SIGN UP! If you’d like to continue receiving Washington Examiner’s Daily on Healthcare newsletter, SUBSCRIBE HERE: http://newsletters.washingtonexaminer.com/newsletter/daily-on-healthcare/

Maternal deaths bill heads to Trump. The Senate on Thursday passed a bill to reduce deaths during pregnancy and childbirth by unanimous consent, sending the legislation to President Trump to receive his signature before the end of the year. The Preventing Maternal Deaths Act aims to discover more information about the rise in deaths and injuries occurring in U.S. women. Every year, 65,000 women have difficult complications during or after childbirth that require extensive medical care, and roughly 900 die from pregnancy or from difficulties they have while giving birth.  The bill would allow the federal government to support the creation of maternal mortality review committees in states, which study maternal deaths and make recommendations about how they can be prevented. The bipartisan legislation comes with $12 million a year in new funds for five years. The groups, which don’t exist in every state now, are made up of epidemiologists, ob-gyns, social workers, nurses, and patient advocates, and make suggestions that include encouraging treatment for diabetes, obesity, or substance abuse disorder. Dr. Lisa Hollier, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, called the bill a “major step toward eliminating preventable maternal deaths in our country.” It passed the House just two days earlier.

Welcome to Philip Klein’s Daily on Healthcare, compiled by Washington Examiner Executive Editor Philip Klein (@philipaklein) and Senior Healthcare Writer Kimberly Leonard (@LeonardKL).  Email [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list.

Federal court blocks Trump administration’s exceptions to birth control rule in five states. A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked the Trump administration’s moral and religious exceptions to the Obamacare birth control mandate from going into effect in five states.

The ruling, from a split three-judge panel, upholds a preliminary injunction by the district court. The case was appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic organization that cares for people in nursing homes, and by March for Life, an anti-abortion advocacy group. Judges John Clifford Wallace, a nominee of former President Richard Nixon, and Susan Graber, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, upheld the injunction. Wallace, who authored the opinion, wrote that the states “will incur significant costs as a result of their residents’ reduced access to contraceptive care.” California, Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, and New York, will not have to abide by the Trump administration’s rules that say employers do not have to pay for birth control coverage for their workers if they have any religious or moral objections to them. The change is set to take effect elsewhere in the U.S. at the beginning of 2019. The judge who dissented, Andrew Kleinfeld, an appointee of Republican President George H.W. Bush, said he would have revoked the injunction because the states lack standing. “The reason they lack standing is that their injury is what the Supreme Court calls ‘self-inflicted,’ because it arises solely from their legislative decisions to pay these moneys,” he wrote.

Court orders release of opioid marketing records. A court has ordered the release of secret documents detailing the way that Purdue Pharma marketed its prescription opioid OxyContin. The decision issued Friday, from a three-judge panel in the Kentucky Court of Appeals, upholds a Kentucky lower court order in May 2016 to release the records. The health and science news organization STAT filed a motion more than two years ago to have the records unsealed. The records will include internal emails, clinical trials analyses, settlements from earlier criminal cases, and how the sales team marketed the drug. They also are expected to include a deposition of Richard Sackler, a former president of Purdue and member of the family that founded the company. Purdue can still request another hearing in front of the appeals court. It also has 30 days to ask the Supreme Court of Kentucky to overturn the appeals court’s decision.

Nancy Pelosi due to be America’s oldest House speaker. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is on course to become the oldest person in history to hold the speaker’s gavel now that she has secured a deal to give her at least two more years as the top House of Representatives leader. Pelosi, now 78, will be almost 81 at the close of the 116th Congress, which ends on Jan. 3, 2021. That will make her nearly a year older than legendary Speaker Sam Rayburn, D-Texas, who died in office less than two months shy of his 80th birthday. Pelosi will turn 80 on March 26, 2020, a little more than a year into her new speaker’s term. She will achieve the milestone of oldest ever speaker on Feb. 7, 2020 — beating Rayburn’s record. Pelosi will also be the first speaker since Rayburn to hold nonconsecutive terms. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is already the oldest Senate majority leader in history. He will turn 77 in February and has no plans to retire or agree to term limits. The oldest holder of the position prior to him was Sen. Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., who was 73 when he left office in 1977. Pelosi, who entered Congress in 1987, already holds the record as the first and only woman to serve as House speaker. Her age and longevity in leadership has attracted criticism from younger members who say the top leadership team excludes fresh faces and ideas.

