Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Can CDC Regain Our Trust?; Holdout States Slowly Coming Around On Expanded Medicaid
Now, the New York Times has reported that staffers at the disease intelligence service at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were pressured by the Donald Trump administration to keep silent about what they knew: that Covid was being spread quietly by asymptomatic carriers. (Faye Flam, 3/29)
When the Democratic-led Congress passed the ACA in 2010, it assumed that every state would broaden its Medicaid program to cover people who lacked coverage and were too poor to qualify for subsidies that the law provides to help households earning between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level. (Karen Tumulty, 3/29)
Reconsidering what we think acceptance means — and whether it will come to pass — requires loosening our expectations of those who are dying. To become better at talking to one another honestly about death and to truly prepare for it, we must first understand why we expect the dying to demonstrate readiness in the first place. (Sunita Puri, 3/29)
The Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that Narcan, the nasal spray that can reverse an opioid overdose, will be available over the counter. The decision was years in the making and should have happened long ago. (Leana S. Wen and Robert Gebelhoff, 3/29)
As we await rulings this term that could gut the already battered Voting Rights Act, weaken laws protecting the LGBTQ community, and eviscerate affirmative action in college admissions, the court teed up a new target for next term: the Americans with Disabilities Act. (Kimberly Atkins Stohr, 3/29)
In recent months, Republicans in Congress have been pushing the narrative that unauthorized immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border is responsible for fentanyl-related overdoses across the country. But there’s one glaring problem with their pitch: It’s not true. (Laura Guzman, Carlos Martinez and Jorge Zepeda, 3/29)