Viewpoints: Big Pharma Needs Dose Of Own Medicine, But Prop 61 Isn’t The Way To Do It
A selection of opinions on health care developments from around the state.
Fresno Bee:
Drug Pricing Is Too Complex To Fix With Prop. 61
It would serve Big Pharma right if Californians passed Proposition 61, capping drug prices by prohibiting state agencies from paying any more for prescription medication than the rock-bottom prices paid by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The industry certainly has given voters every reason to do it – from jacking up the cost for lifesaving EpiPens by a whopping 500 percent to making the most effective treatments for hepatitis C so expensive that they’re out reach for millions of Americans. (9/19)
Los Angeles Times:
Recipe For Ripoffs: Pricing Drugs By Their 'Value' To Sick People
It’s easy to assume that greed is solely to blame for runaway drug prices — and companies like Mylan do nothing to challenge that perception. The reality, however, is more complicated. When [Mylan Chief Executive Healther] Bresch talked about drug prices and access existing “in a balance,” she was referring to what the pharmaceutical industry calls value-based pricing. This is what you get when you price a drug not just commensurate with its research and development, production and marketing, but also reflecting the drug’s importance to patients. And that’s a very slippery concept. (David Lazarus, 9/23)
Sacramento Bee:
‘Right To Try’ Bill Offers False Hope To The Desperately Ill
The Medical Oncology Association of Southern California and the California Nurses Association oppose Assembly Bill 1668, by Ian Calderon, D-Whittier. We agree that it is in the best interest of terminally ill Californians and their loved ones that the governor veto this bill again. The misleadingly named bill would not give patients a real right to try experimental drugs. Rather, it would give them a “right” to request access to drugs in development at pharmaceutical companies. But there is no obligation for a company to grant a patient’s request. (Allison Bateman-House, Arthur Caplan and Lisa Kearns, 9/22)
Los Angeles Times:
Sick: The Biggest Increase In Healthcare Costs In 32 Years
Healthcare is very much in the news, but for all the wrong reasons. On the one hand, we had Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump visiting the “Dr. Oz” show last week to reveal some tidbits about his physical condition (he’s fat). On the other, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had a bout of pneumonia but declared herself fit as a fiddle (we’ll see). The real story, however, wasn’t that the two oldest presidential candidates in U.S. history are showing their age but that the rest of us are still getting creamed by rising healthcare costs. (David Lazarus, 9/20)
Orange County Register:
Where Has $17 Billion In California Mental-Health Funds Gone?
Back in 2004, California voters passed Proposition 63, formally known as the Mental Health Services Act, imposing a 1 percent tax on seven-figure incomes to be used to develop and expand mental health care services. Not the worst idea, and indeed, in the 12 years since there have been plenty of anecdotes about Prop. 63-funded programs helping Californians overcome mental illness or even heading off cases in people at risk of mental illness. One problem: The anecdotes are just that. Not statistics. Not hard evidence. Just isolated tales. So how do voters know if state and local officials and others in charge of spending the Millionaires’ Tax’s $17 billion in aggregate revenue are using it effectively? We don’t. (9/18)
Los Angeles Times:
Stopping Superbugs
Scientists and public health officials have been warning for decades that overuse of antibiotics would inevitably lead to a rise of bacteria that have adapted to the drugs and developed a resistance to them. This is no longer a distant threat. Old standby antibiotic treatments have lost the fight against some diseases and new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are emerging with terrible frequency. We haven’t yet reached the post-antibiotic era, but we are fast approaching it. (9/20)
San Francisco Chronicle:
How Congress Is Failing On Zika
As the fiscal year nears its end on Sept. 30, the next Zika showdown will now be linked to the debate about the 2017 federal budget. This means that the overarching U.S. response to Zika may not be based on the best approach to stop the spread of the disease, but on compromise on other issues like reallocation of leftover Ebola money, politics around Planned Parenthood and, now, size of the federal funding package. (Ana Santos Rutschman, 9/18)
Los Angeles Times:
It's Time To Legalize And Regulate Marijuana In California. Yes On Proposition 64.
Six years ago California voters were asked to make recreational marijuana legal under state law and they declined to do so. But the close decision — 46% voted “yes” on Proposition 19 — suggested that the battle was not yet over. At that time, The Times opposed Proposition 19 not because legalization was necessarily a bad idea, but because it was a poorly drafted mess that would have created a regulatory nightmare. In the years since, a lot has changed. (9/16)
Los Angeles Times:
What Your Kids Need To Know About Marijuana, Legalized Or Not
"Cannabis Curious?” That’s the billboard my children and I see every day on our after-school drive on Ventura Boulevard. The questions from my kids, who are 11 and 13, have come spilling out: “What is cannabis? What's curious about it? Why does it have different names? What does it look like? Why do people use it?” If you are a parent, no matter how you plan to vote on Proposition 64 — the California initiative that would legalize marijuana for adult use — you need to be prepared to talk about marijuana with your kids. (Elizabeth J. D'Amico, 9/21)