Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Rural Patients Suffer Under Stark Law; How 'Moral Hazard' Affects Addiction Treatment
I recently started a patient with metastatic triple-positive breast cancer on a targeted therapy regimen consisting of capecitabine and neratinib, both oral chemotherapy pills that are dosed on a 21-day cycle. Given that her cancer also thrives on estrogen, I chose to continue her monthly fulvestrant injections (which targets estrogen) in my clinic in Dickson, Tennessee, a small town 40 minutes outside Nashville. (Samyukta Mullangi, 3/1)
Dr. Winograd, who is now the director of addiction science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis鈥檚 Missouri Institute of Mental Health, had encountered a concept known as moral hazard, the idea that reducing exposure to the negative consequences of a risk makes people more likely to take that risk. (Maia Szalavitz, 3/1)
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Republican Party declared victory. But the Alabama Supreme Court鈥檚 decision last month that frozen embryos are considered 鈥渆xtrauterine children,鈥 which prompted hospitals to suspend I.V.F. procedures, has complicated that victory. (Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Lydia Polgreen, 3/1)
When I was diagnosed with colon cancer at age 34, all I wanted was to be a mom. Now, a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling means that the decisions I made to preserve my fertility pre-chemo could have made me a criminal. (Bethany Robertson, 2/29)