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Anthem’s proposed merger with Cigna following Aetna’s acquisition of Humana has set off alarms about lack of competition in the health-insurance industry. But policy makers should consider the potential benefits of industry consolidation. The greater efficiency and market power of larger insurance plans could lower prices for consumers by offsetting the bargaining power of health-care providers. (Victor R. Fuchs and Peter V. Lee, 8/26)

Republicans are now 0-2 in their crusade to block 250,000 low-income Arizonans from getting health-care coverage through the state’s Medicaid program. First, there was the Tea Party-led referendum, aimed at blocking the 2013 law that expanded Medicaid in Arizona. Vowing to “stop Obamacare,” organizers couldn’t even muster the 86,000 signatures needed to put the law on the ballot. So 36 Republican legislators sued then-Gov. Jan Brewer, saying she needed a two-thirds super majority to pass the law because it included a “tax” on hospitals. On Wednesday, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Douglas Gerlach ruled that expansion of Arizona’s Medicaid program was legal, that the fee on hospitals “does not qualify as a tax” and thus only a majority vote was needed. (Laurie Roberts, 8/26)

Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy organization fueled by the billionaire Koch brothers, is performing a valuable public service for Tampa Bay voters. It is running a new TV and digital ad featuring the names and faces of Republican legislators from Tampa Bay who blocked the state from accepting billions in federal Medicaid expansion money to subsidize health coverage for low-income Floridians. That's very helpful, because voters should be reminded over and over exactly who voted to deny medical care to tens of thousands of Tampa Bay residents. (8/24)

Back in 2009, President Obama spoke to the American Medical Association and said, “We need to bundle payments so you aren’t paid for every single treatment you offer a patient with a chronic condition like diabetes, but instead paid well for how you treat the overall disease.” That’s a great idea, and it could really improve health care. Unfortunately, the president’s signature reform did nothing to move in that direction. Now, as before, almost no one in the health care fields is actually paid to keep people healthy. (Robert Book, 8/26)

There are two kinds of drug-related madness going on, simultaneously, in the U.S. One is the burgeoning national problem of heroin use. The second is the insistence of some elected officials that we can't afford to pay for addiction treatment while booming heroin use siphons healthcare dollars and overwhelms prisons. (Harris Meyer, 8/26)

Two patients, I’ll call them Sara and Janine, both learned that they had ductal carcinoma in situ (D.C.I.S.), often referred to as Stage 0 breast cancer. Both underwent lumpectomies in their early 50s. Told that worrisome cells were found, both had another surgery. Then a third surgery was recommended. Sara decided she would rather live with the risk. Janine had the opposite response. “Let’s get this all out,” she said. Each is certain she made the best decision, but can both of them be right? (Lisa Rosenbaum, 8/27)

More than half of the nation’s 41,000 suicides each year are committed by people using guns, so it shouldn’t be all that surprising that two new, related studies find that states with stricter gun control laws tend to have both lower rates of suicides using guns, and lower overall rates of suicides. In other words, states where access to firearms is easier have higher rates of suicide. (Scott Martelle, 8/26)

Cannabis is widely used, psychoactive, and addictive. ... In the cannabis debate, does the science of consequences and addictive liability matter? Studies of humans and animals strongly indicate that cannabis changes the structure and function of the brain, and the propensity to cannabis addiction is heritable, which means that some are more vulnerable. On the other hand, it has been advocated that cannabis should be legalized or at least delisted as a schedule I drug. Nicotine and alcohol are regulated, taxed, and routinely enjoyed, providing a blueprint for the deregulation of other drugs that are supposedly less noxious. However, these licit addictive drugs lead to serious social and medical consequences. ... We should be careful in extrapolating long-term consequences of cannabis legalization. (David Goldman, 8/26)