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Some consumers who got health coverage or subsidies through HealthCare.gov might not have been eligible to receive them last year because of deficiencies in the federal exchange’s internal controls, according to a government report likely to further stoke Republican criticism. (Armour, 8/10)

The Obama administration has yet to spell out how it will enforce a key provision of the Affordable Care Act prohibiting discrimination in health care delivery more than five years after the law’s passage. Patient advocates and regulatory experts are mystified by the lack of action on the civil rights protections. (Demko, 8/7)

Since the federal health law’s major provisions rolled out last year, much of the attention has been on getting people signed up for private insurance or Medicaid. But increasingly, the focus of those in health care, insurance and advocacy groups is turning to what comes next: making sure those who gained coverage use it to improve their health, and ensuring that the health care system is adapting to meet their needs – things that could be significantly more complicated than getting people signed up for coverage. (Levin Becker, 8/10)

Many people shopping for health insurance pick plans with the lowest monthly cost. But experts say that’s not necessarily the best buy, since those plans often leave members with steep out-of-pocket costs when they get care. In some cases, advocates and officials say, people who picked the cheapest options – known as bronze plans – ended up not using their coverage because they couldn’t afford to pay for care. (Levin Becker, 8/7)

Another federal appeals court Friday ruled against Catholic church-affiliated groups that oppose being required to provide contraceptive care to employees through a third party. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a Brooklyn judge's ruling affecting over 25,000 employees at two high schools, six hospitals, three nursing homes and several nonprofits. The appeals court in Manhattan said an Affordable Care Act provision that lets religion-related entities put the burden for providing contraceptive care services on third parties does not erode religious rights. (Neumeister, 8/7)

Four Roman Catholic nonprofits in New York must allow employees access to contraception, a federal appeals court panel ruled on Friday, reversing a decision by a lower court that allowed the organizations to get around a requirement in the Affordable Care Act. Six other circuit courts around the country deciding on similar arguments involving religious groups have come to similar conclusions, the unanimous three-judge panel noted in its decision, which was written by Judge Rosemary S. Pooler for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York. Other cases are still pending. (Clifford, 8/7)

Several Planned Parenthood officials and three private bio-medical firms were targeted on Friday by a U.S. congressional panel as lawmakers dig deeper into a controversy swirling around the women's health organization. A U.S. House of Representatives committee made public a letter requesting interviews with personnel from the organization who appeared in surreptitiously recorded videos in discussions about providing fetal tissue for research. House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans also said they had written to three companies identified as human fetal tissue suppliers to request information and briefings. (Cornwell, 8/7)

Republican calls to end federal funding of Planned Parenthood, after an anti-abortion group released a series of undercover videos, have put a spotlight on the organization in recent weeks. ... The organization says the recent controversy has taken attention away from the many health care services it provides to both women and men that are not abortion-related. According to the annual report, 42 percent of the services it provides is for STI/STD testing and treatment, 34 percent is for contraception, and 9 percent goes to cancer screening. Another 12 percent is miscellaneous women's health and other health services. The 327,653 abortions Planned Parenthood clinics perform each year make up just 3 percent of the total services the group provides. (Welch, 8/7)

But it could also cause the eventual nominee problems in a general election with a more moderate electorate. On social issues ranging from abortion to same-sex marriage, much of the Republican field has now taken positions that are at odds with mainstream American opinion. For example, 3 out of 4 Americans say a woman should be able to obtain a legal abortion if she becomes pregnant as a result of rape. (Sullivan, 8/7)

Jeb Bush’s involvement with a philanthropy headed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, which partnered with Planned Parenthood on a $50 million global reproductive health initiative, is coming under scrutiny just as abortion is re-emerging as a top campaign issue. The former Florida governor served as a Bloomberg Family Foundation director from March 2010 until he stepped down in late 2014, earning roughly $37,000. During those years, the foundation worked with Planned Parenthood to expand women’s health programs in Africa and Central America. The association with the women’s health provider is politically fraught at a time when the group has been accused of selling the tissue of aborted fetuses — a charge it denies. (Pradhan, 8/10)

