First Edition: March 11, 2019

Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.

Kaiser Health News: Military Doctors In Crosshairs Of A Budget Battle
The U.S. military is devising major reductions in its medical corps, unnerving the system’s advocates who fear the cuts will hobble the armed forces’ ability to adequately care for health problems of military personnel at home and abroad. The move inside the military coincides with efforts by the Trump administration to privatize care for veterans. The Department of Veterans Affairs last month proposed rules that would allow veterans to use private hospitals and clinics if government primary care facilities are not nearby or if they have to wait too long for an appointment. (Rau, 3/11)

Kaiser Health News: Why Measles Hits So Hard Within N.Y. Orthodox Jewish Community
The Rockland County, N.Y., woman hadn’t told her obstetrician that she had a fever and rash, two key signs of a measles infection. A member of the Orthodox Jewish community there, she went into premature labor at 34 weeks, possibly as a result of the infection. Her baby was born with measles and spent his first 10 days in the neonatal intensive care unit. The infant is home now, but “we don’t know how this baby will do,” said Dr. Patricia Schnabel Ruppert, the health commissioner for Rockland County. When young children contract measles, they face a heightened risk of complications from the disease, including seizures or hearing and vision problems down the road. (Andrews, 3/11)

The New York Times: On Disability And On Facebook? Uncle Sam Wants To Watch What You Post
If you’re on federal disability payments and on social media, be careful what you post. Uncle Sam wants to watch. The Trump administration has been quietly working on a proposal to use social media like Facebook and Twitter to help identify people who claim Social Security disability benefits without actually being disabled. If, for example, a person claimed benefits because of a back injury but was shown playing golf in a photograph posted on Facebook, that could be used as evidence that the injury was not disabling. (Pear, 3/10)

The Associated Press: Sanders' 'Medicare For All' Expands Long-Term Care Benefits
Sen. Bernie Sanders is raising the stakes of the "Medicare for All" debate by expanding his proposal to include long-term care, a move that is forcing other Democratic presidential candidates to take a stand on addressing one of the biggest gaps in the U.S. health care system. Medicare for All is unlikely to advance in the GOP-controlled Senate, but it's a defining issue in the early days of the Democratic primary and candidates have pointed to their support of Sanders' legislation as proof of their progressive bona fides. (3/8)

The New York Times: Bernie Sanders-Style Politics Are Defining 2020 Race, Unnerving Moderates
The sharp left turn in the Democratic Party and the rise of progressive presidential candidates are unnerving moderate Democrats who increasingly fear that the party could fritter away its chances of beating President Trump in 2020 by careening over a liberal cliff. Two months into the presidential campaign, the leading Democratic contenders have largely broken with consensus-driven politics and embraced leftist ideas on health care, taxes, the environment and Middle East policy that would fundamentally alter the economy, elements of foreign policy and ultimately remake American life. (Martin and Ember, 3/9)

The New York Times: U.S. Continues To Separate Migrant Families Despite Rollback Of Policy
Nearly nine months after the Trump administration officially rescinded its policy of separating migrant families who have illegally crossed the border, more than 200 migrant children have been taken from parents and other relatives and placed in institutional care, with some spending months in shelters and foster homes thousands of miles away from their parents. The latest data reported to the federal judge monitoring one of the most controversial of President Trump’s immigration policies shows that 245 children have been removed from their families since the court ordered the government to halt routine separations under last spring’s “zero tolerance” border enforcement policy. (Jordan and Dickerson, 3/9)

Reuters: U.S. Judge May Force Trump Administration To Reunite More Families Separated At Mexico Border
In a blow to the Trump administration's U.S.-Mexico border strategy, a federal court judge in California has expanded the number of migrant families separated at the border that the government may be required to reunite. San Diego-based U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw late on Friday issued a preliminary ruling that would potentially expand by thousands the number of migrants included in a class-action lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. (3/9)

