Community: Health

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee (R) wasted no time in responding to Vice President Kamala Harris after she issued a statement to commemorate the 48th anniversary of the woeful Supreme Court decision making abortion legal across the nation.

“On the 48th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we recommit ourselves to ensuring that everyone has access to care – including reproductive health care – no matter their income, race, zip code, health insurance status, or immigration status,” Harris tweeted.
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The wording of Harris’s post irked Lee, who replied, “Abortion isn’t healthcare.”

The governor invited his Twitter followers to commemorate the Roe v. Wade anniversary by donating $48 to the Tennessee-based pregnancy-support organization Hope Clinic.

Lee has been one of the state leaders at the forefront of the anti-abortion movement; last summer, he signed into law a bill that would have made Tennessee the home of some of the most significant restrictions against the procedure. If it had been allowed to stand, the law would have banned any abortions in cases when the fetal heartbeat can be detected in addition to other, common-sense protections.

The law, however, was challenged in court and blocked by a federal judge shortly after Lee signed it.

As for the new administration, they made it clear on Friday that they intend to not only protect Roe v. Wade but codify the ruling into federal law.

“The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to codifying Roe v Wade and appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe,” the White House said in a statement. “In the past four years, reproductive health, including the right to choose, has been under relentless and extreme attack.”

These efforts have the full support of Planned Parenthood, of course. In a statement of her own on the anniversary, the organization’s president, Alexis McGill Johnson, said that Americans need more and better access to abortion.

“Nearly half a century later, abortion is a right in name only for millions of people across the country,” McGill Johnson said. “As reproductive justice organizations have said for years, Roe is the floor, not the ceiling. Without access to abortion, this right is meaningless. Now is the time for President Biden and our elected officials in states across the country to take necessary and immediate action to ensure that everyone, no matter their race, income, or ZIP code, has access to safe and legal abortion.”

We have no doubt that it will be one of the new president’s most essential priorities. No doubt at all.
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President Joe Biden’s first actions included a directive that suspends President Donald Trump’s executive order aimed at lowering the prices of insulin and epinephrine, which was to have gone into effect on Friday, January 22.

The directive, issued by White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, suspends new regulations for 60 days while the new administration can conduct a review.
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Those regulations include the new rules finalized for insulin and epinephrine.

As Fox News noted:

The Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday announced that the directive [for insulin and epinephrine] would be put on hold among a number of other measures that were passed under Trump, but are not yet in effect.

The measure, signed off on in December, aimed to require some community health centers to deliver savings to low-income patients for insulin and epinephrine in a bid to bring down unaffordable prices.

The rule was scheduled to go into effect on Friday but has since been delayed until March 22.

Bloomberg Law cited critics of the Trump rule who said that health centers providing the drugs “already pass on those savings and this [Trump] rule is merely an administrative burden that paints them as entities that price-gouge patients.”

Trump prided himself on efforts to lower drug prices in the absence of congressional action, cutting red tape at the Food and Drug Administration for drug approvals, and using executive orders in an effort to force the pharmaceutical industry to cut prices. Though he worked with the industry in Operation Warp Speed to develop vaccines far faster than anyone previously thought possible, he clashed repeatedly with the industry in public as it supported negative ads against him.

Under President Trump, prescription drug prices fell, on aggregate, for the first time in nearly half a century.
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www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/covid-19-c...
One case of covid in the community, apparently infected in the 2-week quarantine which all international travelers do.
Disaster here, the last case was months ago, but must seem trivial to people in US or UK.