Tag: Congress

Out of the Shadows: Menopause and the Law

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by Rupa Palanki

In May 2024, a bipartisan group of female senators introduced the Advancing Menopause Care and Mid-Life Women’s Health Act. The bill allocates $275 million over five years toward strengthening and expanding federal research, health care provider training, and public health education on menopause and mid-life women’s health issues. If enacted, it would be the most comprehensive federal effort to improve health care related to menopause. However, further action related to the labeling of low-dose estrogen and workplace support is still necessary to support individuals experiencing menopause.

Unmet Needs for Legislative and Policy Action

Menopause is the natural stage of life when an individual has not had a menstrual period for twelve consecutive months, signifying the end of their fertile years. Half of the American population will eventually experience this transition. Currently, 75 million American individuals are either in menopause, perimenopause (the time before menopause when menstrual cycles may become irregular), or postmenopause (when an individual has not had a menstrual period for longer than a year). Another 6,000 reach menopause daily. Read More

President Joe Biden at desk in Oval Office.

Federalizing Public Health

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By Elizabeth Weeks

The most promising path forward in public health is to continue recognizing federal authority and responsibility in this space. I carefully choose “recognizing,” rather than “expanding” or “moving” because it is critical to the argument that federal authority for public health already exists within the federalist structure and that employing federal authority to address public health problems does not represent a dimunition of state authority. Rather than a pie, of which pieces consumed at the federal level necessarily reduce pieces consumable at the state level, we should envision the relationship as a Venn diagram, where increasing overlap strengthens authority for promoting and protecting public health broadly.

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The United States Capitol building at sunset at night in Washington DC, USA

The End of Public Health? It’s Not Dead Yet

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By Nicole Huberfeld

Once again, health law has become a vehicle for constitutional change, with courts hollowing federal and state public health authority while also generating new challenges. In part, this pattern is occurring because the New Roberts Court — the post-Ruth Bader Ginsburg composition of U.S. Supreme Court justices — is led by jurists who rely on “clear statement rules.” This statutory interpretation canon demands Congress draft textually unambiguous laws and contains a presumption against broadly-worded statutes that are meant to be adaptable over time. In effect, Congress should leave nothing to the imagination of those responsible for implementing federal laws, i.e., executive agencies and state officials, so everything a statute covers must be specified, with no room for legislative history or other non-textual sources.

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Atlanta, Georgia - January 28, 2022: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Unmasking Public Health

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By Jane Moriarty

One of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s stated “essential public health services” is to “create, champion, and implement policies, plans, and laws that impact health.”

Yet, as the U.S. slogs through its third COVID winter, one thing is clear: personal responsibility and autonomy are at the heart of public health messaging. As CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky famously said, “your health is in your hands.”

In other words, CDC and other public health bodies now highlight personal responsibility and autonomy, and minimize the institutional ability to champion policies and laws that would improve the health and safety of the citizenry.

Given the comparatively poor results that the U.S. has had compared to other similarly-situated countries that focus more on the common good, it is time for our public health entities to reinvigorate their role as a force of legal and moral suasion to protect the public’s health.

The moral value of protecting the health of the public should be at the forefront of their messaging. Personal responsibility and autonomy are no match for the reality of commodified and unavailable health care, internet disinformation, health vulnerabilities, age-related vulnerabilities, the lack of paid sick leave, poverty, and the plight of the institutionalized.

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Supreme Court of the United States.

The Bind We’re in — And How the Supreme Court Put Us There

Jennifer S. Bard Leave a comment

By Jennifer Bard

As the COVID-19 pandemic rages into its third year of global death and destruction, the Supreme Court of the United States has effectively thwarted every measure by federal or state government to implement the public health tools that for hundreds of years have been used to stop the spread of contagious disease. They have done so by operationalizing what were previously fringe and relatively harmless academic views in ways that extend their powers beyond any previous boundaries. These include, but are not limited to, extending the protection for religious exercise past any previously imagined, and limiting Congressional authority to respond to emergencies by imposing impossible standards of specificity on its delegation of authority to the agencies which it creates, funds, and directly oversees.

In so doing, the Court has not only undermined the health of the nation, and pushed millions of people into unnecessary long-term disability, which our fragmented health care and social security system is unequipped to handle. It has also threatened our national security by infecting what is already more than half of the children in the country with a virus that has the potential to damage every organ in their bodies, from heart to brain.

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Picture of north star in starry night sky.

Health Justice as the Lodestar of Incremental Health Reform

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By Elizabeth McCuskey

Health justice is the lodestar we need for the next generation of health reform. It centers justice as the destination for health care regulation and supplies the conceptual framework for assessing our progress toward it. It does so by judging health reforms on their equitable distribution of the burdens and benefits of investments in the health care system, and their abilities to improve public health and to empower subordinated individuals and communities. Refocusing health reform on a health justice gestalt has greater urgency than ever, given the scale of injustice in our health care system and its tragic, unignorable consequences during the coronavirus pandemic.

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The White House, Washington, DC.

6 Actions the Federal Government Should Take in Response to the Delta Variant

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By Jennifer S. Bard

Today, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took an important step in protecting the nation’s health by reinstating indoor masking for both vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, in particularly high-risk circumstances. That’s good. And so is the jump in institutions like the Veterans Health Administration requiring COVID-19 vaccination.

But we need to take more forceful action, and it needs to happen faster.

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Herndon, USA - April 27, 2020: Virginia Fairfax County building exterior sign entrance to Mom's Organic Market store with request to wear face mask due to covid-19 pandemic.

The Current COVID-19 Surge, Eugenics, and Health-Based Discrimination

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By Jacqueline Fox

COVID has shown us that the burdens and inequities that characterize everyday life for many Americans are not merely vestiges of an older time, but an honest reflection of our unwillingness to treat everyone with dignity and respect.

We have undergone an ethical stress test in the last 18 months. While many people have exhibited heroic commitments to their fellow citizens, much of our governmental response is indefensible in a society that professes to care for all of its members. This implies we are not such a society.

Rather, we are a society riddled with healthism — discrimination based on health status — and eugenics — a pseudo-science that arbitrarily elevates some human traits over others, much as we do with breeding dogs and horses.

As a result, although we are armed with the power to prevent much harm, we lack the will or inclination to use that power for our most vulnerable. Instead, we place different values on people’s lives using arbitrary definitions of quality, and treat people differently based on their health status. Examples include placing a lower value on a life because a person is older, disabled, or overweight.

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