Hospital prices are soaring especially fast in Northern California. Why?

California’s lawmakers have spent decades crafting rules designed to keep the state’s health care prices in check. But the Golden State dominates a new list of U.S. regions that saw the highest growth in hospital prices paid by private insurers in recent years. Out of 19 such regions, 11 were in California, according to a Health Affairs study posted yesterday. “We end up with this situation where the most regulated state has the highest prices,” Ge Bai of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health told STAT’s Tara Bannow. “This is the exact opposite of what regulators had intended to achieve.” Of those 11 expensive California regions, eight were in Northern California, researchers at the RAND Corporation found. Previous research has indicated hospital consolidation is the main culprit, but there’s more to the story. Read more.

Ned Sharpless is leaving NCI leadership

Ned Sharpless, director of the National Cancer Institute, is stepping down later this month, STAT's Lev Facher first reported yesterday. Sharpless, 55, spent nearly five years leading the roughly $7 billion biomedical research agency, the largest of NIH’s 27 institutes. “I strongly support what this [administration] is doing to support cancer research, but it’s time for me to step aside,” he wrote in a text message to STAT. Sharpless has found success navigating a highly charged Washington since being appointed in October 2017. His departure comes amid significant change in the federal government’s scientific strategy. Earlier this year, the White House relaunched its “Cancer Moonshot,” suggested a nearly $200 million cut to the NCI in its proposed 2023 budget, and asked Congress to allocate $4 billion for ARPA-H, Biden’s new high-stakes research agency intended to “end cancer as we know it.”

Covid vaccination early in pregnancy not linked to congenital problems

Getting vaccinated against Covid-19 early in pregnancy is not associated with an increased risk of congenital problems, a new retrospective study concludes, based on ultrasound exams that detect fetal structural abnormalities. The cohort study in JAMA Pediatrics analyzed records from more than 2,600 patients at a Chicago hospital who had received at least one dose of Covid vaccine in the first weeks of pregnancy, when risk is higher for harm to the developing fetus. Ultrasound identified an anomaly in 27 of 534 unvaccinated people (5.1%) and 109 of 2,622 people who received at least one dose of vaccine (4.2%). For context, 3% to 5% of U.S. infants are born with structural defects. The authors caution that ultrasound reports are proxies for actual outcomes. Still, because pregnant people were excluded from the first Covid vaccine studies, the authors say these preliminary data could prove helpful in weighing the risk of vaccination versus the risk of Covid.

Closer look: How a dire text message made a doctor’s cancer research painfully real

Oncologist Scott Lippman, who specializes in head and neck cancer, sits outside the Moores Cancer Center in La Jolla, Calif. (HUFFAKER FOR STAT)

If you’d seen him, you wouldn’t have known Scott Lippman was living through one of the most harrowing days of his 35-year career. The veteran oncologist, who directs UC San Diego’s Moores Cancer Center, was at a San Diego life science conference, clicking through slides describing his research. Few knew he’d arrived exhausted from the emergency room, where he’d been caring for a patient with the same type of head and neck cancer he was now talking about. And no one noticed when his phone buzzed with a jarring message: His patient, James Ault, was being transferred to Lippman’s house, so the doctor rushed home. “My work life, my patients, my research just all became very real,” he told STAT’s Jonathan Wosen, who traces Ault’s illness and Lippman’s work to better understand how these tumors form. Read more.

U.S. health care falls short for women of reproductive age

Compared to women 18 to 49 years old in other high-income countries, U.S. women of reproductive age have far worse health, a Commonwealth Fund report out today concludes. The U.S. maternal death rate is highest, and Black women are three times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy complications. U.S. women are more likely to:

Struggle to pay medical bills or skip care because of cost.
Have the highest rate of multiple chronic conditions and mental health needs.
Not have a primary care doctor or place to seek care.
Die of preventable causes, at all ages.

“U.S. women are sicker, more stressed, and die younger compared to women in other countries,” study author Munira Z. Gunja writes. “The United States is the world’s wealthiest democracy, yet its failure to provide universal health care leaves 10 million women without coverage.”

Gairdner honors research on sickle cell disease, cancer, and mRNA vaccines

Today Toronto’s Gairdner Foundation announced the winners of its 2022 awards for biomedical research — among the “predictors” known for their good track record in recognizing Nobel Prize-winning work. The five winners of its international award are:

Stuart Orkin of Harvard Medical School for his work exploring how blood cells develop, how genetic hemoglobin disorders such as sickle cell disease and beta thalassemia arise, and how a therapy now in clinical trials might help.
John Dick of the University of Toronto for his discovery of leukemic stem cells, which changed the understanding of cancer's underlying biology and sparked research in breast, brain, colon, pancreas, skin, and liver cancers.
Pieter Cullis of the University of British Columbia and Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman of the University of Pennsylvania for their groundbreaking work developing mRNA and lipid nanoparticle drug delivery that became the foundational technologies for highly effective Covid-19 mRNA vaccines.

In the second episode of “Color Code,” host Nicholas St. Fleur and guests reflect on the 1910 Flexner Report and examine the ripple effects it had on medical education that are still felt today, especially for Black doctors. Listen here.

What to read around the web today

The creator of the CRISPR babies has been released from a Chinese prison. Technology Review
A staffing crisis is causing a monthslong wait for Medicaid, and it could get worse. Kaiser Health News
‘We don’t have a say’: Siobhan Wescott wants to elevate the voices of Native Americans in public health. STAT
Study finds higher homicide risk in homes with handguns. Associated Press
Biden administration funnels one of the largest-ever pay increases to Medicare Advantage insurers. STAT+