By Giulia Cavaliere
Should U.K. employers be required to make reasonable adjustments for women who are struggling to conceive and who are going through fertility treatment?
This blog seeks to answer this question. Before getting to that, I will say a few words about my views concerning infertility and the public provision of fertility treatment.
By Sam Friedman
Amid an emergent international consensus that the COVID pandemic is “over,” writings about the pandemic and its meanings have burst forth like the flowers of June.
This article will focus on one such book, Lessons from the COVID War: An Investigative Report. Produced by an eminently established collection of people, The COVID Crisis Group. The book is intelligently critical of what was done during the pandemic, but at all points it remains within the confines of what is “politically respectable.” This respectability, I argue, means that their recommendations are too narrow to protect Americans, much less the populations of the Global South, from pandemics ahead (barring unexpectedly marvelous advances in vaccine breadth and rapidity of deployment).
By Aparajita Lath
For over 100 years, policy makers and pharmaceutical manufacturers in the U.S. have debated whether the government should produce drugs and biologics.
Until now, private industry has largely won– but that may be changing, due to a recent California initiative.
By Timothy Bonis
Premiering tonight on PBS, the film Below the Belt sheds light on endometriosis by documenting four women’s experiences with the disease.
Endometriosis is a silent crisis. One in ten women have it, yet, on average, people with the condition see seven doctors before they get diagnosed. Many experience severe pain, and the disease costs the American economy $80 billion annually in lost productivity, but the standard treatments are outdated and ineffectual.
Below the Belt exposes the failures in practice and policy that have led to the poor state of endometriosis care. Medical students usually don’t learn about endometriosis in medical school, and as a result, most general practitioners can’t recognize it. The majority of gynecologists treat endometriosis with hormones — which have serious side effects and bring little relief — and an ineffective surgery called ablation. Others continue to recommend the 20th-century approach, a hysterectomy. This dismal selection of treatments reflects the state of endometriosis research; historically, the disease has received less than $10 million in research funding per year (compared to $1 billion for diabetes, an equally common condition among women).
By Zainab Ahmed
Psychiatric care in the Emergency Department is all-or-nothing and never enough. Often, legal holds are the only intervention available, and they rarely are therapeutic. Upon discharge, our patients are, once again, on their own.
The ED acts as a safety-net for a failing health system, one that places little value on mental health services, either preventative or follow-up. The demand for acute psychiatric care is high; however, EDs have little physical capacity for psychiatric patients.
By Katherine Kraschel
The loss in Dobbs and the bleak outlook for abortion rights within the federal courts may afford advocates a unique opportunity to fully adopt a reproductive justice framework and apply it to access to fertility care, as other contributors to this symposium have argued.
This article outlines specific strategies for blue states eager to stake a claim in the reproductive justice movement to consider.
By Valarie K. Blake and Elizabeth Y. McCuskey
In vitro fertilization (IVF), like most medical care in the U.S., costs far more than most people can afford out-of-pocket: over $12,500 per cycle, with multiple cycles typically required. But, unlike most other expensive medical care, IVF rarely has insurance coverage to defray the cost.
In 2020, only 27% of employers with 500+ employees and 42% of employers with 20,000+ employees covered IVF in their employer plans. Companies like Starbucks and Amazon know this and use it to draw in employees at low (or essentially neutral) wages.
Recent reports reveal women working second shifts for these corporations solely to qualify for employer health benefits that cover infertility treatments. Starbucks, for example, covers IVF for employees who work 240 hours over three months, or roughly 20 hours per week. Frequently, in these low-wage positions, workers earn just enough to pay for their health insurance premiums and sometimes the associated cost-sharing requirements.
How did we get to a place where women must work an “infertility shift” beyond their full-time jobs to access medical care?
Last week, a federal judge in Texas dealt a blow to the Affordable Care Act’s preventative care requirements that private insurers cover services such as behavioral counseling, HPV vaccination, and pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV/AIDS (PrEP). In Braidwood Management Inc. v. Becerra, Judge Reed O’Connor enjoined the enforcement of the preventative care coverage mandate.
Led by Braidwood Management Inc., the plaintiffs claimed that the preventive services requirements were unconstitutional, violating the Appointments Clause and the Nondelegation Doctrine. Further, they argued that requiring coverage of PrEP violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
In siding with the plaintiffs, Judge O’Connor has jeopardized access to critical health care services, potentially affecting over 150 million insured Americans. The Biden administration was quick to challenge the ruling; on Friday, attorneys for the Department of Health and Human Services filed a notice of appeal.
To make sense of these developments, leading experts in health law policy analyze Judge O’Connor’s ruling below.
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By Sharona Hoffman
As state and federal public health authority erodes, employers may increasingly find themselves playing a central role in promoting public health. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many employers either incentivized or required employees and customers to be vaccinated and/or masked even in the absence of federal and state mandates. In the future, they may frequently take the lead in implementing public health measures.
By Leslie C. Griffin
You will be surprised I’ve been through all the experiences described in this post, and that I’m still alive to tell you about them. Even I can’t believe it some days. It’s quite a list, so sometimes I mention it to my friends, so they will be as amazed as I am.
I am a lifelong academic, so I also think about what lessons they’ve taught me.
One is the philosophical principle of autonomy, which I regularly teach in my bioethics class. In my opinion, it means you always have to be prepared for the very worst. You have to live knowing it could happen to you. The worst doesn’t always occur. But when it does, you need to find a positive way to look at it and to make good decisions about it.
Two is the practical decision to have your legal documents in place. A durable power of attorney. Health insurance and property insurance. These practical items also help a lot in getting you through terrible situations. Lack of insurance makes everything dreadful.
Autonomy and insurance help you through a lot of crises. My crises include a blizzard, a tornado, an earthquake, a car accident, a hurricane, and two murderers.
You also need good luck.