Kaiser Health News Original Stories

Buy and Bust: Collapse of Private Equity-Backed Rural Hospitals Mired Employees in Medical Bills

The U.S. Labor Department investigates Noble Health after former employees of its shuttered Missouri hospitals say the private equity-backed owner took money from their paychecks and then failed to fund their insurance coverage. (Sarah Jane Tribble, 8/20 )

After Wiping Out $6.7 Billion in Medical Debt, This Nonprofit Is Just Getting Started

Nonprofit RIP Medical Debt buys up unpaid hospital bills plaguing low-income patients and frees them from having to pay. (Yuki Noguchi, NPR News, 8/20 )

On the Wisconsin-Illinois Border: Clinics in Neighboring States Team Up on Abortion Care

When Roe v. Wade was overturned, Wisconsin banned nearly all abortions. To preserve access, now more than a dozen providers are traveling across the border into Illinois to treat patients. This partnership between Planned Parenthood organizations could be a model as dozens of abortion clinics close across the U.S. (Kristen Schorsch, WBEZ Chicago, 8/20 )

Biden Signs Drug Pricing, ACA Premiums Measures Into Law

The White House held the signing ceremony Tuesday for the Inflation Reduction Act. News reports examine details of the health care provisions included in the massive $700 billion economic package.

The Hill: Biden To Sign Health And Climate Bill On Tuesday  President Biden will sign into law the sweeping climate, health care and tax legislation that has been Democrats’ priority for more than a year during a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday.  The signing will represent a major milestone for Biden and his domestic economic agenda. The prospects of his climate proposal appeared hopeless a month ago but were dramatically revived in an agreement between Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) at the end of July. (Chalfant, 8/15)

AP: Biden To Sign Massive Climate, Health Care Legislation Biden is set to sign the bill during a small ceremony in the State Dining Room of the White House, sandwiched between his return from a six-day beachside vacation in South Carolina and his departure for his home in Wilmington, Delaware. He plans to hold a larger “celebration” for the legislation on Sept. 6 once lawmakers return to Washington. (Miller, 8/16)

More details on what's in the bill —

Fierce Healthcare: Here Are 4 Key Health Policy Items In The Inflation Reduction Act  The bill expands who can qualify under the Low-Income Subsidy Program that helps meet Part D cost-sharing burdens like deductibles. Currently, a beneficiary qualifies for the program if they earn up to 135% of the federal poverty level and get partial benefits for 135% to 150% of the level. The law would expand full benefits to those who earn between 135% and 150%, according to an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation. (King, 8/15)

Forbes: Five Truths About How The Inflation Reduction Act Will Help Small Business And Working Families The Inflation Reduction Act expands Medicare benefits by capping out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000 and allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for 100 drugs that it selects. It also sets provisions that save the average Affordable Care Act enrollee $800 a year in the marketplace. Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said he believed the measure would spur innovation, by “encouraging investment in important new products rather than encouraging pharmaceutical companies to try to keep pushing the same product and delaying generic entry as long as possible.” (Buttle, 8/15)

SHRM.org: Inflation Reduction Act's Health Care Provisions Could Affect Employers With the expansion of enhanced premium tax credit subsidies until 2025, it becomes more likely that the higher subsidies will eventually be made permanent, health care policy experts say. One consequence could be to make ACA marketplace plans a more appealing health care option for employers, who could opt to forgo group health plans and meet the ACA's coverage requirements by funding individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements (ICHRAs), which allow employees to purchase their own coverage on ACA exchanges. (Miller, 8/16)

Yahoo Finance: The Inflation Reduction Act Will Not 'Fix American Health Care': GoodRx CEO The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which now sitting on President Joe Biden’s desk, will soon mark a milestone in the battle to lower drug pricing in the U.S., though it is still nowhere near widespread cost control for the entire population. GoodRx (GDRX) co-CEO Doug Hirsch, whose company aims to find the best prices for generics as well as for some brand drugs, says that’s why his company is under no immediate threat from the IRA. (Khemlani, 8/15)

Moderna's Covid Bivalent Booster Approved In UK; Will The US Be Next?

