Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Beyond Bluster Of Campaign, Candidates Have Deep Differences On Health Care Issues
This is a presidential campaign about trust, temperament, honesty, judgment, character, personality and, some are convinced, a personality disorder or two. It's pocked with Donald Trump's ballistic-missile tweets in the middle of the night. It's enlivened by the spectacle of Hillary Clinton's campaign innards spilling day after day into public view, quite a WikiMess. Got a minute for the issues? Beyond all of the bluster in this campaign, a clash of ideas is also at work, with consequences for nearly all Americans and plenty of people around the world. (10/23)
About 9 in 10 Americans now have health insurance, more than at any time in history. But progress is incomplete, and the future far from certain. Millions remain uninsured. Quality is still uneven. Costs are high and trending up again. Medicare's insolvency is two years closer, now projected in 2028. Every family has a stake. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 10/23)
Persistent Republican-led efforts to restrict access to abortion and to curb government funding for Planned Parenthood have been hotly debated in Washington and in states, and will be shaped in some way by the next president. (Crary, 10/22)
More Americans are dying from opioids than at any time in recent history, with overdose deaths hitting a peak of 28,000 in 2014. That amounts to 78 Americans dying from an opioid overdose every day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC uses opioid as an umbrella term for synthetic painkillers and for drugs derived naturally from opium (known more specifically as opiates), such a heroin. (Ronayne, 10/22)
There are an estimated 21.6 million veterans in the United States. Among them, nearly 9 million are enrolled in health care provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs. About 4.3 million veterans get disability compensation from the VA and nearly 900,000 have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. A 2014 law signed by President Barack Obama aimed to alleviate delays many veterans faced in getting treatment at VA hospitals and clinics and end the widespread practice of fake wait lists that covered up long waits for veterans seeking health care. Two years later, many of the problems remain. (Daly, 10/22)
A look at where Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump stand on three dozen issues. (10/22)
