Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.

KHN: As Opioids Mixed With Animal Tranquilizers Arrive In Kensington, So Do Alarming Health Challenges Many people living on the streets in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood — the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast — are in full-blown addiction, openly snorting, smoking, or injecting illicit drugs, hunched over crates or on stoops. Syringes litter sidewalks, and the stench of urine fouls the air. The neighborhood’s afflictions date to the early 1970s, when industry left and the drug trade took hold. With each new wave of drugs, the situation grows grimmer. Now, with the arrival of xylazine, a veterinary tranquilizer, new complications are burdening an already overtaxed system. (Harris Bond, 2/15)

KHN: Armed With Hashtags, These Activists Made Insulin Prices A Presidential Talking Point  Hannah Crabtree got active on Twitter in 2016 to find more people like herself: those with Type 1 diabetes who’d hacked their insulin pumps to automatically adjust the amount of insulin delivered. Soon, though, Crabtree found a more critical diabetes-related conversation happening on Twitter: rising insulin prices. (Sable-Smith, 2/15)

KHN: In California, Democrats Propose $25 Minimum Wage For Health Workers  Union-aligned Democrats were set to introduce legislation Wednesday mandating a statewide $25 minimum wage for health workers and support staffers, likely setting up a pitched battle with hospitals, nursing homes, and dialysis clinics. State Sen. María Elena Durazo’s bill would require health facilities and home health agencies to give raises to many support employees, including nurse technicians, housekeepers, security guards, food workers, and laundry providers. The Los Angeles Democrat said workers remain underpaid even as they have played a crucial role in the covid-19 pandemic. Now, she argued, many who earn close to the state’s $15.50 minimum wage struggle with inflation. (Young, 2/14)

KHN: Listen To The Latest ‘KHN Health Minute’  Tune in to the KHN Health Minute this week to hear how unusual changes in spending can be an early warning of dementia, and why the safest way to drive and use a phone in your car … is not to. (2/14)

Reuters: U.S. Proposes Medicare, Medicaid Programs To Cut Drug Costs, Including $2 Generics  The U.S. health department proposed on Tuesday three new pilot projects aimed at lowering prescription drug prices for people enrolled in government health insurance plans, including offering some essential generic drugs for $2 a month. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) said it would test the models in the Medicare health program for people age 65 or over and the disabled and the Medicaid program for the poor. (Aboulenein, 2/15)

Axios: The Administration's Next Crack At Lower Drug Prices The three programs focus on different classes of treatments and coverage. One would encourage Medicare prescription drug plans to offer a standardized set of about 150 generic drugs to patients for a maximum copayment of $2 per month. The list would target drugs for chronic conditions like hypertension. Another would give state Medicaid agencies the option to coordinate with manufacturers and other states to test new ways to pay for gene and cell therapies based on health outcomes. (Goldman and Owens, 2/15)

Stat: Biden Admin Pitches 3 Big New Drug Pricing Reform Experiments The new proposals are the result of an executive order President Biden signed last year directing the administration to develop demonstrations that would complement Democrats’ new drug pricing law. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services uses demonstrations to pilot test policy ideas, and if those policies work out, the agency can expand them into programs without the approval of Congress. The law Democrats passed last summer directs Medicare to negotiate drug prices, makes drug companies pay back Medicare when price hikes outstrip inflation, and caps seniors’ annual spending for retail drugs — but it will take years to fully implement. (Cohrs and Wilkerson, 2/14)

AP: 18% Drop Since 2020 In People With Reported Medical Debt  The number of people with medical debt on their credit reports fell by 8.2 million — or 17.9% — between 2020 and 2022, according to a report Tuesday from the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. White House officials said in a separate draft report that the two-year drop likely stems from their policies. Among the programs they say contributed to less debt was an expansion of the Obama-era healthcare law that added 4.2 million people with some form of health insurance. Also, local governments are leveraging $16 million in coronavirus relief funds to wipe out $1.5 billion worth of medical debt. (Boak, 2/14)

