Viewpoints: CDC And Lack Of Drug Abuse Research; Failing To Shop For Insurance Is Costly

Vox: We Know Substance Abuse Deaths Are Rising. But Medicare Won't Let Researchers Study The Problem.
In an eye-catching study last week, Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton and his co-author Anne Case found that deaths among middle-aged white men are spiking — and concluded that alcohol and substance abuse are at least partly to blame. The finding is "shocking," health care historian Paul Starr wrote at the American Prospect. ... But here's an even bigger surprise: The federal agency that oversees the nation's largest trove of health data won't let researchers study the problem. In an unusual move, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in 2013 began quietly deleting substance use disorder data from the files they share with researchers. (Dan Diamond, 11/9)

STAT: CDC Is Right To Limit Opioid Prescribing. Don't Let Pharma Manipulate The Process.
Every day, 44 Americans overdose and die after taking opioid painkillers. Every year, 2 million people abuse or misuse the drugs. And as addictions and deaths mount nationwide, authorities are struggling to cope. ... the most sweeping initiative comes from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has prepared preliminary prescribing guidelines for primary care physicians. The recommendations, outlined in a webinar in September and subsequently leaked online, call on doctors to prescribe opioids only after other therapies have failed.This is a crucial effort. (Ed Silverman, 11/10)

Huffington Post: Chris Christie Video Shows That GOP Empathy Is Real -- And Limited
The famous video of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie talking about addiction is a sign of how much Republican Party attitudes toward vulnerable people have changed. It’s also a reminder of how much those attitudes have stayed the same. ... Of course, Christie could have used those same sentences to describe other people. ... Spend time in a community medical clinic and you’ll find people who opted not to buy health insurance that they could have afforded -- or put off medical care when they had a chance to get it. Alongside them, you’ll see people unable to get coverage because it was too expensive or unavailable to them because of pre-existing medical conditions. But you rarely hear Republicans invoke Christie's forgiving, empathetic language when describing these people. (Jonathan Cohn, 11/9)

The Washington Post: Americans’ Loyalty To Employers And Insurance Plans Is Costing Them Billions
It’s currently “open enrollment” season, the one time of year when most Americans are allowed to change their health insurance. Yet relatively few choose to do so. It’s little wonder why. Insurance plans are complicated, with more moving parts and narrower doctor networks than in the past. Insurers don’t exactly go out of their way to make price comparisons easy, either. Plus, consumers have to go through the rigmarole of figuring out whether their preferred doctors participate in competing plans (though of course these preferred doctors could always drop out of their current plans, too). ... Multiple economic studies have found that insurers jack up rates on those too lazy or inattentive to investigate other options. (Catherine Rampell, 11/9)

The Wall Street Journal: ObamaCare’s Failure Contagion
The majority of ObamaCare’s insurance co-ops—12 of 23—have now folded, and their $1.24 billion in federal loans has all but vaporized. More will fail, nearly a million Americans may lose coverage, and now the contagion from their failures is spreading. The co-ops are government-sponsored nonprofits that were supposed to increase competition, but instead they’re causing the greatest insurance disruption in decades. The co-ops aren’t merely jilting their displaced members or the taxpayers who supplied their “seed money.” Local regulators are defying the feds to close them because other insurers are liable for their toxic balance sheets. (11/9)

The Wall Street Journal: Little Sisters Of The Government
So the saga of the Little Sisters of the Poor and their challenge to ObamaCare’s birth-control mandate will be resolved by the Supreme Court. A more humane Administration would have long ago found a way to abide the convictions of this order of nuns, but that’s not how the Obama crowd rolls. (11/9)

The Wall Street Journal: The High Court Gets Religion
So the Little Sisters of the Poor will get their day in court. In the Supreme Court, that is. This past Friday, the justices agreed to hear the Little Sisters’ argument that not only would ObamaCare’s contraceptive mandate force them to violate their beliefs, the Obama administration’s “accommodation”—to have them sign a paper that would empower the sisters’ insurer to provide the birth control—is just an accounting gimmick. (William McGurn, 11/9)

Virginian-Pilot: The Truth About Medicaid In Virginia
Republican opponents of Medicaid expansion seized on a state report last month showing Virginia’s Medicaid program eating a substantial and growing portion of the state budget. The response, of course, was predictably partisan and shrill, steeped in half-truths .... Critical context is missing. Namely, the growth of Medicaid has been driven almost entirely by a program that Republicans and Democrats have willingly expanded: long-term, critical care. (11/10)

Bloomberg: Health Insurance Exchanges
The heart of Obamacare is the array of online shopping centers it created, dubbed Health Benefit Exchanges by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, where people who don’t get their insurance through their employer can go to buy coverage. ... The U.S. has set a low bar for the enrollment season that opened Nov. 1, aiming to get about 10 million people paying for coverage by the end of 2016. That’s less than a million more than the 9.1 million people the Obama administration expects will be paying for Obamacare policies at the end of 2015. (Alex Nussbaum and Zachary Tracer, 11/9)

JAMA Internal Medicine: The Role Of Government In Health Care Reform In The United States And England
In the past, stark differences between the pluralistic, market-driven health system in the United States and the single-payer, centrally managed system in the United Kingdom have resulted in rich opportunities for those interested in comparative health system analysis. These differences are real but look like they are becoming less marked as a consequence of recent trends toward direct governmental intervention in the United States and the use of market forces in the English National Health Service (NHS). (Martin Marshall and Andrew B. Bindman, 11/9)

The Concord Monitor: Now Is The Time To Review Medicare Options
For many people, fall means pumpkin-flavored lattes, hayrides and apple orchards. But for the 46 million Americans over age 65, there’s another important annual event – the Medicare Open Enrollment Period – which is Oct. 15 to Dec. 7. During the open enrollment period, it is crucial for Medicare beneficiaries to take charge of their healthcare and understand the plans and their coverage. With nearly 290,000 Medicare beneficiaries in New Hampshire, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the demand for information is great. (Joseph Veilleux, 11/8)

JAMA: Exercise Is Medicine: At Any Dose?
The benefits of exercise are indisputable and the current perception is that a curvilinear relationship exists between the amount of physical activity and the related health benefits. Many studies have demonstrated that physical activity is associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, and dementia in a dose-dependent fashion. However, recent studies suggest that high doses of exercise can be harmful and are associated with increased risk of cardiovascular mortality. ... These findings were interpreted to mean that exercise may harm the heart at a certain dose. The “too much exercise hypothesis” may cause confusion about the benefits of exercise and the optimal dose of physical activity to prescribe in clinical practice. (Thijs M. H. Eijsvogels and Paul D. Thompson, 11/10)

Politico: How To Solve America’s Childcare Crisis
Evvery election cycle, candidates assiduously court the women’s vote—but fail to show us what they are going to do to materially improve women’s lives. Child care now costs more than in-state college tuition or housing in most states, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute think tank. That high cost means that it’s no surprise that child care is out of reach even for many middle-class families and downright impossible for low-wage workers. Unfortunately, that conclusion isn’t much of a surprise to any mother or father who has tried to go back to work. That might be a surprise, though, is that giving America’s working parents access to safe, high-quality child care didn’t used to be a controversial, partisan idea on the campaign trail. (Vivien Labaton, 11/9)