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is again defending his slip about cutting funding for women's health organizations this week, but not from Hillary Clinton, but instead against former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina's assertions at Thursday night's Republican debate. (LoBianco, Killough and Wallace, 8/7)

Both men are New York natives who live in Burlington, Vt.; they avoid talk of themselves or their biographies, and display irritation with many of the conventions of the way campaigns are conducted and covered. Both call for universal health care, though the appeal has less resonance now than it did before the Affordable Care Act was passed. Both have seemed to strike a chord that suggests impatience with the more establishment Democrats in the contest, whether Hillary Rodham Clinton today or John Kerry and John Edwards, senators from Massachusetts and North Carolina, in 2004. And both have drawn fervent crowds who embrace their philosophy and celebrate their candidate-as-fighter styles. ... Still, what may prove more significant, as Democrats begin to focus on the choice ahead of them and attention shifts from the Republican contest after last week’s debate, are the ways in which the two liberals from Vermont are different. (Nagourney, 10/9)

Anthem Inc. has used the Blue Cross and Blue Shield brand names as a powerful tool on its way to becoming the nation’s second-largest health insurer. But those Blue brands now are a hurdle for Anthem’s $54.2 billion acquisition of Cigna Corp. Anthem executives are confident they can leap over that hurdle, but it’s not a foregone conclusion. (Wall, 8/8)

Shares of health insurer Centene fell in early trading Friday before rebounding, a day after the Chicago Tribune reported that one of the firm's subsidiaries will lose a Medicaid contract with Cook County valued at up to $1.8 billion over five years. A spokeswoman at Cook County Health and Hospitals System confirmed Thursday that it plans to find a replacement for IlliniCare Health, a division of St. Louis-based Centene, to run its Medicaid managed care plan. The county posted a request for bids Tuesday. (Herbling and Sachdev, 8/7)

In a twist on identity theft, crooks are using personal data stolen from millions of Americans to get health care, prescriptions and medical equipment. Victims sometimes only find out when they get a bill or a call from a debt collector. They can wind up with the thief’s health data folded into their own medical charts. A patient’s record may show she has diabetes when she doesn’t, say, or list a blood type that isn’t hers—errors that can lead to dangerous diagnoses or treatments. Adding insult to injury, a victim often can’t fully examine his own records because the thief’s health data, now folded into his, are protected by medical-privacy laws. And hospitals sometimes continue to hound victims for payments they didn’t incur. (Armour, 8/7)

The fast-growing crime of medical identity theft is being fueled by the proliferation of electronic medical records and a sharp increase in data breaches at insurers and health care providers. ... Five things to know about medical ID theft and how to prevent it. (Armour, 8/7)

Bob Smithing is an easygoing, approachable guy — traits his patients surely appreciate in their primary-care provider. But there is one thing patients can do to get a rise out of him. They can call him “Dr. Smithing.” Smithing is a nurse practitioner, a medical professional who works in a family clinic in Kent with four other nurse practitioners and no medical doctors. While there are few practices in the Puget Sound area run exclusively by these nurses with advanced training, Smithing could be a trailblazer in a new trend. (Stiffler, 8/8)

A home-bound heart patient called 911. His leg hurt where a catheter was inserted, but he didn't complain of chest pains. To paramedic Scott Fox, it was the kind of call that might have meant automatically rushing the man to a hospital emergency room. "There was no talking him out of it," Fox recalls. But now he had another option. He arrived at the man's home with a nurse practitioner, Victoria Morrison, who calmed him down, checked him out and contacted his cardiologist to set up a next day appointment. (Smouse, 8/9)

That is changing with a new California law that authorizes dental hygienists to treat cavities without a dentist on site by placing low-cost, temporary fillings. Shore is one of the first dental hygienists in Southern California who will be certified to apply the fillings, called interim therapeutic restorations, under the law that took effect in January. She joined two dozen other dental hygiene educators and dentists Saturday for a two-day training program conducted by Northern California-based University of the Pacific on the campus of West Coast University in Anaheim. (Barboza, 8/9)

Developers of a new video game for your brain say theirs is more than just another get-smarter-quick scheme. Akili, a Northern California startup, insists on taking the game through a full battery of clinical trials so it can get approval from the Food and Drug Administration — a process that will take lots of money and several years. (Dembosky, 8/10)

