Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: No Surprises Act Could Actually Raise Healthcare Costs; New Loan Changes Will Exacerbate The Doctor Shortage
Bloomberg: No Surprises Act Could Be A Shock To The Healthcare System
When the No Surprises Act took effect in 2022, it was a rare feat of bipartisan problem-solving. The law was meant to prevent a once all-too-common scenario: An insured patient would seek emergency care, only to face financial disaster because one of the providers involved was outside the patient’s insurance network. (Lisa Jarvis, 7/24)
Stat: New Loan Changes May Keep Students From Medical School
Every so often, I catch myself wondering, what if I had applied to medical school just two years later? As another class of medical students matriculates, that question has become harder to ignore. (Gauri Gurumurthy, 7/24)
The Washington Post: Vaccines Are A Blessing. Let's Not Forget Why.
The last American who used an iron lung just died. Her story should be a reminder. (Ashley Alker, 7/24)
CIDRAP: A Gap Is Not A Finding—A Lawsuit, A Petition, And What It Takes To Know Whether A Vaccine Caused Harm
In 2006, an Australian-led research team studied 14 children who had all been given the same diagnosis years earlier—some of them decades earlier. Each had suffered a catastrophic seizure within 72 hours of a pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination, all of them before their first birthday, and had gone on to develop severe epilepsy that never improved. No other cause had ever been found. By the standards of the time, they were said to have vaccine encephalopathy, meaning brain injury caused by the vaccine. (Jake Scott, MD, 7/23)
Stat: Geopolitics Are Not The Key To Pharma Supply Chain Resilience
In 2025, there were 216 active drug shortages in the U.S., impacting Americans’ access to lifesaving medications. The resilience of our pharmaceuticals supply chains has been increasingly framed as a national security issue, including by the White House — and rightly so, as Covid-19 magnified the massive costs of a health system ill-equipped to care for its population. (Pooja Yerramilli, 7/24)
