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Patient Lawsuits Cancelled; COVID Lobby Windfall; Faces of Breakthrough Infection

Welcome to the latest edition of Investigative Roundup, highlighting some of the best investigative reporting on healthcare each week.

UVA Health Cancels Patient Lawsuits

The University of Virginia Health System will cancel a “massive backlog” of court judgments and liens against patients for unpaid bills, according to Kaiser Health News. The lawsuits go back to the 1990s, and tens of thousands of families may benefit. However, most families who have already paid money to UVA because of lawsuits or liens will not be getting their money back.

The move “to wipe out liens that drain home equity years after a hospital visit is extremely rare,” scholars of healthcare finance told Kaiser Health News.

UVA is releasing all liens and judgments against households that make less than 400% of federal poverty guidelines, or $106,000 for a family of four, UVA health systems chief financial officer Douglas Lischke said in the article. UVA will also stop blocking enrollment for university students who have unpaid bills in the healthcare system.

For decades, UVA had been suing patients for unpaid bills, amounting to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. When the health system won, it could seize wages and the value of homes once sold, plus 6% interest. After a KHN 2019 investigation, UVA limited its collections lawsuits, increased discounts for uninsured patients, and expanded financial assistance.

Most COVID $$$ Went to Those That Lobbied

Public Citizen and the Center for Responsive Politics have published a report detailing COVID lobbyist efforts in 2020.

The federal government handed out more than $36 billion in contracts to some 6,300 companies involved in the pandemic. The 400 companies (6%) that reported lobbying the federal government received over half ($19.4 billion) of the COVID contract money.

The 142 COVID contractors (2%) that lobbied either the Trump administration or the agency from which they received the contract got $13.4 billion, or 37% of the money. These companies contributed $313 million to Trump, members of Congress, and party committees during the 2016 through 2020 election cycles; $130 million of that came during the 2020 election cycle.

The report highlights certain individual COVID contractors, including those involved with ventilators, PPE, COVID testing supplies, IT, vaccines, and drugs.

The examples “do not necessarily indicate that companies inappropriately received contracts,” according to the researchers. However, the “strikingly disproportionate share of COVID contracts received by vendors who engaged in federal lobbying raises questions about whether the work of professional influencers figured into procurement decisions,” they write.

Human Face of Breakthrough Infections

Kaiser Health News captures the human face of the small number of breakthrough infections reported in some people who have been fully vaccinated for COVID-19.

As of April 16, at least 5,800 breakthrough infections occurred two or more weeks after the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, among 78 million fully vaccinated Americans, according to CDC data quoted in the article.

Robin Hauser, a 52-year old pediatrician in Tampa, Florida, got COVID-19 in February, seven weeks after her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine. She took off work to care for her 21-year-old and 16-year-old who contracted the virus, and was also caring for her father who has cancer. She thought she was protected because she had long been fully vaccinated.

“It’s a minor miracle that I didn’t infect him before I realized I, too, was sick,” Hauser said. Her husband, who hadn’t been vaccinated, never became infected.

Public health officials have said that breakthrough infections after vaccination are expected. According to vaccine manufacturers, breakthrough cases reported to the CDC are “not surprising.” A Moderna company spokesperson has said that their latest analysis of clinical trial data shows that 900 people got COVID after being vaccinated, “consistent with 90% or more efficacy.”

Both Pfizer and Moderna report data showing up to 80% protection from infection about two weeks after the first shot. Most experts think that protection actually ranges from 50% to 80%, depending on length of time after the first shot and individual variation, KHN reported.

Fauci has said that the number of breakthrough infections reported so far is “not cause for alarm,” although monitoring continues and the effect of variants remains unclear. The Biden administration has allocated funds for studying variants.

Source: MedicalNewsToday.com