KFF HEALTH NEWS Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Friday, Feb 14 2025
CIDRAP: Ohio Announces Human H5N1 Avian Flu Case, State’s First
A man from Mercer County, Ohio, is that state’s first human case of H5N1 avian flu, according to the Ohio Department of Health (ODH). The man is a farm worker who was in contact with deceased commercial poultry. … Ohio is one of the epicenters of the US bird flu outbreak, with 54 outbreaks since the middle of January. The outbreaks have led to the loss of more than 10 million birds. (Soucheray, 2/13)
A proposal by the Trump administration to reduce the size of grants for institutions conducting medical research would have far-reaching effects, and not just for elite universities and the coastal states where many are located.Also at risk could be grants from the National Institutes of Health to numerous hospitals that conduct clinical research on major diseases, and to state universities across the country. North Carolina, Missouri and Pennsylvania could face disproportionate losses, because of the concentration of medical research in those states. (Badger, Bhatia, Cabreros, Murray, Paris, Sanger-Katz and Singer, 2/13)
Stat: Examining Options For U.S. Researchers Seeking Opportunities Abroad
The Trump administration’s early moves to restrict scientific studies and limit payments to universities and other institutions have stoked concerns that some academics may look to leave the U.S. The question is, where will they go? (Joseph, 2/14)
Modern Healthcare: House Budget Talks Heat Up Over Medicaid Cuts
Medicaid cuts emerged as an especially sensitive flash point Thursday during the first public debate over a House Republican plan to extend tax cuts and slash federal spending.
Republicans at a House Budget Committee markup insisted they only want to target waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, and defended themselves against Democratic assertions that GOP policies would hurt people and medical providers.
Democrats said harm is inevitable if Republicans want the Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare and Medicaid, to find $880 billion in budget cuts over the next decade. (McAuliff, 2/13)
Politico: Republicans May Find It Harder To Cut Medicaid Than They Think
Amid the chaos of President Donald Trump’s now-rescinded domestic funding freeze, Medicaid portals across the country went offline, which meant states couldn’t get their Medicaid dollars. It was something the administration said was never supposed to happen and which provoked public outrage and a bipartisan outcry.Now Republicans are considering whether and how to target Medicaid as part of their effort to defray the cost of massive tax cuts, the centerpiece of Trump’s legislative agenda. (Kenen, 2/13)
CNN: Bird Flu Infections Went Undetected In Veterinarians, CDC Study Shows
Blood testing of large-animal veterinarians suggests that H5N1 bird flu has spread more widely than US surveillance of the virus is capturing, according to a new study by federal and state disease detectives. The study comes as Ohio announced its first human case of H5N1 in a poultry worker who was hospitalized with respiratory symptoms but has since recovered. (Goodman, 2/13)
Politico: Key Bird Flu Lab Threatens To Strike As California Cases And Egg Prices Climb
Workers at a key lab for testing animal disease are threatening to go on strike, raising concerns about California’s ability to respond to the growing outbreak of bird flu that has sent the price of eggs soaring nationwide. Technicians at the California Animal Health and Food Safety Lab at the University of California, Davis, have been sounding the alarm for months, alleging staffing shortages and strains as their union has been in contentious negotiations with the University of California system. (Bluth, 2/13)
MedPage Today: Neurologic Complications Of Flu In Kids May Be Up This Year
Public health officials are looking into reports of a small potential uptick in neurologic complications of influenza in children — particularly a rapidly progressing and dangerous condition called acute necrotizing encephalopathy (ANE).Adrienne Randolph, MD, MSc, of Boston Children’s Hospital, said she reported about 12 potential cases of flu-associated ANE to CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) in the past few weeks. (Fiore, 2/13)
CIDRAP: Five Years Later, Americans Say Pandemic Drove Them Apart
A new Pew Research Center poll shows 72% of Americans said the pandemic did more to divide the country than bring it together, with 75% saying COVID-19 took a toll on their own lives. The poll was conducted in late October 2024 with 9,593 respondents.The poll suggests that, 5 years after the pandemic was officially declared in March 2020, the nation has not yet healed from the societal effects of the novel coronavirus, with Americans citing the once-in-decades event as an accelerator of the political divide between the left and the right, the distrust of government institutions, and the rise of disinformation. (Soucheray, 2/13)
CNN: Abortion Bans In US Led To More Births And Infant Deaths, Especially Among Vulnerable Groups
Abortion bans in the United States are exacerbating existing health disparities as births increase in high-risk populations and infant mortality rises disproportionately, new research suggests. (McPhillips, 2/13)
The 19th: Sen. Warren, Rep. Bonamici Introduce SAD Act To Regulate Anti-Abortion Centers
