The Affordable Care Act continues to be a popular topic of discussion amongst Bill of Health contributors, who also recently touched on issues of drug approval, vaccine improvements, and provider decision making.

Frank Pasquale tweeted an article about the extremely low-cost health insurance policies that will be available to some people under the Affordable Care Act. Millions of people will be eligible for free-premium plans, but an associated risk is that people will opt for these at the expense of plans that cover necessary care. (11/4)

Art Caplan tweeted his agreement with Robert Kuttner’s blog post about the Affordable Care Act. Building on private insurance was a mistake, according to Kuttner, whereas simply extending Medicare would have been a more favorable approach. (11/4)

Art Caplan also tweeted the results of a new study from Costa Rica suggesting that just one dose of the HPV vaccine might be enough to protect women from the virus. In his tweet, Caplan suggests that such a change might make the vaccine, which is currently taken in three doses, more widely accessible around the world. (11/4)

Michelle Meyer posted an article about the difficult balance between the FDA approval process and patient needs. The author describes his experience as part of a promising trial for a treatment for polycystic kidney disease, only to be let down by the Administration’s decision not to approve the drug. (11/2)

Frank Pasquale tweeted the results of a study revealing that half of clinical decision support (CDS) alerts are inappropriately overridden by providers. CDS alerts highlight things like patient allergies, drug interactions, etc., and can be potentially dangerous when erroneously ignored. (11/3)

Amitabh Chandra posted an article comparing the rollout of the Affordable Care Act to that of Massachusetts’s healthcare program in 2006. The author highlights, among other things, differences in the laws themselves, the websites designed to implement them, and the political context of the time. (10/30)