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Under current law, government funding expires Friday at midnight, when the last short-term spending bill expires. The Senate agreed by voice vote and without debate Thursday to extend that deadline through Wednesday Dec. 16 to allow more time for talks. The House was expected to follow suit Friday, but Ryan allowed that even more time might be needed. (Werner, 12/11)

Congress is poised to pass a stopgap spending bill to avert a Friday shutdown and keep the government running five more days as a standoff intensifies over controversial add-ons included in the year-end budget deal. As Democrats resist dozens of GOP-led efforts to rollback women’s reproductive health services, halt environmental regulations to fight climate change and undo financial services reforms approved after the Great Recession, they were backed by top White House officials in private meetings this week. Democrats are instead pushing to include their own priorities, including lifting a ban on federal gun violence research. (Mascaro, 12/10)

A top House Democrat suggested Thursday that the party's support for a year-end government spending bill will hinge on Republicans' willingness to end a decades-old ban on nearly all federal gun-violence research. Democrats on Wednesday delivered to the Republicans an omnibus spending proposal that eliminates the so-called "Dickey amendment," a perennial rider that's effectively blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from researching gun violence. (Ferris and Sullivan, 12/11)

Congress is getting closer to delaying a tax on expensive employer-sponsored health plans, imperiling a levy that was a key revenue source and cost-control measure in the 2010 health law. Bipartisan support for killing or suspending the start of the so-called Cadillac tax, which is scheduled to take effect in 2018, is growing. With President Barack Obama saying he would veto an outright repeal, lawmakers are pushing to postpone the tax for two years. (Armour and Rubin, 12/10)

Backers argue the projected $91 billion in revenue created by the tax over the next decade is essential to funding the law and keeping healthcare costs in check. “A two-year delay, I’m concerned, turns into a permanent delay,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.). “It was one of the key areas of cost containment, and in a state like mine where we’re still trying to get Medicaid expansion, and state legislators say the federal government’s not going to keep the existing commitments, when you take away one of the substantial pay-fors for healthcare reform, you strengthen their case.” (Sullivan, 12/10)

The Cadillac tax is so unpopular that the Senate voted 90 to 10 last week to repeal it outright as part of a larger bill aimed at dismantling the Affordable Care Act. Both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) voted to repeal the tax. (Pianin, 12/10)

After facing intense public pressure from comedian Jon Stewart, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, promised earlier this week to fully fund health care benefits for 9/11 first responders. The legislation, however, is still held up over lawmakers' disagreement over whether the bill needs to be paid for. (Condon, 12/10)

The New York Police Department commissioner, flanked by police and firefighters, pushed Congress on Thursday to keep dollars flowing to a health program for first responders and others who got sick working in the rubble of the Sept. 11 attacks. Commissioner William Bratton noted that the House and Senate were holding hearings on the evolving terrorist threat to the United States, but the country still hadn't paid its debt to the first responders of 9/11. (12/10)

The U.S. budget deficit widened in November due to an uptick in spending that outpaced an increase in revenues, the Treasury Department said on Thursday. ... Most of the spending growth in recent months has been driven by programs that aren’t appropriated on an annual basis by Congress, such as Medicare and Social Security. (Timiraos, 12/10)

The latest numbers underscore the deepening impact of paying benefits to a growing number of retiring baby boomers. The report said Social Security spending expanded 4 percent, while Medicare spending increased 9 percent. Spending on Medicaid, the government health care program for low-income individuals, rose 12 percent, partly due to an expansion authorized under the Affordable Care Act. (Crutsinger, 12/10)

Spending on hospitals, doctors and social services grew 5.6% year over year in the third quarter of 2015, indicating that healthcare expenses are still outpacing the higher growth rate recorded last year. That figure comes from the U.S. Census Bureau's latest Quarterly Services Report and does not include several other components of the healthcare system, such as pharmaceuticals and other medical products. (Herman, 12/10)

It was shaping up to be a bad year for medical claims for Blevins Inc. in June, so the chief financial officer tried to keep it from getting worse. For the first time, Tim Kentner sent letters to employees at home, asking people to switch to generics when they could and urging visits to urgent care clinics instead of emergency rooms, if appropriate. It didn't work. (Fletcher, 12/10)

