Overnight Health Care — Presented By National Partnership for Women & Families — Vulnerable Republican unveils pre-existing conditions resolution | FDA conducts surprise inspection of e-cigarette maker | DHS watchdog examines ‘zero tolerance’

Welcome to Tuesday’s edition of Overnight Health Care.

The FDA is stepping up its crackdown on e-cigarettes, and Republicans in the House are very concerned about being accused of not protecting pre-existing conditions. We’ll start there…

 

Vulnerable House Republican unveils resolution on pre-existing conditions

There’s now a second (nonbinding) resolution from a vulnerable House Republican pledging to protect people with pre-existing conditions, a sign of how Republicans are playing defense on the issue.

The resolution from Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who is facing a close reelection race against Democrat Colin Allred expresses the opinion of the House that pre-existing conditions should be protected.

The first resolution came from another vulnerable Republican, Rep. David Young (R-Iowa), who last month introduced his own resolution expressing support for the protections.

The catch… Democrats have countered by pointing out that Republicans like Sessions and Young last year voted for the House’s ObamaCare repeal and replacement bill, which would have allowed states to get waivers to allow insurers to spike premiums for people with pre-existing conditions. They also voted for full repeal of ObamaCare without a replacement in previous years during the Obama administration.

Read more here.

 

 

FDA conducts surprise inspection of e-cigarette maker JUUL

The FDA is showing it’s serious about cracking down on e-cigarette use among young people.

The latest example: a surprise visit to the headquarters of e-cigarette maker Juul.

Juul is a small battery-powered e-cigarette shaped like a USB drive. Most e-cigarettes contain nicotine, and JUUL contains among the highest nicotine content of any e-cigarette on the U.S. market.

“As part of FDA’s ongoing efforts to prevent youth use of tobacco products, particularly e-cigarettes, last week the agency conducted an unannounced on-site inspection of e-cigarette manufacturer JUUL Labs’ corporate headquarters,” the FDA said in a statement.

“Across this category, we are committed to taking all necessary actions, such as inspections and advancing new policies, to prevent a new generation of kids from becoming addicted to tobacco products,” it added.

JUUL comes in a variety of flavors, including mango and creme, and also uses nicotine salts, which can allow high levels of nicotine to be inhaled more easily and with less irritation.

The inspection comes after FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said last month that his agency is considering banning online sales of e-cigarettes.

“The new and highly disturbing data we have on youth use demonstrates plainly that e-cigarettes are creating an epidemic of regular nicotine use among teens,” the agency said Tuesday.

 

What did they do during the inspection? FDA said it collected over a thousand pages of documents and checked to see if regulations were being followed.

JUUL CEO Kevin Burns said in a statement that the episode was part of a “constructive and transparent dialogue.”

“We want to be part of the solution in preventing underage use, and we believe it will take industry and regulators working together to restrict youth access,” he added.

Read more here.

 

The surprise inspection was announced the same day the CDC found JUUL has basically cornered the market on e-cigarettes.

Sales of the device grew more than seven-fold from 2016 to 2017, and held the greatest share of the U.S. e-cigarette market, according to newly released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During 2016-2017, JUUL Labs’ sales increased 641 percent — from 2.2 million devices sold in 2016 to 16.2 million devices sold in 2017. By December of 2017, JUUL Labs’ sales comprised nearly 1 in 3 e-cigarette sales nationally, giving it the largest market share in the United States.

“The popularity of JUUL among kids threatens our progress in reducing youth e-cigarette use,” CDC director Robert Redfield said in a statement. “We are alarmed that these new high nicotine content e-cigarettes, marketed and sold in kid-friendly flavors, are so appealing to our nation’s young people.”

 

Overall, it was a bad day for e-cigarette makers

Also on Tuesday, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) urged the FDA to immediately ban kid-friendly e-cigarette flavorings and restrict online sales of the addictive nicotine products.  

“Given the e-cigarette industry’s calculated decision to target children with dangerous and addictive flavored products–and given their success in these efforts–we strongly urge FDA to take decisive action and immediately ban kid-friendly e-cigarette flavorings,” the senators wrote.

Read their letter here

 

DHS watchdog finds flaws from the beginning in Trump ‘zero-tolerance’ policy

President Trump’s widely-criticized “zero-tolerance” immigration policy resulted in U.S. Border Patrol holding hundreds of children longer than they were supposed to, often in holding pens without beds or showers, according to a new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) watchdog report obtained by The Washington Post.

The report also notes that federal agencies had a difficult time tracking the minors who had been separated from their parents at the border.

The policy, which the Trump administration approved in May and halted by executive order in June, created widespread miscommunication and confusion among various federal agencies, the DHS inspector general wrote in an unpublished report obtained by the Post.

Though Border Patrol is only supposed to hold children for 72 hours, officials in the Rio Grande and El Paso sectors held a total of more than 800 children for far longer, with some children stuck in detainment for more than 20 days, according to the watchdog report.

Read more here.  

 

Sponsored content – National Partnership for Women & Families

A recent report by nonpartisan medical experts concludes: abortion is safe and effective health care. Now more than ever, we must continue to fight to ensure that abortion is accessible. Learn more.

 

What we’re reading:

Caregivers or marketers? Nurses paid by drug companies facing scrutiny as whistleblower lawsuits mount (STAT)

Stabbed, punched, bitten: ER doctors face rising violence (Boston Globe)

Memorial Sloan Kettering’s chief executive resigns from Merck’s board of directors (The New York Times)

 

State by state:

Policy levers that states can use to improve opioid addiction treatment and address the opioid epidemic (Health Affairs)

Another rural Kansas hospital is closing. A new fight over Medicaid expansion has begun (Wichita Eagle)

 

From The Hill’s opinion page

Medicare (and Medicaid) for none

Restricting Medicaid abortion coverage forces some women to carry unwanted pregnancies