ReportWire

Tag: iab-healthcare industry

  • Fact check: Breaking down Biden’s exchanges with Republican senators over Social Security and Medicare | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Breaking down Biden’s exchanges with Republican senators over Social Security and Medicare | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden has gone on the attack over Social Security and Medicare.

    In speeches and tweets this week, Biden and his White House have singled out particular Republican senators – notably including Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin – over proposals from those senators that could affect the retirement and health care programs.

    The Republican senators have responded forcefully, accusing Biden of deceiving the public about where they stand. Here is a fact-check of the exchanges.

    Biden and his White House targeted Lee on Wednesday over a video clip of Lee saying, “I’m here right now to tell you one thing that you probably have never heard from a politician. It will be my objective to phase out Social Security, to pull it up by the roots and get rid of it.” The clip has gone viral on Twitter this week; a second viral clip features Lee saying moments later, “Medicare and Medicaid are of the same sort and need to be pulled up.”

    The videos are authentic, though Biden didn’t tell his Wednesday speech audience in Wisconsin they are from more than 12 years ago – an event in 2010, when Lee was running for the Senate but before he was first elected. And as Lee noted in Wednesday tweets responding to Biden, Biden didn’t mention that Lee added at the same 2010 event that current Medicare beneficiaries should have their benefits “left untouched” and that “the next layer beneath them, those who will retire in the next few years, also probably have to be held harmless.”

    Still, while Biden could have included more context, he was accurate in saying Lee had called for Social Security to be phased out.

    And while Lee said in a tweeted statement on Wednesday that, during his 12 years as a senator, he has not called for “abolishing” Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid benefits, only for “solutions to improve those programs and move them toward solvency,” he has supported benefit cuts. For example, he has endorsed various proposals over the years to raise the Social Security retirement age.

    Since last year, Biden has criticized Scott over particular components of what Scott calls his “12 Point Plan to Rescue America.”

    In the State of the Union address on Tuesday and in speeches on Wednesday and Thursday, the president referred to a part of Scott’s plan that says, “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” Biden correctly asserted that “all federal legislation” would include Social Security and Medicare, which do not currently require congressional re-approval.

    Scott responded by accusing Biden of being dishonest and confused. Scott argued on Twitter on Wednesday that while his plan does say that “all” federal legislation should sunset in five years and become subject to a new vote by Congress, “This is clearly & obviously an idea aimed at dealing with ALL the crazy new laws our Congress has been passing of late.”

    But the plan itself doesn’t say that.

    The plan’s official text, which remains online on a dedicated website, says “all federal legislation,” period, should be sunset in five years – not all recent legislation, all crazy legislation or all legislation except for the laws that created Social Security and Medicare. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell rejected Scott’s plan last year, McConnell too said that the plan “sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”

    Last year, Biden sometimes overstated the support for Scott’s sunset proposal among congressional Republicans, which appears very limited. Biden has been more precise in his speeches this week, attributing the proposal to Scott himself or accurately saying in the State of the Union that “some” Republicans – “I’m not saying it’s a majority” – support it.

    Biden may have created an inaccurate impression, however, by mentioning the sunset proposal during the section of the State of the Union in which he discussed the battle over the debt ceiling. There is no indication that House Republicans are pushing this proposal as part of the current debt ceiling negotiations with the Biden administration, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has, more generally, said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are “off the table” in these negotiations.

    Scott, in turn, has tossed a false claim into the debate with Biden this week by repeatedly accusing the president of having cut billions from Medicare in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. The Inflation Reduction Act did not cut Medicare benefits; rather, it allowed the government and seniors to spend less money to buy prescription drugs – and, in fact, simultaneously made Medicare benefits more generous to seniors. The claim of a Medicare cut was repeatedly debunked last year, when Scott and a Republican campaign organization he chaired used it during the midterm elections.

    On Friday afternoon, the day after McConnell told a Kentucky radio station that Scott’s proposal will be a “challenge” for Scott’s own 2024 re-election campaign in a state with a large population of seniors, Scott announced he is introducing a new bill that would make it more difficult for Congress to make any cuts to Social Security and Medicare and that would send the Inflation Reduction Act’s $80 billion in Internal Revenue Service funding to Social Security and Medicare instead.

    This week and in numerous previous speeches, Biden has castigated Johnson for saying last year that Medicare and Social Security should be treated as discretionary spending, which Congress has to approve every year, rather than as permanent entitlements.

    Biden has accurately cited Johnson’s remarks this week. Here’s what Johnson told a Green Bay radio show in August: “We’ve got to turn everything into discretionary spending, so it’s all evaluated, so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken, that are going to be going bankrupt. Because, again, as long as things are on automatic pilot, we just continue to pile up debt.” When Johnson faced criticism for those remarks at the time, he stood by them and said that was his consistent longtime position.

    Johnson, however, claimed Wednesday that Biden was “lying” when the president discussed Johnson’s comments shortly after saying that some Republicans want to “cut” Social Security. Johnson has repeatedly said that his proposal to require annual approval for Social Security spending, and to “fix” and “save” Social Security in light of its poor fiscal shape at present, does not mean that he wants to put the programs on the “chopping block” or even to “cut” it.

    “The Democrats have been accusing me, since the first time I ran for office, of wanting to end Social Security, wanting to cut it, wanting to gut it, wanting to – I’ve never said that. I’ve always been consistent: I want to save it,” he said in a radio interview this week.

    It’s impossible to definitively fact-check this particular dispute without Johnson specifying how he wants to “fix” and “save” the program. His office did not respond to a CNN request for comment.

    White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates noted in an email to reporters on Thursday that, though Johnson accused Biden this week of lying about his stance on Social Security, Johnson also said in interviews this week that Social Security is a “legal Ponzi scheme” and that “Social Security might be in a more stable position for younger workers” if the government had proceeded with Republican President George W. Bush’s controversial and eventually abandoned proposal in the mid-2000s to allow workers born after 1949 to divert a portion of their Social Security payroll taxes into private accounts in which they could buy into the stock market and make other investments.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Rick Scott: From embattled health care executive to Biden’s top foil | CNN Politics

    Rick Scott: From embattled health care executive to Biden’s top foil | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Florida Sen. Rick Scott has emerged as Joe Biden’s top Republican foil in the days since the president’s State of the Union address, with the White House seizing on a year-old Scott proposal that even GOP leaders recognized at the time as politically toxic.

    As a spending fight looms in Washington and Biden moves toward his 2024 reelection bid, the White House is attempting to make Scott the poster child for the president’s accusations that Republicans are seeking to cut entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare.

    Scott has responded by accusing Biden of lying, airing a misleading ad that alleges Biden cut Medicare and lambasting the president in a barrage of television interviews.

    Biden traveled Thursday to Florida – where Scott was a health care executive and two-term governor – on the latest leg of his post-State of the Union tour.

    The trip was designed in part to stoke a fight with Scott after Biden in his speech Tuesday night seized on the first-term senator’s proposal to sunset all federal programs – including Social Security and Medicare – every five years unless Congress extends those programs.

    Biden’s assertion that some Republicans are seeking to change entitlement programs was met with jeers from Republican lawmakers, who have said spending cuts should be part of any proposal to raise the debt ceiling.

    The president continued pressing that message Wednesday in Wisconsin, telling union workers, “A lot of Republicans, their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare.” He waved a pamphlet with Scott’s proposal as he spoke.

    Ahead of Biden’s speech Thursday in Tampa, White House aides placed copies of Scott’s proposal on every seat.

    In an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Thursday, Scott said Biden has misrepresented the proposal he put forward ahead of the 2022 midterm elections while serving as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP.

    “Nobody believes that I want to cut Medicare or Social Security. I’ve never said it,” Scott said.

    Scott said his proposal is intended to eliminate wasteful spending and help ensure the government can “figure out how to start living within our means.”

    “I want to make sure we balance our budget and preserve Medicare and Social Security, and I’ve been clear all along. So what I want to do is get rid of wasteful programs that we never review up here,” he said.

    But Scott’s proposal would sunset all federal legislation – including the two entitlement programs – every five years and require Congress to pass them again.

    Long before he was a US senator, Scott had first-hand experience dealing with America’s federal health care programs – and it became the source of much criticism as he entered the political arena.

    In the 1980s, Scott founded Columbia Hospital Corporation by purchasing a pair of distressed Texas hospitals. He later merged his company with Hospital Corporation of America to create Columbia/HCA, becoming the largest for-profit hospital chain at the time and gaining notoriety on Wall Street for what appeared like cost-cutting in an industry with ballooning expenses.

    In 1997, federal agents unveiled a sweeping investigation into Columbia/HCA that would roil the company for years. On the day the FBI swooped in to seize records from 35 of its hospitals across six states, Scott shrugged off the probe. “It’s not a fun day, but … government investigations are a matter of fact today in health care,” he said on CNN.

    The investigation would unearth what the US Department of Justice later called the “largest health care fraud case in U.S. history.” According to a press release, Columbia/HCA schemed to defraud Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE, the military’s health care program, of hundreds of millions of dollars. The company pleaded guilty to criminal conduct, including charges related to fraudulent Medicare billing and paying kickbacks to doctors, and it ultimately agreed to pay $1.7 billion in fines, damages and penalties.

    Scott was pushed out as CEO amid the turmoil. He was never charged with a crime, though much of the alleged financial abuses took place during his watch. His time in the corporate world made Scott a wealthy individual, which he would lean on in 2010 when he decided to kickstart a political career by entering the race for Florida governor.

    Scott’s time at the helm of Columbia/HCA was the subject of negative ads from both Republicans and Democrats, but he fended them off with a self-funded campaign that flooded the airwaves with a jobs-focused message. He told the St. Petersburg Times that “mistakes were made” at his former company and that he had “learned hard lessons,” but he also said during a debate that he was “proud of the company I built.” Regardless of the controversy, the little-known Scott defeated a GOP favorite for his party’s nomination, and Floridians narrowly elected him governor that fall.

    During his eight years leading Florida, Scott fought off attempts to extend safety net benefits to Floridians. He frequently challenged the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act and blocked expansion of Medicaid in Florida. In his first year as governor, he signed a bill to cut unemployment payments and tied benefits to the state’s unemployment rate.

    Democrats continued to make Scott’s time at Columbia/HCA an issue, to no avail. Scott eked out a reelection victory in 2014. He then narrowly unseated longtime Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in 2018 after spending more than $70 million of his own money on his campaign.

    Marching to the beat of his own drum, Scott declined to be sworn in with his class in January 2019. Instead, he waited until his term as governor had ended and flew to Washington for a separate ceremony. For a time, it made him the country’s most junior senator, but he nevertheless soon found himself in party leadership.

    Scott and other Republicans are aggressively pushing back against Biden’s assertions that the GOP is seeking to cut spending on entitlement programs.

    However, Republican leaders have long recognized Scott’s proposal to sunset all federal programs after five years as rocky political terrain.

    The tense relationship between Scott and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell burst into public view during the 2022 election cycle as Republicans sought to retake the Senate.

    Scott, as NRSC chairman, released a platform called “Rescue America,” which would have subjected all federally elected officials to a term limit of 12 years and closed the Department of Education, amid a slew of other initiatives. It would also have required millions of low-income and middle-class Americans to pay income taxes, which was later dropped in a revised version of the plan.

    And, in what Democrats immediately recognized as an opening to accuse Republicans of attempting to undercut popular programs, Scott’s plan proposed sunsetting all federal legislation in five years – unless Congress extended it.

    McConnell quickly disavowed Scott’s plan, seeking to make clear that the Florida senator did not speak for Senate Republicans.

    “Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda,” McConnell said at a news conference last March. “We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people, and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”

    Their frosty relationship did not improve as the 2022 election cycle continued, as the two battled over which candidates to support in primaries and in the general election, and Republicans ultimately fell short of winning a majority.

    After the election, Scott challenged McConnell for the top Senate Republican post but lost.

    The Florida senator said last week that he saw McConnell’s decision to remove him from the Senate Commerce Committee as retribution.

    “He didn’t like that I opposed him because I believe we have to have ideas – fight over ideas,” Scott said on “CNN This Morning.”

    When pressed Thursday by CNN’s Collins about why his proposal left open the opportunity for the government to cut funding for Social Security and Medicare, Scott repeatedly referenced a policy proposal from then-Sen. Biden in 1975 to sunset federal legislation periodically.

    Scott said Biden’s old proposal does less to protect entitlements for seniors than the senator’s plan from last year because “he proposed it year after year after year to reduce Medicare and Social Security. Year after year. I’ve never done that. I don’t believe in that.”

    Asked Thursday about the 1975 proposal mentioned by Scott, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “A bill from the 1970s is not part of the president’s agenda.”

    “The president ran on protecting Medicare and Social Security from cuts. And he reiterated that in the State of the Union,” she said.

    A new ad from Scott released this week in advance of the president’s visit to Florida says that “Joe Biden just cut $280 billion from Medicare” – a claim that was previously debunked when Scott and the NRSC made it in 2022.

    Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act is expected to reduce Medicare prescription drug spending by the federal government by $237 billion, according to the most recent Congressional Budget Office estimate, because the law allows the government to spend less money to buy drugs from pharmaceutical companies and not because it cuts benefits to seniors enrolled in Medicare. The law makes Medicare’s prescription drug program substantially more generous to seniors while also saving them money.

    Scott, in his interview with Collins, also defended his recent call for Biden to resign, labeling him “a complete failure.” He said his resignation calls did not specifically stem from Biden’s use of his proposal as an avenue to attack Republicans but expressed his displeasure with the president’s repeated references to his plan.

    “He lies about what I want to get done, and I don’t appreciate it,” Scott said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • North Korean hackers extorted health care organizations to fund further cyberattacks, US and South Korea say | CNN Politics

    North Korean hackers extorted health care organizations to fund further cyberattacks, US and South Korea say | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    North Korean government-backed hackers have conducted ransomware attacks on health care providers and other key sectors in the US and South Korea and used the proceeds to fund further cyberattacks on government agencies in Washington and Seoul, US and South Korean officials warned Thursday.

    Some of those follow-on hacks have specifically targeted Pentagon networks and US defense contractors, according to the advisory from US and South Korean intelligence and security agencies.

    It’s the latest in a drumbeat of warnings from US officials that North Korea is adopting cybercriminal tactics to fund dictator Kim Jong Un’s ambitions, including the regime’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

    The statement from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, US National Security Agency, South Korean National Intelligence Service and others does not mention Kim’s weapons programs, but US officials have previously warned that a portion of the money Pyongyang steals through hacking can go to weapons development.

    North Korea’s use of stolen cryptocurrency to fund its weapons programs is part of the regular set of intelligence products presented to President Joe Biden, a senior administration official told CNN this week.

    “They need money, so they’re going to keep being creative,” the official said. “I don’t think the North Koreans are ever going to stop looking for illicit ways to glean funds because it’s an authoritarian regime … under heavy sanctions.”

    The news comes as North Korea displayed nearly a dozen advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles at a nighttime military parade on Wednesday.

    The new US-South Korea advisory did not identify hospitals that the North Korean hackers had allegedly victimized. The Justice Department has previously accused Pyongyang-backed hackers of hitting a medical center in Kansas in 2021, encrypting computer systems the facility relied on to operate key equipment, and another medical provider in Colorado.

    The advisory follows a similar warning from US agencies in July that North Korean hackers had used ransomware to disrupt services at health organizations for “prolonged periods.”

    In the statement released Thursday, US and South Korean officials accused North Korean hackers of taking pains to try to hide their identities – even posing as a notorious Russian ransomware gang. The North Koreans are also emulating non-state criminals in dumping online the private data of victims who do not pay, officials said.

    The hackers have used a popular software used in small and medium-sized hospitals in South Korea to spread their malicious code with the aim of locking up computers, according to the advisory.

    In addition to hacking, suspected North Koreans have posed as other nationalities to apply for work at IT firms and send money back to Pyongyang, US agencies have publicly warned. A CNN investigation found at least one cryptocurrency entrepreneur who unwittingly paid a North Korean tech worker tens of thousands of dollars.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fetterman in Washington hospital ‘for observation’ after feeling lightheaded | CNN Politics

    Fetterman in Washington hospital ‘for observation’ after feeling lightheaded | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Sen. John Fetterman is being kept overnight in a Washington, DC, hospital “for observation,” after being admitted earlier Wednesday after feeling lightheaded, his office said in a statement.

    The Pennsylvania Democrat was elected to the Senate in November while recovering from a stroke he had suffered in May. According to his spokesperson, there was no evidence of a new stroke Wednesday, but he was set to undergo more tests during his hospital stay.

    “Towards the end of the Senate Democratic retreat today, Senator John Fetterman began feeling lightheaded. He left and called his staff, who picked him up and drove him to The George Washington University Hospital. Initial tests did not show evidence of a new stroke, but doctors are running more tests and John is remaining overnight for observation,” Fetterman’s communications director, Joe Calvello, said in the statement.

    Last year, Fetterman checked himself into a hospital in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, several days before the primary. Fetterman won the nomination while in the hospital and underwent a nearly three-hour surgery that same day to implant a defibrillator. He was released from the hospital after a nine-day stay.

    Fetterman’s cardiologist later issued a statement, providing more insight into what caused his stroke and outlining that the Democrat suffers from both atrial fibrillation and cardiomyopathy.

    Calvello said Wednesday night that Fetterman was “in good spirits and talking with his staff and family.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 4 people hospitalized after battery fire in United plane cabin | CNN

    4 people hospitalized after battery fire in United plane cabin | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    A fire from the battery of an electrical device aboard a United Airlines flight forced a Newark-bound plane to return to San Diego on Tuesday and sent four people to the hospital, officials say.

    The flight crew aboard United Flight 2664 prevented the fire from spreading further, and the plane returned to the airport, according to a tweet from the San Diego Fire Department.

    Emergency personnel responded and are currently treating passengers, said San Diego International Airport (SAN) spokesperson Sabrina LoPiccolo in a phone interview with CNN.

    FlightAware data shows that the aircraft, a Boeing 737 MAX 8, took off from the airport at 7:07 a.m. Pacific Time and landed back in San Diego at 7:51 a.m.

    Fire crews evaluated all passengers and crew, and four people were taken to the hospital. Two others declined further treatment, according to another tweet from the San Diego Fire Department.

    FAA spokesperson Ian Gregor told CNN the fire was from a laptop battery. “The FAA will investigate,” Gregor said.

    Flight attendants who are credited with containing the fire are among those taken to the hospital, according to the airline.

    “Our crew acted quickly to contain the device and medical personnel met the aircraft upon arrival at the gate,” said United Airlines spokesperson Charles Hobart in a statement to CNN. “Several flight attendants were taken to the hospital as a precaution, and two customers were evaluated onsite.”

    “We thank our crew for their quick actions in prioritizing the safety of everyone on board the aircraft and we are making arrangements to get our customers to their destinations,” Hobart added.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Apparent cyberattack forces Florida hospital system to divert some emergency patients to other facilities | CNN Politics

    Apparent cyberattack forces Florida hospital system to divert some emergency patients to other facilities | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    An apparent cyberattack has forced a network of Florida health care organizations to send some emergency patients to other facilities and to cancel some non-emergency surgeries, the health care network said Friday.

    Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare, which operates a 772-bed hospital and multiple specialty care centers, said an “IT security issue” late Thursday night forced it to take down its computer system.

    “We are also diverting EMS [emergency medical services] patients and will only be accepting Level 1 traumas from our immediate service area,” the hospital system said in a statement. Level 1 trauma refers to the most acute injuries and illnesses.

    Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare spokesperson Tori Lynn Schneider told CNN “some” emergency patients were being diverted to facilities outside of the organization’s network, but declined to say how many patients. All non-emergency and elective procedures scheduled for Monday were canceled because of the hacking incident, Schneider said.

    It’s the latest in a series of cyberattacks that have continued to hit resource-strapped US health care providers in the nearly three years of the Covid-19 pandemic. In another case, hackers accessed the personal data of nearly 270,000 patients in an attempted ransomware attack on a Louisiana health care system in October.

    The FBI last month shut down the computer infrastructure used by a notorious ransomware gang to attack multiple US hospitals, according to the bureau. But the threat remains as multiple ransomware groups are known to target the health sector.

    It’s unclear who was responsible for the apparent hack of Tallahassee Memorial. Tallahassee Memorial did not specify whether it had suffered a ransomware attack, but the organization’s statement described activity, including the need to shut down computer networks, consistent with a ransomware attack.

    Staff have been unable to access digital patient records and lab results because of the shutdown, a hospital source told CNN.

    Mark O’Bryant, Tallahassee Memorial’s CEO, notified staff in person Friday morning that the system had suffered a “cyberattack,” according to the source.

    “To help us contain the issue, please completely turn off all PCs connected to TMH’s network immediately and leave them off until notified otherwise,” Tallahassee Memorial leadership said in a memo sent to employees Friday morning and obtained by CNN.

    Max Henderson, a Tallahassee native and cybersecurity specialist who focuses on health care, said the effects of a shutting down a hospital’s computer network can last for weeks or months.

    “Immediate, unplanned shutdowns can lead to a loss of recently gathered data regarding diagnosis, clinical notes, shift handovers and other various setbacks for the medical staff,” Henderson, who is senior manager for incident response at security firm Pondurance, told CNN.

    “Nearly all hospitals rely on the internet for connectivity with vendors and remote offices for processing information in critical departments such as radiology, pharmacy, medical device maintenance, patient document scanning and payment processing,” Henderson added.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Biden intends to end Covid-19 and public health emergencies on May 11 | CNN Politics

    Biden intends to end Covid-19 and public health emergencies on May 11 | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden intends to end the Covid-19 national and public health emergencies on May 11, the White House said Monday.

    The White House, in a statement of administration policy announcing opposition to two Republican measures to end the emergencies, said the national emergency and public health emergency authorities declared in response to the pandemic would each be extended one final time to May 11.

    “This wind down would align with the Administration’s previous commitments to give at least 60 days’ notice prior to termination of the (public health emergency),” the statement said.

    The statement added, “To be clear, continuation of these emergency declarations until May 11 does not impose any restriction at all on individual conduct with regard to COVID-19. They do not impose mask mandates or vaccine mandates. They do not restrict school or business operations. They do not require the use of any medicines or tests in response to cases of COVID-19.”

    The statement came in response to a pair of measures before the House that would end the public health emergency and the Covid-19 national emergency.

    The White House weighed in because House Democrats were concerned about voting against the Republican legislation to end the public health emergency that is coming to the floor this week without a plan from the Biden administration, a senior Democratic aide told CNN.

    “Democrats were concerned about the optics of voting against Republicans winding down the public health emergency, absent an understanding of whether and how we intended to do so from the White House,” the aide said. “As soon as we saw this bill, it obviously concerns the White House. So, it was important for them to weigh in.”

    The administration argues that the bills are unnecessary because it intends to end the emergencies anyway. The White House also noted the passage of the measures ahead of May 11 would have unintended consequences, such as disrupting the administration’s plans for ending certain policies that are authorized by the emergencies.

    The White House said it would extend the Covid-19 emergencies one final time in order to ensure an orderly wind-down of key authorities that states, health care providers and patients have relied on throughout the pandemic.

    A White House official pointed to a successful vaccination campaign and reductions in Covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths as a rationale for lifting the emergency declarations. The official said a final extension will allow for a smooth transition for health care providers and patients and noted that health care facilities have already begun preparing for that transition.

    The administration is actively reviewing flexible policies that were authorized under the public health emergency to determine which can remain in place after it is lifted on May 11.

    The aide told CNN that it will be up to every member to decide what is best for their district and how they will vote on the legislation this week. Declaring an end to the public health emergency will also end the border restriction known as Title 42, which will also likely set up a showdown on Capitol Hill.

    The public health emergency has enabled the government to provide many Americans with Covid-19 tests, treatments and vaccines at no charge, as well as offer enhanced social safety net benefits, to help the nation cope with the pandemic and minimize its impact.

    “People will have to start paying some money for things they didn’t have to pay for during the emergency,” said Jen Kates, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “That’s the main thing people will start to notice.”

    Most Americans covered by Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance plans have been able to obtain Covid-19 tests and vaccines at no cost during the pandemic. Those covered by Medicare and private insurance have been able to get up to eight at-home tests per month from retailers at no charge. Medicaid also picks up the cost of at-home tests, though coverage can vary by state.

    Those covered by Medicare and Medicaid have also had certain therapeutic treatments, such as monoclonal antibodies, fully covered.

    Once the emergency ends, Medicare beneficiaries generally will face out-of-pocket costs for at-home testing and all treatment. However, vaccines will continue to be covered at no cost, as will testing ordered by a health care provider.

    State Medicaid programs will have to continue covering Covid-19 tests ordered by a physician and vaccines at no charge. But enrollees may face out-of-pocket costs for treatments.

    Those with private insurance could face charges for lab tests, even if they are ordered by a provider. Vaccinations will continue to be free for those with private insurance who go to in-network providers, but going to an out-of-network providers could incur charges.

    Covid-19 vaccinations will be free for those with insurance even when the public health emergency ends because of various federal laws, including the Affordable Care Act and pandemic-era measures, the Inflation Reduction Act and a 2020 relief package.

    Americans with private insurance have not been charged for monoclonal antibody treatment since they were prepaid by the federal government, though patients may be charged for the office visit or administration of the treatment. But that is not tied to the public health emergency, and the free treatments will be available until the federal supply is exhausted. The government has already run out of some of the treatments so those with private insurance may already be picking up some of the cost.

    The uninsured had been able to access no-cost testing, treatments and vaccines through a different pandemic relief program. However, the federal funding ran out in the spring of 2022, making it more difficult for those without coverage to obtain free services.

    The federal government has been preparing to shift Covid-19 care to the commercial market since last year, in part because Congress has not authorized additional funding to purchase additional vaccines, treatments and tests.

    Pfizer and Moderna have already announced that the commercial prices of their Covid-19 vaccines will likely be between $82 and $130 per dose – about three to four times what the federal government has paid, according to Kaiser.

