Presented by RealRxSolutionsforNY
Editor’s Note: This edition of New York Health Care is published weekdays at 10 a.m. POLITICO Pro New York subscribers hold exclusive early access to the newsletter each morning at 6 a.m. To learn more about POLITICO Pro New York’s comprehensive policy intelligence coverage, policy tools and services, click here.
Quick Fix
— Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said the chamber’s Democrats will likely push to address New York’s Medicaid shortfall by raising revenue instead of cutting health care spending or services in the new budget.
— Attorney General Tish James is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s decision in a case that she argued could prevent women from accessing safe, legal abortions.
— Gov. Andrew Cuomo is reminding New Yorkers that large group health insurance plans must cover in vitro fertilization prescription drugs and fertility preservation services come 2020.
Policy and Politics
MEDICAID SHORTFALL — POLITICO’s Shannon Young: With the Cuomo administration eyeing spending cuts and deferred payments to close the state’s $4 billion Medicaid hole, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said Tuesday that his chamber will likely prioritize raising revenue — not scaling back health care services — in the new fiscal year. Heastie told reporters that while New York “faces a deep problem here in terms of the Medicaid budget,” Assembly Democrats are committed to ensuring New Yorkers have access to “adequate health care.” “We would always rather raise revenue than cut,” he said after a morning caucus meeting. “We think that New York has some very generous people — and I’m saying that facetiously — that we would always like to call on them to do more in that regard instead of cutting health care or denying health care. It’s a very tough situation, but that’s usually where our heart is.”
— ICYMI: Albany lawmakers and health industry leaders are raising concerns about the effects of the unspecified reductions and the transparency around the Cuomo administration’s savings plan.
JAMES FILES SCOTUS BRIEF — Shannon reports: State Attorney General Tish James and nearly two dozen colleagues from across the country are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s decision in a case that they argued could prevent women from accessing safe, legal abortions. James led the coalition of 22 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief on Tuesday in support of the petitioners in the case of June Medical Services v. Gee, which challenges a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers to maintain admitting privileges at a local hospital.
Odds and Ends
WE LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU: This roundup is for you, so please tell us how we can make it even better. Send tips, news, ideas, calendar items, releases, promotions, job postings, birthdays, congratulations, criticisms and corrections to aeisenberg@politico.com and syoung@politico.com.
NOW WE KNOW — About a quarter of young adults and a fifth of adolescents living in the United States are considered prediabetic, or having elevated blood sugar levels that are not high enough to be diagnosed as Type 2 diabetes.
SHARE ME: Like this newsletter? Share it with your friends.
TODAY’S TIP — Throw out those Thanksgiving leftovers if you haven’t already. FoodSafety.gov notes that leftovers can be kept in the refrigerator for three to four days, but can last up to 6 months if already stored in the freezer.
MAKE SURE TO FOLLOW Amanda @aeis17, Shannon @ShannonYoung413 and Dan @DanCGoldberg on Twitter. And for all New Jersey health news, check out @samjsutton.
STUDY THIS — New research suggests that warming temperatures enhance women’s chances of giving birth early, with birth rates increasing by 5 percent on days when temperatures exceed 90 degrees.
Around New York
IVF COVERAGE — Gov. Andrew Cuomo reminded New Yorkers on Tuesday that large group health insurance plans must cover in vitro fertilization prescription drugs and fertility preservation services starting Jan. 1.
HEROIN USE UP — New data from the New York City Health Department suggests that the number of teens reporting heroin use has quadrupled over the last 20 years, with 4 percent of high schoolers saying they used the drug at least once in their life in a 2017 survey compared to just 1 percent in 1999, The New York Post reports.
GOOGLE SEARCH — The Buffalo News reports: “Babysitter Samantha J. Klein knew 3-month-old Alaya Foster was in trouble on Feb. 22. Prosecutor Holly E. Sloma said Tuesday that Klein’s cellphone, searched by Niagara Falls police, shows that Klein searched for ‘symptoms of seizures’ and ‘symptoms of child being lifeless.’ … But no 911 call was made from Klein’s home until 1:04 a.m. Feb. 23.”
GRANTLAND — TD Bank has awarded Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory $750,000 to support its new cancer research facility, Newsday reports.
MAKING ROUNDS — Dr. Bo Shen has been named section head and medical director of the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Center at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and vice chair for innovation in Medicine and Surgery at Columbia.
Pharma Report
CURES ACT — STAT News reports: “The bipartisan duo behind a 2016 law that poured billions into medical research want to repeat their success. But so far, the pharmaceutical industry that helped push the first version across the finish line isn’t nearly so eager to lend the new effort much support.”
IGNORANCE WAS BLISS — Via Reuters: “Over the past 50 years, the FDA has relied upon — and often deferred to — industry even as outside experts and consumers repeatedly raised serious health concerns about talc powders and cosmetics, a Reuters investigation found. Again and again since at least the 1970s, the agency has downplayed the risk of asbestos contamination and declined to issue warnings or impose safety standards, according to documents produced in court proceedings and in response to public records requests.”
What We’re Reading
NEVER EVENT — ProPublica reports: “Two separate studies published last year, one in the United States and one in the United Kingdom, offer fresh evidence that patients fare at least as well, if not better, when emergency medical services workers opted for alternatives to intubating.”
IT’S TOO HARD — Axios reports: “Americans rarely switch to new health plans when the annual insurance-shopping season comes around, even if they could have gotten a better deal.”
WATER WORLD — Disputes over water rights, typically a problem in western states like California and Arizona, have started to trickle east, writes Jesse Newman for The Wall Street Journal. “Burgeoning coastal populations have lowered water tables and dried up streams in Long Island, N.Y. Near Tampa, Fla., groundwater pumping has drawn saltwater into aquifers, drained lakes and triggered sinkholes. Decades of pumping by farmers and others have led to sharp declines in critical aquifers that flank the lower Mississippi River. ‘What keeps me awake at night is not western water issues—it’s the East,’ said Lara Fowler, an attorney and professor of water law and policy at Pennsylvania State University.”
DNA — China is using its detention of more than a million Uighurs to develop new technology that utilizes DNA to create a map of a person’s face, according to The New York Times. “In the long term, experts say, it may even be possible for the Communist government to feed images produced from a DNA sample into the mass surveillance and facial recognition systems that it is building, tightening its grip on society by improving its ability to track dissidents and protesters as well as criminals.”
INSPECTION — The Tampa Bay Times reports: “North Tampa Behavioral Health’s quarterback-turned-CEO has left the hospital after a scathing inspection found he did not meet the requirements for running the facility.”
MISSED A ROUNDUP? Get caught up on the New York Health Care Morning Newsletter page.