AP: Governments Target Medical Debt With COVID Relief Funds  Millions of Americans mired in medical debt face difficult financial decisions every day — pay the debt or pay for rent, utilities and groceries. Some may even skip necessary health care for fear of sinking deeper into debt. To address the problem, an increasing number of municipal, county and state governments are devising plans to spend federal coronavirus pandemic relief funds to eliminate residents’ medical debt and ease those debt burdens. (Pratt, 2/15)

The New York Times: Elementary School. High School. Now College. Michigan State Students Are No Strangers to Mass Shootings For a generation of young Americans, mass shootings at schools or colleges once considered sanctuaries for learning have become so painfully routine that some of them have lived through more than one by their early 20s. People a few years older grew up with active shooter drills. Their younger counterparts have become repeat survivors of traumatic violence. Even those who may not have lived through shootings themselves often know people who have. Being keenly aware of the possibility of gun violence has become a trademark of the generation of adults who grew up after the Columbine High School attack of 1999, which left 12 students and one teacher dead and reshaped how Americans viewed mass shootings. (Bosman, Lada, Tully and Mazzei, 2/14)

Detroit Free Press: Michigan State University Student: I Survived Sandy Hook, Now This Shooting More than a decade has passed since Jackie Matthews survived the Sandy Hook shooting, crouched down in her sixth grade class in a different school in the district as students were directed to shelter in place. The Michigan State University senior relived that moment on Monday night, she said in a TikTok video posted at 1 a.m. Tuesday. This time, Matthews said in the video that she was in a building directly across from where some of the shootings occurred at MSU."I am 21 years old and this is the second mass shooting that I have now lived through," she said. In the video, Matthews said she had crouched for so long in her classroom on Dec. 14, 2012, that she was injured in her lower back, an injury that flares up when she's in a stressful situation. That shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, left 26 people dead, 20 children and six adults. (Altavena, 2/14)

CNN: ‘Reliving Oxford All Over Again.’ Some MSU Students And Parents Endure Second Mass Shooting In 15 Months Some Michigan State University students who survived Monday’s mass shooting – and their parents – had already been through a similar, horrific experience. “I never expected in my lifetime to have to experience two school shootings,” Andrea Ferguson told CNN affiliate WDIV. “There’s several kids there that our daughter’s friends with that are going through the same thing.” Ferguson told the station her daughter and other classmates were also survivors of the November 30, 2021, shooting at Oxford High School, which is about 80 miles northeast of the MSU campus in East Lansing. (Sanchez, 2/14)

The Washington Post: MSU Shooter’s Motive Unknown; He Had Note Threatening N.J. Schools  Authorities on Tuesday said they still had no explanation for why a gunman opened fire on Michigan State University’s campus the previous night, killing three students, severely wounding five more and spreading terror across yet another school community shaken by an act of gun violence. Police said the gunman, whom they identified as 43-year-old Anthony Dwayne McRae, had no apparent connections to the university where he shot people in two campus buildings Monday night, setting off an hours-long manhunt that forced thousands to shelter in place. The gunman then shot and killed himself, police said, betraying no clear reason for targeting the school in East Lansing. (Khan, Berman, Bella and Brulliard, 2/14)

The Washington Post: Michigan Democrats Pushed For Stronger Gun Laws Before MSU Shooting  Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) chastised state lawmakers in her recent State of the State address for not taking action on gun-control laws after four students were killed in a mass killing at Oxford High School in November 2021.Just 19 days later, Whitmer choked back tears during a news conference Tuesday morning after a mass shooting in the state ended the lives of three Michigan State University students and wounded several more. (Itkowitz, 2/14)

Reuters: Federal Workers Not Entitled To COVID Hazard Pay -U.S. Appeals Court  A divided U.S. appeals court on Tuesday said federal workers are generally not entitled to extra pay for being exposed to COVID-19 through their jobs .In a 10-2 decision with potentially "far-reaching" ramifications, the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against 188 current and former correctional employees at a federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. (Stempel, 2/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: WHO Shelves Its Investigation Into Origins Of COVID-19 Pandemic The World Health Organization has quietly shelved the second phase of its investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic due to a lack of cooperation from the Chinese government. “Their hands are really tied,” Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, told the scientific journal Nature. Without access to China, researchers said it may be impossible to understand how the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 first infected people. (Vaziri, 2/14)

