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| Presented By HCA Healthcare |
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| Axios Vitals |
| By Tina Reed · Mar 13, 2023 |
| Welcome back to the work week, Vitals readers. Today's newsletter is 890 words or a 3½-minute read. Catch up quick: A bill to require the director of national intelligence to declassify information on COVID-19 origins is heading to President Biden's desk after clearing the House on Friday, Axios' Maya Goldman reports. |
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| 1 big thing: SVB failure spooks digital health, biotechs |
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| Illustration: Maura Losch/Axios |
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| Digital health and biotech firms made up a substantial part of Silicon Valley Bank's client base. And its historic failure is raising troubling questions about how much the fallout will hurt emerging health companies in need of capital. Driving the news: By the time regulators unveiled a plan Sunday night to backstop all depositors, the bank run and collapse had sent shock waves through a sector already experiencing what SVB itself characterized as a "downcycle" for health deals. - SVB played an outsize role in backing startups and spinoffs, combining funding with personal services for top executives, Steve Brozak, president of WBB Securities, wrote in Forbes. That was especially critical in biotech, whose startups experience an annual failure rate of 90% and have been struggling with a lack of funding.
- 12% of the bank's $173 billion in deposits came from life sciences and health care, along with 36% of its $168 billion in off-balance-sheet funds, per its Q4 financial highlights.
- With interest rates still rising, SVB's demise could stoke even more pessimism about the ability to raise capital, Bill Geary, co-founder at Flare Capital Partners, told Bloomberg.
- "You can't just look at any one of these things in isolation," he said. "They all have kind of a compounded negative impact."
Before regulators intervened, many executives scrambled for information and to disclose their exposure while fretting about over whether they could make payrolls and keep basic operations afloat. - "None of my reps will call me back ... It's the worst 24 hours of my life," Ashley Tyrner, CEO of food-as-medicine company FarmboxRx told the New York Times before news of the backstop.
- On the flip side, Alison Greenberg, the CEO of maternal telehealth company Ruth Health, described her company's harrowing efforts to successfully withdraw the bulk of their funds to CNN.
- "For us, it was, do this now — or else," Greenberg said.
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| 2. Judge delays notice of abortion pill hearing |
| In an unexpected move that stunned some longtime court watchers, the federal judge in a closely watched case that could decide the future of a widely used abortion drug steps to delay public notice of an upcoming hearing, citing safety concerns, the Washington Post reports. Driving the news: The hearing will allow the Justice Department, the abortion pill drug makers and a conservative group challenging the pill's approval, to argue their cases before U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas, per the Post. - But in a pre-hearing call with attorneys, the judge reportedly "said he would delay putting the hearing on the docket until late Tuesday to try to minimize disruptions and possible protests," sources told the Post.
As Axios' Oriana Gonzalez previously reported, the judge could ultimately decide to temporarily block the FDA's authorization of mifepristone, one of two drugs used to end pregnancies. Related: 3 Texas women were sued for allegedly helping a friend access abortion pills |
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| 3. Growing political backlash against THC-containing products |
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| Photo: Karl Merton Ferron/Baltimore Sun/Tribune News Service via Getty Images |
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| States around the nation are eyeing measures to curb the availability of products derived from hemp known as delta-8 THC due to concerns about consumption by kids. Driving the news: There are proposed measures in Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and Virginia aimed at closing a loophole in hemp sales that allows the sale of products with the THC-containing compound. What they're saying: A group of Virginia health organizations, as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics, sent a letter last week to Gov. Glenn Youngkin calling for more restrictions on hemp-derived products with high amounts of THC to curb the rising number of cases of kids ingesting the substances, WTOP reported. - "They are not tested for potency or purity, nor have they been subject to sufficient research and study. Equally concerning, they often bear misleading and inaccurate labels, many of which recklessly target children," they wrote.
- "We have sort of a 'wild west' situation. It's a gray area. Delta-8 is being sold around the state, and it's being sold in gas stations, health food stores," Katie Moyer, president of the Kentucky Hemp Association, told the Kentucky Lantern.
The other side: The U.S. Hemp Roundtable, a national advocacy group for the industry, called for the products to remain legal but put under "a stricter regulatory framework akin to adult-use cannabis." |
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| A message from HCA Healthcare |
| What advancing health equity looks like |
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| HCA Healthcare provides high-quality care for every patient we serve. An example: Strategic collaborations, like the American Heart Association's "Getting to the Heart of Stroke" three-year initiative, enable us to improve health equity and access to care. See our impact. |
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| 4. Quote du jour: Time for vasectomy madness |
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| Illustration: Eniola Odetunde/Axios |
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| "Make this March a slam dunk with a snip to your junk." That's the message on T-shirts which from an Oregon urology clinic that have gained a cult following for how they market scheduling vasectomies — and their required at-home recovery time — to coincide with March Madness, the Wall Street Journal reports. The big picture: Urology clinics around the country now annually see a spike in the number of vasectomies planned during the NCAA Basketball Tournament. - For instance, Akron-based Summa Health reported its urologists will perform more than 150 vasectomies, about 10 times more than the usual volume, per the Journal.
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| 5. While you were weekending |
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| Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios |
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| ⏱ Prostate cancer treatment can wait for most men, a study finds. (Associated Press) 👀 People with ADHD claim Adderall is "different" now. What's going on? (New York Times) ⬆️ Why some in the GOP are floating upping the retirement age for some Americans. (Axios) |
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| A message from HCA Healthcare |
| Shaping the future of medicine |
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| With Graduate Medical Education (GME) programs across the country, HCA Healthcare is preparing residents to be healthcare leaders. How it's done: Residents work alongside and learn from our experienced physicians as they improve access to high-quality healthcare. Read more of our stories. |
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| Thanks for reading, and thanks to senior editor Adriel Bettelheim and senior copy editor Bryan McBournie for the edits. |
 | | Dive deeper into the future of health care | | |
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