Great Britain is the first nation to authorize use of a dual vaccine, reformulated for both the original virus and the omicron variant. The version approved in the U.K., which targets the subvariant BA.1, differs from the one expected to be used in the U.S. this fall, which targets BA.4 and BA.5.

CNBC: UK Becomes First Country To Approve Moderna's Dual Covid-19 Vaccine Britain on Monday became the first country in the world to approve a dual Covid-19 vaccine, which tackles both the original virus and the newer omicron variant. The updated Moderna vaccine — known as a bivalent because it targets two variants — is expected to be available to adults as a booster jab from the fall after receiving the go-ahead from the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on Monday. (Gilchrist, 8/15)

The Hill: UK Becomes First Country To Approve Updated Moderna Vaccine Targeting Omicron  The United States is also working on updated vaccines for a possible fall booster campaign, though the shots might be slightly different. The vaccine approved by the U.K. targets the first version of the omicron variant, known as BA.1, while the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has instructed vaccine makers to target the more recent subvariants of omicron, known as BA.4 and BA.5.  (Sullivan, 8/15)

The New York Times: U.K. Approves Covid Booster Vaccine That Targets Two Variants In the United States, Moderna said in late July that the government had secured 66 million doses of a vaccine it was developing that targets the virus that circulated in 2020 and the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants. The Biden administration expects to begin a Covid-19 booster campaign next month with updated vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna targeting new variants, according to people familiar with the deliberations. (Gross, 8/15)

In other covid vaccine developments —

Reuters: Novavax Seeks U.S. Authorization For COVID Vaccine Booster  Novavax Inc said on Monday it had filed for U.S. authorization for use of its COVID-19 vaccine as a booster dose in people who had either received its shots or a different vaccine. ... [Novavax] is a protein-based vaccine that uses purified pieces of the virus to spur an immune response, a technology that has been used to combat diseases including hepatitis B and influenza. (8/15)

The Boston Globe: 100-Year-Old Tuberculosis Vaccine May Protect Against COVID A small study from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital suggests that a widely used, 100-year-old vaccine for tuberculosis also may offer protection from COVID-19. The findings, published in Cell Reports Medicine on Monday and conducted in volunteers with type 1 diabetes, found that the BCG (Bacillus Calmette-Guerin) vaccine was 92 percent effective versus a placebo in protecting against infections. (Bartlett, 8/15)

And in news from Pfizer —

USA Today: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla Tests Positive For COVID-19, Takes Paxlovid Pfizer's CEO tested positive for COVID-19 and is experiencing "very mild symptoms," he announced Monday. "I would like to inform the public that I have tested positive for COVID-19," the biopharmaceutical company's chairman and CEO, Albert Bourla, said in a statement. (Naysa Alund, 9/15)

Mask Mandates Cover Some, Relax Elsewhere. Science Shows Masks Work.

In Massachusetts there's no school mask mandate, except in health offices, nor covid testing requirements. But in Philadelphia, the school district is mandating masks for everyone for the first 10 days. Other news outlets report school covid cases are expected to rise.

The Boston Globe: Schools Move Away From Masks As Studies Suggest They Are Effective Heading into a third fall of living with COVID-19, many schools and colleges are ditching mask mandates and telling students that face coverings are optional. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education on Monday made it official, releasing fall guidelines that informed families “there is no longer any statewide masking mandate in schools (other than school health offices) and there is no testing requirement for schools.” (Lazar, 8/15)

Fox News: Philadelphia School District Mandates Masks For First 10 Days Of School Year, Pre-K Must Mask Up All Year The School District of Philadelphia is mandating that students and staff wear masks for the first 10 days of the school year, and is requiring that pre-kindergarten attendees mask-up all year. Officials from the school district and city made the announcement in a letter to parents on Friday, stating that after the first 10 days of the school year, from Aug. 29 through Sept. 9, most schools will go mask-optional. (Sabes, 8/12)

Oklahoman: Oklahoma Docs Expect COVID Cases To Rise As Students Return To School As Oklahoma children head back to school, COVID-19 cases are likely to rise, experts said. But families can take precautions to help their kids stay well and stay in the classroom. Experts’ advice looks much like it has during the course of the pandemic: Get vaccinated, mask up and stay home when you’re ill. (Branham, 8/15)

