Healthwatch: Dr. Leana Wen on a 3rd COVID winter, Rx costs, safe sports

It’s the Midday Healthwatch, with Dr. Leana Wen. COVID numbers are up, compounded by big increases in rates of influenza and RSV. Is there a full blown COVID surge on the way in the US? Experts fear that there may be a surge in China. Will highly transmissible Omicron variants prove to be too much for China’s zero-COVID policy to handle? And the advances made in telemedicine during the pandemic made healthcare more accessible for millions of people. Will policy makers make sure that access continues? Democrats and the Biden Administration have promised to lower the cost of prescription drugs. In a column in the Washington Post, Dr. Wen profiled Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the first Black woman to lead the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, and the woman charged with overseeing the drug pricing program, and a host of other programs. We'll discuss these and other topics today... Dr. Wen is one of America’s most trusted and knowledgeable public health experts. She is a former health commissioner of Baltimore and an emergency physician. She teaches at the George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health. She writes a column for the Washington Post.  She’s a medical analyst for CNN, a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health. Dr. Leana Wen joins us on Zoom…Email us at [email protected], tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.