27 May 2023
Volume 401, Issue 10390
WORLD REPORT Some medical associations support restrictions on social media use to protect adolescent’s health, while others focus on making companies provide safer platforms.
WORLD REPORT Some medical associations support restrictions on social media use to protect adolescent’s health, while others focus on making companies provide safer platforms.
WORLD REPORT The Biden administration is launching a new initiative on scientific integrity in federal agencies following multiple lapses. Susan Jaffe reports from Washington, DC.
Just a week after Joe Biden was sworn in as president in January, 2021, he created a multi-agency Task Force on Scientific Integrity to restore “trust in government through scientific integrity and evidence-based policy making”…Last month, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy released A Framework for Federal Scientific Integrity and Practice, a follow-up to the task force’s 2022 recommendations that provides a blueprint for implementation. [Continued here.] …
WORLD REPORT A patchwork of state laws replace abortion rights once guaranteed by Roe v Wade. Susan Jaffe reports from Washington, DC.
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Volume 400, Issue 10345
2 July 2022
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WORLD REPORT Experts say that Eric Lander’s resignation should not affect the President’s plans to reboot the cancer moonshot project. Susan Jaffe reports.…
WORLD REPORT As the Supreme Court blocks one of the Biden Administration’s plans to raise COVID-19 vaccination rates but approves another, Susan Jaffe looks at the next steps.
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President Joe Biden’s administration said last week that it won’t decide whether to allow states to import drugs from Canada anytime soon, if ever. Biden supported drug importation during the presidential campaign, as did his opponent, Donald Trump, to mitigate sky-rocketing drug costs in the USA. Americans pay more per capita for prescription drugs than any other country…. [Continued here.]
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Volume 396, Number 10260 31 October 2020
Volume 396, Number 10255
26 September 2020
WORLD REPORT News accounts say that Trump administration officials wanted to edit and approve COVID-19 studies and publish guidance without the usual scientific review. Susan Jaffe reports.
After news stories about attempts by members of the Trump administration to manipulate COVID-19 reports published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and over-rule its scientists, one top official is taking a sudden leave of absence for health reasons. Another’s government contract has abruptly ended. The 2-month absence of Michael Caputo, chief spokesman for the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), comes after he claimed that a CDC “resistance unit” seeks to undermine Trump. He and an adviser reportedly demanded the right to revise and approve COVID-19 studies published in the CDC’s highly respected Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report journal. [Continued here.]…
Volume 396, Number 10244
11 July 2020
WORLD REPORT The court’s decision means that Louisiana’s three abortion clinics will remain open. Susan Jaffe reports.
The US Supreme Court delivered the Trump administration’s third defeat in as many weeks when it overturned a Louisiana law requiring physicians who provide abortions to have local hospital-admitting privileges.
In an opinion written by Justice Stephen Breyer, the court declared on June 29 that “enforcing the admitting privileges requirement would drastically reduce the number and geographic distribution of abortion providers, making it impossible for many women to obtain a safe, legal abortion in the State and imposing substantial obstacles on those who could”. [Continued here.]…
“We can send prescriptions to the pharmacy, including [for] narcotics,” says Marie Grosh, a geriatric advanced practice nurse practitioner and the owner of a medical house calls practice in a Cleveland suburb. “We can order lab work, x-rays, ultrasounds, EKGs [electrocardiagrams]; interpret them; and treat patients based on that. But we’re just not allowed to order home care—which is absurd.”
By SUSAN JAFFE | Health Affairs | June 2019 | Volume 38, Number 8
When Christine Williams began working as a nurse practitioner some forty years ago in Detroit, Michigan, older adults who couldn’t manage on their own and had no family nearby and no doctor willing to make house calls had few options besides winding up in a nursing home.
Not anymore.
“The move towards keeping seniors in their homes is a fast-galloping horse here,” says Williams, who settled in Cleveland, Ohio, more than a decade ago. “We don’t have space for them in long-term care [facilities], they don’t want to be in long-term care, and states don’t want to pay for long-term care. And everybody wants to live at home.”
But despite the growing desire for in-home medical care for older adults from nearly all quarters, seniors’ advocates and home health professionals claim that rules set by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) along with state regulations have created an obstacle course for the very providers best positioned—and sometimes the only option—to offer that care. [Continued here] …
“Many discoveries now in clinical practice and wide research use have come from human fetal tissue”, said Irving Weissman, director of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. “For these, there was—and still is—no substitute for human fetal tissue.”
…Anti-abortion groups praised the new policy, which would “separate federal research funding from the abortion industry”, said Melanie Israel, a research associate at the conservative Heritage Foundation… Yet how the new Trump research policy would reduce abortions is still unclear. “They are conflating pro-life issues and abortion with research”, said Jennifer Zeitzer, public affairs director at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. “But there’s no evidence that women are getting abortions so they can donate fetal tissue for research.” [Continued here.] …
“We are the department of life…from conception until natural death, through all of our programmes”, US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Alex Azar said earlier this year…. The government’s anti-abortion efforts have ignited lawsuits from Maine to California. Eventually, one or more of these cases are expected to reach the Supreme Court. With its newest arrival—Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose nomination by Trump was championed by abortion opponents—the Supreme Court’s ideological balance has now shifted towards a conservative majority [raising] opponents’ hopes that a sympathetic court will diminish, if not overturn, Roe v. Wade...
Late last week, lawyers for the HHS appealed decisions by two federal court judges in Oregon and Washington state to temporarily halt new administration rules that would limit the information about abortion services that federally funded health-care providers can tell their patients.
“We are fighting back in the courts, we are fighting back in Congress and in state legislatures all across the country”, said Planned Parenthood president Leana Wen, noting that one in four women in the USA will have an abortion in their lifetime. “The public is with us when it comes to defending access to safe legal abortion, which people understand is part of the full spectrum of reproductive health care, which is health care.” [Continued here.]…
Volume 393, Number 10182
27 April 2019
WORLD REPORT The multiagency operation hit five states and led to the arrest of 60 people. Perpetrators face up to
50 years’ prison sentence if found guilty. Susan Jaffe reports.
Volume 393, Number 10175
9 March 2019
WORLD REPORT A committee brought together Senators and drug company representatives to discuss why drug pricing in the USA is so high, but little progress was made, Susan Jaffe reports.
IG investigators said such improper payments are accumulating year after year.
By Susan Jaffe | Modern Healthcare | February 20, 2019
The CMS pays millions of dollars a year to nursing homes for taking care of older adults who don’t qualify for coverage, according to an investigation by HHS’ inspector general.
The IG’s report, released Wednesday, includes steps the CMS should take to fix the problem; but in a written response, CMS Administrator Seema Verma rejected some key recommendations. [Continued here.]…