Viewpoints: It’s Naive To Think Greedy Drug Companies Won’t Find Workaround To Prop. 61

Los Angeles Times:: Proposition 61 Is The Wrong Solution To The Problem Of High Drug Prices
Blatant price-gouging by EpiPen-maker Mylan and other pharmaceutical companies has stoked public outrage about the high cost of prescription drugs. Meanwhile, the emergence of a new class of exceptionally expensive specialty drugs has caused budget nightmares for state governments. But in California, even modest efforts to require drugmakers to reveal more about how they set their prices have been stymied by lawmakers sympathetic to the industry. (10/4)

San Francisco Chronicle: Yes On Prop. 61: Cap Prices State Agencies Pay For Prescriptions
California voters can expect to be hit with tens of millions of dollars in prescription drug industry-funded political advertising warning that passage of Proposition 61 — a measure to cap drug prices — will stifle the industry’s ability to develop new life-saving drugs. This is a well-worn scare tactic used by drug-industry giants whenever the exorbitant prices of their drugs are challenged. It is a claim that is factually shaky, if not fraudulent. I can say this because I worked for more than three years as government-affairs director for Gilead Sciences, the patent holder of the two hepatitis C drugs whose huge price tags have shaken Medicaid budgets nationwide and put the cost of treatment for many patients out of reach. (David W. Poole, 9/30)

San Francisco Chronicle: Chronicle Recommends: No On Proposition 61
[W]e must oppose Prop. 61, despite our disgust with the industry-bankrolled disingenuous advertising blitz. It is important to note that an array of consumer and health-advocate organizations that have no love for the pharmaceutical industry are opposed to Prop. 61. A link between Medi-Cal and the VA is not necessarily a good corollary; their respective patient bases have different demographics and medical needs. Also, the fear of reduced access to certain drugs is legitimate: It would rely to some extent on the good faith of an industry whose greedy practices were the inspiration for this initiative. (9/22)

San Antonio Press Express: Will California Lower Drug Prices For Us All? 
California may soon drive a hole through Washington’s tolerance for — and protection of — price gouging on drugs. A measure on the November ballot, Proposition 61, would bar state agencies from paying more for prescription drugs than the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs does. Congress generally prohibits the U.S. government from negotiating prescription drug prices. The VA is an exception. Federal law ensures that it obtains a discount of at least 24 percent off a drug’s list price. (Froma Harrop, 10/3)

Los Angeles Times: Vote Yes On Proposition 56 To Raise California's Too-Low Tobacco Tax
Everyone knows that tobacco kills, but still, the numbers are staggering. In California alone, some 40,000 adults die each year as a result of smoking or secondhand smoke, and the amount spent annually on healthcare directly related to tobacco exceeds $13 billion. Nationally, the death toll is 480,000. Americans, for better or worse, have decided that this nasty, lethal drug should remain legal. So government’s approach is to discourage smoking where it can. It restricts advertising, requires warnings on cigarette packs, bars sales to minors — and, most effectively, it levies “sin taxes” designed to make smoking prohibitively expensive. (9/30)

Orange County Register: Latest Tobacco Tax Attempt Is A Giveaway To Special Interests 
But Prop. 56 is worded to exempt itself from the Prop. 98 provisions, which would allow them to avoid sending approximately $600 million per year of tax revenue to California schools. Prop. 56 asks California voters to contradict themselves and does an end run around Prop. 98’s constitutional funding requirements to direct billions to the health care bureaucracy. Prop. 56 is being sold as a way to fund health care for low-income residents. Doctors often say they can’t take Medi-Cal patients because the payments they receive for providing care don’t cover their costs. But Prop. 56 wouldn’t fix this problem and fails to provide accountability. (Brian Fojtik, 10/6)

Sacramento Bee: Medical Care Now California’s Biggest Industry, Dwarfing All Others
A new UCLA Center for Health Policy Research study reveals that we Californians are directly or indirectly spending a mind-numbing $367.5 billion a year on our physical well-being, equal to 15 percent of the state’s $2.5 trillion economy. That makes it, by a huge margin, our largest industry, dwarfing such high-profile California mainstays as movies, agriculture, aerospace and tourism. The $50 billion film industry, for instance, is scarcely one-seventh the size. (Dan Walters, 10/1)

