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The Abstract
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> By Stephanie DiCapua Getman, Arnold Ventures
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Next week marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which promised to extend voting rights to all women. In practice, however, most women of color were shut out from exercising that right for decades thereafter, despite their role in the women's suffrage movement. So perhaps it's fitting that the centennial will come on the heels of this week’s historic announcement that California Sen. Kamala Harris is the vice-presidential pick on the Democratic ticket. The nomination comes with many firsts: Harris is the first Black woman and the first woman of Indian ancestry — as well as the first graduate of a Historically Black College or University (Howard) — on a major-party presidential ticket. (And even the first candidate from west of the Rockies on the Democratic party ticket.) And it’s a moment made possible by “millions of Black women and their political labor,” writes Prairie View A&M University Professor Melanye Price.
Almost as if they had planned it perfectly, the newsroom of The 19th will be hosting Harris today for a virtual discussion on race and gender. (For those interested, Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex, will be making an appearance, too.)
Related: Read the story of the Black sorority at Howard University that faced racism in the suffrage movement but refused to walk away, via The Washington Post.
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COVID-19 is putting up serious barriers to birth control — at a time when many women, hesitant to have children amid a pandemic, are seeking it out. (Despite stay-at-home orders, evidence and history point to a baby bust, not boom.) Many women don’t want to expose themselves or their families to the virus by going to a doctor’s office, millions of Americans have lost their employer-based health insurance along with their jobs, and out of pocket costs are putting some traditional methods out of reach.
Bottom line: “[COVID-19 has] really exposed the barriers to care and fault lines in our system that already existed, particularly for certain communities, low-income communities, and communities of color,” says Jamille Fields Allsbrook, Director of Women’s Health and Rights at the Center for American Progress.
What can be done: Telehealth is trying to fill the gap, but we need to open more channels to reproductive health care during the pandemic, including pharmacist-prescribed birth control and investing in family planning providers to fill in service gaps.
Read the story >
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Who's Minimizing Injustice
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San Francisco, as it becomes the first county in the nation to provide free calls to jail inmates, ending the practice of generating revenue from incarcerated people and their families and lifting an economic burden from low-income communities. Kudos to our grantee Financial Justice Project for facilitating this reform.
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Advocates calling for Congress to pass legislation as part of the next coronavirus relief package that would significantly lower the in-state phone call rates for people who are incarcerated. Nearly 80,000 citizens signed on to support the initiative, showing that national momentum to at least reduce the costs of phone calls for families is growing.
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Iowa, whose governor recently signed an executive order restoring voting rights to those with felony convictions who have completed their sentences — without requiring their fines, fees or restitution be paid first. (The fines and fees issue has derailed a similar reform in Florida.) And congrats to grantee Fines and Fees Justice Center for their work on this important reform.
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By Rhiannon Meyers Collette
You knew health care was expensive, but did you know that commercial insurers pay on average 122 percent of what Medicare pays for the same services? A new report by the renowned Health Care Cost Institute, supported by AV, injects some fresh data into the national conversation about health care prices — and what they found underscores the irrationality of the way we pay for care in this country.
Why it matters: The big variation between commercial rates and Medicare rates raises some serious questions about whether the health care market is truly functioning. It’s especially concerning because research has shown time and again that higher prices do not correlate with better quality care or better outcomes for patients.
What’s next: The pandemic and the ensuing national economic crisis has created a new urgency for policymakers to finally do something to lower health care costs at the state and national level.
Read the story >
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By Rhiannon Meyers Collette
President Trump’s “Buy American” executive order is aimed at reducing U.S. dependence on foreign drug manufacturing, but the rule’s potential impacts are unclear — and the mandate could actually increase prices for patients, taxpayers, and employers.
Why it matters: The order is not intended to lower drug prices but rather to remedy some of the drug supply chain problems that have bubbled to the surface during the pandemic. But there are many unknowns: Can American suppliers produce enough supply to meet demand? Will we alienate trade partners? How will this affect drug prices? Early consensus is that the rule would most likely raise costs at a time when Americans are struggling amid the dual blow of national economic crisis and the pandemic. AV Health Care Manager Kevin Love breaks it all down.
Read the story >
Related: New polling from Data for Progress shows voters in key states want aggressive action to lower prescription drug prices, including allowing the government to manufacture generic alternatives to high-cost drugs.
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Vox examining the shortcomings of our 911 system and raising the question of whether a dispatch error may have contributed to the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.