Reuters: Mumps, Other Outbreaks Force U.S. Detention Centers To Quarantine Over 2,000 Migrants
Christian Mejia thought he had a shot at getting out of immigration detention in rural Louisiana after he found a lawyer to help him seek asylum. Then he was quarantined. In early January, a mumps outbreak at the privately run Pine Prairie U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center put Mejia and hundreds of other detainees on lockdown. (3/10)

The Hill: Over 2,000 Migrants Quarantined In US Detention Centers Amid Mumps Outbreaks: Report
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill. The reported quarantines within migrant detention facilities comes during a surge in outbreaks in communicable infections such as measles and mumps. A recent spate of measles infected 159 mostly unvaccinated people in 10 states as of late last month, leading some states to reconsider vaccine exemptions. (Samuels, 3/10)

The New York Times: Transgender Troops Caught Between A Welcoming Military And A Hostile Government
Transgender troops like Senior Airman Sterling Crutcher are seen as “an unreasonable burden” by the Trump administration. It says their presence hurts morale and the military’s ability to fight, and that they have no place in uniform. That’s news to Airman Crutcher. He just got back from a deployment with his B-52 bomber squadron, and when he did, fellow airmen in his squadron, whom he counts among his best friends, threw a shower for him and his wife, Aimee, to celebrate their first child, born in February. (Philipps, 3/9)

The Washington Post: Oklahoma Judge Refuses To Delay First Trial Of Responsibility For Opioid Crisis
An Oklahoma judge declined Friday to postpone the first major trial of whether drug companies bear responsibility for the opioid crisis, leaving the state and the firms on track to meet in court May 28. Cleveland County District Judge Thad Balkman refused a request from the defendants — three major drug manufacturers and 10 of their subsidiaries — to put off the jury trial for 100 days. (Bernstein, 3/8)

The New York Times: An Unvaccinated Boy Got Tetanus. His Oregon Hospital Stay: 57 Days And $800,000.
A 6-year-old boy was playing on a farm when he cut his forehead, a laceration that was simple enough to tend to at home. But six days later, his parents realized something was seriously wrong: He was clenching his jaw, having trouble breathing and experiencing involuntary muscle spasms. (Mervosh, 3/9)

The Washington Post: Unvaccinated Child Of Anti-Vaxx Parents Contracted Tetanus In Oregon, CDC Report Says
The child was playing on a farm when he cut his head on something, the report said. His parents cleaned and stitched the wound at home, but alarming symptoms emerged six days later. The boy’s jaw began clenching, and his neck and back were arched — a trademark indication of tetanus called opisthotonus that is caused by involuntary muscle spasms. He was airlifted to a pediatric hospital, where he was diagnosed with tetanus. It was the first instance of the life-threatening neuromuscular disease in a child in Oregon in more than three decades. (Wang, 3/8)

The Associated Press: CDC: Unvaccinated Oregon Boy Almost Dies Of Tetanus
"This is an awful disease, but ... we have had a mechanism to completely prevent it, and the reason that we have virtually no cases anymore in the United States is because we vaccinate, literally, everyone." Doctors in Portland, Oregon, who treated the child declined to provide any further information about the family at a news conference Friday, citing medical privacy laws. It was the first time that Dr. Judith Guzman-Cottrill, the pediatric infectious disease expert who treated the child, had ever seen tetanus because of widespread vaccination against it in the U.S. (3/8)

Washington Post: 2019 Is Shaping Up To Be The Worst Year For Measles Since ’90s, CDC Data Show
More than 200 cases of measles were confirmed in the United States in the first two months of the year, with outbreaks occurring in 11 states, according to new figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The 206 cases in January and February represent the highest year-to-date number going back more than a quarter-century. (Ingraham, 3/8)

The Associated Press: FDA Approves 1st Immunotherapy Drug To Treat Breast Cancer
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the first immunotherapy drug for breast cancer. Swiss drugmaker Roche's Tecentriq was OK'd Friday for treating advanced triple-negative breast cancer, which accounts for about 15 percent of cases. It's to be given with chemotherapy, the standard treatment. Mount Sinai breast cancer specialist Dr. Amy Tiersten in New York called it "tremendously exciting news." (3/8)

