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Many called it socialized medicine. A rising Republican warned that we’d "spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” Donald Trump talking about Obamacare in 2015? No, Ronald Reagan urging Congress to vote against the creation of Medicare. This week marks 50 years since the passage of Medicare. If addressing inequality is a real priority for Republicans officials — particularly those in the South — they should take a cue from history, embrace the health law, and expand Medicaid. (Sherrod Brown and Tim Kaine, 7/30)

July 30 marks 50 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law. The only birthday gift this middle-age government program merits is a reality check. Health insurance for senior citizens was part of LBJ’s expansion of the welfare state, all in the service of establishing a “Great Society.” Yet many beneficiaries today are struggling to secure access to high-quality care. Future beneficiaries, meanwhile, are forking over billions of dollars today to keep a program afloat that may be bankrupt when they retire—unless fundamental reforms are enacted. (Sally C. Pipes, 7/29)

Rather like a broken record, I have been warning for years that historically low rates of increase in health-care spending would not last. Now it’s time for a different warning: The higher rates of growth now expected are moderate and should be seen in context. Media outlets–especially headline writers–should take care not to dramatize them. (Drew Altman, 7/30)

Doctors don’t like to talk about death, and they often avoid doing so. Most physicians — including me — never studied palliative care in medical school and were rarely trained in how to communicate with patients. By the time I finished residency in 2002, I had to show competency in running Code Blues, inserting arterial lines and performing lumbar punctures, but not a single senior physician had to certify that I could actually talk with patients. (Angelo Volandes, 7/29)

Loren Mandell Wood of Burlington came into the world 11 days ago at an "out-of-pocket maximum" cost of as much as $5,100. On Wednesday, he did not appear prepared to pull that money out of his pocket. And his mom, who testified at a state hearing on health insurance rates, said the family surely couldn't either. "Our monthly premiums are $465 per person. That includes Loren, who's not yet contributing financially to our household," Bekah Mandell told the Green Mountain Care Board amid laughter in the room. "That means we pay a total of $1,395 a month in premiums alone. That's before we get to the copays and before we get to the deductibles. That's significantly more than our mortgage, and frankly it's significantly more than we can afford." (Dave Gram, 7/29)

The Center for Medical Progress, a group apparently created to produce undercover videos targeting Planned Parenthood, released its third such video on Tuesday. The video makes the same allegation as the first two: that Planned Parenthood is engaged in the illegal sale of “baby body parts.” It does not prove this allegation any more than the first two videos did (the bulk of the new video focuses on a woman who once worked for the tissue supplier StemExpress). What it does show, yet again, is how committed Planned Parenthood’s opponents are to paint it as something other than what it is: a nonprofit that provides many health services, including but not remotely close to mainly abortions. (Anna North, 7/29)

Planned Parenthood has been a trusted nonprofit provider of women’s health care for nearly a century. Each year, 2.7 million people come to our health centers for high-quality, nonjudgmental, compassionate care. Since our very beginning, our health centers, providers and patients have come under outrageous attacks, political and otherwise. These attacks are not about us. They are about the ability of women across the country to access health care. Period. (Cecile Richards, 7/29)

Democrats have been picking fight after fight in the culture wars, believing they have the upper hand with socially liberal younger votes. But that assumption is now being tested in the wake of videos of Planned Parenthood doctors blithely discussing the harvesting of fetal body parts. (7/27)

We first acquired the stem cells from the red receptacles of a local hospital’s labor and delivery ward, delivered to our lab at the University of Southern California. I would reach into the large medical waste containers and pull out the tree-like branches of the placenta, discarded after a baby had been born. Squeezing the umbilical cord that had so recently been attached to new life, the blood, laden with stem cells, would come dripping out. (Nathalia Holt, 7/30)

Cutting off health insurance to college students is more morally suspect than the contraceptives at the root of the decision. Wheaton College, which opposes Obamacare's contraception mandate, announced it will stop providing health insurance to students altogether when the current plan expires at the end of this week, rather than fund base coverage for birth control. (Heidi Stevens, 7/29)

Yesterday, the 11th Circuit handed down a substantially revised opinion in Wollschlaeger v. Governor, the Florida “Docs vs. Glocks” case. (I’d been following the controversy for quite a while, but didn’t have a chance to blog about the earlier opinion, which was handed down a year ago.) The court upheld the law, which limits doctors’ speech to their patients about the patients’ gun ownership. But I think the court is mistaken, and the law should have been held to violate the First Amendment. I share many people’s skepticism about much of the “public health” anti-gun advocacy; but I think this is no basis for suppressing doctors’ speech this way. (Eugene Volokh, 7/29)

The fight against Alzheimer's disease tallied a small victory last week, when two new drugs were found that possibly slow its relentless attack on brain cells. But the search for a cure isn't moving nearly quickly enough. Alzheimer's kills about 100,000 Americans every year and undermines the final years of life for some 5 million more. Forgetfulness and disorientation are the first symptoms, soon followed by trouble communicating, cooking and getting dressed. By the end, victims are often unable to recognize friends and family, eat or walk on their own, or understand anything happening around them. (7/29)