Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Different Takes: US Mental Health Care Woefully Inadequate; Congress Must Fix Cracks In ACA
The Atlantic: What American Mental Health Care Is Missing
During my last year as director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), I was in Oregon, giving a presentation to a roomful of mental-health advocates, mostly family members of young people with a serious mental illness. During my tenure as the “nation’s psychiatrist,” the nickname for my role, I oversaw more than $20 billion for mental-health research, and I was eager to share evidence of the agency’s scientific success. (Thomas Insel, 2/13)
The Washington Post: Obamacare Is Working. Democrats Must Make Sure It Lasts
Only a few years ago, it was common to hear how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was an unmitigated disaster. As the federal enrollment website collapsed and premium prices seesawed, even some of the law’s backers wondered if the critics might be right. Cooler heads suggested waiting until the law got its footing before declaring it a failure. (2/13)
Newsweek: Congress Must Act To Permanently Control Fentanyl-Related Substances
The United States' ongoing drug crisis is growing worse every year. The oft-cited figures are as staggering as they are tragic. More than 100,000 Americans lost their lives to overdose in 2021 alone, an ignominious record at risk of being broken again this year. Most of these deaths are caused by synthetic opioids, including fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances, which have saturated the U.S. drug market. (Uttam Dhillon, Jim Carroll and Jim Crotty, 2/11)
Stat: Creating A Promising Pathway For Faster Access To New Drugs
The FDA’s accelerated approval pathway has a potentially prominent champion — Robert Califf, the scientist President Biden has nominated to lead the FDA. This pathway opens the door to earlier approval of drugs aimed at serious conditions that fill an unmet medical need based on a surrogate endpoint, which can considerably shorten the time required to submit data to the FDA and expedite the agency’s review process. At his confirmation hearing in December, Califf said he is “a fan of accelerated approval for the right conditions.” (Peter J. Pitts, 2/14)
The Boston Globe: Raising The Veil On Drug Prices
Long after the current challenges of fighting a worldwide pandemic have eased, the day-to-day problem of making sure the state’s residents have access to life-saving drugs at an affordable price will still be part of the health care landscape. The Massachusetts Senate made a third attempt this week to solve a piece of that puzzle, passing a bill that increases access to prescription drugs and adding some much-needed transparency and oversight to the pharmaceutical industry and to drug pricing. And wouldn’t it be a welcome change if this year the House, which for far too long has shied away from reforms, would welcome some of those proposed changes too. (2/12)
The Washington Post: The Pandemic Crushed Treatment For Other Diseases. But It May Give Us An Edge In The Future
The pandemic has not only wreaked a hurricane of suffering, but it has also disrupted almost every field of health care and medicine worldwide. It delayed immunization campaigns for other diseases, overwhelmed hospitals, sucked up scarce budget resources, exhausted medical personnel, and postponed treatments and surgeries. At the same time, a legacy of the response to the coronavirus pandemic may be innovations and new tools for combating future epidemics. (2/13)
Stat: 'Brian's Song' At 50 Still Offers Lessons About Cancer For Today
When “Brian’s Song” made its debut as an ABC Movie of the Week in 1971, this tear-jerker about a professional football player who died of cancer became a surprisingly popular hit. Fifty years later, it has sunk into obscurity, along with “Brian Piccolo: A Short Season,” a book written by Jeannie Morris, a journalist and wife of Johnny Morris, one of Piccolo’s teammates. But I think it is worth remembering these dual versions of Piccolo’s cancer. “Brian’s Song” painted a gauzy, almost sanitized version of his illness and death — the kind of storytelling we see less often today. Morris’s book was far more frank, a harbinger of greater openness about cancer to come over the succeeding decades. (Barron H. Lerner, 2/13)
