Viewpoints: Insurers’ Denials Are Getting Inconsiderate To The Point Of Cruelty
A selection of opinions on health care developments from around the state.
Los Angeles Times:
Sorry About Your Stage 3 Cancer. Here's A Bill For $21,000 In Charges You Thought Were Covered
When Michele Brough was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in April, her oncologist wasted no time in reaching out to her insurer, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, to obtain pre-approval for a drug that would strengthen her immune system to better withstand chemotherapy. The good news came shortly afterward. “We are pleased to authorize benefits for the service(s),” Anthem informed Brough, 56, by letter. ... It wasn’t until after the second round of treatment that Brough’s oncologist informed her Anthem wasn’t covering the injections, sticking her with the staggering cost of $7,000 for each shot. As if that weren’t devastating enough, Anthem’s reasoning was downright absurd. (David Lazarus, 8/7)
CNN:
Waking Up To A Burning California
Monday morning, by the time I woke up, the poet Brenda Hillman, who lives up the hill from me in Kensington had already posted a picture to Instagram of the eerie sky out over the San Francisco Bay: a layer of low-lying fog, blanketing the hills, a small gap of sky, and then above it a huge dark plume of looming smoke, lurking like a dark genie over the metropolis. (Tess Taylor, 8/7)
The Washington Post:
Trump’s Tweets On California Water And Wildfires Are Dangerous
As if water and wildfire policies in the West weren’t contentious enough, President Trump decided to toss confused and ill-conceived tweets into the mix over the past few days, reigniting fights over water and land use in California. “California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized,” Trump said in a tweet Sunday. He was back at it again Monday morning, decrying water that is “foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean.” (Peter Gleick, 8/8)
Los Angeles Times:
New In GOP Logic: Antipoverty Programs Worked So Well, We Must Get Rid Of Them
For many decades now the GOP has sought to undo the New Deal and the Great Society. But a report released last month from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, lost in a sea of grabbier news items, applies a new logic to the goal of shredding the safety net. According to “Expanding work requirements in non-cash welfare programs,” comprehensive antipoverty programs are no longer necessary because 50 years of antipoverty programs — yes, those same interventions long hated, and their effectiveness belittled, by the GOP — have succeeded so spectacularly that poverty is largely a thing of the past. (Sasha Abramsky, 8/10)
Sacramento Bee:
With Kavanaugh Nomination To Supreme Court, Abortion Rights Are Hanging By A Thread
In May 1972, I was a freshman at Northwestern University and one night at the cafeteria I walked through the line with a woman I knew, but not particularly well. As we sat down and talked, she seemed visibly upset. She told me what had happened at a fraternity party a couple of months earlier -- what today would be regarded as date rape – and said she was sure she was pregnant. (Erwin Chemerinsky, 8/7)
The Mercury News:
Rural Areas Need Affordable Air Ambulances
Unless we spend billions of dollars to build trauma centers 30 minutes away from each other all across rural areas, the access void is filled instead by air ambulances that reduce critical transport time for emergency patients. Simply put, air medical providers save lives, particularly in underrepresented communities. However, air medical bases are at risk of closing. (Ken McEldowney, 8/7)
Sacramento Bee:
Older Adults Have Mental Health Needs, Too
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and state Sen. Scott Weiner make a reasonable case for why youth should be prioritized for Mental Health Service Act funding. ... Yet the bill narrowly defines prevention and early intervention outreach as targeting “secondary school and transition age youth, with a priority on partnerships with college mental health programs.” This cuts out all other population groups. (Janet C. Frank, 8/8)
San Francisco Chronicle:
AIDS Group Kicks In $10 Million More To Expand Rent Control
The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has contributed an additional $10 million to Yes on 10, the coalition supporting a November ballot measure that would let California cities to impose stricter rent control laws. ...Prop. 10 would overturn the 1995 Costa Hawkins Rent Control Act, which prohibits cities from imposing rent control on certain properties including multi-family apartments built February 1995 (unless the city had rent control with a previous cutoff date) and single-family homes and condos of any age. (Kathleen Pender, 8/8)