Viewpoints: Big Pharma, Stop Grandstanding And Work To Lower Drug Prices; Did Guidelines About Increasing Carbs End Up Making Americans Fat?
Opinion writers weigh in on these health topics and others.
Des Moines Register:
Big Pharma, Help Us Lower Prescription Drug Prices
It’s not every day an Iowan has the opportunity to wake up and ask top executives of seven major pharmaceutical companies the question that’s on the minds of most Americans: Why do prescription drug prices keep rising in America? That’s exactly what I’ll be doing this morning when I chair a congressional hearing of the Senate Finance Committee. It’s the second in a series of hearings I have called to examine drug pricing in the United States. (Chuck Grassley, 2/26)
Stat:
Anti-Vaccine Movement Can Be Traced To Pharma's Poor Reputation
Let me start by getting this out of the way: Vaccines are one of humankind’s greatest health care achievements, along with antibiotics, clean water, and good sanitation. There should be no argument about this at all.Vaccines save millions of lives each year — children and adults — and prevent tremendous personal misery caused by infectious diseases. Some vaccines, such as the one against human papillomavirus (HPV), even prevent some types of cancer from developing in adult women and men. Despite these enormous successes, vaccines are being aggressively attacked by a number of groups, many of which are well-organized and financed. Some of them have suggested that vaccines are more harmful than the diseases they prevent, which is nonsense. (Stewart Lyman, 2/26)
The Washington Post:
Did The Government’s Dietary Guidelines Help Make Us Fat?
It’s that time again. Time to revise the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, something that happens every five years. This time, those revisions will happen in the face of charges that, over the past 40 years or so, the guidelines not only haven’t helped Americans eat better, they’ve contributed to our obesity problem. Have they? Here’s the theory. By suggesting that Americans limit fat intake, the guidelines led to decreased fat and increased carbs. That change was at least partly responsible for the rise in obesity. (Tamar Haspel, 2/25)
Kansas City Star:
Regulate Gene Editing Before It Separates Economic Classes
The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine issued a report in February 2017 recognizing the serious ethical risks of heritable genome editing. Unforeseen biological complications are a concern, but societal factors — including the dividing line between those with the means to accomplish enhancements for their children and successive generations — are a grave worry. (Adil Shamoo, 2/23)
The New York Times:
Doctors And Racial Bias: Still A Long Way To Go
The racist photo in the medical school yearbook page of Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia has probably caused many physicians to re-examine their past. We hope we are better today, but the research is not as encouraging as you might think: There is still a long way to go in how the medical field treats minority patients, especially African-Americans. (Aaron E. Carroll, 2/25)
Boston Globe:
Facing My Own Mortality Renewed My Faith In The Common Struggle For Universal Health Care
My favorite ceramic mug goes unused these days, as I’ve lost my taste for coffee. Pancreatic cancer has taken many of my small pleasures. Yet I value this mug more than ever as I remember the young potter in Florida who made dozens in a desperate attempt to raise money for breast cancer treatment for his uninsured sister. While I can, I want to share why I have spent my life fighting to give people like the potter’s sister the health care they deserve. (Rob Restuccia, 2/25)
The New York Times:
Covering Pre-Existing Conditions Isn’t Enough
When patients enroll in health insurance, they are often met with a stark reality: Even with insurance, they can’t afford their treatment. With the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions in limbo once again, it’s important to remember that those with such conditions need more than health insurance. They also need to be protected from discriminatory pricing so that they can afford the medications they need. In 2015 I published a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine that detailed how some insurers were raising costs for H.I.V. medicines to dissuade H.I.V.-positive people from selecting their plans. (Douglas Jacobs, 2/25)
The New York Times:
The Republicans Of Gilead
In “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Margaret Atwood’s ever-resonant tale of misogynist dystopia, Christian fascism has a sordid, perverse underbelly. On the surface, the Republic of Gilead, Atwood’s imaginary successor to America, is a place of totalitarian religious austerity. But as the book’s enslaved narrator discovers, the society’s leaders also maintain a brothel, Jezebel’s, full of women who couldn’t fit into the new order. It’s the inevitable flip side of a regime that dehumanizes women, reducing them to their reproductive organs. “Nature demands variety, for men,” says a character called the Commander. (Michelle Goldberg, 2/25)
Lexington Herald Leader:
Sex-Selective Abortion Bans Based On Racist Stereotype
As an Asian American woman living in Kentucky, I was outraged to discover that anti-choice state legislators have introduced a bill to restrict reproductive health-care access under the guise of nondiscrimination. The legislation, House Bill 5, contains what is known as a sex-selective abortion ban, among other types of bans. Sex-selective abortion bans are dangerous to the well-being of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) women and our agency over our lives, our families, and our communities. (Valerie Izumi, 2/22)
The Washington Post:
The OxyContin Catastrophe Highlights A Big Failure In Policy
A new slogan on the American political left — “every billionaire is a policy failure” — links economic inequality to governmental error. Whether the claim is true is a good question. Billionaires include everyone from Harry Potter’s creator, J.K. Rowling, to the wizard of Omaha, Warren Buffett. Then again, the ranks of the superwealthy include one Richard S. Sackler, and his family, whose assets, shared among 20 people, total $14 billion, according to a 2016 estimate by Forbes magazine. (Charles Lane, 2/25)
The Hill:
To Ensure Public Health And Safety, Impose A Two-Year Moratorium On Marijuana Legalization
Marijuana legalization is gaining momentum across the country, backed by supportive public opinion, politicians, Wall Street investors and the increasingly influential for–profit cannabis industry. By 2025, the legal U.S. marijuana market could be a roughly $50 billion business as a cornucopia of cannabis-based products become easily available in shops and online. But in the rush to legalize marijuana, we are not taking adequate precautions and lack comprehensive and conclusive scientific evidence about what the impact might be. (Mitchell S. Rosenthal, 2/25)
The Hill:
Here's How A Symbol Can Keep A Soldier From Dying Twice
A soldier dies twice: once wherever he takes his last breath; and he dies again when he’s forgotten. Naming the Murfreesboro VA residential treatment facility after Sgt. John Toombs will ensure those veterans we lose to suicide do not die twice and are indeed never forgotten. (Sherman Gillums, 2/25)
The Washington Post:
Maryland’s End-Of-Life Bill Is About One Thing: Killing
It’s called the End-of-Life Option Act. That sounds appealing — until you realize that one of the options on offer is killing. Patients and doctors should have a full array of dignified end-of-life options. But there’s a reason, for two and a half millennia, doctors have taken the Hippocratic oath: “I will keep [the sick] from harm and injustice. I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.”Physicians devoted to their patients’ care should not be in the killing business. (Ryan T. Anderson, 2/25)
