Viewpoints: Medicare Can’t Say No When Negotiating Drug Prices — And That’s Why Bidding Won’t Work
A selection of opinions on health care developments from around the state.
Los Angeles Times:
Allowing Medicare To Negotiate Drug Prices Is A Popular Solution To Healthcare Costs. But It May Not Work
At his press conference Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump endorsed what may be the most oft-cited solution to the crisis of skyrocketing drug prices: allowing Medicare to negotiate prices directly with drug manufacturers. Trump’s words were solidly in the mainstream of healthcare reform thought, even if he did add the spin of a self-styled dealmaker. (Michael Hiltzik, 1/11)
Los Angeles Times:
Repealing Obamacare Could Be A Matter Of Life Or Death For Many Americans. Here Are Their Voices
Obamacare’s critics have painted a picture of the law that is wholly negative: that it’s a “disaster,” that it’s in a “death spiral,” that it’s caused a “struggle” for families that use it. To people not directly affected by the Affordable Care Act — the 85% of Americans who get their coverage from their employers or public programs such as Medicare — these assertions seem plausible enough, especially since they’ve been repeated incessantly for more than six years. Repeat a big lie often and loudly enough, and you don’t need evidence. (Michael Hiltzik, 1/9)
Orange County Register:
Don't Count On An Easy Cure For Obamacare
No government “plan” can meet the needs of people as well as businesses competing for customers and customers shopping for the best deal. Then the government can limit its role to filling in the gaps. It can pay for Medicaid. It can guarantee a risk-pool or reinsurance fund so pre-existing conditions can always be covered. As Obamacare slips into the next world, no one should lie awake thinking salesmanship could have saved it. (Susan Shelley, 1/7)
Sacramento Bee:
Trump, Republicans At Odds Of Dealing With Provisions In Obamacare
Trump promised to guarantee coverage to all, not cut Medicaid and preserve protections for those who have pre-existing conditions. If he does all of that, he will be repealing Obamacare and replacing it with something that changes the name but not the program. That may be what he has in mind, but it’s not what his closest allies and advisers have said they intend to enact. (Daniel Weintraub, 1/9)
Los Angeles Times:
Healthcare Hell: Fighting To Overturn Denied Insurance Claims
One focus of the planned repeal of Obamacare is maintaining coverage for people with preexisting conditions. Republican lawmakers say the current law’s safeguards won’t change, but they have yet to explain how they’ll accomplish this without also keeping the mandate that everyone buy insurance. What isn’t being discussed — although it should be — is the obstacle course that insurance companies and middlemen often make policyholders navigate just to get claims approved, often for chronic conditions. (David Lazarus, 1/13)
Orange County Register:
Use The Marketplace To Improve Health Care
As our next president, Donald Trump has an opportunity to save lives and improve the health care system for everyone. I am particularly pleased that health care reform is high on the president-elect’s agenda. Rep. Tom Price, the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, has made clear his belief that government should be less involved in health care, which makes it even more important for government to help patients obtain the information and skills they will need to become more active consumers. As a businessman, Trump knows that marketplace dynamics can transform health care, just as they have transformed every other sector of our economy. (Leslie Michelson, 1/6)
Los Angeles Times:
A Texas Federal Judge OKs Nationwide Discrimination In Healthcare Against Transgender People
In a ruling upholding the latest tangential attack on the Affordable Care Act by religious activists, a federal district judge in Texas blocked regulations prohibiting insurers, doctors, or hospitals from discriminating against transgender patients or women with an abortion in their medical history. (Michael Hiltzik, 1/9)
Los Angeles Times:
Defunding Planned Parenthood Hurts The Healthcare System
Way up high on the list of priorities of the newly empowered Republican-controlled Congress is the defunding of Planned Parenthood, the well-known and highly competent not-for-profit organization that provides a broad array of reproductive healthcare services to women throughout the country... The first thing to understand is that this plan on the part of the Republicans has nothing to do with improving healthcare services. Members of Congress want to defund Planned Parenthood simply because it also provides abortions — which are anathema to many Republicans despite the fact that they are not only legal but are constitutionally protected, as has been affirmed by the Supreme Court in three different landmark decisions. (1/7)
Fresno Bee:
Who Pays For War On Planned Parenthood?
Californians can be forgiven if the fight over Planned Parenthood feels more like time-worn political theater than a real threat. This is a blue state. We haven’t suffered the arcane restrictions and mass clinic shutdowns that have constricted reproductive rights in Texas and other states. But the crusade will hit home hard if President-elect Trump – whose new head of White House health policy is a former Republican Senate staffer who has claimed, falsely, that contraception causes abortions – acquiesces to his party’s true believers in Congress. Of the $500 million Planned Parenthood gets each year in Medicaid reimbursements, contraceptive discounts and other federal funding, about $260 million goes to health centers in California. (1/8)
Orange County Register:
Trump's Choice Of Vaccine Foe Kennedy Could Worsen Political Ills - The Orange County Register
Not one to skirt controversy, President-elect Donald Trump has reinserted himself into a marginal but revealing controversy: vaccines. Drawing fire from across the political spectrum — but also some cheers — Trump asked Democrat Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a well-known opponent of standard practices, to head up a new commission on vaccinations. Kennedy agreed. (1/12)
Los Angeles Times:
Donald Trump And A Major Medical Clinic Have Moved Vaccine Anti-Science Back Into The Mainstream
Scientific ignorance never lies very deep beneath the claims of the anti-vaccine movement. Many of its adherents still claim there’s a connection between childhood vaccines and autism, even though the connection has been conclusively debunked and shown to have originated in an act of scientific fraud. (Michael Hiltzik, 1/11)
Los Angeles Times:
2017 Is Shaping Up To Be A Banner Year For Anti-LGBT Discrimination
If you thought 2016 was a nasty, brutish year for LGBT rights across the country, 2017 is already shaping up to be much, much worse.Over the holidays, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced that he would be reintroducing the First Amendment Defense Act, a bill first put forward in 2015. It would prevent the government from taking action against businesses that discriminate against LGBT people based on their “religious belief or moral conviction” that marriage is defined as a union solely between one man and one woman. (Nico Lang, 1/6)