    The public health emergency has also meant additional funds for hospitals, which have been receiving a 20% increase in Medicare’s payment rate for treating Covid-19 patients.

    Also, Medicare Advantage plans have been required to bill enrollees affected by the emergency and receiving care at out-of-network facilities the same as if they were at in-network facilities.

    This will end once the public health emergency expires.

    But several of the most meaningful enhancements to public assistance programs are no longer tied to the public health emergency. Congress severed the connection in December as part of its fiscal year 2023 government funding package.

    Most notably, states will now be able to start processing Medicaid redeterminations and disenrolling residents who no longer qualify, starting April 1. They have 14 months to review the eligibility of their beneficiaries.

    As part of a Covid-19 relief package passed in March 2020, states were barred from kicking people off Medicaid during the public health emergency in exchange for additional federal matching funds. Medicaid enrollment has skyrocketed to a record 90 million people since then, and millions are expected to lose coverage once states began culling the rolls.

    A total of roughly 15 million people could be dropped from Medicaid when the continuous enrollment requirement ends, according to an analysis the Department of Health and Human Services released in August. About 8.2 million folks would no longer qualify, but 6.8 million people would be terminated even though they are still eligible, the department estimated.

    Many who are disenrolled from Medicaid, however could qualify for other coverage.

    Food stamp recipients had been receiving a boost during the public health emergency. Congress increased food stamp benefits to the maximum for their family size in a 2020 pandemic relief package.

    The Biden administration expanded the boost in the spring of 2021 so that households already receiving the maximum amount and those who received only a small monthly benefit get a supplement of at least $95 a month.

    This extra assistance will end as of March, though several states have already stopped providing it.

    Congress, however, extended one set of pandemic flexibilities as part of the government funding package.

    More Medicare enrollees are able to get care via telehealth during the public health emergency. The service is no longer limited just to those living in rural areas. They can conduct the telehealth visit at home, rather than having to travel to a health care facility. Plus, beneficiaries can use smartphones and receive a wider array of services via telehealth.

    These will now continue through 2024.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • First on CNN: Biden administration to strengthen Obamacare contraceptive mandate in proposed rule | CNN Politics

    First on CNN: Biden administration to strengthen Obamacare contraceptive mandate in proposed rule | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration wants to make it easier for women to access birth control at no cost under the Affordable Care Act, reversing Trump-era rules that weakened the law’s contraceptive mandate for employer-provided health insurance plans.

    The proposed rule, unveiled Monday by the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury, would remove an exemption to the mandate that allows employers to opt out for moral convictions. It would also create an independent pathway for individuals enrolled in plans offered by employers with religious exemptions to access contraceptive services through a willing provider without charge.

    The proposed rule would leave in place the existing religious exemption for employers with objections, as well as the optional accommodation for contraceptive coverage.

    The administration crafted the proposed rule keeping in mind the concerns of employers with religious objections and the contraceptive needs of their workers, a senior HHS official told CNN.

    “We had to really think through how to do this in the right way to satisfy both sides, but we think we found that way,” the official said, stressing that there should be no effect on religiously affiliated employers.

    Students at religiously affiliated colleges would have access to the expanded accommodation, just like workers in group health plans where the employer has claimed the exemption.

    Now that the proposed rule has been announced, the public will have the opportunity to comment during the next few months. Officials expect there to be many thousands of public comments, and it will be “many months” before the rule could be finalized.

    HHS expects the proposal would affect more than 100 employers and 125,000 workers, mainly through providing the proposed independent pathway for employees to receive no-cost contraception.

    Women using that pathway would obtain their birth control from a participating provider, who would be reimbursed by an insurer on the Affordable Care Act exchanges. The insurer, in turn, would receive a credit on the user fee it pays the government.

    “If this rule is finalized, individuals who have health plans that would otherwise be subject to the ACA preventive services requirements but have not covered contraceptive services because of a moral or religious objection, and for which the sponsoring employer or college or university has not elected the optional accommodation, would now have access,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said in a news release.

    How many people benefit, however, would depend on whether women and their health care providers know the independent pathway exists and whether providers and insurers are willing to set it up.

    “We’ll just have to see how widely that information is spread and in what way to providers and individuals,” said Laurie Sobel, associate director for Women’s Health Policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, noting that the proposed rule would not require data collection to show the pathway’s takeup.

    But the Planned Parenthood Federation of America cheered the initiative.

    “Employers and universities should not be able to dictate personal health care decisions and impose their views on their employees or students,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, the group’s CEO. “The ACA mandates that health insurance plans cover all forms of birth control without out-of-pocket costs. Now, more than ever, we must protect this fundamental freedom.”

    The requirement to provide no-cost contraception is not in the Affordable Care Act itself. Instead, HHS under former President Barack Obama included it as one of the women’s preventive services that all private insurance plans must offer without charge.

    The mandate was controversial from the start, sparking lawsuits from religiously affiliated employers and closely held companies that said it violated their beliefs. Exemptions and accommodations have been available for such employers.

    The Trump administration, however, weakened the mandate. Under the rules issued in 2018, entities that have “sincerely held religious beliefs” against providing contraceptives are not required to do so. That provision also extends to organizations and small businesses that have objections “on the basis of moral conviction which is not based in any particular religious belief.”

    The rules also include an optional accommodation that lets objecting employers and private universities remove themselves from providing birth control coverage while still allowing their workers and dependents access to contraception. But the employer or university has to voluntarily elect the accommodation, which risks leaving many without access.

    The Trump administration changes were temporarily blocked after a Pennsylvania district court judge issued a nationwide injunction in 2019. But the following year, the Supreme Court ruled that the administration could expand exemptions for employers who have religious or moral objections to covering contraception.

    At the time, the National Women’s Law Center estimated that the ruling would impact about 64.3 million women in the United States with insurance coverage that included birth control and other preventive services without out-of-pocket costs.

    Employers are not required to notify HHS if they have a moral objection. The agency estimates about 18 employers have claimed that exemption and around 15 employees are affected.

    Still, if the rule is finalized, senior HHS officials say it is “plausible” there could be potential lawsuits brought by religiously affiliated employers – similar to what has been seen in the past.

    “There’s no new obligation on them to participate in any sort of process. This is simply an additional channel for employees in those employer health plans to receive access to contraceptive services,” another senior HHS official said.

    The contraceptive mandate has taken on increased importance now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing many states to impose severe restrictions on abortion access.

    The Biden administration in turn has focused on continuing access to birth control at no cost. The Health, Labor and Treasury department secretaries last year met with health insurers and issued guidance underscoring Obamacare’s contraceptive coverage requirements for private insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

    “Now more than ever, access to and coverage of birth control is critical as the Biden-Harris Administration works to help ensure women everywhere can get the contraception they need, when they need it, and – thanks to the ACA – with no out-of-pocket cost,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a news release.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Surgeon General says 13 is ‘too early’ to join social media | CNN

    Surgeon General says 13 is ‘too early’ to join social media | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says he believes 13 is too young for children to be on social media platforms, because although sites allow children of that age to join, kids are still “developing their identity.”

    Meta, Twitter, and a host of other social media giants currently allow 13-year-olds to join their platforms.

    “I, personally, based on the data I’ve seen, believe that 13 is too early … It’s a time where it’s really important for us to be thoughtful about what’s going into how they think about their own self-worth and their relationships and the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children,” Murthy said on “CNN Newsroom.”

    The number of teenagers on social media has sparked alarm among medical professionals, who point to a growing body of research about the harm such platforms can cause adolescents.

    Murthy acknowledged the difficulties of keeping children off these platforms given their popularity, but suggested parents can find success by presenting a united front.

    “If parents can band together and say you know, as a group, we’re not going to allow our kids to use social media until 16 or 17 or 18 or whatever age they choose, that’s a much more effective strategy in making sure your kids don’t get exposed to harm early,” he told CNN.

    Adobe Stock

    New research suggests habitually checking social media can alter the brain chemistry of adolescents.

    According to a study published this month in JAMA Pediatrics, students who checked social media more regularly displayed greater neural sensitivity in certain parts of their brains, making their brains more sensitive to social consequences over time.

    Psychiatrists like Dr. Adriana Stacey have pointed to this phenomenon for years. Stacey, who works primarily with teenagers and college students, previously told CNN using social media releases a “dopamine dump” in the brain.

    “When we do things that are addictive like use cocaine or use smartphones, our brains release a lot of dopamine at once. It tells our brains to keep using that,” she said. “For teenagers in particular, this part of their brain is actually hyperactive compared to adults. They can’t get motivated to do anything else.”

    Recent studies demonstrate other ways excessive screen time can impact brain development. In young children, for example, excessive screen time was significantly associated with poorer emerging literacy skills and ability to use expressive language.

    Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who recently published an op-ed in the Bulwark about loneliness and mental health, echoed the surgeon general’s concerns about social media. “We have lost something as a society, as so much of our life has turned into screen-to-screen communication, it just doesn’t give you the same sense of value and the same sense of satisfaction as talking to somebody or seeing someone,” Murphy told CNN in an interview alongside Murthy.

    For both Murphy and Murthy, the issue of social media addiction is personal. Both men are fathers – Murphy to teenagers and Murthy to young children. “It’s not coincidental that Dr. Murthy and I are probably talking more about this issue of loneliness more than others in public life,” Murphy told CNN. “I look at this through the prism of my 14-year-old and my 11-year-old.”

    As a country, Murphy explained, the U.S. is not powerless in the face of Big Tech. Lawmakers could make different decisions about limiting young kids from social media and incentivizing companies to make algorithms less addictive.

    The surgeon general similarly addressed addictive algorithms, explaining pitting adolescents against Big Tech is “just not a fair fight.” He told CNN, “You have some of the best designers and product developers in the world who have designed these products to make sure people are maximizing the amount of time they spend on these platforms. And if we tell a child, use the force of your willpower to control how much time you’re spending, you’re pitting a child against the world’s greatest product designers.”

    Despite the hurdles facing parents and kids, Murphy struck a note of optimism about the future of social media.

    “None of this is out of our control. When we had dangerous vehicles on the road, we passed laws to make those vehicles less dangerous,” he told CNN. “We should make decisions to make [social media] a healthier experience that would make kids feel better about themselves and less alone.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fact check: Biden makes false and misleading claims in economic speech | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Biden makes false and misleading claims in economic speech | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden delivered a Thursday speech to hail economic progress during his administration and to attack congressional Republicans for their proposals on the economy and the social safety net.

    Some of Biden’s claims in the speech were false, misleading or lacking critical context, though others were correct. Here’s a breakdown of the 14 claims CNN fact-checked.

    Touting the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed in 2021, Biden said, “Last year, we funded 700,000 major construction projects – 700,000 all across America. From highways to airports to bridges to tunnels to broadband.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “700,000” figure is wildly inaccurate; it adds an extra two zeros to the correct figure Biden used in a speech last week and the White House has also used before: 7,000 projects. The White House acknowledged his misstatement later on Thursday by correcting the official transcript to say 7,000 rather than 700,000.

    Biden said, “Well, here’s the deal: I put a – we put a cap, and it’s now in effect – now in effect, as of January 1 – of $2,000 a year on prescription drug costs for seniors.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims that this cap is now in effect and that it came into effect on January 1 are false. The $2,000 annual cap contained in the Inflation Reduction Act that Biden signed last year – on Medicare Part D enrollees’ out-of-pocket spending on covered prescription drugs – takes effect in 2025. The maximum may be higher than $2,000 in subsequent years, since it is tied to Medicare Part D’s per capita costs.

    Asked for comment, a White House official noted that other Inflation Reduction Act health care provisions that will save Americans money did indeed come into effect on January 1, 2023.

    – CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed to this item.

    Criticizing former President Donald Trump over his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Biden said, “Back then, only 3.5 million people had been – even had their first vaccination, because the other guy and the other team didn’t think it mattered a whole lot.”

    Facts First: Biden is free to criticize Trump’s vaccine rollout, but his “only 3.5 million” figure is misleading at best. As of the day Trump left office in January 2021, about 19 million people had received a first shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The “3.5 million” figure Biden cited is, in reality, the number of people at the time who had received two shots to complete their primary vaccination series.

    Someone could perhaps try to argue that completing a primary series is what Biden meant by “had their first vaccination” – but he used a different term, “fully vaccinated,” to refer to the roughly 230 million people in that very same group today. His contrasting language made it sound like there are 230 million people with at least two shots today versus 3.5 million people with just one shot when he took office. That isn’t true.

    Biden said Republicans want to cut taxes for billionaires, “who pay virtually only 3% of their income now – 3%, they pay.”

    Facts First: Biden’s “3%” claim is incorrect. For the second time in less than a week, Biden inaccurately described a 2021 finding from economists in his administration that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families paid an average of 8.2% of their income in federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018; after CNN inquired about Biden’s “3%” claim on Thursday, the White House published a corrected official transcript that uses “8%” instead. Also, it’s important to note that even that 8% number is contested, since it is an alternative calculation that includes unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.

