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Starting on Sunday, health care consumers shopping on the Affordable Care Act’s federal website, HealthCare.gov, can see the cost and benefits of insurance plans for 2016, the Obama administration said Friday. But they will have to wait a little longer for new features that will allow them to search for plans that cover specific doctors and prescription drugs, administration officials said. (Pear, 10/23)

Tests on both new features are well underway, and officials at the Department of Health and Human Services are encouraged by the results. But insurers have provided HHS with only half of the information that consumers need to make educated coverage decisions. Having learned from the premature launch of HealthCare.gov in October 2013, HHS officials won’t unveil the new “doctor lookup” and “prescription drug lookup” features until they’re sure the information and technology are solid. (Pugh, 10/23)

Consumers will see a raft of improvements to the federal website for obtaining health insurance, government officials said Friday, though they cautioned that some enhancements are unlikely to be ready in time for the start of open enrollment next month. Open enrollment under the Affordable Care Act begins Nov. 1 in the 38 states that use the website, HealthCare.gov. It also launches in most of the states that run their own sign-up sites. (Armour, 10/23)

Premiums are expected to rise in many parts of the country as a new sign-up season under President Barack Obama's health care law starts Nov. 1. ... Independent experts are forecasting bigger premium increases in 2016 than last year, averaging from the high single digits to the teens. Next week the government will release a master file that researchers use to piece together national trends. Averages won't tell the story, because health care is local. Premiums can vary widely from state to state, and within a state. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 10/23)

The new website estimates what individuals' upfront payments and out-of-pocket costs are likely to be in different plans. It asks customers to select whether their health-care use is likely to be low, medium or high, in order to display what their spending on doctor visits and drugs is likely to be. It also highlights additional subsidies that may be available to some low-income people in mid-level silver plans. (Tracer, 10/23)

Open enrollment will run from Nov. 1 to Jan. 31. Those who don't have health insurance in 2016 - and aren't eligible for a hardship exemption - will face a penalty of $695 per person on their taxes for the year. Many consumers have purchased plans based on their low premiums only to find their doctors or drugs weren't covered and that high deductibles and cost-sharing made them far from ideal choices. About 10 million people have bought and paid for plans on the federal and state exchanges for 2015. (O'Donnell, 10/23)

By this third year, [Andy Slavitt, acting CMS administrator,] and the other officials said, the Web site will be 40 percent faster than a year ago and will, in spots, use vocabulary that is easier to understand. Computer screens will remind insurance shoppers that they need to submit certain information, such as Social Security numbers, to avoid problems later on. And a new “out-of-pocket calculator” will show insurance shoppers what various health plans would cost them in deductibles and co-payments, as well as monthly premiums. (Goldstein, 10/23)

Tens of thousands of people with modest incomes are at risk of losing health insurance subsidies in January because they did not file income tax returns, federal officials and consumer advocates say. Under federal rules, anyone who receives an insurance subsidy must file a tax return to verify that the person was eligible and received the proper amount of financial assistance based on household income. (Pear, 10/25)

Health-insurance holdouts — people who don’t want or haven’t found coverage in the era of Obamacare — will be the focus starting Nov. 1 as state and federal officials launch the Affordable Care Act’s third open enrollment period. The stakes are higher this time for everyone involved. For people without health insurance, the fines for ducking the ACA’s individual mandate are rising sharply this year — to $695 per adult — to the point where advocates say it might be better just to buy a policy than to pay the penalty. (Aleccia, 10/25)

The renowned D.C. eatery will serve up health insurance along with its half-smokes late at night as part of the drive to sign up many of the remaining uninsured — particularly the so-called young invincibles amid signs that Obamacare enrollment is trending older and sicker. Recruiting younger, healthier people is a make-or-break issue as the health law’s third open enrollment season gets underway Nov. 1. While the administration is tempering expectations by projecting only modest sign-up growth, it is intent on recruiting healthier and therefore less-costly people in a bid to keep a lid on rising premiums and ensure the new insurance marketplaces thrive. (Cook and Pradhan, 10/24)

Working on a shoestring compared to past years, 10 community groups will help Illinois consumers sign up for insurance during the third annual enrollment period under President Barack Obama's health care law. The Illinois Department of Insurance announced Friday that $5 million in federal funding would go to groups mostly located in Chicago and its suburbs. None of the groups serving southern Illinois last year — the Illinois Migrant Council, the Illinois Public Health Association or the Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation — received funding. (Johnson, 10/23)

