Viewpoints: Lessons On Hiding Health Care Costs During The Pandemic; Put Teachers Alongside Health Care Workers For Vaccine Priorities
Opinion writers weigh in on these pandemic topics and others.
Politico:
How Much Are We Paying To Treat Covid?
Sixty-three thousand, five hundred dollars. That’s about how much a Covid-19 survivor in my home state of South Carolina was told she owed after spending eight of the worst days of her life in a local hospital. She never knew her care would cost that much. Her first inkling came with the bill — a bill she couldn’t possibly afford. Her story is far from unique. Countless Americans have faced a similar crisis. In Colorado, a man recently received a bill for more than $840,000. In Seattle, a 70-year-old ran up charges of more than $1.1 million. In Manhattan, a 48-year-old learned that his time in the hospital racked up nearly $2 million. While most of these folks ended up paying less because of insurance, the fact remains that the price of their care was hidden from view until after the fact. They walked in blind and could have come out broke. This injustice is a feature of American health care. (Nikki Haley, 9/21)
Stat:
Give Teachers High Priority Access To Covid-19 Treatments, Vaccines
The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed what far too few Americans acknowledge about schools and teachers: they are essential to society. Teachers play indispensable roles in human development, particularly for children in elementary, middle, and high school, that cannot be replaced by remote learning. As schools reopen and teachers expose themselves to the risk of Covid-19 infection, we must grant teachers the same priority access to vaccines and treatments that society readily gives to health care workers. (Charles E. Binkley, 9/21)
Modern Healthcare:
Success Of A COVID-19 Vaccine Requires Proper Planning For Equitable Distribution
I am cautiously optimistic about the current pace of COVID-19 vaccine development and encouraged that a number of drug companies are seeing promising results. Current projections show that we may begin vaccinating the public by the end of this year or early 2021, but it will take hundreds of millions of vaccine doses to effectively curb this virus. Not all of those doses will be available at once, so difficult decisions will have to be made regarding how to prioritize distribution. That is why the Trump administration must develop a national COVID-19 vaccine distribution plan now. (Raul Ruiz, 9/19)
The Wall Street Journal:
You Can Trust The FDA’s Vaccine Process
If one or more Covid vaccines prove safe and effective in large clinical trials, the Food and Drug Administration should make them available, in a careful and limited way, to those at highest risk of contracting infection and suffering a bad outcome. Last week we wrote on these pages how the FDA could allow a Covid vaccine to be used by specific groups of patients through an Emergency Use Authorization. This authority, created by Congress to allow the FDA to respond to a public-health emergency, lets the agency authorize the distribution of a product before a full approval. (Scott Gottlieb and Mark McClellan, 9/20)
Bloomberg:
How Covid-19 Killed Good Manners And What To Do About It
One casualty of the current pandemic is likely to be good manners. True, manners and civility have been dying for ages, but Covid-19 is sure to finish them off. Which is too bad. We often think of manners and civility as the same thing, but the first is only a part of the second. Civility is the sum of all the sacrifices that we make for the sake of living in a workable society. Manners matter to civility not only because they are valuable in themselves (although they may be) but because they have traditionally constituted what the historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. described as our “letter of introduction” to strangers. At a time when information about people was relatively expensive, Schlesinger saw good manners as signaling what sort of people we were. (Stephen L. Carter, 9/20)
Modern Healthcare:
Act Now To Build On Painful Lessons Learned During COVID-19
In this social-media age, attention spans are short. Even with an event as devastating as COVID-19, memories fade and our attention moves quickly to the next crisis. That makes it imperative that Congress act this year, while we have our eye on the ball, to take advantage of the most important lessons learned so far during this pandemic. (Lamar Alexander, 9/19)
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
This Pandemic May Trigger A Renewed Debate Over School Choice
Six months with this pandemic, and months to go before we exit the trap, has changed many minds on many things.Health care for one. You can expect state Democrats to focus on Medicaid expansion in the final 40 days left in this election season, especially as they reach for votes in COVID-battered rural Georgia. Then there is the experience that millions of parents — along with their student-aged children — have suffered through with virtual learning, suddenly thrust upon them by the shuttering of classrooms across the state. (Galloway, 9/18)
Modern Healthcare:
COVID-19 Has Exposed The True Cost Of Underinvestment In Public Health
After decades of neglect, our healthcare system cannot conjure epidemiologists or contact tracers from thin air to address a pandemic. It cannot magically conduct massive public outreach, provide sustained support for vulnerable populations, and, eventually, administer hundreds of millions of vaccine doses without sufficient personnel and resources in place. (Michael Bennet, 9/19)
Modern Healthcare:
This Year's Flu Season Will Be A Testing Ground For Distributing A COVID Vaccine
Since the first U.S. case of this novel coronavirus was identified in January, nearly 200,000 Americans have died, more than 6 million have been infected, and nearly every aspect of American life has been disrupted. While we cannot undo the damage already done, we can keep ourselves from falling into the same trap. Right now, the world’s best scientists and doctors are working tirelessly on vaccines to neutralize the threat of COVID-19. Once a vaccine—proven safe and effective—is ready, we must deploy it efficiently, effectively and ethically. There is little room for error when so many lives are at stake. (Donna Shalala, 9/19)
Dallas Morning News:
The Pandemic Highlights Nationwide Nursing Shortage That Is Acute In Texas
Long before the 7 p.m. ovations rang out across the United States amid the stresses of COVID-19, America admired its health care workers. For 17 consecutive years and counting, nursing has topped Gallup’s poll of most trusted professions. But it took a pandemic for many to gain a deeper appreciation and respect for the contributions that our nurses provide to a community’s health and wellness. (Susan Hernandez, 9/20)
Detroit Free Press:
Group Pushing For 100K Jobs For Adults With Autism
Seeing a huge need and severe lack of opportunities, the Autism Alliance of Michigan has launched a new effort to try to create 101,000 jobs over the next decade for Michiganders on the autism spectrum. “We are calling this our ‘moonshot’ because it’s a bold and audacious goal,” said Colleen Allen, president and CEO of the group. She’s hoping to channel the spirit of the challenge put forth by President John. F. Kennedy when he called on NASA to put a man on the moon. (Carol Cain, 9/19)
