PRI's Focus on Health Care

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For HHS post Biden taps ObamaCare ‘s lead defender – don’t expect him to be a moderate

Fox News | Sally C. Pipes
December 8, 2020

It’s a conventional, if unexpected, pick. The Washington rumor mill had New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham and Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo as the front-runners to lead HHS until both bowed out last week. Becerra has been in politics for nearly his entire adult life, first as a member of the California State Assembly, then as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 24 years.

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Officials ignore their own stay-at-home COVID-19 restrictions — it’s infuriating

Fox News | Sally C. Pipes
December 4, 2020

Just before Thanksgiving, as COVID-19 case rates were rising across the Golden State, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was spotted at a well-attended birthday party for a prominent lobbyist at The French Laundry, a high-end, Michelin three-star restaurant in the Napa Valley.
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Dr. Henry Miller Talks COVID-19 Vaccine Data

The Lars Larson Show | Henry Miller, M.S., M.D.
December 1, 2020

Dr. Henry Miller talks to Lars Larson about the latest news regarding COVID-19 vaccine data and approvals. Miller notes that the approval applications for COVID-19 vaccines are hundreds of thousands of pages and can take a team months to review. Yet some governors have said they will validate all data related COVID-19 vaccines and trials before distribution begins, with some claiming it would only take a couple hours to review all the data.
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Don’t Lower the Medicare Eligibility Age

Newsweek | Sally C. Pipes
December 4, 2020

Opening up Medicare to more people is a bad idea. It would waste scarce taxpayer dollars on millions of disproportionately affluent Americans who already have health insurance—and would do so at a time when the entitlement program faces imminent insolvency.
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Coronavirus Immunity Verification Could Provide the Needed Incentive to Get the Shot

The Washington Examiner | John J. Cohrssen and Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D.
December 3, 2020

Although vaccination is intended primarily to protect individuals against COVID-19 infection or reduce its severity, it can also protect the wider community when a sufficiently large fraction of the population, thought to be approximately 70% in the case of COVID-19, gains immunity to infection because of either natural infection or vaccination. At that point, the virus has difficulty finding new, susceptible hosts, and the outbreak subsides. That state is called “herd immunity.”
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An overly cautious FDA costs lives by not hastening vaccine authorization

Washington Examiner | Sally C. Pipes
December 4, 2020

Despite newly reported deaths nationwide topping a thousand per day, the FDA doesn’t seem to have been in a hurry to review the companies’ vaccine, which proved 95% effective in clinical trials. The meeting will come nearly three weeks after the two companies submitted their request for an EUA. While the race for a COVID-19 vaccine has moved with unprecedented speed, the regulatory state hasn’t followed suit.
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Shocking Disparities In COVID-19 Attitudes And Behaviors

Issues & Insights | Henry Miller, M.S., M.D.
December 3, 2020

A high percentage of positive tests means there is significant community spread of the virus, which makes effective testing, tracing, and isolation difficult, if not impossible. Moreover, the seven-day average of daily new cases has been increasing sharply over the past six weeks, and is currently approximately 160,000 per day (see figure below). These are ominous signs as we approach the winter months, with people often congregating indoors in poorly ventilated spaces.
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