Child deaths go unsolved in Mass.; Doctors push boundaries in medical marijuana states

---The problem with Obamacare’s mental-health ‘parity’ measure, by Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, November 28, 2015
---Drug price controls unhealthy Rx, by Jack Whelan, in the Boston Herald, November 29, 2015

---The Heart Disease Conundrum, by Sandeep Jauhar, M.D., in The New York Times, November 29, 2015

---Contaminating Our Bodies With Everyday Products, by Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, November 29, 2015

---Winning the Right to Save Your Own Life, by Darcy Olsen, in The Wall street Journal, November 27, 2015

Editorials (3)

---A Step Forward for Contraceptive Access, The New York Times, November 29, 2015

---Everything went wrong in the Ebola outbreak. We’re still not ready if it happens again., The Washington Post, November 29, 2015

---Prescription drug ads growing issue, The Greenfield Recorder, November 28, 2015

Across the Commonwealth

Child deaths go unsolved as autopsies fall behind
New England Center for Investigative Reporting via The Boston Globe, November 29, 2015
---The state medical examiner’s office, long under fire for delays in performing adult autopsies, is even slower when children die, taking an average of 242 days to find an official cause of death in child abuse and neglect cases.
Report

Massachusetts, Like Boston, Weighs

Raising Legal Age for Buying Cigarettes to 21
Associated Press via The New York Times, November 29, 2015
---Nearly 60 representatives and senators have signed on to a bill that would make it illegal to sell tobacco to people under 21, with penalties ranging from $100 to $300 for repeat violations.

Report

Businesses immunize, educate

to keep employees on the job

The Telegram & Gazette, Worcester, November 29, 2015
---Central Massachusetts employers contacted by the Telegram & Gazette reported varying impacts of employee illness, depending on company size and industry.
Report

Ride-along with New Bedford paramedic

provides a look at the frontline of addiction
The Standard-Times, New Bedford, November 29, 2015
---After seeing what he has seen over seven years on the job, paramedic David Zander looks at addiction differently than he used to. He views it as a disease, plain and simple.
Report

From the States / Regions

In medical marijuana states,

'pot doctors' push boundaries
Associated Press, November 28, 2015
---When it comes to oversight of boundary-pushing doctors, enforcement practices vary in the 23 states allowing medical cannabis.
Report

San Francisco bolsters anti-AIDS

campaign with new funding (California)
PBS NewsHour, November 28, 2015; transcript and video of 10:03
---The city's public health officials, doctors, and activists have made huge strides battling the epidemic and are now pushing for wider use of a drug shown to reduce HIV infections in at-risk men.
Report

Health Republic is latest health

care co-op to go under (New York)
USA Today, November 29, 2015
---About 200,000 New Yorkers will see their Health Republic policies expire on Monday, marking the demise of the 12th health insurance co-op established under the Affordable Care Act.
Report

Storefront health insurance

gains fans in Rhode Island
The Providence Journal, November 26, 2015
---Retail-style service has arrived in the world of health insurance, and Rhode Island is one of the states at the forefront of the movement, says Melissa Cummings, senior vice president and chief customer officer at Blue Cross.
Report

Across the Nation

More babies going to the NICU, and more than

half are normal weight, study finds
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, November 29, 2015
---In one of the first studies of its kind, Dartmouth researchers recently found that NICU admissions increased by 23 percent in just five years; and by 2012, over half of all admissions were for normal birth weight infants or those born after 37 weeks gestation.
Report

Around the World

Beijing aims to refill medicine

chest with 'Made in China' drugs
Reuters, November 28, 2015
---China is the world's second biggest drugs market behind the United States, and fast food, smoking and pollution have fueled a rise in cancers and chronic heart and lung diseases. The country also has more diabetics than any other in the world....
Report

Articles / Interviews / Features

Quiet, Present, Consistent Care: Lessons

On Medicine From Treating The Homeless

WBUR.org, Radio Boston, November 27, 2015; audio of 14:48
---An interview with Dr. Jim O'Connell, who is known as “Boston’s doctor to the homeless,” has spent 30 years offering hot coffee, warm blankets and medical care to the homeless population in Boston, and has written a book about his experiences.

Interview

Commentary / Analysis

The problem with Obamacare’s

mental-health ‘parity’ measure
by Dana Milbank, The Washington Post, November 28, 2015
---Obamacare aimed to improve this woeful system by requiring mental-health parity. But psychiatrists, many of whom stopped taking insurance because of the paltry reimbursements, have yet to rejoin the system. This leaves the public mental-health system (clinics that charge on a sliding scale) overloaded.
Article

Drug price controls unhealthy Rx
by Jack Whelan, in the Boston Herald, November 29, 2015
---...some Massachusetts lawmakers have proposed a bill that would give government officials the power to set price controls for certain medicines. What proponents of the bill don’t recognize is that the value of breakthrough medications can’t be reduced to dollars and cents....

Article

The Heart Disease Conundrum
by Sandeep Jauhar, M.D., in The New York Times, November 29, 2015
---South Asians today account for more than half of the world’s cardiac patients.... The reasons for this have not been determined. Traditional cardiac risk models, developed by studying mostly white Americans, don’t fully apply to ethnic communities. This is a knowledge gap that must be filled in the coming years. Fortunately, there is a model for doing so: research performed in a small town in Massachusetts over the past seven decades.

Article

Contaminating Our Bodies With Everyday Products
by Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, November 29, 2015
---In recent weeks, two major medical organizations have issued independent warnings about toxic chemicals in products all around us. Unregulated substances, they say, are sometimes linked to breast and prostate cancer, genital deformities, obesity, diabetes and infertility.

Article

Winning the Right to Save Your Own Life
by Darcy Olsen, Goldwater Institute, in The Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2015; subscription required
---Each year hundreds of thousands of Americans die without getting access to promising treatments that could save or extend their lives. This is unnecessary, immoral and the worst kind of bureaucratic overreach. No one should have to beg the federal government for the right to save his own life.
Article

Editorials

A Step Forward for Contraceptive Access

The New York Times, November 29, 2015
---Patients seeking birth control pills today typically have to get a prescription from a doctor .... Now two states are about to allow patients to get them from a pharmacist without seeing a doctor first. Other states should consider similar moves.

Editorial

Everything went wrong in the Ebola outbreak.

We’re still not ready if it happens again.
The Washington Post, November 29, 2015
---Almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong in the world’s early response to the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa in 2014. Before it was over, the virus infected some 28,634 people and claimed more than 11,000 lives. It could happen again — and the world is still not ready.
Editorial

Prescription drug ads growing issue
The Greenfield Recorder, November 28, 2015
---It is the right first step [review by the FDA for clarity and accuracy] given that ultimate decision about the extent of pharmaceutical advertising rests with the FDA, which should be taking a look at what’s happening here and find the right prescription for this affliction.

Editorial

Copyright 2015. Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved
860 Winter Street, Waltham Woods Corporate Center, Waltham, MA 02451-1411
781-893-4610 | 781-893-3800 | Member Information Hotline: 800-322-2303 x7311

To ensure delivery of all Massachusetts Medical Society communications, please add ' mediawatch@mms.org ' to your
email address book or Safe Sender List. If you are still having problems receiving our communications,
see our white-listing page for more details.

Manage Your Profile | Unsubscribe