Health

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares105 Views

      in US Politics

      Key RFK Jr advisers stand to profit from a new federal health initiative

      by

      Federal health officials are seeking to launch a “bold, edgy” public service campaign to warn Americans of the dangers of ultra-processed foods in social media, transit ads, billboards and even text messages.And they potentially stand to profit off the results.Ultra-processed foods are a fixation for the US health and human services (HHS) secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine skeptic who believes the US industrialized food supply is a “primary culprit” behind many chronic diseases.“We need to fix our food supply. And that’s the number one thing,” Kennedy said at his confirmation hearing.Bringing healthier foods to Americans has proved to be one of the most resonant issues of Kennedy’s “Make America healthy again” (Maha) campaign – and arguably the only one that Democrats and Republicans agree on in principle.Kennedy has spent most of his tenure as health secretary dismantling key components of US vaccine infrastructure, instituting mass firings and defunding chronic disease prevention programs, such as for tobacco use.The secretary has been less successful in reigning in food makers. Food advocates have described voluntary changes between the government and manufacturers “disappointing”. Kennedy was criticized by congressional Republicans for targeting agricultural pesticides in the “Maha” report before it was even released – showing the limits of Republicans appetite for regulation, then the report itself was riddled with errors, likely generated by AI.“The campaign’s creative content will turn heads, create viral moments on social media, and – above all else – inspire Americans to take back their health through eating real food,” said a document published by the federal government that described the campaign.The campaign is expected to cost between $10m to $20m, according to documents. Anyone seeking to apply for the award will have a quick turnaround – the deadline is 26 June.“The purpose of this requirement is to alert Americans to the role of processed foods in fueling the diabetes epidemic and other chronic diseases, inspire people to take personal responsibility for their diets, and drive measurable improvements in diabetes prevention and national health outcomes,” it continued.The new public relations campaign also highlights the Trump administration’s unconventional approach to hiring – including its reliance on special government employees.A key adviser to Kennedy, Calley Means, could directly benefit from one of the campaign’s stated aims: popularizing “technology like wearables as cool, modern tools for measuring diet impact and taking control of your own health”.Calley Means is a senior Kennedy adviser, and was hired as a special government employee to focus on food policy, according to Bloomberg. He founded a company that helps Americans get such wearable devices reimbursed tax-free through health savings accounts.Casey Means is Calley’s sister. She also runs a healthcare start-up, although hers sells wearable devices such as continuous glucose monitors. She is Kennedy’s nominee for US surgeon general, and a healthcare entrepreneur whose business sells continuous glucose monitors – one such wearable device. Calley Means’s company also works with Casey’s company.Due to Calley Means’s status as a special employee, he has not been forced to divest from his private business interests – a situation that has already resulted in an ethics complaint. Consumer advocates, such as the non-profit group Public Citizen, had warned such hiring practices could cause conflicts of interest. HHS did not respond to a request for comment about Calley Means’s private business interests, or his role in crafting the publicity campaign.Although the publicity campaign focuses on the ultra-processed foods connection to diabetes, at least one high profile nutritionist was queasy about its focus.“The ultra-processed foods – some of those include breakfast cereals that are ultra-processed because they are fortified with vitamins,” said Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. “Those are good if they’re whole grain breakfast cereals and whole grain breads,” he said.Ultra-processed foods are generally recognized as sodas, salty snacks and frozen meals engineered to be shelf-stable, convenient and inexpensive. Such foods are associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes – or insulin resistance.The mechanism by which such foods could increase risk of diabetes is unknown, a problem that extends in part from the “heterogeneous category” of foods that the ultra-processed category encompasses. The publicity campaign proposal does not venture into defining the category, even as Kennedy has fixated on it “poisoning the American people”.“When you say processed foods you don’t envision a Coke in your brain, and that’s the biggest problem,” said Willett, who added that most public service campaigns are carefully crafted and tested for effectiveness. More