“911 call takers are gatekeepers for the entire criminal justice system. We need to start treating them that way.”
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A deep dive from STAT on the cash pharma is funneling into Congress as drug makers race to fight the coronavirus.
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Calls to defund the police have sparked new interest in city budgets. This visually compelling guide from a recent “budget convert” at CityLab walks readers through the budgeting process and ways to make it more accessible.
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This eye-opening piece from The Hechinger Report and NBC News showing a critical lack of financial oversight in higher education that leaves students scrambling when their colleges abruptly close. “There’s no one organization or entity that is truly in charge of assessing financial responsibility,” said Daniel Zibel, Vice President of nonprofit Student Defense. “There’s no one who has ‘the buck stops here’ authority.”
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New analysis from the Columbia Justice Lab on probation and parole in America. “The United States continues to maintain high rates of community supervision compared to historic rates, as well as compared to European rates. Further, community supervision is still marked by significant racial disparities and ‘mass supervision’ continues to be a major contributor to mass incarceration.”
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Black lawmakers from George Floyd’s home state of Texas introducing the George Floyd Act, legislation that would ban chokeholds statewide and compel officers to intervene and render aid in cases of excessive force.
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This Rolling Stone article highlighting pharma manufacturers profiting from the pandemic. "What Americans need to understand about the race to find vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 is that in the U.S., even when companies appear to downshift from maximum greed levels — and it’s not at all clear they’ve done this with coronavirus treatments — the production of pharmaceutical drugs is still a nearly riskless, subsidy-laden scam."
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This wide-ranging discussion on bipartisan criminal justice reform (and beagles) with Justice Action Network Executive Director Holly Harris on the The Disruption Zone podcast. She brings the shocking statistics:
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The U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population and 20 percent of the world’s incarcerated people because we’ve criminalized so much behavior rather than turning to treatment and other rehabilitative options that lead to better outcomes: “We went way too far in this country… I just don’t think it was a data-driven approach, and we now have the benefit of so much data that shows alternatives to incarceration works for low-level, non-violent offenders.”
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Just under 500,000 of the 10.3 million arrests in 2018 in America were for violent offenses: “We’re talking about a nation that immediately takes low-level, nonviolent offenses and makes them a part of our justice system, and perhaps we need to be looking at other avenues.”
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And reform makes communities safer: “The states that have most significantly reduced incarceration through the reforms that we work on have seen an average drop in their crime rates of roughly 19 percent. Conversely, the 10 states that have most significantly increased their incarceration rates through the old ‘lock ’em up and throw away the key’ policies of the ’80s and ’90s only saw an average drop in their crime rate of 11 percent.”
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When I was a kid, I always considered my uncle’s roommate family — he was my uncle, too. The two of them spent every holiday with us, took my sisters and me ice-skating and bowling, and generally spoiled us rotten. It wasn’t until almost junior high school, after I learned they were moving to another city together, that it dawned on me to ask my mother about their relationship (while at the checkout line in a grocery store, she likes to remind me). Yes, she told me matter-of-factly, they’re gay. The revelation wasn’t much of a revelation — it didn’t change my relationship with them — but it did help to galvanize my views on gay rights. So I was very interested when my mother recommended the Netflix documentary “A Secret Love,” about the more than 60-year relationship between Terry Donahue and Pat Henschel, a lesbian couple who were forced to hide their love and lives together under the guise of being just “roommates” and close friends. “In the forties you had to be very careful.” While their family was not in on the secret, Terry and Pat found kinship in a tight-knit circle of gay friends. Add to that Terry’s time in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (yes, as seen in “A League of Their Own”) and this documentary is a lovely view into enduring love.
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A New York artist was inspired by the powerful photos on this Instagram account that show the toll front-line pandemic work has taken on health care workers. So he started painting their portraits and mailing them to their homes, free of charge. The results are striking.
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The Atlantic put together a collection of nine poems worth revisiting for “this fraught moment.” I’ll add an entry from one of my favorite poets, Lucille Clifton.
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This mesmerizing website splits in half when you click on it. It’s a time-waster but somehow meditative. (H/T to our comms intern, Rachel.)
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Have an evidence-based week,
– Stephanie
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Stephanie DiCapua Getman develops and executes Arnold Ventures' digital communications strategy with a focus on multimedia storytelling and audience engagement and oversees daily editorial operations and design.
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