Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: At-Home BP Readers Can Be Wildly Inaccurate; Shifting Covid Rules Highlighted Role Of Alternative Treatments
Stat: Be Careful With At-Home Blood Pressure Machines
Hypertension is considered to be the No. 1 risk factor for death globally. So it’s no wonder convenient, relatively low-cost blood pressure machines with single-size, standard cuffs can be found in both clinics and homes across the U.S. The “Get It, Slip It, Cuff It, Check It” campaign makes it sound incredibly simple. However, these popular machines and simple-sounding advice may lead to wildly inaccurate results for the sizable portion of the U.S. population with wider or longer arms. (Devabhaktuni Srikrishna, 8/15)
The Star Tribune: In Defense Of Physicians Who Treated COVID With Alternative Approaches
As a primary care physician, I continue to work daily to restore patients' trust in medicine. When the government repeatedly stated as fact their latest recommendations, only to later change those "facts," it undermined patient confidence in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (Mary Paquette, 8/14)
Scientific American: Racist COVID Claims Spread By RFK, Jr., And Other Demagogues Are Deadly
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has floated a conspiracy theory that COVID “ethnically targeted” white and Black people and spared Ashkenazi Jewish and Chinese people. While this racist and antisemitic claim was, and is, easily debunked by global data on COVID cases and deaths, it was presented by Kennedy as a scientific theory and was widely circulated. (Eleanor J. Murray and Monica H. Green, 8/14)
The Boston Globe: How States Can Thoughtfully Unwind Medicare Coverage
Last week KFF estimated that, based on the most current data from 44 states and the District of Columbia, at least 4.5 million people in the United States have fallen off the Medicaid rolls since April 1. These rates of disenrollment range from 72 percent in Texas to 8 percent in Wyoming. While data are still being tabulated for Massachusetts, close to 69,000 residents have been disenrolled from Medicaid as of June. The devastating consequences of Medicaid’s unwinding of continuous coverage deserves immediate attention. (Katherine Gergen Barnett, 8/15)
The New York Times: Republicans Won’t Stop At Banning Abortion
There is no way to regulate and control pregnancy without regulating and controlling people. States that have enacted abortion bans in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health have also considered the establishment of new regimes for the surveillance and criminalization of anyone who dares to circumvent the state’s dictates for the acceptable use of one’s body. (Jamelle Bouie, 8/15)
Stat: What Can The NIH Director Really Do About Drug Spending?
As STAT reported recently, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) has indicated that it will not consider the nomination of Monica Bertagnolli as director of the National Institutes of Health unless she pledges to take specific steps to reduce drug prices. However, the HELP Committee may want to focus on reducing drug spending, the product of price and units prescribed, rather than simply pricing. (Mark J. Ratain, 8/15)
