Opinion: After 30 years of 340B, it’s time for data and an honest conversation
The 340B Drug Discount Program turns 30 on Nov. 4. This once-obscure drug access program…
Category: First Opinion
Opinion: Listen: Home health care is facing devastating ‘clawbacks’
Terry Wilcox’s grandmother lived in an isolated house at the top of a hill overlooking…
Opinion: International concussion guidelines must protect all athletes’ brains, not just professionals’
Imagine that you are the parent of an 11-year-old soccer player who dreams of competing…
Opinion: Covid-19 is an inverse equity story, not a racial equity success story
As MacArthur Foundation fellow Jennifer Richeson noted in The Atlantic in 2020, Americans love to…
Opinion: Better access to PET scans can help reduce racial inequities in Alzheimer’s disease
While many Americans are familiar with the devastating impact of Alzheimer’s disease, few understand the…
Opinion: Keeping families out of ICUs no longer makes sense as the pandemic eases
On, December 9, 2020, my mom, brother, and I waited in a cold, wintery drizzle…
Opinion: Medical professionals: Make your plan to vote now. Then vote!
The U.S. is less than three weeks from the 2022 midterm elections, which will decide…
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Opinion: Research funding is broken. Using a lottery approach could fix it
Thirty years ago, Katalin Karikó had what was then an outlandish idea: use messenger RNA…
Opinion: Support family caregivers to improve and diversify clinical trials
During the Covid-19 pandemic, America’s 53 million family caregivers gained some long overdue recognition for…
Opinion: How states can act to limit drug price increases, saving employers and workers billions
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 mandates that Medicare-covered drug sales will be protected from…
Opinion: What the Makena vote means about accelerated approval, trust, and the FDA
On Wednesday, the FDA advisory committee that oversees obstetrics, reproductive, and urologic drugs voted 14-1…
Opinion: To learn lessons from pandemics, don’t listen to big pharma
Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, the leaders of wealthy countries pledged to respond with “global…
Opinion: STAT+: How digital health innovators can successfully navigate evolving FDA regulations
In the rapidly changing landscape of digital health, innovation has often outpaced regulations, especially for…
Opinion: Ensuring food security and health beyond the Covid-19 public health emergency
Expansions to social safety net programs during Covid-19 have been essential for low-income Americans hit…
Opinion: UpToDate has a racism problem. Its name is Dr. Stanley Goldfarb
The University of Pennsylvania’s Division of Renal-Electrolyte and Hypertension recently made a quiet update to…
Opinion: Polio eradication is in sight. Don’t stop funding it now
When it comes to eradicating infectious diseases, there can be no half measures: it’s an…
Opinion: Monkeypox vaccine: a case study for real-world data
With health emergencies becoming more common, the world needs more efficient ways to test the…
Opinion: The future for practicing physicians in a corporate world
Forty years ago, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning history “The Social Transformation of American Medicine,” sociologist…
Opinion: The global diabetes crisis few are talking about
In the numbers game of disease statistics, type 1 diabetes takes a back seat to…
Opinion: Why the U.S. needs a public benefit biopharma industry
The biopharma industry is failing Americans, economically and medically. U.S. biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, like…
Opinion: Maternity care in the U.S. is in crisis. It’s time to call the midwife
After pushing for several hours, my patient looks exhausted but happy, clutching her seconds-old newborn…
Opinion: Listen: The Supreme Court set public health back 50 years. The next term could be even worse
It took the U.S. Supreme Court just seven days last June to set back public…
Opinion: CBO’s dismissal of health care price transparency is based on faulty premises
Can price transparency meaningfully reduce the outrageous cost of health care and coverage? I believe…
Opinion: Medicare’s cuts to home health are a step in the wrong direction
My grandmother lived at the top of a hill overlooking the magical mountains and valleys…
Opinion: The cost of doing nothing: Congress is missing a rare opportunity to improve FDA policies and help people with deadly illnesses
Congress has taken the necessary step of including critical reauthorizations for the Prescription Drug User…
Opinion: The first malaria vaccine is here. Let’s meet the moment
One child dies every two minutes from malaria. Wider use of a new vaccine can…
Opinion: Certified nursing assistants do important work. They deserve to be paid a living wage for it
In mid-April 2020, as Covid-19 shutdowns and lockdowns were being put in place across the…
Opinion: FDA’s plan to define “healthy” for food packaging: Better than the existing labeling anarchy, but do we really need it?
