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President Barack Obama will propose reducing the bite of the unpopular "Cadillac tax" on high-cost health insurance plans in the budget he releases next week, in a bid to preserve a key element of the Affordable Care Act. Jason Furman, the White House Council of Economic Advisers chairman, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that the president’s plan would reflect regional differences in the cost of health care, reducing the tax’s bite where care is particularly expensive. (Greiling Keane, 2/3)

President Barack Obama will propose tailoring the controversial "Cadillac tax" on expensive private health insurance plans to reflect regional differences when he releases his 2017 budget plan next week, a senior White House adviser said in an article released on Wednesday. Obama's proposal would reduce the bite of the unpopular tax by raising the threshold where it takes effect in areas where healthcare is particularly expensive, according to the article in the New England Journal of Medicine co-written by Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. (Walsh, 2/3)

The Obama administration is working to build evidence supporting increased federal and state spending on anti-violence, social service and other programs to improve life in poor neighborhoods and limit the growth in health care costs. The move comes despite more limited reports done by outside groups and is designed to create a paper trail that makes the need for and efficacy of the programs for Medicare and Medicaid recipients indisputable by showing the cost savings. In the next step in the Affordable Care Act, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will spend nearly $160 million in grants to community groups, health care providers or other public or private entities that will screen patients for unmet social needs and link them with services that help with housing, hunger, interpersonal violence and other social ills. (O'Donnell, 2/3)

Stung by losses under the federal health law, major insurers are seeking to sharply limit how policies are sold to individuals in ways that consumer advocates say seem to discriminate against the sickest and could hold down future enrollment. In recent days Anthem, Aetna and Cigna, all among the top five health insurers, told brokers they will stop paying them sales commissions to sign up most customers who qualify for new coverage outside the normal enrollment period, according to the companies and broker documents. (Hancock, 2/4)

N.C. Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin this week became the latest public official to warn of the harms wreaked by the Affordable Care Act, saying the federal insurance law has destabilized the state’s insurance market and now threatens to leave some residents without options for health insurance. Goodwin expressed his concerns in a letter sent Tuesday to Sylvia Burwell, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as a follow-up to a personal conversation he had with the Obama administration official in November. Goodwin, a Democrat up for re-election this year, warned that the ACA is driving up insurance costs, reducing consumer options and generating unsustainable financial losses for the insurers, with the potential risk that insurers will withdraw from the state altogether. (Murawski, 3/3)

As more requirements of the health care law take effect, income tax filing season becomes more complex for small businesses. Companies required to offer health insurance have new forms to complete providing details of their coverage. Owners whose payrolls have hovered around the threshold where insurance is mandatory need to be sure their coverage — if they offered it last year — was sufficient to avoid penalties. (Rosenberg, 2/3)

Colorado's health insurance exchange reported Tuesday that a record number of residents have signed up for commercial coverage. Since Nov. 1, 211,579 residents enrolled in new policies, renewed existing policies or qualified for medical assistance plans, Connect for Health Colorado announced. (Olinger, 2/2)

As Gov. Matt Bevin prepares to remake Kentucky’s Medicaid program, a new national survey shows what’s at stake: gains in insurance coverage matched only by one other state. Kentucky and Arkansas had the largest drops in the percentage of people without health insurance in the country, according to the Gallup-Healthways survey. In 2013, more than 20 percent of Kentuckians did not have health insurance. By the end of 2015, after the state expanded its Medicaid program and created a health-insurance exchange, that figure was down to 7.5 percent. (Beam and Alonso-Zaldivar, 2/4)

The issue of Medicaid expansion will be back before a Superior Court in Anchorage Thursday morning. The Republican led Legislative Council sued last summer to stop Governor Bill Walker from unilaterally expanding Medicaid. In late August, Judge Frank Pfiffner ruled against a preliminary injunction that would have blocked Medicaid expansion from starting on Sep. 1st. Now both sides will get a chance to make their full oral arguments in front of the judge. Senate Majority leader John Coghill, a Republican from North Pole, says the Governor didn’t give the legislature enough time to come to its own decision on Medicaid expansion. (Feidt, 2/3)

