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The Affordable Care Act ushered in one of the greatest increases in healthcare coverage in U.S. history. Eleven years later, thanks to President Joe Biden and the sweeping pandemic relief bill, we finally have the first real expansion of the law's insurance coverage and Medicaid expansion. Despite this, we haven't realized the ACA's full potential when it comes to lowering drug costs. When I worked at HHS during the Obama administration, helping to implement the ACA, I met workers and families across the country deeply proud and relieved to finally have health coverage for the first time. Now, despite more than 70 congressional attempts to repeal the ACA and three visits to the Supreme Court, it is clear that the law provides necessary protections for Americans and is woven into the fabric of our society. While the ACA is most heralded for its expansion of access to affordable, quality healthcare, it also contained important provisions to lower drug costs. (Meaghan Smith, 4/16)

As mothers and pregnant women, we know that the birth of a child is one of life’s most meaningful experiences. Yet in Pennsylvania, where there is no state-supported paid family leave program, most parents face an impossible choice: take leave without pay and stay home to care for a new baby, or return to work to earn the resources needed to survive, risking the health and welfare of a new infant. As physicians who care for women and children, we know that not having paid family leave has profoundly negative effects on the health and well-being of Philadelphia’s mothers and infants. A lack of paid family leave is associated with increased risks of postpartum depression and suicide, maternal and infant hospitalization, and infant death. We think a lot about our patient, who we’ll call Danielle. Danielle brought her baby in for a newborn visit at our pediatric office. When asked about her plans for feeding her baby, Danielle replied that she had to go back to work in two weeks, so although she knew the health benefits of breastfeeding her baby, she would be switching to formula. Danielle also had a C-section, but without paid family leave, she had no choice but to return to a physically demanding job long before her body could heal and recover. (Stacey Kallem, Aasta D. Mehta and Yuan He, 4/18)

While pharmaceutical regulatory authorities in other countries are employing creative ways like video-based remote inspections to fulfill their obligations to the public, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration remains committed to conventional on-site inspections. By September 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic had precipitated a virtual pause in drug inspections: Roughly 85% of inspections had been curbed within U.S. borders and 99.5% outside the country. (Patrick McLaughlin and Tyler Richards, 4/19)

Between January 2017 and November 2020, 35 states passed 227 laws that restricted a woman’s access to abortion services. Seven states — Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, and Utah — accounted for more than half of those laws. Abortion opponents are hoping that Donald Trump’s appointment of more than 200 federal judges, as well as three Supreme Court justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — will help overturn Roe v. Wade. It is worth noting that all of these attempts to chip away and ultimately eliminate a woman’s constitutional right to make a private decision to end a pregnancy are being made in the absence of any statistics that abortions are becoming a more dangerous procedure or any other information that might justify a return to a national abortion ban. (Mary Ann Sorrentino, 4/16)

One of the first patients I ever lost in my work as a paramedic died from complications of hepatitis C, a virus that attacks the liver. Years of viral insult had withered his liver into a hard, shrunken version of itself, and this was causing blood to back up into his throat. We worked as hard as we could, as fast as we could, and yet we failed that day. His blood showered over me, down my scrubs and into my shoes until my socks squished. That day was horrifying, but perhaps the worst part of it is that it was entirely preventable. (Claire Zagorski, 4/16)

Police aren’t the ideal people to handle mental health crises, but often find themselves doing just that. They’re frequently the first deployed when families call 911 because someone in the home is suffering mental distress and is a threat to themselves and others. Unfortunately, sometimes these calls can go horribly wrong, like when police can’t de-escalate the situation and end up using force — sometimes lethal — to subdue someone. As police departments around the country face intense scrutiny in the wake of officer involved killings — like that of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota — many are looking at ways to reform their law enforcement methods. As part of that evaluation, police are increasingly acknowledging they don’t handle mental health calls as well as they could and are devising new policies and dedicating new resources to those types of calls. (4/19)

In late February, the Biden administration made a major announcement that has the potential to affect the health of Americans for generations. Notably, it had nothing directly to do with COVID-19 or even health care reform. Instead, the news was that the recently reestablished “Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases” had released a preliminary report on the federal government’s best estimate of the cost to society of continuing to burn fossil fuels. A final report is due early next year, but for now, the administration values a metric ton of emitted carbon dioxide at $51, methane at $1,500 and nitrous oxide at $18,000. These are the figures that will be used in calculating the costs and benefits of the administration’s climate policies, including measures to protect Americans from the health effects of the changing environment. (Timothy G. Singer and Frances C. Moore, 4/17)