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By many measures, the [health] law has been a success: The number of uninsured Americans has dropped by about half, with 20 million more people gaining coverage. It has also created a host of new policies for self-employed people .... Yet even as many beneficiaries acknowledge that they might not have insurance today without the law, there remains a strong undercurrent of discontent. ... the plans are often very different from those provided to most Americans by their employers. Many say they feel as if they have become second-class patients. This disappointment is fueling renewed interest in a “public option” that would supplement current offerings. (Elisabeth Rosenthal, 5/12)

Several recent studies have illustrated the root of health care’s cost problem: In most cases, no one person—let alone one organization—bears sole responsibility for paying the bill. Slowing the growth of health costs may well involve changing those financial incentives—but also requires changing the culture that supports the status quo. (Chris Jacobs, 5/13)

District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer has ruled for Congress in House v. Burwell, a case challenging the authority of the executive branch to pay Obamacare subsidies for which no money has been appropriated. ... What happens if the House argument is ultimately upheld, and Department of Health and Human Services is told it can’t pay the insurance companies? ... I have to assume that participation in the exchanges, already low among people who do not qualify for large subsidies, will fall even further. And moreover, that it will fall unevenly, with sicker patients remaining on the exchanges while the healthier patients drop their insurance, forcing premiums to rise even further to compensate for the sickness of the pool. (Meghan McArdle, 5/13)

The end is near for the legislative session and so is health care as we know it in Oklahoma. Our state's health care system is on life support. Today, we face a crisis. In less than three weeks, all Oklahomans will start experiencing a disastrous failing in our system of care, unless the Legislature acts now. The agency that administers Medicaid in Oklahoma warns it will be forced to slash medical provider rates up to 25 percent in just a few weeks. Previous funding cuts of 18 percent have already taken a heavy toll. Any new health care cuts will be catastrophic. (Craig Jones, 5/15)

The Oklahoma Health Care Authority's Medicaid “rebalancing” plan is being considered by lawmakers. The plan is simply Obamacare Medicaid expansion rebranded. As conservatives concerned about fiscal responsibility, we urge lawmakers to reject it. The rebalancing scheme is a policy that expands the scope and size of the federal government and increases dependency on government programs. It removes one more state barrier that separates us from a single-payer system in the United States. And of course it would further balloon state taxpayer spending by $1 billion (at a minimum) over the first 10 years and would increase the federal debt by $10 billion. (Tom Coburn and Larry Parman, 5/15)

[O]ne measure on this November's California ballot appears poised to set a new standard for corporate spending. The so-called California Drug Price Relief Act would cap the price any state agency or healthcare program could spend on prescription drugs at the level paid by the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, which customarily receives the largest discounts of any government agency. Turning the VA’s prices into a benchmark for California could cost Big Pharma billions of dollars a year in profits, especially if the discounts were later demanded by other states or even private insurers. (Michael Hiltzik, 5/14)

The opioid epidemic is now a leading cause of death in the United States, ravaging communities across the country. At last, Congress has snapped to attention. But its recent flurry of legislation will be of little help unless lawmakers are willing to fund treatment and prevention programs. The House last week passed 18 bills related to opioids, and the Senate approved a comprehensive bill in March. The bills, which will be reconciled in a conference committee, are overdue. (5/16)

Clinton's Medicare buy-in, the details of which have not been released (or possibly even figured out), may or may not follow her comparatively disciplined fiscal approach. ... Her proposal implies that Obamacare is not the glittering success she claims. "Aren't the exchanges supposed to offer 'affordable' coverage to these same people?" asks economist Joseph Antos of the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "What is the problem being addressed here?" (Steve Chapman, 5/13)

President Barack Obama made the correct and courageous decision to visit Hiroshima later this month with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The goal: to promote a nuclear-free world. ... I vividly recall the day in the spring of 1995 when I first visited Hiroshima to see the shattered concrete dome near ground zero and toured the one-sided Peace Museum. But I also visited a place where few Western correspondents ventured—the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF), the successor organization to the commission jointly created by both governments in 1947 to study the effects of radiation on the hundreds of thousands of people who survived the initial bomb blasts. ... It's probably the most comprehensive medical registry on earth. (Merrill Goozner, 5/14)

Most mornings, I awake to the sound of my 2-year-old son talking to himself in his crib. I enter his room to fetch him, stepping around the books he scattered across the carpet the night before. On the wall hang prints of a fox, a bear, an owl. I decorated this nursery — for a baby girl — three years before I had Henry. The only sign of her is a box of tiny ruffled clothes in the closet. Everything had gone well during my pregnancy with my second daughter until the final few weeks. My obstetrician found that I had more amniotic fluid than normal. When I went for an ultrasound during my 36th week of pregnancy, the screen was motionless. I thought the machine was broken. It was not. My daughter had died. (Sarah Muthler, 5/16)

Checking in at the front desk of the geriatric clinic, I suddenly felt I had made a ghastly mistake. At 68, I was the only one in the waiting room not accompanied by a caregiver — and one of the few not using a walker or a wheelchair. ... But I couldn’t just leave. A spate of new health problems, requiring a gaggle of doctors with no connection to one another, had persuaded me to find the right person to quarterback my care, now and in the years to come. (Jane Gross, 5/16)

When I see "Theranos" in a headline, I brace myself. What now? The blood diagnostic company based in Palo Alto has been under intense scrutiny over its lab practices, its technology and most recently, how it represented itself to investors. (Michelle Quinn, 5/14)

[T]here have been gains over time for black Americans on many measures, and gaps have closed between blacks and whites on measures such as homicide rates and life expectancy. Still, reality on the ground is a far different thing. There were fifty one homicides in Chicago in January and two hundred and forty two shootings. Chicago may be an especially troubled city but it is also emblematic of problems in other urban areas. (Drew Altman, 5/13)