Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Support For Health Law Gets Strong Backing In Recent Elections; As McConnell Sits On His Hands About Gun Violence, School Kids Are Hiding
The Hill: Why Democrats Are Winning On Health Care
The elections last week confirmed what we know to be true — health care is the number one issue for voters. Just as health care propelled House Democrats to win the majority in 2018, it once again delivered for Democrats in 2019 and is poised to be the issue that helps Democrats win elections in 2020.Democratic candidates won in Kentucky and Virginia because they made health care a centerpiece of their campaigns. Voters trusted the Democrats who vowed to expand and fully fund Medicaid, strengthen protections for pre-existing conditions and hold drug companies accountable for skyrocketing prices. (Brad Woodhouse, 11/16)
St. Louis Post Dispatch: Democratic Wins Show That Affordable Health Care Still Drives Election Results.
Among the takeaways from Democratic election victories in Kentucky and Virginia this month is that support for the Affordable Care Act (known as Obamacare) continues to earn support for Democrats, as it did in the 2018 midterms. As the Democratic presidential candidates rightly debate what health care should look like going forward, the party should continue reminding voters that the Obamacare model, while far from perfect, can work in the meantime if properly supported. It is a model that the Republican Party, from top to bottom, is still trying to destroy. (11/17)
The Washington Post: Mitch McConnell Needs To Stop Sitting On His Hands And Do Something About Gun Violence
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) took to the Senate floor Thursday morning to try to force a vote on gun-control legislation. He argued, “We can’t go 24 hours without news of another mass shooting somewhere in America.” Indeed, as he was speaking, a mass shooting was unfolding in a high school in Santa Clarita, Calif. Two students were killed and three others were wounded as their classmates hid behind locked doors or fled in terror. (11/17)
The Washington Post: Action On Gun Violence Depends On Trump: Be Very Afraid
Sometimes coincidences can be horrific. On Thursday, as the gun violence prevention organization Brady was set to mark the 1993 passage of the Brady handgun bill, a student at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, Calif., shot and killed two of his classmates and wounded three others with a semiautomatic handgun in a 16-second spasm of violence. (Jonathan Capehart, 11/16)
The Washington Post: Big Boys And Girls DO Cry: How Teachers And Parents Should Talk To Children About Traumatic Events
Adults sometimes decide not to tell children about traumatic events, hoping to spare them anxiety and worry — at least for a while. But the “don’t tell the kids” strategy doesn’t work as well today, when those events are public and spread instantaneously across the world on social media. All it takes is for one child in a classroom to know about a tragedy for the entire class to know. (Valerie Strauss, 11/16)
The Wall Street Journal: Unfriendly Skies For Medical Innovation
Airlines are engaged in systematic and potentially deadly discrimination—against animals. The Transportation Department should seize the opportunity to right this wrong. Under pressure from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, most major U.S.-based commercial airlines, including United, American and Delta, have stopped transporting animals for use in medical research. So have many international passenger airlines ( British Airways, China Southern Airlines, Qatar Airways) and most major airfreight carriers (DHL, UPS, FedEx ). The same airlines, however, transport pets, zoo animals and other creatures for nonresearch purposes. (Richard T. Born, 11/17)
The New York Times: The End Of Babies
In the fall of 2015, a rash of posters appeared around Copenhagen. One, in pink letters laid over an image of chicken eggs, asked, “Have you counted your eggs today?” A second — a blue-tinted close-up of human sperm — inquired, “Do they swim too slow?” The posters, part of a campaign funded by the city to remind young Danes of the quiet ticking of their biological clocks, were not universally appreciated. They drew criticism for equating women with breeding farm animals. The timing, too, was clumsy: For some, encouraging Danes to make more babies while television news programs showed Syrian refugees trudging through Europe carried an inadvertent whiff of ugly nativism. (Anna Louie Sussman, 11/16)
Stat: Data Sharing From Clinical Trials: Lessons From The YODA Project
Sharing data after a clinical trial has been completed seems like it should be a slam dunk, a win for many stakeholders, including the general public. Instead, such data sharing is still something of a hot-button issue, with critics questioning the capabilities and motives of those requesting the data, doubting the utility of replication analyses, and speculating that spurious safety findings would receive unwarranted attention and disrupt patient care. This week, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine are convening the workshop “Sharing Clinical Trial Data: Challenges and a Way Forward” just shy of five years after the Institute of Medicine released its seminal report, “Sharing Clinical Trial Data: Maximizing Benefits, Minimizing Risk. (Joseph S. Ross, Joanne Waldstreicher and Harlan M. Krumhols, 11/18)
The New York Times: I Changed My Body For My Sport. No Girl Should.
Over the past week, the athletic world has been embroiled in a reckoning following high school phenom Mary Cain’s story of suffering from an eating disorder and suicidal thoughts in pursuit of athletic success. Stories like hers are not new. What’s new, and what I think has triggered such outrage, is that she has audaciously put the blame where it belongs: on a sports system built by and for men. That system is long overdue for reform. (Lauren Fleshman, 11/16)
Miami Herald: Despite 2,776 Deaths, Florida Lawmakers Won’t Expand Medicaid
Florida’s refusal to expand Medicaid coverage is costing lives, according to data from the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research. The study found that states that broadened coverage for low-income residents between 2014 and 2017 saw significant reductions in death rates among adults ages 55 to 64 — enough, essentially, to save an estimated 19,200 people nationwide. (11/17)
