Supreme Court passes on Arkansas abortion law
The U.S. Supreme Court will not take up a challenge to an Arkansas law that could effectively block the use of medication abortions.
According to the law, doctors who provide medication to terminate pregnancies have to have a contract with a specialist with hospital admitting privileges. Providers say the rule is "burdensome and unnecessary," the Washington Post reports.
The state has three abortion clinics, and critics say the law could essentially leave only the one provider that provides surgical abortions in business. The law was previously blocked temporarily by a U.S. district judge. (Washington Post article)
Mortality rate from Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico much higher than official count
The official death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria, which devastated the territory in September 2017, stands at 64.
But the actual mortality rate is likely much higher—more than 70 times the official estimate—according to a new article published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers used a representative sample to survey nearly 3,300 households across Puerto Rico to produce an independent estimate of all-cause mortality after the hurricane, including causes of death. They calculated a mortality rate of 14.3 deaths per 1,000 people between September 20 through December 31, a 62% increase or 4,645 excess deaths over the mortality rate during the same period the previous year.
One in three of those deaths was attributed to delayed or interrupted healthcare, researchers said. (New England Journal of Medicine article)
HHS says unaccompanied alien children are not "lost," likely don't want to be found
Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan said reports that unaccompanied alien children were "lost" are false.
"This is a classic example of the adage ‘No good deed goes unpunished,’" Hargan said in a statement released on Monday. He said the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, began voluntarily making calls in 2016 as a 30-day follow-up on the release of those children to make sure they and their sponsors did not require additional services.
"This additional step, which is not required and was not done previously, is now being used to confuse and spread misinformation," Hargan said. "These children are not ‘lost’; their sponsors—who are usually parents or family members and in all cases have been vetted for criminality and ability to provide for them—simply did not respond or could not be reached when this voluntary call was made." This may be, in some cases, due to their reluctance to respond because of their own immigration status, he said. (Release)
Relationship between lack of paid sick leave and poverty quantified
Working adults without paid sick leave are three times more likely to have incomes below the poverty line, according to research published in the journals Social Work in Health Care and the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry.
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University and Cleveland State University also found that people with no paid sick leave benefits are more likely to experience food insecurities and require welfare services.
Findings also show that people with no paid sick leave benefits are more likely to experience food insecurity and require welfare services. Currently, only seven states mandate that employers provide paid sick leave benefits, and nearly one-third of all workers in the United States lack these protections.
“This adds to the growing body of evidence that paid sick leave is a key factor in health care affordability and economic security," said Patricia Stoddard Dare, Ph.D., associate professor of social work at Cleveland State, in a statement. (Release)