Democratic lawmakers are pushing for the federal government to better regulate anti-abortion centers, facilities that seek to dissuade people from terminating their pregnancies, The 19th is first to report. (Luthra, 2/13)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Missouri GOP Wants To Hike Tax Credit For Pregnancy Centers
Voters chose to protect abortion rights last year, and Missouri Republicans are now responding with multiple plans to boost pregnancy centers that discourage abortions. One proposal, which would increase the current 70% tax credit for donations to qualified pregnancy resource centers to 100%, is quickly emerging as a partisan flashpoint in the current legislative session. (Suntrup, 2/13)
The Hill: Texas Judge Fines NY Doctor For Prescribing Abortion Pills To Woman Near Dallas
A judge in Texas on Thursday fined a doctor from New York for prescribing abortion pills to a woman outside of Dallas in a ruling that could change the landscape of abortion law in Democratic states. Earlier Thursday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) rejected a request from Louisiana to extradite the same doctor, Maggie Carpenter, who was charged for prescribing a Louisiana pregnant minor abortion pills. (Irwin, 2/13)
Politico: Knives Are Out For Planned Parenthood. In All 3 Branches Of Government
Anti-abortion activists and their allies in government are hoping this is the year they finally take down Planned Parenthood by going after the federal funding that makes up more than a third of the organization’s budget — with efforts moving simultaneously through Congress, the courts and the executive branch. …The Supreme Court announced this week that it will hear arguments in April on South Carolina’s ability to strip Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood — a landmark case that could prompt dozens of GOP-controlled states to take a significant bite out of the organization’s finances. (Ollstein, 2/13)
Modern Healthcare: Cigna’s Customer Service Improvements May Inspire Other Insurers
Cigna’s new plan to bet big on customer service could be a blueprint for other health insurers to follow as the sector grapples with public discontent. The sweeping changes — at least on paper — to how Cigna interacts with its insurance members and Express Scripts pharmacy benefit manager customers could augur a new era for health insurance. (Berryman, 2/13)
Modern Healthcare: SSM Health-Inbound Health’s Home Care Program Shows Good Results
SSM Health hopes to expand home-based skilled nursing to other hospitals in its system after achieving good results from a program it launched last spring in Madison, Wisconsin. The St. Louis, Missouri-based health system launched the Recovery Care at Home program with technology company Inbound Health at St. Mary’s Hospital. The program provides nurse visits, therapy, durable medical equipment, infusion services, imaging and telehealth support to certain patients in their homes following a hospitalization. (Eastabrook, 2/13)
Modern Healthcare: Humana, Eastern Kentucky University Launch Partnership
Humana announced a partnership Thursday with Eastern Kentucky University to teach nursing students how to deliver healthcare in the home. Humana is contributing $75,000 to add a home studio lab within the university’s nursing simulation center, the Louisville, Kentucky-based company said in a news release. The studio will help student nurses learn how to provide care to patients in diverse settings and better assess social determinants of health. The partnership with the university expands Humana and its CenterWell division’s collaboration with approximately 50 nursing schools nationwide. (Eastabrook, 2/13)
Stat: Judge: Lawsuit Over UnitedHealth AI Care Denials In Medicare Advantage Can Move ForwardMedicare Advantage beneficiaries who are suing UnitedHealth Group over allegedly wrongful denials of care that were based on artificial intelligence scored a victory Thursday, as a judge ruled their case could move forward. (Herman, 2/13)
Modern Healthcare: GE HealthCare Doubles Down On AI-Enabled Medical Devices
GE HealthCare is leaning heavily into artificial intelligence, focusing on launching more AI-enabled medical devices and pursuing strategic acquisitions to advance its partnerships with health systems. The company added 27 Food and Drug Administration-approved AI-enabled medical devices to its portfolio since the end of 2023, a number that CEO Peter Arduini said was one of the highest in healthcare. (Dubinsky, 2/13)
MedPage Today: Meet The World’s Healthcare Billionaires
Six of the world’s 500 richest people are Americans who have reaped fortunes from healthcare — and two of them are physicians. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, only 32 people globally have become mega-rich from healthcare enterprises. The richest person to make their fortune in healthcare is Thomas Frist, Jr., MD, who alongside his father in the 1960s co-founded Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) Healthcare. (Robertson, 2/13)
Newsweek: Colorado Removes 500,000 People From Health Care Plan
More than a half-million people in Colorado have been disenrolled from their public health care, following the conclusion of policies that were put in place to safeguard public insurance coverage during the COVID-19 health emergency. Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) enrollment in Colorado has fallen from more than 1.7 million to less than 1.2 million between March 2023 and October 2024, according to health care research nonprofit the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). (Cameron, 2/14)