AP: WVa Providing Free COVID Tests, Vaccines At Schools  West Virginia’s health agency has bought 16 vans to provide free COVID-19 testing and vaccines at school and community events, officials said. ... Schools that are interested in having a van come to an event should contact their local health department, the statement said. (8/16)

In other news about the spread of covid —

Stat: It's Going To Be A Complicated Fall For Covid And Flu Vaccinations For the health officials who steer vaccination campaigns, it’s going to be a complicated fall. (Joseph, 8/16)

AP: NC Governor Signs Order Officially Ending COVID-19 Emergency  North Carolina’s state of emergency giving extraordinary powers to state government to address the COVID-19 pandemic is ending Monday as Gov. Roy Cooper officially concluded it nearly 2 1/2 years after he entered his first order. (Robertson, 8/15)

AP: Defense Secretary Austin Positive For COVID For Second Time Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Monday he has tested positive for COVID-19, is experiencing mild symptoms and will quarantine at home. It’s the second time Austin has gotten the coronavirus. In a statement, Austin, 69, said he is fully vaccinated and has received two boosters. He said he’ll quarantine for the next five days in accordance with CDC guidelines and “will retain all authorities and plan to maintain my normal work schedule virtually from home.” (8/15)

Judge Rules He Had No Authority To Block Georgia's Abortion Ban

A state judge had been asked to issue a preliminary injunction to block Georgia's strict anti-abortion law. In West Virginia Governor Jim Justice is said to have "scoffed" at the idea voters should decide if abortion should be legal in the state. Other abortion-related news is also reported.

AP: Judge Refuses To Immediately Block Georgia Abortion Ban A state judge refused Monday to immediately stop enforcement of Georgia’s restrictive abortion law, which took effect last month and bans most abortions once fetal cardiac activity is present. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled he did not have the authority to issue a preliminary injunction and block the law at this stage of the lawsuit. (8/15)

In abortion updates from Idaho and West Virginia —

AP: Judge: Legislature Can Intervene A Little In Abortion Case  A federal judge says the Idaho Legislature can intervene in the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit targeting Idaho’s total abortion ban, but only to present evidence about emergency abortions performed in Medicaid-funded emergency rooms. In the written ruling handed down Saturday, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill said the Legislature’s interests are already well-represented by the Idaho Attorney General’s office and Gov. Brad Little, so there’s no legitimate reason to add another party to the lawsuit. (Boone, 8/15)

AP: WVa Governor: Voters Shouldn't Decide Abortion Access Issue  West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice scoffed Monday at a suggestion by Democratic lawmakers to let voters decide whether abortion should continue to be allowed in the state. The Republican governor said the state’s abortion law falls under the scrutiny of the Legislature and the attorney general. (Raby, 8/15)

More are seeking out sterilization —

The Washington Post: Post-Roe, More Americans Want Their Tubes Tied. It Isn’t Easy Frances Vermillion showed up to their consultation for a tubal ligation prepared for the worst. Expecting resistance from their gynecologist, the 24-year-old from Ames, Iowa, carefully assembled a binder containing information about sterilization, including their reasons for wanting to get their tubes tied. When they arrived at the initial consultation in late July, Vermillion said their doctor “didn’t even look at the binder” and instead pressed them on why they wanted the procedure, suggesting they were too young and might change their mind later. (Venkataramanan, 8/15)

KUER 90.1: In A Post-Roe World, These Utah Women Are Considering Sterilization As A Form Of Protection Sara Reyes, 36, knows she doesn’t want kids. For her, the choice was settled years ago, but then Roe v. Wade was overturned and Utah attempted to implement its trigger law. While the abortion ban remains held up in litigation, Reyes, who gets the Depo-Provera shot for birth control, said she’s scared that the Supreme Court will come after contraceptives next. (Martinez, 8/15)

On medical training and clinic work —

Reuters: Abortion Bans Limit Training Options For Some Future U.S. Physicians University of Oklahoma medical student Ian Peake spent four years shadowing doctors at a Tulsa abortion clinic because his school didn't offer courses on abortion or provide any training. But the Tulsa Women's Clinic stopped abortion services in May when Oklahoma enacted a near-total ban, and the provider closed for good after the U.S. Supreme Court ended constitutional abortion protections in June. Peake, 33, now had no local options to learn about abortion. (Horowitch, 8/15)

