Viewpoints: Health Law’s Record; Debate On Funding Planned Parenthood; An Ebola Vaccine

The Washington Post: Obamacare’s Solid Progression
To many critics, the Affordable Care Act is perhaps the most ironically named law ever passed, saddling the country with dysfunctional markets that drive up insurance costs. The situation is so bad, some say, that even a disruptive repeal of the law, as the Senate attempted this week, would be better. In the first two years of the law’s phase-in, the facts didn’t support this view. Notwithstanding some sensational news reports, neither do they now. (8/1)

The Chicago Sun-Times: Obamacare Works When States Don't Get In Way
The Affordable Care Act suffers from a condition that afflicts all controversial legislative achievements: its failures are closely scrutinized and widely covered, while its successes go largely unnoticed. This imbalance is understandable in some ways – “Law Functions As Planned” isn’t as exciting a story as “Law Flops In Embarrassing Faceplant.” And so the media spotlight over the years has been aimed at the act’s hiccups and snafus: the crashing website, the conservative legal challenges, the endless repeal votes in Congress, the dire (usually unsubstantiated) warnings of skyrocketing premiums, etc. Meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act has been racking up some significant accomplishments. (Simon Maloy, 7/31)

The Wall Street Journal: ObamaCare Undercover
The people running ObamaCare set low expectations and then consistently fail to meet them, but could the expectations at least stop plunging? Witness the recent “secret shopper” audit that unmasked the entitlement’s wide-open exposure to fraud and the lack of any plan to prevent it. (7/31)

Bloomberg: Spending More on Health Care Is Actually Sort of Good
In recent years, the growth of health-care costs has slowed down. This is great news for the federal budget, and for those of us who, you know, get health care occasionally. Unfortunately, researchers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services project that the good news may be over. With the population aging, the economy recovering, and the federal health-care plan expanding coverage, they expect health care cost growth to average almost 6 percent over the next decade. That's not all bad news. The population is aging because people are living longer. And economic recovery will give us more income to pay our higher health care costs. The newly insured are presumably pretty happy about it too. So there's no reason to go into paroxysms of mourning over this news. But it does cast light on a debate that has been going on for some time: why growth in health expenditures has gone down. (Megan McArdle, 7/31)

The Wall Street Journal: How Single-Payer Health Care Failed In Progressive Paradise
The gruff, unkempt Vermonter is knocking them dead. Campaigning for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders is packing houses, making headlines and putting a scare into Hillary Clinton supporters. ... So as Mr. Sanders makes his case for taking the progressive agenda nationwide, it is interesting to consider how that agenda is doing in Vermont. The answer is . . . not so well. Let’s start with the catastrophic collapse of Vermont’s promises of single-payer health care, which continues to roil state politics. (Geoffrey Norman, 7/31)

The Wall Street Journal: The Connection Between Health Coverage And Income Security
Discussions of expanding health coverage and improving economic security for working Americans don’t overlap much–but they are connected. ... when lower- and moderate-income people gain health coverage, the burden of paying health-care bills is eased and they are able to focus on other pocketbook issues. That’s one conclusion from a recently released panel survey of Californians uninsured before the Affordable Care Act took effect. (Drew Altman, 8/3)

The New York Times: A Health Care Safety Net The Public Loves
Recent public surveys show that Americans strongly support Medicare and Medicaid, the twin pillars of the health care safety net, and that approval of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s health care reform law, is steadily rising. The popularity of these three government programs is a stiff warning to critics, mostly Republicans, who seek to radically change or demolish them. (8/3)

Alaska Dispatch News: Walker Is Out Of Line On Medicaid Expansion; Lawsuit Right And Likely
Gov. Bill Walker’s dogged effort to unilaterally expand Alaska’s Cadillac-class Medicaid program -- despite the Legislature’s reluctance -- is being peddled to Alaskans with a massive propaganda campaign replete with misleading information and outright fibs. Worse, he plans to pull it off -- to join 29 other states and the District of Columbia in expanding Medicaid -- while wading in legal quicksand; by pretending he can accept federal money and tell lawmakers to butt out because he simply would be expanding an existing program. It is malarkey. (Paul Jenkins, 8/1)

Los Angeles Times: Senate Maneuvering Spares Planned Parenthood -- For Now
A series of hidden-camera videos by anti-abortion activists capturing Planned Parenthood executives discussing tissue harvesting from aborted fetuses has renewed calls by Republicans to eliminate all federal support for the organization. But as bad as it's been lately in Washington for Planned Parenthood, the group can actually thank Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for preventing things from getting even worse. Granted, McConnell would not see it that way. But some pro-life conservatives do. (Jon Healey, 7/31)

USA Today: Debate Planned Parenthood Honestly: Our View
Undercover videos of top Planned Parenthood doctors callously discussing how best to collect fetal tissue and organs for research are enough to make most people, regardless of their views on abortion, squeamish if not horrified. The videos raise troubling questions about how far Planned Parenthood doctors are willing to go to collect intact specimens, how broadly collection is conducted, why the cost would differ among affiliates, and whether the century-old group is treating this work with the respect and sensitivity it deserves. ... Yet for all the effort to smear Planned Parenthood — a militant anti-abortion group set up a phony business and used actors and hidden cameras — no smoking gun has emerged to prove that Planned Parenthood illegally profited from selling fetal tissues and organs. (8/2)

