Viewpoints: Votes For GOP Mean Goodbye To Good Health Care, Democrats Say; Administration On Its Moves To Help Consumers, Small Businesses

USA Today: Democrats Will Protect Health Coverage, Not Kill It Or Cut It
This past week, Leader McConnell told the American people exactly what another two years of Republican control of the Senate would look like. If Republicans retain the majority, he said, there will be another attempt to repeal the health care law, which could result in 20 million fewer Americans with health insurance. He then defended the partisan lawsuit that could end protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions — a lawsuit supported by 20 Republican officials, including two attorneys general who are running for Senate seats. Finally, after Republicans already passed a law that blew a $2 trillion hole in the deficit to provide tax breaks to the wealthiest few and the biggest corporations, Leader McConnell said that Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare need to be cut to reduce the growing deficit. (Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, 10/23)

The Hill: GOP Has Worked In Plain Sight To Rip Health Care Away From Americans
What’s driving the enthusiasm on health care and protections for people with pre-existing conditions? The fact that Republicans have have taken a sledgehammer to the pre-existing conditions protections Democrats cemented in federal law.Republicans have taken a few steps  to destroy the pre-existing conditions protections that millions rely upon. Almost all Republicans in Congress have voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, including its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. (Brad Woodhouse and Jim Duffett, 10/22)

The Wall Street Journal: New Health Options For Small-Business Employees
As we have traveled around the country talking to small-business owners and American workers, we’ve consistently heard that health insurance is unaffordable and workers need more options. The data back up their concerns. As insurance costs have risen since 2010, the share of workers at firms with between three and 24 workers covered by employer health benefits has fallen from 44% to 30%. For firms that employ 25 to 49 workers, the share of workers covered by employer health benefits has fallen from 59% to 44%. Small businesses that continue to offer coverage to their workers generally only make a single plan available. In fact, 81% of small employers offering health benefits (those with fewer than 200 employees), and even 42% of large employers, provide only a single option for their employees. (Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and HHS Secretary Alex Azar, 10/22)

The Washington Post: Medicaid ‘Absolutely’ Saved Her Life, Says Patient Now Fighting To Expand It
Without Medicaid, Amanda Gershon says, she would be dead. But she might have avoided a near-death illness had she been covered by Medicaid earlier. Gershon, 36, of Lincoln, Neb., suffers from ischemic colitis, chronic illnesses and pain in her hands, feet and joints. She was an example of the 63 percent of low-income adults a Government Accountability Office report said were left without needed health care in states that didn’t expand Medicaid. (Joe Davidson, 10/22)

Stat: Azar Is Empowering Anti-Fetal Tissue Research Ideologues At The Expense Of Science
(Alex) Azar must stand with science. One the one hand, a coalition of 64 medical organizations and universities, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and Harvard University, have called for preserving funding for fetal tissue research. On the other hand, a loose confederacy of organizations that aligns itself with the notion that women’s bodies have magical prophylactic properties that “shut down” to prevent pregnancy during a sexual assault wants fetal tissue research banned. Azar needs to stand with scientists over political special interests and abandon this extreme ideology, which will only hurt millions of people around the globe. (Mary Alice Carter, 10/23)

Stat: Smartphones Should Fuel The Next Generation Of Tuberculosis Care
At this week’s tuberculosis meeting, participants will be able to see or hear approximately 1,000 scientific presentations. Sadly, only nine of them are focused on using mobile phones to improve tuberculosis care. It is past time for TB researchers and care providers to work with tech innovators, business entrepreneurs, digital companies, and mobile phone operators to adapt the smartphone technology to improve care. At next year’s meeting, I hope to hear presentations describing tuberculosis experts partnering with WhatsApp to raise awareness, with Vodafone to disseminate apps that help patients diagnose themselves, with Yelp to share the quality of their experiences with specific clinics, with Uber to transport clinical samples, and with Amazon to deliver medications directly to patient’s homes. (Peter Small, 10/23)

Bloomberg: Sitting Is Not Worse Than Smoking 
The people promoting the sitting scare may have been using other statistics, but it’s fair to say that there’s no scientific consensus that sitting is worse than smoking. The message wasn’t an invention of the media, Buman said, but came from researchers trying to raise awareness. Awareness is good, but overplaying a scare is only going to get people to tune out or distrust scientists. (Faye Flam, 10/22)

Boston Globe: No On Question 1: Nursing Staff Ratio Is Wrong For Massachusetts
Most patients arriving at a hospital share the same hopes: Get treatment, get better, and get home. Oh, and maybe get a bill in the mail a few weeks later that doesn’t ruin the family finances. Those are the starting points to evaluate Question 1 on the Nov. 6 ballot, a controversial proposal that would require Massachusetts hospitals to hire thousands more of just one component of a hospital’s workforce: registered nurses. (10/22)

Sacramento Bee: Helping Sacramento’s Homeless Is Up To NIMBYs
The day Melanie Gamboa showed up on the campus of Loaves & Fishes — her sister, her boyfriend and their four cats in tow — the staff of Maryhouse women’s shelter didn’t have anywhere to put them. As is typically the case in Sacramento, all of the emergency beds had already been filled by other homeless people. So, having nowhere else to go, the trio and their pets joined the huddled masses across the street. They pitched a tent and that’s where they stayed for weeks, until the night Gamboa fell out of her wheelchair and couldn’t get up. (Erika D. Smith, 10/22)