Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Different Takes: Crisis Pregnancy Centers Must Stop Deceiving Women; Who Decides If Abortion Is Necessary?
Pull up a crisis pregnancy center鈥檚 website and you might find an offer for a 鈥渇ree abortion consultation鈥 or a rundown of the 鈥渇acts鈥 about the 鈥渁bortion pill.鈥 But these centers are not what they appear. (8/15)
Abortion raises many ethical questions. Determining whether an abortion is needed to save a pregnant person鈥檚 life or health is not among them. That鈥檚 a factual question requiring medical 鈥 not ethical 鈥 judgment. (Holly Fernandez Lynch, Steven Joffe and Emily A. Largent, 8/15)
As Ohio pediatricians, we were appalled when we learned about the 10-year-old girl who was raped and, unable to receive legal abortion care in Ohio, received an abortion in Indiana, where the procedure was legal. This is the future we had feared, unfolding before us, having caused additional hardship and unwarranted publicity for this girl who had already been traumatized. (Margaret Stager and Elise Berlan, 8/15)
Also 鈥
Even in their pared-down form passed by Congress, the changes to the U.S. health care system in the Inflation Reduction Act are momentous, politically and for the many patients struggling with drug costs. The Inflation Reduction Act is the biggest health reform initiative since passage of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, more than a decade ago. And the fact that this new legislation passed despite the opposition of the drug industry 鈥 which, along with most insurance companies and hospitals, largely supported the A.C.A. 鈥 makes it, in a sense, even more of a statement about what鈥檚 politically possible in reforming the health system. (Larry Levitt, 8/13)
On a chilly spring evening in 2021, Tim Nolan set up a portable addiction clinic next to a McDonald鈥檚 dumpster, and he waited. His desk was the dashboard of his grey Prius, his office this parking lot, which smelled like frying oil and trash. The hatchback of the nurse practitioner鈥檚 car was full of hepatitis C testing kits, clean needles, fentanyl test strips 鈥 and pizzas. (Beth Macy, 8/15)
The prized and troubled National Health Service now has a backlog of 6.6 million patients waiting to see GPs, get scans or have operations. Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, the two candidates vying to replace Boris Johnson, have both pledged vaguely to address the issue, but they鈥檝e spent most of the聽campaign聽arguing about tax cuts. (Therese Raphael, 8/15)
Nearly every American has been exposed at some point to a class of compounds known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS for short. (Ned Calonge, Jane Hoppin and Alex R. Kemper, 8/15)