| Welcome to Tuesday's Overnight Health Care. Congress is in their second recess week, but the administration is keeping us on our toes. We have the final ObamaCare enrollment numbers. Months after the end of the Trump administration's first ObamaCare open enrollment period, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said that 11.8 million people nationwide signed up for coverage in 2018. That's only a slight dip from last year. Supporters of the law, given that context, were heartened by the numbers. The administration cut advertising and outreach spending by 90 percent, in addition to cutting funds for outside groups that help people enroll. In addition, the administration's report showed that for many enrollees, premiums fell this year. After taking into account ObamaCare subsidies, premiums fell from an average of $106 per month last year to $89 this year. CMS Administrator Seema Verma offered some mixed messages. She praised agency staff for running a "cost-effective and successful" open enrollment, but was quick to criticize ObamaCare's rising premiums for people who aren't eligible for subsidies. But the administration also ended cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments to insurers, which largely contributed to the increased premiums. CDC is battling superbugs, and they're spreading. The agency last year found more than 200 cases of "nightmare bacteria" that can resist most antibiotics. It's a scary thought, but the CDC said they are working with state health officials on aggressive testing at hospitals and labs to rapidly identify patients infected, and stop the spread. Aggressive strategies work well, the agency said. Still, a top CDC official said she was surprised by how quickly the cases have spread. "As fast as we have run to slow [antibiotic] resistance, some germs have outpaced us," Anne Schuchat, the CDC's principal deputy director, told reporters. "We've had some success, but it isn't enough to turn the tide. We need to do more and we need to do it faster and earlier." Most people don't realize the individual mandate was repealed A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds just 30 percent of the public correctly says that ObamaCare's individual mandate has been repealed. Other interesting findings: --90 percent said they will keep getting coverage anyway, even without a mandate --53 percent say ObamaCare marketplaces are "collapsing," compared to 33 percent who say they are not. The NIH is looking at the link between sports and obesity. On the face of it, the connection seems like a paradox: Sports seem to promote exercise and healthy living. But the NIH director is calling on major sports leagues to re-examine their sponsorship deals with unhealthy foods, out of fear they are fueling the country's obesity problem. In a blog post, Dr. Francis Collins cited NIH-funded research showing that more than 75 percent of foods promoted by major sports leagues are unhealthy. Collins gave examples of sports leagues helping promote unhealthy foods, such as the NFL reaching a deal with Tostitos to produce chip bags featuring football team logos and MLB making Nathan's the "official hot dog" of the league. We wrote about the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' sweeping Medicare final rule yesterday. But there was another nugget in those policies that is getting more attention today. CMS altered a measure it had proposed in the draft that was aimed at curbing the opioid epidemic after it proved controversial. The agency had received pushback on a proposal that would have meant a prescription for high doses of opioids (at 90 milligrams of morphine per day or more) automatically wouldn't be filled and the patient would need special permission from their private insurance company in order to receive the medication. Many doctors and patients expressed opposition during the draft proposal's public comment period, which ended March 5, and the proposal "was strongly opposed by nearly all stakeholder groups for a variety of reasons," CMS wrote in its final letter on new Medicare policies released Monday. The final policy is different than what was proposed. When a pharmacist receives a prescription for a dosage of 90 milligrams of morphine or more per day, they will be required to talk to the prescriber, document the discussion and if the prescriber approves, then they can fill the prescription. A CMS official said that in most cases, this should likely make for a faster process than what was originally proposed, saying it would "fit within the current workflow of what the pharmacist is already doing to verify the prescriptions, speaking with the patient and the prescriber." What we're reading With scarce gun violence research available, clinicians and states look to fill the vacuum (Modern Healthcare) FDA forces mandatory recall of kratom, says it's a first (NBC News) DEA's opioid crackdown brings arrests of prescribers, pharmacists (The Washington Post) State by state With Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's signature, almost half of states now ban abortion coverage for public workers. (Governing) As number of HealthCare.gov brokers dwindles, Georgia passes bill to protect their commissions (Modern Healthcare) Texas intensifies efforts to boost maternal health care (Houston Chronicle) From The Hill's opinion pages Obama is gone, but his fiscal waste is still befouling American health care, argues Linda Gorman, the director of the Health Care Policy Center at the Independence Institute, a free market think tank. | 
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