Stat: Roche Wins First U.S. Approval Of Immunotherapy For Breast Cancer
The approval, as is typical, was narrow: for locally advanced or metastatic triple-negative breast cancer expressing PD-L1, the molecule that locks onto PD-1 receptors on the surface of T cells. (Triple-negative means the tumor cells do not have estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, or HER2, all of which fuel uncontrolled cell proliferation but can be blocked with drugs such as Herceptin.) (Begley, 3/8)

Stat: Microbiome-Based Drugs Likely To Face FDA's Biologics Pathway
It’s not really a stretch of the imagination to think that microbiome companies should care deeply about who will lead the Food and Drug Administration after the current commissioner, Scott Gottlieb, departs in a few weeks. After all, no microbiome-based drug has yet gone through the regulatory process and made it to market and investors are still skittish about how those drugs will be received by the agency. Yet a five-person panel of microbiome executives on a panel at the inaugural Chardan Microbiome Summit on Thursday didn’t address the shift in leadership until prompted by a member of the audience. (Sheridan, 3/11)

Stat: Drug For Preventing Premature Births Disappoints AMAG Pharma
The long-running saga of the Makena treatment for preventing premature births has taken yet another twist as AMAG Pharmaceuticals (AMAG), which sells the drug, revealed it failed a confirmatory study. The trial found the treatment was no better than a placebo and the disclosure quickly raised speculation that the medicine, which was approved eight years ago, might be withdrawn, sending AMAG stock down nearly 20 percent in midday trading on Friday. (Silverman, 3/8)

The Washington Post: Springing Forward To Daylight Saving Time Is Obsolete, Confusing And Unhealthy, Critics Say
This weekend, Americans will once again navigate their complex relationship with the chronically confusing and arguably misnamed daylight saving time. In most of the United States, the clocks spring forward early Sunday when 2 a.m. suddenly becomes 3 a.m. People are advised to avoid scheduling anything important for 2:30 a.m. Sunday, since, by law, such a moment does not exist. But the law may change. The national policy of switching from standard time to daylight saving time and back again is under legislative challenge from coast to coast. (Achenbach, 3/8)

The New York Times: Daylight Saving Is Here. Suppose We Made This Time Change Our Last?
A day is a day, with so many hours of darkness and so many of light. It’s a hard reality that no powerful king or brilliant philosopher has ever found a way around. And yet, every year, bless our hearts, we try. Compelled by the augustly named federal Uniform Time Act of 1966, most Americans will leap ahead — or stumble blearily — from one configuration of the clock to another this weekend, as daylight saving time clicks in at 2 a.m. Sunday. (Johnson, 3/9)

The Associated Press: Washington House OKs Step Toward Year-Round Daylight Saving
As daylight saving time is set to take effect in most of the U.S. this weekend, the Washington House passed a measure Saturday that would make those later sunsets permanent in the state all year — if Congress allows it. The measure passed the chamber on an 89-7 vote and now heads to the Senate, which has its own bill on the topic. The vote comes as more than two dozen states are considering measures to avoid the twice-yearly clock change. (3/9)

The New York Times: Cancer Patients Are Getting Robotic Surgery. There’s No Evidence It’s Better.
Robotic surgery was never approved for mastectomy or any other cancer-related treatment, but that has hardly deterred doctors in the operating suite. The equipment is widely used to operate on patients with various malignancies, from breast cancer to prostate cancer. Yet there have long been questions about how well doctors are trained on the machines, and whether the devices are better for patients than traditional methods. (Rabin, 3/11)

The New York Times: Doctor On Video Screen Told A Man He Was Near Death, Leaving Relatives Aghast
Catherine Quintana’s father had been in and out of a hospital for weeks, and the family understood that his time was running out. Her 78-year-old father, Ernest Quintana, had lung disease and was struggling to breathe on his own. On March 3, he was admitted to a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Fremont, Calif., for the third time in 15 days, Ms. Quintana said. He had his wife of nearly six decades and other members of his family at his side. (Jacobs, 3/9)

