Tag: Sen. Patty Murray

Will Trump snuff out e-cigarettes?

Volume 394       Number 10213     30 November 2019   
WORLD REPORT President Trump promised to ban flavoured e-cigarettes, but 11 weeks later, they are still on the shelves. Susan Jaffe reports from Washington. 
When US President Donald Trump announced a plan on Sept 11 to prohibit the sale of most flavoured electronic cigarettes, more than 450 people in the USA had a mysterious lung disease associated with vaping, and six had died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The ban would be finalised within 30 days, said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
The number of cases of the lung disease has since soared to 2290, as of Nov 20, in 49 states, Washington, DC, and the US Virgin Islands. 47 e-cigarette smokers (vapers) have died, according to the CDC. However, as this report went to press, officials from the Trump administration would not disclose when the promised ban would be issued.
…The decision [to implement] a nationwide ban is up to President Trump. “It is a chain of command”, said Robert Califf, a professor of cardiology at Duke University School of Medicine and the FDA commissioner under Trump and former President Barack Obama. “The commissioner reports to the Secretary of Health and Human Services [HHS]and the secretary reports to the president. FDA policies are de facto policies of the Executive Branch, so if the HHS secretary or president chooses to do so, they can intercede.”  [Continued here]  
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Scott Gottlieb sworn in to head the FDA

lancet cover 2Volume 389, Number  10084 

27 May 2017 

WORLD REPORT    Scott Gottlieb becomes commissioner of the FDA, as the agency’s role is threatened by an administration adverse to regulation.  Susan Jaffe, The Lancet’s Washington correspondent, reports.

Only 6 months ago, Scott Gottlieb was still a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative thinktank, when he presented testimony to a US Senate committee investigating prescription drug prices. Before he began, he volunteered that he was “a reformed government bureaucrat, having worked at FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] for a number of years”. He blamed astonishing price hikes—500% in the case of Mylan’s EpiPen—on “regulatory failures stemming from FDA policy, and I think that policy can be fixed”.

Gottlieb was sworn in as the 23rd commissioner of the FDA after being approved earlier this month by the US Senate, over the strong objections of most Democrats. Now Gottlieb will have a chance to fix a daunting array of policies. [Continued here] …

Senate Panel Kills Medicare Program That Offers Help On Enrollment, Billing Issues

By Susan Jaffe  | Kaiser Health News | June 17, 2016 | This KHN story also ran on     nprlogo_138x46

A program that has helped seniors understand the many intricacies of Medicare as well as save them millions of dollars would be eliminated by a budget bill overwhelmingly approved last week by the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.

The State Health Insurance Assistance Program, or “SHIP,” is among more than a dozen programs left out of the bill by the committee. Cutting these “unnecessary federal programs” helped provide needed funding for other efforts, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., chairman of the appropriations committee’s health and labor subcommittee, said in a statement last week.

Ending SHIP saves $52 million, which will help pay for a $2 billion increase for the National Institutes of Health, restore year-round Pell Grants, and increase resources to prevent and treat opioid abuse, among other things.

SHIP counselors are in every state, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories offering free advice on how to choose from an array of drug and health insurance plans, challenge coverage denials, and receive financial subsidies for premiums, co-payments and deductibles. …Ohio’s SHIP program saved seniors $20.8 million in 2015 and was ranked first in the nation by the Department of Health and Human Services, the state’s lieutenant governor announced in February. [Continued on Kaiser Health News or NPR]

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