A state court judge is set to hear arguments in a lawsuit challenging Alaska Gov. Bill Walker's authority to expand Medicaid without legislative approval. The case centers on whether the expansion population is a mandatory group for coverage under Medicaid or an optional group. The case was brought by the Legislative Council, which is comprised of House and Senate lawmakers. (Bohrer, 2/4)

A Democratic lawmaker says voters might be able to end the yearslong legislative fight over expanding Medicaid, which would provide health care coverage to more poor Utahns. Rep. Patrice Arent, D-Millcreek, introduced HB275 to create a process to put nonbinding questions on the ballot, and she plans a separate resolution to allow questioning voters this year about Medicaid expansion. It seeks opinions only and would not actually pass legislation. (Davidson, 2/3)

Arent's bill to establish a procedure for submitting nonbinding questions to voters, HB275, was introduced Wednesday, but a second piece of legislation detailing exactly what she wants them to answer is still being drafted. Polls have shown that Utahns favor Medicaid expansion, but majority House Republicans have stopped two attempts by Gov. Gary Herbert to use the hundreds of millions of dollars available under President Barack Obama's health care law. (Riley Roche, 2/3)

Valeant Pharmaceuticals International rationalized substantial increases in the prices of two heart drugs by arguing that the company would merely be taking money from hospitals, not hurting patients, the company’s interim chief executive is expected to tell a congressional panel on Thursday. “Because these drugs are hospital-administered and not purchased by patients directly, increasing the cost of the drugs to hospitals would affect the hospital’s profits on these procedures, but it should not reduce patient access,” the executive, Howard. B. Schiller, said in prepared testimony that was released before a hearing Thursday morning by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. (Pollack, 2/4)

Martin Shkreli, the former drug executive who raised the price of a lifesaving medicine by 5,000 percent, is set to appear as a witness at a congressional hearing on Thursday but is unlikely to answer lawmakers' questions about price spikes. Shkreli, 32, sparked outrage last year among patients, medical societies and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton after his company Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of 62-year-old Daraprim to $750 a pill from $13.50. The medicine, used to treat a parasitic infection, once sold for $1 a pill. The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is scheduled to hold a hearing on drug prices at 9 a.m., with Shkreli and others from the pharmaceutical industry as witnesses. (Ingram and Lynch, 2/4)

Howard Schiller, interim chief executive of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., is expected to urge House lawmakers Thursday to rewrite rules that make it illegal for drug companies to help Medicare patients pay the out-of-pocket costs of their prescriptions. Such assistance for patients in Medicare and other government-funded health-care programs is considered an illegal kickback under federal law, so drug companies limit offering the help only to patients who are commercially insured. (Rockoff, 2/3)

House Speaker Paul Ryan called on Republicans Wednesday to unify and stop fighting each other as he tried steering his fractious party into an election year devoid of the collisions between conservatives and pragmatists that transformed parts of 2015 into a GOP nightmare. "We have to be straight with each other and more importantly, we have to be straight with the American people," Ryan, R-Wis., said at a Heritage Action for America policy meeting. "We can't promise that we can repeal Obamacare when a guy with the last name Obama is president. All that does is set us up for failure and disappointment and recriminations." (2/3)

A long-simmering dispute over how the Obama administration applied the Affordable Care Act to members of Congress and some of their staff has been revived and could hang up the confirmation of a new federal personnel chief. In advance of the scheduled Thursday confirmation hearing for Beth Cobert to become Office of Personnel Management director, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) raised the prospect of putting a hold on her nomination. (Yoder, 2/4)

Federal officials on Wednesday outlined a plan to improve care at hospitals that treat Native Americans in four Great Plains states, including creating a multi-agency group to focus on quality and patient safety and designating a single organization to accredit Indian Health Service hospitals. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services detailed the steps ahead of a Senate committee hearing on Wednesday afternoon in Washington that'll discuss the quality of care at IHS hospitals in the region. (2/3)