More than seven in 10 residents of Kentucky want their new governor, Matt Bevin, to keep the state’s expanded Medicaid program as it is, according to a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation. And more than half of respondents described Medicaid as important for themselves and their families, underscoring the program’s substantial reach in the state and the challenges Mr. Bevin may face if he seeks to scale back or modify it. (Goodnough, 12/11)

More than 500,000 Pennsylvanians, including 110,954 from Philadelphia, have signed up for Medicaid since Gov. Wolf expanded the program this year, helping the state’s uninsured rate drop to 8 percent from 14 percent, the governor said Thursday. (Brubaker, 12/10)

Pennsylvania’s expansion of Medicaid, which began earlier this year, has exceeded half a million new enrollees, state officials announced today. Officials credit the program’s expansion with dropping Pennsylvania’s uninsured rate from 14 percent in 2013 to 8 percent today. Demographically, most of those who are newly signed-up for the health insurance program that serves low-income people are under age 40, 55 percent are women and 59 percent are white. (Giammarise, 12/10)

Gov. Tom Wolf says the signups of 500,000 Pennsylvanians for health care under the Medicaid expansion are part of keeping a campaign promise he made in last year's election campaign. Wolf joined state Human Services Secretary Ted Dallas and health care advocates to mark the milestone Thursday at a news conference at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. (12/10)

Some Tampa-area lawmakers are giving Medicaid expansion little chance of being considered during the upcoming state legislative session. State Rep. Jamie Grant, R-Tampa, told a gathering of the Tampa Bay Health Care Collaborative on Wednesday that Medicaid expansion hasn't found support the past three years in Tallahassee. (Shedden, 12/10)

The lone health insurance cooperative to make money last year on the Affordable Care Act's public insurance exchanges is now losing millions and suspending individual enrollment for 2016. Maine's Community Health Options lost more than $17 million in the first nine months of this year, after making $10.9 million in the same period last year. A spokesman said higher-than-expected medical costs have hurt the cooperative. (Murphy, 12/10)

About 2,200 current customers of Connecticut’s health insurance exchange won’t be eligible for discounted coverage next year because they did not file tax returns for 2014 as required, exchange officials said Thursday. (Levin Becker, 12/10)

In October, federal health officials visited Cleveland to trumpet good news about the Affordable Care Act: Insurance premiums were dropping 6.3 percent in Northeast Ohio, making it easier for consumers to afford coverage on the federal exchange. But the decrease in premiums was only part of the story. A Plain Dealer analysis of plans offered through healthcare.gov, the exchange website, shows that deductibles, co-pays, and co-insurance expenses are putting up significant barriers to accessing medical care, particularly for middle-income earners. (Ross, 12/10)

When the cost of group health insurance became too expensive a few years ago, OML Worldwide Transportation stopped offering the benefit to its employees. The small business is bringing back coverage for its 40 employees next year. The company's turnaround illustrates several trends in the Illinois health insurance market. Premiums have spiked and provider networks have shrunk for consumers who don't have coverage through their jobs and have to buy insurance on their own. (Sachdev, 12/10)

Patricia Jones thought she was getting the much-talked-about free physical under Obamacare when she went to see a doctor in May. But, she says, a few small things that happened during her checkup ended up making the visit cost more than $450. First, the doctor asked Jones, who lives in Oregon and describes herself as a full-time mom, if she had moles that were changing colors. When Jones pointed to a spot on her neck, the doctor said it was not even a mole and nothing to worry about. (Leonard, 12/10)

From the start, the miracle drug was expected to carry a high price tag: $36,000 to treat each patient. Over the two years leading up to the medicine’s 2013 launch, Gilead Sciences Inc. executives and advisers inched the number higher, to about $65,000, then to $81,000, then to $84,000 -- or $1,000 a pill for the 12-week treatment -- as they homed in on a price that was just below where they thought insurers would add significant restrictions for the breakthrough hepatitis C remedy. (Langreth, 12/10)

Bayer AG is packing more cancer drugs into its pipeline to gain a bigger share of the almost $100 billion global market for such treatments. Known for Aspirin and the blood thinner Xarelto, Germany’s most valuable company had no cancer treatments on the market a decade ago. By the end of this one, Bayer may have as many as five if its research plans pay off. The company has more than doubled the number of cancer medicines in development in the last three years, including treatments that marry radiation and biologics. (Koch, 12/10)

