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Over the past year, liberals from across the country have flocked to endorse the once-radical Medicare-for-all, the progressive cause celebre that would set up a single-payer health-care system to cover all Americans regardless of their income or age.In theory, it sounds wonderful, but don’t be fooled. There’s one big hole in the plan: the cost. And progressives this week showed exactly why we can’t trust them to address it. (Robert Gebelhoff, 1/3)

In the wide ideological gulf between Democrat and Republican healthcare reform efforts — with "Medicare For All" at one end and a market-based system at the other — there has emerged one bipartisan point of agreement: Those with preexisting conditions must be protected. Even those Republicans who want to wholly repeal Obamacare don't want to return the days when insurers could deny applicants coverage because they had cancer. That's what makes a new rule proposed in November by the Trump Administration's Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services so disappointing. In an effort to trim healthcare costs, the rule would allow Medicare Part D plans, which cover roughly 45 million Americans, to exclude some prescription drugs that are saving the lives of countless patients with rare and chronic conditions. (Terry Wilcox, 1/2)

Looking back at the news of 2018, a story broke every few days on foodborne illness. A recent outbreak, tied to E-coli-tainted romaine lettuce, sickened 59 people in 15 states. This followed several outbreaks tied to romaine and recalls of salmonella-tainted ground beef — the latest of five million pounds on Dec. 4, which totaled tens of millions of pounds of food.In a nation with our resources, this simply shouldn’t be happening, yet outbreaks occur with increasing frequency. What causes them, and why is it so difficult to contain this persistent public-health threat? (Jonathan Fielding, 1/3)

The United States is in the midst of an opioid crisis. An estimated 2.1 million Americans had an opioid use disorder in 2016. The rate of opioid overdose deaths has increased by 500% since 1999, and each day an estimated 115 Americans die from opioid overdose. Despite the proven effectiveness of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) for opioid use disorders, the opioid mortality rate has now surpassed that of the AIDS epidemic during its peak in the early 1990s — a time when there was no effective treatment for HIV/AIDS. (Caroline M. Parker, Jennifer S. Hirsch, Helena B. Hansen, Charles Branas and Sylvia Martins, 1/3)

I dislike the term “neglected tropical diseases.” This collection of communicable diseases is neglected — a pejorative term — only by countries unaffected by them. They aren’t neglected by the 1 billion or more individuals afflicted with them, the millions who die from them, or the countries in which they live.The World Health Organization initially listed 13 diseases as “neglected.” Gaining consensus around what constitutes these diseases is as difficult as pronouncing dracunculiasis, schistosomiasis, or chromoblastomycosis. What’s more, there are diseases that kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people every year that don’t make the list, like hepatitis E, which kills 70,000 pregnant women a year, and group A streptococcus (the cause of strep throat), which kills 500,000 people a year. (Jerome H. Kim, 1/4)

Despite recommendations that all patients with cancer be offered effective treatment to help them quit smoking, such treatment is often neglected. The Cancer Moonshot initiative aims to jump-start smoking-cessation treatment at cancer centers. (Robert T. Croyle, Glen D. Morgan, and Michael C. Fiore, 1/3)

Last month, the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security reported that hate crimes in Massachusetts have increased by almost 10 percent to a 10-year high in 2017. This troubling spike in bias-related incidents is reflected nationally. (Iván Espinoza-Madrigal and Lauren Sampson, 1/4)

Across our state, about two people die every day from an opioid overdose. While deaths from prescription opioids have declined slightly, we’ve seen a nearly 50 percent increase in deaths due to synthetic opioids, like illicitly manufactured fentanyl. Gov. Jay Inslee’s proposed $30 million response to this crisis is commendable: nearly $20 million for important treatment and recovery efforts statewide, and more than $10 million for prevention, including alternative pain treatments. Yet we know that Washington is facing more than just an opioid problem — we are experiencing a much broader addiction problem. People who misuse opioids also misuse many other substances, and they’re dying from overdoses. But we can get ahead of the addiction crisis. The challenge is to move upstream to prevent substance misuse in the first place. (J. David Hawkins and Kevin Haggerty, 1/2)

In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 67,265 Americans died from drug-induced causes, six times the number of people that died from gun violence in the same year. The opioid crisis also creates a significant economic hindrance. In Missouri alone, opioid use disorder and overdose deaths cost the state $34.5 million each day — or $12.6 billion per year. This was 4.2 percent of the state’s GDP in 2016. (State Rep. Donna Baringer, 1/2)

The state needs to provide foster families and nonprofits with greater resources and support. Children removed from family homes need more than physical protection from neglect and abuse. (1/3)