Survey data released Thursday show that 36% of uninsured Californians are unaware of the premium subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act. In contrast, only 16% didn't know about the tax penalty for lacking health coverage. About 90% of the 1.3 million Covered California enrollees receive subsidies, and more than 200,000 people pay less than $50 a month thanks to that financial assistance. (Terhune, 10/23)

Many Californians don't know they qualify for coverage help in the form of federal subsidies, according to a survey released on Thursday by Covered California. According to the survey, 36% of Californians without health insurance did not know they might qualify for tax subsidies from the federal government to help pay for health insurance through the Covered California exchange. (Gorn, 10/23)

West Virginia has done well in cutting the number of residents without health insurance, but significant health challenges still remain, Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, leader of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said Friday night. Speaking to a ballroom full of health care advocates at the University of Charleston, Burwell praised the state for its implementation of the Affordable Care Act. (Gutman, 10/23)

The grim announcements keep coming, picking up pace in recent weeks. About a third, or eight, alternative health insurers created under President Obama’s health care law to spur competition that might have made coverage less expensive for consumers are shutting down. The three largest are among that number. Only 14 of the so-called cooperatives are still standing, some precariously. (Abelson and Goodnough, 10/25)

The sudden collapse of nonprofit health plans supported by tens of millions of dollars in Obamacare loans is igniting a new political wildfire over the health law — and it’s playing out in a tight gubernatorial race in Kentucky. The recent demise of Kentucky Health Cooperative, a nonprofit startup seeded with federal loan dollars under the Affordable Care Act, is part of a bigger, national trend. More than a third of the 23 nonprofit health plans created under Obamacare with $2.4 billion in federal loan dollars have collapsed, and most experts predict more failures on the horizon. Late last week, South Carolina’s co-op became the ninth to fail, following similar crashes in Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska and New York. (Demko, 10/26)

Opponents of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul are taking yet another challenge to the law to the Supreme Court, and say they will be back with more if this one fails. A new appeal being filed Monday by the Pacific Legal Foundation contends that the law violates the provision of the Constitution that requires tax-raising bills to originate in the House of Representatives. (Sherman, 10/25)

Kansas is teaming up with Texas and Louisiana in a lawsuit against the federal government to oppose an Affordable Care Act health insurance provider fee. In the lawsuit filed Thursday, Kansas is asking for a refund of $32.8 million. (Eveld, 10/23)

It's a good thing for him that Mitt Romney isn't running for president again. The 2012 GOP presidential nominee — who has still been bandied about as a potential candidate — just embraced everything that made many conservatives skeptical of him. He admitted that the health care plan he instituted as governor of Massachusetts was the precursor to Obamacare. (Taylor, 10/23)

Mitt Romney stirred up a controversy Friday after he appeared to praise Obamacare, the law he pledged to repeal when he ran for president in 2012, before later walking back his comments. (Wallace, 10/23)

Stemberg, he told the Globe, encouraged him to implement health reform when he served as governor, telling Romney that giving people access to health care would be a way of doing good. It was an idea, the Globe reported, "which Romney said he hadn’t really considered before." "Without Tom pushing it, I don’t think we would have had Romneycare,” Romney told the Globe. “Without Romneycare, I don’t think we would have Obamacare. So without Tom, a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.” That seems like a contradictory position from a former presidential candidate who wrote a fundraising pitch in 2010 that started, "President Obama's healthcare bill is unhealthy for America." (Johnson, 10/23)

House Republicans on Friday adopted a budget reconciliation package that would repeal core components of the Affordable Care Act and cut off government funding of Planned Parenthood. The move drew criticism from Democrats, who said the measure was wasting valuable time because it has no chance of becoming law and comes just days before the government will default on its debt unless Congress takes action. While the reconciliation package can be adopted in the Republican-controlled Senate with a simple majority — circumventing the usual procedural obstacles — it faces certain veto by President Obama. (Herszenhorn, 10/23)

House Republicans pushed forward with another vote to roll back the Affordable Care Act on Friday, passing a bill that would repeal several major pillars of President Obama’s landmark 2010 law, including the requirement that Americans have health coverage. The legislation, the latest of more than 50 bills by congressional Republicans to repeal all or part of the health law, would also halt federal funding for Planned Parenthood. (Levey, 10/23)

