Longer Looks: Seven Days Of Heroin; Goop; And Medicare-For-All
Each week, KHN's Shefali Luthra finds interesting reads from around the Web.
The Cincinnati Enquirer:
Seven Days Of Heroin
It’s a little after sunrise on the first day of another week, and Cincinnati is waking up again with a heroin problem. So is Covington. And Middletown. And Norwood. And Hamilton. And West Chester Township. And countless other cities and towns across Ohio and Kentucky.This particular week, July 10 through 16, will turn out to be unexceptional by the dreary standards of what has become the region’s greatest health crisis. (9/10)
The Atlantic:
Why Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop Is Still So Popular
How to explain Goop’s popularity? In many ways, it exemplifies—and has capitalized on—several recent trends in health media. Fact-checking often doesn’t fit into increasingly tight media budgets, or isn’t much of a priority, so dubious health claims about prolonged fasting or avoiding gluten ricochet around the internet. The rich are already more likely than the poor to be healthy, so they shell out for alternative treatments and supplements in hopes of achieving even greater vitality. (Olga Khazan, 9/12)
Vox:
Bernie Sanders's New Medicare-For-All Plan, Explained
The Sanders plan envisions a future in which all Americans have health coverage and pay nothing out of pocket when they visit the doctor. His plan, the Medicare for All Act, describes a benefit package that is more generous than what other single-payer countries, like Canada, currently offer their residents.The Sanders plan goes into great detail about the type of coverage Americans would receive. But it provides no information on how it would finance such a generous health care system. (Sarah Kliff, 9/13)
The New Yorker:
The Cost Of The Opioid Crisis
In September, 2016, Donald Trump delivered a speech at the Economic Club of New York. “Today, I’m going to outline a plan for American economic revival,” he said. “It is a bold, ambitious, forward-looking plan to massively increase jobs, wages, incomes, and opportunities for the people of our country.” He went on to talk about lowering taxes and removing regulations, renegotiating trade deals and building a border wall. But he overlooked one of the most pressing issues facing the American economy today: the opioid crisis. (Sheelah Kolhatkar, 9/11)
FiveThirtyEight:
Surviving A Big Storm Doesn’t Mean The Trauma Is Over
The hurricanes in the Gulf and Florida over the last few weeks have left people displaced — and from more than just their homes. Places of worship, community centers, parks and schools are underwater, missing roofs or windows. And those losses can set the social infrastructure of a person’s life adrift. Years after the family is safe and the home is rebuilt, disaster victims could still be struggling with health problems that got a start because of the way a stressful, terrifying situation disrupted their lives. It’s even possible, some researchers say, that the stress and fear alone could create health problems later. (Maggie Koerth-Baker, 9/12)