The CT Mirror: With CT Safe Harbor Law Passed, Clinicians Train To Perform Abortion On a recent weekday, a nurse midwife and an advanced practice registered nurse at Planned Parenthood of Southern New England sat hunched over two papayas on a medical table. (Carlesso, 8/16)

KHN: On The Wisconsin-Illinois Border: Clinics In Neighboring States Team Up On Abortion Care Around two days a week, Natalee Hartwig leaves her home in Madison, Wisconsin, before her son wakes up to travel across the border into Illinois. “Luckily it’s summer,” said Hartwig, a nurse midwife at Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. “For now, he can sleep in. But any getting ready that has to happen will be on my spouse.” She drives at least two hours each way, immersed in audiobooks and podcasts as she heads back and forth from a clinic in this northern Illinois suburb. She spends her days in the recovery room, caring for patients who have had abortions and checking their vitals before they go home. (Schorsch, 8/16)

Presurgical pregnancy testing becomes more complicated —

Stat: Once Routine, Pre-Surgical Pregnancy Testing Now Is Anything But  Monica da Silva, a critical care and cardiac anesthesiologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, was counseling a patient who had been in a car accident. Just before they headed to the operating room, however, the patient’s pregnancy test came back unexpectedly positive. (Pasricha, 8/16)

Special Report: Pregnant But Unequal

This four-part USA Today project examines the lack of maternal health care in America's rural communities of color.

USA Today: In Rural America, Maternal Health Care Is Vanishing. These Moms Are Most At Risk Five months into her pregnancy, Christine Daniels felt her blood pressure surge. Her head ached, and the skin on her feet stretched and cracked open. Her legs felt so heavy, she could hardly walk to her mom's apartment around the corner. Help was far away. In her rural north Florida town, there is no hospital. No emergency room or urgent care center. No maternal health care of any kind. Daniels, 33, had to drive about 70 miles round trip every other week for her prenatal appointments, and to deliver her baby.  (Hassanein, 8/11)

USA Today: Indigenous People Are Promised Health Care. For Rural Moms, It's An Empty One On Christmas night at her family’s home on the Yankton Sioux Reservation, Markita McBride felt a sudden exhaustion wash over her. She lay down to rest, then stumbled into the bathroom, where she found herself soaked in blood. Seven months pregnant, McBride was hemorrhaging. The clots were so big she thought she was miscarrying. Seeing the blood on her bed and the floor, her brother and sister broke the bathroom door open to find McBride in shock. (Hassanein, 8/11)

USA Today: Inequities In Maternal Health Care Access Are Not New. They Have Deep Roots In History Several years ago, a group of five Black grandmothers in rural Alabama went to the office of their congresswoman U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell. They had a simple question: Why did their daughters have to travel so far to have their babies? Maternity wards at the hospitals where they lived were shutting down, and moms weren’t getting prenatal care. (Hassanein, 8/11)

USA Today: Maternal Mortality Rates Are Higher For Rural Women Of Color. Data, Charts, And Maps Show The Disparity Many pregnant people live miles from a hospital with obstetric care. For women of color in particular, this can prove fatal. (Haseman, Borresen, Hassanein and Caruso, 8/11)

USA Today: Nurses Of Color Await Action After American Nurses Association Apology In a recent statement, the American Nurses Association apologized to nurses of color, saying in the coming months it will launch a multi-phase project of “accountability, healing, and reconciliation. ”The “racial reckoning” statement is a “starting point for an overdue journey toward the future. "ANA intends to take full accountability for its actions,” the association wrote, promising “historic action.” (Hassanein, 8/16)

Officials Able To Distribute Twice As Many Monkeypox Shots As Planned

The Department of Health and Human Services planned to distribute 221,000 more doses as of Monday, but the shift in strategy allowing more shots per vial means 442,000 shots are available. Media outlets report on other monkeypox matters, including misinformation.

