Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: ER Patients Deserve Better Than A Hallway Bed; Why Is There A 'Culture Of Silence' Around Ozempic?
Cara M. squints and shields her eyes against the flood of hallway light, a blanket clutched at her chest, a vomit bag at the ready.聽She describes her migraine as an icepick stabbing through her right eye. At home, the glow from her laptop screen kicked off waves of nausea. Birdsongs landed like hammering spikes. For most of my ER career, I鈥檇 be examining Cara M. in a low-lighted, quiet-ish room. Not in today鈥檚 diluted version of health care.聽(Jay Baruch, 3/18)
I started taking a GLP-1 ten months ago. I鈥檓 still floored by the ways we are鈥攁nd aren鈥檛鈥攖alking about it. (Elizabeth Angell, 3/16)
The Food and Drug Administration recently signaled that it鈥檚 planning to let e-cigarette companies sell a broader range of flavors in the United States. It鈥檚 a welcome change, but the FDA isn鈥檛 going nearly far enough. (3/17)
Somewhere along the decade-plus in training, physicians are imbued with a damaging idea: that we can鈥檛 succeed anywhere outside of medicine. Keep your head down, we鈥檙e taught. Don鈥檛 ask too many questions. And the age-old line: You may not love your work anymore,聽but who else will hire you? In May 2025, after three years of full-time practice as an ENT surgeon, I left clinical medicine to find that out for myself. (Frances Mei Hardin, 3/18)
Until recently, if asked to profile a typical mass shooter, we would have described a middle-aged man who was socially isolated and in despair. Over the past several years, something has changed. We are witnessing the emergence of a different paradigm: a mass shooter no less despairing about life鈥檚 hardships but younger, highly connected to online social networks and seemingly convinced that in acting violently he or she is carrying out the only meaningful act possible in a world otherwise devoid of meaning. (James Densley and Jillian Peterson, 3/17)