Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Steps To Fix Our Broken Health Care System; Is CRISPR The Future Of Reproductive Care?
We all have bad weeks. Mine recently made me marvel at the astonishing dysfunction of our healthcare system. In calling out the system I intend no disrespect to the talented and heroic overachievers in nursing, pharmacy, medicine and the other providers who fight the system every day on behalf of our patients. (Daniel J. Stone, 3/4)
Just after the Affordable Care Act fully took effect in 2014, around two dozen GOP-run states were refusing to implement the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid. This left millions of Americans languishing in a needless crisis, all because ACA-despising Republican legislators were turning away enormous sums of federal cash earmarked to cover their state’s poorest adult residents. (Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent, 3/3)
A birth center gives women with low-risk pregnancies a more homey setting than a hospital, with personalized prenatal care provided by nurse midwives, more natural birth options, and fewer medical interventions. For example, a birth center may offer a tub for a water birth or allow multiple family members to be present, but a center cannot offer medication for pain relief or perform a cesarean section. (3/5)
Clinicians delivering care every day are being asked to do too many things – pick up more overtime, defer more PTO, stay late, come in early, and spend more nights and weekends on call. So how did we get here? And more importantly, what do we do to solve this problem? (Jim Rechtin, 3/3)
Despite decades of effort at the regulatory level to increase access to high-quality and affordable healthcare for all Americans, millions remain stranded in medically underserved communities across the country. (Dr. Clive Fields, 3/6)
Since James Watson and Francis Crick first described the structure of the DNA double helix, scientists have debated the potential for creating genetically modified babies. In 2018, a Chinese scientist named He Jiankui announced he had actually done it: He used a gene editing tool called CRISPR to edit the embryos of twin girls in hopes of making them resistant to H.I.V. (Eben Kirksey, 3/4)
Issues of fairness and justice echo across the health ecosystem, including drug development. Much of the conversation on improving equity in the development of novel therapeutics centers on increasing diversity in clinical trials. A key step in that direction begins with ensuring more equitable representation among clinical investigators. (Irfan Khan, 3/6)
