Immigration and Health Care Under the Trump Administration [from Health Affairs Blog]

After a brief hiatus during the holidays, a Nor'easter, and the dawn of a new semester, PHLW is back with this post by our own Wendy E. Parmet on the Health Affairs Blog.  The piece about the current state of immigration and health care comes out of her recent presentation at the Harvard Law School Petrie-Flom Center Sixth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review in December 2016.

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Minor Access to Prophylaxes in Massachusetts: STI Consent, the Mature Minor Rule, and the Definition of "Treatment"

The Massachusetts Joint Committee on Public Health is currently considering House and Senate bills to amend the Commonwealth’s emergency consent statute (Section 12F), which allows certain minors to self-consent to general medical care, and allows all minors to self-consent STI diagnosis and treatment.

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Could repealing net neutrality be bad for our health? [From Health Cents, philly.com]

The Federal Communications Commission plans to vote this week on a proposal to repeal Obama-era rules that require Internet Services Providers, companies that connect your computer to the Internet like Comcast and Verizon, to treat all websites equally. The rules prohibit ISPs from speeding up or slowing down traffic to a site for financial or other reasons.

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Why is Congress not prioritizing health care for children and other vulnerable populations?

Back in September of this year, Congress was faced with the decision of whether or not to renew funding for both the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the Community Health Center Fund. Both sources of funding expired on October 1, 2017. As of the date of this post, 68 days have passed since Congress failed to renew funding for these crucial programs.

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Of Mosquitoes and “Moral Convictions”: How Rolling Back the Affordable Care Act’s Contraceptive Mandate Jeopardizes Women’s and Children’s Health

December 5 is the deadline to submit comments on the Trump Administration's recent action to gut the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate, which requires employer-sponsored health plans to ensure women's access to free, effective contraception.  This decision, announced in October in two Interim Final Rules, threatens serious harm to American children, because of the risk that women who lack access to contraception will become pregnant, contract Zika, and unwittingly transmit the virus to their developing fetus. 

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