Minneapolis Star Tribune: An Ill-timed Attack On Planned Parenthood Just two weeks ago, our nation was on the brink of a federal shutdown because of congressional conservatives' fanatical focus on demonizing and delegitimatizing Planned Parenthood. ... My Catholic commitment to social justice sounded an alarm. Now those conservatives have set their sights on Minnesota, introducing a bill to deny funds to Planned Parenthood. ... Ensuring family-planning services remain accessible to all fulfills the dictates of our faith (State Sen. Scott Dibble, 4/21). New Orleans Times-Picayune: Take A Scalpel To The State's Hospital Plans Now that a huge chunk of [New Orleans] Mid-City has been demolished, we all need to believe in the glittering future that University Medical Center, the new VA Hospital and the associated biotech corridor are supposed to usher in. But, unless LSU anticipates an outbreak of yellow fever or bubonic plague, the proposed 424-bed hospital will clearly exceed demand and require huge subsidies to operate. That will just be piling it onto the taxpayer, who is in for it already; the state plumped for the $1.2 billion option when it had only about $800 million on hand (James Gill, 4/24).
The Oregonian: A Health Insurance Exchange Should Have Oregon's Imprint About 600,000 Oregonians, adults and children alike, go without health insurance. That's a problem when medical care, almost all of it expensive, is needed ??” most uninsured folks earn less money. ... In Salem Monday we could start to turn the situation around. The Senate votes on whether to create a health insurance exchange offering private insurance plans that are paid for in significant part by government subsidy. Senate Bill 99 is complex and far-reaching. But its message couldn't be simpler: Let's get our people covered in a way that suits Oregon's health care needs and establishes a foundation we can refine and build from (4/24).
San Francisco Chronicle: California Mental Health System A Dangerous Relic Last fall, 54-year-old Donna Gross was found dead. She'd been strangled. ??¦ What made her death especially horrifying was another factor: Her alleged killer was a violent mental patient who stalked her on the grounds of Napa State Hospital. The death of Gross, a psychiatric technician at the hospital, has touched off a furor over the operations of California's state-run mental facilities. Instead of a system that protects and treats the frail and unstable, another picture has emerged. After years of gradual change, the system has become a de facto arm of the prison system, filled with violent patients and managed by poorly protected personnel (4/24).
The Baltimore Sun: Discrimination In Ruxton [Intolerance towards mental illness is a major reason for] the recent outbreak of community-based hysteria involving Sheppard Pratt Medical Systems' proposal to turn a Ruxton mansion in an upscale rehabilitation facility to help those under treatment for mental illness make a transition back to living at home. ??¦ These are not outsiders to be feared, they are just people who are recovering from an illness, and they deserve the community's respect and tolerance (4/25).
Sacramento Bee: There's A Gender Wage Gap For Doctors Men and women have yet to be treated equally - even in medicine. I recently met a young woman medical student who was applying to be a surgery resident - a position that has not traditionally been filled by women. In the United States, women make up less than 16 percent of the nation's 160,000 surgeons (up from 7 percent in 1972). ??¦ This student was 26 weeks pregnant ??¦ (and) her advisers suggested that if she wanted to be taken seriously for a surgery position she'd best hide her pregnancy and not discuss the topic of children or families (Michael Wilkes, 4/24).
This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.