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Yawn. That is the proper response to the latest health-care reform proposals from Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Gov. Scott Walker (Wis.). They are retreads of the Burr-Coburn-Hatch proposal of 2014 and the John McCain plan in the 2008 election. All have the same fatal flaw — for average Americans, the price of health insurance jumps thousands of dollars. (Ezekiel J. Emanuel, 8/28)

The Affordable Care Act served dessert first, offering subsidized health coverage across the country before some of its less popular provisions were scheduled to take effect. But the government soon will start asking the country to eat its vegetables as cost-control measures phase in — and a lot of powerful lobbies are going to fight back. A formidable alliance has formed against one of the government’s best policies that few want to defend: The ACA’s so-called Cadillac tax, a provision scheduled to take effect in 2018 that is meant to whittle down overly generous employer health-care plans. (8/30)

By cutting taxes and controlling spending in Ohio, [Gov. John Kasich] proved his conservative bona fides, at least on fiscal issues .... He has expressed openness to some kind of path to citizenship for immigrants who came here illegally. He has shown little appetite for the culture wars that other Republicans gleefully fight .... Most strikingly, he broke with Republican orthodoxy and with most other Republican governors and accepted the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, a decision he defended in a way that illuminated his skills as a tactician and a communicator. (Frank Bruni, 8/29)

The promise of free money is hard to turn down, and so when Obamacare offered the states a cheap way of expanding Medicaid, Gov. Rick Snyder found it hard to resist. Yet just a year into Michigan’s expansion, it’s not such a bargain. ... here’s why some business groups that once supported the expansion are starting to get worried: They fear the savings will soon become a loss, and they’ll have to cover the difference. Snyder had wanted the Legislature to set aside a portion of the annual savings into a “lockbox” that the state could start drawing on in 2017, when it will have to contribute toward the expanded Medicaid program. Between 2014 and 2015, the governor wanted $225 million placed into safekeeping. Unfortunately, that savings account was never created. (8/30)

If you think Medicaid is a health insurance program for the poor, you’re only partially correct — it’s also critical to the health care infrastructure of our state. Alabama Medicaid provides health coverage for eligible children, pregnant women and severely disabled and impoverished adults, about 1 million Alabamians. Should Alabama Medicaid be anything but fully funded, one-quarter of our state’s population — rural, suburban and urban — could lose access to health care. Despite having so many people dependent on Medicaid, benefit-wise Alabama runs the most bare-bones program in the country. (Buddy Smith, 8/30)

Since taking control of the General Assembly following the 2010 election, Republicans have been intent on reducing or at least freezing the cost of Medicaid. ... Legislative leaders want a system in which the state writes a check for Medicaid and leaves it to providers to meet the medical needs of the 1.8 million people covered by Medicaid. Providers would absorb any cost overruns. ... Senate leaders are pushing to have the system taken over by private managed-care companies. ... The House should hold out for a Medicaid system run by providers, a group whose primary interest is preventing illness and helping the sick, not making profits for stockholders. (8/29)

States from coast to coast are using public funds to help their medical schools recruit scientific stars from other states or to prevent their own stars from being lured away by lucrative offers. There have long been recruitment battles among academic institutions, but today we’re in the midst of what The Chronicle of Higher Education calls a “boom in academic poaching.” (8/29)

Brittany Maynard was soon to die. The question was whether she could do so on her own terms, as a last act of autonomy. Dr. Lynette Cederquist, who regrets that Maynard had to move to Oregon in order to do so, is working with others to change California law to allow physician assistance in dying. ... Cederquist says the most common reason for requesting assistance in dying is not “intolerable physical suffering.” Rather, it is “existential suffering,” including “loss of meaning,” as from the ability to relate to others. The prospect of being “unable to interact” can be as intolerable as physical suffering and cannot be alleviated by hospice or other palliative care. (George F. Will, 8/28)

Only in Albany can a bill pass the Assembly with overwhelming bipartisan support, be sponsored by a majority of the State Senate, be endorsed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, and yet never come up for a final vote. That happened to Lavern’s Law, a bill that would have helped grievously injured victims of medical malpractice have their day in court. This summer, the Senate majority leader, John J. Flanagan, a Republican, wouldn’t allow the bill to be voted on, effectively killing it. (Thomas Moore and Steve Cohen, 8/31)

Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) has proudly provided reproductive health care to women and their families for nearly a century. Last year, we served over 80,000 Coloradans, providing life-saving cancer screenings, HIV and STD testing, and treatment, contraception and abortion care. We are committed to ensuring Coloradans have access to the high-quality, compassionate reproductive health care they deserve, no matter their income, ethnicity, sexual identity, or geography. No matter what. (Vicki Cowart, 8/29)

Most of what we know about prescription drugs and medical devices comes from industry-funded clinical trials. Does the source of funding affect study findings? The question is at the heart of a longstanding debate about financial conflicts of interest in medicine and what to do about them. That debate was recently reinvigorated by a three-part series of articles on the subject in The New England Journal of Medicine. For many years that journal has, as have other medical journals, required study authors to disclose such conflicts. (Austin Frakt, 8/31)

A 24-year-old athlete from Columbia, a teenage girl from Glen Burnie who wanted to become a medical examiner and a 21-year-old brother of two from Pasadena. What do these three individuals have in common? Each died from a drug overdose. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that in 2013, nearly 44,000 Americans died from drug overdose, referring to the situation as an "epidemic" as it eclipsed the number of deaths from auto accidents for the fifth year in a row. (Rep. Donna F. Edwards, D-Md., 8/28)