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In the last few days, Scott Walker and Marco Rubio released health care plans, and other Republican candidates are sure to follow soon. Most will probably be pretty similar, even if some are more fully fleshed out than others. But they’ll all share one feature, the thing that tells you that they aren’t even remotely serious about this issue: they will take as their starting point that the entire Affordable Care Act should be repealed. (Paul Waldman, 8/20)

Republican presidential candidates are starting to roll on health reform. I mean that in a good way, like when the pilot accelerates down the runway and says “Let’s roll.” Governor Scott Walker (WI) just released his 15-page “Day One Patient Freedom Plan.” U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (FL) has written an op-ed in Politico that needs more detail, but contains a significant reform similar to Governor Walker’s. (John Graham, 8/19)

Perhaps today will mark the beginning of a new phase in the long campaign for the GOP nomination for president in 2016. That’s possible because two of the leading candidates — Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and Florida senator Marco Rubio — have offered serious plans for replacing Obamacare in its entirety. (In Senator Rubio’s case, he reiterated in an op-ed the principles of a plan he outlined several months ago.) They, along with Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, are now the candidates who can speak most credibly about what’s wrong with Obamacare, because they have actual plans to do something about it. (James C. Capretta, 8/19)

As the nation goes about mentally categorizing the crowded Republican field, here’s one way to divide the arena: small-government reformers and big-government surrenderists. That debate is at the center of a bigger GOP meditation on how to better appeal to the poor and minorities. Mr. Kasich has emerged as the most eloquent and compelling spokesperson for the go-big camp. ... And he took to the soapbox in Iowa this week to keep driving his theme: that it’s OK to be “conservative” and have a “big heart.” It’s his way of excusing his decision to embrace ObamaCare’s expansion of Medicaid, putting that welfare program on track to consume 50% of Ohio’s operating budget in 2016. “Everybody has a right to their God-given purpose,” said Mr. Kasich at the debate, bragging that his Medicaid blowout is helping the “working poor” to “get on their feet.” (Kimberly A. Strassel, 8/20)

Over the past few weeks, Americans have seen a series of videos come out of Planned Parenthood that are nothing short of horrifying. The footage shows senior Planned Parenthood officials laughing, swilling chardonnay and casually, callously, heartlessly discussing killing unborn children in order to sell their body parts. These videos also force Americans to face the grim reality of what happens to the babies’ remains. (Sen. Ted Cruz, 8/20)

Efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and calls for tighter abortion laws at the Republican presidential debate have moved abortion rights back into the national spotlight. But the real fight is at the state level. The next big Supreme Court case involving abortion is expected to come from Texas, where a 2013 law led to the closing of many clinics and inspired abortion opponents around the country to propose similar restrictions. The law’s effects in Texas show the degree to which regulations ostensibly about clinic quality and women’s safety can reduce access to abortion and raise costs for women who choose the procedure. (Kim Soffen, 8/19)

How long should you wait to treat a possibly fatal but curable disease? That's a question with major implications for millions of patients and for insurers and government programs that have to pay for the treatment. In the last year this question has focused on hepatitis C, a viral infection of the liver that, left untreated, can lead to cirrhosis, cancer, liver failure and death. Hepatitis C is the leading cause for liver transplants in the United States. (D. Steven Fox and Jeffrey S. McCombs, 8/20)

A newly-released survey shows just how conflicted Americans are about long-term care insurance. And how unrealistic they are about how much long-term care costs and how much insurance they can buy for what they are willing to spend. The survey, completed in 2014 by the consulting firm RTI International and the survey research firm GfK Research for the US Department of Health and Human Services, found that consumers prize two attributes above all others when they think about long-term care insurance: They want lifetime coverage and low premiums. Their willingness to buy any LTC insurance declines dramatically as premiums rise and the benefit period shrinks. (Howard Gleckman, 8/19)

Typical federal government right hand/left hand confusion has some graduate students at the University of Missouri in Columbia turning their pockets inside out to scrape together enough money to afford health benefits. On one hand, Obama administration education officials are pushing for colleges and universities to ease the rising cost of attending college, increase institutional need-based scholarship, and do whatever it can to help students avoid drowning in student-loan debt. Of course, there’s also a push to make sure all Americans have affordable health care. (Williams, 8/20)

The TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] Agreement is still being negotiated; recently, in a meeting of trade ministers in Maui, Hawaii, negotiators failed to finalize the text of the Agreement due in large part to disagreement regarding intellectual property protections for pharmaceutical products. ... It is critical to ensure that patents protect only innovative pharmaceutical products and for governments to balance grants of market exclusivity with other competing interests, such as the widespread availability and affordability of certain drugs. (Jing Luo and Aaron S. Kesselheim, 8/20)

Of all the threats to human life confronted by international health workers, few cause as heavy a toll as what is termed “vaccine hesitancy” — the delay or refusal by misinformed people to accept vaccination for themselves and their children. An estimated one in five children went without lifesaving vaccines globally last year, adding to the grim toll of 1.5 million children who die annually for lack of immunization, according to the World Health Organization. (8/20)

The Food and Drug Administration’s approval on Tuesday of a marginally effective drug to enhance the sexual drive of women with low libido came with appropriate safeguards to protect the safety of patients. We will probably never know whether the agency made a purely scientific judgment or whether it was unduly influenced by a campaign, partly financed by the manufacturer and organized with the help of one of its consultants, to depict the agency as gender-biased for never having approved a drug to treat sexual dysfunction in women while approving numerous drugs for men. (8/21)

A recent issue of JAMA highlights 2 studies that examined how physicians might treat or help prevent violence against women. If one only glanced at the results, they might seem like bad news. But a further reading should provide us with optimism about how we might address this difficult issue through the health care system. One study was a research letter that looked at 3-year follow-up of a randomized trial of screening for partner violence. The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends universal screening of women of reproductive age, but others have argued that there’s little evidence that doing so has much of an effect. (Aaron Carroll, 8/19)

Not even the federal government can solve the nation’s growing heroin epidemic on its own, but it could always do more. That’s probably the best way to think about the new anti-heroin initiative unveiled by the White House on Monday. A one-year, $2.5 million plan to track the flow of drugs through the Northeastern states and other “high-intensity” regions certainly can’t hurt; but the White House isn’t pretending that its new initiative will conquer the problem and nor should anyone else. (8/20)

Africa has reported some genuinely good news in the battle to eradicate polio. Late last month , Nigeria passed a full year without a case of wild poliovirus. As of Aug. 11, it has been a year since the last case was detected anywhere on the continent (it was in Somalia). These anniversaries are unofficial milestones, but they point toward continued progress against polio, a scourge that once claimed hundreds of thousands of lives each year. Unfortunately, polio has shown a fierce tendency to return. Hopefully this time will be different. (8/20)