Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Medicaid And Doctors Are Key Weapons In Fight Against Opioid Epidemic
The Washington Post: How To Reverse A Catastrophe
President Trump’s newly appointed Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, led by Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey (R), issued its preliminary report Monday — and the recommendations were generally worthy. ... the president and both houses of Congress have spent the bulk of 2017 so far debating how much to cut Medicaid, which happens to pay for about a quarter of all addiction treatment. The House version of Obamacare repeal-and-replace legislation also could have watered down the requirement to include addiction treatment as an essential health-care benefit for private plans sold on the exchanges. Cutting health care amid an opioid epidemic makes no sense. (8/3)
USA Today: How Doctors Can Stop The Opioid Crisis At Its Source: Quit Overprescribing
For most of my surgical career, I gave out opioids like candy. My colleagues and I were unaware that about one in 16 patients become chronic users, according to new research by doctors at the University of Michigan. Even more alarming, research shows that relapse rates after opioid addiction treatment could be as high as 91%. In addition to expanding treatment, it’s time we address the root of the problem — overprescribing. My own aha moment came recently after my father had gallbladder surgery and recovered comfortably at home with a single ibuprofen tablet. (Marty Makary, 8/4)
The New England Journal of Medicine: Cyberattack On Britain’s National Health Service — A Wake-Up Call For Modern Medicine
As you would expect in a pandemic, the headlines were alarmist: we were reportedly locked in a race against time to protect millions of patients from a new virus of unprecedented virulence that had crippled the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) and was spreading rapidly across the country. Except in this case, the virus was not organic but digital. ... For NHS staff, the attack was stressful, grueling, and exhausting — not least for the legions of NHS IT workers who toiled all night to update and then patch thousands of health service systems. For doctors, it was a wake-up call. Underfunding ultimately left us horribly exposed to a predictable attack that threatened not just privacy but patient safety. (Drs. Rachel Clarke and Taryn Youngstein, 8/3)
USA Today: Betsy DeVos' Title IX Approach Fails To Trust Women Who Report Sexual Assault
Despite overwhelming evidence that sexual assault is endemic on college campuses, disproportionately affecting women, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Candice Jackson, head of the Office of Civil Rights, have signaled they will abandon Title IX’s application to the crisis of sex-based violence in our schools. (Debra Katz and Hannah Alejandro, 8/3)
USA Today: Betsy DeVos Is Right: In College Sexual Assault Cases, Due Process Matters
In a series of meetings this month, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos signaled strong disagreement with the Obama administration’s aggressive erosion of due process protections for college students accused of sexual assault. While deploring the horrors of the offense, DeVos added that “a system without due process protections … serves no one.” This was a welcome change from the decrees issued by the Obama-era Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which had told colleges to avoid any due process safeguards that would “restrict or unnecessarily delay the protections provided by Title IX” to accusers. (KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, 8/2)
