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Donald Trump has just declared that he’ll unveil a health care proposal in the near future, and let’s hope he does, for that would be a highly instructive enterprise. ...Here’s where an understanding of public policy possibilities comes in handy. Possessed of that, one can say with near certainty that nothing Trump proposes will: (1) keep comparable levels of the population insured while (2) making health care coverage much better and (3) much cheaper. (Lehigh, 6/18)

Several of the Democratic presidential candidates, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), have supported Medicare-for-all, which essentially would abolish private health insurance, including employer-provided health-care coverage. They might want think twice about such a plan’s popularity — once voters figure out what it is. The Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest poll finds that voters really don’t understand how their coverage would change. “For example, majorities say people would continue to pay deductibles and co-pays (69 percent) and continue to pay premiums (54 percent) under a Medicare-for-all plan. (Jennifer Rubin, 6/18)

Drug trafficking is one of the biggest and deadliest threats facing the United States. The federal government has a responsibility to help states combat this epidemic — and that means stopping the spread of this drug at the source, something states alone cannot easily do because the source is often not in America but rather in countries like China. (Sens. Chuck Schumer and Tom Cotton, 6/18)

Recent news that random bad luck plays a big role in cancer has been misinterpreted as bad news, when it's actually very useful in helping humanity understand what cancer is and what can be done to prevent it. New experiments attempt to quantify findings from 2015 and 2017 that showed random “bad luck” was a major factor in the development of cancer – along with inherited genetic predispositions and environmental carcinogens. An independent team this month showed that normal tissue is roiling with clusters of mutated cells, some of which have genetic errors common in cancer. This fits well with the current understanding that cancer starts when cells acquire a combination of genetic mutations that allows them to grow out of control. (Faye Flam, 6/18)

The House Ways and Means Committee recently held a hearing about universal coverage, examining incremental and more sweeping Medicare for All style strategies for getting to universal coverage. That means one way or another everyone would be covered, right? (Drew Altman, 6/19)

American children as young as second graders are reportedly vaping. This is a horrifying sign that an intervention needs to end what appears to be a juvenile obsession with electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes.  State Rep. Marjorie Decker (D-Mass.) is apparently determined to fight against the rapid rise in youth e-cigarette use, proposing a bill recently for a 75 percent excise tax on the wholesale price of vaping products and e-cigarettes. House Democrats recently began investigating e-cigarette leader Juul Labs and its marketing strategies to children to young adults. (Mary Heitschmidt, 6/18)

Everyone who cares about abortion has reason to be genuinely alarmed right now. Pro-choice Democrats are watching Republicans put new abortion restrictions into place in a variety of red states, including a new Alabama law that bans almost all abortions, even in the cases of rape and incest. And pro-life Republicans are watching Democrats in blue states like Illinois, Vermont and Nevada pass laws that expand access to abortion rather than playing defense. Former vice president Joe Biden, the polling leader in the Democratic primary, recently dropped his long-standing support for the Hyde Amendment, a provision that keeps federal funds from being spent on to abortion. (David Byler, 6/18)

The new abortion ban in Missouri and the licensing restrictions with Planned Parenthood are serious and devastating to women’s health, and they are detrimental to the well-being of young people. (Katie Plax , 6/13)