KHN’s ‘What The Health?’: Gun Violence And The Politics Of Public Health


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Three mass shootings in eight days have refocused the nation’s attention on the problem of gun violence — and restarted the long-running debate over guns as a public health issue.

Although Congress is on its summer break, before lawmakers left Washington they passed a two-year budget deal to make it easier to fund health programs — but it also cements funding restrictions like the Hyde Amendment, which bans most federal abortion funding.

This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times and Mary Agnes Carey of Kaiser Health News.

Among the takeaways from this week’s podcast:

Plus, for extra credit, the panelists recommend their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read too:

Julie Rovner: The Washington Post’s “2020 Democrats Are Fighting Over Universal Health Care Details. Voters May Not Want That,” by Paige Winfield Cunningham

Mary Agnes Carey: The Washington Post’s “Proponents of Stricter Gun Control Face a Reality Check in the Senate,” by Paul Kane

Alice Miranda Ollstein: Governing’s “America Has a Health-Care Crisis — in Prisons,” by Alan Greenblatt

Margot Sanger-Katz: Balloon Juice blog’s “The Upcoming Strange Politics of the ACA,” by David Anderson

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This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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