Embattled device maker Olympus Corp. posted a 14% increase in sales of medical scopes worldwide despite health officials linking its instruments to superbug outbreaks at U.S. hospitals. The Japanese company, which also makes cameras and microscopes, said Thursday that the strong performance of its gastrointestinal endoscopes led to record-breaking sales and profit for its medical business in the latest quarter ending June 30. The company's increased sales have sparked criticism from some federal lawmakers and patient advocates who say it's wrong for Olympus to benefit financially because design flaws in its duodenoscopes have contributed to the spread of deadly bacterial infections. (Terhune and Petersen, 8/7)

Twelve members of Congress sent a letter to the U.S. Government Accountability Office Friday asking the agency to investigate a controversial gynecological device that can spread cancer in women. ... A GAO investigation would heighten scrutiny of the Food and Drug Administration’s approval and monitoring of the power morcellator, which had been used in tens of thousands of minimally invasive procedures a year. The device is used primarily in hysterectomies, to slice up common benign uterine masses known as fibroids so the bulky tissue could be removed through tiny incisions. (Levitz, 8/7)

A federal judge said on Friday that the Food and Drug Administration could not prohibit the truthful promotion of a drug for unapproved uses because doing so would violate the protection of free speech. The decision, by a district judge in Manhattan, could inhibit the ability of the F.D.A. to regulate one aspect of pharmaceutical marketing. Pharmaceutical companies have collectively paid billions of dollars in fines in recent years after being accused of marketing drugs for unapproved uses. (Pollack, 8/7)

A federal judge barred the Food and Drug Administration from blocking a drug company’s efforts to promote an unapproved use for pills derived from fish oil, saying the firm’s claims are protected by the First Amendment. U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer granted Amarin Corp. preliminary relief. ... Amarin’s suit against the FDA will continue, but the company will be allowed to begin marketing the off-label use immediately, under the judge’s decision. (Johnson, 8/7)

A Maryland-based biotech company believes it can solve a riddle that has baffled Big Pharma for decades: how to protect against a virus that infects almost every American child. If mid-stage trial data proves positive, Novavax Inc will be closer than any drug developer to a vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, which affects those most with compromised immune systems - including young infants and the elderly. (Grover, 8/10)

The American Psychological Association on Friday overwhelmingly approved a new ban on any involvement by psychologists in national security interrogations conducted by the United States government, even noncoercive interrogations now conducted by the Obama administration. ... The vote followed an emotional debate in which several members said the ban was needed to restore the organization’s reputation after a scathing independent investigation ordered by the association’s board. (Risen, 8/7)

The American Psychological Association voted Friday in favor of a resolution that would bar its members from participating in national security interrogations. The resolution by the country's largest professional organization of psychologists passed overwhelmingly. The only dissenting vote came from Col. Larry James, a former Army intelligence psychologist at Guantanamo. (Temple-Raston, 8/7)

Miriam Uribe enrolled in California's low-income health insurance program last November, and she still hasn't found a primary care doctor 10 months later who could see her. "Once you have (insurance), you actually still don't have it because it's still a struggle to find someone," the 20-year-old college student from Bellflower said.Uribe isn't alone. Even though Latinos make up nearly half of California's 12.5 million Medi-Cal enrollees, a report by the independent California HealthCare Foundation found that 36 percent of the Spanish-speaking Medi-Cal population has been told that a physician won't take them, compared to 7 percent of the overall Medi-Cal population. Even those who speak both English and Spanish reported similar difficulty accessing doctors. (Lin, 8/8)

For days, rumors had been circulating among lobbyists at the General Assembly that lawmakers were on the verge of a compromise over Medicaid, the state and federally funded program that provides health care to close to 1.8 million low-income, disabled and elderly North Carolinians. Medicaid reform has been a significant sticking point for several budget cycles, with House members supporting a reform plan that’s got the backing of the medical community and the governor, while members of the Senate have pushed to allow commercial managed care companies to operate in the state. (Hoban, 8/7)

