Food stamp work requirements increase mental health care use: ‘These work requirements harm people with no measurable benefit to the economy’
Being exposed to work requirements in order to receive nutrition benefits from the U.S. government significantly increased mental health care use for depression and anxiety, a new Northwestern University study has found. The policy’s negative effects occurred much sooner for women than men. This is the first study to look at how work requirements associated […]
The Uninsured Rate Is Down, Just In Time For Congress To Debate Health Care Again
The percentage of Americans without health insurance has fallen again, according to a government study released early Thursday. But whether that progress continues will depends greatly on what happens in Congress in the next few weeks. The study was a long-planned, regular update to the National Health Insurance Survey, one of several tools that government […]
Study gives animal testing alternatives a confidence boost
As part of a government effort to reduce animal testing, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have worked with the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and Inotiv Inc. to produce a new protocol for screening skin allergens. The method is potentially cheaper and faster than animal testing, while maintaining a similar […]
New York Doc Tries to Take Down No Surprises Act
Healthcare organizations have already sued the federal government over its interpretation of the No Surprises Act, but one Long Island physician has declared the new law designed to protect patients from surprise billing flat-out unconstitutional. Acute care surgeon Daniel Haller, MD, of Rockville Centre, New York, filed a lawsuit in December 2021 against HHS, among […]
School Mask, Vaccine Mandates Take Center Stage at Senate Hearing
Senators sparred over school mask mandates and whether the federal government can and should mandate COVID vaccines for eligible kids during a Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing on Thursday. While new CDC data showed that schools without mask mandates were 3.5 times more likely to have a COVID-19 outbreak, some governors and […]
Scientists model ‘true prevalence’ of COVID-19 throughout pandemic
Government officials and policymakers have tried to use numbers to grasp COVID-19’s impact. Figures like the number of hospitalizations or deaths reflect part of this burden. Each datapoint tells only part of the story. But no one figure describes the true pervasiveness of the novel coronavirus by revealing the number of people actually infected at […]