Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Medicare, Medicaid And The Trump World Order; Abortion Across State Lines
The Fiscal Times: Trump Can’t Make America Great If He Kicks The Medicare Can Down The Road
Republicans in Washington face a tough question after unexpectedly winning the presidency and controlling the Senate in the 2016 elections. They have regained single-party governance for the first time in a decade, with GOP hands on all the electoral levers of federal government. Donald Trump will have an opportunity to nominate a successor to the late Antonin Scalia, restoring the nominally conservative balance to the Supreme Court. The question is this: What now? One answer, ironically, comes from Nancy Pelosi. (Edward Morrissey, 11/25)
Bloomberg: How Trump Can Help Medicaid
President-elect Donald Trump has already stepped back from his campaign pledge to entirely repeal Obamacare, saying he’ll keep a couple of the law’s popular insurance protections. Soon enough, certain governors in his own party can be expected to argue that it would also be smart to retain the law’s most successful component: the expansion of Medicaid. Trump should take that advice. Thirty-one states -- 11 led by Republicans -- have accepted Obamacare funding to extend Medicaid to anyone earning less than 138 percent of the federal poverty line (about $16,400 for an individual). As a result, at least 10 million Americans have insurance who would lose it without the expansion. (11/23)
Forbes: New Gruber Study Raises Major Questions About Obamacare's Medicaid Expansion
A new study by Jonathan Gruber, one of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) chief economic architects, suggests that roughly two-thirds of new Medicaid enrollees in 2014 were eligible for the program under previous state eligibility criteria—meaning that they were not made eligible by the ACA. If accurate, then a much smaller share of new Medicaid enrollees were made eligible for the program by the ACA than Washington experts commonly believe. (Brian Blase, 11/27)
The New York Times: Chasing Abortion Rights Across The State Line
Half slave and half free. The last time the United States split into two countries, it didn’t work out at all well. If that sounds like a hyperbolic reaction to the yawning red state, blue state divide, so be it. It’s prompted by the picture that President-elect Donald J. Trump painted the other day of what would happen if he achieved his goal of appointing enough Supreme Court justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. The question of abortion “would go back to the states,” Mr. Trump told Lesley Stahl of CBS News during a conversation on “60 Minutes.” ... And so they would, traveling a new underground railroad from red to blue. (Linda Greenhouse, 11/24)
The Hill: Rural Healthcare Access At Risk
Health care remains an issue of debate across our country. However, when it comes to rural health care, the issue is complicated further by geography and a lack of providers, resulting in a loss of competition and ultimately costly burdens being placed on patients. There are a number of medical issues that affect our rural communities at a greater rate than our urban counterparts. For example, diabetes incidence is about 17 percent higher in rural areas than urban ones, according to Texas A&M University researchers, which in turn leads to a greater rate of related complications. (Jack Alexander, 11/23)
The Wall Street Journal: Chuck Schumer’s Minority Duty
Republicans’ first order of business is abolishing the Affordable Care Act. But [Sen. Chuck] Schumer thinks the health law is safe from President Trump. “ObamaCare, he won’t be able to do it,” the senator said on Fox News last week. The GOP simply doesn’t have the votes to kill the program, he added. Mr. Schumer wants to revive the health-care law with fixes and more funding. But persuading fellow Democrats to defend the legislation won’t be easy. ObamaCare has been a curse on Mr. Schumer’s party since it was enacted. (Fred Barnes, 11/27)
Nashville Tennessean: Number Of Uninsured Children In Tennessee Decreasing
With all the negative discourse this election cycle, it’s great to hear some good news for a change. I am celebrating the fact the United States has achieved a historic milestone as 95 percent of children have health care coverage. ... A recent poll found that most people think the uninsured rate for children is increasing despite the fact that it has been decreasing. In fact, the child uninsured rate has been improving for at least a decade and the Affordable Care Act helped bring it down even further. (Michele Johnson, 11/25)
Arizona Republic: The Hard Truth Behind 134 Arizona Children's Deaths
Arizona’s look at how 768 children died last year is an alarm bell. The Arizona Child Fatality Review’s newly released numbers for 2015 show a continuing increase in child suicides and deaths from maltreatment — an increase that represents a challenge to all those in the state who say the lives of children matter. These deaths are preventable. (11/27)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The Power Of Health Care Choice
