Kaiser Health News

‘Forever Chemicals’ Found in Freshwater Fish, Yet Most States Don’t Warn Residents

Published

8 months ago

December 1, 2023

Hannah Norman, KFF Health News
Fri, 01 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Bill Eisenman has always fished.

“Growing up, we ate whatever we caught — catfish, carp, freshwater drum,” he said. “That was the only real source of fish in our diet as a family, and we ate a lot of it.”

Today, a branch of the Rouge River runs through Eisenman's property in a suburb north of Detroit. But in recent years, he has been wary about a group of chemicals known as PFAS, also referred to as “forever chemicals,” which don't break down quickly in the environment and accumulate in soil, water, fish, and our bodies.

The chemicals have spewed from manufacturing plants and landfills into local ecosystems, polluting surface water and groundwater, and the wildlife living there. And hundreds of military bases have been pinpointed as sources of PFAS chemicals leaching into nearby communities.

Researchers, anglers, and environmental activists nationwide worry about the staggering amount of PFAS found in freshwater fish. At least 17 states have issued PFAS-related fish consumption advisories, KFF Health News found, with some warning residents not to eat any fish caught in particular lakes or rivers because of dangerous levels of forever chemicals.

With no federal guidance, what is considered safe to eat varies significantly among states, most of which provide no regulation.

Eating a single serving of freshwater fish can be the equivalent of drinking water contaminated with high levels of PFAS for a month, according to a recent study from the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization that tracks PFAS. It's an unsettling revelation, especially for rural, Indigenous, and low-income communities that depend on subsistence fishing. Fish remain a large part of cultural dishes, as well as an otherwise healthy source of protein and omega-3s.

“PFAS in freshwater fish is at such a concentration that for anyone consuming, even infrequently, it would likely be their major source of exposure over the course of the year,” said David Andrews, a co-author of the study and researcher at EWG. “We're talking thousands of times higher than what's typically seen in drinking water.”

Dianne Kopec, a researcher and faculty fellow at the University of Maine who studies PFAS and mercury in wildlife, warned that eating fish with high concentrations of PFAS may be more harmful than mercury, which long ago was found to be a neurotoxin most damaging to a developing fetus. The minimal risk level — an estimate of how much a person can eat, drink, or breathe daily without “detectable risk” to health — for PFOS, a common PFAS chemical, is 50 times as low as for methylmercury, the form of mercury that accumulates in fish, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. But she emphasized, “They're both really nasty.”

Just like mercury, PFAS bioaccumulate up the food chain, so bigger fish, like largemouth bass, generally contain more chemicals than smaller fish. Mercury is more widespread in Maine, but Kopec said PFAS levels near contamination sources are concerningly high.

‘Fishing Is a Way of Life'

The Ecology Center, an environmental group in Michigan, educates anglers about consumption advisories and related health impacts. But Erica Bloom, its toxics campaign director, noted that for many people out on the river, “fishing is a way of life.”

Eisenman participated in an Ecology Center community-based study published this year, which tested fish from Michigan's Huron and Rouge rivers for PFAS that poured out from auto and other industry contamination. Across 15 sites, anglers caught 100 fish samples from a dozen species, and what they found scared him.

“There were no sites that registered zero,” said Eisenman, noting that some had significantly higher levels of chemicals than others. “You need to make a value judgment. I'm going to still eat fish, but I don't know if that's a good thing.”

Last year, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a sweeping federally funded report that associated PFAS exposure with health effects like decreased response to vaccines, cancer, and low birth weight.

There are thousands of PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, many of them used to make both household and industrial products stain-resistant or nonstick. They're in fire-retardant foam used for decades by fire departments and the military, as well as in cookware, water-repellent clothing, carpets, food wrappers, and other consumer goods.

In late October, the EPA added hundreds of PFAS compounds to its list of “chemicals of special concern.” This will require manufacturers to report the presence of those PFAS chemicals in their products — even in small amounts or in mixtures — starting Jan. 1.

Sparse Testing Leaves Blind Spots

About 200 miles north of Detroit, in rural Oscoda, Michigan, state officials have warned against eating fish or deer caught or killed near the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base because of PFAS contamination.

