Viewpoints: Sessions’ War On Drugs; Contemplating Rural Hospitals; Packing Heat At Kansas’ Psychiatric Institutions, State Facilities
A selection of opinions on health care from around the country.
Detroit Free Press:
Sessions' Policies Stand To Destroy Minority Communities
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced he’s reigniting the “war on drugs,” ordering prosecutors to seek the toughest possible charges and sentences, even for minor drug crimes. What he’s really doing is declaring war on people of color, because his harsh policies will eviscerate struggling black and brown families across America. He is resurrecting a war that has destroyed generations of minority families without eradicating the commerce of illegal drugs or Americans’ appetite for them. (Benjamin Crump, 5/25)
JAMA Forum:
Rethinking Rural Hospitals
Since 2010, 78 of the more than 2150 rural nonspecialty US hospitals have closed. While the closure rate has recently declined, the proportion of financially struggling rural hospitals has increased. When a rural hospital closes, the economic losses can devastate an already stressed community through loss of health care workers, emergency services, and primary care capacity, as well as higher unemployment and lower per-capita income, a drop in housing values, poorer health, and increasing health disparities. An urgent look at how to prevent these closures is merited, but it may also be time to rethink what a rural hospital should be. (Diana Mason, 5/24)
The Kansas City Star:
Concealed Weapons Likely Are Coming To A Kansas Institution Near You
Hey, Kansans: Brace yourselves. Your state is about to change in a consequential way. Barring the unexpected, concealed weapons soon will be allowed in state hospitals, psychiatric institutions and on the state’s public university campuses. That’s happening in just 38 days unless pro-common-sense lawmakers pull a rabbit out of their hats and muscle through a new law. But that looks increasingly unlikely as the Legislature struggles with big issues in its ongoing wrap-up session. (5/24)
JAMA Forum:
Payment Power To The Patients
There is broad consensus that the quality of care that is delivered in the United States is uneven and too often inadequate. For more than a decade, the approach to remedying deficiencies in health care quality has been through measurement, incentives, and accountability. But now consensus is emerging that efforts have not worked particularly well, and that doing more of the same is unlikely to lead to progress. It may be time to try a radically simple idea: let patients decide what comprises high-quality health care. (Ashish K. Jha, 5/22)
The New York Times:
Get Married, Get Healthy? Maybe Not.
In a nation as divided and contentious as our own, it is rare to find a belief we all share. But trust in the transformative power of marriage is close to universal — and it has endured for decades. This isn’t just a matter of faith, we’ve been assured. It’s science. Research is said to have established what our fairy tales promised: Marry and you will live happily ever after. And you will be healthier, too. A new study challenges the claim that people who marry get healthier. (Bella DePaulo, 5/25)
JAMA:
Finding Joy In Practice: Cocreation In Palliative Care
Four years ago, after nearly 20 years in practice, I walked out of the familiar world of infectious disease and into the world of palliative care. In the world I left, I cared for hundreds of patients, educated countless learners, led dozens of infection prevention efforts. But that world felt increasingly superficial, fragmented, isolated, a hard place to find joy and meaning in my work. (Kathryn B. Kirkland, 5/23,30)
The Columbus Dispatch:
Treatment At Hospital Follows ‘Catholic Tradition’
A hospital policy with wide-ranging consequences for patients of Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, Iowa, was made public recently through a Facebook post on a page for mothers. It came from a woman who was denied a tubal ligation after having a cesarean section because Mercy is a Catholic hospital. In verifying that prohibition, I discovered other religious-based restrictions at Mercy and 547 other Catholic hospitals across the U.S., which make up 14.5 percent of all acute care hospitals in the country. It raises a question of whether these institutions are fulfilling their legal and professional obligations to their patients and the taxpayers who subsidize them with billions of dollars. (Rekha Basu, 5/25)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
The Immediate Need For Action On Life
The Missouri Legislature has for many years demonstrated a commitment to protecting the health and safety of women and the dignity of the unborn, passing various laws to further these ends. A number of recent developments, though, have dealt serious blows to these laws and merit immediate attention in a special session of the Legislature. On Monday, the maternity home Our Lady’s Inn, Archdiocesan Elementary Schools of the Archdioceses of St. Louis, and St. Louis businessman Frank O’Brien filed a federal lawsuit against the “abortion sanctuary city” ordinance passed by the city of St. Louis in February. As the plaintiffs note, the bill, which purports to be an anti-discrimination ordinance for those making “reproductive health decisions,” is so broad that it would “force nonprofit organizations like Our Lady’s Inn, whose mission is to promote and facilitate abortion alternatives, to hire abortion advocates, despite their opposition to the ministry’s reason for existence.” (State Sen. Bob Onder, 5/25)