    • 163 Shares147 Views

      in US Politics

      VA hospitals remove politics and marital status from guidelines protecting patients from discrimination

      by

      The Department of Veterans Affairs has imposed new guidelines on VA hospitals nationwide that remove language that explicitly prohibited doctors from discriminating against patients based on their political beliefs or marital status.The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.Under federal law, eligible veterans must be given hospital care and services, and the revised VA hospital rules still instruct medical staff that they cannot discriminate against veterans on the basis of race, color, religion and sex. But language within VA hospital bylaws requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated from these bylaws, raising questions about whether individual workers could now be free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not expressly protected by federal law.Explicit protections for VA doctors and other medical staff based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity have also been removed, documents reviewed by the Guardian show.The changes also affect chiropractors, certified nurse practitioners, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers and speech therapists.In making the changes, VA officials cite Donald Trump’s 30 January executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. The primary purpose of the executive order was to strip most government protections from transgender people. The VA has since ceased providing most gender-affirming care and forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender”, from clinical settings.The Department of Veterans Affairs is the nation’s largest integrated hospital system, with more than 170 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics. It employs 26,000 doctors and serves 9 million patients annually.In an emailed response to questions, the VA press secretary, Peter Kasperowicz, did not dispute that language requiring medical staff to treat patients without discriminating on the basis of politics and marital status had been removed from the bylaws , but he said “all eligible veterans will always be welcome at VA and will always receive the benefits and services they’ve earned under the law”.He said the rule changes were nothing more than “a formality”, but confirmed that they were made to comply with Trump’s executive order. Kasperowicz also said the revisions were necessary to “ensure VA policy comports with federal law”. He did not say which federal law or laws required these changes.The VA said federal laws and a 2013 policy directive that prohibits discrimination on the basis of marital status or political affiliation would not allow patients within the categories removed from its bylaws to be excluded from treatment or allow discrimination against medical professionals.“Under no circumstances whatsoever would VA ever deny appropriate care to any eligible veterans or appropriate employment to any qualified potential employees,” a VA representative said.Until the recent changes, VA hospitals’ bylaws said that medical staff could not discriminate against patients “on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, national origin, politics, marital status or disability in any employment matter”. Now, several of those items – including “national origin,” “politics” and “marital status” – have been removed from that list.Similarly, the bylaw on “decisions regarding medical staff membership” no longer forbids VA hospitals from discriminating against candidates for staff positions based on national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, membership in a labor organization or “lawful political party affiliation”.Medical experts said the implications of rule changes uncovered by the Guardian could be far-reaching.They “seem to open the door to discrimination on the basis of anything that is not legally protected”, said Dr Kenneth Kizer, the VA’s top healthcare official during the Clinton administration. He said the changes open up the possibility that doctors could refuse to treat veterans based on their “reason for seeking care – including allegations of rape and sexual assault – current or past political party affiliation or political activity, and personal behavior such as alcohol or marijuana use”.Dr Arthur Caplan, founding head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine, called the new rules “extremely disturbing and unethical”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It seems on its face an effort to exert political control over the VA medical staff,” he said. “What we typically tell people in healthcare is: ‘You keep your politics at home and take care of your patients.’” Caplan said the rules opened the door to doctors questioning patients about whether they attended a Trump rally or declining to provide healthcare to a veteran because they wore a button critical of JD Vance or voiced support for gay rights.“Those views aren’t relevant to caring for patients. So why would we put anyone at risk of losing care that way?” Caplan said.During the 2024 presidential campaign and throughout the early months of his second term, Trump repeatedly made threats against a host of people whom he saw as his political antagonists, including senators, judges and then president Joe Biden. He called journalists and Democrats “the enemy within”.In interviews, veterans said the impact of the new policy would probably fall hardest on female veterans, LGBTQ+ veterans and those who live in rural areas where there are fewer doctors overall. “I’m lucky. I have my choice of three clinics,” said Tia Christopher, a navy veteran who reported being raped in service in 2000.Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Christopher advocates on behalf of military sexual trauma survivors throughout the country. Under the new policy, some may have to register at a hospital in another region and travel more than a hundred miles to see a doctor. It “could have a huge ripple effect”, she said.As concerned as they were about the new policies themselves, medical experts were equally worried about the way they came about. Sources at multiple VA hospitals, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fear of retaliation, told the Guardian that the rule changes were imposed without consultation with the system’s doctors – a characterization the VA’s Kasperowicz did not dispute.Such a move would run counter to standards established by the Joint Commission, a non-profit organization that accredits hospitals. Kasperowicz said the agency worked with the Joint Commission “to ensure these changes would have no impact on VA’s accreditation”.At its annual convention in Chicago this week, the American Medical Association’s 733-member policymaking body passed a resolution reaffirming “its commitment to medical staff self-governance … and urges all healthcare institutions, including the US Department of Veterans Affairs, to ensure that any amendments to medical staff bylaws are subject to approval by medical staff in accordance with Joint Commission standards”.The changes are part of a larger attack on the independence of medicine and science by the Trump administration, Caplan said, which has included restrictions and cuts at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, last week fired every member of a key panel that advises the government on vaccines. The Guardian has earlier reported on a VA edict forbidding agency researchers from publishing in scientific journals without clearance from the agency’s political appointees. More

