Viewpoints: Two Takes On Medical Aid For The Dying; Taxes Can Be Cut, But It’s Not Time To Cut ‘Entitlements’

Stat: Physician-Assisted Suicide Won't Atone For Medicine's 'Original Sin'
In today’s high-tech medicine, doctors treat disease. Patients’ well-being gets short shrift. When disease can no longer be kept at bay, modern medicine tends to give up altogether. If that sounds cynical, consider that in the wake of its own researchers uncovering serious systemic deficiencies in end-of-life care, UCLA actively moved to the forefront of institutions offering lethal prescriptions to eligible patients. (Ira Byock, 1/31)

Stat: I’m A Doctor With End-Stage Cancer. I Support Medical Aid In Dying
I’m a doctor with incurable stage 4 prostate cancer. When my suffering becomes intolerable, I hope my doctors will permit me the option to end it peacefully with medical aid in dying — something I have been working to get explicitly authorized in Massachusetts, where I live. Medical aid in dying gives mentally capable, terminally ill adults with six months or less to live the option to request a prescription medication they can choose to take in order to end unbearable suffering by gently dying in their sleep. When I was in my 40s, I watched my mother and my father-in-law suffer agonizing deaths from cancer. I remember thinking, “That’s not the way I want to die.” (Roger Kligler, 1/31)

Chicago Sun-Times: Hands Off Social Security, Medicare And Medicaid
Fresh off passing massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, Trump and congressional Republicans want to use the deficit they’ve created to justify huge cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. As House Speaker Paul Ryan says “We’re going to have to get … at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit.” Don’t let them get away with it. (Robert Reich, 1/30)

Detroit News: Medicaid Waivers A Path To Reform
In January the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published guidelines for states seeking to use Section 1115 to institute work requirements affecting “non-elderly, non-pregnant adult Medicaid beneficiaries who are eligible for Medicaid on a basis other than disability.” Many states have already started to take advantage of this go-ahead because they know it will help get people back to work. But there’s another important reason to apply work requirements to Medicaid: the government’s massive debt time-bomb. (Jesse Hathaway, 1/29)

Chicago Tribune: The Cycle Of Life: Getting Stoned Again For Health Reasons
Several decades passed, and along came news of marijuana as a panacea for pain relief, insomnia, anxiety, ailments that were irrelevant to us when we were kids. Friends got medical marijuana cards and touted its post-chemo, anti-nausea benefits, its appetite-stimulating powers for those on AIDS drugs, its ability to salve the pain of persistent bursitis or sciatica. I began to wonder. The arthritis in my fingers makes it hard to sit at the keyboard as long as I'd like. Heck, sitting itself is an issue. We used to tell our bodies what to do; now our bodies tell us. My concentration has gone entirely to hell. Would weed help? (Amy Koss, 1/31)

New England Journal of Medicine: President Trump’s Mental Health — Is It Morally Permissible For Psychiatrists To Comment?
Ralph Northam, a pediatric neurologist who was recently elected governor of Virginia, distinguished himself during the gubernatorial race by calling President Donald Trump a “narcissistic maniac.” Northam drew criticism for using medical diagnostic terminology to denounce a political figure, though he defended the terminology as “medically correct.” The term isn’t medically correct — “maniac” has not been a medical term for well over a century — but Northam’s use of it in either medical or political contexts would not be considered unethical by his professional peers. For psychiatrists, however, the situation is different, which is why many psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have refrained from speculating about Trump’s mental health. But in October, psychiatrist Bandy Lee published a collection of essays written largely by mental health professionals who believe that their training and expertise compel them to warn the public of the dangers they see in Trump’s psychology. (Dr. Claire Pouncey, 1/31)

New England Journal of Medicine: The Regulatory Accountability Act Of 2017 — Implications For FDA Regulation And Public Health
The Regulatory Accountability Act has been described by its proponents as a way to reverse the increasing volume of regulatory requirements. But it could have potentially disastrous consequences for the FDA and other agencies that protect public health and safety. (Jonathan J. Darrow, Erin C. Fuse Brown, and Dr. Aaron S. Kesselheim, 2/1)

USA Today: Government Had No Role In My Late-Term Abortion Struggle Nor Should It
My first pregnancy happened easily as my husband was finishing his first year of law school. It didn’t take long for the complications to begin. ...But another problem had been discovered — a grapefruit-sized fibroid in my uterus that could threaten both my health and my pregnancy. It was something we would have to watch, the doctor told me. Because of the fibroid, a C-section would be my only safe option for delivery, should I be fortunate enough to carry the pregnancy to term. (Brie Loskota, 2/1)

New England Journal of Medicine: The Public And The Opioid-Abuse Epidemic
Over the past year, the U.S. opioid-abuse epidemic has gained enormous visibility. President Donald Trump has identified it as a “public health emergency,” and a national commission and a commission of state governors have issued recommendations for action. ...To determine what the public believes should be done to address the epidemic, we examined data from seven national polls conducted in 2016 and 2017. Many of the findings may surprise people who have been following this issue in professional journals and the media. ... On a list of 15 domestic policy issues that were possible priorities for Congress and the President for 2017, opioids ranked sixth, named by 24% as an extremely important priority. (Robert J. Blendon and John M. Benson, 2/1)

Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio's Entire Supply Of Illegal Drugs Contaminated
Ohio’s entire illegal drug supply — except for marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms – is contaminated. That’s causing overdose deaths throughout Ohio’s illegal drug-using population, which I estimate (based on federal drug surveys) at 800,000 to 1 million residents a year, excluding marijuana. (Dennis Cauchon, 1/31)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Shocking Failure By Cleveland EMS To Help Wounded Man Must Not Be Allowed To Recur
Cleveland's Emergency Medical Service is supposed to save lives, but it did its best to brutally sacrifice one when Cleveland EMS dispatchers refused to send an ambulance to the aid of a Cleveland man who had been shot 16 times in an ambush on Jan. 14. ...Despite calls from the Cleveland police asking for help, Cleveland EMS refused to send an ambulance for the man because officials said he was not in the city. (2/1)

The New York Times: The Ohio Abortion Ban’s Distortion Of Disability Rights
On Dec. 22, Gov. John Kasich of Ohio signed Senate Bill 164 banning doctors from performing abortions in cases in which a fetus is likely to have Down syndrome according to prenatal testing. Despite being staunchly pro-choice, I was primed to sympathize with the bill’s supporters more than ever, given my personal circumstances. (Laura Dorwart, 1/31)