General Articles
- The Biden administration this month will begin spot audits of nursing home use of antipsychotic drugs in an effort to cut down on inappropriate prescriptions. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will conduct “targeted, off-site audits” to check whether nursing home patients who are prescribed the drugs have a schizophrenia diagnosis. The initiative is part of the Biden administration’s larger effort to address long-standing patient safety and staffing shortcomings at nursing homes, which were among the deadliest places during COVID-19’s winter 2020 surge. Read more here.
- Mayors from across the United States gathered in Washington for their annual winter conference this week to tackle major issues facing their cities, with mental health, addiction, and mass migration high on their lists. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, mayors have been on the front lines as their cities struggle to revitalize business districts decimated by a shift to working from home and confront an explosion in mental illness and economic woes. Read more here.
- Many women from war-torn countries suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and other mental health illnesses and do not receive therapy. Oasis International, a St. Louis nonprofit, intends to help women who fled conflict in Afghanistan and Syria and resettled in the region cope with that trauma with a free group therapy session. Read more here.
- Carrie Hastings’s familiarity with the Rams’ personnel, and with which players might be emotionally traumatized after watching Damar Hamlin’s shocking medical emergency, was the product of her having spent six seasons with the club—getting to know the athletes, meeting rookies when they first arrive, and making herself a regular presence at the Rams’ facility. Across the NFL, no such continuity of care exists. The league is working its way toward the kind of mental health support for its players, coaches, and staff in which a range of counseling is standard and readily accessible. Read more here.
- In The Good Life, Waldinger and Schulz distill what makes people find happiness from a study beginning in 1938 following the lives of 724 Harvard students and low-income boys from Boston in the world’s longest scientific study of happiness to date, according to the researchers. The ongoing study, which has expanded to include the spouses and children of the original participants, consists of over 2,000 people. Read more here.
Veterans Mental Health Issues
- Any U.S. military veteran in “acute suicidal crisis” will be able to access emergency health care at any facility for free starting next week, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced Friday. The big picture: Veterans must be enrolled in the VA system to be eligible for most medical benefits, but that requirement won’t apply to emergency suicide care under the new policy. The move grants access to care to up to 9 million veterans who are not currently enrolled, according to the VA. Read more here.
The Opioid Crisis and Addiction Issues
- Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc has agreed to pay West Virginia $83 million to settle the state’s lawsuit accusing it of fueling the opioid epidemic there through lax oversight of its pill sales. The deal, announced Wednesday by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, is not part of a $5.7 billion nationwide settlement Walgreens reached with state and local governments last year. Read more here.
- A record 310 homeless people died in the Seattle area last year, highlighting the region’s struggle to house the thousands of people living on its streets. The 310 deaths in King County surpassed the previous record of 195 homeless deaths set in 2018, the Seattle Times reported, and marked a 65% jump over 2021. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said it underscores his administration’s urgent need to get more people indoors. Fentanyl-related overdoses accounted for more than half of the deaths. Read more here.
- After years of Republican resistance, Missouri is set to finally launch a statewide prescription drug monitoring program. According to a contract inked earlier this month, the state will pay a medical technology company $1.4 million to operate the program, which is designed to curb opioid addiction. Kentucky-based Bamboo Health, which was already overseeing a county-level program operated by St. Louis County, won the contract, which was put out for bids last year following legislative approval of the plan. Read more here.
- The question came out of the blue, or so it seemed to Crossing Healthcare CEO Tanya Andricks: If you had $30 million to design an addiction treatment facility, how would you do it? The interim sheriff of Macon County, Illinois, posed the question in 2018 as he and Andricks discussed the community’s needs. That sheriff was Howard Buffett, the philanthropist son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Read more here.
Climate Change and Health
- As CEOs and world leaders gather for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, they might be surprised to see less snow out of the window than usual on the country’s luminous peaks. The summit in Davos aims to convene decision-makers to come up with solutions to the key issues of the day and map the world’s future. Climate change will be on the agenda, but there’s a piece of the climate puzzle missing: health. Read more here.
