Viewpoints: McCain Was A Hero For All Cancer Patients; Federal Government Could Learn From States About How To Decrease Opioid Deaths

Stat: For People With Cancer, John McCain Was A Leader To The End
Even as he approached death, Sen. John McCain was a leader. His decision on Friday, one day before he died, to terminate disease-focused therapy and direct his care toward comfort resonates deeply with me. Diagnosed last summer with glioblastoma, a generally fast-moving and incurable brain cancer, McCain had been undergoing treatment and living his life, even casting a deciding vote that helped quash the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. His decision represents true leadership for me and many others with cancer. Two years ago, I too was diagnosed with glioblastoma. As a young husband and father, it took some time for me to come to terms with the diagnosis. But over the course of my journey, I’ve come to learn that in coping with this disease, and probably any other, the “big decisions” that garner attention come at the end of a series of smaller decisions that may be just as important and stressful. (Adam Hayden, 8/26)

The New York Times: States Show The Way On The Opioid Epidemic
The opioid epidemic is far from contained — the national death toll from drug overdoses climbed to a record high last year. But some states and cities are bucking the trend and showing how governments can get a grip on the worst drug crisis in American history. In 2017, overdose deaths in the United States jumped 10 percent, to about 72,000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week. The new data show that people are dying from opioids that are more potent and more dangerous than were available in years past. The C.D.C. also found that many people who overdose are simultaneously using multiple drugs like heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamines and benzodiazepine, an anti-anxiety medicine, and that the crisis has spread across the country, from rural and suburban areas to cities. (8/24)

The Washington Post: My Patients Are Dying. But It’s Their Right To Keep Going.
“Dr. Chan, please, please keep me alive a little longer and God will surely bless you.” I am watching a 68-year-old man fall apart. He has been through five different types of chemotherapies, yet his kidney cancer continues to grow and metastasize, spreading to different organs. He now sits hunched in his wheelchair. With his worsening diarrhea, and sores in his mouth, he no longer eats with pleasure. Sleeping a few hours without pain has become a luxury. I have been talking to him about palliative care, how focusing on reducing symptoms instead of treating his cancer directly can provide him relief. I even share with him the results of studies showing he could potentially live longer with that strategy. But he wants to beat the cancer. He believes what will help him live longer is more chemotherapy — so that is what we discuss. This leaves me in an uncomfortable state: caught between my medical recommendation to pursue less aggressive care and my patient’s primal desire to rid his body of cancer. (Isaac Chan, 8/24)

USA Today: Assisted Suicide Laws Prey On Hopelessness
On Dec. 30, 2017, as snowflakes fell outside his window, my husband and the love of my life, J.J. Hanson, took his last breath. He was 36 years old. I was with him, holding our two young sons in my arms. We had known the day would come — J.J. had been living with terminal brain cancer for three and a half years. But that was more than three years longer than his doctors had expected. ...Our struggle was taking place around the same time Brittany Maynard’s story made headlines across the country. Maynard suffered from the same cancer as J.J. and was roughly the same age, but she famously decided to end her own life through assisted suicide in Oregon and to advocate its legalization in her home state of California. I didn’t know it then, but J.J. later admitted that during his illness, he sometimes felt such despair that he may have taken a lethal prescription had it been legal in New York, where we lived, and if he had it in his nightstand during his darkest days. (Kristen Hanson, 8/26)

The Hill: We Must Address America’s Black Maternal Health Crisis
Serena Williams made headlines when she shared that she almost died as a result of giving birth to her daughter. Sadly, her experience is all too common for women in the United States — especially black women, who are three to four times more likely than non-Hispanic white women to die as a result of giving birth: Nationally, the maternal mortality ratio is 40.0 deaths per 100,000 live births for black women, compared to 12.4 for white women, according to the latest available Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, from 2014. (Marcela Howell and Linda Goler Blount, 8/25)

The Hill: Understanding Why Measles Has Resurfaced Is Essential In Order To Tame It
In recent days, headlines across the globe have carried the news of a record numbers of measles cases occurring all over Europe. Half a century after the measles vaccine was developed, these stories seem to be from a different era. Sadly, they are not.Understanding why this virus has resurfaced to such an alarming degree is essential to our effort to tame it. (Amesh Adalja, 8/26)

The Wall Street Journal: When Medical Innovation Meets Politics
An Iowa teenager last summer found himself conscripted into a national debate over health care. The state’s largest insurer, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, was threatening to pull out of the ObamaCare market. One reason, a Wellmark executive said, was a single patient whose care cost $1 million a month. The young man (never publicly named) has hemophilia, which prevents his blood from clotting. The standard treatment, infusions of the missing clotting factor, is expensive. In severe cases, a patient can require several infusions a day. What if there were a cure? Researchers are developing therapies that could permanently alter a patient’s genes, allowing his body to produce the clotting element. The early results are promising. Patients would live longer, better lives. And with thousands of hemophilia cases nationwide, the potential savings for insurers—and for Medicaid—are enormous. But when? (Kate Bachelder Odell, 8/24)

The Hill: Patients Need A More Direct Path To A Doctor’s Treatments And Cures
Doctors and experienced patients know that health insurance coverage is a promise rather than actual care and that delivery on that promise is variable. Many times large deductibles and co-pays block patients from receiving needed treatments. For me, a frustrating experience occurs when one of my patients needs a non-steroidal salve to soothe an ache or a quality of life drug for their erectile dysfunction or a potentially life saving CT Scan or MRI that their insurance won’t approve. Many times, a tortuous appeal process is unsuccessful. (Marc Siegel, 8/25)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Why A Decision By Obscure State Board Matters In Struggle For Rights
I would hope that our political appointees and elected officials would support having more information at their disposal than not. Curiosity, and a willingness to acknowledge experiences and needs other than your own ought to be a prerequisite for serving the people. (Emily Mills, 8/24)