CIDRAP: COVID Antivirals Not Tied To Rebound Or Worse Outcomes  Rates of COVID-19 rebound were similar among hospitalized patients infected with the Omicron BA.2.2 variant who did and didn't receive oral antiviral drugs, and relapse wasn't tied to worse clinical outcomes, suggests a study published yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Rebound is a re-emergence of symptoms and an uptick in viral load after a period of recovery. The antiviral drug nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) was associated with COVID-19 rebound in some previous research, while some newer research has concluded that it is not unique to Paxlovid. (Van Beusekom, 2/14)

Los Angeles Times: What Happens To COVID Vaccines And Drugs After Health Emergency? On May 11, the central pillar of the country’s pandemic response — the declaration of a national emergency that began March 1, 2020 — will come down. But Americans will continue to have access to the vaccines, drugs and medical devices that were authorized for emergency use against COVID-19, so long as they remain sufficiently safe and effective in the view of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (Healy, 2/14)

AP: Tennessee Advances Bill To Narrowly Loosen Abortion Ban Tennessee’s GOP-dominant Statehouse on Tuesday took a first step toward loosening one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, advancing a narrow exemption bill over threats from anti-abortion advocates that doing so would come with political retribution. Tennessee currently has no explicit exemptions in its abortion ban. Instead the law includes an “affirmative defense” for doctors, meaning that the burden is on the physician to prove that an abortion was medically necessary, instead of requiring the state to prove the opposite. (Kruesi, 2/15)

AP: Post-Roe, Native Americans Face Even More Abortion Hurdles  A few months after South Dakota banned abortion last year, April Matson drove more than nine hours to take a friend to a Colorado clinic to get the procedure. The trip brought back difficult memories of Matson’s own abortion at the same clinic in 2016. The former grocery store worker and parent of two couldn’t afford a hotel and slept in a tent near a horse pasture — bleeding and in pain. Getting an abortion has long been extremely difficult for Native Americans like Matson. It has become even tougher since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. (Ungar and Hollingsworth, 2/14)

The Washington Post: Youngkin Opposes Effort To Shield Menstrual Data From Law Enforcement  The administration of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) helped defeat a bill this week to put menstrual data stored on period-tracking apps beyond the reach of law enforcement, blocking what supporters pitched as a basic privacy measure. Millions of women use mobile apps to track their cycles, a practice that has occasionally raised data-security worries because the apps are not bound by HIPAA, the federal health privacy law. (Vozzella and Schneider, 2/14)

Reuters: Judge Indicates Intention To Dismiss J&J Talc Unit Bankruptcy The bankruptcy case filed by Johnson & Johnson's (JNJ.N) subsidiary shouldering talc-related lawsuits will soon be dismissed unless a U.S appeals court agrees to reconsider its decision to nix the company's attempt to offload the litigation into Chapter 11 proceedings, a federal judge said on Tuesday. (Spector, 2/14)

Bloomberg: Zantac Cancer Risk Data Was Kept Quiet By Manufacturer Glaxo For 40 Years The small British company was sometimes called Glaxo University, because it conducted important pharmaceutical research that rarely resulted in profitable drugs. Then the scientists at Glaxo Laboratories created a molecule they called ranitidine, and in 1978 the company was granted a US patent. The molecule was new, but not novel. The scientists had, as scientists sometimes do, looked for a way to mimic the success of an established drug—in this case, one that healed ulcers and could be used to treat heartburn. (Edney, Berfield and Feeley, 2/15)

Modern Healthcare: CommonSpirit Health, AdventHealth End Centura Joint Venture CommonSpirit Health and AdventHealth will unwind their longtime Centura Health joint venture, with CommonSpirit taking control of most of the 20 hospitals. Then-Catholic Health Initiatives, which became Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health following its 2019 merger with Dignity Health, and AdventHealth formed Centura in 1996. The joint venture has reached its “natural maturity,” the health systems said in a news release. (Kacik, 2/14)

ABC News: Lawsuit Accuses Cedars-Sinai Hospital's Website Of Sharing Data With Meta, Google A lawsuit against Cedars-Sinai Health System and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles claims the hospitalshared patient data with third parties. Filed by plaintiff John Doe, the proposed class action lawsuit claims his and other patients' private information -- including data related to their medical inquiries -- was shared with marketing and social media platforms including Google, Microsoft Bing and Meta, the parent company of Facebook. (Kekatos, 2/15)

