A plan was set in motion with no idea of how to stop it. “While federal public-health officials made recommendations regarding schools, the actual closures were carried out at the state and local levels, in response to misplaced public fears and aggressive campaigning by teachers’ unions. Randi Weingarten, the high-profile head of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a February 8, 2021, New York Times article that she hoped things would be “as normal as possible” by the following fall. Class-action lawsuits in multiple states had been filed on behalf of children with special needs on the claim that … Read More
All posts in Health Policy
“The results Lilly announced came from a clinical trial involving 559 people with Type 2 diabetes who took the new pill or a placebo for 40 weeks. In patients who took orforglipron, blood sugar levels fell by 1.3 to 1.6 percent, about the same amount in that time period experienced by patients taking Ozempic and Mounjaro in unrelated trials. For 65 percent of people taking the new pill, blood sugar levels dropped into the normal range. Patients on the new pill also lost weight — up to 16 pounds without reaching a plateau at the study’s end. Their weight loss … Read More
“Health care spending as a proportion of total national spending has been flat, at approximately 17%, since the late 2000s, meaning that health care cost growth hasn’t exceeded growth in the gross domestic product, on average. Per-beneficiary Medicare spending grew at an average rate of 6.6% per year between 1987 and 2005, but by 2.2% per year between 2013 and 2019. [..] low growth has persisted well beyond the Great Recession for all types of insurance. Putting aside the spike in health care spending that occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic, growth in per-capita national health expenditures has been low by … Read More
Six in 10 able-bodied adults on the healthcare program have no earned income. “New research and polling on Medicaid work requirements help to clarify the stakes [to address Medicaid’s rapid expansion]. More than six in 10 able-bodied adults on Medicaid report no earned income, according to a report from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), a think tank. Voters tend to think of Medicaid as a safety net for low-income pregnant women and disabled Americans. But Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act expanded the program into a permanent entitlement for childless men in prime working age. Democrats claim those on Medicaid are working. You’ll … Read More
“Opioid overdose continues to be the leading cause of death due to injury in the US. Recent data from the Drug Abuse Warning Network estimated 882 000 emergency department (ED) opioid-related visits in 2023, a rate of 263 per 100 000 visits, with the highest rates among Black individuals (425 per 100 000). Access to treatment with medications for opioid use disorder, specifically buprenorphine, continues to be challenging for patients in active addiction, and these disparities by race are widening. [..] In many states, rural patients with opioid use disorder have worse outcomes than urban patients. Rural hospitals are also less likely to … Read More
“VBP [Value-Based Payment] was ushered in by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but it is best understood as a rebranding of the larger managed care paradigm that took hold during the 1980s. Managed care delegates total-cost containment to insurance companies and large provider groups, tasking these private-sector “risk-bearing entities” to restrict spending. Spearheaded by health maintenance organizations, the rise of managed care promoted now-familiar utilization management tactics, such as prior authorization and narrow provider networks. It also promoted capitation or risk-based payments—what we call VBP today. Unlike FFS [fee-for-service], insurance companies would incentivize providers to manage utilization by making them … Read More
“The COLONPREV trial—published online in The Lancet—is, therefore, a landmark study. It is the first randomised controlled trial to compare colorectal cancer deaths in people screened with the two most commonly used methods: colonoscopy and faecal immunochemical test (FIT), an antibody-based test for haemoglobin, indicative of blood in the stool. The study finds that invitation to biennial FIT-based screening is non-inferior to invitation to one-time colonoscopy in terms of colorectal cancer mortality at 10 years. These results build on the NordICC trial, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, which showed that invitation to colonoscopy reduced colorectal cancer risk … Read More
“The tobacco and ultra-processed food industries exemplify the detrimental effects of corporate influence on public health. For decades, tobacco companies lobbied aggressively against health regulations, contributing to millions of preventable deaths worldwide. Despite still causing more than 8 million tobacco-related deaths annually, the tobacco industry now claims through its public-relations campaigns and selective science that it focuses on “harm reduction”, particularly by selling new products such as e-cigarettes. These tactics allow the industry to argue that it deserves a seat at the policy table, all while shifting to new types of addictive and harmful products, targeting youth, and continuing to oppose tobacco … Read More
“We compared public-access naloxone strategies using more than 14 000 cases of opioid poisoning in Metro Vancouver over a 6-year period. We found that the 647 take-home naloxone sites were within a 3-minute walk to more than one-third of all opioid poisonings and had high coverage efficiency (Table 2) [the top five location categories for coverage efficiency were: government office, take-home naloxone site, convenience store, retail store and pharmacy]. In addition to existing operations that distribute take-home naloxone kits, which are likely taken elsewhere, take-home naloxone site locations appear generally well-aligned with where opioid poisonings occur, so they are also … Read More
“Despite the convenience and value of telehealth, many states have rolled back COVID-19 pandemic–era flexibilities and reimposed strict licensure requirements for telemedicine. Thus, as it was prepandemic, so it is again that a physician, duly licensed in their home state, is prohibited from consulting or following up with an out-of-state patient via video or phone unless they are also licensed in the patient’s state. Penalties for doing so without that license can amount to tens of thousands of dollars in fines and potential imprisonment. Despite growing pressure to respond to patient preferences and widespread evidence of the benefits of interstate … Read More