AP: US Offers More Monkeypox Vaccine To States And Cities U.S. officials said they are able to ship out more monkeypox vaccine doses than previously planned — because of a strategy shift that allows more shots to be drawn from each vial. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had previously anticipated allowing 221,000 doses to be ordered starting Monday. But officials said they would release 442,000 doses for order by state, local and territorial health departments. (Stobbe, 8/15)

Axios: States Are Unhappy With How The Feds Are Handling Monkeypox The Biden administration is facing increasing criticism from frustrated state health officials over a troubled system for distributing monkeypox vaccines that's slowing their ability to quickly reach patients. (Reed and Dreher, 8/16)

Stat: Immunization Leader Lays Bare Challenges Facing The Monkeypox Response In the United States, the circumstances around monkeypox vaccine are a good news, bad news kind of story. (Branswell, 8/15)

Vanity Fair: “A ‘Hunger Games’ Contest”: How Unforced Errors Hobbled America’s Monkeypox Response The first diagnosed case of monkeypox in the US, on May 18, did not seem like a major cause for alarm. Unlike the virus that causes COVID-19, monkeypox was not novel, not airborne, and rarely fatal. In fact, the US government already possessed a robust arsenal of tools that could be used to combat it. In 2003 the US government began developing a detailed response plan for smallpox, a far more lethal virus that belongs to the same family as monkeypox. The plan, which over two decades grew to fill 333 pages, offered a playbook for how to mount an effective response to such pathogens. (Eban, 8/16)

NBC News: Monkeypox Misinformation Spreading Faster Than The Virus, Experts Say In interviews with NBC News, epidemiologists and infectious disease experts dispelled some of the most common misconceptions, including whether the virus spreads easily through the air, that cases among women and children are being undercounted, and that health care workers are at high risk. (Ryan, 8/15)

The 19th: Monkeypox: Experts Debunk 11 Myths And Misconceptions Can monkeypox spread on the subway? Can it kill like COVID-19? Is it transmitted through sex? Misconceptions, myths and a lack of public knowledge on the monkeypox virus are widespread. (Rummler, 8/15)

Fox News: Why Some Communities Are Distrustful Of Doctors And Public Health Efforts As the latest updates on COVID-19, the monkeypox virus, polio and other health concerns and issues continue to circulate, one doctor pointed out that health care is very much like a product. Dr. Alexander Salerno, an internist in New Jersey, told Fox News Digital, "If you don't trust the seller or the product, why would you buy it?" Salerno works at Salerno Medical Associates, a family-run, second-generation practice that serves East Orange and Newark. (Sudhakar, 8/15)

More on the spread of monkeypox —

ABC News: 7th Child In US Tests Positive For Monkeypox A child in Martin County, Florida, has tested positive for monkeypox, state health data shows. Across the U.S., at least seven children have now tested positive for monkeypox. The child in Florida is between the ages of 0 and 4 years old, according to the state health data. (Mitropoulos, 8/16)

PBS NewsHour: The COVID Lessons The U.S. Still Needs To Learn To Tackle Monkeypox “Without even finishing the COVID pandemic, we’re already facing monkeypox,” said Dr. Caitlin Rivers, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Health Security and a founding member of the CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics. (Santhanam, 8/15)

Zika Simmers On Back Burner As World Copes With String Of Viral Menaces

A frightening outbreak of the mosquito-borne illness in 2015 and 2016 left many children around the world with devastating brain damage. The New York Times reports on how families and researchers are struggling to find a cure as attention dried up in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic.

The New York Times: The Forgotten Virus: Zika Families And Researchers Struggle For Support A procession of mothers pushed children in bulky wheelchairs down a long corridor at a health center in this northeastern Brazilian city, passing patients who glanced at the children, looked away, then looked back, quickly and uneasily. ... Most Brazilians know as soon as they see them: These are Zika babies, whose mothers were infected with the virus while pregnant during a virulent outbreak of the mosquito-borne illness in 2015 and 2016. The chief signifier at birth was microcephaly, unusually small heads that hinted at the devastating brain damage the virus caused while they were still in utero. (Nolen, 8/16)