    “Biden’s numbers are way too low,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute think tank, though Gleckman also said we don’t know precisely what tax rates billionaires do pay. Gleckman wrote in an email: “In 2019, Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabe Zucman estimated the top 400 households paid an average effective tax rate of about 23 percent in 2018. They got a lot of attention at the time because that rate was lower than the average rate of 24 percent for the bottom half of the income distribution. But it still was way more than 2 or 3, or even 8 percent.”

    Biden has cited the 8% statistic in various other speeches, but unlike the administration economists who came up with it, he tends not to explain that it doesn’t describe tax rates in a conventional way. And regardless, he said “3%” in this speech and “2%” in a speech last week.

    Biden cited a 2021 report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy think tank that found that 55 of the country’s largest corporations had made $40 billion in profit in their previous fiscal year but not paid any federal corporate income taxes. Before touting the 15% alternative corporate minimum tax he signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, Biden said, “The days are over when corporations are paying zero in federal taxes.”

    Facts First: Biden exaggerated. The new minimum tax will reduce the number of companies that don’t pay any federal taxes, but it’s not true that the days of companies paying zero are “over.” That’s because the minimum tax, on the “book income” companies report to investors, only applies to companies with at least $1 billion in average annual income. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, only 14 of the companies on its 2021 list of 55 non-payers reported having US pre-tax income of at least $1 billion.

    In other words, there will clearly still be some large and profitable corporations paying no federal income tax even after the minimum tax takes effect this year. The exact number is not yet known.

    Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told CNN in the fall that the new tax is “an important step forward from the status quo” and that it will raise substantial revenue, but he also said: “I wouldn’t want to assert that the minimum tax will end the phenomenon of zero-tax profitable corporations. A more accurate phrasing would be to say that the minimum tax will *help* ensure that *the most profitable* corporations pay at least some federal income tax.”

    There are lots of nuances to the tax; you can read more specifics here. Asked for comment on Thursday, a White House official told CNN: “The Inflation Reduction Act ensures the wealthiest corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, precisely the corporations the President focused on during the campaign and in office. The President’s full Made in America tax plan would ensure all corporations pay a 15% minimum tax, and the President has called on Congress to pass that plan.”

    Noting the big increase in the federal debt under Trump, Biden said that his administration has taken a “different path” and boasted: “As a result, the last two years – my administration – we cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion, the largest reduction in debt in American history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s boast leaves out important context. It is true that the federal deficit fell by a total of $1.7 trillion under Biden in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, including a record $1.4 trillion drop in 2022 – but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction. Biden did not mention that the primary reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had skyrocketed to a record high under Trump in 2020 because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected as the spending expired as planned. Independent analysts say Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits.

    Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics – an economics firm whose assessments Biden has repeatedly cited during his presidency – told CNN’s Matt Egan in October: “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, wrote in September that Biden’s actions will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits from 2021 through 2031, or $2.5 trillion if you don’t count the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill of 2021.

    National Economic Council director Brian Deese wrote on the White House website last week that the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill “facilitated a strong economic recovery and enabled the responsible wind-down of emergency spending programs,” thereby reducing the deficit; David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, told Egan in October that the Biden administration does deserve credit for the recovery that has pushed the deficit downward. And Deese correctly noted that Biden’s signature legislation, last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to bring down deficits by more than $200 billion over the next decade.

    Still, the deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of various additional bills and policies Biden has approved.

    Biden said, “Wages are up, and they’re growing faster than inflation. Over the past six months, inflation has gone down every month and, God willing, will continue to do that.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim that wages are up and growing faster than inflation is true if you start the calculation seven months ago; “real” wages, which take inflation into account, started rising in mid-2022 as inflation slowed. (Biden is right that inflation has declined, on an annual basis, every month for the last six months.) However, real wages are lower today than they were both a full year ago and at the beginning of Biden’s presidency in January 2021. That’s because inflation was so high in 2021 and the beginning of 2022.

    There are various ways to measure real wages. Real average hourly earnings declined 1.7% between December 2021 and December 2022, while real average weekly earnings (which factors in the number of hours people worked) declined 3.1% over that period.

    Biden said he was disappointed that the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives “added $114 billion to the deficit.”

    Facts First: Biden is correct about how the bill would affect the deficit if it became law. He accurately cited an estimate from the government’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

    The bill would eliminate more than $71 billion of the $80 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that Biden signed into law in the Inflation Reduction Act. The Congressional Budget Office found that taking away this funding – some of which the Biden administration said will go toward increased audits of high-income individuals and large corporations – would result in a loss of nearly $186 billion in government revenue between 2023 and 2032, for a net increase to the deficit of about $114 billion.

    The Republican bill has no chance of becoming law under Biden, who has vowed to veto it in the highly unlikely event it got through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

    Biden said that “MAGA Republicans” in the House “want to impose a 30 percent national sales tax on everything from food, clothing, school supplies, housing, cars – a whole deal.” He said they want to do that because “they want to eliminate the income tax system.”

    Facts First: This is a fair description of the Republicans’ “FairTax” bill. The bill would eliminate federal income taxes, plus the payroll tax, capital gains tax and estate tax, and replace it with a national sales tax. The bill describes a rate of 23% on the “gross payments” on a product or service, but when the tax rate is described in the way consumers are used to sales taxes being described, it’s actually right around 30%, as a pro-FairTax website acknowledges.

    It is not clear how much support the bill currently has among the House Republican caucus. Notably, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told CNN’s Manu Raju this week that he opposes the bill – though, while seeking right-wing votes for his bid for speaker in early January, he promised its supporters that it would be considered in committee. Biden wryly said in his speech, “The Republican speaker says he’s not so sure he’s for it.”

    Biden claimed the unemployment rate “is the lowest it’s been in 50 years.”

    Facts First: This is true. The unemployment rate was just below 3.5% in December, the lowest figure since 1969.

    The headline monthly rate, which is rounded to a single decimal place, was reported as 3.5% in December and also reported as 3.5% in three months of President Donald Trump’s tenure, in late 2019 and in early 2020. But if you look at more precise figures, December was indeed the lowest since 1969 – 3.47% – just below the figures for February 2020, January 2020 and September 2019.

    Biden said that the unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic Americans are “near record lows” and that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is “the lowest ever recorded” and the “lowest ever in history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claims are accurate, though it’s worth noting that the unemployment rate for people with disabilities has only been released by the government since 2008.

    The Black or African American unemployment rate was 5.7% in December, not far from the record low of 5.3% that was set in August 2019. (This data series goes back to 1972.) The rate was 9.2% in January 2021, the month Biden became president. The Hispanic or Latino unemployment rate was 4.1% in December, just above the record low of 4.0% that was set in September 2019. (This data series goes back to 1973.) The rate was 8.5% in January 2021.

    The unemployment rate for people with disabilities was 5.0% in December, the lowest since the beginning of the data series in 2008. The rate was 12.0% in January 2021.

    Biden said that fewer families are facing foreclosure than before the pandemic.

    Facts First: Biden is correct. According to a report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, about 28,500 people had new foreclosure notations on their credit reports in the third quarter of 2022, the most recent quarter for which data is available; that was down from about 71,420 people with new foreclosure notations in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 74,860 people in the first quarter of 2020.

    Foreclosures plummeted in the second quarter of 2020 because of government moratoriums put in place because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Foreclosures spiked in 2022, relative to 2020-2021 levels, after the expiry of these moratoriums, but they remained very low by historical standards.

    Biden said, “More American families have health insurance today than any time in American history.”

    Facts First: Biden’s claim is accurate. An analysis provided to CNN by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which studies US health care, found that about 295 million US residents had health insurance in 2021, the highest on record – and Jennifer Tolbert, the foundation’s director for state health reform, told CNN this week that “I expect the number of people with insurance continued to increase in 2022.”

    Tolbert noted that the number of insured residents generally rises over time because of population growth, but she added that “it is not a given” that there will be an increase in the number of insured residents every year – the number declined slightly under Trump from 2018 to 2019, for example – and that “policy changes as well as economic factors also affect these numbers.”

    As CNN’s Tami Luhby has reported, sign-ups on the federal insurance exchange created by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, have spiked nearly 50% under Biden. Biden’s 2021 American Rescue Plan pandemic relief law and then the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act temporarily boosted federal premium subsidies for exchange enrollees, and the Biden administration has also taken various other steps to get people to sign up on the exchanges. In addition, enrollment in Medicaid health insurance has increased significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic, in part because of a bipartisan 2020 law that temporarily prevented people from being disenrolled from the program.

    The percentage of residents without health insurance fell to an all-time low of 8.0% in the first quarter of 2022, according to an analysis published last summer by the federal government’s Department of Health and Human Services. That meant there were 26.4 million people without health insurance, down from 48.3 million in 2010, the year Obamacare was signed into law.

    Biden said, “And over the last two years, more than 10 million people have applied to start a small business. That’s more than any two years in all of recorded American history.”

    Facts First: This is true. There were about 5.4 million business applications in 2021, the highest since 2005 (the first year for which the federal government released this data for a full year), and about 5.1 million business applications in 2022. Not every application turns into a real business, but the number of “high-propensity” business applications – those deemed to have a high likelihood of turning into a business with a payroll – also hit a record in 2021 and saw its second-highest total in 2022.

    Trump’s last full year in office, 2020, also set a then-record for total and high-propensity applications. There are various reasons for the pandemic-era boom in entrepreneurship, which began after millions of Americans lost their jobs in early 2020. Among them: some newly unemployed workers seized the moment to start their own enterprises; Americans had extra money from stimulus bills signed by Trump and Biden; interest rates were particularly low until a series of rate hikes that began in the spring of 2022.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Why urgent care centers are popping up everywhere | CNN Business

    Why urgent care centers are popping up everywhere | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    New York
    CNN
     — 

    If you drive down a busy suburban strip mall or walk down a street in a major city, chances are you won’t go long without spotting a Concentra, MedExpress, CityMD or another urgent care center.

    Demand at urgent care sites surged during the Covid-19 pandemic as people searched for tests and treatments. Patient volume has jumped 60% since 2019, according to the Urgent Care Association, an industry trade group.

    That has fueled growth for new urgent care centers. A record 11,150 urgent care centers have popped up around the United States and they are growing at 7% a year, the trade group says. (This does not include clinics inside retail stores like CVS’ MinuteClinic or freestanding emergency departments.)

    Urgent care centers are designed to treat non-emergency conditions like a common cold, a sprained ankle, an ear infection, or a rash. They are recommended if patients can’t get an immediate appointment with their primary care doctor or if patients don’t have one. Primary care practices should always be the first call in these situations because they have access to patients’ records and all of their health care history, while urgent care sites are meant to provide episodic care.

    Urgent care sites are often staffed by physician assistants and nurse practitioners. Many also have doctors on site. (One urgent care industry magazine says, in 2009, 70% of its providers were physicians, but that the percentage had fallen to 16% by last year.) Urgent cares usually offer medical treatment outside of regular doctor’s office hours and a visit costs much less than a trip to the emergency room.

    Urgent care has grown rapidly because of convenience, gaps in primary care, high costs of emergency room visits, and increased investment by health systems and private-equity groups. The urgent care market will reach around $48 billion in revenue this year, a 21% increase from 2019, estimates IBISWorld.

    The growth highlights the crisis in the US primary care system. A shortage of up to 55,000 primary care physicians is expected in the next decade, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

    But many doctors, health care advocates and researchers raise concerns at the proliferation of urgent care sites and say there can be downsides.

    Frequent visits to urgent care sites may weaken established relationships with primary care doctors. They can also lead to more fragmented care and increase overall health care spending, research shows.

    And there are questions about the quality of care at urgent care centers and whether they adequately serve low-income communities. A 2018 study by Pew Charitable Trusts and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that antibiotics are overprescribed at urgent care centers, especially for common colds, the flu and bronchitis.

    “It’s a reasonable solution for people with minor conditions that can’t wait for primary care providers,” said Vivian Ho, a health economist at Rice University. “When you need constant management of a chronic illness, you should not go there.”

    Urgent care centers have been around in the United States since the 1970s, but they were long derided as “docs in a box” and grew slowly during their early years.

    They have become more popular over the past two decades in part due to pressures on the primary care system. People’s expectations of wait times have changed and it can be difficult, and sometimes almost impossible, to book an immediate visit with a primary care provider.

    Urgent care sites are typically open for longer hours during the weekday and on weekends, making it easier to get an appointment or a walk-in visit. Around 80% of the US population is within a 10-minute drive of an urgent care center, according to the industry trade group.

    “There’s a need to keep up with society’s demand for quick turnaround, on-demand services that can’t be supported by underfunded primary care,” said Susan Kressly, a retired pediatrician and fellow at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

    Health insurers and hospitals have also become more focused on keeping people out of the emergency room. Emergency room visits are around ten times more expensive than visits to an urgent care center. During the early 2000s, hospital systems and health insurers started opening their own urgent care sites, and they have introduced strategies to deter emergency room visits.

    Additionally, passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 spurred an increase in urgent care providers as millions of newly insured Americans sought out health care. Private-equity and venture capital funds also poured billions into deals for urgent care centers, according to data from PitchBook.

