Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Trump's Kidney Initiative, Measles' Return & Fecal Transplants
Vox: A New Trump Executive Order On Kidneys Could Save Thousands Of Lives
President Trump on Wednesday announced an executive order on a topic rather far afield from his usual concerns: improving care for patients with kidney disease. (Dylan Matthews, 7/10)
NPR's Fresh Air: Motorcycle Crash Shows Bioethicist The Dark Side Of Quitting Opioids Alone
In 2015, Travis Rieder, a medical bioethicist with Johns Hopkins University's Berman Institute of Bioethics, was involved in a motorcycle accident that crushed his left foot. In the months that followed, he underwent six different surgeries as doctors struggled first to save his foot and then to reconstruct it. (Terry Gross, 7/8)
The Atlantic: What the Measles Epidemic Really Says About America
The straightforward explanation for measles’ return is that fewer Americans are receiving vaccines. Since the turn of the century, the share of American children under the age of 2 who go unvaccinated has quadrupled. But why are a growing number of American parents refusing vaccines—in the process welcoming back a disease that decades ago killed hundreds of people a year and hospitalized close to 50,000? (Peter Beinart, 7/8)
Pacific Standard: The Global Opioid Supply Chain Begins In Tasmania
Heading into the highlands of Tasmania, some 250 miles south of the Australian mainland, narrow black-topped roads meander through a wide river valley bounded by distant mountain bluffs. Two-track paths splinter off into grassy pastures, past skeletal trees bleached by sun and drought. All along the way, small signs dangle from wire fence lines: Danger Prohibited Area Poison. Little else would suggest that these fields represent the nucleus of the global opioid supply chain—the starting point for one of the world's largest drug markets. (Peter Andrey Smith, 7/11)
Vox: 7 Health Care Questions The 2020 Democrats Should Answer
There is exactly one reasonable response to whether you would abolish private insurance, and it isn’t “yes” or “no.” It’s not raising or lowering your hand. It’s: “It depends.” There are a bunch of questions that need to be answered first before you can even make sense of it. (Ezra Klein, 7/8)
Wired: The Death Of A Patient And The Future Of Fecal Transplants
Poop transplants work so well against some infections that they’re becoming a first line of defense. But two bad incidents raise questions about what's next. (Maryn McKenna, 7/11)
