Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Longer Looks: Where Genetic Testing Crosses The Line; HIV In A New Atmosphere; The 'Benefits' of Addiction
The New York Times: ‘Devious Defecator’ Case Tests Genetics Law
Seven years ago, Congress prohibited employers and insurers from discriminating against people with genes that increase their risks for costly diseases, but the case that experts believe is the first to go to trial under the law involves something completely different: an effort by an employer to detect employee wrongdoing with genetic sleuthing. Amy Totenberg, the federal district judge in Atlanta who is hearing the case, called it the mystery of the devious defecator. (Gina Kolata, 5/29)
Politico Magazine: Welcome To The Red State HIV Epidemic
It wasn’t supposed to happen here. Not in Austin, a one-doctor-and-an-ice-cream-shop town of 4,200 in southeastern Indiana, nestled off Interstate 65 on the road from Indianapolis to Louisville, where dusty storefronts sit vacant and many residents, lacking cars, walk to the local market. Not in rural, impoverished Scott County, which had reported fewer than five new cases of HIV infection each year, and just three cases in the past six years. Not in a state where, of the 500 new cases reported annually, only 3 percent are linked to injection drug use. But it did. And it could happen in many more backwoods towns just as unprepared as Austin. As the largest HIV/AIDS outbreak in Indiana’s history roils this Hoosier hamlet, it reflects the changing face of the epidemic in the U.S., as a disease that once primarily afflicted gays and minorities in deep-blue cities rises in rural red states. This new evolution of HIV is also forcing a new generation of Republican policymakers to confront its orthodox opposition to remedies such as government-funded needle-exchange programs. (Adam Wren, 5/28)
The New York Times: A Choice for Recovering Addicts: Relapse or Homelessness
After a lifetime of abusing drugs, Horace Bush decided at age 62 that getting clean had become a matter of life or death. So Mr. Bush, a homeless man who still tucked in his T-shirts and ironed his jeans, moved to a flophouse in Brooklyn that was supposed to help people like him, cramming into a bedroom the size of a parking space with three other men. Mr. Bush signed up for a drug-treatment program and emerged nine months later determined to stay sober. But the man who ran the house, Yury Baumblit, a longtime hustler and two-time felon, had other ideas. Mr. Baumblit got kickbacks on the Medicaid fees paid to the outpatient treatment programs that he forced all his tenants to attend, residents and former employees said. So he gave Mr. Bush a choice: If he wanted to stay, he would have to relapse and enroll in another program. (Kim Barker, 5/30)
Time Magazine: Scientists Figure Out How To Retrieve ‘Lost’ Memories
The latest research shows memories “lost” to amnesia aren’t gone forever; they’re just not accessible. Mice certainly aren’t men, but they can teach us a lot about memories. And in the latest experiments, mice are helping to resolve a long-simmering debate about what happens to “lost” memories. Are they wiped out permanently, or are they still there, but just somehow out of reach? (Alice Park, 5/28)
Modern Healthcare: Not Your Grandfather's Hospital Food: Health Systems Make Meals Part Of Population Health
As more care is shifted to outpatient settings, New Milford is one of a growing number of hospitals seeking new revenue opportunities by making food service operations appealing to the broader community rather than only to people visiting patients. And in another important shift in food service operations, hospitals send chefs and dietitians into the community to help improve residents' health and assist with the management of post-acute patients. Health systems are introducing the innovations partly to maintain customer volume for food service operations as they face pressures to shift care to lower-cost outpatient settings and find new revenue sources. Administrators say their inpatient meal volume has remained largely unchanged so far. But they recognize that will change as outpatient care grows. That means attracting more retail customers for dining. (Adam Rubenfire, 5/30)
The New York Times: Medicare’s Next Half-Century
There has been a revolution in medicine and in patient expectations since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare health insurance into law on July 30, 1965, setting off the often contentious debates about cost control, rationing and privatization now dominating the public conversation about health care. To craft Medicare’s best possible future, however, it may be more productive to focus on the kinds of health care older Americans are actually receiving and are claiming to want. Consider how much patients, doctors and treatments have changed since 1965. (Sharon R. Kaufman, 6/3)
