Viewpoints: Reducing Medicare Drug Costs; Keep OxyContin From Kids; Fiorina Should Apologize
A selection of opinions on health care from around the country.
The New York Times:
Use Medicare’s Muscle To Lower Drug Prices
A poll last month by Consumer Reports found that a third of the patients who take prescription drugs are paying significantly more this year, forcing many to cut back on other necessities or load up on credit card debt. Another poll in August by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that about a quarter of those surveyed said they had trouble paying for prescription drugs. Many of the people most affected by rising drug prices are older patients on Medicare, who often live on modest incomes, are in poor health, and take four or more prescription drugs. One way to reduce drug costs for this population is to reverse the policy set by the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, which created Medicare’s prescription drug program. (9/21)
Los Angeles Times:
Direct-To-Consumer Drug Marketing Is A Scandal. Can The FDA Fix It?
Two nations in the world allow drug companies to market prescription medicines directly to consumers: New Zealand and the United States. In the U.S. at least, the lack of effective regulation of what drugmakers say, and how, leaves consumers utterly at a loss when trying to understand the uses and risks of these intensely marketed products. That's the conclusion of Jeremy A. Greene of Johns Hopkins and Elizabeth S. Watkins of UC San Francisco, who write in the New England Journal of Medicine that discussions of side effects and contraindications are typically provided to consumers in package inserts whose "medical terminology, dense verbiage, and tiny fonts ... have made them inscrutable to the average consumer and virtually useless as information sources." (Michael Hiltzik, 9/18)
The New York Times:
OxyContin Is Not For Kids
A year and a half ago, I stood up before Vermonters and devoted my State of the State address to speaking about the opiate and heroin crisis affecting my state. Despite our best efforts since, this is not a battle we are winning. Now the Food and Drug Administration is recklessly making the problem worse with its decision to approve OxyContin for use by children as young as 11 years old. (Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin, 9/21)
The New York Times:
The Fight For Unplanned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood! Government shutdown! Anti-abortion politicians are in an uproar over videos that supposedly show Planned Parenthood representatives negotiating on prices for tissue from aborted fetuses. Carly Fiorina was passionate about the subject in this week’s Republican debate. Nothing she said was accurate, but nobody’s perfect. (Gail Collins, 9/18)
Los Angeles Times:
It's Time For Carly Fiorina To Apologize To Planned Parenthood
Defunding Planned Parenthood has become a shibboleth for Republican presidential aspirants: As a legislator or governor, you can't stand as a credible candidate unless you've defunded the organization in your state or voted to do so. Former Hewlett-Packard CEO and Chairman Carly Fiorina can't compete on this score, never having ever held political office. So at this week's GOP debate she raised the ante, making the most extreme statement about Planned Parenthood of anyone in the field. (Michael Hiltzik, 9/18)
The Washington Post:
I Have An Idea: How About We Shut Down Neither The Government NOR Planned Parenthood?
If the members of this legislative body would confine their legislation to their own bodies, we would not have this struggle ahead. Unfortunately for all their highfalutin rhetoric about the unborn, all that a vote to defund Planned Parenthood can really achieve is to take money from women’s health services (that in the vast majority of cases are NOT abortion-related). Title X prohibits the use of federal dollars to fund abortion. (Alexandra Petri, 9/18)
The New York Times:
The Pope And The Birth Control Ban
The church establishment under Pope Francis continues to oppose access to birth control. The Holy See’s delegation at the United Nations has objected to the inclusion of contraception and reproductive rights in worldwide development goals. At every turn, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has fought the Affordable Care Act’s requirements for contraception coverage. In the Philippines, Catholic authorities strenuously opposed a bill to allow government health centers to stock free or subsidized birth control; the law finally passed in 2012. Catholic hospitals and clinics, the only option in some regions, often do not offer contraceptives. Catholics around the world, meanwhile, largely support the use of birth control. (9/21)
The Washington Post:
Why I Had An Abortion After 20 Weeks
In coming days, the Senate is expected to consider a federal ban on abortions at 20 weeks. Before lawmakers cast their votes, I would like them to hear my story. If such a ban had been in place a year ago, I would have been condemned to carry and give birth to a baby who had no chance at life. (Rebecca Cohen, 9/20)
The Kansas City Star:
Kathleen Sebelius Says Obamacare Is Here To Stay
Speaking last week at the annual luncheon of the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City, [former HHS Secretary Kathleen] Sebelius expressed pride in what the ACA has accomplished. The nation has seen a historic drop in the number of people without health insurance, she said, while health care inflation has been running at the lowest rate in 50 years. Those are the facts, Sebelius said. “The debate sounds different, but those are the facts on the ground.” Sebelius was confident that the ACA was so “intimately entwined” into the fabric of the nation’s health care system that it would be impossible to dismantle it wholesale, as some Republicans presidential contenders vow. (Alan Bavley, 9/20)
Salt Lake Tribune:
Medicaid Expansion Is Not The Utah Way Of Helping Poor
Lawmakers plan to gather this fall for a special legislative session to consider accepting Obamacare funding, terms and conditions in order to expand Medicaid in Utah. While state policy makers are looking for opportunities to help those most in need, they seem to have lost sight of the real issue. Distracted by the siren call of "free money" for the state, many lawmakers have skipped over the facts on whether or not such an expensive program will even help those less fortunate get ahead. (Evelyn Everton, 9/19)
The Washington Post:
Treatment, Not Jail, For Mentally Ill People
Natasha McKenna, the schizophrenic woman who died in February after Fairfax County jail guards shot her four times with a Taser, should not have been behind bars. She should have been in treatment at a facility staffed with mental health professionals. Some county officials have acknowledged that; they include Sheriff Stacey A. Kincaid, who runs the jail, where some 40 percent of the 1,100 inmates suffer from mental illness or substance addiction. Now it’s time for Fairfax, whose 1.1 million people make it more populous than all but nine U.S. cities, to make reforms to ensure that senseless tragedies like Ms. McKenna’s death do not recur. (9/20)
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
We Are Hurting Care By Overloading Doctors
The 21st century ushered in many changes in the way medicine is practiced. Hospitals and health-care systems are rapidly buying up physician practices nationally. These organizations control every aspect of the medical pipeline. Insurance carriers may cancel contracts with physicians whom they deem to be "financial drainers." ... Independent" physician practices are becoming rare. The question is whether today's physicians are able to practice without being coerced by the many external forces that control them. ... doctors are, in fact, being asked and mandated to do things that take them away from caring for patients. They are asked to do things that benefit large health care networks, hospitals and insurance companies.(Bhupendra O. Khatri, 9/20)