Viewpoints: McCain’s Effort To Hold Down Drug Prices; VA Needs To Do More To Stop Suicides
A selection of opinions on health care from around the country.
Forbes:
John McCain's Salutary Push For Drug Price Transparency
Drug companies are fond of saying that they have no choice but to charge high prices for their products, because the “cost of innovation” is so high. Today, Arizona Sen. John McCain (R.) announced a bipartisan bill, the Fair Drug Pricing Act, that attempts to hold them to their word. ... The ten-page Fair Drug Pricing Act is a fairly modest piece of legislation, one that doesn’t really get at the underlying drivers of high drug costs: overly burdensome FDA regulation, and the lack of a consumer driven health care system. .... But, despite those deficiencies, the bill would bring some accountability to a system that is driven as much by crony capitalism as by market forces. (Avik Roy, 9/15)
USA Today:
Every 72 Minutes, A Veteran Commits Suicide: Our View
A veteran is choosing death every 72 minutes, and the VA could be doing more to keep that person alive. When veterans manage to ask for help, too many of their calls are not getting through to VA's suicide hotline (800-273-8255). The agency isn't offering enough veterans the kind of cutting-edge treatment therapies that researchers are finally uncovering. (9/15)
USA Today:
VA: Suicide Prevention Is A Top Priority
Among veterans and the American public at large, suicide is a public health crisis. Losing even one veteran to suicide is unacceptable, which is why suicide prevention is a top priority at VA. We know that we save lives when we get veterans into treatment. This past year, VA has expanded our suicide prevention efforts providing greater access to our services, and we are continuing to ensure same-day access for urgent mental health needs at every medical center. (David J. Shulkin, 9/15)
Bloomberg:
Trump Means Change To This Addiction Fighter
It's hard to imagine someone like Melissa Crews of Bedford, New Hampshire, voting for Donald Trump in the presidential election. But the former Democratic voter says that's what she intends to do. I first met Crews during the primary campaign, in February, when New Hampshire was at the center of candidates' attention. The state's heroin epidemic was a big campaign issue, candidates were doing their best to show interest, and Crews was a co-founder and the board chairman of HOPE for New Hampshire, a nonprofit then beginning to build a local network of recovery centers. ... To her surprise, she found that she liked the Republican candidates better. They were more willing to talk about their own experiences with friends' and family members' addiction, and more sympathetic to her approach: using recovering addicts to help others lead sober lives. (Leonid Bershidsky, 9/15)
The Washington Post:
Of Course Hillary Clinton Went To Work Sick. That’s The American Way.
As Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton demonstrated when she nearly collapsed from the effects of walking pneumonia early this week, the benefits of running for elected office may include many things, but sick days are not among them. This is perhaps unavoidable in light of the fact that the job of actually being an elected official doesn’t allow for much rest and recuperation, either. ... Going to work sick is not just a function of political work, however, or even of merely being human — it is a profoundly American behavior. (Emily L. Hauser, 9/15)
The Washington Post:
Voters Barely Worry About Their Own Health. Do They Really Care About The President’s?
If the political furor over Clinton’s pneumonia lingers longer than the illness — which should clear up in a few weeks — that would be a sharp break with history. Voters pay little attention to their own health, and up to now, they haven’t paid much more to the health of the people who want to be president. (Arthur L. Caplan, 9/15)
The Wall Street Journal:
Saving Antibiotics So That Antibiotics Can Save Lives
Ever since antibiotics were first developed and heralded as a miracle of modern medicine more than half a century ago, experts have warned of the dangers of their misuse. By exposing bugs to just enough medicine to encourage resistance, the fear was that we would end up encouraging germs to evade the very drugs that were designed to counter their impact. ... Without immediate action, previously treatable infections and minor surgical procedures will once again become potentially fatal, killing an estimated 10 million people a year by 2050, according to the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance. (Seth Berkley and Jeremy Farrar, 9/15)
The Wall Street Journal:
‘Liking’ Our Way To A Cure For Cancer
Researchers recently revealed in a Nature Genetics paper that they had identified a new gene linked to ALS, a neurodegenerative condition also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The July announcement was a milestone in the fight against ALS, which affects about 30,000 Americans, and a historic moment in financing disease research. That’s because the discovery was made possible by donations from people who completed the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, a viral fundraising effort that called for donors to dump ice water over their heads. Now is the time to build off this success and accelerate research to eradicate cancer. (Jon M. Huntsman Sr., 9/15)
San Antonio Press Express:
Health Care Safety Net Failing Texas Women
While the national maternal mortality rate has gone up 27 percent, the Texas rate has doubled since 2011, according to research published in the August issue of the medical journal “Obstetrics and Gynecology.” The study reported that 537 Texas women died in pregnancy or within 42 days of delivery from 2011 to 2015 compared to 296 between 2007 and 2010. The numbers reflect poorly on state leaders who have taken a staunch position against expanding Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act and have taken drastic swipes at women’s access to health services by slashing funding for Planned Parenthood. (9/15)
Cleveland Plain Dealer:
Abortion Appeals By Attorney General Mike DeWine - Meritorious Or Ideological?
