Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: States Move On Ebola Because Obama Didn't; Copper Plans' Hidden Costs
The Wall Street Journal: Why No Ebola Travel Ban? Politics
New York and New Jersey shouldn’t be making Ebola policy, but if Washington leaves a vacuum, it will be filled. And leaving vacuums is becoming an Obama administration specialty. The decisions by Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie were not as awful as some make them out to be: Any medical worker returning from West Africa can just bypass JFK and Newark. The “mandatory quarantines” simply divert traffic to other airports, making it less likely a newly symptomatic person will step off a plane onto the New York subway (even so, a worker can fly into Dulles, jump on Amtrak and be throwing up on the C train in a few hours). (Holman W. Jenkins Jr., 10/28)
Los Angeles Times: Does An Ebola Quarantine Make Sense?
The safest, most conservative step obviously would be to require volunteers returning from the front lines to stay at home for 21 days, the incubation period of the disease. But look at the reality: Of the hundreds who have worked with Doctors Without Borders and other groups and have returned to their home countries over the last six months, there is not a single known instance in which any of them has infected others. Health officials in New York City are acting with an abundance of caution to track down people who might have been exposed to Craig Spencer, the doctor who was diagnosed after his return (and after he traveled around the city and went bowling). His case prompted New York and New Jersey to tighten their quarantine rules, but the chances that anyone is in real danger are extremely low. (10/28)
Los Angeles Times: America's Epidemic Of Fear Over Ebola
Beware of epidemics in election years. It's unfashionable to express sympathy for politicians these days, but spare an ounce of charity for all those officeholders trying to come up with reassuring responses to the terrifying — but so far, exaggerated — problem of Ebola in the United States. (Doyle McManus, 10/28)
The Washington Post: Shifting Policies, Uncertain Rules: Ebola, New York And New Jersey
The end result, though, is that there are still different guidelines governing different states and people around the country. The CDC has its guidelines, New York and New Jersey have settled on some form of quarantines that are stricter than these rulings, and states from Illinois to Virginia have their own rules. In effect, a person flying back to the United States from West Africa could encounter very different rules depending on what airport they choose. It is unclear if this will be sorted out, as the push and pull between politics and science persists here while an outbreak rages in West Africa. Additional cases are likely coming to the United States, and with them fears, a desire for swift action and the possibility of yet another new policy somewhere. (Mark Berman, 10/28)
Bloomberg: What Science Can't Tell You About Ebola
Does it make sense to quarantine health workers returning from West Africa, as the governors of New York and New Jersey proposed? The science doesn't support it, experts on the disease have said; we're acting out of an abundance of caution, say the governors. Are the governors just plain wrong? Is this really a battle between reason and fear? No. It's more complicated than that -- and pretending it's simple doesn't help. To begin with -- how shall I put this? -- the science on Ebola isn't settled. (Clive Crook, 10/28)
The New York Times' The Upshot: Obamacare: Who Was Helped Most
We know that about 10 million more people have insurance coverage this year as a result of the Affordable Care Act. But until now it has been difficult to say much about who was getting that coverage — where they live, their age, their income and other such details. Now a large set of data — from Enroll America, the group trying to sign up people for the program, and from the data firm Civis Analytics — is allowing a much clearer picture. The data shows that the law has done something rather unusual in the American economy this century: It has pushed back against inequality, essentially redistributing income — in the form of health insurance or insurance subsidies — to many of the groups that have fared poorly over the last few decades. (Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz, 10/29)
The Wall Street Journal: The Senate Referendum
Then there’s Jeanne Shaheen, the New Hampshire Democrat who won in 2008 by opposing the war in Iraq and embracing all things Obama. She too was the decisive vote for ObamaCare. Now she too claims to want to fix it, not that she has succeeded in getting a vote to do so. Amid the health-care rollout in February, Ms. Shaheen said “I think we need to fix the things that are not working, and that’s what I am committed to.” But by Oct. 22 she had backtracked to proposing merely “an independent CEO and advisory committee that would oversee the health-care website, because we saw some issues with the rollout of the website.” Translation: If she wins, she’ll do whatever Mr. Obama asks. (10/28)
Los Angeles Times: What Prop. 46 Would Fix
For haters of junk mail, Proposition 46 may be this election season's biggest nuisance. Groups supporting and opposing 46 have spared no expense in stuffing voters' mailboxes. Among other provisions, the measure would reset California's cap on noneconomic damages recoverable in medical malpractice cases based on inflation, meaning that the $250,000 cap, imposed in 1975, would become a cap of $1.1 million. Rarely, if ever, has the commonplace idea of a regular inflation adjustment provoked such bitter controversy. (Nora Engstrom, Robert L. Rabin and Michelle M. Mello, 10/28)
