Viewpoints: Lessons On Mortality In Pre-Roe V. Wade Era; Mental Health Crisis Challenges Policy Plus Invasive Concern For All

New England Journal of Medicine: Perilous Politics — Morbidity And Mortality In The Pre-Roe Era 
Michael Baden, an 85-year-old forensic pathologist, is best known for his role in investigations of such high-profile cases as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson. But for Baden, who worked in the New York City medical examiner’s office before the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, the most haunting cases involve people whom society seems to have forgotten: women who died after illegal abortion attempts. Baden told me he saw about 20 deaths per year attributable to attempted pregnancy termination, usually self-induced. “Metal wire coat hangers, knitting needles, and slippery tree branches” were the most common approaches, he said. When abortion was legalized in 1973, Baden says, with very rare exceptions, deaths due to unsafe abortions stopped. Soon, however, we may once again see increases in morbidity and mortality due to self-induced abortion. (Lisa Rosenbaum, 9/5)

New England Journal of Medicine: The Dangerous Threat To Roe V. Wade
A key result of our cumulative efforts as U.S. health care providers over the past 46 years is that there are fewer abortions per 1000 reproductive-age women per year today than immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide. Deaths due to unsafe abortions in the United States have been essentially eliminated, with 90% of procedures done today in the first trimester, when the risk of maternal mortality is less than one tenth of that associated with carrying a pregnancy to term.Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has documented the reductions in deaths, there is no official national accounting of the numbers of women who became critically ill and lost their future reproductive potential because of injuries and infections after unsafe abortions. ...Some of us are old enough to have witnessed first-hand the consequences of illegal abortions performed by unskilled providers under nonsterile conditions; the rest of us have learned those lessons from history. Sadly, however, we will not need history as our teacher if Roe is overturned in the Supreme Court, because we will again witness deaths and permanent injuries of women desperate to terminate pregnancies. (The Editors, the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Gynecological and Obstetrical Society, the Council of University Chairs of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Society for Academic Specialists in General Obstetrics and Gynecology, and the Society for Maternal–Fetal Medicine, 9/5)

The Washington Post: Americans Face A Rising Tide Of Despair. We Have A Duty To Act.
There are alarming consequences for the survival of human beings and the success of the society they inhabit when the brain suffers without treatment. And it has become frighteningly common for Americans to find their way into despair and self-murder. About 7 percent of American adults had at least one major depressive episode in 2017. Nearly 13 percent of the U.S. population likely took antidepressant medication during the past month, yet suicide rates have risen to the highest since World War II. The odds of dying from suicide or an opioid overdose — the “diseases of despair” — are now higher than that of dying from a motor-vehicle accident. (Michael Gerson, 9/5)

Stat: Report Cards Show Women Still Under-Represented In STEM 
Despite decades of efforts to increase the number of women working in science, technology, engineering, and medicine (STEM), these fields still aren’t tapping into all of the brainpower available to them. That’s the take-home message from more than 500 “report cards” from academic and scientific institutions. (Whitney H. Beeler, Reshma Jagsi and Susan L. Solomon, 9/5)

JAMA: What Is The Value Of Market-Wide Health Care Price Transparency? 
A primary driver of high spending in the US health care system, relative to other countries, is the higher prices paid for health care in the United States. Part of what sustains these high prices is that health care prices are largely opaque. The goal of price transparency is to empower patients with new information so they can consider prices, along with quality, when making choices about when and where to receive health care. Ideally, such informed decision making would increase competition in the health care system, which in turn, would create incentives to lower prices or demonstrate value. (Anna D. Sinaiko, 9/5)

The Washington Post: We’re In The Midst Of Trump’s War On Children
You’ve heard of the Wars on Drugs, Terror, Poverty, even Women. Well, welcome to the War on Children. It’s being waged by the Trump administration and other right-wing public officials, regardless of any claimed “family values.” For evidence, look no further than the report released Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services’s own inspector general. (Catherine Rampbell, 9/5)

Stat: Reducing The Stigma Of Opioid Addiction: A Corporate Responsibility
Thirty years ago, when I first started in public relations, corporate social responsibility programs were mainly company-funded foundations that donated money to various charities and organizations. There wasn’t necessarily a strategy behind these efforts — it was just understood that charity was part of doing business. While these programs have become incredibly sophisticated — MAC’s Viva Glam Fund, for example, engages the social consciousness of today’s customers and their willingness to reward companies that give back to society — it is time for them to evolve to drive social change and highlight often underfunded and overlooked issues. The misuse of opioids, leading to addiction and stigma, is an excellent candidate. (Kate Cronin, 9/6)

The New York Times: The American Medical System Is One Giant Workaround
The nurses were hiding drugs above a ceiling tile in the hospital — not because they were secreting away narcotics, but because the hospital pharmacy was slow, and they didn’t want patients to have to wait. I first heard about it from Karen Feinstein, the president and chief executive of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, who reported it at a board meeting several years ago. I wasn’t surprised: Hiding common medications is a workaround, an example of circumventing onerous rules to make sure patients get even basic care. (Brown, 9/5)

Georgia Health News: A Few Points In Support Of Medicare For All
If the billions of dollars now spent on non-productive health care financing activities could be redistributed — and if employers and employees paid an amount similar to what they pay today for their portion of health care insurance premiums — there would be more than enough money to pay for Medicare for All, or what I call “M4A.” There are plenty of smart consultants who can be engaged to figure out the details and provide services to make it work smoothly. (Kirk Wilson, 9/5)