Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Children's Dental, Medical Apps, America's Bitter Pill
Slate: Disrupting Dentistry
Dentists claim they just can’t help poor kids. Most dentists are small-business owners who run independent or small group practices. They say they can’t afford to work with Medicaid’s low reimbursement rates and administrative hassles or handle the high no-show rate of these patients. One dental practice in Alabama is showing that there is a solution to these supposedly intractable problems. (June Thomas, 1/6)
The Atlantic: 'A Risk of Harm': Catholic Hospitals' Ban on Tube-Tying
According to a first-of-its-kind study, OB/GYNs across the country are concerned that the Catholic ban on tubal ligations (the clinical term for “tying tubes”) poses a “risk of harm” to women by violating the accepted standard of care, especially for women who are already getting a C-section and would need an unnecessary second surgery. “[If] someone who’s had four C-sections before has to have another operation to get her tubes tied, that’s not what’s in her best interest by any stretch of the imagination,” said another doctor in the study. (Patricia Miller, 1/2)
Mother Jones: When Medical Apps Do More Harm Than Good
Online retailers like iTunes and Amazon offer thousands of apps promising all kinds of real-time information about your body—they can measure blood pressure, take your pulse, track your menstrual cycle, and tell you how well your lungs are working. Mobile health is one of the fastest-growing app categories: According to the consulting firm research2guidance, there are 100,000 mobile health apps on the market, double the number available two and a half years ago. The industry is worth some $4 billion today, and analysts predict that it will reach $26.5 billion by 2017. (Kiera Buter, 1/5)
Aeon: Fertility Fog
It’s too painful to wonder what would have happened if that first gynecologist had sat me down calmly and opened up some informative graphics to show how women’s fertility drastically declines with age – beginning at around 32, more rapidly after 37, then precipitously at 40. The way a doctor might explain to you the risk of smoking by showing you a picture of blackened lungs, or describe the effects fat has on arteries, often leading to heart attacks: simple medical facts, presented in an objective manner, without judgment or guilt or some hidden cultural agenda. Sadly, all this is missing from the discussion on women’s fertility. (Amy Klein, 1/6)
Modern Healthcare: Startup Insurer's Collapse Raises Fears About Co-Op Finances
The financial collapse of CoOportunity Health, a not-for-profit insurer that achieved major enrollment success in Iowa and Nebraska, likely will lead to intensified scrutiny of other new co-op plans by state regulators and congressional Republicans. The fate of the fledgling insurer, established under the provisions of the healthcare reform law, also should serve as a cautionary tale for startup insurers looking to gain market share by offering low premiums in the Obamacare exchanges, where customers' medical costs are difficult to predict. But many co-op plans that struggled to attract customers during the first year of open enrollment are using aggressive pricing to be more competitive in the current open enrollment. (Paul Demko, 1/3)
The New Yorker: The Bill
“’America’s Bitter Pill’ consists of a series of parallel stories. Brill gives us case studies of Americans whose lives have been devastated by outrageous medical bills. He describes the launch of Obamacare in Kentucky; the early days of Oscar, a health-insurance startup in New York City; and his own terrifying experience with a life-threatening aortic aneurysm. Each of these stories orbits his central narrative, ‘the roller-coaster story of how Obamacare happened, what it means, what it will fix, what it won’t fix, and what it means to people.’” (Malcolm Gladwell, 1/12)
