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We believe in political redemption, but [Republican presidential candidate Mike] Huckabee is already back at the same old stand. He is accusing Republicans who support entitlement reform of “robbing” seniors and says that as President he wouldn’t sign Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform. He recently lambasted New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for proposing to gradually raise the Social Security retirement age and means-test benefits. Aside from repealing ObamaCare, Mr. Huckabee has no answer of his own on entitlements, though they are steadily consuming more of the federal budget and national GDP. Entitlements on autopilot inevitably mean tax increases. (5/5)

No one was misled three years ago when Virginia’s then-attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli II, a Republican, twisted legal logic to the breaking point by trying to shutter abortion clinics that had operated legally and safely for years. Mr. Cuccinelli, a crusading culture warrior, advanced a rationale as flawed as it was novel: He argued that a 2011 law, applying stringent hospital construction standards to small, outpatient abortion clinics, should apply not only to new structures but also to existing ones — a departure from long-standing practice for health-care facilities in Virginia. ... In a watertight official opinion, Mr. Herring laid waste to Mr. Cuccinelli’s reasoning and gave the green light for state regulators to restore common-sense rule-making. (5/5)

If you listen to party leaders, you might think that the nation is hopelessly divided on abortion. Recently, for example, three presidential candidates — Mike Huckabee, Rand Paul and Hillary Rodham Clinton — addressed the issue in very different ways. .... But unlike the opinions of party activists and pundits, public opinion about women’s choices during their pregnancies yields surprising points of agreement across party lines. If you ask them specifics, Americans agree on quite a bit about when and why abortions should be legal. (Lynn Vavreck, 5/6)

Back in 2009, a big selling point of health care reform was the idea that expanding insurance coverage would increase Americans’ access to preventive and primary care and decrease the unnecessary use of emergency rooms, saving billions. ... There is one big problem with this logic: data. A new survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians found that 75 percent of emergency room doctors reported increases in patient volume since the Affordable Care Act went into effect. ... Opponents of the Affordable Care Act point to these increases as confirmation that yet another promise of the law was false. But these failures do not mean that the emergency room problem is unsolvable, just that insurance coverage alone is insufficient. (Ezekiel J. Emanuel, 5/6)

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), signed into law in March 2010, has been in place for nearly half a decade and by many measures is succeeding. ... Nevertheless, millions of US residents remain uninsured and millions will remain uninsured even after the ACA is fully in effect. Additionally, individuals now insured under the ACA may find health care unaffordable because of high cost-sharing. The complexity of the ACA’s operation, and in particular its use of the tax system to accomplish many of its goals, perplexes many who benefit from the tax credits or who are subject to the ACA’s individual or employer mandates. The United States still has the world’s most costly health care system. Many US residents continue to disapprove of the ACA and it remains under continual siege from its political opponents. (Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, 5/5)

A panel of medical experts stood firm against political backlash last month and insisted that biennial mammograms are unnecessary for women below age 50. The guidance from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force affirms long-standing evidence debunking the belief that standard screening of women as young as 40 for breast cancer reduces deaths. It’s an idea founded more in politics and profit than in science. (Karuna Jaggar, 5/5)