Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Work Requirements Will Throw Working People Off Medicaid; The Covid Pandemic Led To RFK Jr.
It sounds like a perfectly reasonable proposition: If low-income Americans are going to get their health care coverage through the government鈥檚 Medicaid program, accepting aid from the taxpayers, those recipients who are physically able to hold jobs should do so. We don鈥檛 actually disagree with that philosophical premise. But that isn鈥檛 the ironclad argument it might appear to be for the kinds of work reporting requirements for Medicaid that are currently on the table as congressional Republicans seek to extend their 2017 tax cuts. (6/15)
In more than 20 years of covering policy, I have witnessed some crazy stuff. But one episode towers above the rest in sheer lunacy: the November 2020 meeting of the CDC鈥檚 Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Sounds boring? Usually, maybe. (Megan McArdle, 6/15)
A horror story is playing out in Georgia, where physicians at Emory University Hospital have kept Adriana Smith, who is brain-dead, on life support for three months against her family鈥檚 wishes solely as a means of incubating her still-developing fetus. Georgia law declares that an unborn product of conception at any stage of development is a 鈥渘atural person.鈥 Between that statute and Georgia鈥檚 ban on abortion after six weeks of gestation, Smith鈥檚 doctors聽decided聽that discontinuing life support would effectively 鈥渁bort鈥 the fetus. (Laura Hermer, 6/16)
In the face of rising national infertility and economic uncertainty, the institution of family is more important than ever. With 1 in 6 globally experiencing infertility, the current administration鈥檚 presidential order to make in vitro fertilization more affordable was a welcome development. It may be light on action, but it shows our government recognizes that building families strengthens the foundation of society, safeguards tomorrow, and ensures long-term stability. (Brian Levine, 6/16)
Future cancer cures are in jeopardy because of dramatic and unprecedented proposed reductions in research funding, staff eliminations and policy shifts at the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute. That鈥檚 why I traveled to Washington, D.C., last week to speak in support of strong cancer research funding, and to personally tell Sen. Jerry Moran that cuts have consequences. (Matthew Chen, 6/15)
