Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

The Top Three...

With so much going on, it can be hard to know what to read.  If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest...

The New York Times: A ‘Tripledemic’? Flu And Other Infections Return As Covid Cases Rise With few to no restrictions in place and travel and socializing back in full swing, an expected winter rise in Covid cases appears poised to collide with a resurgent influenza season, causing a “twindemic” — or even a “tripledemic,” with a third pathogen, respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., in the mix. (Mandavilli, 10/23)

Axios: ACA's Preventative Care Requirement Under Attack Plaintiffs in an Affordable Care Act lawsuit are now asking a federal judge to toss all parts of the law requiring coverage of preventive health services. The filing raises the stakes in the closely watched case, Kelley v. Becerra: If U.S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor sides with the plaintiffs, millions of Americans could lose coverage for cancer screenings, behavioral counseling and other recommendations made by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. (Gonzalez, 10/25)

Axios: Premiums Stayed Stable In 2022, But Next Year Expect Increases It cost an average of $22,463 to cover a family through employer-sponsored health insurance in 2022, according to an annual benefits survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation that found premiums remained relatively flat year-to-year while wages and inflation surged. (Dreher, 10/27)

For a Deeper Dive...

KHN: Hospitals Said They Lost Money On Medicare Patients. Some Made Millions, A State Report Finds. Atrium Health, the largest hospital system in North Carolina, has declared publicly that in 2019 it provided $640 million in services to Medicare patients that were never paid for, by far the largest “community benefit” it provided that year. Like other nonprofit hospitals around the nation, Atrium logs losses on the federal health insurance program for seniors and people with disabilities as a community benefit to satisfy legal requirements for federal, state, and local tax breaks. (Clasen-Kelly, 10/25)

Modern Healthcare: Physicians Left Their Jobs In Droves In 2021: Report As a profession, physicians lost the most members, with 117,000 individuals leaving their roles last year, followed by nurse practitioners, which lost 53,295 members and physician assistants, with 22,704 positions vacated, according to a report published Thursday by Definitive Healthcare. (Devereaux, 10/20)

AP: Failing US Nursing Homes To Face Tougher Federal Penalties The new guidelines announced Friday will apply to less than 0.5% of the nation’s nursing homes. The facilities are already designated as a “special focus facility” because of a previous violation and are on a watchlist of sorts that requires the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare to monitor them more regularly. (Seitz, 10/21)

HealthcareDive:  Hospital efforts to tackle social determinants of health stall, data shows. Rural, critical access and safety net hospitals have not expanded initiatives to address social determinants of health in vulnerable patient populations, and some are implementing fewer such strategies, according to an analysis of survey data collected during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Efforts to develop community partnerships especially have lagged.  Insufficient financial and community resources, workforce constraints, limited institutional partnerships and a lack of incentives were among the possible explanations. (Kelly, 10/24)

USA Today: Cancer Death Rate Decline Suggests Progress In Treatment, Report Shows Overall U.S. cancer death rates continue to drop among men, women, children, teens and young adults, according to a report released Thursday. The American Cancer Society’s Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer showed a decline in every major ethnic and racial group from 2015 to 2019. The findings are based on pre-COVID-19 pandemic data. (Williams, 10/27)

USA Today: Climate Change Is Worsening Health And Disparities: What Can Be Done? Researchers across the globe collaborate to study climate and health in an annual report, the Lancet medical journals’ “countdown” on health and climate change. In this year’s U.S. portion of the report, released Tuesday, scientists break down research on the health impacts of a warming climate and outline policy recommendations, focusing on health equity. (Hassanein, 10/25)

Harvard Public Health: Taking Steps Toward Anti-Racist Healthcare There’s growing recognition of the health inequities people of color experience because of racism, implicit bias, and systemic marginalization. But efforts to tackle the root causes of such inequities and ease their impact on the nation’s collective health lag behind. There is momentum to move from awareness to action, in private and public hospitals, in academic medicine, and in public health departments. (Newsome, 10/3)

AP: Oregon Could Be 1st State To Make Health Care A Human Right Oregon voters are being asked to decide whether the state should be the first in the nation to amend its constitution to explicitly declare that affordable health care is a fundamental human right. State Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, a main sponsor of the legislation behind the ballot measure, said making health care a human right is a value statement and is not aimed at pushing Oregon to a single-payer health care system, a longtime goal of many progressives. (Selsky, 10/27)

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