Viewpoints: Trump’s Move To Defund Planned Parenthood Harms Women; End ‘Shenanigans’, Find Lower Drug Prices With Generics

The Washington Post: Donald Trump Knows Terrifyingly Little About Women’s Health
President Trump has shown himself to be deeply interested in women’s bodies: As a radio show guest, he graded them, part by part. As a presidential candidate, he attributed tough questions from them to their wayward bleeding. And now, as president, he’s restricting their access to health care. A rule Trump is expected to outline Tuesday will strip sexual health funding from clinics that perform or refer for abortions, which if Texas’s experiment is any guide, will vastly reduce women’s access to effective forms of contraception in the name of preventing abortion. (Irin Carmon, 5/20)

The New York Times: Pandering, And Endangering Women
Appealing to the religious right, Donald Trump is set to make good on his campaign promise to defund Planned Parenthood. In the process, he will put at risk women’s access not only to abortion but to birth control, Pap tests, sexually transmitted infection screenings and other health services. (5/19)

The Washington Post: Trump's Abortion Move Is A Gift To Pro-Life Evangelicals — And Hurts Low-Income Women 
No group has been more loyal, politically, to President Trump than pro-life evangelical Christians, and he is being loyal to them. The latest example: the news Friday that his administration plans a partial reinstatement of Reagan administration regulations that restrict the use of federal family planning dollars by organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, that provide abortion, as well as less controversial forms of reproductive and other health care. At issue is $286 million in federal spending under the Title X program, which funds clinics for low-income women seeking contraception, prenatal care, disease screenings and the like. (5/20)

The Wall Street Journal: More Competition For Pharma
President Trump last week laid out a plan to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, and the press sniped that he sold out to the pharmaceutical industry. So irony alert: One of the Administration’s first actions is to call out drug companies that appear to be trying to evade competition. On Thursday Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced that the agency would publish a list of companies that have “potentially” tried to forestall competition from generic alternatives. More competition from generics is essential for lower costs for patients, and with multiple competitors the price can drop to 85% less than the brand name. (5/18)

Arizona Republic: Trump's Prescription Drug Prices Mandate Misses The Point
President Donald Trump announced plans to lower drug prices and his administration immediately sought – through U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar – to require drug companies to share price information directly with patients. But while a move toward more sunlight in drug pricing is significant, patients are still being left in the dark when it comes to “off-label” prescriptions. (Christina Sandefur and Naomi Lopez Bauman, 5/19)

The New York Times: Don’t Put That In My Heart Until You’re Sure It Really Works 
Atrial fibrillation, a condition affecting three million to six million Americans, is caused by irregular contractions of the heart and results in an increased risk of stroke and death. Over the past two decades, cardiologists have increasingly treated it with a procedure called catheter ablation, in which small plastic catheters are used to create scars in the damaged heart tissue to prevent the aberrant electrical signals from spreading. Many have touted catheter ablation, which can cost well above $20,000, as a “cure” for atrial fibrillation. (Haider Warraich, 5/20)

Chicago Tribune: School Shooters Are A Symptom Of A Culture That Is Ill 
If you want gun control, I’ll offer some now: The mentally ill should be nowhere near guns. I support the Second Amendment, making me an almost extinct creature in the world of journalism. But I don’t care if the NRA likes that idea or not. (John Kass, 5/18)

The New York Times: Please, Let’s Never Get Used To This
There was a time when the news that 10 people had been gunned down at their school would have been a terrific shock. You’d have talked about it with everyone at work, with your family at dinner. All through the weekend.But now it’s beginning to feel way too normal. On Friday it was in Santa Fe, Tex. Just three months after we lost 14 kids in Florida. “It’s been happening everywhere. I’ve always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here, too,” one of the Santa Fe students told a reporter. (Gail Collins, 5/18)

