The Public Health Emergency declaration put into place to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic ended last week. The move was largely symbolic but the end of the public health emergency has brought policy changes. Many of those changes are already in the works.
Back in 2020 when the world began mobilizing to deal with the emerging threat from the pandemic, a number of health policy changes were enacted to protect people, especially those who were the most economically vulnerable, from the upheaval caused by the pandemic.
Many of those programs have ended or are in the process of winding down. The extra pandemic allotments for those on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, ended in March. The Continuous Enrollment Provision for Medicaid, which provided healthcare coverage for millions during the pandemic, has also now ended.
The Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that enrollment in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program increased by nearly 30% between February 2020 and November 2022.
Later in this hour, the Food and Drug Administration said last week that it was updating its recommendations for blood donor screening. The new recommendations will eliminate prior restrictions that had prevented donations from most gay and bisexual men. The FDA is now recommending that all donors answer a series of individual risk-assessment questions, including questions on recent sexual history, to determine if someone is eligible to donate blood. The same questions will be given to any prospective donor, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender or sex.
The removal of the restrictions that prohibited most gay and bisexual men from donating blood is a change that LGBTQ+ advocates had been seeking for years. Critics have said the previous policy was discriminatory.
Guests
-John Corlett, President & Executive Director, The Center for Community Solutions
-Kevin Gowan, Director, Cuyahoga County Job and Family Services
-Ken Schneck, Editor, The Buckeye Flame
-Prakash Ganesh, MD, Medical Director, Cuyahoga County Board of Health
-Rachel Rood, Supervising Producer, Ideastream Public Media
-Delos "Toby" Cosgrove, MD, Former CEO and President, The Cleveland Clinic
