Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: GOP Needs To Act Quickly, Offer Alternative To The ACA; Why Won't Lawmakers Listen To America About The Need For Gun Buyer Background Checks?
The Wall Street Journal: Still Heading For The ObamaCare Exits
Republicans think they can win on health care in 2020 by running against Medicare for All, and the facts about single payer are a target-rich environment. But the latest data on ObamaCare shows why the GOP needs to come up with its own ideas to sell to the public. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services this week released a report on trends in the individual health insurance market, and the results are ugly. Of particular note is the continued flight of those who aren’t entitled to the Affordable Care Act’s tax-credit subsidies and thus are exposed to the full pain of high premiums. The tax credits phase out at about $100,000 for a family of four. In other words, the American middle class. (8/15)
Bloomberg: Mass Shootings Show Need For Gun Buyer Background Checks
Recent gun massacres — meaning this month’s massacres, not the previous month’s — have elicited a flurry of words from the gun lobby’s political spokesmen in Washington. President Trump, elected with the help of an unprecedented outlay by the National Rifle Association, said last week that he now supports “very meaningful” background checks on gun purchases. He didn’t say what “meaningful” means.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose Republican majority has been anchored by tens of millions of additional spending by the NRA, is talking too. He said that after the Senate returns from recess in September he’ll put background checks and red-flag laws “front and center.” (8/15)
The Washington Post: Americans Need To Know The Whole Truth About The Opioid Crisis
The truth hurts. Also, the truth will set you free. Both old sayings receive validation in the The Post’s continuing investigative reporting series on the history of the prescription opioid industry and the addiction epidemic it helped to spawn. It is indeed painful to find out that millions of oxycodone and hydrocodone pills flooded poor communities in Appalachia as pharmaceutical companies and the Drug Enforcement Administration failed to heed signs of large-scale inappropriate prescribing. Yet there is a certain liberation in finally being able to point to specific data, which might help assign responsibility for what may be U.S. health care’s most fateful systemic failure in recent history. (8/15)
Fox News: No, Trump's New Green Card Rules Are Not Un-American, Anti-Immigrant Or Unlawful
Once again, President Trump is being accused of drastically altering U.S. immigration law in order to send the message that if you’re not white and wealthy, you’re not welcome. The only problem with that accusation – just like all of the prior, similar accusations – is that it is utterly false. (Matt O'Brien, 8/15)
The Washington Post: We Must Abolish The ‘Public Charge’ Rule
The Trump administration announced a vast expansion of an immigration inadmissibility this week known as the “public charge.” The new rule, more than 800 pages long, creates stricter standards for applicants seeking legal permanent residency who use public benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps or housing assistance. In other words, immigration officials will look more thoroughly at the credit scores, wealth, age and educational background of immigration applicants to determine whether they are worthy of being here. Such a policy may sound shocking to some, but in fact, the public-charge provision has long been a weapon of racism and classism in the United States. Far from its expansion, the rule should be abolished as a relic of the bygone era from which it came. (Christopher Richardson, 8/15)
Stat: Cannabidiol Confusion: Lofty Promises And Barriers To Research
As cannabis researchers, we work in a field whose unknowns could positively or negatively affect the health of millions of Americans. But the U.S. government’s decades-long prohibition of cannabis research forcefully limits what we might learn. Adding to the absurdity, the recent relaxation of this prohibition may promote a public health threat. (Beatriz H. Carlini, Gregory Carter and Nephi Stella, 8/15)
Los Angeles Times: Should You Be Worried About Ebola? It Depends On Where You Live
The latest outbreak of the deadly hemorrhagic virus Ebola has claimed more than 1,800 lives in Congo and been declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by the World Health Organization. But how worried should other nations be about its spread?It depends. The danger of Ebola does not lie solely in the disease itself, but in the socioeconomic conditions of the places affected. People who contract Ebola are three to four times less likely to die from it if they are treated in a high-income country such as the United States rather than in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo or western Africa, where the 2014 epidemic occurred. (Abraar Karan, 8/16)
The New York Times: Ebola Could Be Eradicated — But Only If The World Works Together
The global health community got a few pieces of hopeful news this week. On Monday the World Health Organization announced that two newly developed intravenous drug therapies appear capable of curing Ebola. The medications could help end a continuing epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where nearly 2,800 people have been infected over the past year and more than 1,800 have died. Combined with the recently developed Ebola vaccine, they could even help eradicate a disease that has killed more than 12,000 people over the past four decades. Then, on Wednesday, the Food and Drug Administration effectively endorsed a three-drug treatment that appears to cure so-called extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis — the deadliest version of the world’s deadliest infectious disease. (8/16)
The Hill: Compound Medicine Regulation Is Key To Patient Safety
Compounded drugs serve a critically important purpose for people with rare diseases or allergies to commercially available drugs. The science of compounding two or more medications to create a custom mix has been vital in treating patients who need to avoid certain ingredients or dyes because of allergies, or who need special strength or dosages. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began regulating the practice in the 1950s, but over the years, unfortunately, we continue to see instances when compounded medicines have caused patient harm, and in some cases death. (Sally Greenberg, 8/15)
Stat: Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality Can Improve Surgeons' Training
Rapid advances in the development of medical devices in the 21st century are contributing to healthier lives, but bring with them a new challenge: teaching clinicians how to use these often-complicated technologies. Teaching them poorly, or failing to do it at all, can negate the potential benefits and put patients at risk of harm from devices that were intended to benefit them. (Justin Barad, 8/16)
Newsweek: Illinois To Require Insurance Companies To Cover Cost Of EpiPen Injectors For Kids
llinois Governor JB Pritzker has signed a law that would require insurance companies to cover costs for children in need of epinephrine injections for cases of severe allergic reactions. House Bill 3435 will take effect January 1, 2020, and would require companies offering health insurance policies in Illinois to pay for medically necessary epinephrine injectors for minors. (Prokos, 8/14)
