Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: FDA Finally Starts To Crack Down On Teen Vaping; Apple Watch's New EKG App Bears Monitoring
The New York Times: Getting The Positives Of E-Cigarettes Without The Negatives
There isn’t a lot of good news coming out of the federal government these days. But we got some yesterday. The Food and Drug Administration announced it was cracking down on the epidemic of electronic-cigarette use by teenagers. The agency took a range of actions against manufacturers and retailers to reduce youth e-cigarette use and threatened to do more in the coming months. (David Leonhardt, 9/13)
Chicago Sun Times: Teen Vaping Epidemic Is An Epidemic The FDA Must Snuff Out
When millions of kids and teens are at risk of becoming nicotine addicts, the feds certainly ought to get tough.The Food and Drug Administration rightly took a hard line with the five largest makers of flavored e-cigarettes, giving them 60 days to come up with plans to curb underage use of the increasingly popular devices — or risk having them pulled from the market. (9/13)
Stat: The Next Apple Watch Wants To Monitor Your Heart. Should You Let It?
Wednesday’s announcement that the next iteration of the Apple Watch can both monitor the wearer’s heart rhythm and, if a suspicious reading emerges, perform an electrocardiogram, could be a boon for users and their doctors. Or it could be a massive headache for the health care system. (Anthony Pearson, 9/13)
San Jose Mercury News: New Apple Watch Could Save Lives, Help Sell iPhones
What impresses me about the Apple Watch Series 4 isn’t the cool apps and watch faces or even how nice it looks on your wrist, but the fact that it can, literally, save lives. Apple has built-in a sensor that it says is “capable of generating an ECG similar to a single-lead electrocardiogram.” (Larry Magid, 9/12)
The Washington Post: How Much Would You Pay For One More Day, One More Month With Someone You Love?
If someone you love is dying, how much are you willing to pay for just one more day with them?Doing the math, Melany Knott figured it cost about $1,100 a day. That got them 21 months. “No regrets,” Knott said. “I wouldn’t change a thing. And I won’t wonder about anything. ”The Knott family auctioned off chain saws, goats and guns to raise some of the $695,000 they spent. They raided their savings, college funds, maxed credit cards and doubled down on the double shifts. They did fundraisers at the county fair and ran online tote bag sales to pay for untested treatments offered at a medical clinic in Mexico. (Petula Dvorak, 9/13)
The New York Times: How To End The Cycle Of Violence In Chicago
Wrong place, wrong time — “I was shot nine times,” a teenager, whom I’ll call J.B. to protect his safety, told me. “I got shot because they had a gun and they wanted to do something.” Somehow he survived. Drive-by shootings are commonplace in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood, where the homicide rate rivals that of the world’s most murderous cities. One boy arrested for having a gun was asked why he carried it. “You need to be ready to defend yourself,” he said. “Two of my friends were shot. It was a drive-by, turf war.” (David L. Kirp, 9/13)
The New York Times: The Abortion I Almost Forgot
I didn’t notice my skipped period. I had switched birth control pills, and my menstrual cycle had always been a little irregular. It wasn’t like a movie, either. When I started vomiting, it didn’t even dawn on me that I was pregnant. I thought it was some symptom of cancer. Nor can I remember where or how I ended up getting a pregnancy test. I just know that at some point I figured I couldn’t take a home test for anything else, so I might as well rule this possibility out. (Marisa Meltzer, 9/13)
Detroit News: Michigan Must Understand Marijuana Danger
The marijuana industry is coming at us fast and furious, demanding we legalize another harmful drug. It’s an issue about to come before voters, and it will change our country. Every single state that has commercialized marijuana has seen a multitude of public health concerns. Below are just a few studies that prove that the social disease that is recreational marijuana is true and undeniable. Alcohol used to be the main culprit when it came to impaired driving, but that drug is getting a run for its money from marijuana. So much so that recently the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an awareness campaign. (Kevin Sabet, 9/13)
Sacramento Bee: Why Can’t The Rest Of California Be Like Children’s Hospitals?
While children’s hospitals lose money on Medi-Cal patients, they compensate by being aggressive with commercial insurers and building powerful fundraising operations. And like other interest groups, children’s hospitals have won taxpayer dollars through the ballot.In November, California voters are all but certain to approve Proposition 4, a $1.5 billion bond issue that is the third general obligation bond for children’s hospitals in the past 14 years. (Joe Mathews, 9/13)
