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Today’s the day
I assume you’ve already decided who you’re voting for — maybe you’ve already voted! But if you want to further mull the stakes of this election, consider how a Kamala Harris or Donald Trump win would change health care.
It’s always difficult work to interpret and distill candidates’ proposals — but it’s been especially hard work this year, STAT’s D.C. reporters told me. It’s been a light election cycle when it comes to policy ideas, since there weren’t really competitive primaries. That means there’s been less source material to work with, STAT’s chief Washington correspondent Rachel Cohrs Zhang explained.
I asked Rachel and our colleague Sarah Owermohle what some of their favorite stories from this election cycle have been. Rachel pointed to her exclusive from earlier in the summer on who really came up with the idea for $35 insulin. “It turned out much more interesting than I had imagined,” she said. Sarah recalled her trip to Montana reporting on how abortion rights regularly win at the ballots, but pro-abortion candidates may not. “The conversations that opened up between the canvasser and total strangers, those alone were fascinating,” she said.
As for today — Rachel was up at 5 am for the morning shift, to make sure they had everything as up-to-date as possible for today’s special edition of D.C. Diagnosis. Sarah will be on the night shift, watching to see if some key races and ballots get called before she goes to bed around 1 am. (Don’t worry, she’s planning a midday nap.)
Keep up with Rachel and Sarah’s coverage every week in D.C. Diagnosis. And check back here tomorrow for those results.
Understanding the complex link between screen time and autism
When kids younger than age two have more than 14 hours of weekly screen time, they’re at significantly greater risk of being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder by the time they’re 12, according to a study published yesterday in JAMA Pediatrics. But the association is not causal, according to the study authors, whose analysis is based on more than 5,100 kids in Australia, of whom 145 had a parent-reported autism diagnosis.
Instead, they point to underlying socioeconomic factors like family income and maternal education as “instrumental factors” that could affect the connection between screen time and autism. It’s not the first time a study has identified this association but failed to capture causation. For some experts, it raises the question: What if autistic kids just happen to seek out more screen time? As the internet and social media are increasingly the focus of public health scrutiny around youth mental health, more research is always needed.
Private Medicare plans get paid — the VA provides the care
With names like “Patriot Plan,” “Courage MA,” and “Honor” plan, all of the major private Medicare insurers directly court veterans, selling plans that are supposed to complement their Veterans Affairs coverage with benefits like dental and vision. And the plans are quite popular — almost 42% of all Medicare-eligible veterans had one in 2022.
But a new Health Affairs study shows redundant government spending that benefits these Medicare Advantage plans. It finds that MA plans didn’t cover any care for 10% of their veteran members in 2020. At the same time, Medicare paid those plans over $1.3 billion to cover those members. That’s just “the tip of the iceberg” with respect to federal overpayment, said Jose Figueroa, a senior author of the study. Read more in STAT+ from Tara Bannow.
FDA vax regulator wants to fight disinformation with transparency
No matter who wins the presidential election, vaccine fatigue and disinformation will continue to be major public health issues. At a public forum last week, the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, Peter Marks, said the way to counter this growing movement against vaccines is through transparency. STAT’s Helen Branswell reached out to Marks to talk more about vaccine production, safety, and disinformation.
“It doesn’t take vaccination rates to drop off that much to start getting into problems here, where you lose herd immunity,” Marks said. “So I do think there’s some concern there that this could get worse. And we just don’t know the extent of the damage that’s been done to date.” Read more from Helen.
What’s next for brain-computer interfaces?
Bigwigs from brain-computer interface companies gathered in New York City this past weekend to schmooze and answer a pressing question: What’s next? In recent years, the field has demonstrated the technology’s safety and efficacy. Much of the symposium’s discussion centered around potential clinical endpoints and how the industry plans to translate these early successes into effective treatments.
Key to this process will be simplifying the technology, said Peter Yoo, the neuroscience and algorithms director at Synchron: “Once you give someone a BCI you shouldn’t need hours of training with a scientist to provide value. Imagine if I gave you an iPhone and you had to sit with Apple for hours to make it work? That’s not the way to commercialize.”
— Timmy Broderick, STAT’s disability reporting fellow
(If you’ve got thoughts about what’s needed to take brain-computer interface technology to market, send Timmy a note. They’re cooking up a story about this moment.)
Could TikTok convince you to go off birth control?
Almost three-quarters of the YouTube influencers who talk about birth control are encouraging people to stop using it, according to a study published last year. Another study found the same is true of nearly half of TikTok posts about contraception.
These social media posts are based on personal experiences, not scientific evidence, writes Emily Pfender, a researcher who worked on both those studies. That said, positive changes can come out of personal posts. Earlier this year, the CDC updated its IUD insertion guidelines to recommend pain management strategies, following a viral trend of women posting videos of their pained faces during the procedure. “This shows how social media can spark changes, but it also demonstrates the danger of allowing misinformation to dominate these platforms,” Pfender writes in a First Opinion essay.
Read more from Pfender about how misinformation about women’s health spreads online, and what she says health care leaders should do about it.
What we’re reading
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Richard A. Cash, who saved millions from dehydration, dies at 83, New York Times
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Thousands of children in Gaza receive 2nd dose of polio vaccine, with others cut off, NPR
- Medicare finalized coverage for some mental health apps. Now what? STAT
- LGBTQ+ marriage is legal, but it’s back on the ballot in three states, 19th News