    Urgent care centers can be attractive to investors. Unlike ERs, which are legally obligated to treat everyone, urgent care sites can essentially choose their patients and the conditions they treat. Many urgent care centers don’t accept Medicaid and can turn away uninsured patient,s unless they pay a fee.

    Like other health care options, urgent care centers make money by billing insurance companies for the cost of the visit, additional services, or the patient pays out of pocket. In 2016, the median charge for a 30-minute new insured patient visit was $242 at an urgent care center, compared with $294 in a primary care office and $109 in a retail clinic, according to a study by FAIR Health, a nonprofit that collects health insurance data.

    “If they can make it a more convenient option, there’s a lot of revenue here,” said Ateev Mehrotra, a professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School who has researched urgent care clinics. “It’s not where the big bucks are in health care, but there’s a substantial number of patients.”

    Mehrotra research has found that between 2008 and 2015, urgent care visits increased 119%. They became the dominant venue for people seeking treatment for low-acuity conditions like acute respiratory infections, urinary tract infections, rashes, and muscle strains.

    Some doctors and researchers worry that patients with primary care doctors – and those without – are substituting urgent care visits in place of a primary care provider.

    “What you don’t want to see is people seeking a lot care outside their pediatrician and decreasing their visits to their primary care provider,” said Rebecca Burns, the urgent care medical director at the Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

    Burns’ research has found that high urgent care reliance fills a need for children with acute issues but has the potential to disrupt primary care relationships.

    The National Health Law Program, a health care advocacy group for low-income families and communities, has called for state regulations to require coordination among urgent care sites, retail clinics, primary services, and hospitals to ensure continuity of patients’ care.

    And while the presence of urgent care centers does prevent people from costly emergency department visits for low-acuity issues, Mehrotra from Harvard has found that, paradoxically, they increase health care spending on net.

    Each $1,646 visit to the ER for a low-acuity condition prevented was offset by a $6,327 increase in urgent care center costs, his research has found. This is in part because people may be going to urgent care for minor illnesses they would have previously treated with chicken soup.

    There are also concerns about the oversaturation of urgent care centers in higher-income areas that have more consumers with private health care and limited access in medically underserved areas.

    Urgent care centers selectively tend not to serve rural areas, areas with a high concentration of low-income patients, and areas with a low concentration of privately-insured patients, researchers at the University of California at San Francisco found in a 2016 study. They said this “uneven distribution may potentially exacerbate health disparities.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • FDA vaccine advisers vote to harmonize Covid-19 vaccines in the United States | CNN

    FDA vaccine advisers vote to harmonize Covid-19 vaccines in the United States | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    A panel of independent experts that advises the US Food and Drug Administration on its vaccine decisions voted unanimously Thursday to update all Covid-19 vaccines so they contain the same ingredients as the two-strain shots that are now used as booster doses.

    The vote means young children and others who haven’t been vaccinated may soon be eligible to receive two-strain vaccines that more closely match the circulating viruses as their primary series.

    The FDA must sign off on the committee’s recommendation, which it is likely to do, before it goes into effect.

    Currently, the US offers two types of Covid-19 vaccines. The first shots people get – also called the primary series – contain a single set of instructions that teach the immune system to fight off the original version of the virus, which emerged in 2019.

    This index strain is no longer circulating. It was overrun months ago by an ever-evolving parade of new variants.

    Last year, in consultation with its advisers, the FDA decided that it was time to update the vaccines. These two-strain, or bivalent, shots contain two sets of instructions; one set reminds the immune system about the original version of the coronavirus, and the second set teaches the immune system to recognize and fight off Omicron’s BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, which emerged in the US last year.

    People who have had their primary series – nearly 70% of all Americans – were advised to get the new two-strain booster late last year in an effort to upgrade their protection against the latest variants.

    The advisory committee heard testimony and data suggesting that the complexity of having two types of Covid-19 vaccines and schedules for different age groups may be one of the reasons for low vaccine uptake in the US.

    Currently, only about two-thirds of Americans have had the full primary series of shots. Only 15% of the population has gotten an updated bivalent booster.

    Data presented to the committee shows that Covid-19 hospitalizations have been rising for children under the age of 2 over the past year, as Omicron and its many subvariants have circulated. Only 5% of this age group, which is eligible for Covid-19 vaccination at 6 months of age, has been fully vaccinated. Ninety percent of children under the age of 4 are still unvaccinated.

    “The most concerning data point that I saw this whole day was that extremely low vaccination coverage in 6 months to 2 years of age and also 2 years to 4 years of age,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Birth Defects and Infant Disorders. “We have to do much, much better.”

    Cohn says that having a single vaccine against Covid-19 in the US for both primary and booster doses would go a long way toward making the process less complicated and would help get more children vaccinated.

    Others feel that convenience is important but also stressed that data supported the switch.

    “This isn’t only a convenience thing, to increase the number of people who are vaccinated, which I agree with my colleagues is extremely important for all the evidence that was related, but I also think moving towards the strains that are circulating is very important, so I would also say the science supports this move,” said Dr. Hayley Gans, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Stanford University.

    Many others on the committee were similarly satisfied after seeing new data on the vaccine effectiveness of the bivalent boosters, which are cutting the risk of getting sick, being hospitalized or dying from a Covid-19 infection.

    “I’m totally convinced that the bivalent vaccine is beneficial as a primary series and as a booster series. Furthermore, the updated vaccine safety data are really encouraging so far,” said Dr. David Kim, director of the the US Department of Health and Human Services’ National Vaccine Program, in public discussion after the vote.

    Thursday’s vote is part of a larger plan by the FDA to simplify and improve the way Covid-19 vaccines are given in the US.

    The agency has proposed a plan to convene its vaccine advisers – called the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, or VRBPAC – each year in May or June to assess whether the instructions in the Covid-19 vaccines should be changed to more closely match circulating strains of the virus.

    The time frame was chosen to give manufacturers about three months to redesign their shots and get new doses to pharmacies in time for fall.

    “The object, of course – before anyone says anything – is not to chase variants. None of us think that’s realistic,” said Jerry Weir, director of the Division of Viral Products in the FDA’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review.

    “But I think our experience so far, with the bivalent vaccines that we have, does indicate that we can continue to make improvements to the vaccine, and that would be the goal of these meetings,” Weir said.

    In discussions after the vote, committee members were supportive of this plan but pointed out many of the things we still don’t understand about Covid-19 and vaccination that are likely to complicate the task of updating the vaccines.

    For example, we now seem to have Covid-19 surges in the summer as well as the winter, noted Dr. Michael Nelson, an allergist and immunologist at the University of Virginia. Are the surges related? And if so, is fall the best time to being a vaccination campaign?

    The CDC’s Dr. Jefferson Jones said that with only three years of experience with the virus, it’s really too early to understand its seasonality.

    Other important questions related to the durability of the mRNA vaccines and whether other platforms might offer longer protection.

    “We can’t keep doing what we’re doing,” said Dr. Bruce Gellin, chief of global public health strategy at the Rockefeller Foundation. “It’s been articulated in every one of these meetings despite how good these vaccines are. We need better vaccines.”

    The committee also encouraged both government and industry scientists to provide a fuller picture of how vaccination and infection affect immunity.

    One of the main ways researchers measure the effectiveness of the vaccines is by looking at how much they increase front-line defenders called neutralizing antibodies.

    Neutralizing antibodies are like firefighters that rush to the scene of an infection to contain it and put it out. They’re great in a crisis, but they tend to diminish in numbers over time if they’re not needed. Other components of the immune system like B-cells and T-cells hang on to the memory of a virus and stand ready to respond if the body encounters it again.

    Scientists don’t understand much about how well Covid-19 vaccination boosts these responses and how long that protection lasts.

    Another puzzle will be how to pick the strains that are in the vaccines.

    The process of selecting strains for influenza vaccines is a global effort that relies on surveillance data from other countries. This works because influenza strains tend to become dominant and sweep around the world. But Covid-19 strains haven’t worked in quite the same way. Some that have driven large waves in other countries have barely made it into the US variant mix.

    “Going forward, it is still challenging. Variants don’t sweep across the world quite as uniform, like they seem to with influenza,” the FDA’s Weir said. “But our primary responsibility is what’s best for the US market, and that’s where our focus will be.”

    Eventually, the FDA hopes that Americans would be able to get an updated Covid-19 shot once a year, the same way they do for the flu. People who are unlikely to have an adequate response to a single dose of the vaccine – such as the elderly or those with a weakened immune system – may need more doses, as would people who are getting Covid-19 vaccines for the first time.

    At Thursday’s meeting, the advisory committee also heard more about a safety signal flagged by a government surveillance system called the Vaccine Safety Datalink.

    The CDC and the FDA reported January 13 that this system, which relies on health records from a network of large hospital systems in the US, had detected a potential safety issue with Pfizer’s bivalent boosters.

    In this database, people 65 and older who got a Pfizer bivalent booster were slightly more likely to have a stroke caused by a blood clot within three weeks of their vaccination than people who had gotten a bivalent booster but were 22 to 42 days after their shot.

    After a thorough review of other vaccine safety data in the US and in other countries that use Pfizer bivalent boosters, the agencies concluded that the stroke risk was probably a statistical fluke and said no changes to vaccination schedules were recommended.

    At Thursday’s meeting, Dr. Nicola Klein, a senior research scientist with Kaiser Permanente of Northern California, explained how they found the signal.

    The researchers compared people who’d gotten a vaccine within the past three weeks against people who were 22 to 42 days away from their shots because this helps eliminate bias in the data.

    When they looked to see how many people had strokes around the time of their vaccination, they found an imbalance in the data.

    Of 550,000 people over 65 who’d received a Pfizer bivalent booster, 130 had a stroke caused by a blood clot within three weeks of vaccination, compared with 92 people in the group farther out from their shots.

    The researchers spotted the signal the week of November 27, and it continued for about seven weeks. The signal has diminished over time, falling from an almost two-fold risk in November to a 47% risk in early January, Klein said. In the past few days, it hasn’t been showing up at all.

    Klein said they didn’t see the signal in any of the other age groups or with the group that got Moderna boosters. They also didn’t see a difference when they compared Pfizer-boosted seniors with those who were eligible for a bivalent booster but hadn’t gotten one.

    Further analyses have suggested that the signal might be happening not because people who are within three weeks of a Pfizer booster are having more strokes, but because people who are within 22 to 42 days of their Pfizer boosters are actually having fewer strokes.

    Overall, Klein said, they were seeing fewer strokes than expected in this population over that period of time, suggesting a statistical fluke.

    Another interesting thing that popped out of this data, however, was a possible association between strokes and high-dose flu vaccination. Seniors who got both shots on the same day and were within three weeks of those shots had twice the rate of stroke compared with those who were 22 to 42 days away from their shots.

    What’s more, Klein said, the researchers didn’t see the same association between stroke and time since vaccination in people who didn’t get their flu vaccine on the same day.

    The total number of strokes in the population of people who got flu shots and Covid-19 boosters on the same day is small, however, which makes the association a shaky one.

    “I don’t think that the evidence are sufficient to conclude that there’s an association there,” said Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.

    Nonetheless, Richard Forshee, deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Biostatistics and Pharmacovigilance, said the FDA is planning to look at these safety questions further using data collected by Medicare.

    The FDA confirmed that the agency is taking a closer look.

    “The purpose of the study is 1) to evaluate the preliminary ischemic stroke signal reported by CDC using an independent data set and more robust epidemiological methods; and 2) to evaluate whether there is an elevated risk of ischemic stroke with the COVID-19 bivalent vaccine if it is given on the same day as a high-dose or adjuvanted seasonal influenza vaccine,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

    The FDA did not give a time frame for when these studies might have results.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fact check: McCarthy’s false, misleading and evidence-free claims since becoming House speaker | CNN Politics

    Fact check: McCarthy’s false, misleading and evidence-free claims since becoming House speaker | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Since winning a difficult battle to become speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Kevin McCarthy has made public claims that are misleading, lacking any evidence or plain wrong.

    Here is a fact check of recent McCarthy comments about the debt ceiling, funding for the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s resort and residence in Florida, President Joe Biden’s stance on stoves and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.

    McCarthy’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

    McCarthy has cited the example of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, his Democratic predecessor as House speaker, while defending conservative Republicans’ insistence that any agreement to lift the federal debt ceiling must be paired with cuts to government spending – a trade-off McCarthy agreed to when he was trying to persuade conservatives to support his bid for speaker. Specifically, McCarthy has claimed that even Pelosi agreed to a spending cap as part of a deal to lift the debt ceiling under Trump.

    “When Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s what transpired. To get a debt ceiling, they also got a cap on spending for the next two years,” McCarthy told reporters at a press conference on January 12. When Fox host Maria Bartiromo told McCarthy in a January 15 interview that “they” would not agree to a spending cap, he responded, “Well Maria, I don’t believe that’s the case, because when Donald Trump was president and when Nancy Pelosi was speaker, that’s exactly what happened for them to get a debt ceiling lifted last time. They agreed to a spending cap.”

    Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are highly misleading. The deal Pelosi agreed to with the Trump administration in 2019 actually loosened spending caps that were already in place at the time because of a 2011 law. In other words, while congressional conservatives today want to use a debt ceiling deal to reduce government spending, the Pelosi deal allowed for billions in additional government spending above the pre-existing maximum. The two situations are nothing alike.

    Shai Akabas, director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, said when asked about the accuracy of McCarthy’s claims: “I’m going to steer clear of characterizing the Speaker’s remarks, but as an objective matter, the deal reached in 2019 increased the spending caps set by the Budget Control Act of 2011.”

    The 2019 deal, which was criticized by many congressional conservatives, also ensured that Budget Control Act’s caps on discretionary spending – which were created as a result of a 2011 debt ceiling deal between a Democratic president and a Republican speaker of the House – would not be extended past 2021. Spending caps vanishing is the opposite of McCarthy’s suggestion that the deal “got” a spending cap.

    Pelosi spokesperson Aaron Bennett said in an email that McCarthy is “trying to rewrite history.” Bennett said, “As Republicans in Congress and in the Administration noted at the time, in 2019, Speaker Pelosi and Democrats were eager to reach bipartisan agreement to raise the debt limit and, as part of the agreement, avert damaging funding cuts for defense and domestic programs.”

    In various statements since becoming speaker, McCarthy has boasted of how the first bill passed by the new Republican majority in the House “repealed 87,000 IRS agents” or “repealed funding for 87,000 new IRS agents.”

    Facts First: McCarthy’s claims are false. House Republicans did pass a bill that seeks to eliminate about $71 billion of the approximately $80 billion in additional Internal Revenue Service funding that Biden signed into law in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act – but that funding is not going to hire 87,000 “agents.” In addition, Biden has already made clear he would veto this new Republican bill even if the bill somehow made it through the Democratic-controlled Senate, so no funding has actually been “repealed.” It would be accurate for McCarthy to say House Republicans “voted to repeal” the funding, but the boast that they actually “repealed” something is inaccurate.

    CNN’s Katie Lobosco explains in detail here why the claim about “87,000 new IRS agents” is an exaggeration. The claim, which has become a common Republican talking point, has been fact-checked by numerous media outlets over more than five months, including The Washington Post in response to McCarthy remarks earlier this January.

    Here’s a summary. While Inflation Reduction Act funding may well allow for the hiring of tens of thousands of IRS employees, far from all of these employees will be IRS agents conducting audits and investigations. Many other employees will be hired for the non-agent roles, from customer service to information technology, that make up the vast majority of the IRS workforce. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions.

    The IRS has not yet released a detailed breakdown of how it plans to use the funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, so it’s impossible to say precisely how many new “agents” will be hired. But it is already clear that the total won’t approach 87,000.

    In his interview with Fox’s Bartiromo on January 15, McCarthy criticized federal law enforcement for executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and residence in Florida, which the FBI says resulted in the recovery of more than 100 government documents marked as classified and hundreds of other government documents. Echoing a claim Trump has made, McCarthy said of the documents: “They knew it was there. They could have come and taken it any time they wanted.”

    Facts First: It is clearly not true that the authorities could somehow have come to Mar-a-Lago at any time, without conducting a formal search, and taken all of the presidential records they were seeking from Trump. By the time of the search, the federal government – first the National Archives and Records Administration and then the Justice Department – had been asking Trump for more than a year to return government records. Even when the Justice Department went beyond asking in May and served Trump’s team with a subpoena for the return of all documents with classification markings, Trump’s team returned only some of these documents. In June, a Trump lawyer signed a document certifying on behalf of Trump’s office that all of the documents had been returned, though that was not true.

    When FBI agents and a Justice Department attorney visited Mar-a-Lago without a search warrant on that June day to accept documents the Trump team was returning in response to the subpoena, a Trump lawyer “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room,” the department said in a court filing after the August search. In other words, according to the department, the government was not even allowed to poke around to see if there were government records still at Mar-a-Lago, let alone take those records.

    In the August court filing, the department pointedly called into question the extent to which the Trump team had cooperated: “That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.”

    McCarthy wrote in a New York Post article published on January 12: “While President Joe Biden wants to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on, House Republicans are certainly cooking with gas.” He repeated the claim on Twitter the next morning.

    Facts First: There is no evidence for this claim; Biden has not expressed a desire to control the kind of stove Americans can cook on. McCarthy was baselessly attributing the comments of a single Biden appointee to Biden himself.

    It is true that a Biden appointee on the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., told Bloomberg earlier this month that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and said, “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the day before McCarthy’s article was published by the New York Post, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

    To date, even the commission itself has not shown support for a ban on gas stoves or for any particular new regulations on gas stoves. Commission Chairman Alexander Hoehn-Saric said in a statement the day before McCarthy’s article was published: “I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so.” Rather, he said, the commission is researching gas emissions in stoves, “exploring new ways to address health risks,” and strengthening voluntary safety standards – and will this spring ask the public “to provide us with information about gas stove emissions and potential solutions for reducing any associated risks.”

    Trumka told CNN’s Matt Egan that while every option remains on the table, any ban would apply only to new gas stoves, not the gas stoves already in people’s homes. And he noted that the Inflation Reduction Act makes people eligible for a rebate of up to $840 to voluntarily switch to an electric stove.

    Defending his plan to bar Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff from sitting on the House Intelligence Committee, a committee Schiff chaired during the Democratic majority from early 2019 to the beginning of this year, McCarthy criticized Schiff on January 12 over his handling of the first impeachment of Trump. Among other things, McCarthy said: “Adam Schiff openly lied to the American public. He told you he had proof. He told you he didn’t know the whistleblower.”

    Facts First: There is no evidence for McCarthy’s insinuation that Schiff lied when he said he didn’t know the anonymous whistleblower who came forward in 2019 with allegations – which were subsequently corroborated – about how Trump had attempted to use the power of his office to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden, his looming rival in the 2020 election.

    Schiff said last week in a statement to CNN: “Kevin McCarthy continues to falsely assert I know the Ukraine whistleblower. Let me be clear – I have never met the whistleblower and the only thing I know about their identity is what I have read in press. McCarthy’s real objection is we proved the whistleblower’s claim to be true and impeached Donald Trump for withholding millions from Ukraine to extort its help with his campaign.” Schiff also made this comment to The Washington Post, which fact-checked the McCarthy claim last week, and has consistently said the same since late 2019.

    The New York Times reported in 2019 that, according to an unnamed official, a House Intelligence Committee aide who had been contacted by the whistleblower before the whistleblower filed a formal complaint did not inform Schiff of the person’s identity when conveying to Schiff “some” information about what the person had said. And Reuters reported in 2019 that a person familiar with the whistleblower’s contacts said the whistleblower hadn’t met or spoken with Schiff.

    McCarthy could have fairly repeated Republican criticism of a claim Schiff made in a 2019 television appearance about the committee’s communication with the whistleblower; Schiff said at the time “we have not spoken directly with the whistleblower” even though it soon emerged that the whistleblower had contacted the committee aide before filing the complaint. (A committee spokesperson said at the time that Schiff had been merely trying to say that the committee hadn’t heard actual testimony from the whistleblower, but that Schiff acknowledged his words “should have been more carefully phrased to make that distinction clear.”)

    Regardless, McCarthy didn’t argue here that Schiff had been misleading about the committee’s dealings with the whistleblower; he strongly suggested that Schiff lied in saying he didn’t know the whistleblower. That’s baseless. There has never been any indication that Schiff had a relationship with the whistleblower when he said he didn’t, nor that Schiff knew the whistleblower’s identity when he said he didn’t.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Why is Britain’s health service, a much-loved national treasure, falling apart? | CNN

    Why is Britain’s health service, a much-loved national treasure, falling apart? | CNN

    [ad_1]


    London
    CNN
     — 

    Most winters, headlines warn that Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) is at “breaking point.” The alarms sound over and over and over again. But the current crisis has set warning bells ringing louder than before.

    “This time feels different,” said Peter Neville, a doctor who has worked in the NHS since 1989. “It’s never been as bad as this.”

    Scenes that would until recently have been unthinkable have now become commonplace. Hospitals are running well over capacity. Many patients don’t get treated in wards, but in the back of ambulances or in corridors, waiting rooms and cupboards – or not at all. “It’s like a war zone,” an NHS worker at a hospital in Liverpool told CNN.

    These stories are borne out by the data. In December, 54,000 people in England had to wait more than 12 hours for an emergency admission. The figure was virtually zero before the pandemic, according to data from NHS England. The average wait time for an ambulance to attend a “category 2” condition – like a stroke or heart attack – exceeded 90 minutes. The target is 18 minutes. There were 1,474 (20%) more excess deaths in the week ending December 30 than the 5-year average.

    Ambulance staff and nurses have staged a series of strikes over pay and working conditions, with the latest walkout by ambulance workers happening Monday. More are planned for the coming weeks. The chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS organizations in England, wrote to the government on the eve of an ambulance strike last month to warn of NHS leaders’ concerns that they “cannot guarantee patient safety” that day. In response, a government health minister advised the public to avoid “risky activity.”

    While the NHS has suffered crises before, this winter has brought a new reality: In Britain, people can no longer rely on getting healthcare in an emergency.

    Founded shortly after World War II, the NHS is treated with an almost religious reverence by many. Britons danced for it during the 2012 London Olympics and clapped for it during the pandemic. “Our NHS” is a source of national pride.

    Now, it is coming unstuck. There has long been an implicit contract between British people and the state: Pay taxes and National Insurance contributions in return for a health service that is free at the point of use.

    But, with the tax burden on track to reach its highest sustained level since the NHS was founded, Britons are paying more and more for a service they increasingly cannot access as quickly as they need.

    Some of these strains can be seen elsewhere in Europe. Doctors in both France and Spain have held strikes in recent weeks, as many countries face the same problems of providing care to an increasingly aging population – when inflation is at its highest level in decades.

    Yet there are fears that the NHS is in worse shape than its international peers, and CNN spoke with experts who said they fear they’re witnessing the “collapse” of the service.

    So how did Britain get here?

    When Covid-19 hit, the NHS went into full crisis-fighting mode, diverting staff and resources from across the organization to care for patients with the disease.

    But, for many in the NHS, Covid-19 remains a crisis from which they are yet to emerge.

    During the height of the pandemic, many ordinary practices were put on hold. Millions of operations were canceled. The NHS “backlog” has ballooned. Data from November showed there were more than 7 million people on a hospital waiting list in England.

    This winter, a “twindemic” of Covid and flu continues to put additional strain on capacity.

    Many feel that Covid is a crisis from which the NHS has not yet emerged.

    Explanations for the current crisis “have to start with a consideration of Covid-19,” Ben Zaranko, an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) whose work focuses on Britain’s health care system, told CNN. “There’s the simple fact that there are beds in hospitals occupied by Covid patients, which means those beds can’t be used for other things.”

    Covid also created a strain on the amount of work the NHS can do. “If you add up all the time that staff spend doing infection control measures, donning protective equipment and separating out wards into people with and without Covid … that might impede the overall productivity of the system,” Zaranko said. Rates of NHS staff sickness are also considerably higher than they were pre-pandemic, according to IFS analysis.

    But, again, Britain was not alone in battling the pandemic, yet it appears to have suffered a worse hit than comparable nations.

    This is despite there being more doctors and nurses in the NHS now than there were before Covid. According to an IFS report, even after adjusting for staff sickness absences, there are 9% more consultants, 15% more junior doctors and 8% more nurses than in 2019.

    Yet the NHS is treating fewer patients than before the pandemic.

    “It seems to be that bits of the system aren’t fitting together anymore,” Zaranko said. “It’s not just about how much staff there are and how much money there is. It’s how it’s being used.”

    Even with the increase in funding since the pandemic, the UK is still playing catchup, after what critics say is more than a decade of underfunding the NHS.

    Neville, a consultant in a hospital, judges 2008 the “best” he has seen the NHS in more than 30 years of working in it. By that time, the NHS had enjoyed nearly a decade of hugely increased investment. Waiting lists fell substantially. Some even complained about getting doctor appointments too quickly.

    “When the Labour government came in in 1997, they injected considerably more money into the NHS. It enabled us to appoint an adequate number of staff and get on top of our waiting lists,” Neville told CNN.

    But this level of investment did not last. In response to the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the Conservatives elected in the coalition government in 2010 embarked on a program of austerity. Budgets were cut and staff salaries frozen. For Neville, the ensuing decade saw a gradual “erosion” of the system: “Slow, subtle, but nonetheless happening.”

    Health Secretary Steve Barclay on a visit to King's College University Hospital in London.

    According to analysis by health charity the Health Foundation, average day-to-day health spending in the UK between 2010 and 2019 was £3,005 ($3,715) per person per year – 18% below the EU14 [countries that joined the EU before 2004] average of £3,655 ($4,518).

    During this period, capital expenditure – the amount spent on buildings and equipment – was especially low, according to the Health Foundation analysis. The UK has far fewer MRI and CT scanners per person than the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average, meaning staff often have to wait for equipment to become available.

    Hospital beds are particularly scarce. Over the past 30 years the number of beds in England has more than halved, from around 299,000 in 1987 to 141,000 in 2019, according to analysis by the King’s Fund, an independent think tank.