Cautious after Kavanaugh furor, Supreme Court braces for controversy. The Supreme Court’s recent reluctance to hear cases involving controversial issues is likely to come to an end in 2019, as a number of high-profile cases are knocking on the bronze doors of the nation’s highest court. So far this term, the court, after the bruising battle over Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation, has spurned cases that touch on hot-button issues, turning down appeals from two states involving Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. But a number of blockbuster disputes are awaiting action from the justices, and the Trump administration has continued to urge the Supreme Court to consider challenges to its policies, even if it means bypassing the lower courts. Among the cases awaiting action from the Supreme Court in the new year are three appeals involving whether federal civil rights law protects gay and transgender people from employment discrimination.

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to allow transgender ban to begin.  The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow its policy restricting many transgender people from serving in the military to take effect. In filings Thursday, Solicitor General Noel Francisco asked the high court to put on hold orders from lower courts blocking the administration from enforcing the ban nationwide. The request from the Justice Department comes after the administration asked the Supreme Court last month to fast-track a ruling on the Trump administration’s transgender military ban before a federal appeals court has weighed in.

In urging the Supreme Court to take up the case, the Trump administration said it “involves an issue of imperative public importance: the authority of the U.S. military to determine who may serve in the nation’s armed forces.” Francisco asked the Supreme Court to issue a stay only if the justices reject the administration’s request to take up challenges to the ban this term.

Lawmakers, witnesses spar over necessity of fetal tissue research. House lawmakers wrestled Thursday over the importance of fetal tissue in research on devastating illnesses, with Republicans calling to end government funding for such research and Democrats arguing to spare it. Witnesses at the Oversight Committee hearing sparred with lawmakers and each other about whether fetal tissue was necessary or replaceable in medical research. GOP Reps. Mark Meadows of North Carolina and Jim Jordan of Ohio, the conservative lawmakers who called for the hearing, want a ban on government funding for fetal tissue. The National Institutes of Health spent about $100 million in 2017 on medical research involving the tissue, which are obtained from abortions. Sally Temple, the former president of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, said the science was being misrepresented and that researchers had told her a ban in funding would be “devastating” to their efforts to find cures and treatments. Testifying against the use of fetal tissue were Tara Sander Lee and David Prentice, both of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List. “There is no scientific necessity for the continued taxpayer funding of fresh fetal tissue, organs, and body parts from induced abortion,” Prentice said.

California still falling slightly behind in Obamacare enrollment. Enrollment in the Obamacare exchange in California, known as Covered California, is still falling slightly behind last year. Numbers from the state on Thursday show that enrollment is at 1.35 million, down from 1.382 million at the same time last year. The state said, however, that customer interest was “surgint.” If people sign up before Saturday’s deadline they will have coverage Jan. 1, but they have longer than most of the country, until Jan. 15, to sign up. Peter Lee, the director of Covered California, in a statement blamed the loss of the penalty on the uninsured for the shortfall compared to last year. “Covered California continues to see strong interest, but we are seeing new enrollment that’s about 10 percent lower than last year, which we largely attribute to the removal of the individual mandate penalty,” Lee said. It’s not clear whether California lawmakers will institute their own mandate, as some states have done.

Most counties have $0 premium options for certain Obamacare customers. Obamacare customers in more than 95 percent of U.S. counties that use healthcare.gov can get premiums for $0, finds an analysis from Avalere. This represents a decline from the 98 percent that could receive it last year. People can qualify for these plans if they are lower-income, meaning making around $18,210 a year, and they would register for a bronze plan that is coupled with higher deductibles. “While consumers may be able to save monthly premium dollars by choosing a bronze plan, they will likely face higher costs when visiting a doctor or hospital,” Elizabeth Carpenter, senior vice president at Avalere, said in a statement. “The final days of open enrollment are a good time to remind shoppers to look not only at premiums, but also out-of-pocket costs, when picking insurance for 2019.”

Source of E. coli infected lettuce found. A batch of lettuce that was infected with E. coli was traced back to a farm in central California, government officials announced Thursday. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned the public not to eat lettuce from Monterey, San Benito, and Santa Barbara counties. If people aren’t sure where the lettuce comes from, they shouldn’t eat it, officials said. Seven more people have been reported sick with E. Coli since the last update, bringing the total to 59 people from 15 states and Washington, D.C. Twenty-three people have been hospitalized and no deaths have been reported.

RUNDOWN

HuffPost Emails show Trump administration was told Obamacare ad cuts could hurt enrollment

MedTech Dive FDA touts progress in move toward global device audits

Forbes Amid Obamacare Sign-Up, Centene Announces Stock Split And Solid 2019

Propublica Illinois Lawsuit targets Illinois’ child welfare agency over children languishing in psychiatric hospitals

Cleveland.com Ohio legislature sends to Gov. John Kasich two abortion bills

Vox CrossFit is amassing an army of doctors trying to disrupt health care
Modern Healthcare Farm bill opens door to refinancing indebted rural hospitals
New York Times NIH to scrutinize private donations to scientific research projects