Social Isolation and Mental Health
- Socially isolated older adults have a 27% higher chance of developing dementia than older adults who aren’t, a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers found. “Social connections matter for our cognitive health, and it is potentially easily modifiable for older adults without the use of medication,” Dr. Thomas Cudjoe, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins and a senior author of the study, said in a news release. Read more here.
Health Insurance and Health Care Spending
- UnitedHealthcare is rolling out a new virtual behavioral health coaching program backed by Optum. The offering is available as of Jan. 1 for 5 million fully insured members, and self-insured employers can also purchase the program as an employer benefit. Through the program, adults with symptoms of mild depression, stress, and anxiety can access support for their mental health needs through virtual modules as well as one-on-one video conferences, phone calls, or messaging with coaches. Read more here.
- Changes to Medicare policy that lowered out-of-pocket costs for outpatient mental health and substance use disorder (MHSUD) care, to achieve parity with typical cost-sharing under Medicare, were associated with uneven improvements in the use of these services across racial and ethnic groups, a study suggested. Specifically, MHSUD specialist visits among White beneficiaries increased during the cost-sharing reduction policy phase-in and implementation periods (2010–2013; 2014–2018) when compared with a control group of beneficiaries who received free care throughout the entire study period (2008-2018; P<0.001). But changes were smaller for Black, Hispanic, and Asian patients. Read more here. (Access to this article requires free registration.)
- In the first quarter of 2022, the uninsured rate for people under 65 dropped to an all-time low of 8%, according to a report from the Health and Human Services Department. The uninsured rate dropped from 11% in 2019 to 10.5% in 2021, according to HHS. Many of the coverage gains are due to a pandemic-era policy that prevented states from kicking people off Medicaid, which led to a surge in enrollment. But this year that policy ends, which will result in millions losing Medicaid coverage. Read more here.
- Medical debt may still plague millions of American families, but the pandemic years brought a marked decline in the number of people struggling to cover their health costs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. By the numbers:5 million fewer people were in families having problems paying medical bills in 2021 than in 2019—amounting to a 3.2 percentage point decline, according to National Health Interview Surveys. Women were likelier to have problems paying medical bills. Read more here.
Federal and State Policy
- House Republicans don’t have much of a path to get major health care changes passed with a Democratic Senate and president, with one possible exception: the debt ceiling fight. Why it matters: It’s not clear which spending cuts House Republicans will push for in exchange for expanding the government’s borrowing authority later this year—but at least some say health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid should be on the table. Others, mindful of how the mere talk of entitlement cuts has brought political repercussions, are saying they want to steer clear of the programs. Read more here.
- The clock is ticking for the United States to avoid a default on its debt, and some are sounding the alarm about potential disruptions to Social Security and Medicare. On Thursday, Jan. 19, the U.S. outstanding debt hit its statutory limit. The debt limit or debt ceiling is the total amount of money the United States can borrow to meet its legal obligations including Social Security and Medicare benefits, as well as military salaries, tax refunds, interest on the national debt and other payments. Read more here.
- To advance its goal of having 100% of people with traditional Medicare in an accountable care relationship in 7 years, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has announced three initiatives in the Medicare Shared Savings Program and the ACO REACH and Kidney Care Choices models. More than 700,000 healthcare providers and organizations will participate in at least one of the three initiatives this year, CMS said. These programs are expected to grow and provide care to more than 13.2 million people with Medicare. Read more here.
- Medicaid expansion has become a perennial issue in Wyoming. But advocates are hoping that this year is the last legislative session they’ll have to push for a bill that expands Medicaid. Currently, there are at least 19,000 people in Wyoming who make too much money to qualify for traditional Medicaid but don't make enough to afford their own insurance or to qualify for the tax credits that make insurance more affordable. Read more here.
- Colorado has been the scene of several notorious mass shootings. But suicides are by far the leading cause of gun deaths here. In 2021, Colorado voters approved the creation of a new office within the state’s Department of Public Health and Environment to tackle gun violence. They are partnering with the Colorado School of Public Health to create an information bank that tracks and studies gun violence across Colorado. Read more here.
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