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good morning. In case you missed it, on Friday my friend Bob Herman was treated to Joe Kernan on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to talk about his excellent new series “Out of Pocket, Out of Reach.” Mr. Kernan grilled Democrats and Obamacare, but Mr. Bob continued to make non-political comments. Truly professional!
Caregivers brace for pay cuts and possible homelessness
States are scrambling to cut their budgets in the face of a key provision of the Republican One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which would cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years. First of all, there’s the problem. This is a program that states are not required to cover under federal law. My colleague O. Rose Broderick pointed out that at least six states have cut or are cutting pay for family caregivers, often parents, of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Rose’s story reveals the truly devastating human toll of these cuts. Two mothers caring for disabled sons are now facing losing their homes. The needs of the children are so great that they cannot do anything other than take care of them.
“Either we’re going to endure this until our last day until we get kicked out of the house, or we’re going to put our son in an institution,” one mother told Rose, holding back tears.
A game changer for pancreatic cancer?
Organizers of a three-day pancreatic cancer conference in London didn’t plan for the event to revolve around promising new drugs, but that’s all everyone wanted to talk about, my colleague Andrew Joseph reports.
“This is one of those moments,” one oncologist said during a hastily added panel discussion about Revolution Medicine’s drug dalaxonelasib. She was referring to the drug’s surprising clinical results, which were first presented at a conference in Chicago in May. In a study of 500 people, patients who took the drug lived almost twice as long as those receiving standard chemotherapy.
The drug has not yet cleared regulatory review, but patients are already asking to get their hands on it. At the meeting, clinicians said they were preparing for the inevitable new strains. It will probably be expensive. Access will be uneven. There may be side effects, and your doctor may need to discuss their limitations. Read Andrew’s story.
Not taught in medical school
The Department of Health and Human Services recently convened a two-day meeting with dozens of mental health experts as it develops clinical guidance to wean patients off antidepressants, STAT Dream Team’s Lizzie Lawrence and Chelsea Siluzzo report.
The meeting was held after Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized overmedicalization using selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), which are commonly used to treat depression and anxiety. A senior HHS official told my colleagues that the upcoming guidance is not intended to discourage people from using SSRIs, but rather to help them understand what to expect and what they should know if they decide to stop taking SSRIs.
One participating clinician told my colleague that many physicians lack training in this area. “They say, ‘I wish I had information about this, but no one taught me this in medical school.'” … “So this guidance fills that gap.” Read more.
Another vaccine skeptic appointed to HHS
The country’s response to a public health crisis could soon be led by the co-founder of a consulting firm who has publicly questioned the safety of the vaccines and drugs that are typically at the center of such responses, my colleague Chelsea Siluzzo reports.
Sean Kaufman, the Trump administration’s nominee for assistant secretary for preparedness and response, is not the only senior HHS official to express skepticism about vaccines, despite efforts by White House officials to steer the discussion away from vaccine reform.
Chelsea tracked several social media posts in which Kaufman linked the hepatitis B vaccine to autism, questioned the safety of coronavirus vaccines and described the vaccine rollout as “reckless.” Kaufman still requires Senate confirmation and will be closely watching Senate Health Leader Bill Cassidy’s reaction during this week’s hearing. read more.
Is there a doctor on board?
Airlines have long relied on doctors willing to help fellow passengers when medical emergencies occur onboard, Dr. Sriman Swarup writes in a new First Opinion column. He would know. He personally responded to these requests. Doctors do so out of professional obligation, human decency and ethics in emergencies, he said.
But perhaps this multibillion-dollar industry relies too much on doctors’ altruism, Swarup speculates. In-flight emergencies have financial implications when a flight has to be changed, so we question the logic of outsourcing business matters to the customer’s professional ethics.
Swarup doesn’t think paying doctors is the answer, but he thinks airlines can come up with something between that and what they’re doing now, which is, well, nothing. Travel credit?Volunteer register? Food for thought.
what we are reading
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Parents’ obsession with mobile phone screens can lead to anxiety in children – study, Guardian
- How a Boston doctor built a following as a ‘loud and fearless’ voice in the Trump era, The Boston Globe
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Gas is cheap. Trump administration won’t say who’s paying for it, Politico
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They’re harvesting the nation’s food, but new rules could strip them of health insurance, KFF Health News
