Opinion
Children have a right to medicine that goes down easily
Let’s face it – medicine can only be effective if it gets into the system. For parents and children, bubblegum, strawberry, and other flavorings have been a godsend, especially now.
Let’s face it – medicine can only be effective if it gets into the system. For parents and children, bubblegum, strawberry, and other flavorings have been a godsend, especially now.
OPINION: As health care delivery evolves thanks to advances in data sharing and technology, it’s important that health systems harness the availability of these new tools to improve transparency, information dissemination and communications between doctor and patient, allowing them to better work together to make vital health decisions.
Police response to mental-health calls often ends – again and again – in chaotic, noisy hospital emergency rooms, where staff is stretched thin, and a heart attack is likely to take precedence over someone in the throes of a mental-health crisis. “Traditionally, people would be dropped off at the ER, and the only option was to transfer them to a psychiatric facility,” says Dr. Scott Zeller, a nationally known emergency psychiatrist and former president of the American Association for Emergency Psychiatry.
OPINION: So after seven years of waiting, I finally received a kidney transplant in 2006. That same kidney has kept me alive, and I am grateful I have never had to go back to dialysis. Part of the reason I have stayed healthy is because my continuous health insurance pays for the medication to prevent my body from rejecting the transplanted kidney. But there is a flaw in our system that could prevent kidney transplant recipients from getting this kind of care.
Deborah Kratter sat in her Half Moon Bay home, explaining her decision to move to Washington state to live, and then die with life-ending medication alongside family members when her terminal pancreatic cancer worsens. “My gosh, when the time comes and you can’t be who you are … I don’t see why you should have to lie in a bed and wait to die,” Kratter said.
OPINION: Prices for prescription drugs are rising precipitously, seriously threatening public and private healthcare budgets, and creating barriers preventing patients from accessing needed therapies. Pharmaceuticals now account for 19 percent of employer spending and Medicare spending on healthcare and, with a slew of approvals of new $100,000+ medications, there is no relief in sight.