Obama: ‘Dismantling The V.A. System Would Be A Mistake’
The president says a move to privatize the VA health system would undercut the progress his administration has made in modernizing the department and bringing veterans timely care.
The Associated Press:
Obama Opposes Privatization Of The Department Of Veterans Affairs
President Obama is opposing suggestions to privatize the Department of Veterans Affairs to improve the health care that veterans receive. In an interview with The Colorado Springs Gazette, he said that his administration had made progress modernizing the department and providing veterans with more timely care. Privatizing the agency would delay that progress, Mr. Obama said. (6/5)
In other national health care news —
The New York Times:
Why The Economic Payoff From Technology Is So Elusive
For several years, economists have asked why ... technical wizardry seems to be having so little impact on the economy. The issue surfaced again recently, when the government reported disappointingly slow growth and continuing stagnation in productivity. The rate of productivity growth from 2011 to 2015 was the slowest since the five-year period ending in 1982. One place to look at this disconnect is in the doctor’s office. Dr. Peter Sutherland, a family physician in Tennessee, made the shift to computerized patient records from paper in the last few years. There are benefits to using electronic health records, Dr. Sutherland says, but grappling with the software and new reporting requirements has slowed him down. He sees fewer patients, and his income has slipped. (Lohr, 6/5)
The New York Times:
‘Liquid’ Cancer Test Offers Hope For Alternative To Painful Biopsies
A blood test to detect cancer mutations produced results that generally agree with those of an invasive tumor biopsy, researchers reported, heralding a time when diagnosing cancer and monitoring its progression may become less painful and risky. The blood tests, known as liquid biopsies, represent one of the hottest trends in oncology. They take advantage of the fact that DNA fragments from tumors can be found in tiny amounts in the blood of patients with cancer. (Pollack, 6/4)
The Wall Street Journal:
Combination Drug Therapies For Cancer Show Promise At Higher Potential Cost
Cancer researchers see promise in giving patients combinations of multiple drugs that are proving more effective than one or two. But the strategy poses a dilemma for health insurers and patients: even higher prices. Researchers said at a medical meeting here Sunday that adding a third drug, Johnson & Johnson’s Darzalex, to an older two-drug combination for patients with multiple myeloma significantly slowed the blood cancer’s growth compared with the older two-drug combination alone in a clinical trial. But the combined cost of the drugs—based on current list prices and the dosing schedule used in the study—would be at least $180,000 for the first full year of treatment for the average patient. (Loftus, 6/5)
The New York Times:
Parkinson’s: A Progressive, Incurable Disease
Muhammad Ali, who died on Friday after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease, was given the diagnosis in 1984 when he was 42. The world witnessed his gradual decline over the decades as tremors and stiffness set in, replacing his athletic stride with a shuffle, silencing his exuberant voice and freezing his face into an expressionless mask. (Grady, 6/4)