Policies: Page 19

Transgender Health Care Endangered

A few years ago, Stephan Rivera, a 31-year-old native of the Bronx, New York, consulted two doctors about his prospects for “top surgery,” a double mastectomy. “I was like, I really just want to cut them off,” he recalls. Although he was generally content —working as a teacher’s aide in a public school and living with […]

Transgender Health Care

NIH Rejected Alcohol Ad Study during Quest for Industry Funds

It’s rare for officials at the National Institutes of Health to summon university scientists from hundreds of miles away. So when Dr. Michael Siegel of Boston University and a colleague got the call to meet with the director of NIH’s Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, he said, “I knew we were in trouble.” He […]

NIH Rejects Alcohol Study

Microplastics Found in Nearly All Bottled Water

Drining from a plastic water bottle likely means ingesting microplastic particles, a new study claims, prompting fresh concerns — and calls for scientific research — on the possible health implications of widespread plastics pollution. A study carried out on more than 250 water bottles sourced from 11 brands in nine different countries revealed the Microplastic contamination […]

Bottled Water Contaminations

New Iowa Law Allows Plans that Skirt ACA

Iowa will allow people to buy a cheaper form of health insurance that skirts Affordable Care Act rules, under legislation signed into law Monday by the state’s Republican governor. The law will allow Iowa’s Farm Bureau to partner with a designated insurance company to offer so-called health benefit plans that technically aren’t defined as insurance. […]

VA Choice Could Open Way to Privatization

For the last year, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin insisted the VA would not be privatized on his watch. Now, thanks to a Koch-supported coup at the top of the second-largest department in government, his watch has ended — and the battle over privatization persists. For years the Koch brothers have been hovering around the […]

First Responders Improving Interactions for People with Autism

First responders areare increasingly likely to respond to an incident involving a person with autism. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is the fastest-growing developmental disability affecting about 1 in 68 children in the United States. On a global scale approximately 1 percent of the world population has ASD. How can first responders adapt their response when […]

Portrait of cute autistic boy with headphones

Sewage Leaks Plague Elite Washington Hospital

“A black, grainy foul-smelling substance” coated the floor of an operating room at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center, which also suffered from at least one “active leak” of sewage, according to a review by the District of Columbia health department last August. That health department report was cited in a lawsuit filed against the hospital by the […]

Hospital Sewage Leak

Soda Industry Fighting Back on Local Taxes

Watch out public health advocates – as soda tax campaigns are bubbling up in cities across the nation to combat obesity, diabetes and other serious health conditions – the beverage industry is working to choke off this expression of local democracy. A state bill banning localities from taxing food and beverages came out of nowhere in Michigan […]

States Need More Rules to Protect Insurance Market

Without more rules in place, state regulators won’t be able to fully protect the individual health insurance market from adverse selection when the individual mandate penalty ends in 2019 and if the Trump administration expands association health plans (AHPs) and short-term catastrophic plans, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. States can “ensure a level playing […]

Insurance Market

Sanders: ‘We Know Nothing About VA Pick’

Sen. Bernie Sanders wouldn’t commit to supporting President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, on Sunday. In an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” the Vermont independent noted that Jackson, Trump’s personal physician, is a virtual unknown on veterans issues. He also expressed concerns the Trump administration […]

Institute Supports Conscience Rules in Healthcare

First Liberty Institute attorneys today submitted public comments on behalf of several religious ministries in support of new United States Health and Human Services (“HHS”) guidelines that ensure the protection of conscience rights for health care professionals. “Without conscience protections, health care professionals across America risk discrimination for refusing to perform, facilitate, or refer for procedures that […]

First Liberty Institute

Why Take the Risk of Skipping Insurance?

In tiny Marion, North Carolina, the Buchanans decided that $1,800 a month was too much to pay for health insurance, and are going without it for the first time in their lives. In Harahan, one bend of the Mississippi river up from New Orleans, the Owenses looked at their doubling insurance premiums and decided no […]

Skipping Insurance

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