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Did you see “You Can See Everything” over the weekend? If so, please send me your hot takes and well-reasoned reviews. I’ve got a babysitter scheduled so I can go to a showing this week. I’ll share my thoughts and yours in a newsletter later in the week.
And on that note, a correction: Friday’s newsletter item on Holmes incorrectly referred to the American Association for Clinical Chemistry. Thanks to the eagle-eyed reader who caught our mistake. We always appreciate your feedback.
The big surprise about the No Surprises Act
When Congress passed the No Surprises Act in 2020, it was designed to protect patients from huge bills from out-of-network providers. And on that front, it has largely succeeded. But one of its key provisions — an arbitration system that allows providers and insurers to duke it out to determine how much is owed for a service or treatment — has gone off the rails.
As STAT’s Tara Bannow reports: “The arbitration system’s $22 billion tab has far exceeded anyone’s expectations and sparked countless legal battles.” The firms that conduct the arbitrations work largely in secret, with little accountability or oversight. And they side with providers in more than 80% of cases, which may be in part to drum up more business, because providers file the majority of disputes.
One person Tara spoke with compared these arbitrators to “mini gods.” To understand how this internecine system is affecting your health care bills, read on.
Inside the debate that roiled the American Association of Immunologists
A ballot measure that provides billions of dollars in state funds to immunology researchers sounds like a dream come true for scientists, right? Turns out, it’s complicated.
STAT’s Jonathan Wosen has been looking into California’s Prop 38, which would funnel $8 billion in taxpayer money to immunology research. And he’s found that even some of the people likely to benefit — such as members of the American Association of Immunologists — considered opposing the measure.
Why? “Some clinicians and scientists lauded the proposal as a timely and necessary investment in lifesaving breakthroughs,” he writes. “Others characterized the proposition as a thinly veiled attempt to funnel taxpayer dollars to an institute with ties to the measure’s billionaire backers.”
Read on for the whole tale.
Her mother killed herself. It changed her thinking on assisted suicide
“I can’t count how many times my mother attempted suicide.”
The opening line of First Opinion editor Torie Bosch’s new essay is a gut punch, and it doesn’t ease up. Torie writes with honesty and beauty about her mother’s struggles, arguing that for some people, mental illness is chronic, debilitating and impossible to live with. For them, she writes, assisted suicide should be an option.
Torie’s mother “received massive amounts of medical and psychiatric care, not to mention family support, but none of it worked,” she writes. “I wish that medical aid in dying had been an option for her. At the very least, it would have offered her a more comfortable death — and my brothers and me a less complicated grief. And maybe, just maybe, it could have saved her.”
I implore you, go read this revelatory essay. And please, share your thoughts with me — I’d love to know what you think.
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. For TTY users: Use your preferred relay service or dial 711 then 988.
Two former Republican lawmakers say the GOP’s vaccine position is a liability
As doctors, these two former GOP congressmen are used to making diagnoses. Their new one?
The Republican party’s confusing messaging on vaccines is going to hurt candidates in the midterms. “If current polling trends hold, Republicans could lose their majorities in both the House and Senate this November,” they write. “Most pundits attribute this potential blue wave to voters’ frustration with gas prices and the broader cost of living. But another issue is quietly hurting GOP candidates: our party’s often mixed messaging on vaccines.”
Read more about the party’s internal data about vaccines and voters, and how Democrats have leveraged the current situation to their advantage.
What we’re reading
- Is retirement unhealthy? It depends, New York Times
- Does Isomorphic Labs have what it takes to revolutionize drugmaking? STAT
- Would you hire a male doula? New York
- Cambridge scientist David Sabatini speaks out after courtroom victory: ‘The hardest years of my life,’ Boston Globe