Â鶹ŮÓÅ

We hear from the legislature that North Carolina’s Medicaid program is broken and needs to be radically changed. Therefore we cannot expand it. Bunkum. North Carolina has one of the best Medicaid programs in the nation, one that actually is providing quality health care while controlling costs. ... The cost of North Carolina’s knee-jerk opposition has been more than dollars, jobs or GDP. Access to adequate health care in rural communities has suffered. The decision to forego the Medicaid expansion has been a contributing factor in the closing of several rural hospitals in our state. (8/3)

Two southern states, Louisiana and Kentucky, have reversed positions on Medicaid expansion–after electing new governors. This shift is a reminder, as the presidential contest draws so much focus, that down-ballot races also matter. When it comes to health policy, governors can make a huge difference. (Drew Altman, 8/3)

Health insurers have been taking a financial beating for the ages on ObamaCare, but Aetna was always more bullish than the rest of the industry—until now. The entitlement’s keenest corporate patron announced Tuesday that it is cancelling its ObamaCare expansion plans for 2017 and may withdraw altogether. Aetna posted fabulous second-quarter earnings, though the exception is its Affordable Care Act line of business that the company expects will lose more than $300 million this year. (8/2)

On Monday, Illinois citizens were jolted by a piercing pain in the wallet as federal officials unveiled proposed Obamacare insurance premium rates for 2017. Insurers plan to dial up rates as much as a heart-stopping 45 percent for those who buy plans on the Obamacare marketplace when open enrollment starts Nov. 1. (8/2)

Another day, another investigation into Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. While the mayor likes to boast that his administration is competent, transparent and accountable, the facts occasionally suggest an entirely different set of adjectives. A report released Monday by the office of Comptroller Scott Stringer examines the saga of Rivington House, a building on the Lower East Side that the city sold in 1992 to a nonprofit that ran it as a nursing home for people with H.I.V. and AIDS. The city recognized at the time that this was a valuable use of the property. It put a restriction on the deed requiring that the building be used as a nonprofit residential health care facility forever. But forever lasted only until 2015. (8/2)

It wasn't one of the high-profile policy issues sorted out on Beacon Hill before the legislative session ended late Sunday, but for thousands of nursing aides doing vital work at roughly 400 nursing homes in Massachusetts, a last-day vote by lawmakers means they’ll get an overdue pay increase. The Legislature put back into the state budget a $35.5 million appropriation to boost the wages of aides whose average starting rate is just $11 an hour. Most of them are women between the ages of 18 and 44, and many are single parents. (8/3)