The Red Folder

Archived from August 19, 2024.

Key stories for the week, brought to you by Lindsey Zhao and the Red Folder team.

Reading for the sake of reading sucks. Telling yourself to read to win a round is nice but ineffective. This condensed news brief helps you understand current domestic and international issues, analyze the news, and gives you opportunities to read more.

Publishing since January 2024.

Domestic Stories

4 key domestic stories for the week:

1) Confusion in Care: The Ongoing Impact of Post-Roe Abortion Bans Meera Menon

Since the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, fourteen states have enacted abortion bans. While these laws typically include exceptions for cases where a pregnancy endangers the mother’s life, the vague and complex language has led to widespread fear and confusion among doctors. Recently, two Texas women filed federal complaints against hospitals that denied them abortions for ectopic pregnancies—an emergency condition where the pregnancy cannot be carried to term and poses serious health risks. Both women reported that they were repeatedly turned away, nearly losing their lives and suffering the loss of their fallopian tubes in the process. These women announced their complaints publicly on Monday, speculating a potential investigation of Ascension Seton Williamson and Texas Health Arlington Memorial Hospital for violating the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) for providing improper care.

The ambiguous language of current abortion laws has led to inconsistent interpretations across states and even within the same state. For example, what one hospital in Texas might consider an emergency could be interpreted differently in Idaho, despite both states having similar bans. This lack of clarity has resulted in patients being turned away or forced to wait until their conditions worsen—sometimes until their vital signs crash—before receiving care. Even when emergency abortions were needed, physicians in states with strict abortion bans, like Idaho and Texas, have still turned patients away due to the severe legal consequences they could face. In Texas, for instance, medical professionals risk life imprisonment if they violate these laws.

The combination of vague legal wording and harsh penalties has made physicians more fearful and hesitant to rely on their medical judgment, further deteriorating healthcare in states with abortion bans. In response, Healthcare professionals nationwide are pleading for better guidelines on abortion laws in order to adequately treat their patients with their true advised care. Although some states have taken steps to halt the confusion and ameliorate current laws, these efforts often fall short, highlighting the need for a specific and applicable definition of the terms of abortion. Improving clarity would aid doctors, especially in abortion-banned states, in their practice of medicine and care. In turn, this would help women with dangerous medical conditions, better American healthcare, and save lives overall.

Read More Here:

2) Gavin Newsom and “Clearing the Camps” Roshan Shivnani

Homelessness has long been a problem in the U.S., with most major cities having homeless encampments in public areas from parks to highways. Yet, nowhere is the trend more paramount than California, which is home to nearly a third of the country's homeless population. That means more than 123,000 people sleep in encampments or other places not meant for habitation. The result has been a frenzy, with California Gov. Gavin Newsom trying to focus on the issue for years with little to no success. But with a new court decision, set of state policy, and changing message we may be in the midst of a larger change to how the state government will approach homelessness.

In decades past it was ruled that people couldn’t be punished for sleeping in homeless encampments so long as they had no alternative. However, that’s changed, with the Supreme Court ruling that cities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public places. The justices, in a 6-3 decision, overturned lower court rulings that deemed it cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment to punish people for sleeping outside if they had nowhere else to go.

This critical decision has given Gavin Newsom the firepower to have more aggressive policies targeting encampments legally. Unsurprisingly, he is using it to launch a new set of guidelines. Specifically, he enacted an executive order to “move people off the street”. Under the order, all state agencies must inventory encampments and formulate plans to begin addressing them. They will need to work with local service providers but, thanks to the Supreme Court decision, they do not need to ensure there are enough shelter beds for everyone before removing an encampment.

Unsurprisingly, the decision was controversial both across the state and nationally. In Congress, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders publicly argued that punishing homeless people won't solve the lack of affordable housing and put themselves in a stance against the policy. Interestingly enough, Newsom’s decision drew most of its praise from officials inside the state from California mayors, including Stockton’s Kevin Lincoln, a Republican, and San Diego’s Todd Gloria, a Democrat.

It’s undoubtedly clear that homelessness will continue to rise as a large-scale problem, especially with a growing population and lack of affordable housing. What’s also clear is we are about to witness a new approach to the crisis altogether. At the very least we’ll see on the state scale if more aggressive policy can quell the crisis and serve as the bedrock for a national model, or if America's homeless just end up in a worse situation before the policies even begin.