Senate testimony Wednesday painted a grim picture of the poor healthcare afforded Great Plains Indians — caught in a federal system plagued by substandard medical facilities and persistent problems in attracting health professionals. Despite promised reforms, three Indian Health Service hospitals in the four-state region are listed as seriously deficient by inspectors from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — leading to the sudden pre-Christmas closing of a critical emergency room facility in South Dakota. (Rogers, 2/3)

Government officials tangled on Wednesday over who was to blame for the crisis in Flint, Michigan, that allowed lead-contaminated water to flow to thousands of residents at a combative congressional hearing that devolved into a partisan fight over witnesses and no-shows. “A failure of epic proportions,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at the first Capitol Hill hearing since the crisis in Flint emerged last year. (Daly, 3/3)

Budget watchdogs for years have warned of a looming debt crisis in the U.S. The federal debt, already its highest as a share of the economy since 1950, is poised to rocket higher as retiring baby boomers draw on Medicare and Social Security. Here’s the surprise: Compared to seven years ago, the long-term budget outlook has gotten better, not worse, thanks to slower health-care inflation and, more important, much lower interest rates. The hands on the doomsday debt clock have been moved back. (Ip, 2/3)

The federal deficit this year will jump $105 billion from last year, but it will also increase as a portion of the economy for the first time since 2009, according to the Congressional Budget Office. ... In the budget proposal next week, President Barack Obama is likely to leave this problem for the next president. To do otherwise would mean addressing the rate of growth of entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, which currently make up two-thirds of the federal budget and which will grow nearly 7 percent this year, according to CBO. (Mufson, 2/3)

As interest grows in Bernie Sanders’ “revolutionary” agenda following his strong showing against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Iowa caucuses, a new study warns that the Vermont senator’s plan for universal government health care coverage could add as much as $14 trillion to the national debt over the coming decade -- even with enactment of the massive tax hikes that Sanders has outlined. (Pianin, 2/3)

Bernie Sanders put a pretty big price tag -- $14 trillion over a decade -- on his Medicare-for-All proposal. But he also promised to pay for it in full through higher taxes, especially on the rich. A new analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget suggests that the plan may increase deficits by at least $3 trillion, and that's assuming Sanders correctly estimated the cost. (Sahadi, 2/3)

The state of Texas’ sustained campaign against Planned Parenthood and other family planning clinics affiliated with abortion providers appears to have led to an increase in births among low-income women who lost access to affordable and effective birth control, a new study says. The researchers, from the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, say their findings offer a sneak peak of what may happen in other states that have cut funding to Planned Parenthood. Lawmakers in Arkansas, Alabama, New Hampshire, Louisiana, North Carolina and Utah have enacted policies to keep public funds out of Planned Parenthood clinics. Ohio is expected to be the next state to follow suit. (Netburn, 2/3)

A study found that Texas saw a drop in women obtaining long-acting birth control after Republican leaders booted Planned Parenthood from a state women's health program in 2013, which researchers said may explain an increase in births among poor families. The research examined the effects of Texas severing taxpayer ties with the largest abortion provider in the U.S. The same year Texas barred Planned Parenthood from state family planning services, then-Gov. Rick Perry signed abortion restrictions that shuttered clinics under a sweeping law that the U.S. Supreme Court will review next month. (2/3)

One of two anti-abortion activists indicted for using a fake government ID to aid secret filming inside Planned Parenthood facilities appeared at a Texas court on Wednesday while the other will do so a day later, legal officials said. David Daleiden, indicted in January by a Houston-area grand jury, will appear at Harris County District Court in Houston on Thursday and then go through booking, lawyer Jared Woodfill said. Daleiden will likely seek to have charges against him thrown out, he added. (Herskovitz, 2/3)

Blood banks in the United States and Canada have begun turning away prospective donors who have visited Latin America in the past four weeks to avoid contaminating the blood supply with the Zika virus, according to officials with the group that represents nearly all of the blood donation centers in the United States. (Kaplan, 2/3)

On the same day Texas health officials announced the first U.S. Zika virus transmission contracted through sex and not a mosquito bite, local blood banks asked prospective donors Tuesday who have traveled to affected countries to postpone giving for about a month. The American transmission of the Zika virus involved a Dallas County resident who had sexual contact with someone who acquired the infection while traveling in Venezuela, Texas health officials said. (Abram, 2/2)