By most metrics, [Wisconsin] is the nation’s most competitive insurance market, and it therefore comes as no surprise that it boasts among the lowest uninsurance rates, ranks in the top quartile in the Commonwealth Fund’s Scorecard on Health System Performance, and has outperformed most of the nation on health care costs and health outcomes. In short, Wisconsin is proving what economists and common sense have long known: A competitive market brings prices down, spurs innovation, and demands attention to quality and customer service. However, it is not enough merely to have choice available in the marketplace. The fruits of a competitive marketplace rely on making those choices available to individual workers and families. (Barak Richman, 11/26)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Health Care Industry Faces Compliance Challenges
By the second quarter of 2017, the number of Wisconsin residents employed in the health care industry is projected to grow 3.25% to 401,414. That total is likely to continue to climb, considering that 10,000 U.S. baby boomers will turn age 65 every day between now and 2030 and will need more medical attention as they age, according to the TransAmerica Center for Retirement Studies. The sprawling industry extends across multiple sub-sectors, including not just hospitals and doctors but also nursing homes, clinics, dentists, labs, outpatient centers, home health services, mental health centers, fertility clinics and substance abuse centers. (Steve Jagler, 11/26)
The Wall Street Journal: Lilly’s Bet On Alzheimer’s
Drug-discovery failures are sometimes as important as the successes, and one such notable disappointment arrived on Wednesday. Eli Lilly & Co. reported another defeat for an experimental Alzheimer’s treatment, once thought to be a potential breakthrough against the disease. In a closely watched clinical trial, Lilly’s antibody called solanezumab did not slow cognitive decline in patients with dementia compared to a placebo. ... Alzheimer’s lacks a cure or even a treatment to delay its advance, and the underlying causes and mechanisms of the disease are still elusive. That uncertainty makes research like Lilly’s extraordinarily risky. (11/25)
Richmond Times Dispatch: Opioid Epidemic Requires Compassion
Attitudes are changing for the better. When substance abuse was perceived — wrongly, we should say — as a problem related to inner cities, the focus fell not on treatment but on punishment. Black lives did not matter. But as the incidence of abuse and deaths attributed to opioids spread to suburbs and small towns, society as a whole took notice of something it had ignored before. (11/26)
San Antonio Press Express: A Matter Of Public Health, Not Just Crime
Addiction is a disease of the brain, every bit as much as diabetes and other maladies are diseases of the body, the report confirms. And it is treatable, with new therapies coming online. Nonetheless, only 1 in 10 alcohol and substance abusers receive specialized treatment. Imagine that rate of treatment for, say, those with diabetes or cancer. There would be no public tolerance for it. Substance abuse — including for alcohol — is closely linked with mental illness. Yet Mental Health America ranks Texas 46th in the nation in access to mental health treatment. (11/26)
Tampa Bay Times: Vigilance Needed To Reduce Suicides By Children
A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that young adolescents are now more likely to die from suicide than from a car crash. The revelation is a warning about the pervasive influence of social media in the lives of young people, whose smallest actions and decisions can be broadcast to an unforgiving and unlimited audience. Suicide among young people remains rare, but the fact it is on the rise is reason for alarm. (11/25)
San Antonio Press Express: Still Much To Be Done In HIV Fight
We need to end the stigma associated with HIV, and reduce transmissions and AIDS-related deaths. Cities across Texas should replicate San Francisco’s Getting to Zero initiative in which a multisector consortium organizes events and leverages existing resources to achieve zero HIV transmission, zero HIV-related deaths and zero HIV stigma. Imagine if Texas cities started an Ending Stigma Committee, charged with eliminating discrimination and prejudice against individuals living with the disease and those communities disproportionately impacted by the disease. This is the work each Texas community must do. (Michele A. Rountree and Bart Whittington, 11/26)
The Washington Post: Learning To Love The Secret Language Of Urine
I’ve studied all the body’s fluids and used each in diagnosing disease, and urine stands out in the wealth of information it grants about a patient’s condition. Conceived in the kidneys — a pair of bean-shaped organs tucked away in the abdomen’s rear — urine runs down the ureters and is conveniently stored in the bladder, from which it is gathered in plastic cups for testing. Urine analysis is performed frequently enough by physicians to have earned the shorthand “urinalysis” — no other bodily fluid can claim to be on a nickname-basis with the medical profession. (Jonathan Reisman, 11/23)