The New York Times: How Artificial Intelligence Could Transform Medicine
Last month, President Trump signed an executive order making the development and regulation of artificial intelligence a federal priority. But one area where artificial intelligence is already taking hold is health care. Doctors are already using A.I. to spot potentially lethal lesions on mammograms. Scientists are also developing A.I. systems that can diagnose common childhood conditions, predict whether a person will develop Alzheimer’s disease and monitor people with conditions like multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. (O'Connor, 3/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Rural Sheriffs Defy New Gun Measures
In swaths of rural America, county sheriffs, prosecutors and other local officials are mounting resistance to gun-control measures moving through legislatures in Democratic-led states. The “Second Amendment sanctuary” movement has taken hold in more than 100 counties in several states, including New Mexico and Illinois, where local law-enforcement and county leaders are saying they won’t enforce new legislation that infringes on the constitutional right to bear arms. (Gershman and Frosch, 3/10)

The Wall Street Journal: I Gave My Kidney To A Stranger To Save My Brother’s Life
In August, I became part of an exercise in market economics to save my older brother’s life. We participated in an innovative program that creates exchanges of goods with immeasurable value—healthy kidneys—among strangers who never would have connected otherwise. A little over a year earlier, my brother had rushed to the intensive-care unit of the Alfred Hospital while on a work trip in Melbourne, Australia, after experiencing extreme difficulty breathing. (Patel, 3/9)

The New York Times: Doctors Welcome New Depression Drug, Cautiously
Doctors welcomed federal approval this week of a new, fast-acting nasal spray for depression. But also they expressed concerns about its cost and long-term effects, as well as the logistics of administering it in accordance with safety requirements. The new drug, esketamine, made by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, won approval from the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday for people who have received little or no relief from other antidepressants. (Carey, 3/8)

The New York Times: Bit By Bit, Scientists Gain Ground On AIDS
The unnamed “London patient” — the second person apparently cured of H.I.V. — earned all the headlines. But other research released this week at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections showed that scientists are making slow but steady progress on the tactics and medicines needed to fight the epidemic, especially in Africa. Monthly injections of long-acting H.I.V. drugs proved as good as daily pills at suppressing the virus, according to two trials involving more than 1,000 patients. In another study, Descovy, a new formulation of the H.I.V. treatment Truvada, proved just as effective at suppressing the virus, and may have fewer — or at least different — side effects. (McNeil, 3/8)

The Associated Press: Flu May Have Peaked, But Experts Eye Jump In Nastier Strain
There's a strong chance this flu season has peaked, but health officials are watching a recent wave of illnesses from a nastier flu strain. Flu was reported to be widespread in 48 states last week, down from 49 the week before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday in its latest report on this winter's flu season. The federal agency's flu forecasters think there's a 90 percent chance the flu season has peaked. (3/8)

The Washington Post: The Man Who Developed Timeouts For Kids Stands By His Now Hotly-Debated Idea
After his daughter was born, Arthur Staats naturally began thinking about his role as a parent. How would he encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior as Jennifer grew up? He didn’t like spanking. So what was a psychology professor and behaviorist in 1960 to do? Invent timeout. Or so the family story goes. (Vander Schaaff, 3/9)

The New York Times: Congratulations, It’s Twins. The Doctor Is Perplexed.
It only required a glance at the ultrasound for the doctor to know that he was looking at identical twins. The positioning of two amniotic sacs attached to one placenta was the giveaway. It would be a couple of months before he could tell the mother whether to expect two boys or two girls. What seemed certain was that her babies would share a gender. And yet at 14 weeks when Dr. Nicholas M. Fisk, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital at the time, inspected the ultrasound, he saw something perplexing. (Murphy, 3/8)