The Wall Street Journal: Sports’ Newest Battlefront: Mental Health
This isn’t a typical sports story, but I think it’s an important one. Over the past few months, a handful of high-profile athletes have come forward to talk about their personal issues with mental health. The Olympic legend Michael Phelps opened up on his struggles with depression, as did the NBA All-Star DeMar DeRozan of the Toronto Raptors. Another basketball All-Star, Kevin Love, currently in the playoffs with the Cleveland Cavaliers, went public about his battles with anxiety—including a panic attack he suffered during a game this season. (Jason Gay, 5/20)

Boston Globe: In Rural America, Digital Divide Slows A Vital Path For Telemedicine
Kentucky's Allen County has 20,000 residents. Its school system serves about 3,100 students — but it has no pediatrician. The nearest one is 28 miles away. For years, when a child in the county seat of Scottsville became sick in school, parents and teachers didn’t have any good options. But that’s now changed because of high-speed Internet access. Thanks to a digital connection between Allen County and Vanderbilt University’s Children’s Hospital in Tennessee, students in Scottsville simply walk to the school nurse’s office to see a top-notch pediatrician. Doctors can see their faraway patients on a screen, and parents can check in using an app. Everyone wins: Kids are healthier, parents don’t have to take time off work, teachers can focus on teaching, doctors can extend their expertise, and Scottsville is a stronger community. This story illustrates that telemedicine — the delivery of health care services using communications technology — can be a critical tool for making Americans healthier. (Newton N. Minow and Ajit Pai, 5/21)

The Wall Street Journal: The Case To Bring Back The Asylum
In the U.S. today, jails and prisons have become our mental asylums. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that some 365,000 American adults with serious mental illness are behind bars and an additional 770,000 are on probation or parole. A 2017 Justice Department study estimates that some 37% of all prison inmates suffer some mental illness and that 26.4% of jail inmates suffer from a psychosis. They are behind bars because, too often, they have nowhere to go. Two generations of policy have led to the mass closing of state mental hospitals. The extent of the resulting problems—for the seriously mentally ill in general, not just those in jails or prisons—is so widespread that a case is building to bring back the asylum, especially for those who pose a risk to others or themselves. But proponents aren’t advocating for a return of the inhumane places of the past. What’s needed is a new generation of flexible and varied institutions. (Howard Husock and Carolyn D. Gorman, 5/18)

Modern Healthcare: Anchors Away On Tackling The Social Determinants Of Health
Social scientists know a lot about the root causes of so much of the ill-health in our society, yet healthcare systems have rarely acted on that knowledge. That's finally starting to change. Next week, a 2-year-old network of major healthcare systems dedicated to combating the social problems contributing to ill health in their own backyards will go public. They've chosen to highlight a San Francisco Bay Area food production center that will be up and running by the end of this year. (Merrill Goozner, 5/19)

Houston Chronicle: Get Tested For Hepatitis C 
The good news is that Hepatitis C can be cured in almost all people. Effective medications can treat Hepatitis C. ...However, the true picture is not so simple. Even if an effective treatment exists, many times we do not know who has the disease because there are missed opportunities for testing and diagnosis. A great example is Hepatitis C, a silent potential killer. Hepatitis C is a serious infection of the liver and a leading cause of liver cancer. More people are dying from liver cancer every year. Worse, many of these people had Hepatitis C and did not know it in time because they were not tested for it. Hepatitis C is more common than you might think. Nearly 4 million people in the United States are infected. In Texas alone, there are around 400,000 people with this serious infection. (Sharwin Khot and Monisha Arya, 5/19)

Los Angeles Times: Stop Fighting The Koreatown Homeless Shelter
When L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled his plan to fund shelters for homeless people in every City Council district, Council President Herb Wesson was the first council member to announce that he had found a site on his turf: a parking lot in Koreatown. It's city-owned (so no private property owner to pay or haggle with), big enough to house at least 65 people, and not bumping up against any residential housing. When it comes to housing homeless people, that's as close to a dream site as you can get. (5/19)