    • 150 Shares188 Views

      in US Politics

      Who are the eight new vaccine advisers appointed by Robert F Kennedy?

      by

      Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, named eight new vaccine advisers this week to a critical Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel after firing all 17 experts who had held the roles.New members of the panel include experts who complained about being sidelined, a high-profile figure who has spread misinformation and medical professionals who appear to have little vaccine expertise. Kennedy made the announcement on social media.“All of these individuals are committed to evidence-based medicine, gold-standard science, and common sense,” Kennedy said in his announcement. “They have each committed to demanding definitive safety and efficacy data before making any new vaccine recommendations.”Formally called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), the panel advises the CDC on how vaccines should be distributed. Those recommendations in effect determine the vaccines Americans can access. This week, Kennedy also removed the career officials typically tasked with vetting ACIP members and overseeing the advisory group, according to CBS News.Kennedy is a widely known vaccine skeptic who profited from suing vaccine manufacturers, has taken increasingly dramatic steps to upend US vaccine policy.“ACIP is widely regarded as the international gold standard for vaccine decision-making,” said Helen Chu, one of the fired advisers, at a press conference with Patty Murray, a Democratic US senator.“We cannot replace it with a process driven by one person’s beliefs. In the absence of an independent, unbiased ACIP, we can no longer trust that safe and effective vaccines will be available to us and the people around us.”Robert W MaloneArguably the most high-profile new member, Robert W Malone catapulted to stardom during the Covid-19 pandemic, appearing across rightwing media to criticize the Biden administration while describing himself as the inventor of mRNA technology.Messenger RNA technology powers the most widely used Covid-19 vaccines. While Malone was involved in very early experiments on the technology, researchers have said his role was limited.Malone’s star rose quickly after appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast in 2022, where he and Rogan were criticized for spreading misinformation. On the show, Malone promoted the idea that both ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine could be possible treatments for Covid-19, but said research on the drugs was being suppressed. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have not been shown to improve outcomes from Covid-19.“Malone has a well-documented history of promoting conspiracy theories,” said Dr Jeffrey D Klausner, an epidemiologist and infectious disease expert at the University of Southern California, who recently told the New York Times he was in touch with Kennedy about his appointments.Martin KulldorffKulldorff is a former Harvard professor of biostatistics and an infectious disease epidemiologist originally from Sweden. He said in an essay for the rightwing publication City Journal that he was fired because he refused to be vaccinated in line with the school policy.Like Malone, he rose to prominence during the pandemic as a “Covid contrarian” who criticized the scientific consensus – views he said alienated him from his peers in the scientific community. He voiced his opposition to Covid-19 vaccine mandates and, in his essay, complained of being ignored by media and shadow-banned from Twitter.Kulldorff co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for limited closures instead of pandemic lockdowns before vaccines were available. The document became a touchstone for the American political right.Before the pandemic, Kulldorff studied vaccine safety and infectious disease, including co-authoring papers with members of CDC staff, such as on the Vaccine Safety Datalink. He was a member of the CDC’s Covid Vaccine Safety Working Group in 2020, but said later he was fired because he disagreed with the agency’s decision to pause Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine and with Covid-19 vaccine mandates. He served on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) drug safety and risk management advisory committee around the same time.He has since enjoyed support from people already within the administration, including the Great Barrington