Your weekly roundup of STAT's First Opinion

Before you look ahead to prepare for another week, set aside a few minutes to catch up on last week's First Opinions, which ranged from why Philadelphia's health commissioner believes his city and others need supervised injection sites to America's other drug problem: people being prescribed too many medications. Have an idea for a First Opinion article? Please send it to Pat Skerrett at first.opinion@statnews.com.

Overdose prevention sites can help cities like Philadelphia save lives By THOMAS FARLEY SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES Overdose prevention sites, also known as supervised injection facilities, can prevent overdoses from escalating into deaths. READ MORE

Esketamine and psychedelics will require restructuring mental health care visits By AMITHA KALAICHANDRAN TERESA CRAWFORD/AP Use of esketamine and psychedelics like MDMA and psilocybin for depression and other mental health issues must come with a change in administering care. READ MORE

Overprescribed: High cost isn’t America’s only drug problem By SHANNON BROWNLEE AND JUDITH GARBER JULIO CORTEZ/AP Almost half of U.S. adults over age 65 take five or more medications — a red flag for harm. More prescriptions often means more harm from side effects. READ MORE

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Sen. Grassley: Stop kicking Medicaid’s safety net hospital payments down the road By CHUCK GRASSLEY ADOBE Congress needs to modernize outdated formulas for calculating payments to safety net hospitals in the Disproportionate Share Hospital program. READ MORE

Preventing heart disease requires more than medicine By ROBERT M. KAPLAN TIM BOYLE/GETTY IMAGES Taking a statin can lower your cholesterol. But it doesn't do much for your risk of dying prematurely, especially if you don't have heart disease. READ MORE

Paging Dr. Topol: Grasping the multidimensional narrative of ‘Deep Medicine’ By KEN GORDON ADOBE Eric Topol's "Deep Medicine" mimics the direction the author wants medicine to take — to become more comprehensive, personal, effective, and humane. READ MORE

High-quality care can lower U.S. health care costs: a case study from Brooklyn By WILLIAM A. HASELTINE BRYAN THOMAS/GETTY IMAGES Everybody talks about what the government should do to improve health care. We should be talking more about what health care providers themselves should do. READ MORE

Medicare Advantage is nudging aside ‘old Medicare’ with a free ride, a warm meal, and a handyman By MICHAEL ADELBERG AND KRISTIN RODRIGUEZ PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS/AP Medicare Advantage, rolled out in 2003, is attracting seniors away from the flagship program. New benefits like transportation and meal delivery may be why. READ MORE

5 ways to address the challenges of direct-to-consumer health products By ANNA WEXLER AND STEVEN JOFFE ADOBE As health products increasingly move from the realm of the medical professional to the consumer, we need better oversight of them. READ MORE

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