Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa faced an angry crowd at a town hall in Chico, California, Monday, with the LA Times reporting one man shouted "may you die in pain" over LaMalfa's vote for the GOP health care plan.
As the crowd booed and shouted, he said, "I have the mic folks. Yep, boo away … People across the board are being hurt by this."
It wasn't just health care: the crowd became upset when LaMalfa said he doesn't believe "man-made activity" is causing climate change.
Why it matters: many Republicans viewed this as the worst case scenario — they have to deal with the wrath of constituents upset over their position on the unpopular health care plan, and still have nothing to show for it.
Hospitals and health care companies often flood email inboxes and wire services with press releases that tout new procedures or devices. The marketing intent is clear — they want to attract patients to their facilities or get the word out on their new technology.
The one thing they don't talk about: the price.
Why it matters: Adopting new technologies contributes a lot to the growth of health care spending. To battle that growth, the health care industry promotes price transparency as a way to encourage competition and lower spending. However, most hospitals and providers really don't embrace price transparency, and continue to advertise the latest procedures with seemingly little regard for costs.
Last week, we reported on the heroin-and-opioids crisis in the U.S. jobs market — a lot of skilled positions are going unfilled because a lot of people can't pass a drug test required for this work — and about a new trend in which Americans have stopped moving to find work. The posts generated many more than the usual number of letters, not a few which were powerful. We asked some of these readers whether we could reprint part of their letters.
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