Declaration co-author Dr Jay Bhattacharya, current head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Dr Vinay Prasad, head of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, which handles vaccines.Cody MeissnerMeissner is a professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. He previously held advisory roles at the FDA and CDC, including ACIP from 2008-2012.In 2021, Meissner co-wrote an editorial with Dr Marty Makary, now the head of the FDA, which criticized mask mandates for children. In April, he was listed as an external adviser to ACIP on the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) committee.Notably, Meissner is listed in a new conflicts of interest tool launched by the health department in March. Kennedy had criticized the fired ACIP members as “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest”.“He’s a card-carrying infectious disease person who knows the burden of these diseases, and he knows the risk and the benefit,” Dr Kathryn Edwards told CBS News. Edwards previously served as chair of the FDA’s vaccine advisory panel.Vicky PebsworthPebsworth is a nurse and the former consumer representative on the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee. She is also the Pacific regional director for the National Association of Catholic Nurses, according to Kennedy’s announcement.In 2020, Pebsworth spoke at the public comment portion of an FDA advisory panel meeting on Covid-19 vaccines. There, she identified herself as the volunteer research director for the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), “and the mother of a child injured by his 15-month well-baby shots in 1998”.The NVIC is widely viewed as an anti-vaccine advocacy organization “whose founder Barbara Lou Fisher must be considered a key figure of the anti-vaccine movement”, according to an article from 2023 on how to counter anti-vaccine misinformation.Retsef LeviLevi is a professor of operations management at the MIT Sloan School of Management who Kennedy described as an “expert in healthcare analytics, risk management and vaccine safety”.In 2021, he opposed Covid-19 booster shot approval during the public comment portion of an FDA advisory committee hearing. In 2022, he wrote an article calling for EMS calls to be incorporated into vaccine safety data, arguing that cardiovascular side-effects could be undercounted – an article that later required correction. The potential effects of Covid-19 vaccines on heart health have been a focal point of right-leaning criticism.Last month, Levi was criticized for publishing a pre-print paper – a paper without peer review – that he co-authored with Dr Joseph Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, a vaccine skeptic. The paper alleged that people who took the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine were more likely to die than those who received the Moderna vaccine.Michael A RossKennedy described Ross as “a Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at George Washington University and Virginia Commonwealth University, with a career spanning clinical medicine, research, and public health policy”.However, as first reported by CBS News, Ross’s name does not appear in faculty directories for either school. A spokesperson for George Washington University told the outlet that Ross did work as a clinical professor, but “has not held a faculty appointment … since 2017”.A spokesperson for Virginia Commonwealth University described Ross as “an affiliate faculty member” at a regional hospital system in the Capitol region.He is also listed as a partner at Havencrest Capital Management, as a board member of “multiple private healthcare companies”.Joseph R HibbelnHibbeln is a California-based psychiatrist who previously served as acting chief for the section of nutritional neurosciences at the NIH. He describes himself as an expert on omega-3, a fatty acid found in seafood.He also serves on the advisory council of a non-profit that advocates for Americans to eat more seafood. He practices at Barton Health, a hospital system in Lake Tahoe, California. His work influenced US public health guidelines on fish consumption during pregnancy.Dr James PaganoPagano is an emergency medicine physician from Los Angeles “with over 40 years of clinical experience”, and a “strong advocate for evidence-based medicine”, according to Kennedy. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump’s EPA announces major rollbacks to power plant pollution limits

