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Health policy experts have long argued that Congress should let older Americans buy into Medicare before they become eligible for it at 65. Hillary Clinton said this week that she supports this option, which could help expand coverage and cut the cost of insurance for some people. Many lawmakers, as well as former President Bill Clinton, have said in the past that people between 55 and 65 should be allowed to buy into Medicare, which has lower administrative costs than private insurance because it pays lower reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals and does not have to turn a profit. Congress even considered this provision when it was debating the Affordable Care Act, but did not include it in the law because of opposition from Republicans, conservative Democrats and former Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Connecticut independent. (5/12)

While public support for Obamacare remains tepid, Medicare gets more love. On Monday, Hillary Clinton proposed extending the popular government health insurance program to more Americans. (Elizabeth O'Brien, 5/11)

The shrinkage of employee retirement resources in the U.S. has been well documented, as employers shift more risk onto their workers. Less so is the rate at which employers have been eliminating healthcare benefits for retirees. As the Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported, retiree health coverage is becoming an endangered species. "Employer-sponsored retiree health coverage once played a key role in supplementing Medicare," observe Tricia Neuman and Anthony Damico of the foundation. "Any way you slice it, this coverage is eroding." (Michael Hiltzik, 5/11)

When millions of Americans got thrown off of their existing health-insurance plans in the fall of 2013, PolitiFact called it the Lie of the Year. Obama ended up apologizing for the lie in an interview with NBC News’ Chuck Todd in November 2013, even if he couldn’t quite bring himself to admit that it was a lie. “We weren’t as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place,” was as far as Obama’s contrition went. (Edward Morrissey, 5/12)

“Most people are healthy enough to work longer than they do now,” write economists Courtney Coile of Wellesley College, Kevin Milligan of the University of British Columbia and David Wise of Harvard. Most Americans could work another two to four years without adverse consequences, they say. (Robert J. Samuelson, 5/11)

The Republican-controlled Congress has wasted entirely too much time sitting on President Obama’s request for emergency funding to combat the arrival of the Zika virus to the mainland United States. The National Governors Association, not exactly an alarmist group, declared that “the nation is on the threshold of a public health emergency.” Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says that Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory where the virus is already on the move, “is on the precipice of a really serious disaster.” Now that Congress has returned from its recess, it is time to buckle down and approve the president’s request for about $1.9 billion in emergency funding, or something close to it. (5/11)

In a moment, we’ll get to the Zika virus. First, remember how scathing Republicans were about President Obama’s handling of Ebola in the fall of 2014? They lambasted his reluctance to ban travelers from affected nations, with Paul Broun, a House member from Georgia then, even wondering if Obama had a “purposeful” plan to use Ebola to harm America. (Nicholas Kristof, 5/12)

The lesson of history is that politics and epidemics generally do not mix well. In The Great Influenza, historian John Barry showed that President Woodrow Wilson’s obsession with projecting strength during World War I hampered the US response to the pandemic. In And the Band Played On, journalist Randy Shilts documented how the homophobia of key political leaders undermined the nation’s efforts during the emergence of AIDS. (Joshua Sharfstein, 5/11)

So are regulators responsible for high drug prices? The short answer is yes and no. Before drug regulatory agencies existed, all sorts of “remedies” were sold on street corners — sometimes for a penny. But even if high prices weren’t always an issue, concerns about product quality, safety, and lack of efficacy created a need for regulation. In the ensuing decades, regulatory agencies have developed sophisticated evidence standards to ensure that approved drugs have favorable benefit–risk profiles. Regulators have, for example, developed rigorous standards for the generation and analysis of clinical trial data and for acceptable trial end points and study designs. Regulatory requirements have undoubtedly made pharmaceutical R&D expensive. (Hans-Georg Eichler, Hugo Hurts, Karl Broich and Guido Rasi, 5/12)

When I read that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the United States, I had no trouble believing it. Human bodies and minds are complex, and caring for them when something goes wrong is difficult. (Jerry Large, 5/11)

Since 1992, the American Academy of Pediatrics has encouraged primary care providers to discuss firearm safety with families. This reflects the influential group’s acknowledgment that keeping a gun locked and unloaded dramatically reduces the risk of firearms accidents, and the belief that brief counseling by physicians promotes safer storage of guns in homes with children. Still, sadly, some controversy remains. (Marjorie Rosenthal, 5/11)

Long-awaited federal rules to keep electronic cigarettes out of the hands of children finally arrived last week, and not a moment too soon. Use of the nicotine delivery devices has been growing rapidly among middle- and high-school-aged teens in the last few years. The rules, in the works since 2010, put the regulation of all tobacco products — including “ novel and future” ones — under the authority of the Food and Drug Administration for the first time. This is a profoundly important step in reining in e-cigarettes, a popular product with unknown long-term health effects that has been virtually unsupervised by government until now. (5/12)

A quarter of Ohioans get health insurance through Medicaid. Why? Because they’re too young, old, sick or disabled to work; because their jobs are low-paying and don’t provide insurance; or because they can’t find a job at all. (Wendy Paton, 5/11)

Mental illness is treated differently than any other illness. It always has been. It remains in the shadows and away from the public square. It is rarely the subject of casual conversation or self-disclosure, and it is invariably an awkward topic when it can’t be avoided. (John Broderick, Jr., 5/11)

I’ve really been struggling with my anxiety disorder the last week or so. That’s bad news on multiple fronts. First, panic attacks stink. My heart races. I sweat. My hands shake. It feels as if I’m in the middle of a life-threatening situation just sitting in my apartment trying to watch the NBA Playoffs. The worst attacks feel like my skin is itching on the inside. Secondly, anxiety spurs binge eating. Panic attacks are chemical imbalances in the brain. Biologically, my body will do whatever it thinks is necessary to restore proper chemical balance. (Daniel Finney, 5/11)

As deaths caused by opiate overdoses in Virginia continue to climb, a lifesaving drug is becoming more widely available. In a joint event Wednesday with Gov. Terry McAuliffe, CVS Health announced that naloxone — which reverses the effects of opioid overdoses — can now be purchased without a prescription in CVS pharmacies. (Katie Demeria, 5/11)

One of my greatest satisfactions as a physician was the ability to get to know many people from all over Philadelphia, and to offer advice and support as they tried to care for themselves and their families. (Gene Bishop, 5/11)

For workers and visitors to some businesses in St. Louis County, the countywide smoking ban has become a joke, instead of the good policy and common-sense public health effort it was supposed to be. On Jan. 2, 2011, after winning voter approval by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, the county’s “Indoor Clean Air Code” took effect. And so, too, began the exemptions. (5/11)

Dieting doesn't cure obesity. That's not news, although it was reconfirmed last week in a particularly mediagenic fashion in a study published by National Institutes of Health researchers. The researchers followed contestants from the “The Biggest Loser” television show as these formerly obese contestants proceeded to regain most of the massive amounts of weight they had lost on the show. (Gary Taubes, 5/11)