Viewpoints: Why Do We Put Up With Insurers Telling Doctors How To Treat Their Patients?

Los Angeles Times: What The Aetna Scandal Tells Us About Our Healthcare System: It's A Money Pit
Gillen Washington was a student at Northern Arizona University in 2014 when his health insurer, Aetna, denied authorization for the costly drug infusion he'd been receiving each month to treat his rare immunodeficiency disease. He appealed, but while he was waiting for a decision he wound up hospitalized with pneumonia and a collapsed lung. These ugly facts were enough to prompt a lawsuit, but Washington's claim against Aetna surfaced an even uglier revelation: that Aetna's medical director at the time, Dr. Jay Ken Iinuma, granted or denied coverage for treatments without ever bothering to look at the patients' medical records. According to CNN, Iinuma said in his sworn deposition that he relied on what he was told by the nurses working for Aetna, who checked to see whether the requested treatments complied with the insurer's guidelines. Denying authorization amounts to vetoing a treatment for all but the very few people who can afford to cover the cost out of pocket. (2/14)

San Jose Mercury News: Federal Budget Cuts Put Californians' Health At Risk
Congress did fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program for 10 years. That’s the good news for 200,000 kids in the Bay Area who rely on it to meet their basic health care needs. But Congress came up with the funding for CHIP by grabbing $1.35 billion from the Centers for Disease Control’s Prevention and Public Health Fund. (2/13)

Boston Globe: The First Step To Treatment Is Staying Alive
Drug treatment can’t help dead people. That’s why San Francisco is scheduled to open two safe injection sites later this year, where drug users will be allowed to shoot up under medical supervision. If an addict overdoses, trained staff will be available to revive them with an overdose antidote like naloxone, commonly known as Narcan. Staffers can also recommend treatment options to those interested. In an effort to stem fatal overdoses, safe injection sites are now under discussion in such cities as Philadelphia, Seattle, and Ithaca. There are no similar discussions in Boston, however, or anywhere else in Massachusetts, where Governor Baker, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, and Mayor Domenic Sarno of Springfield have all expressed either doubt or outright opposition. (2/9)

Los Angeles Times: With The Opioid Epidemic Raging, San Francisco Takes A Smart Gamble On Preventing Overdoses
With the opioid epidemic raging and thousands of people dying from overdoses annually, four Democrats in the California Legislature proposed a controversial but potentially effective response: letting a handful of counties experiment with safe injection sites. At these government-sanctioned centers, drug users could bring illicit controlled substances to inject in a clean space with clinical supervision to guard against lethal overdoses. In Canada and Europe, where injection sites have been used for decades, they are credited with saving lives and helping direct addicts into treatment. (2/8)

San Jose Mercury News: AG Becerra's Delay Enables More Opioid Deaths
While state Attorney General Xavier Becerra has fiddled, thousands more Californians have died from opioid overdoses. It’s been more than 16 months since Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation mandating that physicians check a statewide database before prescribing addictive medications. (2/10)

Los Angeles Times: California Confronts The Complexities Of Creating A Single-Payer Healthcare System
California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon may have expected to torpedo the idea of a statewide single-payer healthcare system for the long term last June, when he blocked a Senate bill on the issue from even receiving a hearing in his house. He was wrong, of course. His shelving of the Senate bill created a political uproar (including the threat of a recall effort), forcing him to create a special committee to examine the possibility of achieving universal health coverage in the state. On Monday and Wednesday, the Select Committee on Health Care Delivery Systems and Universal Coverage held its final hearings. (Michael Hiltzik, 2/9)

San Jose Mercury News: How Trump Decision Puts Women's Health At Risk
This devastating scenario where women [seeking abortions because of medical conditions such as cancer] are turned away at the most vulnerable time of their lives despite their doctor’s wishes could become more common thanks to the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This month, they announced the intention to create a new “conscience and religious freedom” division that introduces sweeping interpretations of so-called conscience protection laws covering medical providers, backed by aggressive enforcement. (Jody Steinauer and Lori Freedman, 2/10)

