Healthcare

A pair of federal programs compensating people who suffer injuries from vaccines and pandemic treatments are now facing so many claims that thousands of people may not receive payment for their injuries any time soon.

On March 21, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, announced that he has secured $2 million in federal appropriations for the new Central Texas Community Mental Health Sur­veil­lance Collaborative, a project that aims to create an interactive map of mental health data similar to local COVID dashboards. The project, one of 10 chosen from a community project funding request, is being designed by Texas State Uni­ver­sity's Dr. Melinda Villagran and Dr. Alessandro De Nadai. Villagran says when the pandemic hit in March 2020, she was struck by the simple visual language of COVID dashboards: "There's a lot of data available, but very few of us have the bandwidth to look at it, find it, understand it, and use it every day. I found it to be a visual way to make sense of what was happening. And I thought, man, we need one of these for everything!"

On September 19, 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced the Elijah Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act. The bill, known as H.R. 3, was a shot across the bow of an industry accustomed to congressional docility and deference. If passed into law, H.R. 3 would allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices on behalf of Medicare, a right assumed by the governments of every other major economy. The bill reflected an intra-party compromise and disappointed progressive Democrats who had pushed for deeper reforms. But H.R. 3 was no trifle. It put a hard cap on insulin prices and allowed Health and Human Services to negotiate prices on “at least” 50 of the 250 most expensive Medicare drugs.

Austin Public Health will open a new, federally funded COVID-19 testing site on Feb. 1 at Metz Elementary School, located at 84 Robert T. Martinez Jr. St. in East Austin.

A free COVID-19 testing site will open at the now-closed Metz Elementary School in East Austin on Tuesday. The site will offer PCR testing seven days a week through Feb. 21.