“We have a 9-mile stretch of river system in which the state determined way back in 2012 that it wasn't safe to even eat a single fish,” said Tony Spaniola, an advocate for communities affected by PFAS. He owns a home across a lake from the shuttered military site.

In Alaska, several lakes are designated catch and release only because of PFAS contamination from firefighting foam. A study by the U.S. Geological Survey and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection released in August led to a warning to avoid eating fish from the Neshaminy Creek watershed.

Nationwide, use of firefighting foam and other PFAS-loaded products by the Department of Defense alone has led to the contamination of at least 359 military bases and communities that need to be cleaned up, with an additional 248 still under investigation as of June.

But many lakes and streams haven't been tested for PFAS contamination, and researchers worry far more sites hold fish laced with high levels of PFAS.

Federal efforts to curb PFAS exposure have focused mostly on drinking water. Earlier this year, the EPA proposed the nation's first PFAS drinking water standards, which would limit contamination from six types of chemicals, with levels for the two most common compounds, PFOA and PFOS, set at 4 parts per trillion.

But the EWG researchers found that one serving of fish can be equivalent to a month's worth of drinking water contaminated with 48 parts per trillion of PFOS.

Store-bought fish caught in the ocean, like imported Atlantic salmon and canned chunk tuna, appear to have lower PFAS levels, according to FDA research.

A biomonitoring project focused on the San Francisco Bay Area's Asian and Pacific Islander community measured PFAS levels in the blood and found higher amounts of the compounds compared with national levels. The researchers also surveyed participants about their fish consumption and found that 56% of those who ate locally caught fish did so at least once a month.

Eating a fish's fillet is often recommended, as it accumulates fewer chemicals than organs or eggs, but many participants reported eating other parts of the fish, too.

California is one of many states with no fish consumption advisories in place for PFAS. Jay Davis, senior scientist at the San Francisco Estuary Institute, said that's in part because of “limited monitoring dollars” and a priority on legacy chemicals like PCBs as well as mercury left over in particularly high concentrations from gold and mercury mining.

Wesley Smith, a senior toxicologist with California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, said the state is reviewing the latest scientific literature but needs more data to develop an advisory that is “neither too restrictive nor too permissive.”

States like New Hampshire, Washington, Maine, and New Jersey have some of the most protective guidance, while other states, such as Maryland and Michigan, lag when it comes to designating fish unsafe to eat.

Advisory levels for at-risk groups — such as children and women of childbearing age — are usually lower, while “do not eat” thresholds for the general population range from 25.7 parts per billion in New Hampshire to 300 ppb in Michigan, 408 ppb in Maryland, and 800 ppb in Alabama.

“That's wicked outdated to have levels that high and consider that safe for folks to eat,” said Kopec, the University of Maine researcher.

Though it is no longer made in the U.S., PFOS remains the most commonly found — and tested for — PFAS chemical in fish today.

The primary maker of PFOS, 3M, announced it would begin phasing the chemical out in 2000. This year, the company said it would pay at least $10.3 billion to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by public water system operators. But in July, attorneys general from 22 states asked the court to reject the settlement, saying it was insufficient to cover the damages.

The military first documented health concerns surrounding PFAS chemicals in the 1970s yet continued to use firefighting foam made with them. Mandated by Congress, the Defense Department was required to stop buying retardant containing PFAS by Oct. 1 and phase it out altogether by 2024. A recently published study linked testicular cancer among military personnel to PFOS.

Tackling Pollution at the Source

Pat Elder, an activist and director of the environmental advocacy group Military Poisons, has tested water for PFAS up and down the East Coast, including in Piscataway Creek, which drains from Joint Base Andrews, the home of Air Force One.

In 2021, after testing fish from Piscataway Creek, Maryland officials released the state's sole PFAS fish consumption advisory to date. But Elder worries Maryland has not gone far enough to protect its residents.

“People eat the fish from this creek, and it creates an acute health hazard that no one seems to be paying attention to,” Elder said.

Since then, Maryland's Department of the Environment has conducted more fish monitoring in water bodies near potential PFAS sources, as well as at spots regularly used by subsistence anglers, said spokesperson Jay Apperson. He added that the state plans to put out more advisories based on the results, though declined to give a timeline or share the locations.

