Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Mental Health Care Needs An Overhaul; Why Is FDA Stalling On New Sunscreens?
In the late 1960s, there was a mass deinstitutionalization of psychiatric care in the United States. Hundreds of psychiatric hospitals (so-called 鈥渁sylums鈥) were closed in the name of freedom and human rights for their populations. In those asylums, mentally ill patients were kept in locked wards, often involuntarily, and sometimes in inhumane conditions, making it more of a mass incarceration than a compassionate treatment program. (Charles Murchison, 7/30)
A decade after Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) authored the Sunscreen Innovation Act, which became law in 2014, Americans are still waiting for newer, more effective sunscreen products due to the Food and Drug Administration鈥檚 chronic inaction. (Darrell Rigel, 8/1)
Of all the dangers that Donald Trump both threatens and embodies, from seedy criminality to sprawling authoritarianism, perhaps no threat is more acute than the one he poses to public health. 鈥淚 will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate,鈥 Trump said at a rally in Minnesota last weekend. The former president used the same language 鈥 not 鈥渙ne penny鈥 for schools that require vaccines or masks 鈥 at a rally in May. (Francis Wilkinson, 8/1)
The Federal Trade Commission presents on Thursday聽its interim staff report, 鈥淧harmacy Benefit Managers: The Powerful Middlemen Inflating Drug Costs and Squeezing Main Street Pharmacies.鈥 It reveals how pharmacy benefit managers intentionally force people onto high-cost, high-rebate drugs. (Juliana M. Reed, 8/1)