General Mental Health Issues
- Highmark Wholecare reports that over a third of its members have been diagnosed with at least one mental health condition. That’s according to a recent analysis of over 420,000 Highmark Wholecare members, which found that mental health disorders have become the most common health condition among its members, surpassing common conditions like diabetes, hypertension, tobacco use, and obesity. Read more here.
- The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it will examine its rules on pilot mental health. The move comes after years of calls from industry and government leaders, and the high-profile case of an off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot who allegedly tried to crash a commercial flight in October, and who claimed he suffered from mental health issues. The pilot, Joseph Emerson, allegedly told officers he believed he was having a "nervous breakdown," according to a criminal complaint. Read more here.
Youth Mental Health
- When the destructive summer blaze swept across Lahaina in west Maui, Maryann Kobatake’s nephew helped ferry a friend’s grandmother and cousins to safety. On the drive out of a burning Front Street, the town’s main thoroughfare, she said the 18-year-old heard screams and witnessed carnage that haunts him still. Kobatake, who is Native Hawaiian, said she was worried that her nephew’s habit of suppressing his emotions may leave him unprepared to navigate PTSD symptoms and triggers, especially given that, every day, he has to drive by the ravaged town on his way to school. Read more here.
- Trouble with playground bullies started for Maria Ishoo’s daughter in elementary school. For Valerie Aguirre’s daughter in Hawaii, a spate of middle school “friend drama” escalated into violence and online bullying that left the 12-year-old feeling disconnected and lonely. Both children received help through telehealth therapy, a service that schools around the country are offering in response to soaring mental health struggles among American youth. Read more here.
Aging Issues
- As America's population of seniors grows, affordable long-term care is increasingly hard to find. Nearly 70% of older adults will need long-term care services, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. Medicare doesn't cover these services, and Medicaid often has long wait lists for at-home support, said Samara Scheckler, a research associate. There's also a growing shortage of care providers. Read more here.
Gun Violence and Mental Health
- The perpetrator of the October 25 shooting in Lewiston, Maine was admitted to a psychiatric facility in New York state for two weeks this past summer. He was still able to legally buy guns afterward, officials have said. It’s unclear whether his stay was voluntary or involuntary—a key distinction that determines whether he could legally possess firearms. The Trace conducted a comprehensive analysis of gun laws in all 50 states and found that only five impose some form of a gun ban after an emergency mental health hospitalization that’s not followed by a court-ordered commitment. Read more here.
- Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Hank Johnson renewed their push for comprehensive gun violence legislation by reintroducing their Gun Violence Prevention and Community Safety Act. This effort was timed around the 30th anniversary of the Brady Bill last week — and the continued toll that gun violence is taking on American lives. Read more here.
- Gun safety advocates from Connecticut and across the country came back to Washington, D.C. to push for passage of a trio of reforms nearly 11 years since the Sandy Hook school shooting. They teamed up with most of Connecticut’s congressional delegation to redouble their efforts in passing gun safety legislation that did not make it into federal legislation — the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — that passed in 2022. Read more here.
The Opioid Crisis and Addiction Issues
- Methadone is one of several medications that are used to help people with opioid use disorders lessen their dependence on lethal narcotics while limiting the pain and most severe symptoms that can accompany opioid withdrawal. Even more, the health professionals who administer methadone — and another commonly used treatment drug called buprenorphine — say the medications enable people to find new jobs, to regain custody of their children, and to more easily recover from the mind-altering effects of opioids. Read more here.
Social Isolation and Loneliness
- People in high-income countries who are considered "solo diners" rate their quality of life lower than more social diners, according to a recent study from Gallup and the Ajinomoto Group. The study constitutes another piece of evidence that the "epidemic of loneliness" that was exacerbated by COVID "has real consequences," Andrew Dugan, the research director of the study, told Axios. Read more here.
Health Insurance
- Nearly 7.3 million Americans so far have signed up for health insurance for next year through the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) marketplace, according to data released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The enrollment for 2024 includes 1.6 million new additions to the marketplace. People who want to choose a healthcare plan for 2024 under the ACA, also known as Obamacare, could enroll from November 1, 2023, to January 15, 2024. However, if they want to be covered as of Jan. 1, they generally need to choose a plan by Dec. 15. Read more here.
Research
- Suicide rates among Black women increased from 1999 to 2020, especially among teens and young adults, according to an analysis of national data. Among Black women ages 15 to 84, suicide rates rose from 2.1 per 100,000 in 1999 to 3.4 per 100,000 in 2020, according to Victoria Joseph, MPH, of the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York, and colleagues. Notably, those increases were concentrated among Black women and girls ages 15 to 24, rising from 1.9 to 4.9 per 100,000, the researchers reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Read more here.
Medicaid Redetermination
- Louisiana removed 197,000 people from its Medicaid rolls over a five-month period from June to October, as it complies with renewed federal standards for the government-backed insurance. About a quarter of the people dropped, or 47,000, are children. Two-thirds of the individuals cut have lost their health insurance for “procedural reasons,” including not filling out the appropriate paperwork. Louisiana is also experiencing a significant amount of “churn” as it takes part in the nationwide Medicaid disenrollment process. Read more here.
Federal and State Policy
- Four of the five remaining candidates for the Republican presidential nomination clashed noisily on a variety of healthcare issues during the final Republican debate before the 2024 primary season begins, discussing everything from gender-affirming care, to fixing the healthcare system, to solving the fentanyl crisis. At the debate, which was held at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and hosted by NewsNation, the transgender care question was provocatively introduced by Megyn Kelly, a SiriusXM radio host and one of three debate co-moderators. Read more here.
- GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said his health care plan will replace ObamaCare if he is elected to the White House, promising that his full plan will be released in the spring. NBC’s Kristen Welker pressed DeSantis, the Florida governor, to address former President Trump’s vow to repeal and replace ObamaCare — a promise that he failed to keep during his time in the White House. Read more here.
- The era of massive overhauls of the health care system appears to be over — at least for now. Health care is shaping up to be a prominent 2024 campaign issue, but today's political environment has all but extinguished hopes for sweeping changes to the system. At the same time, health care is getting tougher to afford and access, testing Americans' tolerance for incremental reforms. The Biden administration announced a new framework that opens the door for the government to use march-in rights to seize the patents of certain pricey drugs developed with the help of taxpayer dollars. Read more here.
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