Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Readmission Penalties; Nature's Cure; Treating Menopause
Vox: Obamacare Punishes Hospitals That See Poor Patients, Study Finds
An Obamacare program that aims to improve American health care may have an unintended side effect: penalizing hospitals that serve the sickest and poorest patients. The Affordable Care Act penalizes hospitals that have high readmission rates, where patients come back within 30 days. The aim of that program was to encourage doctors to do the best job possible on the first hospital visit, improving patients' experience and saving money by preventing a second trip. (Sarah Kliff, 9/14)
The Atlantic: The Nature Cure
The first time J. Phoenix Smith told me that soil has healing properties that can help thwart depression, I just nodded slowly. Smith is an ecotherapist, a practitioner of nature-based exercises intended to address both mental and physical health. Which means she recommends certain therapies that trigger in me, as a medical doctor, more skepticism than serenity: Listen to birdsong, in your headphones if necessary. Start a garden, and think of the seeds’ growth as a metaphor for life transitions. Find a spot in a park and sit there for 20 minutes every week, without checking your phone, noting week-to-week and seasonal changes in a journal. (James Hamblin, 9/15)
FiveThirtyEight: Ignore The Headlines: We Don’t Know If E-Cigs Lead Kids To Real Cigs
If you followed the news this week, you might think that teens who try electronic cigarettes are bound to take up Marlboros too. “Yep, e-cigarettes are a gateway to smoking,” read a news story published by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. “Teens who vape appear more likely to smoke” was the headline at Reuters, and CBS Boston ran a story titled “E-Cigarette Smoking Gateway To The Real Thing, Study Finds.” This is what happens when 16 people are made to represent an entire population. (Christie Aschwanden, 9/11)
The Atlantic: No One Really Understands How To Treat Menopause
For men, middle age brings the promise of little blue pills and little clear gel packs—Viagra and testosterone to combat the indignities of aging. For women, when things get hot, complicated, and fuzzy, turning to hormones for relief is a trickier proposition. (Leah Shaffer, 9/15)