Part of the challenge of getting the word out and setting location-specific consumption advisories is that contamination levels vary significantly from lake to lake, as well as species to species, said Brandon Reid, a toxicologist and the manager of Michigan's Eat Safe Fish program.

Michigan set its screening values for fish consumption advisories in 2014, and the state is in the process of updating them within the next year, Reid said.

But to see the chemicals dip to healthier levels, the pollution needs to stop, too. There is hope: Andrews, the EWG researcher, compared EPA fish sample data from five years apart and found about a 30% drop on average in PFAS contamination.

Bloom has watched this cycle happen in the Huron River in southeastern Michigan, where PFAS chemicals upstream seeped into the water from a chrome plating facility. While the levels of PFAS in the water have slowly gone down, the chemicals remain, she said.

“It's very, very hard to completely clean up the entire river,” Bloom said. “If we don't tackle it at the source, we're going to just keep having to spend taxpayer money to clean it up and deal with fish advisories.”

——————————
By: Hannah Norman, KFF Health News
Title: ‘Forever Chemicals' Found in Freshwater Fish, Yet Most States Don't Warn Residents
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/pfas-forever-chemicals-freshwater-fish-regulatory-gap/
Published Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2023 10:00:00 +0000

Post Views: 265

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Union With Labor Dispute of Its Own Threatens to Cut Off Workers’ Health Benefits

Published

9 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Staff Editor

Phil Galewitz, KFF Health News
Fri, 26 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The National Education Association, the nation's largest union, is threatening to cut off health insurance to about 300 Washington, D.C.-based workers on Aug. 1 in an effort to end a bitter contract dispute.

It's a tactic some private employers have used as leverage against unionized workers that has drawn scrutiny from congressional Democrats and is prohibited for state employers in California. Experts on labor law say they've never seen a union make the move against its own workers.

“This is like a man-bites-dog situation where the union is now in a position as the employer,” said Paul Clark, a professor of labor and employment relations at Penn State University. “It's not a good look for a union.”

NEA workers with pressing health needs are worried but say they won't fold. Joye Mercer Barksdale, a writer on the NEA's government relations team, said she needs coverage for a medical procedure to address atrial fibrillation, a cardiac disorder. “This is insane for the NEA to use our health benefits as a bargaining chip,” she said.

But Barksdale said the threat isn't enough to force her to agree to an unacceptable contract. “I am not ready to give in,” she said.

The NEA Staff Organization, the union representing workers at the NEA's headquarters, launched a strike on July 5 in Philadelphia, during the union's annual delegate assembly. It was its second walkout this summer as the two parties negotiate a new contract, navigating sticking points such as wages and remote work.

In response, the NEA ended the conference early. President Joe Biden was supposed to speak at the event but withdrew, refusing to cross the picket line. The NEA on July 24 endorsed Kamala Harris for president.

On July 8, the day after the conference had been scheduled to end, the NEA locked out workers. In a letter the day before, the NEA informed its unionized workers that they would not be paid, effective immediately, and their health benefits would expire at the end of July unless a new deal were reached.

“NEA cannot allow NEASO to act again in a way that will bring such lasting harm to our members and our organization,” Kim Anderson, the NEA's executive director, wrote in the letter, obtained by KFF Health News. “We are, and have always been, committed both to our union values and to the importance of conducting ourselves as a model employer.”

Democrats in Congress, including Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, introduced legislation last year to protect striking workers from losing their health benefits, after several large companies, including General Motors, John Deere, RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies), and the maker of Kellogg's cereals, threatened to or did cut off coverage during labor disputes.

“Workers shouldn't have to choose between their family's health and a fair contract,” Brown said in a statement to KFF Health News.

The legislation was endorsed by large labor unions including the Service Employees International Union and United Steelworkers, according to a press release from Brown's office. The NEA wasn't among them.

“This tactic is immoral, and it should be illegal,” United Steelworkers' president at the time, Thomas Conway, said in the release.

