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The Affordable Care Act’s critics seemed to get a shocking piece of new evidence when UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest health insurer, announced last month that it would pull out of many ACA markets next year. In fact, the news is not all that shocking, and it is not a sign that the law is failing. Though UnitedHealth is the country’s largest health insurer, it is not a dominant player in the marketplaces that the ACA set up for individual insurance buyers. It covers only about 6 percent of 12.7 million marketplace participants. United does not appear to have been very effective at competing to attract customers. (5/8)

Today the Food and Drug Administration finalized regulations asserting regulatory authority over e-cigarettes and various tobacco products, such as cigars. According to the agency, this rule will help protect public health. Insofar as the rule subjects actual tobacco products to the same regulations as cigarettes, this might be so. But the part of the rule that “deems” e-cigarettes to be tobacco products and subjects them to extensive regulatory requirements is more likely to harm public health than to help it. Big Tobacco, meanwhile, is likely to be pleased with the new regulations. (Jonathan H. Adler, 5/5)

On May 20, cigarette packs in Germany will display images of rotten teeth and blackened lungs. Also this month, cigarette manufacturers in the U.K. are likely to have to switch to plain packaging, without brands or imagery. And the top European court has upheld a 2014 European Commission directive that banned flavored cigarettes, mandated that 65 percent of the surface of packs must be covered with health warnings and imposed restrictions on how much nicotine could be ingested via e-cigarettes. (Leonid Bershidsky, 5/7)

A trio of healthcare information technology experts that includes a vice president of IT from Kaiser Permanente and a senior editor for the Mayo Clinic's website will advise HHS on standards for sharing patient medical information. James “Jamie” Ferguson, vice president of HIT Strategy and Policy at Kaiser; Carolyn Petersen, senior editor for Mayoclinic.org; and Karen van Caulil, president and CEO of the Florida Health Care Coalition, a business coalition on health, will sit on the federally chartered HIT Policy Committee. (Joseph Conn, 5/6)

The federal government has accused South Dakota of unconstitutionally warehousing the mentally ill and disabled in nursing homes. Meanwhile, at least 16 percent of the nation’s jail and prison inmates are estimated to be mentally ill and about 40 percent of the mentally ill have been incarcerated. Many of the homeless are also mentally ill. (5/9)

Johnson & Johnson is an immense pharmaceutical and consumer products company of the type that the public loves to hate. Recently, it's been getting absolutely killed by juries holding its baby powder responsible for causing several women's ovarian cancers. The damage awards levied against Johnson by juries in St. Louis on behalf of two families total $127 million. That sum would suggest that the scientific evidence is clear that Johnson's talcum powder caused the women's cancers. But what does science say? (Michael Hiltzik, 5/6)

Beginning in the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies selling high-dose opioids seized upon a notion, based on flimsy scientific evidence, that regardless of the length of treatment, patients would not become addicted to opioids. It has proved to be one of the biggest mistakes in modern medicine. An epidemic of prescription drug abuse has swept across the country as a result, and one of the latest victims, according to The New York Times, may have been Prince. (David A. Kessler, 5/6)

This Just in: Overdose deaths in Massachusetts increased 7 percent last year. That figure is significant because the rise in deaths is slower than previous years, an indication that greater awareness and legislation are making a small dent in the epidemic. And the comprehensive opioid legislation signed by Governor Charlie Baker two months ago, including the first law in the nation establishing a seven-day supply limit on first-time opioid prescriptions, should help make a difference over time. (5/6)

My four children were born more than 20 years ago. I had four birth experiences, and I think about those experiences rarely, if ever. In nearly 30 years of motherhood, those acute hours quickly faded into insignificance compared with the reality of my children’s daily lives, their milestones, their achievements, their personalities, their challenges and the growth of our relationship as they changed from infants to school-age children to teenagers to adults. I gave birth vaginally. But it never occurred to me that this was some kind of achievement, since it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with luck. My children, too, do not much care about the specifics of how they were born. This is, I suspect, typical for women of my generation and the ones that preceded us. (Amy Tuteur, 5/6)

A crisis exists right now in nursing-home care, and it has been percolating for some time. Nurses are leaving long-term care — and there is no overflowing pipeline of nursing graduates waiting to care for our elderly. You don’t have to work in long-term care to understand what that means. As anyone with a loved one in a nursing home knows, nurses are the heart and soul of a care facility. They provide care for residents with complex conditions that require consistent attention and regular follow-up. They know their patient’s history and are the first line of defense when a resident’s health declines for any reason. Their patients depend on them, and the comfort from knowing they will see the same nurse at the same time most days goes a long way toward improving the quality of life during a long-term care stay. (Hilary Danklefs, 5/8)

I don’t often get the chance to say these two words about the Arizona Legislature but brace yourself, here they come: Good job. (Laurie Roberts, 5/6)