Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Rural Patients Suffer Under Stark Law; How 'Moral Hazard' Affects Addiction Treatment
I recently started a patient with metastatic triple-positive breast cancer on a targeted therapy regimen consisting of capecitabine and neratinib, both oral chemotherapy pills that are dosed on a 21-day cycle. Given that her cancer also thrives on estrogen, I chose to continue her monthly fulvestrant injections (which targets estrogen) in my clinic in Dickson, Tennessee, a small town 40 minutes outside Nashville. (Samyukta Mullangi, 3/1)
Dr. Winograd, who is now the director of addiction science at the University of Missouri-St. Louis鈥檚 Missouri Institute of Mental Health, had encountered a concept known as moral hazard, the idea that reducing exposure to the negative consequences of a risk makes people more likely to take that risk. (Maia Szalavitz, 3/1)
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Republican Party declared victory. But the Alabama Supreme Court鈥檚 decision last month that frozen embryos are considered 鈥渆xtrauterine children,鈥� which prompted hospitals to suspend I.V.F. procedures, has complicated that victory. (Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Lydia Polgreen, 3/1)
When I was diagnosed with colon cancer at age 34, all I wanted was to be a mom. Now, a recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling means that the decisions I made to preserve my fertility pre-chemo could have made me a criminal. (Bethany Robertson, 2/29)