AstraZeneca is diving into the world of proteins secreted by cells - collectively known as the secretome - in the hunt for new drugs and better "cell factories" for making biotech medicines. The so-called secretome accounts for around one third of human proteins and the idea of mapping them all follows the decoding of the human genome in 2000, since when there has been a surge in scientific buzzwords ending in "ome." (Hirschler, 12/10)

The Food and Drug Administration sees lab-developed tests as the Wild West of medicine, citing examples of inaccurate tests it claims put patients at risk. The agency is trying to toughen its supervision next year after largely leaving the business alone for decades and focusing most of its oversight on traditional testing methods. Lab-developed test providers are fighting back. They say their tests are accurate and even lifesaving. Industry officials say heightened regulation could stifle innovation. (Burton, 12/10)

On the eve of a crucial bankruptcy court hearing, a long-simmering dispute over a $1.8 billion loan to Millennium Health LLC on Wednesday boiled over into a federal-court racketeering lawsuit. Funds associated with Voya Investment Management Co. sued Millennium’s owners, founder James Slattery and private-equity firm TA Associates Inc., alleging they failed to warn lenders of a Justice Department investigation into the company’s practices. (Brickley, 12/10)

The head of Sprout Pharmaceuticals, the women’s libido pill maker that Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. bought for $1 billion, is leaving less than three months after her company was folded into the larger drugmaker. (Koons, 12/10)

Johnson & Johnson and Alphabet Inc's life sciences unit have formed an independent company to create far smaller, smarter and less costly robotic-assisted systems for surgery than those sold now by other companies, J&J said on Thursday. Creation of the new company, Verb Surgical Inc, follows an announcement in March by J&J and Google Inc of their plans to pool their technologies and expertise to create robotics for the operating room. Google has since changed its name to Alphabet, and its life sciences unit is now called Verily. (Pierson, 12/10)

Johnson & Johnson and Verily Life Sciences LLC, formerly known as Google Life Sciences, have formed a new company to develop the next generation of robotic-assisted tools for surgeons. The venture, which will be called Verb Surgical Inc., is the latest partnership between the California tech giant and the health-care industry, after earlier collaborations with Biogen Inc., Novartis AG and Sanofi. (Koons, 12/10)

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio boasts of being the only Republican presidential candidate to have dealt a blow to Obamacare — but he's also insured under the law. Rubio's campaign confirmed to NBC News that the GOP presidential candidate and his family remain insured under the law, through the D.C. exchange. He first signed up in 2013, at which point spokeswoman Brooke Sammon told the Tampa Bay Times that Rubio "spent time looking at all the options and decided to enroll through the D.C. exchange for coverage for him and his family." (Jaffe, 12/10)

The Affordable Care Act promised participating insurance companies and cooperatives payments in the first three years if they lost too much money. Thanks to a provision successfully pushed last year by Senator Marco Rubio, insurers are only getting about 13 cents for every dollar they say they are owed. (Edson, 12/10)

Millions of private medical records have been hacked at large insurance companies like Anthem. What appears to be causing more damage are smaller violations of medical privacy. (Kodjak, 12/10)

Even when small privacy violations have real consequences, the federal Office for Civil Rights rarely punishes health care providers for them. Instead, the office typically settles for pledges to fix any problems and issues reminders of what the privacy law requires. It doesn't even tell the public which health providers have reported small breaches — or how many. (Ornstein, 12/10)

With sexually transmitted diseases on the rise, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago think they might have a powerful new weapon to fight their spread: Google searches. The nation’s leading search engine has quietly begun giving researchers access to its data troves to develop analytical models for tracking infectious diseases in real time or close to it. UIC is one of at least four academic institutions that have received access so far, along with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Jaklevic, 12/10)

Six states are not alerting the FBI about people who have been found to have mental health problems that would bar them from owning guns, according to a new report released Thursday by a gun-control advocacy group. Three of those states recently passed laws to turn over records of people who are involuntarily committed to mental institutions for use in the FBI's National Criminal Background Check System. (Volz, 12/11)

Americans with severe mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed by police than other civilians, a study by an advocacy group said on Thursday. Official and unofficial accounts of the hundreds of Americans killed yearly in encounters with police show that at least a quarter of those slain are severely mentally ill, the report by the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center said. (12/10)

