An issue with Poynter's website resulted in a broken link to the full Morning Meeting in today's newsletter. This version updates that link. Thank you for bearing with us. 

The One-Minute Meeting

A federal judge in Texas who once tried to overturn the entire Affordable Care Act now says insurance companies and employers should not be forced to cover the cost of 100 preventative tests, exams, counseling and vaccinations. It could mean that your insurance company could decide not to cover 100% of the cost of a mammogram, colonoscopy or autism screening for kids.

That autism screening may be more important than you realize. New data shows one in 36 8-year-olds was identified with autism. But researchers are not entirely sure why the rate is rising. It could be that the way we screen for autism catches cases that previous screenings missed.

Almost half of public health care workers who were on the job in 2017 have quit. There is a national need for 80,000 public health care workers. Public health care workers, including their leaders, left the job in droves during the pandemic partly because of public pushback on masking and vaccine rules.

While on the subject of the pandemic, here is some interesting new data looking backward at where the COVID-19 virus spread most and least. The data shows:

• States with lower poverty rates had lower COVID-19 rates.
• States with higher rates of education had lower COVID-19 rates.
• States in which people expressed more “interpersonal trust” had lower COVID-19 rates, which translated into people who were willing to trust medical advice and get vaccinated.