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The ad went viral. Joe Manchin, Democratic senator up for re-election in West Virginia, a state where President Donald Trump's approval rating is 60 percent, raises a rifle and shoots a hole in a document emblazoned in red: "LAWSUIT ON COVERAGE OF PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS." That's a suit filed by 20 Republican attorneys general and governors — including Manchin's opponent, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey — seeking to void the entire Affordable Care Act. (Andrew Sprung, 10/9)

Arizona is a key battleground state for control of Congress. We have perhaps the most closely fought race for U.S. Senate. And we have three swing House contests, although Democrats are thought to have the upper hand in all three. (Robert Robb, 10/7)

The rising costs of health care continue to be a challenge for all Marylanders and their families, and particularly those living with expensive, chronic health conditions. Unfortunately, a misguided policy from the Baltimore-based U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) may have inadvertently created a new “pre-existing condition” that is making matters worse for many of the state’s most vulnerable patients. (Beverley Francis-Gibson, 10/8)

Health & Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently announced that premiums for a benchmark Affordable Care Act 2019 plan on the federal exchange will drop 2 percent nationally compared with 2018 premiums — the first reduction since the law's implementation. While this is encouraging news, it is no cause for a major celebration. When Obamacare's exchanges open for business in just a few weeks, on Nov. 1, many consumers will still find exchange plans unaffordable. Rates will soar by double digits in many states. Despite the slight decline in the national average premium, the typical 2019 plan sold through the HealthCare.gov exchange will still likely cost more than twice as much as the average individual market plan in 2013, the year before most Obamacare provisions went into effect. (Sally C. Pipes, 10/8)

The contentious “right to try” bill that President Trump signed into law to help terminally ill patients get access to treatments that might — I emphasize the “might” — cure them or prolong their lives is more wishful thinking than it is reality. Right to try implies that a catalog of available drugs exists that can help patients if only they could get access to them. It’s easy to believe in a shelf of miracle cures to stop cancer — after all, media outlets are full of anecdotal stories of cancer patients who are now disease free. Some drugs, whether still in development or already available for other indications may, indeed, help some patients. But those cases are rare. (Joe Olechno, 10/9)

Will you know when it is your time to die? It is a question that has permeated my mind since July 14, 2017. This was the day my mother died. It was a sad day, but it pales in comparison to the months preceding it. A breast cancer that had returned aggressively, a hasty port placement to receive chemotherapy that was too late  and an ICU admission that began many futile interventions that never saved her life, but prolonged my mother’s suffering. As a registered nurse, I watched a scene unfold that I swore to myself I would never let happen to anyone I loved. (Colleen Chierici, 10/8)

Reading the news — the real, not fake news — and watching it on TV can make many of us unhappy. Famine, wars, innocent children separated from their parents, global warming with its worsening effects on the rise, people hurling insults at one another on a daily basis, a lack of respect toward respectable people; sadly, the list goes on and on and on. Thus, it is no wonder that many of the most popular books today are on finding happiness, on learning how to be happy. Specifically, there are 209 books on happiness reviewed on Goodreads.com, with “The Art of Happiness” by the Dalai Lama XIV ranked No. 1 and “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin ranked No. 2. (Lynne Agress, 10/8)

We can prevent gun violence by implementing policies that are entirely consistent with Second Amendment protections. The middle, common ground is vast. (David Hogg and Chana Sacks, 10/5)

Not long ago, in Spartanburg, S.C., I visited the offices of something called the Spartanburg Academic Movement (SAM). The walls were lined with charts measuring things like kindergarten readiness, third-grade reading scores and postsecondary enrollment. Around the table was just about anybody in town who might touch a child’s life. There were school superintendents and principals, but there were also the heads of the Chamber of Commerce and the local United Way, the police chief, a former mayor and the newspaper editor. The people at SAM track everything they can measure about Spartanburg’s young people from cradle to career. They gather everybody who might have any influence upon this data — parents, religious leaders, doctors, nutrition experts, etc. (David Brooks, 10/8)

The morning of my job interview brought excitement and anxiety. At the same time, I felt prepared and confident. It was the beginning of 2017 and already I had gone through three rounds of phone interviews, all rigorous, yet fair. This final interview would be our first face-to-face meeting. After passing through such an extensive interview process, backed by my impeccable credentials, I felt this meeting would be a formality. (Dayniah Manderson, 10/8)

One thing I’ve noticed over the years as I’ve written about climate change is that the actual predicted effects of a warmer world often aren’t well known. People understand that the planet is getting hotter, a change that is both easy to understand and directly familiar to almost everyone. But the effects of the increased heat are much broader than simply higher temperatures. In an effort to delineate what scientists expect to see as the world warms, I spoke with Alex Halliday, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. (Philip Bump, 10/8)

Family-member advocates for those with a serious mental illness know that Proposition 2, while well-meaning, will not solve the homelessness problem for those who are most ill. Prop. 2 is a misuse of funds, an unnecessary giveaway to investors and bureaucrats, that further reduces access and quality of treatment for people with severe mental illnesses. (Catherine Lauren Rettagliata, 10/6)

U.S. Senate candidate Josh Hawley continues to struggle with facts and logic in the debate over health insurance in America and coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions. Hawley, the Republican looking to knock off Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, recently wrote a column outlining his plan to protect patients with pre-existing conditions from losing health insurance. His proposal is incoherent. (10/7)

California can’t hope to solve its housing crisis unless the state makes a serious investment in building more units. Proposition 1 does just that, authorizing a $4 billion bond for housing loans for veterans and affordable housing for low-income households. Voters should support it on Nov. 6. (10/6)

On Thursday, following the death of the sixth inmate, the county released a statement saying that County Executive Armond Budish will ask the County Council for money to hire an outside expert to review the county jail system. It certainly warrants a review - and more. The FBI also is looking into possible civil rights violations at the jail, sources told cleveland.com this week. (Mark Naymik, 10/5)

It must be terribly frustrating for Kanye West to see a Supreme Court confirmation fight in Washington elbow his new album out of the national spotlight. But that’s show biz. His latest wave of newsmaking appearances and tweets makes me wonder whether, at best, we’re watching a genius at work or, at worst, the slow, public disintegration of a man who revealed in a June radio interview that he has been diagnosed with a “mental condition.” (Clarence Page, 10/9)