�Թϲ�����

President Biden took several steps Thursday to undo some of the damage President Trump inflicted on the health insurance program created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and that’s a good thing. Trump needlessly undermined the state exchanges that made coverage available and affordable to millions of lower-income Americans who don’t have access to an employer’s health plan. But make no mistake, Biden’s actions won’t do much to improve the U.S. healthcare system as a whole. The problems of ever-rising costs and large numbers of uninsured Americans remain, and will continue to fester until more dramatic and permanent steps are taken. (Jon Healey, 1/29)

Last week, President Joe Biden signed executive orders that will re-open ObamaCare's insurance exchanges from Feb. 15 through May 15 and direct federal agencies to re-examine some of the health care rules enacted by the Trump administration. There's a limit to what Biden can accomplish by executive action. But with narrow control of Congress, there's still plenty Democrats can do on health care. Unfortunately, the changes they have in mind won't make health care more affordable, even as they command huge sums of taxpayer money. Near the top of Biden's agenda are more generous subsidies for coverage sold on the exchanges. Currently, ObamaCare provides premium tax credits to Americans earning between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level, or between about $26,000 and $105,000 for a family of four.  (Sally Pipes, 1/31)

On Thursday, President Biden lifted the Mexico City Policy, known more commonly to critics as the global gag rule, which denies U.S. aid to nongovernmental organizations if they advocate for, suggest or even mention the word abortion. Mr. Biden’s move was not a surprise. Since the rule was established under Ronald Reagan in 1984, Republican presidents have sustained the policy, and their Democratic counterparts have repealed it. The gag rule does not simply project America’s culture battles onto the lives of women and families in far-flung communities across the world — though it very much does that — but also creates what Simon Cooke, the C.E.O. of the U.K.-based women’s health organization MSI Reproductive Choices, calls a “yo-yo” effect which badly strains global health care distribution. (Sarah Wildman, 1/31)

In 2009, four months after Barack Obama, who supported abortion rights, was sworn in as president and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, a religious zealot murdered the late-term abortion doctor George Tiller in the vestibule of Tiller’s church. I have always believed those two things were related. Generally, when the Republican Party has been in charge, antiabortion activists breathe a little easier, knowing women’s reproductive rights will be foiled at almost every turn. (Robin Abcarian, 1/31)

The defining photograph of the attempted insurrection on Jan. 6 was that of a man strolling through the broken halls of our national Capitol, amid the smashed windows and assorted rubble of the failed coup, proudly brandishing a Confederate flag on his shoulder and hoping to overturn an election decided largely by Black voters. It’s an image that tells the story not only of Jan. 6 or of the Trump presidency, but also of all the steps that led to that moment — the whole history of hate in America captured in one frame. For me, the echoes of that picture reverberated back nearly six years, to the day my mom — Ethel Lee Lance — was shot and killed while praying in Charleston’s Mother Emanuel Church along with eight other Black Americans, including two of my cousins and one of my close childhood friends. (Sharon Risher, 1/31)

As survivors of sexual violence have dealt with the stresses of the pandemic, a chaotic political season and civil unrest, RAINN has seen record demand for our victim services programs — the highest in our 26-year history. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the risks that kids have faced throughout a long national quarantine, the majority of victims we helped online through the National Sexual Assault Hotline in 2020 were kids. (Scott Berkowitz, 1/31)

Despite groundbreaking advances in basic and clinical science and technology, clinical trial methods have not kept up with the pace of change and are no longer fit for purpose — not for patients or for the life science industry. (Kalali and Lipset, 1/29)