Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Metal Mouth Is Serious Side Effect Of Paxlovid; How Should Childhood Obesity Be Handled?
San Francisco Chronicle: I Got COVID But Threw My Paxlovid Pills In The Garbage. Here’s Why
It’s been a month since I threw my Paxlovid pills in the garbage. I only took the three-pill, twice-daily dosage for one day instead of the prescribed five. But no matter how many cough drops I sucked on or sticks of gum I chewed, I could not shake the rancid, metallic-tasting dumpster fire that has seemingly taken up permanent residence in my mouth. (Debbie Cohen, 1/25)
The New York Times: Why The New Obesity Guidelines For Kids Terrify Me
The academy’s guidelines are the latest sally in the war on obesity that health care providers, public health officials and the general public have waged to shrink our bodies for over 40 years. The approach hasn’t worked; Americans, including kids, are not getting thinner. (Virginia Sole-Smith, 1/26)
The Tennessean: Too Many Rural Americans Lack Health Insurance And They Deserve Better
In rural Tennessee, 16% of Tennesseans 18-64 are uninsured, having no healthcare coverage. (Jack Bernard, 1/25)
The Boston Globe: Massachusetts Can Finally Measure The Health Of Primary Care
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, a nationally renowned institution of science, recently asserted that “primary care is a common good” and went on to depict what the United States would look like if people no longer had access to high-quality primary care. (Barbra G. Rabson and Katherine Gergen Barnett, 1/25)
Newsweek: The Downsides Of Financial Incentives To Diagnose COVID
What likely began as a good-faith effort by Congress to comfort grieving families has turned into a runaway train of data obfuscation. (Jay Bhattacharya and Kyle Lamb, 1/26)