3) When the Price isn’t Right: Medicare’s Price Negotiations Boyana Nikolova

Almost 60 years ago, Former President Lyndon B. Johnson began pushing an initiative, better known as the “Great Society,” that sought to finally address poverty rates in the United States. At the cornerstone of the agenda stood a set of two programs that were to revolutionize healthcare, making it affordable to all struggling to purchase it, be it disabled, veteran, or low-income Americans. The plan itself was simple: the Medicaid program would offer benefits to all who had limited income and resources and Medicare would cover all eligible senior citizens above 65 alongside people with specific disabilities. Together, the two policies were expected to obliterate the greatest standing barriers to healthcare access. In the modern age, however, healthcare still appears to be more of a privilege than a right and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “great” proposal has hardly eliminated the affordability problem, particularly so for senior citizens.

Background

In the context of medical insurance, Medicare is expected to cost an average of $174.7 per month this year, the highest that number has ever been. Although the price has become normalized by many of the 60.6 million enrolled Americans, costs have been disfigured by decades of inflation within the program. Alarmingly, trends suggest they’re only going to rise further: the average annual cost per enrollee is forecasted to increase by more than $7,300 from 2010 to 2040. Even newcomers are sensing these changes: annual charges rose by roughly $360 in the past 3 years alone.

Medicare users, supported by their close ones and doctors, have taken to rebelling against this growing inaccessibility. Protests and legal action have been attempted, but the most recent battles have also been the most prominent. Fielded by the US federal government, Americans may now see a glimmer of hope in reversing ballooning prices; if US officials can put a cap on Medicare’s unhinged medicine-related expenses and savings within the program rise, premiums will ultimately go down. At last, healthcare coverage for the elderly and the eligible would become financially feasible.

There’s just one tiny obstacle: the notorious multi-trillion dollar pharmaceutical industry. For years, the government has been proposing to intervene in the meetings where pharmaceutical companies and Medicare administrators negotiate drug prices. With the presence of federal officials, drug expenses can be forced lower and talks could become more transparent. Progress on involving the government has thankfully been made, although limited until now.

The Biden administration’s 2022 Inflation Reduction Act was the first such revolutionary policy: the US would have to take part in meetings when drug manufacturers conducted business with Medicare and as a result, prices were reasonably expected to decrease. Except this wasn’t the case at all. Lucrative drug companies enforced excessively strict rules regarding meetings and who was invited, rejected price offers and follow-up deals by the US officials, and still negotiated higher prices than what the representatives had initially proposed. The act was rendered a failure and even legal countermeasures fell apart as drug makers refused to give in.

What now?

Just days ago, the Biden administration reached a breakthrough deal with prescription drug makers, completely recreating the healthcare landscape. Price negotiations have been reached for 10 specific commonly-used drugs, ones popular enough for 9 million Medicare users to rely on them. In consequence, close to $6 billion are expected to be saved. Better yet, an additional 15 drugs and their prices will soon be disputed by the government and drug industry. But why is this monumental? And are these savings really going to guarantee lower Medicare prices?

The answer to both of these questions can be found in the mounting costs enrollees have already been encountering. In the past, spending was relatively well-distributed, meaning the budget wasn’t inexplicably concentrated in any certain area. This has stopped being the case over time. In 2022, Medicare as a federal program paid close to $50 billion for just the 10 now negotiated-on drugs, a sum making up 5% of its spending that year. Unsurprisingly, the pharmaceutical industry is a major force behind these expense discrepancies. As Medicare lacks the legal authority to negotiate drug prices, it has had to accept conditions set by drug manufacturers, hiring private insurers to oversee its finances. Sadly, until recently, this has been Medicare’s only reality.

Now, the Biden Administration has begun dismantling the advantage drug companies have, an advantage they have weaponized against affordable healthcare. Prices on the selected 10 drugs were tweaked to be 38% to 79% lower than their initial mark; Medicare savings have climbed to nearly 22%. What does this mean for Medicare users? The most popular drugs they rely on are now more affordable and soon, more medications are to join that list. Inevitably, the monthly premiums they pay with Medicare will fall as the program’s savings on drug costs rise.

