Wednesday's health stories
Ohio sues five opioid manufacturers
Ohio's attorney general filed suit against five manufacturers of opioids, claiming they violated state laws and committed Medicaid fraud in their marketing of medications, per CNBC.
What Ohio wants: An injunction to prevent further "glossy" marketing of opioids, damages repaid for the state's continued response to the crisis, and some sort of reparations paid to opioid consumers.
By the numbers: Almost 20% of Ohio's population was prescribed an opioid at some point last year.
Why it matters: Ohio is the second state (after Mississippi) to sue opioid makers, and it increases the odds that drug manufacturers could face more lawsuits over their role in the opioid crisis.
Ousted health insurance CEO: Trump is "sabotaging" health care
It's been nearly a month since Dr. J. Mario Molina was fired from the health insurance company his father started. Today, he's coming out guns blazing in an op-ed in U.S. News & World Report that lambasts the Trump administration and congressional Republicans for "sabotaging" the health care system — particularly the individual insurance market.
What Molina is saying: The American public "has been duped into believing that the Affordable Care Act is failing, even as Republicans work behind the scenes to destroy it." Molina said this has been going on since President Trump was inaugurated, as well as while Obama was in office.
Why this matters: Molina has been the most vocal industry critic of the Republican push to partially repeal and replace the ACA, and his ouster has emboldened him to speak out even more.
Experimental Ebola vaccine approved in DRC
The Democratic Republic of Congo has approved an experimental Ebola vaccine this week to help address the slew of recent Ebola cases announced earlier this month, the first outbreak since the 2014 epidemic.
Note: The vaccine, known as rVSV-ZEBOV, isn't yet licensed. But it's a promising experimental drug. It has shown positive movement in a clinical trial in Guinea, leaving 5,837 subjects who received the vaccination free of Ebola virus 10 days after receiving the vaccination. Compare that to 23 cases in 6,004 subjects who weren't vaccinated.
Médecins San Frontières arrived this week to go over protocol with the technical teams, although it may be difficult transporting the drug to the rural Bas-Uélé province where the recent cases have been recorded.