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Good morning. In case you missed it, my pal Bob Herman got the Joe Kernan treatment on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday, where he discussed his excellent new series “Out of Pocket, Out of Reach.” Kernan got in a lot of digs at Democrats and Obamacare, but Bob kept his comments apolitical. A true professional!
Caregivers brace for pay cuts, and maybe homelessness
States are scrambling to trim their budgets ahead of major provisions of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cuts roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the coming decade. First up on the chopping block: programs states aren’t required to cover under federal law. My colleague, O. Rose Broderick, identified at least half a dozen states that either are or are trying to slash pay for family caregivers — often parents — of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Rose’s story exposes the truly devastating human toll of these cuts. Two mothers caring for their disabled sons now face losing their homes. Their kids’ needs are so high, they can’t work beyond caring for them.
“It’s either I ride it out until the very last day until they kick us out of our home, or I put him in an institution,” one mother, fighting back tears, told Rose.
A game-changer in pancreatic cancer?
Organizers of a three-day pancreatic cancer conference in London didn’t plan for the event to revolve around a promising new drug, but it was all anyone wanted to talk about, my colleague, Andrew Joseph, reports.
“It’s one of those moments,” one oncologist said during a hastily-added panel about the drug, Revolution Medicine’s daraxonrasib. She was referring to the drug’s striking clinical results, first presented at a conference in Chicago in May. Patients taking the drug lived nearly twice as long as those undergoing standard chemotherapy in a study of 500 people.
The drug hasn’t yet gone through regulatory review, but patients are already clamoring for access. At the conference, clinicians said they’re bracing for new tensions that will inevitably crop up. It’ll probably be expensive. Access will be uneven. It may have side effects, and doctors may need to explain its 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 professionals as the agency develops clinical guidance for weaning patients off antidepressants, STAT dream team Lizzy Lawrence and Chelsea Cirruzzo report.
The meeting comes after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized what he referred to as overmedicalization using selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, drugs commonly used to treat depression and anxiety. A senior HHS official told my colleagues that the forthcoming guidance isn’t meant to discourage people from using SSRIs, it’s to help them understand what to expect and what to know about getting off of them.
One clinician who attended told my colleagues that many doctors lack training in this area. “They say, ‘I wish I would have information on this, nobody taught me this in medical school.’ … “That’s where this guidance will fill that gap.” Read more.
Another vaccine skeptic slotted for HHS
The country’s response to public health crises could soon be led by the co-founder of a consulting firm who has publicly questioned the safety of vaccines, medications that are typically at the center of any such response, my colleague, Chelsea Cirruzzo, reports.
Sean Kaufman, the Trump administration’s pick for Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, wouldn’t be the only high-ranking HHS official who harbors vaccine skepticism, even as White House officials try to steer the conversation away from vaccine reform.
Chelsea tracked down a handful of social media posts in which Kaufman linked the hepatitis B vaccine to autism and questioned the safety of Covid-19 vaccines, describing offering them as “reckless.” Kaufman still needs Senate confirmation, and we’ll be paying close attention to Senate health leader Bill Cassidy’s reaction at a hearing this week. Read more.
Is there a doctor on board?
Airlines have long relied on doctors being willing to help their fellow passengers during in-flight medical emergencies, Dr. Sriman Swarup writes in a new First Opinion column. He’d know. He has personally responded to these requests. Doctors do so, he said, out of professional obligation, human decency, and emergency ethics.
But perhaps this multibillion-dollar industry has become too reliant on doctors’ altruism, Swarup posits. In-flight emergencies have financial implications if flights have to be diverted, and he questions the logic of outsourcing a business problem to customers’ professional ethics.
Swarup doesn’t think paying doctors is the answer, but he does think airlines could come up with something between that and what they currently do, which is, well, nothing. Travel credits? Volunteer registries? Food for thought.
What we’re reading
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Parents’ attachment to phone screens can lead to anxiety in children — study, The Guardian
- How a Boston doctor built a following as a ‘loud and unafraid’ voice in the Trump era, Boston Globe
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The gas is cheap. The Trump administration isn’t saying who’s paying for it, Politico
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They harvest the nation’s food, but a new rule may strip them of health insurance, KFF Health News