The FDA has announced the set of rules it proposes to enforce for manufacturers to…
Opinion: The new law that could stealthily transform biomedical innovation
Buried deep within the Inflation Reduction Act’s drug-price negotiation provisions is language that could open…
Opinion: Interoperability can’t wait: Don’t delay information blocking rules
Interoperability is a word you seldom hear uttered outside the health care sector (though there…
Opinion: Needed: stricter screening of gene synthesis orders, customers
Scientists rely on gene synthesis technologies as a research tool for everything from basic research…
Opinion: Listen: Wheelchair users and Medicare disagree on what’s ‘primarily medical in nature’
Modern wheelchairs have amazing capabilities. At the push of a button, they can position a…
Opinion: Messaging — the unrecognized coefficient in pandemic control — matters
A little over a century ago, scientists working in laboratories discovered that microbes were the…
Opinion: How can the latest Alzheimer’s therapy reach patients? Follow this trustworthy process
The press release issued by pharmaceutical companies Eisai and Biogen on Sept. 27 might someday…
Opinion: Better use of health savings accounts: lessons from Singapore
Today, 9 in 10 Americans have health insurance, more than ever before, yet health care…
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Opinion: Will there be a Supreme assault on public health?
In just seven days last June, the U.S. Supreme Court set back public health by…
Opinion: How the Inflation Reduction Act can help decarbonize the health care industry
The climate crisis — the greatest threat to human health in history — is often…
Opinion: Maternal-fetal surgery is not an alternative to abortion care
Every day, pregnant people across the United States get the news that the futures they…
Opinion: Rabies will continue to take lives without stronger human-animal health policies
The Covid-19 pandemic set back many of the global health goals for 2030. One of…
Opinion: How health systems can truly value Black lives: help close the racial wealth gap
Institutional declarations of support for Black lives were ubiquitous in the aftermath of the murder…
Opinion: Medicare needs to cover the full spectrum of care for substance use disorders
Imagine if Medicare covered treatments for stage 1 or stage 4 cancers, but nothing in…
Opinion: Listen: How the Dobbs decision could affect how and where clinical trials are conducted
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade opened the door to allow states…
Opinion: The Inflation Reduction Act will help the U.S. achieve maximum vaccine access and uptake, but access gaps remain
One of the many achievements in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which President Biden signed…
Opinion: Doctors who knowingly spread Covid-19 lies should be held accountable
The California State Legislature has sent a bill to Gov. Gavin Newsom that strengthens discipline…
Opinion: FDA: Ignore a pharma company’s deceptive racial equity argument for keeping Makena, an ineffective preterm labor drug
In an effort to sway the Food and Drug Administration not to withdraw accelerated approval…
Opinion: Subject, not suspect: The new hazards of conducting clinical research in the Dobbs era
Here’s a scenario anyone who has done clinical research will recognize: A 32-year-old woman participating…
Opinion: Market share isn’t the only metric for biosimilars’ success
Market share is often held up as the most relevant metric for the success of…
Opinion: Gender-affirming care should be embraced, not met with vitriol and bomb threats
As a pediatrician and a parent of a transgender son, I have become increasingly alarmed…
Opinion: Public health agencies: learn from NASA about regaining the public’s trust
The amazing images of the Cartwheel Galaxy captured by the James Webb Space Telescope this…
Opinion: Termination is the safest course for some high-risk pregnancies. Dobbs decision threatens that care
Ava was excited about her pregnancy. As her rheumatologists, we were anxious about it. Her…