Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Different Takes: Is AI The Future Of Health Care?; Opioid Settlement Money Must Be Used Wisely
Stat: What Nordic Countries Can Teach Us About Using AI In Health Care
The Swedish-made Koenigsegg Jesko Absolut is one of the fastest and most beautiful cars ever built. But it can’t be driven anywhere without fuel. The same goes for artificial intelligence in health care. You can have an excellent algorithm and technology. But without fuel — without data — it won’t go far. And not just any fuel will do. Just as a Jesko runs best on the highest-octane gasoline available, AI runs best on clean and high-quality data. (Madlaina Costa-Scharplatz, Peter Hovstadius and Jacob LaPorte, 3/29)
Stat: Money From Lawsuits Over Opioids Is Urgently Needed Now
Opioid companies are being forced to pay for their grave mistakes and misdeeds in helping fuel the overdose epidemic in the United States. The total in settlements — including Purdue Pharma’s $8.3 billion agreement in a federal case and a consulting company paying more than a half-billion dollars for its role — now stands at approximately $10 billion, with many cases and billions more dollars still pending. It’s imperative that these funds are allocated wisely — and as soon as possible — to ensure better access to addiction treatment and recovery support. (Marvin D. Seppala, 3/29)
The Sacramento Bee: Changes To Medi-Cal Can Tackle Unequal Access To Health Care
Wealthy Californians come from affluent enclaves to take vaccine shots meant for at-risk frontline workers. In the same state but a world away, Californians haven’t heard that a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine exists because the news hasn’t yet reached them in their language. Unequal access to quality health care allowed the virus to cut a path of devastation through communities of color over the past year. Like the murder of George Floyd and acts of violence that sparked a national reckoning on race last year, inequalities in health care are rooted in a set of rules stacked against Black and brown communities. To heal, we must rewrite the rules. One big place to start is Medi-Cal. (Sandra R. Hernández, 3/26)
Los Angeles Times: U.S. Invested In The War On Terror At The Cost Of Public Health
Here’s one big takeaway from our country’s disastrous 2020 COVID response: For 20 years we’ve lavished attention and money on fighting human terrorism and forgot that the terrorism of nature is equally deadly, deserving equal preparation. Today, with more than 540,000 COVID deaths, I hope we’ve learned the huge cost of allowing our public health structure to wither as we single-mindedly pursued the decades-long war on terror. Slowly, with no one much paying attention, here’s how it happened. (Elizabeth Rosenthal, 3/28)
CNN: America's Pandemic Dead Deserve Accountability After Birx Disclosure
The hundreds of thousands of citizens whose deaths from Covid-19 could have been avoided are owed national and political accountability, but the polarization of America that exacerbated the pandemic threatens to deprive them of their due. A haunting admission by Dr. Deborah Birx in a new CNN documentary that after last year's first infectious wave, the death toll could have been substantially reduced, will prove harrowing for those who lost loved ones. It also throws new scrutiny on the negligent management of the pandemic by former President Donald Trump and his willingness to put economic and political goals above science and the public well-being. (Stephen Collinson, 3/29)
