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75 Years Ago: A landmark bill for American hospitals
With both infrastructure and hospitals in the news these days, Ohioans should take a moment to learn about the Hill-Burton Hospital Survey and Construction Act. This ground-breaking legislation, signed into law 75 years ago this week on August 13, 1946 by President Harry S. Truman, helped to build and modernize American hospitals. An Ohio senator […]
What the Vax-a-Million says about us
There is a saying in public health that you need to “meet people where they are.” The problem is that realizing where people are can sometimes be depressing. This is this hard truth that Gov. Mike DeWine alone was willing to face in turning to a lottery — the so-called Vax-a-Million — to convince more […]
Shot in mom’s arm is reminder of what we’ve taken for granted
It’s easy to forget what vaccines have given us as a society. We’ve forgotten the stories of babies struggling for each breath, not for hours or days, but for weeks due to whooping cough. We’ve largely forgotten the sudden deaths from diphtheria, and panicked summers with children kept indoors for months due to polio epidemics. The […]
What California v. Texas Could Mean for Ohio
Today the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in California v. Texas, a case that could determine the fate of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the landmark legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010. As then Vice President Joe Biden, now President-Elect, said at the time, caught on a hot mic, the law […]
It’s the trust, stupid
Whatever happens on Tuesday, we know that there’s important, hard work to be done in the weeks, months, and years ahead. While a great deal of the focus will be on the merits of various policy proposals, Americans will also need to take a step back and take stock of a larger question about our […]
COVID-19: Never Forget
Last week, for the nineteenth time, we remembered the 2,977 people lost on September 11, 2001 in attacks on New York and Washington, and the intentionally-downed plane by heroic passengers in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. I was in New York on that day. I saw the first plane hit and the Towers fall with my own eyes […]
The health care long game: Biden, Harris, and Medicare for All
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate has meant different things to differently situated liberals and progressives. But as regards health care, the message is clear. Harris’s presidential run failed in large part because she couldn’t stake out a coherent place in a crowded field of health care […]
The complications of history: Public policy must provide a full picture for true education
Ohioans are understandably proud of the fact that their state was abolitionist from its inception. Predictably, this aspect of our state’s history has been evoked within the context of the anti-racist discussions of the past few months. I recently took some time to read David McCullough’s, “The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who […]
Ohio’s great social experiment
A week of pandemic can feel like a year. But it is hard to believe that just last month Dr. Amy Acton, Ohio’s public health director, was empowering us, telling us how great we were, and assuring us that we were capable of doing hard things. For just that moment, Dr. Acton was right. Most […]
Dr. Birx’s decision: protecting American lives or protecting the president
Dr. Harold Bornstein should have been our first clue that President Donald Trump might not fully respect what physicians do. Yet, here we are, on the cusp of a risky “reopening” of our country’s social and economic life, hoping that physicians and scientists are driving federal policy. Among other things, Trump has used his daily […]
A coronavirus long-view: taking vaccines seriously
Like all Americans, Ohioans are understandably anxious to return to school, work, and recreation. Gov. Mike DeWine has repeatedly assured us that he won’t keep the state-at-home order in place a day longer than necessary. But the COVID-19 pandemic presents us with a moment of decision. We had better decide wisely. It’s becoming increasingly clear […]
American leadership and the new normal
When Donald Trump took office in 2017, Democrats everywhere pledged to not “normalize” his politics. Cries of “this is not normal” resounded through social media as the left mobilized to resist Trump’s attacks on health care access, the stripping of environmental protections, xenophobic immigration policies, and more. Now Trump’s feckless COVID-19 coronavirus response is challenging […]