The budget reconciliation bill faces an uncertain fate in the Senate, even though it requires only a simple majority of 51 senators to pass it instead of the super-majority of 60 senators usually needed to approve major legislation. Three conservative Republicans — Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Mike Lee of Utah and Marco Rubio of Florida — said they will oppose it because it does not repeal Obamacare outright. (Kelly, 10/23)

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation on Friday targeting President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act that, like 60 other attempts before it, stands little chance of becoming law. The measure uses special budget rules that give it a greater chance of passing the Senate and reaching Obama's desk than previous efforts, but Obama has said he plans to veto it. (Sullivan and Lawder, 10/23)

House Republicans voted Friday to repeal the core provisions of the Affordable Care Act and strip federal funds from Planned Parenthood, using an expedited process designed to send those proposals to President Barack Obama's desk for the first time. The 240-189 vote forwards the measure to the Senate, where Republicans could bypass Democratic opposition and send the bill to the president. Obama would veto it, though, and Democrats have enough votes to block an override. (Miller and Dopp, 10/23)

House Republicans this week appeared committed to passing measures that President Obama almost certainly won’t sign, including a bill that would put the government at risk of defaulting on its bills. The GOP-controlled chamber on Friday adopted a measure -- through a process called “budget reconciliation” -- that repeals large parts of ObamaCare and defunds Planned Parenthood. (10/25)

Senate Republicans’ carefully-laid plans to use a powerful fast-track tool to send an Obamacare repeal to President Barack Obama is running into fresh resistance, with new opposition from high-profile conservatives and bubbling concerns from moderates. For months, the GOP-led Congress has planned to use the procedural maneuver known as “reconciliation” to finally shepherd a major Obamacare repeal bill to the president’s desk. The fast-track process ensures Democrats in the Senate can’t filibuster the legislation and foil yet another attempt to gut the law. (Kim, 10/25)

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Sunday suggested he would reshape Medicare and Medicaid but said he wouldn’t eliminate the government health programs entirely. The former neurosurgeon, speaking on the Sunday-morning political shows, struggled to answer specific questions about his plans for the programs. A campaign spokesman declined to provide details about Mr. Carson’s proposals and said the campaign hasn’t yet released a formal plan. (Kendall, 10/25)

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who is making inroads against front-runner Donald Trump, on Sunday denied he would end the Medicare healthcare program for the elderly, saying he would provide the option of using a government-backed savings account to buy health insurance. Interviewed on "Fox News Sunday," Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, said, "The program that I have outlined using health savings accounts ... largely eliminates the need for people to be dependent on government programs" like Medicare. (10/25)

Ben Carson said Sunday that he no longer wants to dismantle Medicare and defended the policy switch, while also responding to the latest attack from fellow Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Carson, who leads Trump in Iowa, according to new polls, acknowledged that months ago he indeed wanted to end Medicare but said he changed his mind after talking to a lot of economists. (10/25)

Donald J. Trump, who is rarely at a loss for words, admitted “I don’t know what’s going on” when confronted by Ben Carson’s surge past him in early-voting Iowa, where Mr. Trump had led the Republican presidential field for months. ... On Facebook, Mr. Carson answers nightly questions from his 4.3 million “friends,” covering personal topics (his ailing mother is “much better”), policies like a recent suggestion that he would end Medicare (he denied it) and the campaign (the debates are “just a boxing match”). (Gabriel, 10/25)

[T]he White House is a long way from the operating room, where the doctor with the technical skill unquestionably is the one in charge, not the best deal-maker or diplomat seeking consensus. Carson's lack of executive experience produces deep skepticism from critics in both parties. Yet he's among the leaders in the Republican presidential campaign. In a new Associated Press-GfK poll, Carson has the highest positive and lowest negative rating of any Republican sized up by registered GOP voters, with 65 percent giving him a favorable rating and just 13 percent rating him unfavorably. ... Pediatricians were dismayed when Carson questioned whether children get too many vaccines at once, even as he disputed any link with autism. And though he opposes abortion rights, Carson has defended co-authoring a 1992 study that used fetal tissue, telling CNN there's a difference between performing abortions and using tissue someone else already stored. (Neergaard and Peoples, 10/26)