    Siva Anandiciva, chief analyst at the King’s Fund, told CNN this decrease was partly attributable to the “changing model of care.” As technology and treatments improved, people spent less time in hospital, reducing the need for beds. The last Labour government, in power from 1997 to 2010, also cut bed numbers, despite increasing investment elsewhere.

    “You can keep reducing how long patients stay in hospital,” said Anandaciva, but eventually “you approach a minimum. If you then keep cutting bed numbers … that’s when you start to get into problems like performance.”

    During the austerity years, bed numbers continued to be cut, leaving the UK with fewer beds per capita than almost any developed nation, according to OECD data.

    “For a long time we knew we just didn’t have the bed capacity,” Anandaciva said. But cuts continued in the name of “efficiency,” he added.

    While low bed numbers were seen as a marker of “success” indicating that the NHS was running efficiently, it left the UK woefully underprepared for a shock like Covid-19. The same factors that made the NHS “efficient” in one context made it grossly inefficient when that context changed, in his analysis.

    The bed shortage has been made even more acute by the fact that many of those in hospital no longer need to be there – there is simply nowhere else for them to go.

    “The longest I had a patient that was physically and medically ready to go home, but was sitting around waiting for discharge, was four weeks,” said Angus Livingstone, a doctor working in the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.

    The problem is caused by a crisis in another sector: Social care. Patients that could leave the hospital end up staying there because they cannot access more modest care in a home setting and so cannot be safely discharged.

    Many patients are well enough to leave hospital, but cannot be looked after elsewhere.

    Health and social care are separate sectors in the UK system. Healthcare is provided by the NHS, whereas social care is provided by local councils. Unlike the NHS, social care is not free at the point of use: It is rationed and means-tested.

    There have long been calls to integrate the two systems, since a crisis in one system feeds through into the other.

    “If you allow us to regain the enormous number of beds that are currently occupied by people awaiting social care, then I would be very confident that the immediate snarl-up in A&E and ambulances waiting outside would pretty much disappear overnight,” Neville said.

    “When people ask me, ‘where do you want the money in the NHS?’ My answer is ‘I don’t want it in the NHS. I want it in social care.’”

    With an increasingly aging population – the latest census data show nearly 19% of the population of England and Wales is now 65 or older – demand for social care is increasing. But the sector is struggling to provide it in the face of staffing shortages, rising costs and funding pressures.

    Care work can be grueling and underpaid. Most supermarkets offer a better hourly wage, analysis from the King’s Fund found. So, it is perhaps unsurprising that the sector reported 165,000 vacancies in August.

    The NHS is also reporting an alarming number of vacancies, with about 133,000 open positions as of September.

    This points to a deeper crisis: Morale.

    Jatinder Hayre, a doctor completing the foundation program at a hospital in East London, told CNN that morale is “at an all time low.” Staff are “stressed, fatigued, tired,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be an end to this.”

    “When you walk into the hospital in the morning, you’re met with this cacophony of grief and dismay and dissatisfaction from patients, who are lined up in the corridor,” Hayre said.

    “You feel awful, but there’s nothing you can do. You’re fighting against a system that’s collapsing.”

    Hayre said that most days there are “around 40 to 50 patients lined up in the corridors” as there is no space left in the wards. “It’s not appropriate. It’s not a safe or dignified environment.”

    Unable to deliver an acceptable standard of care, many staff are demoralized – and considering their options. At Hayre’s hospital, “the day-to-day workplace talk is, ‘are we going to leave?’”

    Britain is braced for another wave of strikes over low pay and working conditions.

    A junior doctor at a hospital in Manchester, who wished to remain anonymous, told CNN that she had made the decision to join the growing number of NHS doctors who are moving abroad. She plans to move abroad in the summer, to work in a country that offers doctors better pay and working conditions.

    Of the eight doctors she lived with at university, six have already left. “They’ve all gone to Australia. They love it,” she said. Only one is planning to stay in the UK.

    Medical students are watching in alarm as their future workplace deteriorates.

    “For everyone I know, it’s almost a given that at some point they’re going to go to Australia or New Zealand,” said Eilidh Garrett, who studies medicine at Newcastle University. She is considering taking exams to work as a doctor in Canada.

    This is a hugely painful decision for many young doctors. “I think about my closest friends. If I go to another country and treat other people’s closest friends, while my friends struggle to see a doctor in the UK – that is really heartbreaking,” Garrett told CNN.

    A growing number of doctors are considering leaving the NHS to work abroad.

    Meanwhile, Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016 has likely not helped the situation. Research by the Nuffield Trust health think tank, published in November, finds that long-standing staff shortages in nursing and social care “have been exacerbated by Brexit.”

    The picture is “more complex” for doctors working in the NHS, the researchers found. While overall “EU numbers have remained relatively stable,” the report says, the data suggest a slowdown in the registration of specialists from the EU and European Free Trade Association countries since Brexit, particularly in certain specialties such as anesthetics.

    The concern is that these issues get worse the longer they go untreated.

    When patients finally get seen, their treatments take more time, forcing those after them to wait even longer as they get sicker.

    “In terms of the system performance, it feels like we’re past the tipping point,” Zaranko said. “The NHS has been gradually deteriorating in its performance for some time. But we’ve gone off a cliff in recent months.”

    It is unclear how the NHS regains its footing. Some compare this crisis to a period in the 1990s when services were rapidly deteriorating. The NHS was in bad shape, but restored its levels of service after a decade of historically high investment while Labour was in power.

    Injections of cash on this scale are unlikely to be replicated. The most recent budget announced by the government in November will see NHS England spending rise by only 2% in real terms on average over the next two years.

    “We recognize the pressures the NHS is facing so announced up to £250 million [$309 million] of additional funding to immediately help reduce hospital bed occupancy, alleviate pressures on A&E and unlock much-needed ambulance handovers,” a spokesperson from the Department of Health and Social Care told CNN in a statement.

    “This is on top of the £500 million [$618 million] Discharge Fund to speed up the safe discharge of patients and rolling out virtual wards to free up hospital beds and cut waiting cuts,” the statement continued.

    Pay negotiations between the government and nursing unions have so far been unsuccessful. British media outlets have reported that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak may be considering offering a one-off hardship payment of £1,000 ($1,236) to attempt to resolve the dispute, but many feel this underestimates the true nature of the crisis.

    “All I hear about is sticking plasters,” Neville said. “It depresses us all.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Florida GOP congressman discharged from hospital after accident: ‘Grateful to be home’ | CNN Politics

    Florida GOP congressman discharged from hospital after accident: ‘Grateful to be home’ | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Rep. Greg Steube was discharged from the hospital Saturday after being injured in an accident on his property in Sarasota, Florida, according to a tweet from the Republican congressman.

    “I’m grateful to be home and recovering after being discharged from the hospital today,” Steube said from his official Twitter account. “All praise and glory goes to God! Jen and I remain endlessly blessed by the prayers and support from our friends, family, and community.”

    On Wednesday, Steube “was knocked approximately 25 feet down off a ladder while cutting tree limbs,” and spent Wednesday evening in the intensive care unit, CNN previously reported.

    He was then moved out of the intensive care unit on Thursday, his office said in a statement.

    The Florida Republican on Saturday also thanked health care staff at Sarasota Memorial Hospital in a subsequent tweet, and said his office will provide updates next week on his recovery and his return to Washington, DC.

    Steube was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 2018. He comfortably won a third term in November representing Florida’s safely Republican 17th Congressional District.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • An elderly Florida couple’s murder-suicide agreement ended with a shooting and hostage situation at a Daytona Beach hospital | CNN

    An elderly Florida couple’s murder-suicide agreement ended with a shooting and hostage situation at a Daytona Beach hospital | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    A 76-year-old woman is in custody after fatally shooting her terminally ill husband in the head in what police say was an intended murder-suicide at a hospital in Daytona Beach, Florida, on Saturday.

    The terminally ill man, 77, was hospitalized at the Advent Health Hospital and made a plan with his wife three weeks ago to “end it” should his health get worse, Daytona Beach Police Chief Jakari E. Young said in a news conference. Police did not specify the man’s illness.

    The man intended to turn the gun on himself but was physically too weak to do so, police said. His wife, who indented to take her own life after, said she “couldn’t go through with it,” according to Young.

    The woman then barricaded herself in the hospital room.

    Officers responded to the hospital shortly after 11:30 a.m. and hostage negotiators made contact with the woman, whose identity hasn’t been released. She was taken into police custody at approximately 3 p.m., Young said.

    Keeping other patients on the 11th floor, where the hostage situation took place, was a “logistical nightmare” as many patients were on ventilators and could not be easily evacuated, he added.

    The woman is in custody and could be awaiting a first-degree murder charge, according to Young.

    “She’s very sad, it’s a tough situation,” Young said.

    It’s unclear how the woman entered the hospital with a gun and if the hospital had a metal detection security system. The exact gun used in the shooting also remains unclear.

    CNN reached out to AdventHealth for comment.

    There is no longer a police presence at the hospital, according to Young.

    Dr. Joshua Horenstein, a cardiologist at Advent Health Hospital, was working in the emergency department when he learned of the shooting incident.

    “Someone came in screaming in the emergency department that this was not a drill and to shelter in place,” Horenstein told CNN while hiding in a supply room with a nurse.

    Horenstein said he was finally able to leave the supply room after roughly 90 minutes.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Opinion: Women don’t have to die from cervical cancer | CNN

    Opinion: Women don’t have to die from cervical cancer | CNN

    [ad_1]

    Editor’s Note: Dr. Eloise Chapman-Davis is director of gynecologic oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Denise Howard is chief of obstetrics and gynecology at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital and a vice chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Weill Cornell Medicine. The views expressed in this commentary are their own. Read more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    As doctors who specialize in women’s reproductive health, we are on the front lines of a preventable crisis. Imagine treating a woman with advanced cancer who has a five-year survival rate of 17%, knowing that she should have never developed the deadly disease in the first place.

    This is what we are facing with cervical cancer. Yet we have the clinical tools not only to lower but also eliminate nearly all the roughly 14,000 new cases and 4,300 deaths from cervical cancer each year.

    Denise Howard

    We have effective screenings: the traditional Pap smear and the HPV test. If these screening tests are abnormal, additional tests can determine who needs further treatment to prevent the development of cancer. Importantly, we have the HPV vaccine, which protects against high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) types that cause the majority of cervical cancer cases and is nearly 100% effective, according to the National Cancer Institute.

    A report published earlier this month shows the vaccine’s tremendous impact. The US saw a 65% drop in cervical cancer rates from 2012 through 2019 among women ages 20-24, the first to have received the vaccine. The vaccine, combined with screening, could wipe out cervical cancer and make it a disease of the past.

    But the percentage of women overdue for their cervical cancer screening is growing, and, alarmingly, late-stage cases are on the rise.

    We have had the heartbreaking experience of seeing mothers in the prime of life die from this avoidable disease, leaving small children behind — even women who had an abnormal screening but never received follow-up care. It’s devastating to see an otherwise healthy person slowly die from a preventable cancer.

    Simply put, cervical cancer should never occur. This Cervical Cancer Awareness Month, we should commit to making that a reality. Here is what needs to happen.

    Eliminating cervical cancer requires commitment at multiple levels, from public awareness campaigns with culturally appropriate messaging that broadcasts the power of the vaccine and screenings to prevent cancer to resources that ensure all women have easy access to routine health exams.

    Timely screening reminders and systems to prioritize follow-up care are essential. Too many women with abnormal screenings don’t receive their results, reminders or follow-up instructions they understand and, therefore don’t receive the proper treatment. Barriers also include logistical challenges like transportation and language issues. Studies suggest that 13% to 40% of cervical cancer diagnoses result from lack of follow-up among women with an abnormal screening test.

    Gynecology and primary care practices should be vigilant about reaching and monitoring patients with suspicious test findings. Large health systems can leverage the power of the electronic health record to track abnormal tests and ensure these women receive the proper follow-up.

    Pediatricians should encourage parents of children 9 and older to get the HPV vaccine and stress its safety. About 60% of teenagers are up to date on their HPV vaccines, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Physicians not recommending the vaccine and parents’ rising concerns about its safety, despite more than 15 years of evidence that it is safe and effective, have been cited as top reasons why more children aren’t receiving this lifesaving vaccine.

    College campuses should do large-scale, catch-up vaccination outreach. These students are at high risk for contracting HPV, yet only half report having received the full HPV vaccine series. This service should be provided at no cost to students.

    Stark racial disparities also must be addressed. As Black women physicians, we are frustrated that Black women continue to be more likely to die from the disease than any other race, according to the American Cancer Society. The system failures contributing to this tragedy range from Black women receiving less aggressive treatment to barriers around access to affordable routine health care and the high-quality, specialized treatment needed to treat cancer. Everyone deserves access to quality care.

    Older patients should be told that approval of the HPV vaccine has been extended up to age 45 and to discuss with their doctor whether it’s right for them. Insurance providers should cover the cost of the vaccine for these older ages.