      by

      US power plants will be allowed to pollute nearby communities and the wider world with more unhealthy air toxins and an unlimited amount of planet-heating gases under new regulatory rollbacks proposed by Donald Trump’s administration, experts warned.The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled a plan on Wednesday that would repeal a landmark climate rule that aims to mostly eliminate greenhouse gases from power plants by the 2030s and would, separately, weaken another regulation that restricts power plants’ release of hazardous air pollutants such as mercury.“We choose to both protect the environment and grow the economy,” said Lee Zeldin, administrator of the EPA, at an event to announce the plans. He said the rollbacks will save households money while also defying what he called “the climate change cult”.The climate rule has “saddled our critical power sector with expensive, unreasonable and burdensome regulations”, Zeldin said. “American energy suffered and Americans who rely on reliable, affordable energy suffered. The good news is those days are over.”The EPA’s proposals will go out for public comment and are likely to face legal challenges.They target a rule crafted last year by the Biden administration to phase out emissions from electricity-producing fossil fuel plants, which are responsible for around a quarter of US greenhouse gases, and a regulation called the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, which Biden toughened in 2023 to slash harmful pollution suffered by communities.These rollbacks come despite overwhelming scientific evidence of the dire consequences of the worsening climate crisis and the harm caused by pollutants such as mercury, which can seep into water, soils and the air and has been linked to neurological damage in young children as well as heart, lung and immune system ailments in adults. Coal-fired power plants cause nearly half of all mercury emissions in the US, according to the EPA.More than 200 health experts wrote to the EPA on Wednesday warning the moves “would lead to the biggest pollution increases in decades and is a blatant give-away to polluters”. The experts added the reversals are “a direct contradiction to the Environmental Protection Agency’s mission of protecting public health and the environment”.Trump, however, has vowed to boost fossil fuel production at all costs, having reaped record donations from the oil and gas industry during his election campaign. At Wednesday’s EPA event, Zeldin was joined by eight lawmakers, all Republicans – Kevin Cramer, Troy Balderson, Brett Guthrie, Carol Miller, Dan Meuser, Rob Bresnahan, Michael Rulli and Riley Moore – who have collectively received more than $3m from fossil fuel donors in their own election campaigns, a Guardian analysis of the OpenSecrets database shows.Bresnahan, a Pennsylvania representative, holds personal financial interests in more than 20 fossil fuel companies.In justifying the deletion of the Biden climate plan, which the EPA previously estimated would deliver $370bn in net benefits, Zeldin has claimed that US power plants only produce a small and declining fraction of the world’s emissions. This is despite the fact that if these power plants were a country, it would be the sixth-largest emitter on the planet.Gina McCarthy, who was EPA administrator under Barack Obama, said that Zeldin’s “dismantling of our nation’s protections from power plant pollution is absolutely illogical and indefensible. It’s a purely political play that goes against decades of science and policy review.”“By giving a green light to more pollution, his legacy will forever be someone who does the bidding of the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our health,” she added. “Everyone will be affected by his actions, but the most vulnerable among us, our kids and grandkids, will suffer the most.”The EPA has embarked upon a wide-ranging blitz upon environmental regulations since Trump became president, setting about removing or loosening clean air and water rules that, collectively, were on track to save 200,000 American lives in the decades ahead.Trump, who has adopted the mantra of “drill, baby, drill”, has claimed unhindered fossil fuel production will bring down energy costs, although he has sought to hobble clean energy such as solar and wind, which are typically the cheapest sources of new electricity generation.The rollbacks follow the second-hottest May on record globally, and a record-hot 2024 that unleashed a stunning number of climate-driven disasters and six weeks of extra-dangerously hot days. Experts have warned that sea level rise is on track to cause “catastrophic inland migration”, including to millions of Americans, with climate shocks set to wipe 50% from global GDP by the end of this century.“It’s completely reprehensible that Donald Trump would seek to roll back these lifesaving standards and do more harm to the American people and our planet just to earn some brownie points with the fossil fuel industry,” said Patrick Drupp, climate policy director at the Sierra Club.“This administration is transparently trading American lives for campaign dollars and the support of fossil fuel companies, and Americans ought to be disgusted and outraged that their government has launched an assault on our health and our future.” More

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      RFK Jr to remove all members of CDC panel advising on US vaccines

      by

      The health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, is getting rid of all members sitting on a key US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel of vaccine experts and reconstituting the committee, he said on Monday.Kennedy is retiring and replacing all 17 members of the CDC’s advisory committee for immunization practices, he wrote in piece published in the Wall Street Journal.“Without removing the current members, the current Trump administration would not have been able to appoint a majority of new members until 2028,” Kennedy wrote.More details soon … More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in UK Politics