The Zika virus is creeping into politics, with Republicans beginning to question whether the Obama administration is doing enough to protect the public from an outbreak. Fears about the virus grew Tuesday when it was announced that the virus has been transmitted sexually in Dallas — the same city where a scare over the Ebola virus began in 2014. (Sullivan, 2/4)

"If you are a woman who is pregnant living in the U.S., there's one really important thing you need to know: You shouldn't go to a place that has Zika spreading." That's the strongly worded advice from Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Frieden's statement is a sign of just how seriously the CDC is taking the Zika outbreak, which has been linked to a surge in birth defects in Brazil. CDC is one of the lead global agencies in the battle against this virus, and officials there say the outbreak is far from over, with major challenges ahead. (Beaubien, 2/3)

Brazil is not sharing enough samples and disease data to let researchers determine whether the Zika virus is, as feared, linked to the increased number of babies born with abnormally small heads in the South American country, U.N. and U.S. health officials say. The lack of data is forcing laboratories in the United States and Europe to work with samples from previous outbreaks, and is frustrating efforts to develop diagnostic tests, drugs and vaccines. Scientists tell The Associated Press that having so little to work with is hampering their ability to track the virus' evolution. (2/4)

The surging medical reports of babies being born with unusually small heads during the Zika epidemic in Brazil are igniting a fierce debate over the country’s abortion laws, which make the procedure illegal under most circumstances. Legal scholars in Brasília, the capital, are preparing a case to go before Brazil’s highest court, saying pregnant women should be permitted to have abortions when their fetuses are found to have abnormally small heads, a condition known as microcephaly that Brazilian researchers say is linked to the virus. (Romero, 2/3)

The Florida Department of Health confirmed six new cases of the mosquito-borne Zika virus on Tuesday afternoon, bringing the statewide total to nine, including four in Miami-Dade County. All nine cases have been contracted by people who’ve traveled to Latin America and the Caribbean and brought the disease back to Florida. Three cases were contracted in Haiti, three of them in Venezuela, two in Colombia, and one in El Salvador, according to Mara Gambineri, communications director for the Florida Department of Health. Gambineri did not offer additional information regarding the cases. (Lima, 3/3)

The Georgia Department of Public Health on Wednesday confirmed the first travel-related case of Zika virus in the state. Testing of this individual was done by the CDC, according to Public Health officials. (Miller, 2/3)

Mice were much healthier and lived about 25 percent longer when scientists killed off a certain kind of cell that accumulates in the body with age. What's more, the mice didn't seem to suffer any ill effects from losing their so-called senescent cells. These are cells that have stopped dividing, though not necessarily because the cells themselves are old. (Greenfieldboyce, 2/3)

Would it be ethical for scientists to try to create babies that have genetic material from three different people? An influential panel of experts has concluded the answer could be yes. The 12-member panel, assembled by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, released a 164-page report Wednesday outlining a plan for how scientists could ethically pursue the controversial research. (Stein, 2/3)

Stanford University scientists say they’ve devised a more accurate and comprehensive DNA test to screen newborns for cystic fibrosis, the most common fatal genetic disease in the United States. Affecting about one in 3,900 babies born in the U.S., cystic fibrosis causes mucus to build up in the lungs, pancreas and other organs, leading to frequent lung infections and often requiring lifetime treatment for patients, whose median lifespan is 37 years. (Feder Ostrov, 2/4)

Republicans in the Iowa House are backing a special kind of prescription painkiller they say will help cut down on opioid abuse. GOP lawmakers have introduced a bill to encourage the use of tamper-proof pills for doctors to prescribe for patients likely to abuse. (Russell, 2/3)

In a bill advanced by a House subcommittee Tuesday, doctors and other prescribers would be required to check the state’s Prescription Monitoring Program before writing a prescription for opioid painkillers for longer than two weeks. House Bill 293 is aimed at curbing overprescribing of drugs such as oxycodone and stemming an alarming rise in prescription opioid and heroin overdose deaths across the state and nation. (Smith, 2/3)