Ben Carson argued Sunday that abortion should be outlawed in almost all cases, and he likened women who terminate their pregnancies to "slave owners." Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether a woman should have the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, Carson, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, acknowledged upfront that the choice of words would be controversial. (Williams, 10/25)

Dr. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon-turned-insurgent presidential contender, compared abortion to slavery on Sunday, adding that he does not support exceptions for rape and incest when it comes to outlawing the practice. (Stein, 10/25)

A trade group for abortion providers is asking a top House Republican to investigate after secretly recorded videos were posted online by a conservative blogger who wrote that he got the footage from a congressional source. The National Abortion Federation said Friday that the videos were recorded at recent meetings by the Center for Medical Progress, a small group of anti-abortion activists. The center’s furtive recordings of Planned Parenthood officials discussing their retrieval of fetal tissue have sparked an uproar by conservatives and unsuccessful efforts by congressional Republicans to cut Planned Parenthood’s federal funds. (Fram, 10/23)

The pharma sector needs more than medicine to get over its latest malaise. Shock allegations this week concerning Valeant's business practices poured oil on the fire in the pharmaceuticals sector, which has gone from hero to zero in little more than the blink of an eye. (Carnegie, 10/23)

Around the Phoenix-area offices of mail-order pharmacy Philidor Rx Services LLC, employees said they often ran into a friendly colleague named Bijal Patel who tracked prescriptions. But when the employees got an email from the colleague, they say he used a different name: Peter Parker, the alter ego of Spider-Man. He was among a few workers at Philidor offices who went by one name in person and another in emails during the past two years, according to three former employees. Mr. Patel and the other people weren’t employed by Philidor, though the emails used a Philidor address, these people said. They were employees of drug company Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. (Rockoff and Whalen, 10/25)

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. on Monday said it has formed a special committee to review the charges over its accounting and relationship with mail-order pharmacy Philidor Rx Services. Based on its review conducted to date, the company said, Valeant believes it is in compliance with applicable law. (Beilfuss, 10/26)

Valeant Pharmaceuticals shares stumbled on Monday after it said it has formed a committee to review allegations against the company. Shares of Valeant were about 8 percent lower in premarket trading. "Based on its review conducted to date Valeant also believes that the company is in compliance with applicable law," the company said in a release. (10/26)

As Valeant Pharmaceuticals prepares to defend its drug sales practices to Wall Street on Monday, new details are emerging about the tangled relationships - and litigation - among Valeant’s specialty pharmacy partners. The court cases, which have drawn media attention in recent days, are expected to be addressed during Monday morning's investor call, a person familiar with the matter said. Valeant lost more than 30 percent of its market value this past week as the company disclosed details of its relationship to a Pennsylvania-based pharmacy called Philidor Rx Services. (10/25)

After a four-year love affair with healthcare shares, investors are moving on. Selling has spread from biotechs - shaken on Sept. 21 when Hillary Clinton first tweeted concerns about drug prices - to other areas of the healthcare sector. Investors have been dumping shares of everything from hospitals to traditional pharmaceutical companies and insurers in recent weeks. (Valetkevitch and Humer, 10/23)

Gov. Pat McCrory's signature on House Bill 372 wasn't the end of North Carolina's effort to change how the state's $14 billion Medicaid system works. While the political wrangling may be over for the moment, the real work of changing how poor and disabled North Carolinians get health care is just beginning. Administration officials are only in the nascent stages of building the division that will be responsible for crafting and running the new program. (Binker, 10/14)

An injury at age 5 cost Jadon Wade his ability to talk or move his arms and legs, but not his infectious laugh. Jadon delights in “knock-knock” jokes. Now 12, he’s happiest swinging in a hammock alongside his grandmother and legal guardian, Nancy Richardson .... But if the Ohio Department of Medicaid follows through with its plan to stop funding 68 hours of nursing care for Jadon each week at home, Richardson fears that her grandson might have to move to an institution. (Sutherly, 10/26)

