Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

The Top Three...

With so much going on, if you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest...

Politico: Senate Fails To Pass Abortion Rights Bill — Again Anti-abortion activist groups like the Susan B. Anthony List had lobbied senators on both sides of the aisle to oppose the bill, and plan to run ads against any vulnerable swing-state Democrats who cast their vote for the legislation. “We’re focused on Democratic incumbents who are anywhere close to a battleground state,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of SBA List, told reporters on a Tuesday call. “Certainly [Arizona Senator] Mark Kelly would be way up there. We spent, very recently, a million dollars attacking him in Arizona for just this reason — his abortion decision.” (Ollstein and Levine, 5/11)

Politico: U.S. Drug Overdose Deaths Surpass 107,000 Last Year, Another Record The rapid spike in overdose fatalities — deaths are up nearly 50 percent in two years — presents a grave challenge to the Biden administration as it seeks to manage the twin crises of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and worsening opioid epidemic. Drug policy experts argue the administration needs to apply the same urgency to stopping opioid deaths that it’s brought to its Covid-19 response. “We need to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time,” said Jerome Adams, former U.S. surgeon general and a member of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Opioid Crisis Task Force. “Covid is not going to go away.” (Mahr, 5/11)

USA Today: COVID End Could Cost Medicaid Coverage For Up To 14 Million Americans Millions of Americans who gained Medicaid health insurance during the COVID-19 pandemic could lose coverage this year or next year when generous federal subsidies end, a new analysis found. Kaiser Family Foundation estimates 5 to 14 million Americans could lose Medicaid when states begin to unwind coverage after the Biden administration declares the COVID-19 public health emergency is over. The federal government provided billions in federal aid to states on the condition that they would not remove people from Medicaid until the public health emergency ends. The temporary measure to ensure Americans didn't lost coverage during the pandemic has extended more than two years. Kaiser projects sign-ups for full and partial Medicaid coverage will have swollen by 25% to 110 million by September's end. (Alltucker, 5/10)

For a Deeper Dive...

Politico: How We Got To 1 Million Covid Deaths – In Four Charts Patricia Dowd, 57, died of Covid-19 on Feb. 6, 2020.She is believed to be the first pandemic death. In the 27 months since, nearly 1 million people in the U.S. have succumbed to the coronavirus, a figure so large that it engulfs individual stories like Dowd’s into a national maw of grief with which the country is struggling to reckon. It’s as if the entire population of Delaware, Montana or Rhode Island, or all of Austin, vanished in just two years’ time. (Goldberg and Choi, 5/11)

The New York Times: White House, Under Pressure, Says It Will Address Baby Formula Shortage The Biden administration said on Thursday that it was working to address a worsening nationwide shortage of infant formula, announcing efforts to speed manufacturing and increase imports as pressure mounted to respond to a crisis that has desperate parents scouring empty store aisles to feed their children. Officials outlined the plan after President Biden met with retailers and manufacturers, including Walmart, Target, Reckitt and Gerber, about their efforts to increase production. They also discussed steps the federal government could take to help stock bare shelves, particularly in rural areas, according to senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the conversation. (Karni, 5/12)

Axios: Staffing Shortages Slam Hospitals More than four in 10 hospitals have seen staffing shortages limit their ability to discharge patients because of a lack of post-acute care, according to a survey provided exclusively to Axios by CarePort Health, a care coordination software company. Health care staffing shortages in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have been felt across the industry and are noticed by patients. Among the hardest hit are the facilities that fall on the spectrum of post-acute care. (Reed, 5/11)

The New York Times: Gun Deaths Surged During The Pandemic’s First Year, The C.D.C. Reports “This is a historic increase, with the rate having reached the highest level in over 25 years,” Dr. Debra E. Houry, acting principal deputy director of the C.D.C. and the director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, said at a news briefing. More than 45,000 Americans died in gun-related incidents as the pandemic spread in the United States, the highest number on record, federal data show. The gun homicide rate was the highest reported since 1994. (Rabin and Arango, 5/10)

The Hill: 5 Risks If Congress Does Not Pass New COVID-19 Funding Republicans have long said they do not see an urgent need for the funding, and have insisted it be paid for with cuts to money from previous COVID-19 relief bills. ... Here are five risks if the funding does not go forward. (Sullivan, 5/12)

Modern Healthcare: The Wonky Medicare Proposal Worrying Safety-Net Hospitals Hospitals in some states that haven't expanded Medicaid coverage worry a proposed Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services policy could deprive them of hundreds of millions of dollars in disproportionate share hospital payments. In its most recent hospital payment rule, CMS proposed excluding certain uncompensated care pool days from the Medicare Disproportionate Share Hospital calculation. This seemingly technical adjustment raised alarms at hospitals in a handful of states, including Texas, Florida and Tennessee, that believe the change could take away Medicare reimbursements they earn by caring for needy patients. (Goldman, 5/12)

For the Visual Among Us...