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Scott Walker said Thursday he knows and likes John Kasich and Chris Christie, but the Wisconsin governor said that unlike the chief executives of Ohio and New Jersey, he didn’t accept Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion dollars. ... Walker said Kasich is “a good guy” and has “a solid record in Ohio.” “There’s a couple of differences between me and any of the other governors on the (debate) stage the other night, meaning Gov. Christie and Gov. Kasich,” he said. “I didn’t take the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare,” as Kasich and Christie did. “I think that’s important to a lot of Republicans -- that I didn’t further Obamacare." (DiStaso, 8/13)

But what [Ohio Gov. John Kasich] is not saying is just as revealing. During the event, at a country club in a Democratic-leaning part of the state, he dispatched a question about whether he would support legalized abortion in cases of rape, incest and when the life of the woman is in jeopardy with a single word — “Yes” — cutting off discussion of an issue that has addled some of his opponents. ... Mr. Kasich says he is most animated by what he calls “people in the shadows,” those with mental illness, developmental disabilities and in at-risk minority communities. (Martin, 8/13)

GOP presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina said Thursday that parents should not be forced to vaccinate their children against diseases like measles and mumps, although she added that public school systems can forbid unvaccinated children from attending. "When in doubt, it is always the parent's choice," Fiorina said during a town hall in an agricultural building in rural Iowa on Thursday evening. "When in doubt, it must always be the parent's choice." (Johnson, 8/13)

GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson on Wednesday accused Planned Parenthood of disproportionately opening clinics in black neighborhoods as a way to “control that population.” In an interview with Fox News late Wednesday, Carson claimed Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a racist who intentionally opened abortion clinics in predominately black neighborhoods. (Ferris, 8/13)

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Thursday defended his past use of tissue from aborted fetuses for medical research even as he continued to criticize Planned Parenthood. The retired neurosurgeon said his research, which took place in 1992, does not conflict with his call to defund Planned Parenthood after several undercover videos surfaced that purportedly show officials with the organization working with research companies using tissue from aborted fetuses. Jen Gunter, an obstetrician-gynecologist, wrote on her blog that Carson had co-authored an academic paper published in Hum Pathol, in which he described working with material "from two fetuses aborted in the ninth and 17th week of gestation." (Scott and Spodak, 8/13)

Ben Carson doesn't deny using fetal tissue from aborted fetuses for medical research in the early 1990s. But the way in which the former Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon received and used the tissue is very different from how Planned Parenthood obtains and sells its fetal tissue, he claims. (Phillips, 8/13)

New Hampshire is in the throes of a drug epidemic driven by prescription opiods and heroin. "The state of New Hampshire loses a citizen to an overdose death about every day," said Tym Rourke, chair of the New Hampshire Governor's Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse. In New Hampshire, a recent poll about the most important problems facing the state found drug abuse ranks second. That puts it ahead of education, taxes and the state budget. And now politicians visiting the first-in-the-nation primary state are paying attention — in part because so many voters are bringing it up. (Keith, 8/14)

When the former head of the U.S. government’s health insurance programs was hired in July to run a lobby that had spent tens of millions of dollars trying to derail Obamacare, it was more than just another spin of Washington’s revolving door. Marilyn Tavenner, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, became chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s main lobbying group, which is known as AHIP. As the latest of a half-dozen prominent architects and overseers of Obamacare to move into the health industry, her move signified growing ties between health insurers and Democrats despite battles over the Affordable Care Act. (MacGillis, 8/13)