Officials at the NEA, which represents teachers and other administrators, declined an interview request. In a statement, the organization's president, Becky Pringle, said “we are making every effort to reach an agreement as quickly as possible” with its staff union.

“As union leaders who have been on strike, we recognize the significance and impact of these important decisions on a personal and family level. We truly value our employees and look forward to continued collaboration with NEASO to develop a new contract that benefits us all,” she said.

Kate Hilts, a digital strategist who works for the NEA, said she fears losing her coverage will leave her unable to afford treatment for a rare autoimmune disease that attacks her kidneys. Her next treatment was slated for August.

“I wake up every day and can't believe this is happening,” she said. “You would expect this from an employer that is antiworker or has a terrible labor record, but I am totally flabbergasted that a labor union would do this that bills itself as pro-worker, pro-family, pro-education, and pro-children.”

The NEA staff union has filed multiple charges with the National Labor Relations Board this year, including allegations that the NEA withheld holiday overtime pay and failed to provide information on the outsourcing of millions of dollars in bargaining unit work.

California is one of the only states that protect striking workers from losing health coverage. The state legislature passed a law in 2021 that blocks the tactic from being used against public employees and another law in 2022 that allows any striking workers who lose their insurance to immediately get heavily discounted coverage through the state's Affordable Care Act marketplace.

If they remain locked out, the NEA workers would be eligible for coverage under COBRA, a federal program that allows people who are fired or laid off to maintain their employer-sponsored insurance for 18 months.

But the coverage can be a financial hardship, as individuals often must pay the entire cost of their insurance premiums, plus a 2% administrative fee.

Another option for workers would be coverage through the Affordable Care Act marketplace, though that also could be costly. And it may be unclear how soon that coverage would begin or whether insurers would cover their existing doctors.

“I'm hoping the NEA will be so ashamed of what they are doing that, at the very least, they will not take away our health benefits,” Barksdale said.

——————————
By: Phil Galewitz, KFF Health News
Title: Union With Labor Dispute of Its Own Threatens to Cut Off Workers' Health Benefits
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/nea-national-education-association-union-threatens-health-insurance-benefit-lockout/
Published Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

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Kaiser Health News

The CDC’s Test for Bird Flu Works, but It Has Issues

Published

11 hours ago

July 26, 2024

Staff Editor

Arthur Allen and Amy Maxmen
Fri, 26 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says a glitch in its bird flu test hasn't harmed the agency's outbreak response. But it has ignited scrutiny of its go-it-alone approach in testing for emerging pathogens.

The agency has quietly worked since April to resolve a nagging issue with the test it developed, even as the virus swept through dairy farms and chicken houses across the country and infected at least 13 farmworkers this year.

At a congressional hearing July 23, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) asked about the issue. “Boy, that rings of 2020,” he said, referring to when the nation was caught off guard by the covid-19 pandemic, in part because of dysfunctional tests made by the CDC. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, responded that the agency rapidly developed a workaround that makes its bird flu test reliable.

“The tests are 100% usable,” he later told KFF Health News, adding that the FDA studied the tests and came to the same conclusion. The imperfect tests, which have a faulty element that sometimes requires testing a sample again, will be replaced soon. He added, “We have made sure that we're offering a high-quality product.”

Still, some researchers were unnerved by the news coming four months after the government declared a worrisome bird flu outbreak among cattle. The CDC's test is the only one available for clinical use. Some researchers say its flaws, though manageable, underscore the risk of relying on a single entity for testing.

The problem came to light in April as the agency prepared to distribute its test to about 100 public health labs around the country. CDC officials detected the issue through a quality control system put in place after the covid test catastrophe of 2020.

Daskalakis said the CDC's original test design was fine, but a flaw emerged when a company contracted by the agency manufactured the tests in bulk. In these tests, one of two components that recognize proteins called H5 in the H5N1 bird flu virus was unreliable, eliminating an important safeguard. By targeting the same protein twice, tests have a built-in backup in case one part fails.

The agency developed a fix to ensure a reliable result: If only one of the two parts detected H5, the test was considered inconclusive and would be run again. With the FDA's blessing, the CDC distributed the tests — with workaround instructions — to public health labs.

Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious diseases at the Association of Public Health Laboratories, said the results of the tests have not been ambiguous, and there is no need to discard the tests.

Still, the agency has asked a different manufacturer to remake the faulty component so that 1.2 million improved tests will be available soon, Daskalakis said. Some of the updated tests are already in stock at the CDC, but the FDA hasn't yet signed off on their use. Daskalakis declined to name the manufacturers.

Meanwhile, the outbreak has grown. Farmworkers continue to lack information about the virus and gear to protect them from it. Rural clinics may miss cases if they don't catch a person's connection to a farm and notify health officials rather than their usual diagnostic testing laboratories.

Those clinical labs remain unauthorized to test for the bird flu. Several of those labs have spent months working through analyses and red tape so that they can run the CDC's tests. As part of the licensing process, the CDC alerted them to the workaround with the current test, too.

But outside select circles, the news was largely overlooked. “I'm totally surprised by this,” Alex Greninger, assistant director of the University of Washington Clinical Virology Laboratory, told KFF Health News this week. Greninger's lab is developing its own test and has been trying to obtain CDC test kits to evaluate.

“It's not a red alarm,” he said, but he's worried that as the CDC and the FDA spend months developing and evaluating an updated test, the only one available relies on a single component. If the genetic code underlying that fragment of the H5 protein mutates, the test could give false results.

It's not uncommon for academic and commercial diagnostic labs to make mistakes and catch them during quality control checks, as the CDC did. Still, this isn't the agency's first mishap. In 2016, well before the covid debacle, CDC officials for months directed public health labs to use a Zika test that failed about a third of the time.

The CDC caught and worked to remediate the situation far more quickly and effectively in this case. Nonetheless, the mishap raises concern. Michael Mina, chief science officer of the telemedicine company eMed.com, said diagnostic companies may be better suited to the task.

“It's a reminder that CDC is not a robust manufacturer of tests” and lacks the resources that industry can marshal for their production, Mina said. “We do not ask CDC to make vaccines and pharmaceuticals, and we do not ask the Pentagon to manufacture missiles.”

The CDC has licensed its updated test design to at least seven clinical diagnostic labs. Such labs are the foundation of testing in the U.S. But none have FDA clearance to use them.

Diagnostic labs are developing their own tests, too. But that has been slow-going. One reason is the lack of guaranteed sales. Another is regulatory uncertainty. Recent FDA guidance could make it harder for nongovernmental laboratories to issue new tests in the early phase of pandemics, said Susan Van Meter, president of the American Clinical Laboratory Association, in a July 1 letter to the FDA.

Transparency is also critical, scientists said. Benjamin Pinsky, medical director of the clinical virology laboratory at Stanford University, said as a public agency the CDC should make its protocol — its recipe for making the test — easily accessible online.

The World Health Organization does so for its bird flu tests, and with that information in hand, Pinsky's lab has developed an H5 bird flu test suited to the strain circulating this year in the U.S. The lab published its approach this month but doesn't have FDA authorization for its broad use.

The CDC's test recipe is available in a published patent, Daskalakis said.

“We have made sure that tests are out there, and that they work,” he added.

As the CDC came under fire at the July 23 congressional hearing, Daniel Jernigan, director of the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, noted that testing is just one tool. The agency needs money for another promising area — looking for the virus in wastewater. Its current program uses supplemental funds, he said: “It is not in the current budget and will go away without additional funding.”

——————————
By: Arthur Allen and Amy Maxmen
Title: The CDC's Test for Bird Flu Works, but It Has Issues
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/article/bird-flu-test-cdc-flaws/
Published Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Post Views: 22

Kaiser Health News

KFF Health News’ ‘What the Health?’: Harris in the Spotlight

Published

1 day ago

July 25, 2024

Staff Editor

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 18:45:00 +0000

The Host

Julie Rovner
KFF Health News

@jrovner

Read Julie's stories.

Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KFF Health News' weekly health policy news podcast, “What the Health?” A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book “Health Care Politics and Policy A to Z,” now in its third edition.

As Vice President Kamala Harris appears poised to become the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, health policy in general and reproductive health issues in particular are likely to have a higher profile. Harris has long been the Biden administration's point person on abortion rights and reproductive health and was active on other health issues while serving as California's attorney general.