Jason and Jenny [Steinke] talked at length about her worsening asthma. Nearly a decade ago, the 36-year-old had been diagnosed with the condition that inflames and narrows the airways. The asthma flared up every so often, once requiring hospitalization, but hadn’t usually required much attention. Without insurance, Jenny sometimes obtained short-acting inhalers from a community health clinic. Other times, she bought them off friends who had extras. The inhalers usually helped. But over the summer months Jenny needed them more frequently. ... For the Steinkes, insurance coverage had always been out of reach. “It’s just not affordable,” Jason said. Their circumstances were not unique. “Several times a week I see people who have delayed medical care because they don’t have coverage, either Medicaid or insurance,” said Ken Krell, director of critical care at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. “They put off being seen until it’s really dire,” he said. “It’s a very common occurrence.” The results can be deadly. (Ramseth, 10/25)

Talk to most people in health care and they’ll tell you the future of hospitals lies in joining larger systems. Already, three-quarters of Connecticut's 28 general hospitals are either part of larger health systems that operate multiple hospitals, or are in talks to join one. (Levin Becker, 10/26)

Think for a moment about what would happen if you upended the whole system of financial incentives for hospitals. What if you said goodbye to what's known as fee-for-service, where hospitals are paid for each procedure, each visit to the emergency room, each overnight stay? What if, instead, hospitals got a fixed pot of money for the whole year, no matter how many people came through the door? (Cornish, 10/23)

With South Miami-Dade ripe for expansion of the county’s taxpayer-owned hospital network, trustees for Jackson Health System will meet Monday to vote on a plan to renovate two operating rooms in anticipation of providing trauma services at Jackson South Community Hospital in Palmetto Bay. Jackson trustees will be asked to approve $1.8 million for the design and construction of the operating rooms, which are key to the hospital system’s efforts to win state approval for a Level II trauma center in the southern end of the county. (Chang, 10/24)

As crews of workers continue the task of cleaning and mending the shuttered confines of Yadkin Valley Community Hospital, Yadkin County officials report they’ve made progress in once again providing hospital services to their constituents. In August, the county signed agreements with two firms to explore the financial and structural viability of reopening the hospital, which was closed in July by its previous operator, HMC/CAH Consolidated Inc. (Sisk, 10/23)

At a time when the phrase "reducing health care costs" typically means "slowing the growth of health costs," Hennepin County Medical Center has done something significant: It has actually lowered the cost of caring for its patients. (Zdechlik, 10/26)

The Golden State's effort to tackle the issue of skyrocketing drug prices is among the most aggressive in the nation, opening up a wider debate over an industry whose sales account for 10 percent of the nation's $3 trillion in annual health care costs. (Seipel, 10/24)

A U.S. District Court judge on Friday postponed a decision on whether to force Virginia to speed efforts to overhaul how the state treats people with severe disabilities. Judge John A. Gibney said he would rule in December on a Department of Justice request for hard deadlines in implementing changes agreed to in a 2012 court settlement. (Olivo, 10/23)

Supporters of universal health care loaded boxes of resident petitions off an ambulance and onto a stretcher Friday, launching their campaign to make Colorado the first state to opt out of the federal health law and replace it with taxpayer-funded coverage for all. (Wyatt, 10/23)

Gov. Charlie Baker is warning that an increase in premiums for some Medicare recipients could have a major impact on [Mass.] finances. Baker sent a letter Friday to the state's congressional delegation urging them to support efforts in Washington to reduce or eliminate the approximately 50 percent hike in Medicare Part B premiums that is scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1. (10/23)

About 150 clients of the Florida Department of Health’s Children’s Medical Services program in Miami-Dade may have had their personal information compromised after vendors were faxed a clinic roster containing names, birth dates and membership numbers, agency officials reported Friday. Health department officials said that no Social Security numbers, bank accounts or credit card information were compromised. But federal patient privacy laws require healthcare providers to issue a notice to patients whenever personal healthcare information is disclosed without prior authorization. (10/23)

Shots aren’t for everyone, but the manufacturer of a nasal spray version of the vaccine experienced a technical issue early in the season that caused shipping delays. At Forest Park Peds in St. Louis, office manager Gail McCarthy says the clinic has been receiving just a percentage of the FluMist vaccines they’d originally ordered. (Bouscaren, 10/23)

For example, Planned Parenthood South Texas was told to produce five years of records — whether electronic, paper or ultrasound — concerning any patients billed to Medicaid who had an abortion in which any part of the fetus was removed or preserved for research use. Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast was to turn over a complete copy of certain patients’ records, including doctors’ orders, nursing notes and lab tests, as well as the center’s appointment books, patient sign-in sheets and contracts. “We’re concerned about the breadth and depth of what they’re asking for,” said Sarah Wheat, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas. (Lewin, 10/23)