Congress Thursday will weigh in once again on the ongoing saga surrounding drug prices and the CEOs who set them. But experts say one state official may have found a way to combat the high costs of drugs by using consumer protection laws. A potential lawsuit in Massachusetts against drugmaker Gilead over its costly hepatitis C drugs could, if successful, forge a new path for states, which in recent months have actively fought high drug costs, even as Congress has ramped up its own efforts. (Schencker, 2/3)

The state’s $3 billion privatized Medicaid system has been without an inspector general for more than a year. The Kansas Senate unanimously approved a bill Wednesday that would eliminate the position. Senate Bill 182 as originally introduced would have changed the inspector general position for the program known as KanCare from classified to unclassified. Officials from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment requested that change to allow them to offer a higher salary because they said they were struggling to find qualified candidates at the classified salary level. (Marso, 3/3)

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s proposed budget calls for cutting funding for mental health and substance abuse treatment, hospitals, community health centers, school-based health clinics, asthma treatment, and respite programs for those who care for people with dementia – and counts on millions more in unspecified cuts to health care and social service systems that advocates say are already stretched thin. (Levin Becker, 2/3)

A health insurer’s data breach has affected 148,334 Georgians on Medicaid or PeachCare for Kids, state officials say. That total includes current and former Medicaid and PeachCare members from 2009 to 2015. (Miller, 2/3)

The federal government overpaid University of Minnesota Medical Center by at least $3.2 million between 2012 and 2013, according to a report released Wednesday by the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services. The feds analyzed 255 inpatient and outpatient claims from the U's medical center and found about half did not fully comply with Medicare billing requirements. (Cox, 2/3)

Nearly $600,000 in public funds for people with developmental disabilities instead goes to a trade association whose lobbying at the state Capitol has resulted in a contentious relationship with parents of children with disabilities. Parents whose young or adult children have developmental and intellectual delays have simmered for years knowing that lobbyists receive a portion of government funds dispensed for therapy, respite care, wheelchair ramps and bathroom renovations. (Brown, 1/31)

State officials, hit with a surge in spending on home health care services, have asked Attorney General Maura Healey to investigate providers that they suspect of submitting fraudulent bills. Governor Charlie Baker’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services referred a dozen agencies to the attorney general’s Medicaid Fraud Division after reviewing internal data and fielding consumer complaints that pointed to possible fraud. Officials did not name the agencies. (Dayal McCluskey, 2/3)

Swedish Medical Center is asking about 2,900 patients to get tested for HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C after discovering that a former employee may have stolen narcotic pain medicines. Sgt. Brian Cousineau of the Englewood Police Department said police are investigating 28-year-old Rocky Allen. The surgical technologist worked in operating rooms at the hospital from Aug. 17 to Jan. 22, officials said Wednesday, and could have put at risk patients who had surgery during that time. (Olinger and Hernandez, 2/3)

Initially scheduled to open in Asheville last fall, Western North Carolina’s newest community health center has seen substantial delays, but the facility’s director says he expects it to open Feb. 8. After a two-year process, Appalachian Mountain had been awarded status as a federally qualified health center – independent nonprofit organizations that provide care to “medically underserved populations/areas or special medically underserved populations comprised of migrant and seasonal farmworkers, the homeless or residents of public housing,” according to HRSA guidelines. (Williams, 3/4)

Proponents of limiting the consumption of sugary drinks have mostly fallen short in the political arena in recent years, but Californians are largely supportive of their efforts. A new Field Poll, sponsored by The California Endowment, found that overwhelming majorities of voters favor taxing and putting safety warnings on soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages, proposals that advocates argue would help reduce health conditions such as diabetes. (Koseff, 2/3)

Broward Health reportedly is under two investigations, one federal, another state, that have come to light after the recent suicide of the system's CEO. The FBI is looking into claims of corruption following evidence gathered by a corporate private investigator allegedly hired by Dr. Nabil El Sanadi, according to a not-for-profit investigative journalism organization. (Sandler, 2/3)