Los Angeles Times: Idaho Scraps Obamacare Customer Protections. Will The Trump Administration Enforce Federal Law?
Not inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth, Blue Cross of Idaho announced Tuesday that it will jump into that state's new non-Obamacare marketplace with a sheaf of health plan offerings that openly violate federal law. The state's largest health insurer, Blue Cross filed five plans with state regulators that place annual benefit caps on customers, disallow maternity coverage, and can charge applicants more if they have a history of medical treatment or preexisting medical conditions. None of that is permitted under the Affordable Care Act, which governs health insurance plans in the individual market nationwide. (Michael Hiltzik, 2/14)

Sacramento Bee: The Courts Are Risking California Home Values. Lead Paint Measure Just Aims For A Fix
A dangerous lawsuit – funded by out-of-state trial lawyers who stand to make tens of millions of dollars – will hurt California homeowners and threaten property values, taking particular aim at low-income families who’ve achieved the American dream of homeownership. Yet you wouldn’t know this after reading Dan Morain’s column on Jan. 19 on a statewide ballot measure to clean up hazards in homes. (Julian Canete, 2/15)

San Jose Mercury News: Ban California Kids From Pop Warner Football
California sports advocates can no longer ignore this grim reality: Tackle football puts young children at risk of permanent brain damage. Safer alternatives, including flag football, exist. It’s time that California did away with the high-impact sport for kids until they reach high school. A good case can even be made that tackle football should be banned at all public schools. (2/15)

The Desert Sun: Clinton Foundation Initiative Gave The Coachella Valley A Healthy Boost
The five-year Coachella Valley laboratory experiment that was the Clinton Health Matters Initiative has been a good thing for our desert. The Clinton Foundation’s effort to spur action among all who could make a difference to improve community health and wellness notched some important successes during its run. (2/10)

Orange County Register: Prop. 65 No Good For Californians’ Health 
The good news is an expert analysis of health studies, published in the Annual Review of Nutrition, concludes that drinking coffee lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease, Parkinson’s disease, cancer and diabetes. The bad news is that California law still requires coffee shops to post a warning sign that coffee contains a chemical known to the state to cause cancer. (2/8)

Los Angeles Times: The Koch Network Uses A Flagrant Falsehood To Defend A Dangerous And Irresponsible Law
You can always tell that defenders of a dangerous and irresponsible law have nothing to offer when they resort to flagrant misrepresentation to make their case. Step forward, Nathan Nascimento and David Barnes of the Koch brothers network. Nascimento and Barnes are representatives of the Koch brothers group's Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce and Generation Opportunity, respectively. They were sufficiently ticked off at my takedown of one of their hobby horses, a federal "right-to-try" law, to complain about it in a letter to the editor, published Thursday. (Michael Hiltzik, 2/9)

Orange County Register: Doctors Should Support Interstate Telemedicine 
Should licensed physicians be allowed to practice telemedicine across state borders? Lawmakers in Congress have been reluctant to move this forward. An exception is the recent VETS Act of 2017, versions of which just passed in both houses of Congress. (Shirley Svorny, 2/8)

Sacramento Bee: How An Abortionist Helped Launch A California Governor’s Political Career
No one encouraged me to plumb Inez Burns’ scandalous life. They waved aside her story as though it was an odor defiling the air. “Let sleeping dogs lie” was an expression I heard several times. “Stop your research,” others offered emphatically. “No good shall come of this.” (Stephen G. Bloom, 2/15)

Orange County Register: Santa Ana’s Jail Should Be Closed And Repurposed
Next Tuesday, the Santa Ana City Council will decide on the future of its local jail. There’s a lot at stake here, not only because the jail currently operates at an $8.6 million annual deficit, but also because the decision will determine what kind of community the city of Santa Ana wants to be. (Christina Fialho, 2/14)