Health officials across the country face a vexing quandary – how do you help the sickest and neediest patients get healthier and prevent their costly visits to emergency rooms? Los Angeles County is testing whether community health workers like Lopez may be one part of the answer. Lopez is among 25 workers employed by the county to do everything possible to remove obstacles standing in the way of patients’ health. That may mean coaching them about their diseases, ensuring they take their medications or scheduling medical appointments. Their help can extend beyond the clinic walls, too, to such things as finding housing or getting food stamps. (Gorman, 10/26)

The Obama Administration has a new plan to combat the abuse of heroin and prescription drugs. The president is calling for a shift away from incarceration, and towards prevention, and a Florida Democratic Representative is working on just that: a needle exchange program. (Payne, 10/25)

ObamaCare’s image of invincibility is increasingly being exposed as a political illusion, at least for those with permission to be honest about the evidence. Witness the heretofore unknown phenomenon of a “free” entitlement that its beneficiaries can’t afford or don’t want. This month the Health and Human Services Department dramatically discounted its internal estimate of how many people will join the state insurance exchanges in 2016. There are about 9.1 million enrollees today, and the consensus estimate—by the Congressional Budget Office, the Medicare actuary and independent analysts like Rand Corp.—was that participation would surge to some 20 million. But HHS now expects enrollment to grow to between merely 9.4 million and 11.4 million. (10/25)

[S]ome Freedom Caucus members consider Ryan ... to be dangerously moderate too. Never mind that Mitt Romney chose Ryan as his running mate in 2012 because the congressman had championed bills to slash domestic spending and turn Medicare into a voucher plan. Ultras in the Freedom Caucus distrust Ryan because, as chairman of the House's tax-writing committee, he made a bipartisan budget deal to keep the government running in 2013. ... Tea party organizations are already raising money from supporters with appeals to stop any more Ryanesque budget deals. The GOP presidential campaign will complicate the new speaker's life too. Already, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has demanded that the House include the complete repeal of Obama's healthcare plan in any budget deal, a reprise of his demand that touched off a 16-day government shutdown in 2013. (Doyle McManus, 10/25)

But now it’s 2015 in America, and Mr. Romney’s party doesn’t want people who get things done. On the contrary, it actively hates government programs that improve American lives, especially if they help Those People. And this means that Mr. Romney can’t celebrate his signature achievement in public life, the Massachusetts health reform that served as a template for Obamacare. This has to hurt. Indeed, a few days ago Mr. Romney couldn’t help himself: he boasted to the Boston Globe that “Without Romneycare, we wouldn’t have had Obamacare” and that as a result “a lot of people wouldn’t have health insurance.” And it’s true! (Paul Krugman, 10/26)

The American Cancer Society issued new guidelines last week saying that women with an average risk of breast cancer should start having mammograms at 45, five years later than it had long advocated. This presents yet another wrinkle for women who are trying to make informed decisions about their health care, especially when other respected groups suggest earlier or later ages. (10/26)

Over the past three decades, more and more women have opted to get mammograms, which, despite some discomfort and anxiety, provide the best way to detect breast cancer early. The system has worked: In the same period, the rate of breast cancer deaths has been cut by one-third. That can’t be coincidence, and most everyone, including the influential American Cancer Society, agrees that early detection saves lives. (10/25)

Cancer screening is like searching for needles in a haystack. The needles are the women with breast cancer. The hay is the healthy population. We don’t have a magnet to magically detect the needles. Instead, we sift through each piece of hay: The fewer the needles, the harder they are to find. That’s why we don’t screen women in their 30s. Even though cases of fatal breast cancer exist in this group, they’re very rare. Meanwhile, for women 50 and over, there’s broad consensus about recommended screening. (Ruth Etzioni and Kevin Oeffinger, 10/25)

For a century, the American Cancer Society has held up “early detection” of breast and other cancers as its mantra. Once, that made sense. But over the past few decades, the limitations of this approach have become increasingly apparent to researchers, physicians and other advocacy groups: Early detection may not save lives, and it can lead to unnecessary procedures. Yet the ACS has continued to insist that early detection was still the best way to find and treat the disease .... Why did it take the nation’s most fervent anti-cancer group so long to grapple with new facts? The answer is a reminder that the best way to fight disease is with evidence — and that we should not pay for tests that are not effective, even if they are popular. (Barron H. Lerner, 10/23)