Roughly two months after another proposed health insurance expansion for low-income Utahns died, the state's Medicaid director is stepping down. Michael Hales, who held the post for a decade, will join the private sector, the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) announced Thursday. The agency did not give more details on the move, and Hales declined to comment. His deputy, Nathan Checketts, will become interim director Dec. 31 as a search for a permanent replacement gets underway. (Knox, 12/10)

In the 10 years of Hales' direction, the program has undergone many changes, including implementation of the Medicaid Preferred Drug List, which saved taxpayers $46 million last year, the health department reports. Medicaid also converted to Accountable Care Organizations under Hales' watch. Various services have also been expanded, including coverage of treatment of autism spectrum disorders and other medically complex conditions. Also under Hales' watch, Medicaid systems were breached by hackers in 2012, leading the department of health to contact and assist thousands of Utahns with long-term identity protection plans. (Leonard, 12/10)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is in Iowa this week assessing the state’s readiness to transition the management of Iowa’s Medicaid program into the hands of four private companies on Jan. 1. Critics say the process has been unorganized and rushed, and many Medicaid recipients complain they don’t have enough information to determine which, if any, of the Managed Care Organizations best fits their coverage needs. (Boden, 12/10)

Iowa Department of Administrative Services Director Janet Phipps on Tuesday rejected a request from Aetna, one of the unsuccessful bidders for the lucrative state contract, to immediately freeze the state’s effort to privatize Medicaid on Jan. 1. (Clayworth, 12/10)

The big metro Atlanta health systems are looking to get bigger – and are targeting potential partners that are farther away from their home bases. Atlanta-based Piedmont Healthcare’s entering partnership talks with Athens Regional Health System, announced this week, is another sign of hospital consolidation reshaping the health care landscape in Georgia. (Miller, 12/10)

Being in the hospital can be overwhelming and disorienting. That’s why [Lisa] Freeman and other patient safety experts advise people to have strategies to help, like writing down their questions and having a friend or relative there to advocate for them.Here are a few things experts say patients should know when they're in the hospital. (Levin Becker, 12/10)

Vermont may have pulled the plug on its single-payer health plan, but it’s on the verge of instituting major reforms through an "all-payer" effort that’s largely flown under the radar. For months the state has been negotiating with federal officials to secure an “all-payer waiver.” The state would control rates paid to hospitals and physicians under Medicare, Medicaid and commercial insurance. Caps would limit health care cost growth each year over a five-year period. (Pradhan, 12/10)

Pennsylvania lawmakers are sending a bill to the governor that would extend the Children's Health Insurance Program for two more years, and move the program from the Insurance Department to the Department of Human Services. The House voted unanimously Thursday to renew the program that covers more than 150,000 Pennsylvania children who aren't eligible for Medicaid. (12/10)

Of the two special sessions called by the governor, the effort on healthcare was the most wide-ranging. Brown asked legislators to rework a soon-to-expire $1.1 billion tax on managed care insurance plans, as well as agree on a new way to pay for in-home care worker wages and restore a 10% cut in developmental disability programs made during the recession years. ... But in the case of transportation and healthcare, funding through additional revenues -- that is to say, a tax increase -- has remained a non-starter, especially in the eyes of legislative Republicans, who have argued that projected windfalls of tax revenue should be used first. (Myers, 12/10)

Members of West Virginia's Public Employees Insurance Agency Finance Board have voted to approve $120 million in cuts to workers' health plans. The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports the cuts are slated to affect more than 200,000 public employees and retirees. (12/11)

An administrative law judge Tuesday rejected a challenge to a state Board of Medicine proposal that would increase the cost of copies of patient medical records. (12/10)

Gov. Sam Brownback on Thursday named Tim Keck as interim secretary of the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services. ... The KDADS secretary oversees a $1.6 billion agency responsible for the state’s Older Americans Act programs, behavioral health programs, and home and community-based services for older adults and people with disabilities. (12/10)

As the state’s drug task force plans to wrap up on Tuesday, most of the bills slotted to be fast-tracked next legislative session have more or less been chosen. The bills include increasing the penalties for fentanyl, ramping up drug prevention in schools from kindergarten through 12th grade, and creating a 24-hour hotline for those battling addiction. (Sutherland, 12/11)

