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The Affordable Care Act is certainly sustainable. In fact, it has performed far better than expected. Even as health costs have grown at historically low rates, the law has reduced the number of Americans without health insurance by more than 40 percent. Still, the law could use improvements — and right now, the most critical of them is to add a “public option,” available in all parts of the country, that would allow Americans buying coverage through the Obamacare "exchanges" to enroll in a public insurance plan modeled after Medicare. (Jacob S. Hacker, 8/24)

Although she has gone to extraordinary lengths to distract and deceive American voters, the truth is finally coming out: Hillary Clinton has an 11th toe. I don’t have the medical records. She refuses to release them. But just try to come up with some other explanation for why she’s so infrequently photographed in sandals or flip-flops; why she seldom appears barefoot in public; why, during debates, she keeps her legs, especially the lower halves, tucked carefully behind the lectern. She’s covering something up, and it’s that freakish, disqualifying digit. (Frank Bruni, 8/23)

Hillary Clinton is 68 years old. She's been diagnosed with cerebral venous thrombosis; head trauma, pregnancy, cancer, brain infection, autoimmune diseases and inborn clotting abnormalities are all predisposing factors, per The Washington Post. She's currently taking blood thinners. Four years ago, Clinton fainted, hit her head and suffered a concussion. She's also the odds-on favorite to assume one of the most strenuous jobs on the planet as president of the United States. But lately many in the media have become outraged that Clinton's health is being broached at all. And what are the primary two words associated when Donald Trump, a Trump surrogate or conservative media bring up Clinton's medical condition? "Conspiracy theories."  (Joe Concha, 8/23)

Like many Americans, I have been personally appalled by much of Trump’s indecorous behavior as a candidate. He comes across as cantankerous, vain, impulsive, demeaning and ill-informed. I understand why people have raised questions about his mental health. It can be tempting to describe his behavior in familiar psychopathological terms. But there are several reasons why we should resist using a psychiatric framework to describe Trump. (Matthew Goldenberg, 8/23)

This presidential campaign has been odd in many ways, but among its wretched excesses is the penchant of experts and nonexperts to issue categorical judgments about the mental and physical health of the two major party candidates. This year, it's not enough to say, in the standard colloquial manner of expressing distaste, that "Donald Trump is nutty" or "Hillary Clinton is sick." This year, more literal claims are being made. And we find the trend unhealthy, in a strictly nonmedical sense. (8/23)

Ground zero for the Zika virus in the United States is now South Florida. The virus, which can cause severe fetal birth defects and other neural disorders, is spreading in a 20-block area of Miami Beach and another section of Miami known as Wynwood. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a warning to pregnant women to avoid both areas and to people more generally to be aware of the risks. Zika is a mosquito-borne virus that can also be transmitted through sex and blood. Although the symptoms may be mild in most people, a new report suggests that it may also affect adult brain cells. (8/23)

The arrival of the Zika virus and its ability to cause severe microcephaly in infants born to some infected pregnant women has once again pushed the issue of abortion back into the public spotlight. The debate isn't surprising, but what is surprising and what should deeply disturb everyone is the cavalier suggestion that abortion should be the default option for a pregnant woman infected with the Zika virus. (Richard Corcoran, 8/22)

At a time when Hillary Clinton gets applause by declaring, “I believe in science,” it’s worth taking a moment to remember the life and achievements of Donald Ainslee Henderson. All he did with science was eradicate smallpox. Dr. Henderson died Friday at age 87 in Towson, Md., not far from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, where he had been dean emeritus. In the early 1960s, while working for the Centers for Disease Control, he and his team began an ambitious program to eliminate smallpox in 18 African countries. (8/23)

Doug Grant wants to save lives. Thousands of them. And he wants to do it better, faster and for less money than anyone else. But Mr. Grant and his health-care startup, Hemeos, are suspended in a bureaucratic limbo—their fate in the hands of federal regulators who haven’t made a decision after nearly three years of dithering over a proposed rule.Hemeos is aimed at one of the most pressing problems in medicine: the shortage of bone-marrow donors to combat deadly blood diseases. Thousands of Americans are waiting for a lifesaving donor, and thousands more have died waiting. (Rowes and McNamara, 8/23)

You’d think that when parents are told of a vaccine that could prevent future cancers in their children, they’d leap at the chance to protect them. Alas, that is hardly the case for a vaccine that prevents infections with cancer-causing human papillomavirus, or HPV. The vaccine, best given at age 11 to 12, is currently the most underutilized immunization available for children. (Jane E. Brody, 8/22)

Last year, Gov. Terry Branstad’s spokesman told The Des Moines Register the governor believed Obamacare “is unaffordable, unsustainable and creates too much uncertainty for Iowans. The implementation of this law has been flawed from the very beginning.” Oh, the irony. Iowans currently are mired in the disaster of the Medicaid privatization plan Branstad foisted upon the state this spring. (8/24)

“The health of Americans should not be a profit center. Health care is a right. Full stop.” That comes from the Twitter feed of personal finance writer Helaine Olen. But it could have issued straight from the heart of any progressive in the land.  Subjecting health care to the sordid whims of the marketplace strikes many people as simply immoral. (Megan McArdle, 8/23)

Some policymakers and theorists say price transparency is the silver bullet that will help solve the nation's healthcare cost growth problem. Consumers will use information about the price and quality of services offered by different providers to get the best deal, saving themselves and the country lots of money, they argue. But my personal experience over the past year trying to find a lower price for an MRI shows that shopping for a healthcare service based on price and quality is very hard, even for someone with above-average knowledge about how the system works. (Harris Meyer, 8/22)

The pharmaceutical company Mylan has been taking on a boatload of vituperation — and rightfully so — for jacking up the price of its lifesaving EpiPen injector, which reverses allergic reactions, by 500%. But there’s another reason to detest this remarkably amoral corporation: It’s also a tax dodger. Mylan is one of the leading exploiters of the technique known as inversion, in which a U.S. company cuts its tax bill by acquiring a foreign firm and moving its tax domicile to the acquired company’s homeland. (Michael Hiltzik, 8/23)

Here is another reason the Legislature needs to revisit its tax cuts: Providers of community-based services to Kansans with intellectual and developmental disabilities are struggling to pay bills and keep employees. It’s been eight years since the state has increased reimbursement rates to I/DD service providers. Yet costs continue to increase. (8/24)

The country is on the brink of a crisis that has the potential to affect the care of patients - in the hospital, at the doctor's office, in schools - just about anywhere there should be a nurse. The need for nurses has created record enrollments in nursing schools nationwide, which has contributed to an increased need for academic nurse faculty. Unfortunately, a national shortage of doctorally prepared faculty threatens society's access to a workforce of competent nurses delivering patient care. (Barbara Patterson, 8/24)

Different providers can charge a ridiculous range of prices for the exact same service, but that fact is almost never revealed to the patient, who assumes the insurance company will take care of it. That assumption, and the patient's decision not to shop for a good price from a quality provider, costs Americans $600 billion a year, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. If Americans took the time to shop for the best value, they could shave up to 20 percent off the nation's annual medical bill, but only if they could figure out the prices. (Chris Tomlinson, 8/23)

Health care professionals and emergency responders confront the brutality of injury and illness on a daily basis. Too often we assume these heroes can block out the horrors and heartbreak of their jobs – that they are superhuman. But the idea that doctors, nurses, officers and EMTs are impervious to mental illness is untrue. Studies show health care and emergency professionals suffer from immense psychological and emotional distress related to their jobs. (Janie Heath and Jan Findlay, 8/24)