Viewpoints: Big Tobacco Turns To Vaping To Profit Off The Pain, Suffering Of Millions; Medicare Advantage Transforms A Dysfunctional Insurance Market

Opinion writers weigh in on these health issues and others.

Fox News: Don't Fall For Vaping Hype. Like Smoking, It's Unsafe And Addictive 
Many vaping (or e-cig) companies have sprung up in the past five years as the “cure” for cigarette addiction, offering a similar high, but allegedly without the same health risks of cigarettes. Instead, they are causing disease, mysterious illnesses, and even death, as reported recently. The Centers for Disease Control is urging people to stop vaping after multiple deaths and hundreds of mysterious lung illnesses. (Liberty Vittert, 9/8)

The Hill: The Best Health Care Reform Is Already In Place
As with the previous Democratic debates, this week’s debate in Houston will likely start with our country’s forever question: How can we provide health insurance to all without bankrupting the country? The Republican Party’s answer is to define basic health insurance as no health insurance. The party yearns for, and is suing in the courts, to restore the halcyon pre-ObamaCare days when 50 million Americans were uninsured and insurance companies could deny coverage at will. (Laurence Kotlikoff, 9/8)

USA Today: Red Flag Gun Laws Invite Abuse Of Power And Won't Stop Mass Shootings
What’s wrong with people close to a troubled young man being able to warn police and petition courts to take away their guns? In an ideal world? Nothing. But we don’t live in one of those. In the world we actually inhabit, state-level experiments with “red flag” laws should give all Americans pause before handing over this kind of power to Washington. (Jim DeMint, 9/9)

The New York Times: The Age Of American Despair
This week CNN devoted seven hours of programming to climate change, bringing the leading Democratic candidates onstage to grill them on the issue. I have no complaints about the decision, but I wish that some network would set aside a similar amount of time for a more immediate crisis, one that is killing tens of thousands of Americans right now — more than the crack epidemic at its worst, more than the Vietnam War. (Ross Douthat, 9/7)

The Hill: Are Insurance Companies Driving Doctors Out Of The Profession?
Earlier this year, my mother made a hard choice. After reviewing her medical history with her physician, she chose to have a preventative double mastectomy and hysterectomy. Her employer-based insurance did not question the procedures. Four months later, her incisions began opening and her physician determined she needed a second, outpatient surgery. While recovering in the outpatient ward, my mother learned that her insurance company decided the procedure was “unnecessary” and would not approve the equipment she needed in our house, post operation. (Elizabeth O'Connor, 9/7)

The New York Times: Which Health Policies Actually Work? We Rarely Find Out
A few years ago, Oregon found itself in a position that you’d think would be more commonplace: It was able to evaluate the impact of a substantial, expensive health policy change. In a collaboration by the state and researchers, Medicaid coverage was randomly extended to some low-income adults and not to others, and researchers have been tracking the consequences ever since. Rigorous evaluations of health policy are exceedingly rare. The United States spends a tremendous amount on health care, but very little of it learning which health policies work and which don’t. In fact, less than 0.1 percent of total spending on American health care is devoted to evaluating them. (Austin Frakt, 9/9)

The Washington Post: Postpartum Depression In Dads Often Goes Unnoticed
Three days after our son was born, my husband lay curled on the living room floor sobbing. I knelt beside him, trying to make out his words. “Just tell Tyler . . . tell him it wasn’t his fault,” Rob gasped. My stomach dropped in a sickening thump. Tyler was barely born, a sack of warm flour and red skin swaddled in blankets on our couch. My own body was stretched and raw from the birth, my mind slow to grasp what Rob was trying to tell me. (Brianna Randall, 9/8)

The New York Times: Walking On Eggshells In Medical Schools
I trained to be a doctor in the bad old days — not the worst old days, but the bad old days. Humiliation was part of the deal, sometimes deliberately inflicted by certain grandstanding, sadistic attending physicians, sometimes more casually, because everyone could see that you didn’t know something you should have known. Now we are aware of the consequences of harassment and unconscious bias, and we are trying to give medical students room to learn and grow — but many medical students and residents continue to experience harassment and discrimination and bullying. (Perri Klass, 9/9)

The Hill: Is A Dark Ages Disease The New American Plague Threat?
Diseases are reemerging in some parts of America, including Los Angeles County, that we haven’t commonly seen since the Middle Ages. One of those is typhus, a disease carried by fleas that feed on rats, which in turn feed on the garbage and sewage that is prominent in people-packed “typhus zones.” Although typhus can be treated with antibiotics, the challenge is to identify and treat the disease in resistant, hard-to-access populations, such as the homeless or the extremely poor in developing countries. I also believe that homeless areas are at risk for the reemergence of another deadly ancient disease — leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease. Leprosy involves a mycobacteria (tuberculosis is another mycobacteria) that is very difficult to transmit and very easy to treat with a cocktail of three antibiotics. (Marc Siegel, 9/8)

The Washington Post: How A Rabbit Study And An Ex-Student Boost My Hopes For A Future Of ‘Love . . . And Dignity’
At whatever grade level teachers find themselves, from kindergarten to the final class at medical or law school, few moments stir the emotions as deeply as when former students reappear years and often decades later with an update on where their journey has taken them and what resiliencies have been the pavement on which they’ve traveled. So it was when a recent letter came from Kelli Harding, a student 21 years ago in my Peace Studies summer course in Washington. (Colman McCarthy, 9/8)

The New York Times: These Newborn Babies Cry For Drugs, Not Milk
His body dependent on opioids, he writhes, trembles and cries. He is exhausted but cannot sleep. He vomits, barely eats and has lost weight. He is also a baby. Just 1 month old, he wails in the nursery of the CAMC Women and Children’s Hospital here. A volunteer “cuddler” holds him while walking around, murmuring sweetly, hour after hour, but he is inconsolable. What his body craves is heroin. (Nicholas Kristof, 9/7)

Sacramento Bee: AB 1030 Must Change Or It Will Fail Sexual Assault Victims
For me, keeping women safe has been my life’s goal and is now part of my job. So when I heard about Assembly Bill 1030, which aims to provide mandatory informational pamphlets to women who may undergo pelvic exams, I was initially overjoyed. I believe women should be empowered with all the resources that keep them informed. However, one part of the bill troubled me: It requires a signature upon receipt of the pamphlet. (Joyce Sutedja, 9/6)

This is part of the KHN Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.

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