Science: Zika, Dengue Viruses Make Victims Smell Better To Mosquitoes The viruses that cause Zika and dengue fever can’t get from person to person on their own—they need to hitchhike inside a mosquito. A new study suggests how they hail these rides: They make their victims smell more attractive to the blood-sucking bugs. It’s "a big advance," says mosquito neuroscientist Laura Duvall of Columbia University, who wasn't connected to the research. The work shows that "infection with these mosquito-borne viruses can alter the way some people smell … to make them more likely to be bitten." (Leslie, 6/30)

ScienceDaily: New Smartphone Clip-On Can Detect Zika Virus In Blood Samples  In a new study, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have combined their efforts to develop an instrument that can be clipped on to a smartphone to rapidly test for Zika virus in a single droplet of blood. (7/29)

Simple Flying: Aircraft Insecticide: Why Certain Plane Cabins Are Sprayed Before Departure Have you ever wondered why the cabin crew sometimes walk down the plane aisle, spraying a mysterious liquid in the air before departure? The reason why is that some countries require aircraft cabins to be sprayed with pesticides to kill insects and stop the spread of diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and Zika. This can occur either before the flight takes off or while the plane is airborne. Another method is to spray the aircraft and wipe down surfaces while no passengers are on the plane. This method is the most effective and has been seen to kill insects for up to eight weeks. (Finlay, 8/14)

La Jolla Institute For Immunology: The Life Of A Scientist Studying Zika And Dengue As a member of the Shresta Lab, Julia Timis is working to guide vaccine design by shedding light on the human immune response to flaviviruses, the viral family that includes dengue virus, Zika virus, yellow fever virus, and Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV). (McCurry-Schmidt, 8/28)

2,000 Kaiser Permanente Mental Health Workers Strike

The open-ended strike began yesterday over staffing shortages. Modern Healthcare notes no further bargaining sessions are scheduled. (Kaiser Permanente is not affiliated with KHN.) Staffing in New York hospitals, an activist investor stake in Cardinal Health, and more are also reported in health industry news.

AP: Kaiser Permanente Mental Health Workers Go On Strike Over Staffing  Nearly 2,000 Kaiser Permanente psychologists, therapists, social workers and other mental health workers in Northern California began an open-ended strike Monday over staffing shortages that their union said have led patients to wait for months to get help. The National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents the workers, is negotiating a new contract with the Oakland-based health giant. It said the strike is to demand Kaiser hire more mental health workers to ease the burden put on the current staff. (Rodriguez, 8/15)

Modern Healthcare: Kaiser Permanente Mental Health Workers On Strike No further bargaining sessions are scheduled, according to Kaiser Permanente spokesperson Steve Shivinsky. “Kaiser Permanente has made it known we are prepared to meet with the union at any time and will continue bargaining in good faith. Our goal is to reach a fair and equitable agreement and bring this strike and our negotiations to a conclusion,” he wrote in an email. (Christ, 8/15)

In other news about health care workers —

Crain's New York Business: New York Hospitals, Healthcare Workers Reach Few Agreements On Staffing Levels Hospitals across New York largely failed to reach consensus with nurses and ancillary-service workers in their final clinical staffing plans submitted to the state Department of Health, union members said. (Kaufman, 8/15)

More developments from the health care industry —

Bloomberg: Activist Elliott Takes Large Stake In Cardinal Health, Dow Jones Reports Elliott Management Corp., the activist investor firm, has taken a large position in drug distributor Cardinal Health Inc. and is seeking seats on the company’s board, Dow Jones reported, citing people familiar with the matter. (Lauerman, 8/15)

Billings Gazette: Montana Hospitals Facing Unprecedented Financial Crisis Record high hospitalizations during surges of COVID-19 infections led to burnout among nurses and front-line workers, resulting in an exodus from the field. To backfill, hospital administrators have turned to traveling or contracted staff, whose wages, agency fees and housing cost at least three times more than the wages of permanent employees. (Schabacker, 8/14)

Axios: Few Cancer Centers Have Price Transparency Less than a third of the 63 National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers in the U.S. are fully complying with federal price transparency rules, according to an analysis in JAMA Surgery. (Reed, 8/15)

