Vaccine nationalism could prolong the pandemic and lead to preventable deaths.
by Marco Hafner and Christian Van Stolk
The approval of various COVID-19 vaccines seems like a game changer in the course of the pandemic. The vaccines offer hope that vulnerable populations can be better protected and that people’s social and economic lives can perhaps return to normal, or at least closer to it.
However, the virus is not static. New variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are emerging frequently. Just as dangerous to human health, these variants tend to be more transmissible than the original. …
Recent RAND research can shed light on how Congress might consider divvying up funds to support students over the next year.
by Grace Evans, Heather L. Schwartz, Benjamin K. Master
President Biden’s plan calls for $50 billion to scale up COVID-19 testing to support safe school reopening and protect at-risk populations like those in prisons and long-term care facilities. The plan also calls for $130 billion to help schools safely reopen and identifies summer school or other supports to help students compensate for lost learning time as permissible uses of this funding. Recent RAND research can shed light on how Congress might consider divvying up these two buckets of funds to support students over the next year.
“Building back better” requires understanding a community’s needs, ambitions, goals, vulnerability, and capacity.
by Max Izenberg and Aaron Clark-Ginsberg
Long before it was popularized and made its way into political slogans and economic recovery battle cries, the phrase “building back better” was a central tenet of disaster recovery and community resilience. In these circles, the concept refers to more than how to create lasting infrastructure. Instead, it means substantially improving individual and community well-being.
Viewed through this lens, “building back better” requires understanding a community’s needs, ambitions, goals, vulnerability, and capacity. It means local voices must be front and center as plans and decisions are made. …
Might the crises of the past year provide a catalyst for a renewed sense of civic engagement?
by Katherine Grace Carman, Tamara Dubowitz, Christopher Nelson
The past year has been among the most turbulent in recent memory, with a global pandemic killing well over 350,000 Americans, protests against police brutality as well as to foster racial justice, a flagging economy, and a contested presidential election. Might the crises of the past year provide a catalyst for a renewed sense of civic engagement that transcends some of the race and class divisions COVID-19 has exacerbated?
In October of 2020, RAND and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation surveyed a nationally representative sample of 4,143 individuals with household incomes under…
Any device can be hacked, including one inside the human body. What are the privacy and security implications of devices that live with us?
The “Internet of Things” gave us driverless cars, video doorbells, and smart refrigerators — everyday items made new with sensors and network connections. Up next: the “Internet of Bodies.” You’re about to find out just how personal your personal technology can get.
Think smart pills transmitting information from inside your body; smart beds that can track your heart rate and breathing; even smart clothes that can sense your body temperature — and adjust your smart thermostat accordingly. One team of doctors recently announced the development of “hardware and software for the long-term analysis of a user’s excreta”-a smart toilet.
The price Americans pay for insulin is more than ten times higher than the average price in 32 other countries combined.
Drug companies charge more for insulin in the United States than in nearly three dozen other countries RAND researchers examined — and it’s not even close. The average list price for a unit of insulin in Canada was $12. Step across the border into America, and it’s $98.70.
Those differences help explain why insulin has become a symbol of the high cost of American health care. Its prices have shot up in recent years, for reasons that are opaque at best, with those who can least afford it often paying the most. …
Telehealth use skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Can this form of high quality, low cost care be maintained post–COVID-19?
by Shira H. Fischer and Joshua Breslau
Telehealth use skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the public health emergency, Medicare had 13,000 members with telehealth service claims; two months later, that number was almost 1.7 million. Similarly, the number of private claims for telehealth were 40 times higher in March 2020 than they were a year earlier. The availability of these virtual appointments when offices were closed, the newly allowed insurance coverage of such appointments, and the ability to use non-HIPAA secure platforms like Zoom and FaceTime, certainly drove much of the increase.
But a less-noted additional change may have…
The CARES Act showed that Unemployment Insurance can do better by workers and employers.
In every recession since 1957, Congress has intervened (PDF) in Unemployment Insurance to put off benefits’ expiration date. But with the CARES Act, passed in March, Congress stepped into new territory. Congress increased the dollar amount of benefits and, for the first time, changed tax rates and covered additional groups of workers.
These provisions, even if they eventually expire some time in 2021, made stark the crucial ways that Unemployment Insurance is falling short for covered workers, workers not covered, and the employers who pay into it. …
There are large disparities in who is able to telework by race and ethnicity—but even larger ones by educational attainment.
Teleworking has increased tremendously in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The ability to telework is associated with both reduced risk of infection and significantly lower risk of job loss. Recently released data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) sheds new light on how widespread telework has become and who is doing it. There are large disparities by race and ethnicity — but even larger ones by educational attainment.
As seen in Figure 1, non-Hispanic whites are 62 percent of all workers, but 69 percent of teleworkers, an 11.5 percent positive gap. (These gaps are calculated as…
States, health systems, and the public continue to need clarity on health care resource allocation policy.
by Lori Frank and Thomas W. Concannon
The surge-upon-surge of COVID-19 cases in the United States has again focused attention on scarcity of lifesaving medical resources — hospital beds, ICU equipment, ventilators, oxygen, medications, and hospital staff. With nearly 124,000 people hospitalized — and more than 23,000 in ICU care — hospitals have reached and exceeded their capacity from California to Georgia to Texas to Tennessee.
What happens next in each of those states will differ. Guidelines for how to allocate health care resources — where they exist at all — vary widely by state. Fundamental questions about who gets…
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