      NHS to get up to £30 billion as other services squeezed in spending review

      by

      The NHS is set to be one of the big winners in next week’s spending review – with a boost of up to £30 billion at the expense of other public services.The Department for Health and Social Care is set to get the biggest settlement in the government’s spending review next week, while other areas will face cuts.Chancellor Rachel Reeves will argue that Labour is investing in health, security and the economy, according to reports in The Times. The Department of Health is set to be handed a 2.8% annual increase in its day-to-day budget over a three-year period. This amounts to a cash increase of £30 billion by 2028 – £17 billion in real terms. However, the health services capital spending budget will only increase in line with inflation, according to the reports.Reeves will put £113 billion a year extra in infrastructure spending for projects designed to grow the economy, such as the Sizewell C nuclear power plant and a new generation of mini reactors.Bringing down NHS waiting times was one of Labour’s key commitments. Sir Keir Starmer has pledged to ensure that by the next election 92% of patients in England waiting for planned treatment are seen within 18 weeks of being referred.Latest NHS data suggests around 60% of people are currently seen in this time and figures released last month showed the overall number of patients on waiting lists had risen slightly from 6.24 million to 6.25 million.Meanwhile, in order to meet tough financial savings targets this year and reduce the NHS its deficit by around £6.5 billion, hospital leaders have warned they’re being forced to make cuts to frontline services. The NHS received £3.1 billion in additional capital investment in the 2024 budget, however, health leaders warned this was short of the £6.4 billion a year needed for the NHS to meet its productivity target of 2 per cent a year.A recent analysis by The Nuffield Trust shows that since coming into office, Labour has set healthcare spending to grow at 2.9 per cent for 2024-25 and 2025-26. Between 2011 and 2023-24, budgets grew at 2.4 per cent. For 2025-25, £1.5 billion of the additional funding for the NHS is due to cover the costs of the increase in employer National Insurance contributions, meaning for this financial year, spending growth will actually be less than 2 per cent, the Nuffield Trust estimates. Following the autumn budget, £22.6 billion extra was allocated to the DHSC however, this will be absorbed by spending pressures such as inflation and meeting waiting times targets.Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, told The Times that without big changes to the way the health service treats patients, the funding increase “is not going to enable us to achieve recovery and reform”. “Without additional capital investment, either traditional or through the private sector, I just don’t think it’s possible to combine recovery and reform,” he said. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump rescinds Emtala guidance protecting women in need of emergency abortions

      by

      The Trump administration on Tuesday rescinded Biden-era guidance clarifying that hospitals in states with abortion bans cannot turn away pregnant patients who are in the midst of medical emergencies – a move that comes amid multiple red-state court battles over the guidance.The guidance deals with the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (Emtala), which requires hospitals to stabilize patients facing medical emergencies. States such as Idaho and Texas have argued that the Biden administration’s guidance, which it issued in the wake of the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, interpreted Emtala incorrectly.In its letter rescinding the guidance, the Trump administration said that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) “will continue to enforce Emtala, which protects all individuals who present to a hospital emergency department seeking examination or treatment, including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy. CMS will work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions.”Abortion rights supporters said on Tuesday that rescinding the Biden administration’s guidance will muddy hospitals’ ability to interpret Emtala and endanger pregnant patients’ lives. Since Roe’s collapse, dozens of women have come forward to say that they were denied medical treatment due to abortion bans. A reported five pregnant women have died after having their care denied or delayed, or being unable to access legal abortions.“This action sends a clear message: the lives and health of pregnant people are not worth protecting,” Dr Jamila Perritt, an OB-GYN and the president of Physicians for Reproductive Health, said in a statement. “Complying with this law can mean the difference between life and death for pregnant people, forcing providers like me to choose between caring for someone in their time of need and turning my back on them to comply with cruel and dangerous laws.”Last year, the US supreme court heard arguments in a case involving Idaho’s abortion ban, which at the time only allowed abortions in cases where a woman’s life was at risk. In contrast, most state abortion bans permit abortions when a patient’s “health” is in danger – a lower standard that could make it easier for doctors to intervene. Idaho’s standard, the Biden administration said, blocked doctors from providing abortions in some emergencies and thus violated Emtala’s requirement that hospitals must stabilize patients.Ultimately, the supreme court punted on the issue by ruling 6-3 on procedural grounds that the case had been “improvidently granted”, indicating they should have never taken it up in the first place.“This court had a chance to bring clarity and certainty to this tragic situation and we have squandered it,” wrote Ketanji Brown Jackson, the supreme court justice, at the time. “And for as long as we refuse to declare what the law requires, pregnant patients in Idaho, Texas and elsewhere will be paying the price.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Trump administration’s Tuesday move is not unexpected. In March, the administration moved to drop out of the case over the Idaho abortion ban. A local Idaho hospital later filed its own lawsuit over the ban. More

    • 213 Shares99 Views

      in UK Politics

      Voices: ‘Why are they striking? Because they can’: Readers frustrated by threat of further NHS industrial action