Seattle’s Group Health Cooperative says it won’t budge on plans that exclude nearly 95 percent of its members from voting on a proposed acquisition by California’s Kaiser Permanente. Officials with the co-op said this week they are upholding a long-standing tradition by leaving the key decision to about 27,000 members who registered to vote before the deal with Kaiser Permanente was announced last week. (Aleccia, 12/10)

As college campuses nationwide try and cope with increased demand for mental heath services, one study found the investment is paying off for California. The RAND Corporation looked at the effects of investment in prevention and early intervention treatment at California public colleges over about a year and a half. The study, released Thursday, predicts a $56 million "societal benefit" from annual California Mental Health Services Authority funds averaging $8.7 million a year. RAND arrived at the figure using data on lifetime earnings for California college graduates compared to those who drop out. (Wagner, 12/10)

Advocates for the dying on Thursday urged policymakers to start implementing a new law, currently on hold, that will allow terminally ill Californians to end their lives. (White, 12/10)

A new University of California, Los Angeles study has found that in parts of California the rate of thyroid cancer patients with an advanced stage of the disease is well above the national average, prompting research into possible links to farming or radiation. According to the study, 35 percent of Californians with thyroid cancer were not diagnosed until the disease had already spread to lymph nodes or other parts of the body, compared with 29 percent of people nationwide. (Whitcomb, 12/10)

The Rawlings-Blake administration is banking on a new strategy to bring fresh food to disadvantaged Baltimore communities: an 80 percent break on the taxes grocery stores pay on their cash registers, freezers and other equipment. The City Council unanimously approved the legislation Thursday as an incentive to encourage supermarkets to open in communities that don't have such stores now, areas known as food deserts. (Wenger, 12/10)

Under a settlement filed last week, all children in the state covered by Medicaid will be eligible for testing if their parents request it — or if they live in old buildings, are recent immigrants or face other exposure risks. The state Department of Health also unveiled an online map that allows residents to determine the relative risk from lead in their neighborhoods. (Doughton, 12/10)

The state's certificate of need program — the gatekeeper to health care provider expansion — has been in the spotlight in recent weeks as two hospitals unsuccessfully competed to build a freestanding emergency room. But a burgeoning debate about reform could keep the program in the spotlight. (Fletcher, 12/10)

Seattle health officials closed a South Lake Union Chipotle restaurant Thursday for repeated food-safety violations. The move to shutter the Mexican-style restaurant, at 212 Westlake Ave., comes more than a month after the fast-food chain closed 43 sites in Washington and Oregon amid an E. coli outbreak that eventually sickened 52 people in nine states and sent 20 people to hospitals. (Aleccia, 12/10)

Health officials shut down a Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc restaurant in Seattle on Thursday after finding "repeated food safety violations," according to a statement from the Seattle & King County public health department. The restaurant on Westlake Avenue is one of 17 in the county that had re-opened last month after passing inspections following an E. Coli outbreak. (12/10)

The New Hampshire Medical Society told lawmakers that crafting best practices for prescribing opioids should be left to the medical community. Currently, lawmakers are considering a bill that would amend the guidelines by proposing certain dosage amounts and time limits. The proposal ranges from enforcing random urine testing for long-term opioid patients to creating a limit on doses given out during emergency room visits. (Sutherland, 12/10)

We provide an overview of sixty-four programs operating in jails, prisons, or community probation and parole systems that enroll individuals during detention, incarceration, and the release process. We describe the variation among the programs .... Seventy-seven percent of the programs are located in jails, and 56 percent use personnel from public health or social service agencies. We describe four practices that have facilitated the Medicaid enrollment process: suspending instead of terminating Medicaid benefits upon incarceration, presuming that an individual is eligible for Medicaid before the process is completed, allowing enrollment during incarceration, and accepting alternative forms of identification for enrollment. (Bandara et al., 12/7)

Programs created under the Affordable Care Act to connect consumers to health care coverage represent an unprecedented public-sector investment. State-level implementation of these programs has varied greatly .... assister programs play a vital role supporting consumers in the new Marketplaces, particularly when assisters maintain extended ongoing relationships with consumers; assisters come from and are situated within communities they serve; local programs are well coordinated; and postenrollment issues can be addressed. Stable funding commitments, year-round employment, and enriched training were identified as crucial long-run strategies for building a more professional assister workforce and stronger infrastructure. (Grob and Schlesinger, 12/7)

