Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: The Medical Bankruptcy Myth; Needle Exchange And Reducing Harm
Bloomberg: The Myth Of The Medical Bankruptcy
Did medical bills single-handedly account for more bankruptcies than anything else? No. This is an exaggerated half-remembering of a series of studies, authored by (among others) Elizabeth Warren, that were themselves exorbitant exaggerations. I went into detail on the problems with the work seven years ago, but the highlight reel is that these authors have an aggressive tendency to employ any technique that ratchets the count of “medical bankruptcy” upward, while not using similar techniques that would tend to ratchet up other categories and diminish the number of bankruptcies counted as medical, and to present their results in misleading ways -- so as to obscure, for example, the fact that by their own accounting, the number of medical bankruptcies actually fell by hundreds of thousands between 2001 and 2007. (Megan McArdle, 1/17)
The New York Times: Injecting Drugs, Under A Watchful Eye
It has been nearly 30 years since the first needle exchange program opened in the United States, in Takoma, Wash., in 1988. It was a health measure to prevent injecting drug users from sharing needles, and therefore spreading H.I.V. and hepatitis. The idea was controversial, to say the least. Many people felt — and still feel — that it enables drug use and sends a message that drug use is O.K. and can be done safely. (Tina Rosenberg, 1/18)
Stat: New Rule On Clinical Trial Reporting Doesn't Go Far Enough
Roughly half of clinical trials go unreported. Industry-sponsored trials are four times more likely to produce positive results than non-industry trials. And even when trials are reported, the investigators usually fail to share their study results: nearly 90 percent of trials on ClinicalTrials.gov lack results. Failure to report clinical trial results puts patients in danger. (Chris Cai, 1/17)
