Opinion: Congress: Don’t let hospital care at home shrivel when the public health emergency ends
During surges of Covid-19, providing hospital-level care in the home was a good alternative to…
Category: First Opinion
Opinion: Monkeypox patients should not be left to suffer when an FDA-approved drug could help
Andy couldn’t sleep more than a couple fitful hours a night because it felt like…
Opinion: New competencies on diversity, equity, and inclusion for medical education across the continuum
Turning students into competent physicians in just four years is a tall order. They have…
Opinion: Empower primary care with adequate payments and technology
Nina, the mother of an autistic teenager, had never experienced a panic attack until Covid-19…
Opinion: STAT+: Value-based drug pricing: When does it work best?
Value-based drug pricing offers an important way to bring down the high cost of drugs…
Opinion: Opioid-pushing executives should get jail time, not fines
The first time I heard the word “Oxy” was President’s Day, 2001, as my 18-year-old…
Opinion: FDA rule would facilitate prescription-to-OTC switches but nix a third class of drugs
After a decade-long wait, the Food and Drug Administration finally issued a proposed rule in…
Opinion: Secrecy: A demon of gene therapy’s past bedevils its future
Twenty-three years ago, the field of gene therapy was bursting with the promise of breakthrough…
Opinion: Dobbs decision will rob many medical students of essential abortion training
As medical students — the next generation of physicians — we believe that the Supreme…
Opinion: Real-world evidence must not become evidence for abortion-related prosecution
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn federal protection for abortion changed in an instant how…
Opinion: STAT+: How pharma and biotech can keep innovating in a bear market
Over the last decade, the biotech sector experienced the largest boom it has ever seen….
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Opinion: Community-level risk: an ‘uninformative’ guide for Covid-19 prevention
For the first time since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced its three-level…
Opinion: Hospitals and for-profit PBMs are diverting billions in 340B savings from patients in need
America’s economically disadvantaged patients can point in two directions when talking about what is wrong…
Opinion: Are tax-exempt hospitals giving back their fair share to communities? It depends on what you count
Nonprofit hospitals in the U.S. are exempt from most taxes. To earn this status, they…
Opinion: The FDA owes parents an explanation about why it delayed authorizing Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine for young kids
Until mid-June, 1 in 13 persons living in the United States — that’s all children…
Opinion: The monkeypox vaccine underscores the value of U.S. investments in preparedness
After living through the Covid-19 epidemic, many people around the world reacted to the sudden…
Opinion: STAT+: Why health care organizations need to invest in workforce career advancement
In a tight health care labor market, health care companies must be creative in attracting…
Opinion: The accuracy of pulse oximeters shouldn’t depend on a person’s skin color
Covid-19 made pulse oximeters an even more important tool for measuring the amount of oxygen…
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Opinion: THC ingestion by young kids highlights the need to tighten inadequate packaging regulations
Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, is finding its way into the hands and…
Opinion: Improve CDC’s quarantine stations to prevent the next pandemic
In today’s interconnected world, people, packages, and animals can circumnavigate the globe in less than…
Opinion: How the Dobbs decision changed my research on reproductive health technology
If you are using technology to track your period, and abortion is even a remote…
Opinion: PBMs are inflating the cost of generic drugs. They must be reined in
These are not comfortable days in Washington for pharmacy benefit managers, the highly consolidated group…
Opinion: Mainstream medicine must embrace palliative care services
Even before the onset of Covid-19, there were legions of people with serious illnesses in…
Opinion: FDA: Don’t rush a move to change the Covid-19 vaccine composition
On Tuesday, the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) voted 19-2 to…
Opinion: Wheelchair users live outside the home, not just inside. Medicare policies need to acknowledge that
My daughter, Katherine, is 21 years old. She has cerebral palsy and has relied on…
Opinion: The next epidemic may be here. The U.S. isn’t ready for it
As if dealing with continued waves of Covid-19 isn’t enough, the U.S. is facing a…
Opinion: Now is not the time for Congress to further cut hospitals’ Medicare payments
As the U.S. slowly emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic, hospitals hope get back to some…
Opinion: Looking for ‘black swan’ outbreaks can prepare for future pandemics
In December 2021, one year into the Covid-19 pandemic, my colleague Alina Deshpande had the…
Opinion: A major problem for minors: post-Roe access to abortion
Now that the Supreme Court has overturned constitutional protection to abortion access, more than two…
Opinion: Arthur Ashe and AIDS: Did the public have the right to know his diagnosis?
Do prominent public figures who are ill have some type of responsibility to reveal their…
Opinion: Digital back doors can lead down the path to health inequity
For years, racism mandated that Black people and other people of color in the United…
Opinion: Signals from monkeypox: Create an external advisory group to start preparing for the next pandemic
As the U.S. reels from a more than 1 million reported deaths due directly to…
Opinion: Needed: a clearer explanation of why diversity in clinical trials is important
Increasing the diversity of clinical trial participants is all the rage these days. The numbers…
Opinion: Congress: Fund PrEP to end the HIV epidemic
As the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies…
Opinion: Health care has a carbon problem. Health tech can help fix it
As climate change threatens the health of the planet — and everyone living on it…
Opinion: A national patient ID is essential for patient safety
Misidentifying patients can have tragic consequences. Numerous catastrophic cases and near misses have been collected…
Opinion: The U.S. needs to revitalize research on the health effects of low-dose radiation
People are exposed to low-dose radiation in many ways: having a CT scan, working as…
Opinion: U.S. health care needs to be fixed. Look to the LGBTQ+ community to do it
The brewing monkeypox outbreak that’s raising health alarms in the LGBTQ+ community comes on the…
Opinion: Hold science to higher standards on racism
Shortly before an 18-year-old white supremacist entered a supermarket in a Black neighborhood of Buffalo,…
Opinion: Never forget that early vaccines came from testing on enslaved people
In response to the growing spread of monkeypox, public health leaders are for the first…
Opinion: Why I ask my patients about their faith or religion
As a surgeon specializing in cancer, I often meet people at a time of crisis…
Opinion: Reformulating drugs helps profits more than patients
Prescription drug prices remain stubbornly high in the U.S. even though making drugs more affordable…
Opinion: Medical schools need to be part of the solution to preventing gun violence
Like so many Americans, we watched in horror the news reports about the mass shootings…
Opinion: New report: gains in patient safety have stalled over the past decade
Hospital care helps patients recover from serious illness and injury but, all too often, patients…
Opinion: Technology is expanding virtual access to health care. Here’s how to ensure equitable outcomes
Virtual health capabilities are evolving far beyond video consultations with a doctor. They now encompass…
Opinion: Youth and gender-affirming care: let’s start with ‘do no harm’
No decent person wants to hurt children. Yet as pediatricians and longtime public health practitioners,…
Opinion: IP nationalism: the unexamined issue underlying the controversial WTO vaccine proposal and beyond
Countries that are members of the World Trade Organization are currently considering a watered-down version of…
Opinion: The irony — and ignominy — of medical conferences as superspreader events
Emergency physicians like us have seen the worst of Covid-19, from children gasping for breath…
Opinion: Lessons from earlier pandemics: Vaccine panel must discuss imprinting among infants and toddlers
This week, when the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee considers approving the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA…
Opinion: Understanding long Covid will take the lived experiences of long haulers
I went from training for the Big Sur 21-miler to barely being able to climb…