Biden’s science adviser resigns over bullying
Volume 399, Issue 10326
19 February 2022
WORLD REPORT Experts say that Eric Lander’s resignation should not affect the President’s plans to reboot the cancer moonshot project. Susan Jaffe reports.
Medicare Patients Win the Right to Appeal Gap in Nursing Home Coverage
The Jan. 25 ruling, which came in response to a 2011 class-action lawsuit eventually joined by 14 beneficiaries against the Department of Health and Human Services, will guarantee pThe next steps for US vaccine mandates
Volume 399, Issue 10323
28 January 2022
WORLD REPORT As the Supreme Court blocks one of the Biden Administration’s plans to raise COVID-19 vaccination rates but approves another, Susan Jaffe looks at the next steps.
President Joe Biden’s efforts to encourage the most reluctant Americans to get fully vaccinated against COVID-19 have hit one legal roadblock after another. About one in four adults have still not received either the two-dose or single regimen of the vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the path to greater vaccination uptake is shrinking as federal courts muddy his Administration’s pro-vaccine message, cases of infection driven by the Omicron variant continue to rise in many parts of the country, and the president’s popularity ratings fall. …In the first of two rulings on Jan 13, the Supreme Court decided 6–3 to block the Biden Administration’s mandate for private companies with more than 100 employees to require weekly COVID-19 tests for employees who have not been fully vaccinated. ,,,Yet in a pair of lawsuits the court heard along with the employer mandate cases, the court came to the opposite conclusion. In a 5–4 decision, they upheld the Biden Administration’s requirement of vaccination for 10·4 million workers at 76 000 health-care facilities that treat patients covered by the government’s Medicare or Medicaid health insurance.[Continued here.]
Holmes verdicts prompt questions over justice for patients
Volume 399, Issue 10321
15 January 2022
WORLD REPORT The founder of Theranos was found guilty of defrauding some investors, but cleared of charges that she misled patients. Susan Jaffe reports.
On Jan 3, a federal jury in California found Elizabeth Holmes, creator of the blood-testing startup Theranos, guilty of lying to some of her investors about a portable blood analyser that she claimed would transform health care. It could run dozens of tests from a fingerprick of blood, she said, and deliver dependable results quickly. However, government prosecutors’ account of Holmes’s empty promises and hype failed to convince the jury that she also deceived patients and their doctors who depended on her device’s inaccurate readings. [Continued here.]
US Supreme Court expected to weaken abortion rights
Volume 398, Issue 10317
11 December 2021
WORLD REPORT The US Supreme Court, now dominated by conservatives, heard arguments last week on the legality of a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. However, the justices signalled that they are likely to do more than uphold the law. .[Continued here.]
Theranos founder counters fraud charges in federal trial
Volume 398, Issue 10315
27 November 2021
WORLD REPORT Federal prosecutors charged Theranos’ founder Elizabeth Holmes and former Theranos president Ramesh Balwani with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, alleging that they deceived investors and patients and their doctors by claiming that Theranos’s machine could produce accurate test results from blood collected in its tiny “nanotainer” device instead of several vials. But witnesses for the prosecution testified that the devices did not operate as promised…. “When something is brought forward as the next new thing regardless of whether it’s a drug or device, it needs to go through the process of rigorous scientific and clinical testing, then presented to the scientific community for peer review and ultimately publication”, said Roy Silverstein a haematologist and chair of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. “And I’m not aware of any single publication that ever came out of this Theranos technology.” [Full story here.]
Legal challenges threaten Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine rule
Volume 398, Issue 10314
20 November 2021
WORLD REPORT Almost a year after the first COVID-19 vaccine was approved for emergency use in the USA, roughly a third of adults have still not received it. After urging Americans to get vaccinated, US President Joe Biden has taken a tougher approach: under his administration’s new workplace safety standard, people must get vaccinated or undergo weekly tests for the virus if they work for companies with at least 100 employees. “The rule will protect more than 84 million workers from the spread of the coronavirus on the job”, said Jim Frederick, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health. …A day after OSHA’s announcement on Nov 4, 2021, multiple lawsuits to block the rule started rolling in to federal courts across the country.[Continued here.]
Medicare’s Open Enrollment Is Open Season for Scammers
By Susan Jaffe | Kaiser Health News | November 11, 2021 | This KHN story also ran in The Washington Post.
