Viewpoints: Graham-Cassidy May Be Dead, But War Over Government’s Role In Health Care Isn’t

Los Angeles Times: Americans Have Been Fighting Over Government's Role In Medical Care For Decades. That Fight Will Continue
In 1978, I was on overnight duty in the pediatric emergency room at Los Angeles County Hospital. It had been a busy night and I was looking forward to the end of shift. At about 4 a.m., a man with a frantic expression came rushing into the ER carrying what looked like a small log wrapped in a blanket. His 4-year-old son had suffered an asthma attack and the man had bypassed several private-hospital ERs on the way to the public hospital. He’d previously been refused emergency care at the private hospitals due to lack of insurance. On this occasion, the father did not want to waste time and took the much longer drive to Big County. I took the bundle from his arms and rushed into the treatment room. (Steve Tarzynski, 9/27)

Los Angeles Times: Graham-Cassidy Is Dead. Now Stop Treating Obamacare Like The Enemy And Help Get Americans Health Coverage
We may never know how many Republicans in the U.S. Senate would have voted against the latest ill-conceived and disruptive proposal to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act. But we know the three whose public opposition kept the measure from reaching the Senate floor this week — Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Although they disagree sharply over what to do about the ACA, they all deserve the country’s thanks for stopping lawmakers from heedlessly leaving millions of lower- and middle-income Americans unable to afford coverage and sending the market for non-group policies into a death spiral. (9/26)

San Francisco Chronicle: Let Obamacare Repeal Rest In Peace
Nine months into the GOP’s total control of the federal government, the obsessive campaign to dismantle the ACA has succeeded mainly in expanding the ranks of its unlikely defenders in the face of grim alternatives. It’s a measure of the depth and illogic of this obsession that Republicans have yet to give it up completely. (9/26)

Los Angeles Times: Why The GOP's Obamacare Repeal Plan Was Doomed From The Start
It’s always tempting to declare the outcome of any contest preordained, even when it was closer than it looks. One side’s victory in the World Series or a presidential election often is treated as inevitable in retrospect, though a single timely hit or strikeout or the shift of a few thousand votes in a couple of states might have been the determining factor. With repeal, however, failure was baked into the outcome from the start. (Michael Hiltzik, 9/26)

Los Angeles Times: Republicans Should Gladly Pay For My Preexisting Condition
It’s a question I encounter frequently when I discuss healthcare with conservatives, particularly after I note that I have a chronic and costly preexisting condition, Type 1 diabetes. “Why should I pay for your healthcare?” they ask. (David Lazarus, 9/26)

Sacramento Bee: Brown Can Help End Nursing Home Abuse
A Carmichael nursing home supervisor admitted she was ordered to alter medical records of a 92-year-old patient, who died after developing rotting bedsores. The state fined a Santa Monica nursing home for claiming a resident received physical therapy five days a week. At least 28 of those sessions were documented by nurse assistants who were not at work on those days. In Los Angeles, lawyers for a woman who was severely re-injured at a convalescent home discovered that nonexistent nurses made entries in her chart. (9/28)

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: A Dose Of Transparency On Drug Prices
With the defection of Arizona’s John McCain and others, Senate Republicans decided on Tuesday not to hold a vote on the latest Obamacare repeal bill. That would be the good news. But anyone looking for something more than the status quo on health care, especially the spiraling cost of pharmaceuticals, might keep an eye on Sacramento rather than Washington. (9/27)

East Bay Times: Don't Buy The Hype, Keep Prescription Drugs Safe
It’s easy to take safe, reliable medicines for granted. Picking up drugs from the pharmacy, I hardly give a second thought about their safety and efficacy. But the lull of normalcy masks very real threats to a relatively well-functioning system, including counterfeiting, fraud and powerful narcotics in the wrong hands. (Eric O'Neill, 9/24)

Los Angeles Times: If The Hepatitis A Outbreak Doesn't Convince You To Wash Your Hands After Using The Toilet, Nothing Will
The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health last week declared an outbreak of hepatitis A, citing 12 cases as of Monday. Only four are cases in which people acquired the disease locally, but that’s enough for officials to sound the alarm. And few populations are more vulnerable to acquiring it — and suffering more severe cases of it — than the homeless community. More than three-quarters of the cases identified here have been among homeless people. (9/27)

San Jose Mercury News: 60% Of Medicaid Beneficiaries Are Working Americans
The U.S. Congress has put the health of millions at risk with its counterproductive attempts to gut Medicaid. The changes being proposed will move America’s health care system, and our entire economy, in a dangerous and harmful direction, phasing out Medicaid coverage for millions of Americans and threatening the viability of the Medicaid system through underfunded per capita allotments. (Christine Tomcala, 9/24)

Los Angeles Times: Why Replacing L.A. County's Health Director Won't Be Easy
When Los Angeles County supervisors describe the kind of person they want for a top department post, they often say something along the lines of, "We want a Mitch Katz type. "That certainly speaks volumes about Dr. Mitchell H. Katz, who on Friday told the supervisors he'd be leaving the county at the end of the year. His departure culminates a stunningly successful run as leader, first of the massive Department of Health Services and then of the new and even more massive county Health Agency, which takes in the formerly stand-alone departments of mental health and public health. Katz turned about a third of the county's operation and budget into a nimble human services organization that not only runs hospitals and coordinates clinical care, but also provides housing for the homeless and diverts the addicted and mentally ill from jails to clinics. (9/26)

Sacramento Bee: Record STD Rates Show Need For More Talk About Sex
Let’s talk about sex. On the heels of yet another congressional effort to defund Planned Parenthood and roll back access to health care comes news that last year set national and state records for sexually transmitted disease. There’s a dispiriting feel to the data released this week by California’s Department of Public Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Gonorrhea rates are up just as drug-resistant strains threaten to render the disease untreatable in the near future. Syphilis, close to eradication as recently as the 1990s, has increased, particularly among bisexual men, gay men and women. (9/27)

Los Angeles Times: Facing Criticism, UC Irvine Scrubs 'Homeopathy' From Its Roster Of Offered Treatments
As of late last week, visitors to the website of UC Irvine Health, that institution’s clinical arm, could learn that among its services to patients was “homeopathy.” That was a problem, because homeopathy is a discredited and thoroughly debunked “alternative medicine.” Even Howard Federoff, UCI’s vice chancellor for health affairs, agreed that the scientific basis for homeopathy was “lacking.” The issue is important because the donors of a $200-million gift to UCI’s medical schools, the billionaire couple Susan and Henry Samueli, are sworn believers in homeopathy and supporters of a raft of other “integrative” health treatments. As I reported, some medical authorities have raised questions about whether the Samuelis’ beliefs and their rare generosity will undermine UCI’s explicit commitment to science-based medicine. (Michael Hiltzik, 9/25)

Sacramento Bee: Jerry Brown Should Sign Gender Recognition Act
It said male on my birth certificate, and I was raised as a boy. However, for as far back as I can remember, I never imagined myself growing up to be a man or a woman. As a child growing up in Amish Country in rural Pennsylvania, I would show interest in the toys and activities that society deems to be only for girls: twirling baton, tumbling on the balance beam and playing with makeup. I enjoyed some of the stereotypically male activities as well, including several years of participation in the Boy Scouts. (Mark Daniel Snyder, 9/28)