Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Moral Injury Harms Doctors' Ability To Provide Good Health Care; Alzheimer's Trial Not A Total Bust, So What's Next?
Stat: Physicians Aren't 'Burning Out.' They're Suffering From Moral Injury
Physicians on the front lines of health care today are sometimes described as going to battle. It’s an apt metaphor. Physicians, like combat soldiers, often face a profound and unrecognized threat to their well-being: moral injury. Moral injury is frequently mischaracterized. In combat veterans it is diagnosed as post-traumatic stress; among physicians it’s portrayed as burnout. But without understanding the critical difference between burnout and moral injury, the wounds will never heal and physicians and patients alike will continue to suffer the consequences. (Simon G. Talbot and Wendy Dean, 7/26)
Bloomberg: Biogen’s Results Leave The Alzheimer’s Puzzle Unsolved
It’s hard not to cheer when a drug is shown to have a very real potential to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease — a common, devastating, and currently uncurable condition. But some restraint is needed when reacting to the results released late Wednesday for the treatment being developed by Biogen Inc. and Eisai Co. The drug, BAN2401, was shown to significantly slow cognitive decline after 18 months of treatment at a high dose — depending on how you measure it. Regardless of the qualifier, this is absolutely a promising outcome and the data is better than I, a skeptic on Alzheimer’s studies, expected in some respects. But there’s much more testing to be done before anyone can be sure about this result, and it will take a long time. (Max Nisen, 7/25)
Bloomberg: Women Act Rationally, And Somehow That Was Newsworthy
The other day The New York Times and a few other outlets ran with a story that was unusual, maybe even unprecedented, for highlighting a social science study that failed to show any sort of irrationality or self-delusion in its subjects. There were no signs that mysterious, unconscious cues were wreaking havoc on people’s decision making. The study, a survey of women who had recently had eggs frozen, revealed decisions that were well-informed, reasonable and rational. The women were single for the most part, and wanted to increase their odds of getting pregnant if they found a suitable co-parent in the future. Stories about people acting reasonably don’t often make headlines, but the appeal here was that the research countered a stereotype often attached to women with careers: that they’re postponing having families so they can advance up the corporate ladder. And why not use science to contrast reality with stereotypes? (Faye Flam, 7/25)
USA Today: Tennessee's Opioid Regulations Precipitated My Husband's Death
There have recently been a few minor stories about the closing of Comprehensive Pain Specialists clinics across the region due to financial issues and a federal criminal investigation. Some have even mentioned that around 50,000 pain patients are now without a pain management doctor. If this were 50,000 cancer patients not receiving treatment in the weeks to come, it would be headline news. People would be up in arms over that denial of care. If you, or somebody you love, have not been directly impacted by long-term chronic pain, then you are very fortunate. But keep in mind that we are all just one car accident away from that condition. (Meredith Lawrence, 7/25)
The Washington Post: Reunifying The Families Trump Tore Asunder Will Take A Long, Long Time
Having torn migrant children from their families with no idea how they would be reunited — and almost no record-keeping that would facilitate reunions — the Trump administration is now laboring heroically to repair what it has broken. By “heroically,” we mean only that lower-ranking officials — most of them blameless in the mess created by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who proclaimed the “zero tolerance” policy that sundered families, and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who oversaw the policy’s enforcement — are racing to meet a court-ordered deadline to reunify more than 2,500 children with their parents by Thursday. Hundreds of bureaucrats have spent weeks trying to match separated children with their parents, hamstrung by the absence of data that was either never recorded or inadvertently destroyed. The fact that Mr. Sessions, Ms. Nielsen and the lieutenants who serve them never anticipated this eventuality speaks to their callousness. (7/25)
WBUR: On Drug Prices, Trump Is (Finally) On To Something
Now, the administration has announced that the Food and Drug Administration will consider a procedure under which, if a drug maker hikes the price of a generic drug — and there’s no ready substitute on the domestic market — the FDA would allow foreign substitutes into the country. ...Because they often lack adequate substitutes to compete with them in the market, many generics have soared in price of late. (Rich Barlow, 7/26)
Real Clear Health: FDA's Anti-Smoking Strategy Puts Lives At Risk
July 28th marks the one year anniversary of the FDA’s landmark announcement to embark on what it called a “new comprehensive plan for tobacco and nicotine regulation” that “places nicotine, and the issue of addiction, at the center of the agency’s tobacco regulation efforts.” (Jeff Stier, 7/26)
