Congress handed a invoice to fund a lot of the federal authorities for the rest of the fiscal yr simply hours earlier than its March 23 deadline. But not included in that laws is a bipartisan invoice geared toward stabilizing premiums for people who purchase their very own medical insurance. That proposal collapsed in partisan rancor after lawmakers had been unable to resolve a struggle over abortion and different points.
Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration is transferring ahead with doubtlessly landmark guidelines that would dramatically change the tobacco business. And the spending invoice loosens twenty years of restrictions on the general public well being impression of weapons.
This week’s panelists for KHN’s “What the Health?” are Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Joanne Kenen of Politico and Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times.
Among the takeaways from this week’s podcast:
In the massive spending invoice handed by Congress, plenty of well being companies and initiatives — together with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and efforts to fight opioid habit – obtained extra funding. With the passage of the federal spending invoice now over, it appears extremely unlikely that there will likely be one other effort to stabilize the Affordable Care Act’s insurance coverage marketplaces this yr. One potential purpose is that well being care doesn’t seem — at this level — to be a lot of a motivating difficulty for voters as they consider the midterm elections. While they did get activated by the specter of a repeal of the ACA in 2017, coping with attempting to repair the marketplaces is rather more difficult and unlikely to impress voters in the identical manner. The House has now handed a invoice letting terminally ailing sufferers attraction to drugmakers to get experimental medicines. But the House model of this “right-to-try” laws is completely different than the Senate model that handed final yr, and it’s not but clear which invoice will go ahead. Patient teams and authorities drug officers previous and current have complained the invoice might do extra hurt than good. A brand new research within the New England Journal of Medicine helps clarify that monetary issues sufferers face after a hospitalization are primarily based on extra than simply their medical insurance standing.
Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists advocate their favourite well being tales of the week they suppose it’s best to learn, too.
Julie Rovner: Kaiser Health News’ “The Dream Among ‘Dreamers’ To Become A Doctor Now ‘At The Mercy’ Of Courts,” by Ana B. Ibarra.
Also: CNN’s “Juul e-cigarettes and teens: ‘Health problem of the decade’?” by Ana B. Ibarra.
Joanne Kenen: Slate’s “The New Spending Bill Could Finally Pave the Way for Federal Research on Gun Violence,” by Alex Barasch.
Margo Sanger-Katz: Vox.com’s The Weeds podcast, “The opioid debate: Could reversing overdoses worsen the epidemic?” by Ezra Klein and Sarah Kliff.
Anna Edney: Stat’s “That’s $425,000 right there’ — The anxious launch of a gene therapy with a record sticker price,” by Eric Boodman.
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