Steve Simmons of Fort Smith was shocked when he learned last week that his health insurance under Arkansas’ private option had been terminated, even though he had done everything that was asked of him to show that he remains eligible for the program. ... The state Department of Human Services is seeking to verify the eligibility of about 600,000 Medicaid recipients by Oct. 1, as required by state and federal laws. The scope of the task has been expanded by the private option, which since January 2014 has used federal Medicaid money to subsidize private health insurance for more than 200,000 people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. DHS canceled coverage at the end of July for 35,668 people, and about 13,000 more are slated for termination at the end of this month. The agency says about 97 percent of the terminations were triggered by failure to respond within 10 days to a notice requiring verification of income level. (Lyon, 8/9)

Before the state finalizes a decision next week that would slash payments for a therapy program for the poor, speech and physical therapists are fighting back, saying the impending budget cuts will harm thousands of children with disabilities. But behind the publicity campaign lobbyists, advocacy groups and some lawmakers are waging against the cuts, a more private battle is taking place — this one among providers themselves. (Walters, 8/8)

In her first year, it looked as if Ariel Reyes was destined to live completely dependent on others. She was born with spina bifida, an incomplete closure of the backbone and membranes around the spinal cord, and doctors didn't know whether she'd be able to walk or perform the simplest of tasks. ... But after years of physical, occupational and speech therapy, the precocious Houston 7-year-old's life has been transformed. By age 4, she no longer needed a wheelchair or a walker, and she is due to start first grade in the fall. Therapy providers are warning that such success stories are at risk because of deep cuts in Medicaid therapy payment rates due to take effect Sept. 1. Home health agencies and outpatient clinics say the reductions threaten to limit access to therapy services, leaving thousands of Texas children unable to overcome the challenges of their disabilities. (Hawryluk, 8/9)

Bubbly and athletic, Heather Padgett, raised in a loving family in the Cincinnati suburbs, would not fit the stereotype of a heroin addict. But the 28-year-old former administrative assistant's addiction was so bad, she used heroin while pregnant. Her twin girls were born nine months ago while she was in treatment, and they suffered tremors from withdrawal. Until she got clean last August, she was part of what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called a heroin epidemic - a 100 percent rise in heroin addiction among Americans between 2002 and 2013. The sharp rise in heroin addiction, coupled with the risks of newborns developing withdrawal symptoms after they are sent home, has led a group of Cincinnati hospitals to try what they say is the first program of its kind in the United States: testing all mothers, or their infants, for opiates regardless of background, not just those who seem high-risk. (Wisniewski, 8/7)

About 30 party guests wearing suits and summer dresses mingled in the candlelit back yard of a small, private home in the Forest Hills neighborhood in Northwest Washington and snacked on hors d’oeuvres to the sound of jazz. Instead of cocktails, they sipped gourmet coffee and tea infused with marijuana. (Gurciullo and Mawdley, 8/9)

John W. Huffman is his name. But he is better known by his initials: JWH. In the world of synthetic drugs, few letters carry greater notoriety. They have materialized on thousands of advertisements selling what are known as synthetic cannabinoids or marijuana. And government authorities have banned nine JWH substances, making him arguably the nation’s most prolific inventor of outlawed synthetic marijuana. Huffman’s compounds, experts say, laid some of the earliest groundwork for what has become a scourge of cheaply made, mass-produced synthetic drugs wreaking havoc in the District and beyond. (McCoy, 8/9)

An outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the South Bronx appeared to be ebbing on Friday, even as city and state officials jockeyed to show how they were responding to the airborne illness. ... Since the city learned of the outbreak in late July, health officials investigated the area, eventually narrowing in on five water-cooling towers in the South Bronx that were found to have the legionella bacteria. On Thursday, city health officials issued an order requiring buildings with the towers to inspect and clean them within two weeks. That, apparently, was not sufficient for the state. On Friday, state health officials convened a meeting and news conference with investigators from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at the Manhattan office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. (Hu and Remnick, 8/7)

This week, opponents of the measure mobilized to spread the word that the bill, which comes before an Assembly committee hearing on Tuesday, would cost the state millions in research, trigger an exodus of talented scientists to other states and rob patients with illnesses such as Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's disease of an important source of hope. (Johnson, 8/7)