The New York Times: No One Is Taking Your Hamburgers. But Would It Even Be A Good Idea?
The hamburger is suddenly embroiled in a political dispute. Supporters of the Green New Deal, according to a Republican talking point, are anti-patty. “They want to take away your hamburgers,” Sebastian Gorka, a former adviser to President Trump, said last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Other Republicans, including Mr. Trump, have made similar claims. But the Green New Deal, a broad climate policy proposal, makes no mention of hamburgers, cows or beef. (Pierre-Louis, 3/8)

The New York Times: We Broke The Same Bone. My Recovery Was A Breeze, Hers An Ordeal. Why?
A recent essay in The New England Journal of Medicine was titled “Heart and Sole — Of Metatarsals, Meaning and Medicine.” I had to read it. It’s not often you come across a reflection on metatarsal fractures, though they are common. I had just recovered from breaking my fifth metatarsal, the slender bone on the outside edge of the foot, so I was curious. (Kolata, 3/8)

NPR: Pregnant And Considering Home Birth? What You Should Know
As my belly grows, I'm more and more stressed by a decision that's weighed on me for the last eight months. Where should I deliver my baby? Last summer, when I found out I was pregnant with my first baby, I initially envisioned, like most American women, a hospital delivery. In fact, that's where roughly 99 percent of U.S. children are born. That's not a surprise: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, or ACOG, recommends hospitals or accredited birth centers as the safest option for having a baby. (McClurg, 3/11)

The Washington Post: Look Right Here, Folks! Psychologist Points Out What Catches Your Eye, Fires Up Your Brain
What caught your attention about this article? Maybe it was the headline or its placement on a page or computer screen. But as you read these words, plenty of other things are vying for your visual attention. Color, movement, pattern expectations all beckon you. So what dictates what grabs you? “How Attention Works,” written by Stefan Van der Stigchel and translated from the Dutch by Danny Guinan, answers that question. A cognitive psychologist, Van der Stigchel is interested in how human brains process visual information. His book is slender but packed with information about how the brain navigates a complex visual world. (Blakemore, 3/10)

The Associated Press: Iowa Court: Medicaid Can Cover Sex Reassignment Surgery
The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday upheld a lower court's ruling that the state cannot deny two transgender women Medicaid coverage for sex reassignment surgery. The state's high court agreed with Judge Arthur Gamble's ruling in June that a 1995 Iowa Department of Human Services policy denying Medicaid coverage for sex reassignment surgery violates the state's 2007 Civil Rights Act, which added gender identity to the state's list of protected classes. (3/8)

The Washington Post: District Residents Say Cuts In Medicaid Home Care Hours Leave Them Vulnerable
For decades, Leah Graham was a pillar in her neighborhood in Southeast Washington, tending her vegetable garden, helping sick neighbors, baking her signature strawberry cake with icing made of confectioners’ sugar and strawberry Kool-Aid. Now 108, Graham has dementia and is too frail to leave her bed, but neighbors still stop by, as do her granddaughter and great-grandson, who live 10 minutes away. She became bedridden at 104 but has been able to stay in the house she’s lived in for more than 40 years because she has been eligible to have a caregiver in her home 24 hours a day through the Elderly and Persons with Physical Disabilities (EPD) Medicaid Waiver program. (Bahrampour, 3/8)

The Associated Press: Arizona Now Oversees Center Where Incapacitated Woman Raped
A Phoenix long-term care facility where an incapacitated woman was raped last year and gave birth in December without any healthcare workers noticing her pregnancy was placed Friday under state supervision, subjecting the center to strict oversight requirements. The Arizona Department of Health Services and Hacienda HealthCare entered into a voluntary agreement allowing state regulators to watch over the facility, which houses patients who are intellectually disabled or are medically fragile. (3/8)

Los Angeles Times: Firefighter Suicides Reflect Toll Of Longer Fire Seasons And Increased Stress
Capt. Ryan Mitchell had just finished three punishing weeks of firefighting. He had deployed to fires far from home, then returned only to dash out to another one. Mitchell’s parents and 16-month-old son came to visit him at the station. “He didn’t look good. He was tired, he was thin, his eyes were shallow. He wasn’t his usual self,” Mitchell’s father, Will, recalled. (Agrawal, 3/1)

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