In his first State of the Union Address, President Donald Trump informed the American public that “one of my greatest priorities is to reduce the price of prescription drugs.” But that message may barely start to sink in earlier than different well being information developed: The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was compelled to resign Wednesday after conflict-of-interest experiences.
Meanwhile, exterior the federal authorities, Idaho is proposing to permit the sale of particular person insurance coverage insurance policies that particularly violate parts of the Affordable Care Act. And three mega-companies — Amazon, Berkshire-Hathaway, and JPMorgan Chase — say they may associate to attempt to management prices and enhance high quality for his or her workers’ well being care.
This week’s “What The Health?” panelists are Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Alice Ollstein of Talking Points Memo and Julie Appleby and Sarah Jane Tribble of Kaiser Health News.
Among the takeaways from this week’s podcast:
Despite Trump’s robust rhetoric within the State of the Union Address, the president has taken few actions throughout his first yr in workplace to cut back drug costs. The president touted that Republicans had repealed the well being legislation’s requirement that people get medical health insurance or pay a penalty. But that change within the legislation doesn’t go into impact till 2019, so his feedback may very well be complicated to some taxpayers. Idaho officers have introduced that they will enable insurers to problem insurance policies that don’t meet all the factors of the federal well being legislation. But it’s not clear that insurers are serious about collaborating within the experiment. “Alexa, send me my Lipitor!” Can Amazon’s announcement that it and two different company behemoths are taking over workers’ well being care create a brand new components for holding prices down and enhancing high quality? Email Sign-Up
Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.
Sign Up Please verify your electronic mail deal with under: Sign Up
Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest their favourite well being tales of the week they suppose it’s best to learn, too.
Julie Rovner: Kaiser Health News’ “No Car, No Care? Medicaid Transportation At Risk In Some States,” by JoNel Aleccia.
ALSO: JAMA’s “Are Medicaid Work Requirements Legal?” by Nicholas Bagley.
Alice Ollstein: Politico’s “Trump’s Top Health Official Traded Tobacco Stock While Leading Anti-Smoking Efforts,” by Sarah Karlin-Smith and Brianna Ehley.
Julie Appleby: The Atlantic’s “Why We Forget Most of the Books We Read,” by Julie Beck.
Sarah Jane Tribble: The New York Times’ “5-Year-Olds Work Farm Machinery, And Injuries Follow,” by Jack Healy.
To hear all our podcasts, click here.
And subscribe to What the Health? on iTunes, Stitcher or Google Play.
Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a nationwide well being coverage information service. It is an editorially impartial program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which isn’t affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
We encourage organizations to republish our content material, freed from cost. Here’s what we ask:
You should credit score us as the unique writer, with a hyperlink to our khn.org web site. If potential, please embrace the unique writer(s) and “Kaiser Health News” within the byline. Please protect the hyperlinks within the story.
It’s necessary to notice, not all the things on khn.org is on the market for republishing. If a narrative is labeled “All Rights Reserved,” we can not grant permission to republish that merchandise.
Have questions? Let us know at [email protected]”>[email protected]