Los Angeles County supervisors are poised to decide whether to go forward with a proposed overhaul of three health agencies, the latest in a series of moves to restructure county government since last year's election ushered in a new board majority. In January, Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich proposed a merger of the Department of Health Services, which runs county hospitals and clinics; the Department of Public Health, which investigates disease outbreaks, inspects restaurants and runs substance abuse treatment and STD prevention programs; and the Department of Mental Health, which oversees treatment programs for county residents struggling with the most severe forms of mental illness. (Sewell, 8/10)

A recent audit showed that an eastern Kansas school district could save money by employing health aides instead of nurses, but the district's recent superintendent said nurses are worth the extra money because of the services they can provide. A Legislative Post Audit study of staffing and other practices at Auburn-Washburn Unified School District 437 showed the 6,200-student district could save $68,000 a year by replacing four of its 10 nurses with health aides. The switch also would save the state $9,000 a year in pension funding because lower pay would mean lower retirement obligations. (8/9)

Many people have taken a CPR or a first-aid course, but not all that many have had a chance to put those lifesaving skills to use. Most people will never encounter a stranger having a heart attack in the grocery store, said Alissa LeRoux Smith, community health manager for Fairview Southdale Hospital in Edina, but with one in five Americans diagnosed with a mental illness, many will one day witness a person in the throes of a mental health crisis. For Fairview, this concern became apparent last year when the health system conducted its annual community needs assessment. In response, Fairview decided to conduct a series of adult mental health first-aid trainings based on a program created in Australia in 2001 and brought to the United States in 2008 by the National Council for Behavioral Healthcare. (Steiner, 8/7)

Across the country, psychiatrists are in short supply. In most Wisconsin counties, fewer than one psychiatrist is available to care for every 30,000 people, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The need for child psychiatrists is even greater. (Hauer, 8/8)

Brigham and Women’s Hospital is co- developing a women’s health center in Shanghai, a deal that matches parent Partners HealthCare’s drive into new markets with growing demand for better medical care. The tie-up extends a relationship with Jiahui International Hospital, a 500-bed facility under construction in Shanghai for which Partners is working as a long-term consultant. (Dayal McCluskey, 8/10)

At Atrius Health, a large medical group, more doctors are leaving their doors open until 8 p.m. Tufts Medical Center is taking online appointments for its emergency room. Several hospital networks are building walk-in clinics for urgent care. Doctors have started seeing patients through video chats. And apps are being built that will let consumers make appointments and view medical information from their phones, the way consumers already access so many other services. (Dayal McCluskey and Luna, 8/8)

Wyoming has not done enough to adopt policies and laws that a national organization favors in fighting cancer, a report by the group says. For example, the state has not raised the tax on cigarettes or created a smoke-free Wyoming, says the American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network. (8/8)

Karen Wininger keeps raising a fear to the staff at her new nursing home. Several times a day, she asks if she's going to be taken somewhere else. The 75-year-old woman expresses her anxiety in a voice so soft it's barely audible. Davis Center staff members lean down to her wheelchair, sometimes putting their ears inches from her mouth when she speaks. They reassure her, time and again, that she can stay. (Leys, 8/9)

A transgender California prison inmate will be paroled soon, rendering moot a controversial court order requiring the state to pay for gender reassignment surgery, state prison officials said late Friday. Michelle Lael-Norsworthy, for whom the state was ordered earlier this year to provide the surgery, will be released within about a week, a spokesman for the state said. Separately on Friday the state reached a settlement with another transgender woman inmate, Shiloh Quine, agreeing to provider her surgery and transfer her to a women's prison. (Bernstein, 8/7)

Henry Smilie, the CEO of Home Physician Services, a Chicago-based health care company, was arrested on allegations he participated in billing Medicare for as much as $1.2 million in fraudulent charges. Authorities used an undercover source to build a case that Home Physician Services was billing care for a homebound patient even though the man was walking about his neighborhood, according to a report by the Chicago Tribune. Authorities were also told by a former employee of the company that Smilie told him to “make it up” if services rendered did not qualify for Medicare payments, the report added. (8/7)