Of course, there will still be opposition from the side of drugmakers. Many pharmaceutical companies are lobbying Congress for exemptions in the face of government-monitored negotiations. Others are searching for bureaucratic excuses that will stall talks instead. Will this resistance from the side of drug companies continue? It’s hard to say. There is one fact, however, that America is gladly beginning to accept: the era of unaffordable health care may be coming to an end.

Read more here:

4) Vance and Walz’s Disinformation Duel Justin Palazzolo

In 2020, over four billion dollars were spent campaigning in the presidential election. The democrats proved that victory certainly had a price tag attached, as the Biden campaign outspent Trump and the RNC by over 2 billion dollars. All of this money was fed into the slow, increasingly bloated, and laborious process of having thousands of door-knockers, television ads, and sponsored messages try to sway an increasingly less receptive population to traditional campaign methods.

Campaigning is definitely hard.

Luckily for both candidates, lying isn’t.

With the rise of AI and deep fakes, misinformation and false news will dominate every social media platform in the 2024 election cycle. Older individuals are already more susceptible to fake images and AI-deep fake videos that will likely be spread around platforms like Facebook. While younger voters can usually spot AI-generated content, older voters may find their opinions shaped by blatantly false images or information. However, both sides have shown that they don’t need AI as a crutch when plain old slander is always available.

There is not a more clear example of this than the current spat between the two VP picks, JD Vance and Tim Walz. Deep within the bowels of the internet, a fake paragraph from Vance’s book ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ began widely circulating throughout Twitter. The paragraph detailed JD Vance admitting to performing sex acts with his couch. Right-wingers on social media platforms in response began a slander campaign of their own against Tim Walz, accusing the Minnesota governor of drinking horse semen in an equally repulsive act of mudslinging.

If you had any expectations that grown men running for the second highest office in the U.S. would be able to maintain some sense of democratic civility and not accuse each other of having intercourse with animals and furniture pieces then prepare to be disappointed. Tim Walz echoed the couch accusations after joking that he’d debate Vance if “he was willing to get off the couch and show up,” Walz left nothing to interpretation as he quipped “you see what I did there.” The right also promoted their lie about Walz after Donald Trump Jr. reposted an image promoting the horse-Walz slander.

Furthermore, both VP candidates have not just echoed social media disinformation but have parroted lies of their own. Vance has repeatedly accused Walz of stolen valor, stating that Walz ended his 24-year service in the National Guard 5 months before the Iraq war to avoid a deployment. There is no concrete evidence that Walz looked to avoid deployment, and a more likely explanation is that retirement is an entirely reasonable choice after 2+ decades of service.

Dems have not avoided Vance’s strategy of denigrating armed service records either, as multiple representatives and news anchors accused Vance of being a non-combat “public affairs” correspondent and nicknamed him “Sergeant Scribbles”. This comes with members who even served alongside Vance clarifying that he was present as a combat correspondent with Marine units in combat zones. Cullen Tiernan, a fellow combat correspondent, stated that they both came “under rocket and mortar fire” in their mission to document “The Marine Corps’ story” in Iraq.

The malicious slander campaign both sides are engaging in regarding the personal character of both potential VPs is part of a greater trend from 2020 and 2016. In 2020, baseless claims of electoral fraud were spread by Donald Trump and the Republican party that culminated on Jan 6th. The push to overturn the results of the election ultimately degraded the integrity of our democracy. This follows the 2016 election where Hillary Clinton called Trump “Putin’s puppet” and Rep. Adam Schiff claimed definitive evidence of Trump colluding with Russia despite both the Mueller and Durham report finding no direct evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. 2020 and 2016 are clear examples of misinformation not being produced by social media trolls but by representatives and candidates alike, and with the situation between Vance and Walz, 2024 projects to be far worse.

Admittedly, the jokes about couches and horses are pretty funny. But the notion, that two military veterans who are running for Vice President would refuse to disavow lies about sex with horses and couches, is a joke in itself. It turns out that running a country requires some maturity, a virtue neither Vance nor Walz is displaying right now. For us voters and citizens, it’s important not to fall into the biggest lie of all, that misinformation is a sin of one party or is a problem confined to social media trolls.

Misinformation is a cancer in every level of our democratic system from social media, to the campaign trail and even Capitol Hill.