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Hospitals and lawmakers are pressing the Biden administration to review federal pandemic-relief programs that they say have distorted pay rates for travel nurses, the Wall Street Journal reported. Many nurses are making twice what they did before the pandemic or more on assignments at hospitals paying top dollar to fill big holes in their workforces. Some hospitals are using federal COVID-19 relief funds to cover part of the difference between rates for travel nurses and staff salaries. Health-industry trade groups and some members of Congress say staffing agencies matching workers with hospitals are capitalizing on a tight labor market, as many nurses have left during the pandemic, often because of burnout and fatigue. Staffing firms say the higher pay rates are simply a matter of supply and demand. “It’s kind of like saying real-estate agents set the price. The buyers and sellers participating in the market do,” said Alan Braynin, president and chief executive officer at Aya Healthcare, the largest healthcare staffing agency in the U.S. Almost 200 House lawmakers led by Reps. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) on Jan. 25 asked the White House to investigate the run-up in wages that staffing agencies pay contract nurses. Trade groups the American Hospital Association, the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living wrote recently to the White House that staffing firms are exploiting the pandemic by charging exorbitant prices.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd has reached a settlement worth $225 million to resolve claims the drugmaker fueled an opioid epidemic in Texas by improperly marketing addictive pain medications, the state's attorney general said yesterday, Reuters reported. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Teva agreed to pay $150 million over 15 years and provide $75 million worth of generic Narcan, a medication used to counter the effects of opioid overdoses. The deal is the largest Teva has struck in the more than 3,500 lawsuits it faces seeking to hold it and other drug companies responsible for an opioid abuse epidemic that led to hundreds of thousands of overdose deaths over the last two decades nationally. The Israeli drugmaker previously settled with Oklahoma and Louisiana. Teva did not admit wrongdoing as part of Monday's settlement. Teva has long sought to resolve the thousands of opioid lawsuits by state, counties and municipalities it faces, offering in 2019 to donate $23 billion in opioid addiction treatment drugs and pay $250 million over 10 years. Attorneys general from four states, including Texas, negotiated that proposal with Teva. But no nationwide settlement agreement ultimately resulted after lawyers for some of the plaintiffs questioned the true value of the drugs.

Johnson & Johnson tried to get a U.S. judge to block Reuters from publishing a story based on what it said were confidential company documents about the healthcare giant's legal maneuvers to fight lawsuits claiming its Baby Powder caused cancer. "The First Amendment is not a license to knowingly violate the law," said the company in a filing late Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey, where a unit of J&J had sought bankruptcy protection while defending the Baby Powder lawsuits. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects freedom of the press. On Friday, Reuters reported that J&J secretly launched "Project Plato" last year to shift liability from about 38,000 pending Baby Powder talc lawsuits to a newly created subsidiary, which was then to be put into bankruptcy. By doing so, J&J could limit its financial exposure to the lawsuits. After the publication of the story, Reuters asked U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan to deny J&J's motion, claiming it was moot. Less than an hour after Reuters submitted its letter, J&J said in a filing that it was withdrawing a request for an immediate hearing on the matter but was "not prepared to agree" that its request regarding the documents was moot. J&J said in its filing after the publication of the story that it intends to continue discussions with Reuters and said it was "heartened that publication of confidential documents may no longer be imminent." J&J's request to block publication was "among the most extraordinary remedies a litigant can request under the law," attorneys for Reuters, a unit of Thomson Reuters, said in a Friday court filing. The news agency's lawyers called J&J's request a "prior restraint of speech on a matter of public interest." J&J said Reuters had obtained documents that were protected from public disclosure by an order from Judge Kaplan. The company demanded that Reuters return the documents and refrain from publishing information gleaned from the documents. Reuters denied that it has confidential information, saying in court papers that the confidentiality of one of the documents was lifted in January and that the second is not in the possession of Reuters.

With the ink barely dry on a vote in the state Senate, California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed S.B. 418, according to a release from the office of State Sen. John Laird, the Santa Cruz Sentinel reported. S.B. 418, authored by Laird, creates the Pajaro Valley Health Care District. The district is first in line to purchase the financially troubled Watsonville Community Hospital. Three weeks ago, Laird “gut and amended” Senate Bill 418 to add language that would create the Pajaro Valley Healthcare District. In a matter of weeks, Laird moved this legislation through the full legislative process. Assemblymembers Robert Rivas and Mark Stone, as well as Sen. Anna Caballero also co-authored S.B. 418. In response to the current owners of the Watsonville Community Hospital filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy, issuing WARN Act notices to employees, and announcing the hospital’s January closure, Laird authored legislation to ensure the hospital doors remain open. In late November, Watsonville Community Hospital CEO Steven Salyer announced that the hospital would be sold or shuttered by March. Pajaro Valley Healthcare District Project leader and former Santa Cruz County health official Mimi Hall is working with the county, Watsonville and others to build financial backing for the acquisition and future operation of the hospital as it goes through chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. In late January, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors approved $5 million toward the purchase and the operation of the hospital. Those funds are contingent on the district’s successful bid for the hospital. All total, the county has earmarked $5.5 million, according to a county release.

