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Health care is always personal. As science and technology have advanced, it’s become possible to make it personalized as well, giving us the tools to better understand, prevent, and treat everyone’s individual health needs. ... Our health care should be customized for us. The powerful and exciting field of precision medicine goes a step further and asks: What if we could just as easily match a cancer cure to a patient’s unique genetic code? Instead of trying a one-size-fits-all treatment, what if medical experts could tailor one specifically for everyone’s body? (President Barack Obama, 7/7)

Medicare enrollees are moving in greater numbers than ever to the program’s managed care option as a way to save money. But the tradeoff is much less ability to use their preferred doctors and hospitals. (Mark Miller, 7/7)

When the Summer Olympics open in Brazil in less than a month, athletes and visitors will have plenty to contend with, from economic and political turmoil to polluted waters and a violent crime wave. The Zika virus — which has garnered the world’s attention, prompted several star athletes to skip the Olympics and stirred bitter debate over whether the Rio Games should go on — is far down on any realistic list of concerns. And if public health decisions are to be driven by facts, not fear, the decision to begin the Games on Aug. 5, as scheduled, is reasonable. (7/6)

Most of the discussion about the risk of the Zika virus around the Rio Olympic Games is missing the point. By focusing so much on mathematical models of infectious disease and theoretical models of human behavior, too little attention is given to factoring for time and place. (Lee H. Igel, 6/6)

Two years after a scandal engulfed the nation’s veterans hospitals, with reports of long waiting lists, cooked appointment books and patients dying while they waited for care, a commission created by Congress has delivered a plan to transform the Veterans Affairs Department over the next 20 years. Its 300 pages, released on Wednesday, are a chronicle of failings at the Veterans Health Administration, the part of the V.A. that handles medical care. The debate over the report’s many judgments and prescriptions is just beginning. But the commission’s ambitious work brings two immediate thoughts to mind. (7/7)

Now poor and disenfranchised Kentuckians are caught in the middle of a dangerous game of chicken [Kentucky Gov. Matt] Bevin is playing with the federal government. He has made it clear that if the Obama administration does not want to approve his plan, then Medicaid expansion in Kentucky will be rolled back in its entirety, leaving more than 400,000 Kentuckians right back where they started – blocked from access to regular and preventative health care with nowhere to turn but the emergency room. The Bevin administration’s plan is a sideshow. It uses political misdirection to provide the illusion of effort to ensure the long-term health security so many Kentuckians need, but with the ultimate goal of rolling back Medicaid expansion with the smallest amount of political damage. (Matt Erwin, 6/6)

Gov. Sam Brownback’s disdain for the health of low-income women is on full display these days for Kansans to view with disgust. In yet another reminder of why he’s the most unpopular governor in America, Brownback has continued his assault in recent months against Planned Parenthood in the Sunflower State. (6/6)

A person released from a county jail or state prison faces no shortage of challenges readjusting to life in society. Accessing health care shouldn’t be one of them. The Legislature has recognized as much by passing a change to the state Human Services Code that would suspend, rather than terminate, Medicaid benefits while a person is incarcerated for up to two years. The change would make it easier to restart benefits when an offender is released. That translates into quicker access to psychiatric medications and other health care services that can help lower recidivism. (7/7)

The push for “deinstitutionalization” sounded like a noble and practical cause: basic human dignity for patients, savings for the state. But as a new Boston Globe Spotlight Team investigative series shows, the phasing out of inpatient beds was not accompanied by an outpatient support system to replace state hospitals. Public officials, year after year, refused to commit to the resources needed to create a robust network of integrated community-based behavioral health care that would minimize the need for long-term hospitalization. As the hospitals went offline — starting in the 1970s — more and more patients were discharged, largely left to fend for themselves. The results have been disastrous. (7/7)

Many young neuroscientists enter PhD programs with aspirations to run a university laboratory or work in industry. A growing number want to pursue alternative careers in science. A recent paper published in Neuron recognizes that what once was “Plan B” for neuroscience trainees — job opportunities outside the lab or clinic— is growing in popularity. ... Although schools are rethinking their neuroscience graduate programs, the central dogma of scientific education — PhD program leads to postdoctoral training leads to faculty position — must shift first. (Catherine Kopil, 7/6)

Whether or not one supports President Obama, it is worth noting that a central premise of his public service is making real the nation’s guarantee of equal opportunity for all in a nation scarred by long-standing divisions and distrust of government. Public service in any form is an awesome responsibility. Filling open seats on the nation’s highest court, fixing our federal immigration laws, ensuring women’s access to reproductive health care, performing all functions of government on equal terms for LGBT people – these are ground rules for responsible public service. (Luis López, 7/6)

An interim joint hearing of the Licensing and Occupations Committee will be held at 10 a.m. Friday in Room 129 of the Capitol Annex to focus on the legalization of medical marijuana in Kentucky. The committee has held many hearings on the issue over the last four years, and we were told in 2012 that we would have interim hearings in the summer and do something in 2013. (Thomas Vance, 6/6)