San Francisco Chronicle: UCSF Heart Transplant Surgery Done By All-Women Team Made History It was only at the end of the five-hour heart transplant that attending cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Amy Fiedler looked up from her patient and realized the significance of the moment. There was not a man in the operating room, including the person on the operating table. (Whiting, 2/14)

The New York Times: According To Medical Guidelines, Your Doctor Needs A 27-Hour Workday  The intent is admirable: Give doctors guidelines so they can be sure to cover what needs to be discussed with patients and help select options. Let’s talk about your diet and any problems you might have sleeping. Are you getting enough exercise? If not, here is some advice. You are due for colon cancer screening. Do you prefer a colonoscopy or a fecal test? Here are the pros and cons of each. But there is a problem. There are just not enough hours in a workday to discuss and act on all the guidelines. (Kolata, 2/14)

CBS News: New Male Birth Control Shows Promising Results In Lab Mice A new form of birth control for men is showing promising results in lab mice, rendering them "temporarily infertile" via a single injectable dose, according to a study published on Tuesday in the peer-reviewed medical journal Nature. (Mandler, 2/14)

USA Today: Average Penis Size Has Grown, May Impact Fertility: Stanford Study Studies of men from around the world show that the length of the erect penis has grown 24% over the last 30 years. That sounds like it would be good news but it concerns some male fertility experts. "The million-dollar question is why this would occur," said Dr. Michael Eisenberg, a urologist and male fertility specialist at Stanford Medicine, who led the research, published Tuesday in The World's Journal of Men's Health. Penile length may not be directly related to fertility, Eisenberg said, but anything that changes the reproductive system is fundamental to human existence and "something we should pay attention to and try to understand why." (Weintraub, 2/14)

The New York Times: Binge Drinking May Be Curbed With A Pill  Ever wake up regretting the last round of drinks from the previous night? There’s a medicine that might help. A recent study adds to the evidence that people who binge-drink may benefit from taking a dose of the medication naltrexone before consuming alcohol, a finding that may be welcomed now that alcohol-related deaths in the United States have surpassed 140,000 a year. (Alcorn, 2/14)

NPR: AAP's New Childhood Obesity Guidance Worries Eating Disorder Specialists Eating disorder treatment specialists are sounding the alarm over new guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics advising doctors to treat obesity earlier and more aggressively, which they say could lead to eating disorders.They say it focuses on weight loss and BMI rather than health, minimizes the risk of disordered eating and could perpetuate deep-rooted, damaging stigmas. (Radde, 2/15)

AP: Estimated 300,000 Oklahomans To Lose Medicaid Coverage Nearly one-quarter of Oklahomans receiving health care through Medicaid, about 300,000 people, will no longer be eligible by the end of this year, mostly because they or a parent earn too much to qualify, state health officials said Tuesday. (Murphy, 2/14)

AP: Idaho House Passes Ban On Gender-Affirming Medical Care  A bill criminalizing gender-affirming healthcare for minors overwhelmingly passed the Idaho House Thursday, despite warnings from opponents who said it would likely increase suicide rates among teens. The bill, which would subject physicians to felony charges if they provide puberty blockers, hormone treatment or gender-affirming surgeries to transgender youth under 18, is just one of several targeting Idaho’s LGBTQ+ residents this year. Proponents of the bill have acknowledged that gender-affirming surgeries on minors are not currently being performed in Idaho. (Boone, 2/15)

AP: Bill Would Ban Companies That Offer Trans Care From TennCare  The private companies that manage care for most of Tennessee’s Medicaid program could no longer contract with the state if they cover gender-transitioning medical care, according to a bill Republican lawmakers advanced Tuesday. The legislation is the latest proposal targeting transgender people that Tennessee lawmakers have introduced this year. It’s similar to bills seeking to limit or ban gender-affirming care being considered in statehouses across the country. (Kruesi, 2/15)