Of 23 CO-OPs launched [under the federal health law], all but two have fallen short of their enrollment or profitability projections. Twelve plans have or are about to shut down .... We examined plan, pricing, and enrollment data for six CO-OPs .... To meet the very short deadlines for filing rates and plans with state departments of insurance, CO-OPs were forced to outsource critical functions such as network design and claims processing. ... Setting the initial and subsequent prices of their products may have been the most important decisions CO-OPs faced. However, unlike their competitors, CO-OPs lacked historical claims and market data to help them estimate their costs. ... Over half of the CO-OPs fell short of their enrollment targets in 2014, making it difficult for them to cover fixed costs. (Corlette, Miskell and Giovannelli, 12/10)

Medicare Part D drug plans differ considerably in the drugs they list on their formularies, their use of formulary tiers, and the level and structure of cost sharing applied to those tiers. ... The financial consequences for Part D plan enrollees can be substantial. ... Part D enrollees can expect to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for a single specialty drug in 2016, even after their drug costs exceed the catastrophic coverage threshold. ... Monthly out-of-pocket costs for commonly used brand and generic drugs tend to vary widely across Part D plans, even when included on plan formularies; for five of ten top brands, monthly costs vary by as much as $100 across plans. (Hoadley, Cubanski and Neuman, 12/2)

Nearly a quarter of primary care doctors in the United States say their practices are not well-prepared to manage patients with multiple chronic illnesses, according to an international survey. The 2015 Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey of Primary Care Physicians, released Monday, surveyed doctors in 10 countries, including the United States, Canada, Germany, Australia and Sweden. Doctors in the United States and Canada felt least prepared among the countries surveyed to handle patients with multiple chronic conditions. (Samuel, 12/7)

Many Type 2 diabetes patients are being overtested and overtreated, according to a new finding from Mayo Clinic researchers. Their study, published Wednesday in the BMJ medical journal, found that six out of 10 patients who don't require insulin have their average blood sugar levels checked far more frequently than guidelines recommend, a practice that can lead to potentially harmful, excessive treatments. (Benson, 12/8)

Women surgeons working at university medical centers say they’ve faced more gender discrimination as staff surgeons than they did as medical students or residents, according to a new study in Canada. But the women surgeons still rated their career satisfaction highly, researchers found. (Doyle, 12/10)

Women with breast cancer may have better survival odds if they get surgery and chemotherapy more quickly, two large U.S. studies suggest. “We are not taking about providing care in days, but a woman should not have to wait months,” said Dr. Eric Winer, a researcher at Harvard University and director of the breast program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. (Rapaport, 12/10)

There are a number of options for women when they learn they have breast cancer in its earliest stages, when the tumor is relatively small and has not yet spread. Each option is similarly effective when it comes to killing cancer cells and preventing the disease from returning. (Neighmond, 12/11)

Injection drug users in rural and suburban areas have less access to needle exchange programs than those in cities do, even though addiction rates are rising in non-urban areas, a new study shows. Providing injection drug users with new, sterile needles and syringes in exchange for used ones reduces their risk of contracting or spreading infections such as HIV and hepatitis C, the researchers explained. (Preidt, 12/10)

If you were at high risk for a deadly, untreatable disease, would you want to know it? Would you want to join a clinical trial? Alzheimer's researchers are hoping that a lot of people are so eager to find a cure that they will answer yes to both those questions. GeneMatch, an ambitious, national effort to recruit people at high genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease, was launched Tuesday by the Banner Alzheimer's Institute in Phoenix and will include a key role for University of Pennsylvania researchers. (Burling, 12/8)

A push now under way in Congress to defer or repeal the so-called Cadillac tax is the biggest legislative threat the Affordable Care Act has faced in the past five years. And, weirdly, the lawmakers to blame are Democrats. (Peter R. Orzag, 12/11)