KHN: Buy And Bust: Collapse Of Private Equity-Backed Rural Hospitals Mired Employees In Medical Bills  The first unexpected bill arrived in December, just weeks before Tara Lovell’s husband of 40 years died from bladder cancer. Lovell worked as an ultrasound technologist at the local Audrain Community Hospital, in Mexico, Missouri, and was paying more than $400 a month for health insurance through her job. The town’s struggling hospital, the sole health care provider and major employer, had changed ownership in recent years, selling in March 2021 to Noble Health, a private equity-backed startup whose managers had never run a hospital. (Tribble, 8/16)

KHN: After Wiping Out $6.7 Billion In Medical Debt, This Nonprofit Is Just Getting Started Soon after giving birth to a daughter two months premature, Terri Logan received a bill from the hospital. She recoiled from the string of numbers separated by commas. Logan, who was a high school math teacher in Georgia, shoved it aside and ignored subsequent bills. She was a single mom who knew she had no way to pay. “I avoided it like the plague,” she said, but avoidance didn’t keep the bills out of mind. (Noguchi, 8/16)

Strangling Hazard Forces Baby Swing, Rocker Recall

Over 2 million infant swings have been recalled after the Consumer Product Safety Commission determined the straps were a tangling and strangling hazard. Meanwhile, nearly 6,000 cartons of Wild Cherry Capri Sun have been recalled over a cleaning solution contamination.

Newsweek: Millions Of Baby Swings, Rockers Recalled After Child Strangled And Killed More than 2 million infant swings have been recalled for "entanglement and strangulation hazards" after one child died and another was injured. The 4moms MamaRoo Baby Swing and RockaRoo Baby Rocker were recalled Monday because the dangling restraint strap pose a strangulation hazard to crawling infants, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). (Giella, 8/15)

And check your child's lunchbox for these recalled drinks —

USA Today: Capri Sun Recalled: Cleaning Solution Contamination Prompts Recall Kraft Heinz issued a voluntary recall of more than 5,700 cartons of Wild Cherry flavored Capri Sun drinks that were contaminated with cleaning solution used on food processing equipment, the company announced in a statement Friday. (Mayorquin, 8/15)

In other health and wellness news —

Bloomberg: Eating Disorder Crisis Plaguing Americans On Government-Funded Insurance The pandemic exacerbated many mental health problems, and eating disorders are no exception: Emergency room visits for girls suffering from anorexia and bulimia were twice as high in January of this year as they were three years earlier. (Muller, 8/15)

The New York Times: What Types Of Exercise Do You Need To Reduce Dementia Risk?  Three major long-term studies released in recent months have attempted to characterize the types, intensities and durations of physical activity that confer the most overall protection against dementia. These studies, which followed thousands, and even hundreds of thousands, of people for years at a time, confirm that regular physical activity, in many forms, plays a substantial role in decreasing the risk of developing dementia. (Fairbank, 8/15)

Chicago Tribune: Recovered Quadriplegic To Swim From Alcatraz To San Francisco From the beach where he swims on Lake Michigan, Rob Heitz can point out the green facade of the rehabilitation hospital where he began his recovery journey after being paralyzed from the neck down 19 years ago. (Perez, 8/15)

The Washington Post: In A World First, Scotland Offers Tampons And Pads For Free Scotland is offering tampons and other period products free to anyone who needs them — the first nation in the world to do so — as part of a push to end “period poverty.” From this week, menstrual products will be available free in public spaces such as community centers, pharmacies and youth clubs, in line with legislation initially approved by lawmakers in 2020. (Pannett, 8/16)

Free School Meals Have Ended For Many, But Not In California

A report in the Los Angeles Times details the provisions put in place to ensure free school meals are accessible to all students. In other news, a potential 20%-plus rate increase in Connecticut's insurance rates, leaded aviation gas, a boil water advisory in Michigan and more.