On Monday, Attorney General Mike DeWine's office filed a notice of intent to appeal a unanimous three-judge Ohio appellate court ruling from July that found that both state health regulations and an underlying law restricting abortion-clinic operations in Ohio -- the immediate impact of which would have been to force a Toledo clinic to close -- were unconstitutional and not motivated by health considerations. ... Is DeWine overstepping on his abortion appeals in a way detrimental to Ohio taxpayers? Or is he just doing his duty in defending Ohio laws? Our editorial board roundtable takes a look. (9/16)
Toledo Blade:
Try Again On Medicaid
The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said no to Healthy Ohio last week. The state program with that name would have required Medicaid recipients to make monthly contributions to a form of health savings account; the state would have contributed a baseline $1,000 a year, plus incentive payments to reward healthy behavior. The end of this proposal should not be the end of the goal of giving Medicaid beneficiaries a bigger stake in controlling costs and improving their own health. (9/15)
JAMA:
Reframing Prevention In The Era Of Health Reform
The 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) raised numerous opportunities for disease prevention. Of the 10 legislative titles comprising the ACA legal framework, Title 4 (“Prevention of Chronic Disease and Improving Public Health”) initially held the most promise for delivering new financial resources as well as effective policy for prevention. Six years later, Title 4 outcomes show mixed results. In the meantime, however, other ACA innovations are redesigning health systems by incorporating prevention into a range of new care models. Doing so connects the clinic and the community in ways not necessarily envisioned in the statute, thereby broadening possibilities for the future of population health. (Howard K. Koh, Rahul Rajkumar, John E. McDonough, 9./13)
JAMA:
From Volume To Value In Health Care The Work Begins
The transition of health care from volume to value is no longer theoretical, or wishful thinking. .... Health care is finally entering an era of significant change, and the model for health care delivery is being redesigned from the ground up. Redesign is being accelerated by a long-needed transition in the payment system away from fee-for-service to value-based payments. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have committed that 90% of Medicare payments will reward value by 2018, and commercial payers are starting to do the same. (Michael E. Porter and Thomas H. Lee, MD, 9/13)
RealClear Health:
Childhood Cancer, Noah's Ark, And My Daughter
What does Noah’s Ark have to do with childhood cancer? A life-size replica of the biblical boat was recently finished and opened to the public in Kentucky. The cost of this construction exceeded a staggering $100 million. Money was raised through private sources as well as local bonds and a Kentucky sales tax incentive, the subject of a court battle, which infused $18 million into the project. I make no commentary upon the propriety of building a life-sized Noah’s Ark, or the religious debate overall. My point is that as a nation, there is often a prioritization of investment into projects like Noah’s Ark over funding things like medical research. The ark, which received funding from private and public sources, represents more than half of what is spent on childhood cancer specific research by the NCI. (Jonathan Agin, 9/15)
JAMA:
Workplace Violence In Health Care: A Critical Issue With A Promising Solution
Workplace safety is a critical issue in health care. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health defines workplace violence as “violent acts (including physical assaults and threats of assaults) directed towards persons at work or on duty.” This Viewpoint discusses the scope and characteristics of workplace violence in health care settings, relevant government regulations, the responsibility of health care leaders in addressing workplace violence, a model program for violence prevention in health care settings, and a comprehensive environmental risk analysis. (Ron Wyatt, Kim Anderson-Drevs and Lynn M. Van Male, 9/13)
The New York Times:
Jay Z: ‘The War On Drugs Is An Epic Fail’
This short film, narrated by Jay Z (Shawn Carter) and featuring the artwork of Molly Crabapple, is part history lesson about the war on drugs and part vision statement. As Ms. Crabapple’s haunting images flash by, the film takes us from the Nixon administration and the Rockefeller drug laws — the draconian 1973 statutes enacted in New York that exploded the state’s prison population and ushered in a period of similar sentencing schemes for other states — through the extraordinary growth in our nation’s prison population to the emerging aboveground marijuana market of today. We learn how African-Americans can make up around 13 percent of the United States population — yet 31 percent of those arrested for drug law violations, even though they use and sell drugs at the same rate as whites. (Asha Bandele, 9/15)
Chicago Tribune:
Mom And I Opened A Medical Marijuana Dispensary — Here's What We See
"Cam" my mother said, "the G6 flower is still our top seller, but the brownies and cookies are going like crazy!" Two years ago, hearing my mom talk about different kinds of marijuana would have been empirically weird, but today it is completely common. In November 2015, she, two business partners and I opened Harbory — a medical cannabis dispensary in Marion, Ill., two hours from my hometown of St. Louis. (Cameron Lehman, 9/15)