Meanwhile, Congress is back for a brief session between presidential conventions, but efforts in the GOP-led House to pass the annual spending bills, due by Oct. 1, have run into the usual roadblocks over abortion-related issues.

This week's panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health News, Stephanie Armour of KFF Health News, Rachel Cohrs Zhang of Stat, and Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico.

Panelists

Stephanie Armour
KFF Health News

@StephArmour1

Read Stephanie's stories.

Rachel Cohrs Zhang
Stat News

@rachelcohrs

Read Rachel's stories.

Alice Miranda Ollstein
Politico

@AliceOllstein

Read Alice's stories.

Among the takeaways from this week's episode:

President Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the presidential race has turned attention to his likely successor on the Democratic ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris. At this late hour in the campaign, she is expected to adopt Biden's health policies, though many anticipate she'll take a firmer stance on restoring Roe v. Wade. And while abortion rights supporters are enthusiastic about Harris' candidacy, opponents are eager to frame her views as extreme.
As he transitions from incumbent candidate to outgoing president, Biden is working to frame his legacy, including on health policy. The president has expressed pride that his signature domestic achievement, the Inflation Reduction Act, took on the pharmaceutical industry, including by forcing the makers of the most expensive drugs into negotiations with Medicare. Yet, as with the Affordable Care Act's delayed implementation and results, most Americans have yet to see the IRA's potential effect on drug prices.
Lawmakers continue to be hung up on federal government spending, leaving appropriations work undone as they prepare to leave for summer recess. Fights over abortion are, once again, gumming up the works.
In abortion news, Iowa's six-week limit is scheduled to take effect next week, causing rippling problems of abortion access throughout the region. In Louisiana, which added the two drugs used in medication abortions to its list of controlled substances, doctors are having difficulty using the pills for other indications. And doctors who oppose abortion are pushing higher-risk procedures, like cesarean sections, in lieu of pregnancy termination when the mother's life is in danger — as states with strict bans, like Texas and Louisiana, are reporting a rise in the use of surgeries, including hysterectomies, to end pregnancies.
The Government Accountability Office reports that many states incorrectly removed hundreds of thousands of eligible people from the Medicaid rolls during the “unwinding” of the covid-19 public health emergency's coverage protections. The Biden administration has been reluctant to call out those states publicly in an attempt to keep the process as apolitical as possible.

Also this week, Rovner interviews Anthony Wright, the new executive director of the consumer health advocacy group Families USA. Wright spent the past two decades in California, working with, among others, now-Vice President Kamala Harris on various health issues.

Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think you should read, too:

Julie Rovner: NPR's “A Study Finds That Dogs Can Smell Your Stress — And Make Decisions Accordingly,” by Rachel Treisman.

Alice Miranda Ollstein: Stat's “A Pricey Gilead HIV Drug Could Be Made for Dramatically Less Than the Company Charges,” by Ed Silverman, and Politico's “Federal HIV Program Set To Wind Down,” by Alice Miranda Ollstein and David Lim.

Stephanie Armour: Vox's “Free Medical School Won't Solve the Doctor Shortage,” by Dylan Scott.

Rachel Cohrs Zhang: Stat's “How UnitedHealth Harnesses Its Physician Empire To Squeeze Profits out of Patients,” by Bob Herman, Tara Bannow, Casey Ross, and Lizzy Lawrence.

Also mentioned on this week's podcast:

States Newsroom's “Anti-Abortion Researchers Back Riskier Procedures When Pregnancy Termination Is Needed, Experts Say,” by Sofia Resnick.
KFF Health News' “Louisiana Reclassifies Drugs Used in Abortions as Controlled Dangerous Substances,” by Rosemary Westwood, WWNO.
The New York Times' “Biden and Georgia Are Waging a Fight Over Medicaid and the Future of Obamacare,” by Noah Weiland.

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KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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Title: KFF Health News' ‘What the Health?': Harris in the Spotlight
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/podcast/what-the-health-357-kamala-harris-campaign-health-policy-july-25-2024/
Published Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2024 18:45:00 +0000

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