Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Progress On Right-To-Try Bill Gives Hope To Patients, Doctors; Remind Us, Please: Why Lose Focus On International Diseases?
The Wall Street Journal: A Right To Try Arrives
The House on Tuesday passed a bill that would allow some patients to seek medical treatments still in clinical trials, and this is a welcome end to some messy sausage-making. But it isn’t a GOP license to forget about the more fundamental bureaucratic obstacles to drug approvals. The House passed 250-169 a bill sponsored by Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin that passed the Senate by unanimous consent last year. The bill is named for patients such as Wisconsin mother of three Trickett Wendler, who died in 2015 after a battle with ALS. Another is Jordan McLinn, a young boy in Indiana who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. (5/22)
The Washington Post: The White House Signals That Bioterrorism And Disease Don’t Matter — Again
Has our national security leadership forgotten that, in 2001, anthrax-laced letters killed five and sickened 17 others in multiple states? Or that in 2014, 11 people were treated for Ebola in the United States, resulting in two deaths and widespread panic that nearly shut down the city of Dallas? Or that smallpox killed more people in the 20th century than all the wars of that century combined? Apparently so. In eliminating the Office of Global Health Security at the National Security Council, it seems these events have slipped the mind of newly installed national security adviser John Bolton. (Kenneth W. Bernard, 5/22)
The New York Times: Ebola, Amnesia And Donald Trump
On Monday, a team led by the World Health Organization began inoculating people in the Democratic Republic of Congo against the Ebola virus with an experimental vaccine in an attempt to quell an outbreak of the disease that began in early May. If the effort succeeds, and maybe even if it doesn’t, it will go down in history as the first time Ebola was met with more than just the crude tools of quarantine and hospice care. (5/22)
The Washington Post: Democrats’ Complaints About CHIP Funding Are Hypocrisy In Its Purest Form
Just last month, Democratic Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer stated on the House floor, “I wouldn’t irrationally oppose a rescission which said we’ve had money lying in an account that has not been spent for one, two, three years; we shouldn’t just have it sitting in that account.” About that same time, Hoyer (Md.) — along with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) — voted to rescind (or, in layman’s terms, to claw back) $6.8 billion worth of funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Plan. (Mick Mulvaney, 5/22)
The Hill: Planned Parenthood's Tax Dollar Gravy Train Just Got Derailed
Americans owe a debt of gratitude to President Trump and the good people in his administration. After nearly 50 years, the law marking a bright line between “family planning” and abortion will finally be respected. In 1970 Congress passed Title X of the Public Health Service Act to provide tax-supported family planning services for low-income Americans. (Cathy Ruse, 5/22)
Richmond Times-Dispatch: Taking Aim At Planned Parenthood
The Trump administration’s proposed new rules on federal family-planning funds are more than just another step in the dubious effort to make an end-run around Roe v. Wade. ...Advocates of widening that role rarely stop to think about the consequences down the road, when politicians of a different political stripe take office and weaponize the power of the purse strings they have been given. (5/23)
Bloomberg: What It Will Take To Finally Defeat Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis has been around since before recorded history, yet humanity is still struggling to get the upper hand. In recent decades, some strains have developed resistance to the strongest antibiotics known to medicine. While the number of deaths worldwide has been falling somewhat, TB killed 33 million people from 2000 to 2015, and still infects almost one-quarter of the human population. So when world leaders say they want to end the epidemic by 2030, they are setting a tight deadline. Meeting it will require a global effort to uproot the disease from its most fertile breeding grounds, and get effective treatments and diagnostic tools to medical workers who need them. (5/21)
The Washington Post: The Recession Is Long Gone. Where Are The Babies?
We may be running a bit low on babies. Last week, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that U.S. fertility had fallen to a record low — for the second straight year. The fertility rate declined to 60.2 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, down 3 percent from 2016. The number of births in the United States fell 2 percent to 3.85 million, the lowest in 30 years. In fact, the only group for whom birthrates have risen this year is women over 40. (Christine Emba, 5/22)
New England Journal of Medicine: Leadership Development In Medicine
Health care suffers from a persistent disconnect between the capacity of the physician-leadership workforce and the needs of our increasingly complex health systems. Closing this gap will require leadership skills that are not acquired during traditional medical training. (Caryn Lerman and J. Larry Jameson, 5/17)
Sacramento Bee: California Could Afford To Lead On Alzheimer's Research
According to current projections, AD will overwhelm the national healthcare system by 2050, affecting 16 million Americans and costing Medicare and Medicaid $1.1 trillion. In the wake of numerous failed clinical trials over the past decade, several large pharmaceutical companies have shuttered their AD research programs, creating a sense of hopelessness. (Kenneth Kosik and Andrew Lo, 5/22)
Los Angeles Times: I Was A Patient Of USC Gynecologist George Tyndall. The Pelvic Exam He Gave Me Was Anything But Normal
How many pelvic exams does a woman have in her lifetime? Why should one in particular stand out?Even at the time it didn't feel right, back when I was a 25-year-old theater student at USC. Today, 16 years later, I'm a women's health nurse practitioner who has performed thousands of pelvic exams. I'm a person who knows in great detail what is and is not a typical part of an exam. And I know that what happened to me was not normal. (Cate Guggino, 5/23)
Sacramento Bee: Keep State's Drug Discount Program
The Brown administration argues that more money could be brought to the state general fund if 340B were eliminated. ...If Brown’s proposal is approved by the Legislature, it would reduce our workforce and eliminate necessary supportive services. (Britta Guerrero, 5/22)
Cleveland Plain Dealer: A Healthier Food Stamp Program Should Be On The Menu
Trying to push more people to work for food stamps by adding harsh provisions to the farm bill has sharply divided Congress, even though the high-stakes bill failed to pass the U.S. House Friday, mostly over unrelated issues. Congress can take the food stamp work-requirement dispute off the table entirely. Instead of punitive, ill-considered measures likely to hurt hungry children, Congress should instead take aim at the unhealthy foods that are contributing to the obesity epidemic among our young people. (5/22)
