Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
ICE Detainees Claim They're Served Low-Quality Meals, Are Left Hungry
Months after leaving immigration detention, Camila Mun虄oz can still remember the ice cream scooper used to ladle food onto plastic trays and the "sour feeling" after every meal. Hunger. "You have to eat no matter what, or the night is going to get you," she told USA TODAY. "We were really hungry." In Louisiana 鈥 a major hub of the Trump administration's mass deportation effort 鈥 detainees and their representatives say people in custody are going hungry on a diet of processed foods that are barely edible, often expired and never filling. (Villagran, 10/19)
At the Northwest Ice Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, about 1,500 people in immigration detention await their day in court. Most are held for months, living not by the rising and setting sun but under the perpetual twilight of fluorescent lights. 鈥淲e couldn鈥檛 tell if it was day or night,鈥 said one former detainee who spent 10 months at the facility and whom the Guardian is not naming for fear of retaliation from US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and the Geo Group, the private company that operates the detention center. 鈥淭he lights were on 24/7. We maybe saw the sun twice a week.鈥 Windows were coated in dark paint, and people made eye masks with their socks, he recalled. (Peeples, 10/20)
Children were reportedly zip-tied during a multi-agency law enforcement raid in Wilder, Idaho, as hundreds of people were detained and police fired rubber bullets. The operation took place on October 19 at La Catedral Arena, a horse racing venue west of Boise, according to The Idaho Statesman. (Rahman, 10/21)
Ofelia Torres has spent almost every day of the past month at Lurie Children鈥檚 Hospital, where the 16-year-old Lake View High School student is fighting cancer. After a tough few weeks where the disease spread through her body and doctors inserted a drain in her abdomen to relieve fluid, the Torres family worked with her oncologist to arrange a short getaway over the weekend, where she and three of her closest friends could enjoy a Saturday of simple pleasures and normalcy before a scheduled return to the hospital and chemotherapy. (Pratt, 10/21)
More health news from the Trump administration 鈥
The Trump administration chose a new leader for a federal health research funding organization that focuses on high-risk, high-reward programs, after firing its previous head in February. Alicia Jackson, a health technology entrepreneur who used to work for the Defense Department, was appointed director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. (Griffin and Swetlitz, 10/21)
The Trump administration is exploring moving the $15 billion program that supports students with disabilities to a different agency within the federal government as it works to close the Education Department altogether, a department official said Tuesday. The effort comes on the heels of the agency鈥檚 decision this month to lay off the vast majority of employees working on special-education services and months after Education Secretary Linda McMahon talked about moving the program to the Department of Health and Human Services. Her goal is to fulfill President Donald Trump鈥檚 promise to close the Education Department and move its functions to other parts of the government. (Meckler, 10/21)
As pharma companies and President Trump tout initiatives to sell branded medications directly to cash-paying consumers, some entrepreneurs have seized on a potential business opportunity 鈥 pitching a new model for employers to help their workers pay for medications without using insurance. (Chen, 10/22)