Los Angeles Times: Why Won't UC Health Centers Provide Birth Control Without A Prescription? 
Under the pharmacist protocol, women seeking birth control are no longer required to endure yearly pelvic exams or the wait times associated with them—which aligns with the medical consensus advising against annual exams for healthy women. It marks a turning point in feminist history, removing paternalistic barriers to women’s agency over their bodies. Yet nearly three years after President Napolitano’s office supported the passage of the pharmacist protocol, no UC school has implemented it on campus or even made a sincere attempt to do so. (Olivia Weber, Ali Chabot, and Laura Lively, 10/6)

The Orange County Register: Make VA Hotline Work Right, With Or Without New Law
The Department of Veterans Affairs has called it a public health crisis — an estimated 20 veterans commit suicide every day. So it is no trivial matter that a suicide hotline run by the VA is failing to answer the phone. The former director of the Veterans Crisis Line told the Associated Press that an average of 35 to 40 percent of the calls to the hotline in May went unanswered by the crisis-trained health science specialists at the VCL’s location in Canandaigua, N.Y. The calls rolled over to backup centers run by a contractor and staffed by workers, sometimes volunteers, who lack specialized training. (10/5)

Bay Area News Group: Trump Misses Reality Of PTSD For Veterans
Jason Deitch was an Army Ranger who served multiple deployments to Africa and the Middle East. You can make the case that he still works the front lines today in his job as veteran liaison at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ Program in Rehabilitation Neuroscience. Deitch, 47, works at health facilities all over the Bay Area — in his hometown of Martinez, UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco — spending time with combat veterans suffering from mental health issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). So he listened carefully when he was read something Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said to a group of veterans in Virginia on Monday. (Gary Peterson, 10/3)

Los Angeles Times: Bill Clinton Was Right That Obamacare Needs Improvement — But We Knew That Already
My quiet afternoon was interrupted Tuesday by an outburst of blather on CNN about a gaffe that Bill Clinton had uttered, supposedly calling the Affordable Care Act “the craziest thing in the world.” There followed lots of speculation about how Hillary Clinton would tamp down the controversy, lots of chortling over whether the time had come to put a leash on the ex-president lest he embarrass his wife again, etc., etc. You know the drill. (Michael Hiltzik, 10/5)

Los Angeles Times: A Medical Journal Invited Both Candidates To Describe Their Healthcare Ideas. Guess Which One Responded.
Serious candidates for office don’t normally shun golden opportunities to outline their policies for an attentive audience. So when the New England Journal of Medicine invited the two top presidential candidates to describe their goals and plans for American healthcare in their administrations, Hillary Clinton jumped at the chance. Donald Trump didn’t respond at all. (Michael Hiltzik, 9/30)

The Mercury News: Make End Of Life Options Real With Palliative Care
While controversy remains about California’s recently passed End of Life Option Act, we need to accept that aid-in-dying is now legal and that the state needs to support additional real options for patients—especially good palliative care with its focus on the whole-person and pain management. Alarmingly, California falls woefully short in providing universal access to palliative care.  Community-based palliative care is currently unavailable in 22 of our 58 counties; there are no inpatient services in 19 counties. Specialists in palliative care are in short supply and reliable funding is nonexistent. Most rural communities in the state have limited, or no, access to this vital service. (Margaret R. McLean, 10/5)

Orange County Register: Concierge Care – 'Designer' Health Care That's Flexible, Affordable 
Changes in federal policies, health coverage parameters, and a projected shortage in practicing physicians have created a pressure-packed industry for doctors nationwide. “In response to this frustrating situation, more doctors are seeking an alternative practice model,” wrote Paul Hsieh, Forbes health contributor. “They are establishing ‘concierge’ or ‘direct-pay’ practices.” (Osmond Cook, 10/6)

Los Angeles Times: This Newport Beach Doctor's Work Has Changed Pediatric Care Throughout The World 
Many years ago, as Dr. Zeev Kain watched a 3-year-old get wheeled to an operating room for a tonsillectomy, a colleague turned to him and said, "The walk to the OR for a child is the longest place in the world." The remark captured precisely what Kain had been feeling. As a pediatrician and anesthesiologist, he had become increasingly concerned about the pain and anxiety endured by children undergoing surgery and other invasive medical procedures. (Patrice Apodaca, 10/6)

Sacramento Bee: Parents Should Be Wary Of Marijuana Legalization 
Marijuana is a complicated issue. I support its medicinal use and have introduced federal legislation to make it easier to research and potentially bring marijuana-derived medicines to the market with FDA approval... But Proposition 64 would allow marijuana of any strength to be sold. (Dianne Feinstein, 10/1)