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Hillary Clinton on Tuesday announced she wants to eliminate the “Cadillac tax,” a key feature of the Affordable Care Act that economists love and pretty much everybody else says they hate. White House officials, who fought to include the tax in their health care overhaul, won’t be happy about the news, first reported by Maggie Haberman of The New York Times. But many interest groups, particularly labor unions, will be ecstatic. And that probably has a lot to do with why Clinton's taking this position. (Jonathan Cohn, 9/29)

Hillary Clinton’s prescription to soothe the economic hangover consumers have from ObamaCare’s regulatory binge is a single ingredient: more regulation. Mrs. Clinton begins her treatment plan by focusing on “price gouging” by pharmaceutical companies and the need for price regulation. (Scott Gottlieb, 9/29)

The resignation of House speaker John Boehner symbolizes the most important question Republicans face: Do they want to be a party of protest or a party of governance? Governance requires compromise, but the protesters reject that as collusion. ... Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was one of the loudest voices defending the Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, and he seems determined to push for defunding Planned Parenthood in December. Every Republican presidential candidate will be compelled to take a position on the government-shutdown strategy. The ones who support it will represent the party of protest. The ones who reject it, if there are any, will be standard-bearers for the party of governance. (William A. Galston, 9/29)

They have been going after Planned Parenthood over the past few months like so many Captain Ahabs. They threatened to shut down the government to defund the group. Their insistence on a Planned Parenthood showdown drove House Speaker John Boehner to resign. They’re about to appoint a special committee to investigate Planned Parenthood. The party’s presidential candidates have made Planned Parenthood a central part of the campaign, and House Republicans are manufacturing new legislative vehicles to cut off the group. And what do they have to show for it? A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds that Americans have a more favorable view of Planned Parenthood than of any other entity tested, including the Republican Party and presidential candidates. (Dana Milbank, 9/29)

Boehner’s resignation, and the month until it takes effect, offers the prospect — albeit a slim one — for a mini-grand bargain to let the government function more effectively until after the presidential election. Boehner would do his successor, his party and the country a huge favor if he were to do the necessary mucking. The bargain that’s in the realm of the possible is far from the sort of broad agreement on spending and entitlements that Boehner and President Obama envisioned in 2012. That deal entailed politically risky moves by both sides — for Democrats, raising the Medicare eligibility age and reducing cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients, along with huge spending cuts; for Republicans, acceding to $800 billion in new taxes. That moment is gone. (Ruth Marcus, 9/29)

Mr. Boehner’s resignation cleared the way for passage of a temporary spending bill this week, good news only briefly as it will leave the country facing the double prospect of shutdown and default in mid-December. So now would be a good time for [Rep. Kevin] McCarthy — indeed, for any and all candidates for speaker — to pledge not to permit a government shutdown and not to block increases in the federal debt ceiling, no matter how loud the clamor of GOP ultras to the contrary. (9/29)

McCarthy will have to be not just pretty good, but masterful if he is to succeed at managing a renegade group of GOP congressmen whose definition of “conservative” does not include him. It is absurd to call McCarthy anything but dependably conservative, just as it was erroneous for militant right-wing activists to characterize Boehner as an untrustworthy moderate. As good old George Wallace used to say about Republicans and Democrats, there is not a dime’s worth of difference on policy between Republicans like Boehner and the tea party zealots who drove him out of the speaker’s chair. They all hate Obamacare, Planned Parenthood, taxes on “job creators” and any government rule that inhibits Wall Street financiers, and they are all desperate to slash programs for the poor, kill environmental regulations and rattle sabers at Iran, Russia, China and North Korea. (David Horsey, 9/29)

On July 9, .... CMS announced that a forced bundled payment reimbursement model would be tested in 75 markets across the U.S. representing approximately 35 percent of the nation’s population. The Nashville-Franklin-Murfreesboro market is one of the 75 randomly selected markets where this model will be tested. The program specifically targets joint replacements for hip and knee. CMS data shows that more than 406,000 of these elective procedures were performed in 2013 at a taxpayer cost of nearly $7 billion. And with a stated goal of 2 percent reduction in annual spending on these procedures for each of the next five years, a potential for nearly $700 million in savings exists should the program be fully implemented across the country. Based on the same 2013 CMS data made public in June, the Metro Nashville market alone saw 1,832 primary hip and knee replacements in 2013 worth an estimated $19 million in hospital Medicare reimbursement. (Bill Hancock, 9/29)

My mother taught me many things, including, in the end, how to die. Her death went well, I told the few friends who I knew would understand my meaning: She was not in pain, she was conscious until the day before she died, she was at home, my sister and I were with her. It was a peak experience, revelatory and meaningful — something I wouldn’t have traded for anything — except her life. (Margot Mifflin, 9/30)