USA Today: Sen. Lankford: Defund Organ Harvesting
If you haven’t seen the videos about Planned Parenthood’s operation to harvest human body parts from abortions, I suggest you view them. It might change your mind about whether taxpayers should help fund Planned Parenthood. While our nation is divided on abortion, we shouldn’t force the taxes of Americans who strongly oppose organ harvesting or abortion to continue to fund an organization that carries out these inhumane practices. About 40% of Planned Parenthood’s funding comes from hardworking taxpayers, which leaves its other resources available to perform these barbaric procedures. (Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., 8/2)

The Washington Post: Stop The Vendetta Against Planned Parenthood
The sting videos targeting Planned Parenthood are hard to watch. Doctors talk clinically, some say callously, about harvesting fetal tissue. Technicians identify and isolate tiny organs. References are made to “it’s a baby” or “it’s another boy.” The videos were taken surreptitiously and were artfully edited to produce maximum discomfort about complicated issues that, for many, are inherently uncomfortable. That truths were distorted to paint an inaccurate and unfair picture of a health organization that provides valuable services to women — as well as to demonize research that leads to important medical advances — doesn’t matter to antiabortion activists. Or, sadly, to the politicians who pander to them. (7/31)

The New York Times: Our Sex-Crazed Congress
To appreciate the dumbing down of American politics, consider this: Conservative Republicans, indignant about abortion, are trying to destroy a government program that helps prevent 345,000 abortions a year. Inevitably in politics there are good ideas and bad ideas. But occasionally there are also moronic ideas — such as the House Republican proposal to kill America’s main family planning program, Title X. (Nicholas Kristof, 8/1)

The Washington Post: A Solution To Teen Pregnancy In Virginia?
A privately funded initiative in Colorado that drastically reduced teen pregnancy and abortion rates has recently been lauded by public health officials, policymakers and editorial boards alike. As a physician, I’ve been closely following the outcomes and results of this public health initiative. As Virginia’s lieutenant governor, I genuinely believe that Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree that reducing unintended pregnancies, decreasing abortion rates and improving the health of mothers and infants are important public health goals that should be carefully considered and debated. (Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam, 7/31)

Los Angeles Times: Will Trans-Pacific Partnership Hold Back New Generic Drugs?
So what should the public be looking for if and when the [the Trans-Pacific Partnership] deal is completed? (Be patient -- a deal that once seemed imminent doesn't appear to be so close now, and the text may not become public until weeks after the talks conclude.) One possibility is a combination of U.S. and foreign requirements that winds up changing the competitive balance. That's what generic drug makers, among others, fear when it comes to a new class of medicines called biosimilars, which are less-expensive versions of biologically produced drugs. Under U.S. law, biologic drug makers have a 12-year exclusive right to the research they conduct on the safety and effectiveness of their products. Within that 12-year period, all other drug makers would have to submit data from their own safety and efficacy studies to win approval of a biosimilar version. That's a pretty effective barrier to competing versions entering the market. (Jon Healey, 8/1)

The New York Times: Ebola Vaccine: The Need To Act Now
One year ago West Africa was descending into chaos. As the Ebola death toll approached 1,000 for the first time ever and Liberia closed its borders, the World Health Organization declared the situation an international health emergency. Experimental drugs were cautiously put to use to try to treat those infected, but what was urgently needed to stop the spread was a vaccine. Now, 12 months on, it looks very much like we have one. ... While more research may be needed to establish the long-term protection and safety, use of this vaccine needs to be immediately extended beyond the trials in Guinea and made available to ring vaccinate people in Sierra Leone and wherever else outbreaks occur. Similarly health care workers in affected regions should be offered access to this vaccine now, as they are often the first exposed to any new cases. (Seth Berkley, 8/2)

The New York Times: Teenagers, Medication And Suicide
Is our culture of relentless achievement and success driving our young people to suicide? You would certainly think so, given the prevailing narrative in the media about the recent spate of suicides on college campuses: one high-achieving student after another succumbing to the toxic social pressure for perfection. It’s a plausible but incomplete explanation. No doubt the intense social pressure on young people, especially girls and young women, is daunting, but stress is only part of the story: We should also focus on adolescent mental illness and its treatment. (Richard A. Friedman, 8/3)

The Wall Street Journal: When A Doctor Is Always A Phone Call Away
A 39-year-old truck driver was hauling through the Midwest in the middle of the night in 2011 when he began to feel a bit of indigestion. Then a lot of indigestion. He pulled over, recalling that his company had recently signed on with Teladoc, for which I was then the chief medical officer. The service allowed him to get a doctor on the phone within 15 minutes. He called and described his symptoms: nausea, chest pain, a little numbness in his left arm. He was having a heart attack, and his GPS guided him to the nearest emergency room. Getting that doctor on the phone saved his life, and potentially the lives of whoever his 10-ton rig might have plowed into had he keeled over behind the wheel. If efficient and affordable quality treatment is the goal, telemedicine should be the future of health care. (Richard Boxer, 8/2)

The New York Times: G.O.P. Candidates And Mass Shootings
Despite the repeated horror of mass shootings in churches, movie theaters and schoolrooms, the Republican candidates running for president are remarkably quiet about how they would deal with this most pressing public health challenge. ... In contrast, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, is taking up the gun control issue once more, 15 years after the defeat of Al Gore left her party leaders swearing off the subject as a losing cause. (8/3)