It has been a busy health policy year. Here are my choices for the top health policy
stories. They all may not have made big
headlines, but all will reverberate for some time.
The Slowing of
Healthcare Inflation
This was on my
watch list coming into this year, and I’ll lead with it today because it
was the best health policy news of the year.
When healthcare inflation came in low this year, it did all sorts of
good things. It helped balance state
budgets, extended the life of the Medicare Trust Fund, and dropped the price
tag of the Affordable Care Act. Inflation
is supposed to jump up this year as millions more become insured, but we can at
least hope that a more modest trendline continues.
Mental Health Parity
And for some more good news… It took five years and
incessant lobbying from heroes like Patrick Kennedy, but the
final rule implementing the Mental Health Parity Act of 2008 was finally
released this year, coinciding roughly with the 50th anniversary
of President Kennedy’s signing of the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963. This isn’t the end of the fight for fairness
and equity for people with mental illnesses. It is just a new beginning. One
that will test a new generation of policy leaders. Let us hope – and pray –
that these leaders will rise to the occasion and make policy with justice for
all.
And now for the not-so-good news….
The Lack of Action in
the Aftermath of Sandy Hook
Didn’t you just assume that policymakers would give us much
stronger gun laws and much more
robust mental health screening and services in the aftermath of the Sandy
Hook massacre? But for most, once the
wailing quieted down, so did their commitment to act – just as it did after
Tucson, Aurora, Blacksburg, and D.C. It
is a year later now. What has really
changed to prevent such a tragedy from happening again in the future?
The Death of Itzcoatl
Ocampo
Itzcoatl Ocampo may not be a household name, but when he
died last month in a jail cell while awaiting trial for murder, it was a
depressing denouement to the story which probably demonstrated most effectively
how our social welfare policies have failed. Ocampo was accused of killing four homeless
men two years ago. I wrote about this in
a column entitled California
Screaming. But those victims’ lives had value – to their families and
society. And Ocampo was a decorated veteran.
His death was reported
to be a suicide; his mental health needs may have been neglected. I’ve known policymakers who would argue that
this was one person gone bad, and no one could have foreseen the outcome. But they are wrong. This story is way too familiar, and ties
together the way we too often neglect homeless people with chronic mental
illness, veterans, and veterans who are both homeless and chronically mentally
ill.
Magic Johnson Speaks Out
– Again – about AIDS
It was twenty-two years ago when Magic Johnson announced
that he was infected with HIV. At the
time, most people saw HIV infection as a death sentence. But as he and others lived on with the AIDS
virus because of advances in pharmaceutical medicine, two things happened. We grew to understand that people could live
with HIV infection. And we became more
complacent about preventing it. As Johnson
and others point out year after year, a quarter million U.S. residents are
infected and don’t even know it.
The Tragedy of Allen
Daniel Hicks, Sr.
When Allen Daniel Hicks died of a stroke in 2012, he died of
an often-silent chronic disease that attacks African American men more
frequently than other men and women. And
we know this. What made Mr. Hick’s death
so tragic, and what made it a story in 2013, were the circumstances under which
he died. After suffering his stroke
while driving his car in Florida, he was initially brought to jail, instead of
a hospital, for resisting an officer – apparently while incapacitated. A
settlement was announced this year, making news headlines in Tampa. But the
whole story reminded us that race does
matter, in the ways diseases attack us, and sometimes in the way we respond
to them.
The Obamacare Rollout
If it hadn’t been for the government shutdown and Duck Dynasty, the problems with the Obamacare rollout might have been the
only news story of the last three months of the year. In fact, this was such a
pervasive story (and, I think, a political winner for the Republicans), that it probably even prevented another budget crisis from happening. (I bet you didn’t even remember that Congress had originally scheduled one for this month.) Thank goodness for small favors, but with over a million people already insured because of Obamacare the real
story of the rollout will not be written until next year.
And so in the meantime, in the words of St. Nick, Happy
Christmas to all!
Paul Gionfriddo via email: gionfriddopaul@gmail.com. Twitter: @pgionfriddo. Facebook: www.facebook.com/paul.gionfriddo. LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/paulgionfriddo/
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