Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Border Patrol Agency Formalizes Long-Awaited Medical Screening Plan For Migrants, But Doctors Blast It As 'Bare Bones'
The Associated Press: US Agency Formalizes Border Medical Plan After Migrants Die
U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Tuesday formalized a medical plan formed in the wake of a massive surge of migrant families to the U.S.-Mexico border and a series of deaths in immigration custody. The goal was to increase medical care and efficiency. According to the directive, the codified plan includes a sustainable proposal for triage, plus screenings for respiratory systems, instructions to isolate sick migrants to prevent the spread of disease, vaccines for staff and a supply of face masks and hand sanitizer. More than 500 medical professionals are on contract to help administer care. (Long, 12/31)
CNN: Long-Awaited CBP Plan For Migrant Health Screenings Is 'Bare Bones,' Doctor Says
More than a year after migrants in the custody of US Customs and Border Protection began to die, the agency released a plan on Tuesday to improve medical screening. Doctors said they were disappointed it took that long to come up with the plan, which is lacking in many details and provides health screenings only for children, not adults. "To me, this is beyond disappointing. It's incredibly frustrating," said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. (Cohen, 1/1)
In other news on the Trump administration —
The New York Times: Science Panel Staffed With Trump Appointees Says E.P.A. Rollbacks Lack Scientific Rigor
A top panel of government-appointed scientists, many of them hand-selected by the Trump administration, said on Tuesday that three of President Trump’s most far-reaching and scrutinized proposals to weaken major environmental regulations are at odds with established science. Draft letters posted online Tuesday by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Scientific Advisory Board, which is responsible for evaluating the scientific integrity of the agency’s regulations, took aim at the Trump administration’s rewrite of an Obama-era regulation of waterways, an Obama-era effort to curb planet-warming vehicle tailpipe emissions and a plan to limit scientific data that can be used to draft health regulations. (Davenport and Friedman, 12/31)
The New York Times: How Cutting Food Stamps Can Add Costs Elsewhere
The Department of Agriculture recently finished work on a new rule that may take food stamps away from nearly 700,000 Americans by tightening work requirements. Several times in the past year, the government has proposed cutting food stamp eligibility. The new rule is intended to save almost $8 billion over five years. It’s not clear how much money would actually be saved, research suggests, given the costs that might come from a decline in the health and well-being of many of the country’s 14.3 million “food-insecure” households. (Frakt and Pearson, 12/31)
