tested arbitration techniques could help Medicare balance drug innovation and affordability. Such negotiation could lower excessively high prices, even as parts of the market where competition works well are left alone. (Richard G. Frank and Len M. Nichols, 9/4)

As an independent gastroenterologist, I treat thousands of patients in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area who have gastrointestinal issues. Some of the most challenging cases my colleagues and I confront are for patients who live with Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitis, which are painful, medically incurable diseases that attack the digestive system. Unfortunately, the Senate is considering a proposal that would make it harder for my patients to afford much-needed medications that improve their quality of life. (Michael Weinstein, 9/11)

My name is Cynthia Stockton. I am a 71-year-old senior living in Sacramento. I have spent a lifetime wearing many hats: self-made college graduate, Army wife and a contributor to the workforce for more than 50 years, including 22 years spent working as a public servant for Sacramento County and 10 years managing senior communities. I had planned to write children’s books and create artwork for friends in my retirement. (Cynthia Stockton, 9/4)

Technology has in many ways have made life easy—certainly much easier than before. So why did one recent study find that the rate of moderate to severe depression among U.S. college students rose from 23.2% in 2007 to 41.1% in 2018, while rates of moderate to severe anxiety jumped from 17.9% in 2013 to 34.4% in 2018? I think technology itself may be to blame for the rise. (9/10)

If one of our patients withheld food or medication from her child, we would report her for child abuse. But come Oct. 15, when the Trump administration’s new public charge immigration rule goes into effect, we’ll have to rethink that strategy. The public charge rule refers to a term used in immigration law to identify an individual who is primarily dependent on the government for support. The Trump administration has broadened the definition of what can be taken into account when denying green cards to include immigrants who use one or more of three government programs: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as food stamps), some federal housing subsidizes, and adult Medicaid. (Leah Zallman and Stephanie Woolhandler, 9/11)

The number of Americans without health insurance rose last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and Democrats say this justifies more government control. Yet the reality is more complicated—in particular, note that having a Medicaid card is no guarantee of great medical care. The good Census news is that real median earnings of men and women who work full time and year round “increased by 3.4% and 3.3%, respectively, between 2017 and 2018.” Some 2.3 million more Americans are working full time. The poverty rate fell 0.5 percentage points from 2017, to 11.8%, the fourth annual decline in a row. (9/10)

Health care delivery in the United States is being led by practitioners who have ascended to leadership roles primarily through years of loyalty to their organizations. But as burnout worsens and affects the youngest clinicians to the detriment of the system, is this the appropriate cadre to shepherd us towards necessary system transformation? (Travis Bias and Ashley Ramirez, 9/11)

Two weeks ago, on Long Island, West Babylon Junior High School rang in the new school year by simulating a prelude to slaughter: Sequestered in their classrooms, students huddled silently as an imitation gunman banged on the doors, chased out by police officers flooding the hallways and firing off blanks. “It’s sick that we have to do this,” said the head of the security company conducting this active-shooter drill, an exercise that has become a commonplace in schools across the country. “But this is the future here.” (Spencer Bokat-Lindell, 9/15)

Everyone in Los Angeles County knows how pervasive and intractable a problem homelessness is. Even as we increase the number of shelter beds and build permanent supportive housing and dispense rental subsidies and provide all manner of other services, it’s not enough to stanch the flow of newly homeless people onto the sidewalks. So the arrival this week of a group of officials from the Trump administration saying they want to learn about homelessness ought to be a hopeful sign. It should be a good thing that the federal government, with all its experts and money and other resources, is interested and wants to help. (9/11)

The World Health Organization reports that measles outbreaks worldwide have almost tripled since last year. This is astonishing, and very troubling. (Jan Taigen and Christine Palm, 9/11)