By DUAA ELDEIB
This story was originally published by ProPublica
The U.S. has not prioritized stillbirth prevention, and American parents are losing babies even as other countries make larger strides to reduce deaths late in pregnancy.

The Senate on Tuesday passed legislation that, for the first time, expressly permits states to spend millions of federal dollars on stillbirth prevention.

The Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act, which passed the House in mid-May, now goes to President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign the measure into law.

ProPublica has spent the past two years reporting on the crisis around stillbirth, the death of an expected child at 20 weeks of pregnancy or [Read More]

Supremes’ Ruling Allows Medical Malpractice Suit To Continue

An Oakland County woman who sued her doctor for medical malpractice will get a second chance to advance her lawsuit.

In a 5-2 decision, the Michigan Supreme Court held the trial court improperly dismissed Lynda Danhoff’s lawsuit.

At issue was whether an expert is required to support their standard-of-care opinion with scientific literature.

“Consistently with precedent, we hold once again that scientific literature is not always required to support an expert’s standard-of-care opinion, but that scientific literature is one of the factors that a trial court should consider when determining whether the opinion is reliable,” the majority’s opinion from Justice Kyra Bolden reads.

” … Determining that [Read More]

By SAMANTHA YOUNG

The White House is calling on hospital executives, doctors, and other health care leaders to take bolder steps to prevent gun violence by gathering more data about gunshot injuries and routinely counseling patients about safe use of firearms.

Biden administration officials are hosting back-to-back events Thursday and Friday at the White House for about 160 health care officials, calling gun violence a “public health crisis” that requires them to act.

The strategy also reflects a stark political reality: Congress has been deadlocked on most gun-related legislation for years, with a deep divide between Republicans and Democrats. If Democratic President Joe Biden wants to get anything done quickly, he will need [Read More]

A Rep. Alabas A. Farhat (D-Dearborn) bill prohibiting pharmaceutical manufacturers from denying access to drugs based on participation in a drug pricing program for low-income patients received a first day of testimony in a House committee.

Farhat said the legislation would address skyrocketing prescription drug prices, but pharmaceutical industry stakeholders said they feel the bill, and the “340B” program as a whole, gives an unfair advantage to hospital and chain pharmacies that don’t pass the savings onto their patients.

The 340B Drug Pricing Program is a 32-year-old, federal program to get pharmaceutical manufacturers to discount some of their most expensive prescription drugs, Farhat said, and requires these manufacturers to sell outpatient drugs to [Read More]

By SUSAN ADELMAN, MD
Tricia Keith has just been appointed CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, becoming the first woman to attain that position since 1929, the year the company was first organized. She comes to this position after a career of steadily rising through the ranks of the organization since she joined in 2006. Her last appointment was as Chief Operating Officer and President of the Emerging Markets Division. In 2018, a profile of her in Detroit Business gave her titles as executive vice president, chief of staff, and corporate secretary of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan in Detroit. In these positions, Tricia Keith oversaw 300 employees, [Read More]

JENNI COLAGIOVANNI
Wachler & Associates, P.C.

On April 26, 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) published a Final Rule introducing modifications to the HIPAA Privacy Rule that limit the use or disclosure of reproductive healthcare information (RHI) for certain non-health care purposes.[1] Titled the “HIPAA Privacy Rule to Support Reproductive Health Care Privacy,” the Final Rule prohibits disclosure of protected health information (PHI) related to lawful reproductive health care under certain circumstances. The Final Rule incorporates several changes for HIPAA-covered entities and business associates including a requirement for entities to obtain an attestation in connection with certain requests for reproductive [Read More]

By L.PAHL ZINN & PATRICK MASTERSON
Dickinson Wright

It has been a rapid-fire start to 2024 with antitrust enforcers within the Biden administration ramping up regulatory scrutiny across the U.S.—and healthcare is at the center of it.

These efforts started in December 2023 when the Federal Trade Commission (the “FTC” or “Commission”) and Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (the “DOJ”) released the final 2023 Merger Guidelines, which drastically restructured the framework used to evaluate mergers. Notably, several new guidelines are aimed squarely at healthcare. The new Merger Guidelines significantly lowered thresholds applied to assess whether a merger is presumptively anticompetitive and introduced novel guidelines, including a special interest in “roll-up” [Read More]

By AMY MAXMEN & ARTHUR ALLEN

Stanford University infectious disease doctor Abraar Karan has seen a lot of patients with runny noses, fevers, and irritated eyes lately. Such symptoms could signal allergies, COVID, or a cold. This year, there’s another suspect, bird flu — but there’s no way for most doctors to know.

If the government doesn’t prepare to ramp up H5N1 bird flu testing, he and other researchers warn, the United States could be caught off guard again by a pandemic.

“We’re making the same mistakes today that we made with COVID,” Deborah Birx, who served as former President Donald Trump’s coronavirus response coordinator, said June 4 on CNN.

To become a pandemic, the [Read More]

Lansing Lines is presented in cooperation with MIRS, a Lansing-based news and information service.

Whitmer Signs Telemedicine Parity, Asbestos, Teacher Licenses, And Mental Health

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed nine bills recently with several directed at insurance and telehealth, along with asbestos abatement, licensing for teachers and children’s mental health intervention policy.

Whitmer signed HB 4579 , HB 4580 , HB 4213 , and HB 4131 , which all add up to requiring health insurance companies, Medicaid and Healthy Michigan to cover telemedicine services at the same rate as going to physically see the doctor.

Republicans said the bills would drive up health care costs, while Reps. Natalie Price (D-Berkley), Felicia Brabec (D-Ann Arbor), Christine Morse (D-Kalamazoo), and Tullio [Read More]

The Senate wants more than $194.9 million in Medicaid reimbursement rate increases in next year’s budget, based on a Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 spending bill that moved out of subcommittee late last month.

The plan also boosts Michigan’s health and human services spending by more than $1.97 billion.

“Uplifting the Medicaid reimbursement payments was a top priority in this budget cycle,” said Sen. Sylvia Santana (D-Detroit), chair of the Senate Department of Health and Human Services Appropriations Subcommittee. “We looked at the top five billing codes in the state, and allocated values accordingly. That was a priority for me.”

Under the $37.7 billion DHHS budget in SB 767, $54.66 million ($14.5 million from [Read More]