At the moment, the proponents of the ACA believe the new law is working, and initiatives are being readied to build upon what was enacted in 2010 by further bolstering the federal government’s power to control costs through additional regulation. We are among those who opposed the ACA because of its heavy emphasis on federal control. But we also believe that unless a credible and practical alternative reform plan is presented to the public, and supported by policymakers, the long-term trend toward ever-increasing governmental control will continue unabated in the years ahead. The plan we present is not confined to replacing the ACA. We propose major reforms to the tax treatment of employer-sponsored health care, Medicaid, Medicare, Health Savings Accounts, and other areas of existing policy. (Joseph Antos, James Capretta, Lanhee Chen, Scott Gottlieb, Yuval Levin, Thomas Miller, Ramesh Ponnuru, Avik Roy, Gail R. Wilensky, and David Wilson, 12/9)

Sen. Marco Rubio's presidential campaign has been crowing lately about the blow he supposedly scored against the Affordable Care Act. "Only one candidate has actually done significant damage to Obamacare," boasts his campaign website. The candidate himself claims to have "saved the American taxpayer $2.5 billion." The New York Times -- excuse me, "even" the New York Times -- credits Rubio with slipping "a little-noticed" provision into a spending bill last year to achieve this aim. These claims are a little overheated, wholly misleading and spectacularly cynical. Let's set the record straight. (Michael Hiltzik, 12/10)

Medicaid is a critical lifeline for Kentucky’s, and our nation’s, most vulnerable patients -- whether children, pregnant mothers, the elderly, the blind, or the disabled. As policymakers, we want to see a strong safety net program that protects those most in need by ensuring they have access to high quality care. There are signs that the safety net is under strain. Too often, vulnerable patients can face problems accessing timely, quality care. The program would also greatly benefit from improved transparency, enhanced accountability and more robust program integrity. But time is critical. Over the longer term, health economists and nonpartisan experts have warned the current paths of Medicaid and other entitlements are unsustainable. (Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., 12/10)

Insure Tennessee is a health-care solution designed for Tennesseans by Tennesseans. Gov. Bill Haslam created Insure Tennessee, unlike traditional Medicaid expansion, to specifically meet Tennessee's needs. The plan emphasizes personal responsibility and brings much-needed health care to hardworking Tennesseans from Memphis to Mountain City. It is important to correct the record on the points previously raised about Insure Tennessee and its impact on the state. (Craig Becker, 12/10)

Expanding Medicaid, so far at the federal government’s expense, has reduced uncompensated care expenses for hospitals. It has done nothing to hold down costs, and in fact has increased emergency room visits. Expansion supporters like Woodburn will have a chance to make their case in January that putting New Hampshire taxpayers on the hook for a small portion of the program’s cost is a worthwhile investment. They will be hard-pressed to show it’s made any progress in fighting drug addiction. (12/10)

An unfortunate refrain among Democratic presidential hopefuls is that rapacious pharmaceutical and biotech companies are driving up the cost of essential medications, bankrupting the health-care system, and depriving sick Americans of treatment. Hillary Clinton has honed her message to a nice sound bite: Drug companies that charge excessively high prices “are making a fortune off of people’s misfortune.” ... The way we pay for innovative drugs can certainly be improved. But the anger directed at the pharmaceutical and biotech industries overall is misdirected. (Michael Mandel, 12/10)

Most would not be shocked to learn healthcare costs -- and prices -- are going up, not down. But in late November, the Department of Health and Human Resources convened a forum on the rising cost of prescription drugs. The nine-hour event featured discussions on a wide range of issues, from patient access to drug innovation. What was missing, however, was any serious discussion about the chief drivers of healthcare costs – and what effective solutions might look like. (Joel White, 12/10)

His mental health notwithstanding, [Robert L. Dear Jr., the man accused of killing three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in November] is – to no one’s surprise – a stunning hypocrite. He accused Planned Parenthood of killing even as he freely admitted to gunning people down at the clinic. The only atrocities that took place there that day were the murders of Jennifer Markovsky, Ke’Arre Stewart and Garrett Swasey, and the wounding of nine others. Nor can Mr. Dear’s logic simply be dismissed as the ravings of a mentally ill man — not when others with political influence share his views. (Anna North, 12/10)

A major flaw of this system is that local donation areas vary widely in the size and demographics of their population, the number of transplant centers within the area, and the ratio of patients in need versus organs available. For example, southern California has much lower donor potential due in large part to its lower overall death rate (5.6 per thousand residents verse 8.2 nationwide). Local donation area boundaries were established over 20 years ago without consideration of medical factors and without a goal to equalize access to organs, essentially making them historical accidents. (Milan Kinkhabwala and Sandy Florman, 12/10)