In response, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has threatened to penalize private insurance companies selling Medicare Advantage and drug plans if they or agents working on their behalf mislead consumers. The agency has also revised rules making it easier for beneficiaries to escape plans they didn’t sign up for or enrolled in only to discover promised benefits didn’t exist or they couldn’t see their providers.
The problems are especially prevalent during Medicare’s open-enrollment period, which began Oct. 15 and runs through Dec. 7. A common trap begins with a phone call like the one Linda Heimer, an Iowa resident, received in October. [Full story in The Washington Post and Kaiser Health News.]
3 States Limit Nursing Home Profits in Bid to Improve Care
“If they choose to rely on public dollars to deliver care, they take on a greater responsibility,” says New York Assemblyman Ron Kim. “It’s not like running a hotel.”
By Susan Jaffe | KAISER HEALTH NEWS | October 25, 2021 | This story also ran on
Nursing homes receive billions of taxpayers’ dollars every year to care for chronically ill frail elders, but until now, there was no guarantee that’s how the money would be spent.
Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York are taking unprecedented steps to ensure they get what they pay for, 
after the devastating impact of covid-19 exposed problems with staffing and infection control in nursing homes. The states have set requirements for how much nursing homes 
must spend on residents’ direct care and imposed limits on what they can spend elsewhere, including administrative expenses, executive salaries and advertising and even how much they can pocket as profit. …With this strategy, advocates believe, residents won’t be shortchanged on care, and violations of federal quality standards should decrease because money will be required to be spent on residents’ needs. At least that’s the theory. [Continued on Kaiser Health News, Fortune, NBC News, Yahoo Finance, and Chicago Sun-Times]
The Push For Nursing Home Reform In The Middle Of A Pandemic
Sept. 20, 2021 | Today on NPR‘s news program “1A,” reporter Susan Jaffe discusses her Kaiser Health News story about new state laws protecting nursing home residents in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Changes affect staffing, visitation rights, virtual communications, “essential support persons,” and more. A resident of a Connecticut nursing home quoted in this KHN article is also a guest.
New 9/11 casualties strain health-care programme
Volume 398, Issue 10304
11 September 2021
On this 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, first-responder Terence Opiola won’t be attending any memorial events. “I’ll go to church and pray that people remember and understand that it’s not over,” he said. “We’re losing people every week.”
Now a funding shortfall threatens the World Trade Center Health Program, which provides free medical monitoring and treatment for Opiola and increasing numbers of other 9/11 survivors and first responders. [Full story here.]
After pandemic ravaged nursing homes, new state laws protect residents
So far, 23 states have passed more than 70 new pandemic-related provisions affecting nursing home operations.
By Susan Jaffe | KAISER HEALTH NEWS | August 17, 2021 | This story also ran in
When the coronavirus hit Martha Leland’s Connecticut nursing home last year, she and dozens of other residents contracted the disease while the facility was on lockdown. Twenty-eight residents died, including her roommate.
“The impact of not having friends and family come in and see us for a year was totally devastating,” she said. “And then, the staff all bound up with the masks and the shields on, that too was very difficult to accept.” She summed up the experience in one word: “scary.”
But under a law Connecticut enacted in June, nursing home residents will be able to designate an “essential support person” who can help
take care of a loved one even during a public health emergency. Connecticut legislators also approved laws this year giving nursing home residents free internet access and digital devices for virtual visits and allowing video cameras in their rooms so family or friends can monitor their care.
Similar benefits are not required by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal agency that oversees nursing homes and pays for most of the care they provide. But states can impose additional requirements when those federal rules are insufficient or don’t exist. And that’s exactly what many are doing, spurred by the virus that hit the frail elderly hardest. [Continued at Kaiser Health News and USA Today]
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure: innovative US federal health director
Volume 398, Issue 10300
14 August 2021
PROFILE 
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, President Joe Biden’s choice to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, presides over an agency with a US$1 trillion budget that provides health insurance to more than 154 million people. Tackling health-care inequities is one of her top priorities. “These disparities have long existed, but COVID-19 has illuminated them in a way that is really unprecedented”, she said. [Full story here.]
US FDA defends approval of Alzheimer’s disease drug
Volume 398, Issue 10294
3 July 2021
WORLD REPORT An avalanche of criticism has forced the US Food and Drug Administration to defend its decision to grant accelerated approval for aducanumab, the first new Alzheimer’s disease treatment in two decades. “It will be a very long time before we ever figure out whether or not this drug really works”, said Aaron Kesselheim, professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who resigned in protest from an FDA advisory panel that recommended against approval.[Continued here.]