    Women should see a gynecologist on a regular basis well into their older years. We see patients with cervical cancer in their 60s and 70s who haven’t been screened in 20 years. Many people stop seeing a gynecologist after childbearing or menopause, but this shouldn’t be the case. Getting quality gynecological exams throughout a woman’s life is critical to preserving it.

    We also need to empower women to be their own advocates through health education. Women should receive their screening result with an explanation of what it means and any next steps clearly delineated. No news after a screening is not good news. In an ideal world, women would see their HPV status as essential information with the power to save their lives.

    Education makes a difference. At NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine, we produced a series of easy-to-understand, publicly available videos on cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine. We showed several of the vaccine videos to more than 100 parents in one of our pediatric practices that serves mostly low-income families as part of a pilot study. Their knowledge scores on a questionnaire about the vaccine and HPV that they completed before and after watching the videos increased nearly 80%, and roughly 40% of the unvaccinated children received the HPV vaccine within one month. We aim to expand this effort.

    We have the tools to prevent cervical cancer but fail to use them effectively. It’s unacceptable, and we can no longer ignore the problem. It’s time for a full-scale offensive focused on all fronts to make cervical cancer a disease of the past.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • 5 Colorado first responders charged in 2019 death of Elijah McClain plead not guilty to all charges | CNN

    5 Colorado first responders charged in 2019 death of Elijah McClain plead not guilty to all charges | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The five Aurora, Colorado first responders indicted by a state grand jury for the 2019 death of Elijah McClain pleaded not guilty to all charges Friday afternoon in an Adams County courthouse.

    Aurora Police officers Randy Roedema and Nathan Woodyard, former officer Jason Rosenblatt and Aurora Fire Rescue paramedics Jeremy Cooper and Peter Cichuniec in September 2021 were each indicted on charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide as part of a 32-count indictment.

    McClain, a 23-year-old Black man, was walking home from a convenience store on August 24 when he was apprehended by Aurora police officers responding to a “suspicious person” call, according to the indictment.

    Officers pinned McClain to the ground after a brief physical struggle. Woodyard then applied a carotid hold, which caused McClain to lose consciousness, the indictment said.

    In testimony to the grand jury, Roedema also put McClain in a bar hammer lock. Roedema stated he “cranked pretty hard” on McClain’s shoulder and heard it pop three times.

    Eventually paramedics arrived to the scene. Cooper made the decision to administer a 500 mg dose of Ketamine, according to the indictment.

    “A correct dosage of Ketamine is calculated according to a patient’s weight, with 5 mg of Ketamine per kilogram of patient weight,” stated the grand jury indictment.

    “Cooper said he estimated Mr. McClain’s weight to be approximately 200 pounds (90.7 kg). At that weight, in accordance with the standing order from their medical director, Mr. McClain should have been administered 453 mg of Ketamine,” the indictment read.

    “Cooper administered 500 mg of Ketamine. Mr. McClain actually weighed 143 pounds (65 kg) and as such his weight-based Ketamine dose should have been closer to 325 mg of Ketamine.”

    After giving him the dose, McClain was put on a gurney by the officers and paramedics.

    “By the time he was placed on the gurney, Mr. McClain appeared unconscious, had no muscle tone, was limp, and had visible vomit coming from his nose and mouth,” the indictment says. “(Officer) Roedema said he heard Mr. McClain snoring, which can be a sign of a ketamine overdose.”

    The paramedics found he had no pulse and was not breathing and performed CPR. He never regained consciousness and was declared brain-dead on August 27, the indictment states.

    The original autopsy report listed the cause of McClain’s death as “undetermined.” An amended autopsy report, completed in 2021 and made public last September, said McClain’s death was caused by complications from ketamine injection following restraint. The manner of death was left “undetermined.”

    Aurora police confirmed to CNN Woodyard and Roedema remain suspended indefinitely without pay. Rosenblatt was fired by the department in 2020.

    Ahead of their arraignment in Adams County, Colorado court on Friday, a district court judge ruled the trials of five defendants in McClain’s death will be split.

    Paramedics Peter Cichuniec and Jeremy Cooper will be tried together, but separate from the other three defendants in the case, Judge Mark Warner announced in an order issued on Wednesday.

    Aurora police officer Woodyard will be tried separately from officers Roedema and former officer Rosenblatt, Warner said.

    The trial date for Roedema and Rosenblatt is scheduled to begin July 11. Cooper and Cichuniec’s trial is scheduled to begin on August 7 and Woodyard’s trial on September 18.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Opinion: ‘We can barely breathe.’ How did Britain’s treasured NHS get so sick? | CNN

    Opinion: ‘We can barely breathe.’ How did Britain’s treasured NHS get so sick? | CNN

    [ad_1]

    Editor’s Note: Dr. Roopa Farooki is an Internal Medicine Doctor for the NHS in South East England. She is the author of “Everything is True: A Junior Doctor’s Story of Life, Death and Grief,” on the first 40 days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    I’m writing this towards midnight, having just finished a set of four 13-hour shifts in my small, coastal hospital’s Accident & Emergency (A&E) department.

    It’s hard to describe the helplessness we feel, as doctors, every time we walk through the emergency waiting room, packed with patients, knowing we can only review and treat one person at a time.

    Knowing that when we see someone really sick, who needs admission, that they might be waiting on that chair or trolley for over 24 hours before a bed on the ward becomes free.

    I’m an internal medicine doctor for the UK’s National Health Service – better known as the NHS. I’m currently on the medical on-call team – the majority of patients who come through the front door at A&E are referred to us.

    Government-funded and free at the point of care, the NHS is a source of national pride.

    And it is in crisis.

    There aren’t enough beds for our patients. Trying to include an extra bed on each side of the ward, is akin to trying to make more space in a car park by simply drawing the lines closer together.

    And then, there are not enough staff to care for the beds that we do have. When we manage to make a patient well enough to be discharged, we find we cannot, as there is no one in the community to care for them.

    No one to help with the non-medical activities of daily living, such as washing and dressing.

    Across the NHS, health care staff have been feeling the strain of years of underfunding.

    We work in hospitals where in the A&E, a consulting room to review and examine a patient is a luxury, and the doctors queue up for them.

    I recently had to perform a lumbar puncture – where a needle is inserted into the patient’s spinal canal, to measure and collect cerebrospinal fluid for testing – normally a procedure that you could do at the bedside.

    But this patient didn’t have a bed in A&E, even though they clearly needed one, and was just lying down on two chairs pushed together.

    I managed to get a consulting room for 30 minutes and did the procedure there, before I was told to leave by the emergency department consultant. It seems I shouldn’t have been allowed to occupy the room for even that long.

    My own son came into our A&E not so long ago. He had a dislocated shoulder after falling off his bike, on a day when I happened to be working at a different hospital.

    He was treated relatively quickly, with pain relief, his shoulder popped back into place by the emergency department doctor. His X-ray repeated and checked before being discharged.

    Still, he was shocked, visibly shocked at the place where I have spent much of my working life.

    Military personnel were on call to fill the gap during a strike by ambulance workers over a government pay dispute.

    It’s different when you see your everyday reality though naïve eyes. He saw the elderly patients on the jigsaw of trolleys crammed into the department, pushed against the wall, squeezed in the gap between the bed and nursing stations.

    He saw the fluids hanging from rails where we had no stands, lines running into the patient’s forearms. He saw the oxygen fed into their noses from cylinders propped along the bed, the cacophony of beeping machines and alarms.

    It doesn’t look like it does on the TV. It doesn’t even look like it does on reality TV.

    Sometimes though we can fix a patient’s problem in reasonable time. The patient’s treatment, albeit in an uncomfortable chair, can still be started. And after 24 hours of antibiotics or fluids or other interventions, they can improve enough to be discharged home.

    That happened first thing this morning. It was a relief for the patient, their family and me, that I could send him home with oral antibiotics, some two days after he had come into the emergency department.

    In this instance, he had not been left in the waiting room the entire time. We had placed him in a small room with five other patients having interventions in their chairs.

    In these closeted spaces, informal bonds form. The patients in those rooms look out for each other. If you call out a name, and someone is too hard of hearing to answer, or in the toilet, the others will let you know where they are.

    I’m always apologizing to patients. And to their families. I’m humble about the care that we can offer, with the resources and staffing that we have.

    I’m always worrying that while we’re managing the medical issues – while I’m monitoring arterial oxygenation by taking regular blood gases from their radial arteries, while our nurses are administering medication, while our radiologists are reporting the imaging – that our patients are suffering socially and psychologically.

    I encourage them to call their families when they’re in the emergency department, and plug in their phone.

    I urge them to keep up their food and fluid intake, while stuck in the trolley or chair. “Please have a cup of tea, and a snack, and a meal, whenever someone comes round to offer you one,” I say.

    “Even if you don’t feel like it now, you might want it a bit later.”

    How is this different from the pandemic? In many ways, it’s not. Then, we worked with the understanding that we might walk into a virus, get ill, and maybe even get critically ill. That’s not changed.

    Many of the patients I admitted over Christmas, sitting in the same space as other patients, later tested positive for Covid-19 or Influenza A.

    Nurses employed at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust strike outside the James Cook Hospital on January 18, 2023.

    When I wrote an account of the first 40 days of the Covid-19 pandemic, from the start of lockdown, I described the unprecedented nature of the situation, the compromise for patients and my health care colleagues.

    “Death and deterioration have been impossibly normalized. You’re living in impossible times,” I wrote.

    I never thought that almost three years later we would still be working like this. I had hoped to look back at that time with learning and wisdom, knowing that it was extraordinary, that we got through it, and hoping that I had done enough to help.

    But now, that egotism, that sense of what we are doing as individual clinicians is in any way significant, seems foolish.

    We are caught in a trap of underfunding that means what we can offer patients isn’t enough. In medical terms, this is a chronic condition, like heart failure. We are now suffering an acute exacerbation, so the fluid that should have been pumped around efficiently is now filling our boots and our lungs. We can barely breathe.

    The junior doctors, that is any doctor who is not a consultant, have experienced more than a decade’s worth of sub-inflation pay awards, amounting to a 26% decrease in pay since 2008.

    Recently it has been reported that as many as 40% of my junior doctor colleagues will leave the NHS next year.

    From my personal experience, that seems optimistic. No one that I know wishes to remain in the NHS once their training contract finishes. They are talking about taking a year off, agency work, heading abroad where there is better pay and conditions, having more time to see their families.

    They want anything other than what they have experienced for the last three years.

    NHS Accident & Emergency departments felt the brunt of Covid-19 and Influenza A cases this winter.

    Already this winter we’ve had several strikes from ambulance workers and nurses, with more planned this week.

    But next year, every day will be like a strike day, if something isn’t done to prevent our clinical staff from giving up and burning out.

    And the tragedy is that this feels orchestrated. This chronic disease, this failure of our hearts, has been deliberately mismanaged; with the decade of persistent underfunding, it is as though the medication that we need has been withheld, to a point of crisis.

    And then the political leadership essentially say to us, “Look, you just can’t work anymore. You’re not well.” As though it is our fault.

    Our treasured NHS. I still find it extraordinary that I can organize expensive tests and start life-saving treatments and procedures, from the emergency room to the intensive care unit, that would cost hundreds or thousands of pounds, and ask nothing more from a patient, for all of this, than their time in the hospital.

    I still feel that being a doctor is the best job in the world, providing care for those who need it. And I have been so proud to be an NHS doctor, giving back to the place which looked after my sister through her breast cancer and chemotherapy, and me through the birth of my children.

    The NHS will exist as long as there are those who will fight for it.

    But we’re all so tired. People clapped for us during the pandemic, and it felt empty, performative at the time.

    It means nothing when we are left to fight for the NHS on our own.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Florida congressman making ‘good progress’ after falling 25 feet off ladder on his Sarasota property | CNN Politics

    Florida congressman making ‘good progress’ after falling 25 feet off ladder on his Sarasota property | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Republican Rep. Greg Steube of Florida is making “good progress” after suffering “several serious injuries” in an accident on his Sarasota property Wednesday afternoon, according to a statement from his office posted to his official Twitter account.

    The congressman remains hospitalized but was moved out of the intensive care unit Thursday afternoon, his office announced in a separate tweet.

    “The Steube family is grateful for the outpouring of well wishes and prayers,” the tweet said. “Rep. Steube was moved out of the ICU this afternoon. He remains hospitalized under the care of a great team.”

    Steube had spent the night in the ICU, his office tweeted Thursday morning, noting that he “was knocked approximately 25 feet down off a ladder while cutting tree limbs.”

    The earlier statement also noted that Steube’s injuries “are still under assessment but not life threatening at this time. He is making progress and in good spirits.”

    Further details on congressman’s injuries were not provided. CNN has reached out to his office for additional information.

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeted Thursday that he had spoken to Steube.

    “I spoke with @RepGregSteube and his wife, Jen, this morning. He is in good spirits, and our entire conference prays for a swift recovery,” the California Republican said. “I informed him he will serve on the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and he is eager to get back to work!”

    Steube was first elected to the US House of Representatives in 2018. He comfortably won a third term in November representing Florida’s safely Republican 17th Congressional District.

    This story and headline have been updated.

    [ad_2]

    Source link