Viewpoints: Covid’s Toll On Our Mental Health Becoming Apparent; Ideas To Make Health Care More Affordable

Miami Herald: Looser Pandemic Restrictions Reveal Mental-Health Crisis 
COVID-19 appears to be on the wane. But a - crisis may fill the void left by the virus. Some experts say the damage could last a generation. Since the earliest days of the pandemic, social workers have served on the front lines, providing essential mental-health services to those in need. As lockdowns hit and deaths multiplied, social workers helped individuals and families cope with anxiety, depression, grief and isolation. (Angelo McClain, 3/22)

The New York Times: The Next Covid Wave Is Probably Already On Its Way 
The most important lesson of the Covid pandemic is that the only constant is change. Variants spread, cases surge and abate, treatments change and knowledge expands. This means that we — the public, elected officials and public health leaders — need to learn constantly and adapt quickly, acting on the insight that no one policy response is likely to stay effective for long. (Tom Frieden, 3/22)

Roll Call: ‘We Don't Know That’: A Curious Answer About Biden And A 20-Year-Old Getting COVID 
Questions about the health of a 79-year-old head of state will always be risky business. The answers always are telling — sometimes, however, what’s sound medically can be lacking politically. Senior aides to older leaders handle queries about sniffles, limps, water glass-holding, annual physicals and, now, COVID-19 in a manner of ways. Over the years, some presidents have dispatched their military doctors to throw open — to some extent — their medical charts and let the world know how healthy they are. Such reports have been delivered with varying degrees of believability. (John T. Bennett, 3/22)

Stat: Pharma Executives Shouldn't Be Driving Covid-19 Vaccine Policy 
In a March 13 interview with CBS, Albert Bourla, Pfizer’s CEO, said his company intended to apply to the Food and Drug Administration for authorization of a fourth mRNA vaccine dose and implied that this was something all adults needed. Two days later, it did just that — but only for adults over 65. That same day, Stephen Hoge, Moderna’s president, took a different perspective: that a fourth dose of his company’s mRNA vaccine wasn’t required for all adults but could benefit older and immunocompromised Americans. Two days later, Moderna announced it was requesting FDA authorization of a fourth vaccine dose for everyone aged 18 or over. (John P. Moore and Luciana L. Borio, 3/22)

The Atlantic: What Americans Really Think About The Pandemic 
Recent opinion surveys give mixed messages about how Americans perceive the current state of the pandemic, and what they think we should do about it. In a February Washington Post/ABC News poll, for example, 58 percent of Americans said that controlling the spread of the coronavirus is more important than loosening restrictions on normal activities. In a Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted the same week, 51 percent said we need to learn to live with COVID-19 and get back to normal. (Natalie Jackson, 3/23)

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Georgia Health News: U.S. Health Care Still Lags On Affordability
Many years ago, I had lunch with Dr. Uwe Reinhardt, a distinguished health care economist, who was a speaker at a national conference for hospital CEOs put on by the organization employing me. In a good-humored way, he made clear to me that the United States did not have the best health care in the world, no matter what our politicians liked to say. Obviously, the troubled situation of our health care system start did not start with the Covid-19 pandemic, as extraordinary an upheaval as that was. Pre-Covid, there were numerous excellent studies and reports regarding the excessive costs plaguing the U.S. system. (Jack Bernard, 3/22)

Kansas City Star: Kansas Representative: US Diabetics Need Insulin Copay Cap 
My first experience with America’s broken health care system came when I fell into a diabetic coma at the age of 12. After three months in the hospital, a medical social worker enrolled me in Medicaid to cover insulin costs. But my family was left with crippling debt from my hospital stay. This was only the beginning of the nightmare that is living with diabetes in America. (Heather Meyer, 3/23)

Detroit News: Congress Must Make Immunization Affordable For Seniors
There isn’t anything we wouldn’t do to protect our parents, our grandparents and seniors across Michigan who we love. The pandemic has taught and reminded us a lot about what really matters in life — and the importance of our friends and family. It’s also reminded us about the importance of access to health care and prevention — especially among Michigan’s most at-risk populations. Unfortunately, we’ve learned that a cost-sharing provision in the Medicare Part D program may be impacting Michigan seniors by making it harder than it needs to be to get the immunizations they need. (Saul Anuzis, 3/20)