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The science is clear on vaccines’ safety and efficacy. But the presidential candidates’ thoughts on vaccines? Well, they’re a mixed bag. ... Out of the four big presidential candidates, only Hillary Clinton seems to be fully pro-vaccine, meaning she’s the only one aligned with the scientific consensus on this issue. Republican Donald Trump is a straight-up anti-vaxxer, and the other two candidates — Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson — have mixed views on the issue. (German Lopez, 8/1)

It must be tough being both a physician committed to scientific evidence and a politician running for the presidency. Over the weekend, Dr. Jill Stein, a retired internist who is the Green Party's presidential candidate, got caught between the conflicting demands of those two professions when the Washington Post asked her a brief question about public health. “Do you think that vaccines cause autism?” (Harris Meyer, 8/1)

Yesterday Florida governor, Rick Scott, reported that ten additional cases of Zika were in all likelihood, acquired locally. This followed Friday’s announcement that the emerging virus had been spread from person-to-person by mosquitoes in Miami. The advisory was somewhat surprising, given that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, Dr. Thomas Frieden said as recently as Friday, that local transmission was not enough to warrant advising against travel, and that he expected additional cases to emerge. (Meghan May, 8/2)

Premiums for Obamacare insurance are rising more quickly this year than they have in the past. But, on average, the coverage remains cheaper than what the government’s own forecaster had predicted it would be by this point. That’s the conclusion of two new independent reports, by scholars at the Brookings Institution and at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. The finding is likely to surprise people who have read all the headlines about skyrocketing premiums in the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges, to say nothing of those consumers who are weighing whether to pay the higher prices next year or to seek out cheaper alternatives for coverage. (Jonathan Cohn, 8/1)

Usually it's a good thing that everything's bigger in Texas, but that isn't true when it comes to health-insurance premiums for Obamacare. Recent federal data show that Texas' largest insurer on the Obamacare exchanges is seeking average premium increases of nearly 60 percent for 2017 -- among the highest hikes in the entire country. (Jerome Greener, 8/1)

Banning resident Jim Bailey and his wife went in recently for their annual physicals. They came away with hundreds of dollars in charges for co-pays and tests. Bailey, 78, told me that he feels duped. “The Affordable Care Act dictates that all annual physicals be provided at no cost to the policyholders — no deductibles or co-pays,” he said. “But that wasn’t the case with us.” ... “There’s nothing in the ACA that guarantees a free checkup,” said Bradley Herring, an associate professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins University. “It’s surprising how many people think it’s part of the law.” (David Lazarus, 8/2)

Worries about all manner of pathogens — disease-causing bacteria, viruses, and larger parasites — are an underappreciated contributor to prejudice, distrust of foreigners, and resentment toward those who spurn traditional values, according to a growing body of psychology research. To understand why, it helps to be acquainted with the behavioral immune system, our defense against infection that’s shaped by natural selection and further embellished by learning. Largely below the level of our conscious awareness, we constantly scan our surroundings for any potential source of contagion. ... But this germ radar is not guided by sophisticated reasoning, and it pays particularly close attention to other people, a leading source of infection. (Kathleen McAuliffe, 7/31)

I’m not an economist. But I find it hard to imagine that we can achieve sustainable health reform if we ignore 70 percent of what’s driving health outcomes and costs. Yet if you look at spending in the health care sector, little funding is devoted to identifying or addressing unmet social needs. Today we spend most of our time and money wrangling about clinical care, while population health — the health outcomes of groups of individuals — has been allowed to languish. We need to blur the distinction between clinical care and population health and look more closely at unmet social needs. (Rocco Perla, 8/1)

Amy Kapczynski and Aaron Kesselheim proposed in Health Affairs that the federal government reduce the price of on-patent prescription drugs using an obscure federal law (codified as 28 USC 1498) to either threaten to, or actually, seize patent rights to drugs in a manner similar to eminent domain. The idea is that the federal government would “produce or import low-cost versions of patented medicines” itself, while paying the drug company that previously controlled the patent “reasonable and entire compensation” according to some vaguely measure. (Robert Book, 8/1)

Rulemakers in outgoing administrations usually end their tenures with a bang, not a whimper. President Barack Obama's appointees at the CMS are no exception. Over the objections of most healthcare provider trade groups, the agency last week proposed expanding its mandatory bundled-payment program to include heart attacks and coronary artery surgery in 98 markets. It also extended the purview of the orthopedic joint replacement bundles, just getting started in 67 markets, to include hip and femur fractures. (Merrill Goozner, 7/30)

It’s hard to find a more complicated thicket than health care finances, yet there are some clear truths: We all end up paying for each others’ health care. The best way to control costs is to prevent disease and expensive medical crises. With that in mind, dividing Kentuckians covered by taxpayer-funded Medicaid from those covered by taxpayer-subsidized private health insurance, as a Bevin administration spokeswoman seemed to do last week, sheds no light. It does stigmatize as “dependent” people who toil for low wages with only Medicaid to keep them healthy. (8/2)

In 2015, city supervisors in San Francisco passed an ordinance requiring billboards advertising sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) to include a notice: “Warning: drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay. This is a message from the city and county of San Francisco.” The ordinance, originally scheduled to go into effect on July 25, 2016, represents the first such SSB warning notice law in the world. A clear, factual warning notice about health effects related to SSBs may be important in reducing disease rates among many people. (Dean Schillinger and Michael F. Jacobson, 8/1)

The latest attack on America’s expanding waistlines is aimed at your wallet, as health advocates and lawmakers hope to tax consumers out of drinking so many sugary drinks. ... Americans, more than one-third of whom are obese, would be better off if they did cut back on sugary drinks. But efforts to tax people out of the habit are likely to fall flatter than day-old cola. People are quick to see through ideas described as good for them but which make little sense. Why slap a surtax on sodas but not on Twinkies (135 calories per cake) or McDonalds' Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese (780)? And why tax diet sodas, as Philadelphia does, if the target is sugar? Maybe because the tax is a money grab disguised as a public health initiative. (8/1)

The time has come to tax sugary drinks like we tax tobacco. The analogy is powerful: As with tobacco, rock-solid evidence shows habitual use harms health. Sugary drinks are a prime culprit in rampant health problems — diabetes, obesity, and heart, dental and liver disease – that cut lives short and drive up health care costs. (Jim Krieger, 8/1)