Viewpoints: Government Control Of Drug Prices Is A Bad Idea For Patients; Lessons On How Medicare Advantage Helps Ease Opioid Crisis

Stat: The Right Way To Address Prescription Drug Costs 
With a new Democratic majority in the House pledging to address the rising cost of health care — including prescription drugs — a fundamental question arises: Will lawmakers focus on the real issues that can drain a family’s finances, or simply adopt extreme policies that fail to take on the underlying problems in our health care system? As policy professionals from different sides of the aisle, we believe there is a right way to address these issues and a wrong way. The right way will reduce out-of-pocket costs for Americans, improve access to new medicines, and allow the United States to remain the global leader in medical innovation. The wrong way leads to price controls, weakened intellectual property protections, and restricted access to medicines, not to mention stifling innovation and doing little to make drugs more affordable. (Jim Greenwood and David Beier, 12/20)

The Hill: Government Drug Price Controls Will Wind Up Harming Medicare Patients
The Trump administration wants to use an average of the drug prices paid by other countries to limit what Medicare Part B pays for some drugs. This is a bad idea. Pricing reflects preferences, and the Trump administration plan would replace the needs of American patients with the preferences of foreign bureaucrats. (Linda Gorman, 12/19)

Bloomberg: Medicare Advantage Is Helping To Address The Opioid Crisis 
Since most of Medicare Advantage provides both drug and medical insurance, the authors surmise that the insurance plans have a stronger incentive to mitigate opioid problems. As the authors argue, the Medicare Advantage plans have “the incentive to account for the spillover effects of prescription drug use on the cost of care overall and can choose which physicians to include in its network and how it manages care.” Stand-alone plans providing only Part D drug coverage, by contrast, do not face the same incentives, since the cost of addressing medical problems is not their responsibility. (Peter R. Orszag, 12/19)

The Hill: Health-Care Access And Delays: A True Crisis In America
A recent Gallup poll notes that three in 10 Americans delayed seeking medical care due to cost — a true testament as to why America needs to solve its health-care access crisis.The notion that approximately 19 percent of all U.S. adults delayed treatment for serious or somewhat serious conditions or illness carries serious consequences particularly for diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and a myriad of other acute and chronic conditions that may be amenable to early diagnosis and treatment. (Janice Phillips and Maria Alonso, 12/19)

Stat: Delivering New Gene Therapy To Patients Almost As Hard As Making It
After a career spent in pharmaceutical commercial strategy and operations, I thought I had a handle on what was required to launch a new therapy. But I’ve learned many lessons — and faced a few curveballs — in the 12 months since the FDA approved Luxturna (voretigene neparvovec), a one-time gene therapy for the treatment of patients with vision loss due to inherited retinal dystrophy caused by confirmed biallelic RPE65 mutations and who have sufficient viable retinal cells. (Ron Philip, 12/19)

The Hill: The Baby Powder Scandal — Is It Really Going To Impact You?
All of this research, combined with the Reuter’s report, makes me hesitant to recommend regular, heavy use of talcum powder for either babies or women. I am not alone in such caution. I would say to be aware of a possible associated risk and to be judicious in your use. At the same time, since I am anything but a fear-monger, I will gladly reassure patients who have been exposed to daily talcum powder use that the risk of developing cancer from it remains extremely small. (Marc Siegel, 12/19)

The Washington Post: Tammy Duckworth: I’m A Combat Veteran. We Cannot Allow Our Country To Be Turned Into A War Zone. 
I come from a long line of combat veterans who have taken up arms to defend this nation since before George Washington crossed the Delaware, and I spent decades in the military myself. So I understand why these kinds of weapons exist.But what I don’t get is why semiautomatics that U.S. service members carry around Fallujah are being sold to teenagers at the corner gun store.What I don’t understand is how some politicians can consider the National Rifle Association’s dollars more important than our kids’ lives.Or how our streets have become deadlier than war zones, with more Americans killed by gun violence over the past 50 years than in every war in American history combined. (Sen. Tammy Duckworth, 12/19)

Forbes: Has Childhood Obesity Become A National Security Threat?
As a physician and lawmaker, I have long argued that federal global health aid improves America’s standing in the world and makes us safer by steadying unstable nations. Countries with healthy workforces have improved economic outputs, stronger family units, and are less likely to become havens for terrorists.  But what many may not realize is that the health of our population here at home also impacts our national security. (Bill Frist, 12/19)

The Washington Post: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez And The Problem Of Self-Care
Burnout is a real thing. Vacations and breaks, even coffee breaks, make us more productive and more engaged with both our work and our day-to-day life. However, to say all that already plays into the dominant narrative that we need to rationalize our time away from work as good for the work, and our desire that we not live on scraps alone as something bigger than a simple desire to relax and enjoy our life. It’s a set of beliefs so dominant even Ocasio-Cortez felt impelled to make a nod to it. So let me say this: It is the holidays and the end of the year. We can all rest and enjoy ourselves — for any reason we want. (Helaine Olen, 12/19)

New England Journal of Medicine: The Anti-Trans Memo — Abandoning Doctors And Patients
A proposed redefinition of gender as a “biological, immutable condition determined by a person’s genitalia at birth” would have damaging repercussions for vulnerable communities that have faced discrimination from health care providers, hospitals, insurers, and others. (Jocelyn Samuels and Mara Keisling, 12/19)

New England Journal of Medicine: Persons Of Nonbinary Gender — Awareness, Visibility, And Health Disparities
As our society’s concept of gender evolves, so does the visibility of contemporary nonbinary people. Yet many members of the medical community may not know how to interact with nonbinary patients respectfully or recognize their unique needs and barriers to care. (Walter Liszewski, J. Klint Peebles, Howa Yeung, and Sarah Arron, 12/20)

New England Journal of Medicine: Training In Sexual And Gender Minority Health — Expanding Education To Reach All Clinicians 
“If a man says he is a woman, does that mean he is mentally ill?” The staff member asking this question was attending a mandatory training session on health care for sexual and gender minority (SGM) patients at an urban hospital. She spoke timidly and seemed genuinely curious. We explained that incongruence between the sex assigned at birth and gender identity — denoted by the term “transgender” — is not a mental illness, and that transgender people’s mental health often improves with care that affirms their gender identity. She thanked us for the explanation, and we moved to the next topic, but her question lingered in our minds. We were surprised that concepts we took for granted were unknown to this clinician, who practiced in a large, diverse medical center. And yet questions such as hers are becoming more common as continuing medical education on SGM health expands. (Kevin L. Ard and Alex S. Keuroghlian, 12/20)

San Francisco Chronicle: To Help The Homeless, Offer Shelter That Allows Deep Sleep
What if homeless people were provided with more comfortable sleeping environments, where they could get the rest required to function better? Would homelessness then be reduced? I definitely think so. After all, without the clarity that a decent night’s sleep provides, how can someone climb the herculean mountain of self-sufficiency that housing oneself demands? (Lori Teresa Yearwood, 12/19)