      by

      Strikes by NHS doctors are once again making headlines and dividing opinion across the country.As junior doctors vote on whether to take more industrial action, Health Secretary Wes Streeting has urged them to say no, warning that more strikes will only hurt patients and stall progress. Doctors say they’ve had enough of being underpaid and undervalued, with some calling for a near 30 per cent pay rise to make up for years of real-terms cuts. But public support is slipping, and some patients are losing patience. In a poll of Independent readers, two-thirds of respondents said they felt strikes would hurt patients and should not go ahead.Bigger questions also lurk behind the pay dispute: is the NHS properly funded? Is immigration helping or hurting the system? And how do we train and keep enough staff without burning them out or driving them abroad?When we asked for your views, some readers blamed poor management, others pointed to staff shortages and rising demand. But one thing was clear: the NHS is at breaking point, and something has to give.Here’s what you had to say:User changesWe need some user charges for health care. This is to encourage people to look after their health. Despite more money being poured into the NHS than ever before, the number of people needing treatment continues to rise even faster. User charges would also enable doctors to be paid properly and prevent them from leaving for other countries.MarkAdd your view on strikes and the state of the NHS by leaving a coment hereA career, not a vocationWhen becoming a doctor became a career rather than a vocation, it seems to have become both in thrall to Big Pharma and motivated by greed rather than concern for patient or societal well-being — something else unwanted, imported from the USA.Topsham1Rising demand means rising contributionsIf we went back to the NHS of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, etc., we could probably reduce funding considerably. However, what the NHS does and the numbers it does it for consistently rises. If we really want it to meet the need comprehensively, we’ll need to increase contributions. To keep up with rising costs and modern treatments, this seems inevitable. We seem to accept rising costs in most areas of life, but think we can run the NHS on less. Go figure.Strangely EnoughStriking while patients suffer is wrongI think it is morally wrong to take industrial action that will knowingly harm patients. The dispute is not with them. Strikes are to put pressure on the employer, in this case the government, to up their offer. But if inadequate pay is causing retention problems, then the pressure is already there.EarthFirstIf you get rid of the thousands of administrators/managers on £100,000+ salaries, you can afford a pay rise for doctors and nurses. The NHS is way too top-heavy.VonGenschlerA good carpenter can out-earn most doctorsI’ve spent a lot of time in and out of hospitals in recent times and have had excellent treatment overall. It would be good if our NHS staff were the world’s highest paid, but that can’t happen because hospitals are oversubscribed with the growing number of people, many of whom are not entitled by birth to do so. Doctors and other staff are also not necessarily native in any way, but I, for one, am glad they’re here.Today, a good carpenter can out-earn most doctors up to registrar level, which must be galling for those with higher education and ambition.As an older person, I use the NHS more frequently. Sometimes I’m aware that me living means someone might not get that important appointment. Another thing is free prescriptions – I receive twelve items more or less each month. Again, I wonder how on earth I could pay the cost that others have to pay. My prescriptions are delivered free as well. I don’t know how this is financed, but someone does.I suppose, one day, they will carry out the most enormous cull to balance things up a little. I wouldn’t blame them – maybe they’re already planning it.MartynGPs failingsGPs bear a great chunk of the NHS failings that are occurring today.My recollection of GP services concerns the home birth of our second child. There were no complications – in fact, labour only lasted for three hours – but our GP at the time came to the house during the labour and returned three days after the birth to check that the baby and mother were in good fettle, which they were.Do GPs give that sort of service today?Cameron promised 24/7 GP service, but that went unfulfilled.A battle needs to take place, with GPs becoming employees of the NHS and being paid a good rate for the job. Present partnerships must be put to the sword.MORDEYAs I am in my 80s, I am lucky enough to remember when being a doctor was a vocation, not just another job. Sadly, those days are gone.It appears that greed is now what motivates our young doctors.Why are they striking? Because they can.Do they care that people may die because of their actions?No.Paqs‘Wealthfare’ state vs NHS spendingHow come we never have these “debates” when we spend on the “wealthfare” state (aka socialism for the rich), but must always have them whenever it’s time to spend on anything else? I ask because even Big Oil and Big Pharma, the arms industry, etc., apparently need subsidies, tax relief, grants and sundry other largesse, while overworked NHS workers must live on food banks, or have their relative peanuts “debated.”Ryhope1UK failed to retain its own medicsThe NHS has been subsidised by the developing world, who train its doctors and nurses since its inception.It is incapable of recruiting and retaining UK staff like me, who went to Australia as soon as I completed my training.KwameSome of the comments have been edited for this article for brevity and clarity. You can read the full discussion in the comments section of the original article here.The conversation isn’t over. To join in, all you need to do is register your details, then you can take part in the discussion. You can also sign up by clicking ‘log in’ on the top right-hand corner of the screen.Make sure you adhere to our community guidelines, which can be found here. For a full guide on how to comment click here. More