The New York Times: After Ohio Derailment And Chemical Spill, Health And Environmental Fears Grow As officials investigate the recent derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in eastern Ohio, concerns about the disaster’s effects on human health and the environment are growing, and experts warned that understanding the causes and consequences could require a more comprehensive investigation than what they have seen so far. (Zhong and Einhorn, 2/14)

The Washington Post: Drink Bottled Water, Officials Tell Ohio Town Hit By Toxic Train Crash Eleven days after a train derailed, spilling toxic chemicals and causing a massive fire here, officials told residents Tuesday to use bottled water until testing could confirm whether the local water supply was safe to drink — heightening concern among some locals who were already wary of returning to their homes. ... Along with wondering about their drinking water, many residents pondered their options as a strong odor of chemicals continued to hang over the town. Some locals said they are considering leaving East Palestine and are frustrated with how little they know about their potential exposure to toxic chemicals. (Keppler, McDaniel and Phillips, 2/14)

AP: Private Practice Doctor Appointed As Nebraska Medical Chief  Gov. Jim Pillen has selected a private practice doctor from Lincoln to serve at Nebraska’s next chief medical officer. Pillen announced Tuesday that he selected Dr. Timothy Tesmer, an ear, nose and throat specialist, to replace the former chief medical officer, Dr. Gary Anthone. Anthone left the post earlier this year when former Gov. Pete Ricketts’ term expired. Ricketts had appointed Anthone just weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic began in early 2020 that ushered in school and business closings and debates over public masking. (2/14)

The Wall Street Journal: The VA Program That Has Homelessness Down Among Veterans Nationwide, the homeless population has been slowly rising during the past few years, up more than 5% since 2017. But among veterans, the number has declined by more than 17% over that period, a drop advocates attribute to an aggressive and well-funded “housing first” policy. The approach is in full swing in a program that operates out of a nondescript brick building in an industrial area of Denver. Lauren Lapinski, a licensed clinical social worker with the Department of Veterans Affairs, arrived at Denver’s VA Community Resource and Referral Center before dawn one day earlier this month—after having been up late the night before canvassing strip malls and alleys as part of an annual homeless count. (Kesling, 2/14)

San Francisco Chronicle: Golden Gate Bridge Suicide Net Could Be Delayed By Lawsuit A long-anticipated Golden Gate Bridge suicide barrier, intended to catch jumpers in a web of marine-grade steel, is now mired in a lawsuit that could more than double its cost as construction falls further behind schedule. The contractors building the net sued the Bridge Highway and Transportation District in San Francisco Superior Court, claiming that design flaws, worker safety requirements and “extensive” deterioration of the span have raised the project cost from $142 million to $392 million. (Swan, 2/14)

CIDRAP: Chikungunya Outbreaks Intensify In The Americas  The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) yesterday issued an epidemiologic alert about elevated chikungunya activity in the Americas, which urged countries to prepare their healthcare systems to handle the medical management of it and other mosquito-borne diseases. (Schnirring, 2/14)

The Washington Post: Climate Change May Already Be Spreading Malaria Mosquitoes As temperatures rise, many tropical species once confined to the warmest parts of the globe are expected to climb to higher altitudes and creep farther from the equator. That already may be happening with mosquitoes carrying malaria, one of the world’s most devastating diseases and one that already kills more than 600,000 people a year. Evidence shows the insects are flapping their tiny wings to new locales in Africa, according to a new study. (Grandoni, 2/14)

Stat: Marburg Outbreak Spurs Race Against Time To Test Vaccines  A Marburg fever outbreak in Equatorial Guinea is galvanizing efforts to test drugs and vaccines for a virus that currently has none. But every day counts, warned experts who gathered virtually on Tuesday to try to chart a course for the work. (Branswell, 2/14)

AP: Polish Mother Of 7 Successfully Gives Birth To Quintuplets A Polish mother of seven has successfully given birth to premature quintuplets, hospital officials in southern Poland said Tuesday. The two boys and three girls were born through cesarean section Sunday, in the pregnancy’s 28th week, at the University Hospital in Krakow. Weighing between 710-1,400 grams (25-49 ounces,) they were all put in incubators and given breathing support, but doctors said they are all doing fine, given their premature birth. (2/14)

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