Pharmaceutical company Mallinckrodt PLC on Thursday won court approval of its reorganization plan, which includes a $1.7 billion settlement of opioid-related litigation, bringing its 16-month bankruptcy close to an end, Reuters reported. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in Wilmington, Del., signed off on the plan in a 103-page written decision. In addition to settling thousands of lawsuits accusing it of deceptively marketing its opioids, the plan allows Mallinckrodt to reduce $5.3 billion in debt by $1.3 billion and hands control of the reorganized company to creditors. Mallinckrodt filed for bankruptcy in October 2020 to resolve more than 3,000 lawsuits from states, local governments and private individuals who accused the company of fueling the opioid epidemic through deceptive marketing, including by playing down the risks of addiction and abuse. The company won the support of committees representing junior creditors and opioid claimants, which had long opposed the plan, for the deal in September. Nearly all U.S. states backed it as well. In approving the plan, Judge Dorsey overruled objections raised by the state of Rhode Island, pharmaceutical company Sanofi, certain insurers and shareholders.

A committee representing consumers suing Johnson & Johnson over its talcum-based baby powder products is challenging a bid to use bankruptcy to freeze litigation against the company and retailers that sold the product, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The committee, which represents consumers who allege exposure to J&J’s talcum products caused cancer, said in a court filing on Tuesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Trenton, N.J., that pausing civil lawsuits against J&J, which is not in bankruptcy, could prevent tens of thousands of people dying from ovarian cancer and mesothelioma from having their day in court. J&J faces about 38,000 talc-injury cases that alleged talc-based Johnson’s Baby Powder contained asbestos, a cancer-causing mineral, an allegation J&J has denied. The consumer goods giant moved the talc-injury cases to bankruptcy court last year through a newly formed subsidiary, which filed for chapter 11 in October. J&J stopped selling talcum powder-based products in the U.S. and Canada in 2020 and has maintained that the powder is safe and doesn’t contain asbestos.

The former head of a major generic-drug distributor was convicted of conspiring to sell opioids to crooked pharmacies to boost profits and his own pay, Bloomberg News reported. Laurence F. Doud III, who spent 25 years as chief executive officer of Rochester Drug Co-operative, was found guilty yesterday in New York of scheming with others at the company to sell large amounts of addictive oxycodone and fentanyl to businesses that diverted the medications to addicts and street dealers. Doud faces a minimum of 10 years in prison when he’s sentenced June 29. Doud was convicted of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances and conspiring to defraud the U.S. government by failing to report suspicious orders to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The jury delivered its unanimous verdict on the second day of deliberations.

A federal judge on Tuesday extended a legal shield protecting the Sackler family owners of Purdue Pharma from lawsuits to Feb. 17, as they try to reach a deal with several states to settle sprawling litigation stemming from the U.S. opioid crisis, Reuters reported. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain said that allowing the legal shield to expire at the end of Tuesday would be “quite foolish,” given the mediator’s report of a possible deal. Purdue, maker of the highly addictive OxyContin opioid painkiller, filed for bankruptcy in 2019 in the face of thousands of lawsuits accusing it and the Sacklers of fueling an American opioid epidemic through deceptive marketing. The opioid abuse crisis has led to nearly 500,000 overdose deaths over two decades, according to U.S. data. Members of the Sackler family have denied the allegations. Purdue’s bankruptcy judge has paused litigation against members of the Sackler family since 2019, seeking to buy time for the company to pursue a reorganization in bankruptcy court. On Monday, the mediator reported that the Sacklers were nearing an agreement to boost their more than $4.3 billion cash contribution to resolve the litigation after negotiating with states that objected to the original terms. Judge Drain said on Tuesday that “all bets were open” as to whether the Sacklers would continue to receive legal protection from opioid lawsuits if the current round of mediation does not result in a new deal.

Native American tribes have reached settlements over the toll of opioids totaling $590 million with drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and the country’s three largest drug distribution companies, according to a court filing made Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. The filing in U.S. District Court in Cleveland lays out the broad terms of the settlements with Johnson & Johnson and distribution companies AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. Some details are still being hashed out. All federally recognized tribes in the U.S. will be able to participate in the settlements, even if they did not sue over opioids. And there could be settlements between other firms in the industry and tribes, many of which have been hit hard by the overdose crisis. W. Ron Allen, chair of the Jamestown K’Klallam Tribe in Sequim, Washington, called it a big deal for tribes to reach their own settlement, in contrast with tobacco industry deals in the 1990s that left out Native American groups. Allen doesn’t expect his tribe of about 550 people to get much from the settlement, but it will help in its efforts to build a healing center that will address opioid addiction, he said.