The Health News USA October 10 2017

• Shares of drugmakers dropped in midday trading Friday after CNBC reported Amazon is in the final stages of considering an entrance into selling drug prescriptions. Walgreens, Rite Aid and CVS Health stocks each slipped 4% or more as investors worried Amazon may disrupt the traditional distributors’ hold on the drug prescription market.
• A US study suggests that vaccinating mothers against whooping cough during pregnancy may prevent 9 out of  10 severe cases of this potentially fatal respiratory infection in their babies. The bacterium Bordetella pertussis causes whooping cough, which gets its nickname from the sounds patients make as they gasp for air during intense coughing fits.
• In a blow to Obamacare’s controversial contraceptive mandate, employers may now have more leeway to withhold birth control coverage on religious grounds, according to new rules issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services. The new rules continue the undermining of the Obamacare mandate that requires birth control be covered with no co-pay as a preventive service.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 10th of  October 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health News

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/06/drugstore-stocks-tumble-as-amazon-considers-selling-prescription-drugs-online.html

Shares of drugmakers dropped in midday trading Friday after CNBC reported Amazon is in the final stages of considering an entrance into selling drug prescriptions.Walgreens, Rite Aid and CVS Health stocks each slipped four percent or more as investors worried Amazon may disrupt the traditional distributors’ hold on the drug prescription market.  According to a source and an email from Amazon viewed by CNBC, Amazon will decide before Thanksgiving whether to move into selling prescription drugs online.

Amazon typically spends years researching opportunities before it telegraphs its intentions. The opportunity to sell drugs online is alluring given its market size – analysts have estimated the U.S. prescription drug market at five hundred sixty billion dollars per year. Amazon is well aware of the complexities, say sources familiar with the company’s thinking.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-pertussis-pregnancy/fewer-newborns-get-whooping-cough-when-moms-get-vaccinated-idUSKBN1CB2M8

A US study suggests that vaccinating mothers against whooping cough during pregnancy may prevent nine out of ten severe cases of this potentially fatal respiratory infection in their babies.
The bacterium Bordetella pertussis causes whooping cough, which gets its nickname from the sounds patients make as they gasp for air during intense coughing fits. Pertussis is highly contagious and easily spread when an infected individual coughs or sneezes. About half of babies under age one who catch pertussis require hospitalization for serious complications like pneumonia or brain disorders. For the study, researchers examined data on two hundred fifty one infants who developed whooping cough before two months of age and a control group of five hundred thirty seven babies who didn’t catch pertussis as newborns. Overall, researchers estimate that giving pregnant women the Tdap booster vaccine for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis prevented about seventy eight cases of whooping cough in their babies for every one hundred mothers vaccinated. The vaccine effectiveness rate was ninety percent when researchers looked only at severe cases requiring hospitalization.
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Health officials in many countries recommend vaccination during pregnancy, as well as a series of three shots for infants starting sometime between ages six weeks and three months. Some countries also recommend that women get vaccinated during each pregnancy because effectiveness of the shot wanes over time. In early two thousand thirteen, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that all pregnant women get the Tdap shot, regardless of whether they previously had received this vaccine. The study examined data collected from two thousand eleven through  two thousand fourteen in California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York and Oregon. Researchers compared records on babies with whooping cough to records for similar babies who were born at the same hospital but didn’t contract pertussis.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/06/health/trump-birth-control-mandate/index.html

In a blow to Obamacare’s controversial contraceptive mandate, employers may now have more leeway to withhold birth control coverage on religious grounds, according to new rules issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services on Friday. The new rules continue the undermining of the Obamacare mandate that requires birth control be covered with no co-pay as a preventive service. This could impact many of the millions of women who now receive contraceptives at no cost under this provision. The rules would let a broad range of employers — including nonprofits, private firms and publicly traded companies — stop offering contraceptives through their health insurance plans if they have a “sincerely held religious or moral objection,” senior agency officials said on a call about the implementation and enforcement of the new rules. Health and Human Services officials said the new rule would have no impact on ninety nine point nine percent of women in the United States. It is basing that percentage on the one hundred sixty five million women in America, many of whom are not in their childbearing years.
The agency calculated that at most, one hundred twenty thousand  women would be affected: mainly those who work at the roughly two hundred entities that have been involved in fifty or so lawsuits over birth control coverage.
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The latest announcement builds upon an executive order in May claiming “to protect and vigorously promote religious liberty” by providing “regulatory relief” for organizations that object on religious grounds to Obamacare coverage requirements for certain health services, including contraception. A number of legal challenges to the new rules are brewing from groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Women’s Law Center, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the office of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.
Over fifty five million US women have birth control coverage with zero out-of-pocket costs, according to the National Women’s Law Center. The mandate saved women an estimated one point four billion dollars on birth control pills alone in two thousand thirteen, according to the center.