Fairfax County [Virginia] is launching a program to reduce the number of mentally ill inmates at its jail by diverting nonviolent offenders experiencing crises into treatment instead of incarceration. The move follows the high-profile case of Natasha McKenna, a schizophrenic woman who died in February after a team of sheriff’s deputies at the jail repeatedly used a Taser on her and hit her when she resisted their efforts to transfer her to another facility. About 40 percent of the jail’s 1,100 inmates suffer from mental illness, drug or alcohol addiction, or both, the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office has said. (Jouvenal, 8/8)

Federal investigators have confirmed that a lethal cocktail of prescription drugs killed Marine Corps veteran Jason Simcakoski, a psychiatric patient at the Tomah, Wisconsin, veterans hospital known as “Candy Land” for its rampant use of opiates. The inspector general’s report comes nearly a year after Simcakoski’s death on Aug. 30, 2014, in the psychiatric ward of the Tomah VA Medical Center, after he was prescribed yet another opiate to go with more than a dozen other drugs he had been issued. He was being treated for anxiety after entering the facility earlier that month, saying he felt suicidal. (Caina Calvan, 8/7)

The pace is rarely slow at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center during weekends. But it was heart-poundingly faster when Live Nation Entertainment's Hard Summer music festival came into town, with ambulances sending overdosing concertgoers from the Los Angeles County fairgrounds. Dr. Bradford Hardesty saw one man so combative that he had to be sedated to keep him safe, as well as the nurses and doctors. His heart rate was up to more than 200 beats per minute — double the normal rate. “It had taken multiple police officers to hold him down. It took almost five or six staff members here,” Hardesty said. (Lin and Winton, 8/7)

Harm reduction centers — where drug users and sex workers can get clean needles, syringes, free condoms and HIV prevention information — have existed for decades. They’ve generally operated on the outskirts of the health care system and pieced together shoestring budgets with the help of state and federal programs as well as private donations. But harm reduction centers are increasingly trying to reposition themselves as a commodity for hospitals and insurers because of their unique experience in coordinating care for high-risk and often marginalized patients. (Gillespie, 8/10)

A federal appeals court rejected yet another legal challenge to Obamacare's individual mandate Friday -- so resoundingly, in fact, that even the dissenting judges dismissed the challengers' core constitutional argument. The suit -- Sissel v. the Department of Health and Human Services -- was brought by artist Matthew Sissel of Washington, who objected to the requirement in the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that virtually all adult Americans carry health insurance. Backed by the Pacific Legal Foundation, he argued that the individual mandate was unconstitutional because it was a revenue-raising measure (that is, a tax) that originated in the Senate, contrary to the constitutional requirement that all revenue bills originate in the House. (Jon Healey, 8/7)

Everyone likes having health insurance. Nobody likes paying new taxes. So the growing campaign against Obamacare's tax on expensive health plans was to be expected. But this tax deals with a root problem in the U.S. health-care system, and it would be better to fix its eminently fixable flaws than to kill it outright. The tax is meant to address a critical weakness in the way Americans pay for their health insurance: The coverage they get from their employers -- unlike salaries and other forms of compensation -- is not subject to income or payroll taxes. (8/7)

What did the men who would be president talk about during last week’s prime-time Republican debate? Well, there were 19 references to God, while the economy rated only 10 mentions. Republicans in Congress have voted dozens of times to repeal all or part of Obamacare, but the candidates only named President Obama’s signature policy nine times over the course of two hours. ... Strange, isn’t it? The shared premise of everyone on the Republican side is that the Obama years have been a time of policy disaster on every front. Yet the candidates on that stage had almost nothing to say about any of the supposed disaster areas. (Paul Krugman, 8/10)

The Department of Health and Human Services agency known as CMS oversees Medicare and Medicaid, among other programs. It is responsible for a trillion dollars in annual spending, more than a hundred million beneficiaries, 39% of total health spending, and 43% of hospital revenues. Daily decisions at CMS can affect millions of lives and billions of dollars. (Drew Altman, 8/10)