It has been nearly four months since videos surfaced showing Planned Parenthood employees discussing their role in making the organs of aborted fetuses available for medical research. Despite claims by the antiabortion activists who produced the highly edited videos, there has been no evidence of wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood. Nonetheless, the potentially damaging fallout continues, with states moving to yank funding from the women’s health organization and creation of a special committee by House Republicans who want to defund the group. Particularly worrisome is the interest of some states in limiting the use of fetal tissue for medical research. (10/23)

While Republican leaders in Raleigh refuse to expand Medicaid, Dr. Dorothy DeGuzman spends her days in rural Yancey County dealing with the consequences. DeGuzman works for Celo Health Center in Burnsville, a nonprofit, community-owned family practice that serves low-income people in the mountainous county north of Asheville. Most of the center’s patients do not have private health insurance, and their health reflects a lack of access to doctors and preventative programs that would help reduce obesity, hypertension, smoking and substance abuse. The medical care gap shows up most profoundly in the pregnant women DeGuzman sees. (Ned Barnett, 10/24)

Last week, President Obama announced a multipronged effort to address the epidemic of addiction to prescription opiate painkillers in this country. This is long overdue and, unfortunately, like most action on addiction and mental illness, comes after the problem has reached Stage 4 — and is that much harder to treat — when it could have been diagnosed and treated at Stage 1, or perhaps even prevented altogether. (Patrick J. Kennedy, 10/23)

The significance became clear after I took care of my own red blanket patients: It was a marker of status. At that hospital, patient relations gave them to some C.E.O.s, celebrities and trustees’ friends. Although we weren’t instructed on how to treat the V.I.P. patients, the blanket spoke for itself: “This patient is important.” Today, I work at a hospital in Massachusetts that gives the same white blankets to everyone. Yet I continue to see red blanket patients. Here, they are called “pavilion patients” because they pay extra to stay in private hotel-like rooms on the top floor, which come with gourmet food, plush bath robes and small business centers. (Shoa L. Clarke, 10/26)

After decades of inaction, concern about the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture is finally gaining traction, not because of federal regulations or congressional legislation, but because smart people around the nation are listening to consumers and thinking creatively about new ways of doing things. Antibiotic resistance is a serious global problem that is growing worse. (10/25)

This is shaping up to be another banner year for medical progress. Regulators have already approved 28 new medicines, roughly on last year's pace of 41 new drug approvals - the most since the Clinton administration. But in future years, the list of medical breakthroughs could prove much shorter. In response to the high cost of certain medications - most notably Turing Pharmaceuticals' admittedly outrageous 5,000 percent price hike on a generic AIDS drug - political leaders are proposing caps on drug prices. (Wayne Winegarden, 10/26)

The Obama administration last week offered the outline of a rescue plan to help the island and the 3.5 million American citizens who live there. The plan would impose new oversight on the island’s finances and expand access to government programs like Medicaid and the earned-income tax credit. Crucially, it asks Congress to change the law so that Puerto Rico’s territorial government and its municipalities can seek bankruptcy protection. (10/24)

The Nugent family lost their baby Carlie in 2000, in the Charlotte suburb of Harrisburg. She died from a disease called severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID, which leaves babies highly vulnerable to infections that can kill them. It’s sometimes called “bubble boy disease” because of a child who lived for 12 years in a plastic, germ-free bubble. A screening test and then a bone marrow transplant to treat the disease can give such babies a tremendous chance at survival. Last week, Gov. Pat McCrory signed a law to test all newborns for SCID. It is the humane and hopeful thing to do, and as McCrory noted, it can save money for the health care system because the diseases that attack those infants with SCID are expensive to treat. (10/25)

[Treasury Department counselor Antonio Weiss] advocated not only permitting Puerto Rico’s municipalities and public corporations to file for bankruptcy, which would affect about a third of its $73 billion debt, but also extending the bankruptcy option to the commonwealth government itself. He called for a permanent fix to the island’s Medicaid program, which faces crippling uncertainty because of limits on federal assistance unlike those of the 50 states. And to address its lagging labor force participation – a huge drag on economic growth – he proposed creating an Earned Income Tax Credit to encourage low-wage workers’ return to the job market. (10/24)