Current Events

Troops have filed $2.16 billion in medical malpractice claims under a 2019 law that required a system of compensation for victims, according to the military services.

The total, which hasn’t been previously reported, represents 227 cases that have yet to be adjudicated. The Army, which is the largest branch of the military, reported $845 million in malpractice claims. The Air Force reported $530 million, while the Navy and Marine Corps reported a combined total of $781 million.
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NEW YORK (AP) — More than 9,000 recovering coronavirus patients in New York state were released from hospitals into nursing homes early in the pandemic under a controversial directive that was scrapped amid criticism it accelerated outbreaks, according to new records obtained by The Associated Press.

The new number of 9,056 recovering patients sent to hundreds of nursing homes is more than 40% higher than what the state health department previously released. And it raises new questions as to whether a March 25 directive from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration helped spread sickness and death among residents, a charge the state disputes.

“The lack of transparency and the meting out of bits of important data has undermined our ability to both recognize the scope and severity of what’s going on” and address it, said Richard Mollot, the executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition, a residents advocacy group.
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Campbell Soup Co. and its subsidiary Plum Organics were cited in a congressional committee report about heavy metals in baby food from manufacturers like Gerber and Walmart.

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide privately apologized to Democratic lawmakers for withholding the state’s nursing home death toll from COVID-19 — telling them “we froze” out of fear that the true numbers would “be used against us” by federal prosecutors, The Post has learned.

The stunning admission of a coverup was made by secretary to the governor Melissa DeRosa during a video conference call with state Democratic leaders in which she said the Cuomo administration had rebuffed a legislative request for the tally in August because “right around the same time, [then-President Donald Trump] turns this into a giant political football,” according to an audio recording of the two-hour-plus meeting.

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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Thursday warned that early results from a safety trial on Pfizer’s arthritis and colitis drug, tofacitinib, revealed an increased risk of heart issues and cancer when compared to another medicine.

The drug, marketed under Xeljanz or Xeljanz XR, was tested against an arthritis drug called tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors. The FDA is still waiting for more information on blood clots and death.

"Patients should not stop taking tofacitinib without first consulting with your health care professionals, as doing so may worsen your condition. Talk to your health care professionals if you have any questions or concerns," the FDA said in a statement posted Thursday.

Ingredients in many baby foods, including some organic fare, are contaminated with heavy metals like arsenic, lead and cadmium at levels that are far higher than those allowed in products like bottled water, congressional investigators said on Thursday.

Their report underscored the federal government’s persistently lax approach to overseeing the safety of baby food, some experts said, despite clear risks to infants and toddlers. Exposure to heavy metals in particular has been linked to behavioral impairments, brain damage and even death.

“This is an endemic problem that’s been swept under the rug and never addressed,” said Tracey Woodruff, director of the program on reproductive health and the environment at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the preparation of the congressional report.

(Reuters) - Newly unsealed court documents and other records show that Merck & Co and U.S. regulators knew about reports of suicidal behavior in men taking the company’s anti-baldness treatment Propecia when they decided not to warn consumers of those potential risks in a 2011 update of the popular drug’s label.

Internal records from Merck were made public in late January, when a federal magistrate in Brooklyn, New York, granted a 2019 Reuters motion to unseal 11 documents filed in years of litigation alleging Propecia caused persistent sexual dysfunction and other harmful side effects.

Since the 2011 decision on the warning, the FDA has received more than 700 reports of suicide and suicidal thoughts among people taking Propecia or generic versions of the drug.

(Reuters) - Bayer AG struck a $2 billion deal to resolve future legal claims that its widely used weedkiller Roundup causes cancer, the German company said on Wednesday.

Bayer has been struggling to finalize the settlement of claims that Roundup and other glyphosate-based herbicides cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer. Bayer inherited the business and the litigation as part of a $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto in 2018.

The company has said that decades of studies have shown Roundup and glyphosate are safe for human use.

When Monica Smith was badly hurt in a car accident, she assumed Medicaid would cover the medical bills. Ms. Smith, 45, made sure to show her insurance card after an ambulance took her to Parkview Regional Medical Center in Fort Wayne, Ind. She spent three days in the hospital and weeks in a neck brace.

But the hospital never sent her bills to Medicaid, which would have paid for the care in full, and the hospital refused requests to do so.
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Mihail Zilbermint is used to treating diabetes — he heads a special team that cares for patients with the metabolic disorder at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md. But as the hospital admitted increasing numbers of patients with covid-19, his caseload ballooned.

“Before, we used to manage maybe 18 patients per day,” he said. Now his team cares for as many as 30 daily.

Many of those patients had no prior history of diabetes.
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New York’s nursing homes and hospitals would be required to maintain adequate minimum staffing levels under a proposed state law gaining steam in the wake of a damning report linking understaffed facilities to high levels of coronavirus deaths. The push to pass the legislation has picked up since state Attorney General Letitia James released a bombshell report last week packed with shocking findings — among them that two-thirds of nursing home coronavirus fatalities in the state were in facilities with the lowest or next-to-lowest staffing ratings.

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