Ten Republican presidential hopefuls took to the debate stage last night to prove their conservative bona fides. They swore they'd unravel President Barack Obama's legacy. But there was one place they barely went: repealing Obamacare. ... candidates mentioned Obamacare exactly six times during the course of a two-hour debate. Only one candidate, Scott Walker, uttered the Republican rallying cry: "Repeal Obamacare." The near-complete absence of Obama's health overhaul is remarkable. The rhetorical shift shows a fundamental change in the calculus of Obamacare: It's one thing to talk about dismantling a theoretical law. It's another to take away insurance that tens of millions of Americans now receive. (Sarah Kliff, 8/7)

Californians got a double dose of good health care news late last month. The number of Californians who have trouble finding a doctor or paying their medical bills has sharply declined since the Affordable Care Act took effect. And premiums charged by private insurers have risen only modestly, contrary to warnings that insurers were likely to get double-digit premium increases. (8/10)

As Gov. Bill Walker’s campaign promise to expand Medicaid in Alaska without the pesky Legislature’s approval chugs along, it only gets curiouser and curiouser. There are reasons galore to question the program’s fait accompli expansion as of Sept. 1: We are broke and may get broker; Walker could be breaking the law; the idea stinks as public policy; expansion without the Legislature presents a separation-of-powers thingy; it could shred the economy; arguments supporting expansion are questionable; it hoses the elderly and military families; and, perhaps worse, it could threaten education, pensions and other critical spending. That is just for openers. (Paul Jenkins, 8/8)

Like many Americans, my wife and I have watched the Planned Parenthood undercover videos in horror. ... Luckily, members of the U.S. Senate watched these videos with the same horror we did, and held a vote on legislation that would end taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood while fully funding women's access to health care. Every Republican senator — except for one — joined two Democrats in voting to advance this measure. The lone Republican to vote against this bill? U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois. (Bobby Schilling, 8/8)

For squishy pro-choicers -- a category I have spent many years in myself -- believing that free birth control can reduce abortion to negligible levels is very convenient. It is the "torture doesn't work" of the feminist movement. Instead of forcing a hard moral choice between the autonomy of the woman and the value of the potential life that is terminated, belief in the birth control fairy lets us off the hook. It would certainly be lovely if programs such as the Colorado Family Planning Initiative could make abortion so rare that it no longer required us to make those moral and political choices. But hoping for something to be right doesn't make it so -- and neither does bad data. (Megan McArdle, 8/7)

Recent news reports suggest that despite efforts by the Department of Veterans Affairs, many veterans continue to wait a long time to get medical care at a VA facility. Yet a simple administrative change could reduce or even eliminate many of the waiting lists. I recently retired after a 25-year career as a VA physician, the last 14 years of which I spent providing primary care at an outpatient clinic. A large proportion of the veterans I saw were already receiving care from private doctors. However, to get their medications at a lower cost, they had to enroll in the VA system—because VA pharmacies can only fill prescriptions written by a VA health-care provider. So these veterans had to get in line along with the many others who truly do need VA health care. (Nasser Gayed, 8/9)

Ralph Nader goes way back with Gov. Jerry Brown. Their relationship dates to the 1970s, when both men were eagerly shaking things up from their respective perches on the progressive left. Between them, they've run for president eight times. In 1992, Brown said he'd appoint Nader to his Cabinet if elected to the White House. But when I spoke with Nader this week, the man who wrote the playbook for consumer advocacy was mad as hell at his former comrade. ... What has Nader so cheesed is Brown's reluctance to take a leadership role in fixing California's Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, a 1975 statute that Brown signed into law during his first stint as governor. (David Lazarus, 8/7)

Heart disease is the world’s No. 1 killer, despite advances in medical technology, as well as public health initiatives that have eased the burden of heart disease drastically. While one marvels at the progress, we often ignore how heart-disease patients die. Patients with heart disease are more likely to suffer excessively at the end of life than those with other conditions. While surveys show that people overwhelmingly want to die at home, patients with cardiovascular disorders are much less likely to do so than patients with other diseases, such as cancer. (Haider Javed Warraich, 8/10)

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan on Thursday for a coordinated attack on mental illness, violence and homelessness. ... For the relatively small number of people whose untreated psychiatric and drug problems threaten public safety, his plan promises to patch some holes in a threadbare web of care. People who otherwise end up on the streets or in jail might instead get a hospital bed, therapy and medication. (8/7)