Monday, August 16, 2021
Accessing contraceptives is a health necessity for many women. Contraceptives help prevent unwanted pregnancy while reducing the risk of diseases including endometrial, ovarian, and colorectal cancers. However, finding and obtaining the right contraceptive method often places an undue financial burden on women, particularly low-income women.
One of the many achievements for patients in the Affordable Care Act was defining contraceptive as an essential health benefit that could be covered at no cost under the bill. This has led to a dramatic decrease in costs for most contraceptives and a dramatic increase in contraceptive use.
Unfortunately, while the Affordable Care Act mandates coverage across the full range of contraceptive methods, it does not mandate coverage across the full range of FDA-approved contraceptive products, and, despite the intent of the bill, contains loopholes that allow insurance companies to deny coverage of certain products to women who need them and shift costs onto patients.
Why does this matter? Not every contraceptive product is right for every woman. Different products have different side effects interactions with other medications and conditions that impact women to varying extents, and some products that are effective for one woman may not work at all for another.
Timothy Smeeding began his research career in public affairs and economics by sitting across from the woman who created the official poverty measure of the United States – a standard he’s worked most of his career to change.
The stakes are high. The poverty line directs tens of billions of dollars annually in aid to the nation’s poorest people – for public housing, subsidized rent, food stamps, free school lunches, college grants, Medicaid and federal grants to nonprofits that serve low income communities.
But the equation used to set the poverty line hasn’t been updated since the 1960s. Consider 1967: The annual median income was $7,143; the median rent was less than $100 per month; and a gallon of gas cost 31 cents. A year at the University of Pennsylvania was less than $2,000.
“The official poverty measure was something that we created 70, 65 years ago, and it was appropriate for that time and period. But it isn’t anymore,” said Smeeding, a professor at Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Most expenses, such as housing, fuel and college tuition, have skyrocketed. But the cost of food – which the poverty measure was mainly based on – has become cheaper because of better farming practices and more efficient supply chains.
Choosing measurements based on current realities
The federal government determines who is in poverty based on the cost of food to sustain a household, adjusted by the number of people in a family. Today, a family of four falls into poverty based on an annual household income of $26,500.
Sunday, August 15, 2021
The Arizona Education Association and a coalition of education organizations and supporters filed a lawsuit against the state over the constitutionality of the ban on K-12 mask mandates on Thursday.
The Arizona Education Association, the largest professional association for public school employees in Arizona, argues the provisions included in the K-12 budget bill, prohibiting school districts from requiring masks and the COVID-19 vaccine for students and staff are unconstitutional, as they are unrelated to the budget.
According to the lawsuit filed by AEA, the law violates the single subject and title requirements for legislation and equal protection grounds as set forth in the Arizona Constitution,
“Governor Ducey and the GOP legislative leadership are putting our children in harm’s way and our communities at risk,” says AEA President Joe Thomas. “Their actions are reckless and abusive. By tying the hands of our local school board leaders, lawmakers are preventing them from making decisions to keep our students safe.”
Several school districts across Arizona, including Tucson Unified School District, opted to require masks in schools in opposition to the Governor. As of Tuesday, TUSD Board member Adelita Grijalva said the district had yet to receive a letter from the Governor’s office, but expected it to arrive after the legislation technically comes into effect on Sept. 29, 90 days after the session adjourns.
“We know the majority of parents and our educators support our school leaders doing everything they can to keep our students and staff safe and healthy,” says Thomas. “We’re seeing more and more school districts taking steps to protect their students and communities. But they shouldn’t have to break the law to implement common sense protections for our students. We urge lawmakers to listen to their constituents and make the right decision to ensure our classrooms and campuses are safe so we can keep our students learning in our classrooms.”
Ducey spokesman C.J. Karamargin said, “We're confident the legislation we signed is completely constitutional.”
Saturday, August 14, 2021
Friday, August 13, 2021
Arizona is going through “Groundhog Day” with the COVID-19 pandemic: People are getting sick, again. Arizona is once more in a COVID surge, just like a year ago — but with two notable differences. Last summer, schools reopened in the setting of slowly declining COVID rates; right now, COVID cases and hospitalization rates are continuing to dramatically rise. In addition, schools are now left without key tools for keeping students and educators safe.
Since the outbreaks we saw in July 2020 and throughout the winter months, the Republican-controlled Arizona Legislature passed, and Gov. Doug Ducey signed, a law taking away local control from schools that want to implement science-based safety protections such as wearing masks. As parents, physicians, and public health experts, we have one simple message for them: Get rid of this senseless law now, which endangers the lives of children, teachers, school staff and their neighbors and loved ones.
This law will prevent what we all want: for children to be able to safely and consistently remain physically present in schools, and for parents to be able to safely keep working. Children who fall ill with or who are exposed to COVID-19 will need to quarantine at home, and their parents or guardians will need to remain at home to quarantine with them, preventing them from going to work. If schools are prohibited from requiring universal masking together with other mitigation strategies, expect to see repeated outbreaks and increasing absences from both schools and other workplaces for 10 to 14 day stretches throughout the school year.
Furthermore, this law is an overreach by the state, setting a dangerous precedent in preventing public health agencies from leading us through the current and future public health crises. To keep people safe, we need credible and qualified public health professionals providing guidance based on the most up to date science during a public health crisis — not legislators, a lame duck Governor, or political appointees more concerned about partisanship than the health of their citizens.
Physicians, nurses, and all healthcare workers are exhausted from being expected to clean up the mess that results from this hostility towards evidence based public health measures, as well as attacks on our integrity from political pawns. Physicians specifically take an oath to do no harm, and are held to the highest ethical and practice standards of any profession. To deliberately undermine the work of those who have dedicated their lives to saving others during one of the worst pandemics in modern history is not just tragic, but inexcusable.
