Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: The Future Of Pharma; Jimmy Kimmel On CHIP; And Presidential Health
Politico: Politico's Agenda: The Pharma Issue
The pharmaceutical industry has scored some big successes in the past century. Antibiotics allowed surgery to become routine instead of life-threatening. Drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure have cut the death rates from cardiovascular disease. Chemotherapy drugs have turned some cancers into more of a chronic disease than a death sentence.But when we look to the future, it’s not at all clear that we’re going to have the drugs we need for the health challenges we can already predict. (12/13)
Jimmy Kimmel Live: Jimmy Kimmel Returns With Baby Billy After Heart Surgery
The fight is not over for millions of children whose health is threatened right now because a program called CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program), that is there to protect them, is in serious need of funding because Congress recently failed to approve funding for it. This is not a partisan issue. Democrats and Republicans have always overwhelmingly supported it – until now. Video. (12/11)
The Atlantic: How Much Will We Find Out About Trump's Health?
President Trump’s detractors have raised concerns that he doesn’t quite fit that first category. There are already some publicly available reasons to worry about Trump’s health: Besides being the oldest president ever elected, he’s overweight, appears to subsist on a junk-food-heavy diet, and avoids exercise. (Olga Khazan, 12/8)
Vox: We’re Barely Using The Best Tool We Have To Fight Obesity
The medical case for bariatric surgery has grown much stronger in recent years. High-quality studies on the long-term health outcomes of people with obesity who got surgery show, on average, that they’re able to lose dramatic amounts of weight, and even reverse or prevent their obesity-related health conditions, like diabetes and high cholesterol. ... Yet out of the 20 million people who are eligible in the US, fewer than 1 percent get bariatric surgery for weight loss, according to the Obesity Society. (Julia Belluz, 12/8)
The New York Times: ‘Without Andrew, I Can’t Imagine What Life Would Be About.’
For years, Regina Hensley has struggled with addiction, even once attempting suicide. When her son Andrew was born, he gave her a reason to live. But when he was 10, Andrew was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer — forcing Regina to search for meaning once again. Video. (12/10)
The New Yorker: Ophelia Dahl’s National Health Service
[Partners in Health] first came to West Africa in 2014, at the invitation of the governments of Liberia and Sierra Leone, during the height of the Ebola epidemic. Emergency intervention is distinctly not P.I.H.’s project; in contrast with organizations like Médecins Sans Frontières, which specialize in addressing intense crises, P.I.H. works to remake entire health-care systems, by collaborating with local governments. Its commitments are long-term and large in scale. (Ariel Levy, 12/11)