Los Angeles Times: Free For All California Students: At Least Two Meals A Day California is the first state to enact free school meals for students served by public school districts, county offices of education and charter schools, whether or not they’re eligible for the National School Lunch Program’s free or reduced-price meals. The state started a universal meal effort last year, with the federal government picking up most of the tab ... (Garcia and Healey, 8/15)

The CT Mirror: CT Insurance Department Pressed To Reject Double-Digit Rate Increases Mike Smith counts himself as lucky. When, at 21, he discovered a golf ball-sized tumor on his neck, he had health coverage and a support system to back him up. (Carlesso, 8/15)

The CT Mirror: Why This CT Town Rejected A Mental Health Center At Its High School When the small northeastern Connecticut community of Killingly was presented a proposal earlier this year for a grant-funded, school-based mental health center, the local board of education said no. (Monk, 8/15)

In environmental health news from Colorado, Michigan, and Texas —

Colorado Community Media: Doctors Ask Jefferson County Officials To Take Action On Leaded Aviation Gas A group of doctors sent Jefferson County commissioners a letter and a petition signed by 35 health care professionals asking the elected officials to act on leaded fuel at the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport. (Zarzecki, 8/15)

Detroit Free Press: Boil Water Advisory To Continue For 2 Weeks As Repairs Begin Seven communities, approximately 133,000 people, will remain under a boil water advisory for two weeks while the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA) investigates what caused the Saturday morning break. A new section of the 120-inch pipe arrived Monday, beginning the repair process that's anticipated to take a week to complete. (Marini, 8/15)

Houston Chronicle: Contaminated Fifth Ward Rail Yard Linked To Dangerous Toxic Waste Fifth Ward and Kashmere Gardens residents have been fighting for years to get hazardous creosote chemicals cleaned up from the ground and groundwater around their homes. But creosote might not have been the only harmful substance that workers used at the rail yard in the neighborhood, and it might not have been the most dangerous. (Foxhall, 8/15)

Viewpoints: Polio Is Back, Thanks To Low Vaccination Rates; We Are Failing To Control Monkeypox

Editorial writers weigh in on polio, monkeypox, vaccines, and more.

CNN: How A Virus Seemingly Returned From The Dead Polio is a vaccine preventable disease and these latest developments should be a warning to us all. Unfortunately, places like Rockland County have an incredibly low polio vaccination rate; 60.5% of two-year-olds are vaccinated compared with the statewide average of 79.1%. (Syra Madad, 8/15)

The Boston Globe: The US Response To Monkeypox Has Not Worked. Here’s How To Fix It.  Surprisingly, public health officials and political leaders have responded to monkeypox by repeating nearly every mistake they made in 2020 with COVID-19: limited access to testing, inefficient management of vaccines, administrative roadblocks to accessing treatment, and poor communication with the public. (Sean Cahill and Kenneth H. Mayer, 8/15)

USA Today: WHO And World Leaders: How We're Building Better, More Equitable Vaccine Systems Inequity has plagued the responses to harmful pathogens. Take COVID-19: An unprecedented 12.45 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide in the last 18 months, helping many countries turn the tide on the pandemic. Yet three-quarters of people in Africa have not received one dose. As long as this gap exists, we can’t protect the world against new virus variants and end the acute stage of this pandemic. (Paul Kagame, Emmanuel Macron, Cyril Ramaphosa, Macky Sall, Olaf Scholz and Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, 8/16)

Modern Healthcare: Health Systems Can Use Their ‘Unique Voice’ To Lead Conversations On Social Determinants Plenty of conversations are underway in the healthcare industry’s boardrooms and executive offices about issues that have been brought into sharper focus and the opportunities to do better. Social determinants of health—understanding them, coming to grips with decades of miscommunication and prejudice about them, and addressing them—are certainly high on the list of topics to tackle. (Mary Ellen Podmolik, 8/16)

Stat: FDA's Office Of Neuroscience Isn't Helping People With ALS Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), as I have unfortunately come to learn, is a terrible disease with no cure. Some exciting treatments are on the horizon, but the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Neuroscience, which has the task of overseeing the development of new ALS drugs in the U.S., has repeatedly failed to take aggressive steps to greenlight these experimental therapies. (William G. Woods, 8/16)

The New York Times: I’m Going Blind. This Is What I Want You To See.  Ms. Shortt has retinitis pigmentosa, a disease that causes progressive loss of sight. She can see some things some of the time, depending on various factors, including the amount of ambient light, her distance from the object and the object’s location in her field of vision. (James Robinson, 8/16)

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