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In recent years, spring has brought with it a new U.S. health care tradition: headlines about proposed premium increases under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and predictions of the law’s demise. This year’s reports declared that Obamacare would be producing major increases in premiums for 2017, citing numbers as high as 37% premium growth for some plans on the ACA’s health insurance exchanges — changes that one Associated Press article referred to as “stiff medicine for consumers and voters.” These predictions are typically accompanied by doubts about the law’s performance and economic stability, as well as further stoking of the ongoing political controversy surrounding the ACA. But these concerns are overblown, for several important reasons. (Benjamin D. Sommers, 7/21)

The disclosure that Florida health officials are investigating what could be the first Zika infection from a mosquito bite in the continental United States underscores the dereliction of the do-nothing Congress that left town without lifting a finger to protect the public. The worrisome new case occurred in Miami-Dade County. No surprise there — this is Ground Zero for the virus. As of Wednesday, Miami-Dade had 89 reported cases, all travel-related. That gives us the unwanted distinction of being No. 1 in the continental United States. The total for Florida, the leading state, is 327. (7/20)

As 9 p.m. approached on the Wednesday of the 2012 Republican National Convention, delegates in Tampa, Florida, heard from South Dakota Sen. John Thune and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman. On Wednesday, as that same hour approaches in Cleveland, Republican delegates will hear a speech from someone named Michelle Van Etten, the senior vice chairman marketing director for a company called Youngevity. Whatever your political leanings may be, Thune and Portman were at least sitting elected officials with a public track record. Youngevity sells vitamins, purported weight-loss pills, and, also, dog shampoo. While Thune and Portman themselves have a shaky relationship with science, by the standards of the company Van Etten works for, those guys were basically Watson and Crick. (Jeremy Samuel Faust, 7/20)

Congress fails the public so often these days that it almost seems like a waste of time to point out yet another case where it’s failed to do its job. But passively accepting congressional inability get anything done as the new norm would be akin to giving up on America. So it behooves taxpayers to voice frustration that Congress bolted out of Washington D.C. earlier this month before approving funding to fight the Zika virus. (7/21)

Here's a sentence to excavate from the vaults and give a good dusting: Valeant might have done something right. A panel of FDA experts on Tuesday voted unanimously that Valeant's plaque psoriasis drug, brodalumab, deserved approval. The troubled pharmaceutical firm's shares rose more than 4 percent Wednesday morning as Valeant investor Bill Ackman talked it up on a call with investors. (Nisen, 7/20)

Over the past year, technology titans including Google, Apple, Microsoft and IBM have been hiring leaders in biomedical research to bolster their efforts to change medicine. ... In many ways, the migration of clinical scientists into technology corporations that are focused on gathering, analysing and storing information is long overdue. Because of the costs and difficulties of obtaining data about health and disease, scientists conducting clinical or population studies have rarely been able to track sufficient numbers of patients closely enough to make anything other than coarse predictions. ... Yet there is a major downside to monoliths such as Google or smaller companies such as consumer-genetics firm 23andMe owning health data. (John T. Wilbanks and Eric J. Topol, 7/20)

Though historians are often hesitant to declare any event a “first,” one might safely claim that the contemporary health care quality movement had its “founding moment” in October 1965. Less than 3 months after the Medicare and Medicaid programs were enacted, the newly created Health Services Research Section of the U.S. Public Health Service convened a meeting in Chicago of leaders from many health-related fields. These leaders considered the influence of social and economic research on public health, the organization of community health agencies, and the quality of health services. (John Z. Ayanian and Howard Markel, 7/21)

Here’s a woeful secret that most medical students don’t learn until it’s too late: Physicians are more likely to become depressed, burn out, and die from suicide than their peers in the general population. Sometimes depression and suicide are the result of slow-building and long-standing issues. Other times they seem to come out of the blue. One of my roles at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine is physician health liaison. One Friday afternoon, I got an urgent page from an anesthesiologist. When I called him back, he told me about a surgery that had gone terribly awry the week before — and how he was now thinking about suicide. (Joan M. Anzia, 7/21)

I’ve lived a good life, and I can handle whatever Cancer 3.0 deals me. (Cancer 1.0 was my 1999 diagnosis with colon cancer; 2.0 was last year’s fight against lymphoma.) But I’m angry about children facing a mystifying disease that this old man can’t understand, children who won’t get all the opportunities I’ve already had. (Steve Buttry, 7/20)

Like many industries, “Big Food”—the business sector that comprises agribusiness, food manufacturers, and marketers for the food industry—aims to expand its profit margins. But it does so at the cost of expanding US waistlines and contributing to high rates of obesity and associated health problems. The industry produces and aggressively markets foods, many marketed as “healthy” or “natural,” that are laden with added sugars, salt, and unhealthful fats, with calories far beyond what are necessary for healthful living. (Lawrence Gostin, 7/20)

The bad news came last April when the Idaho Legislature walked away from its 2016 session without hammering out a solution to assist the estimated 78,000 Idahoans who face today and tomorrow without health insurance. The good news is that members of the Legislature — in the form of the bipartisan Healthcare Alternatives For Citizens Below 100 Percent of Poverty Level committee, made up of Idaho House and Senate representatives — is back talking about care for our neighbors who don’t make enough money to enroll in the Your Health Idaho exchange, and who make too much to benefit from coverage under Medicaid. (7/20)

Take the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act (HR 2646) that was passed by the U.S. House on July 6. Assuming it becomes law, it will fund programs for people in psychiatric hospitals and those in crisis. But it is far more limited in its support for everyday Americans who need help but aren’t in crisis. (Carmela Castellano-Garcia, 7/20)

Although the Hispanic population is steadily growing, it remains underrepresented in clinical trials for new drugs in Texas and across the country. The dearth of Hispanic participation in medical research could soon become a thing of the past under a new South Texas initiative aimed at broadening access to experimental drug-testing programs. Texas A&M University and Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi have partnered to create the Global Institute for Hispanic Health to expand medical research in South Texas. (7/20)

As director of the Barbara Davis Center’s Hispanic/Latino Diabetes Care Team, [Dr. Andrea] Gerard-Gonzalez continues to develop and expand culturally appropriate ways to not only improve the delivery of diabetes care for the 800 youngsters with whom her team works, but to educate family members about the disease, eliminate stigmas and build a sense of community. (Joanne Davidson, 7/21)