A federal judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina last week ruled that the former operator of the Yadkin Valley Community Hospital must pay $36,080 in costs and $112,012 in attorneys’ fees to Yadkin County for closing the hospital when a temporary restraining order was in effect. Judge Terrence Boyle ruled in June of last year that HMC/CAH Consolidated Inc., the Missouri-based former operator of Yadkin Valley Community Hospital, and its parent company, CAH Acquisition Company 10 LLC, must pay the county for expenses incurred from the date the hospital was shut down, May 22 of last year, till it should reopen, but not to exceed July 31 of last year. That’s the date the contract between the county and CAH was due to expire. (Sisk, 2/31)

Lawmakers this year are looking to free-market economics to shape the future of healthcare in Florida. Republican leaders in the Florida House are pushing for an array of new laws that would cut regulations and negate insurance hurdles — from letting patients negotiate payment plans directly with their doctors to eliminating a statewide licensing program for hospitals. (Auslen, 3/3)

A Glendale, California, company shut down 10 months ago will pay about $10 million to settle claims by the Federal Trade Commission that it wildly exaggerated the results of its diet supplements, used fake endorsements from people like Oprah Winfrey and hired marketers to send millions of spam emails. FTC Midwest Region attorney Matthew H. Wernz said the $43 million settlement allows $33 million to be suspended if the defendants comply with conditions of the settlement. If they fail to comply, the full amount will be reinstated. (2/3)

Two laws addressing coal ash and natural gas drilling are unconstitutional, the N.C. Supreme Court ruled on Friday. In a highly anticipated ruling, the court found that the laws – the Energy Modernization Act and the Coal Ash Management Act – usurp Gov. Pat McCrory’s power to execute state laws, thereby violating the state’s constitution. (Rivin, 2/31)

Last month, majorities in Congress voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Not surprisingly, President Obama vetoed the repeal bill, and the Republican Congress was unable to override the president’s veto. As former leaders in Congress, we have a message for both sides in this debate: It’s time to give the states a chance. (Newt Gingrich and Tom Daschle, 2/3)

Since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010, our health care system has changed for the better. The uninsured rate has fallen by 45%, and for the first time, more than 9 in 10 Americans have health insurance. Health care spending per beneficiary has grown more slowly in both the private and public sectors, and we’ve seen promising improvements in health care quality, including lower rates of hospital-acquired conditions and hospital readmissions — a sign that we are not just cutting costs but also delivering greater value. (James Furman and Matthew Fiedler, 2/3)

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have been claiming that the law would be a job killer since its passage, and the claims have not subsided with time. Some supporters of the ACA also worry about the possibility of unintended employment consequences. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that the ACA would have negative employment effects. However, predictions that the ACA would substantially reduce employment, and shift millions of workers from full-time to part-time work, have not been borne out. Instead we have a growing body of empirical evidence, including two new studies in the most recent issue of Health Affairs and analyses we have released, that the ACA has had little, if any, adverse effect on employment. (Bowen Garrett and Robert Kaestner, 2/3)

Two studies published in the most recent Health Affairs journal raise questions about the contention that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will reduce employment, wages, and hours worked by employees. The study by Gooptu and colleagues examined the effects of the law’s Medicaid expansion on employment and found no statistically significant effect through March 2015. A related study by Moriya and colleagues examined the subsidy structure provided to households getting health insurance through the ACA’s exchanges and similarly found no discernible effect on levels of part-time employment for employees eligible for these subsidies. These studies provide useful new information, but they do not mean, as some reporting on them seems to suggest, that there is nothing to worry about with respect to the ACA’s effects on labor markets. (Joseph Antos and James Capretta, 2/3)

Listening to the political debate about health care, and in conversations with patients and health professionals across the country, I get the sense that some people that feel their choice of doctors–and hospitals–is threatened and that people are losing their regular doctors as insurers narrow provider networks to lower costs. Critics have blamed the Affordable Care Act; in a recent campaign rally in Iowa, Sen. Ted Cruz charged that Obamacare is “taking our doctors.” Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s January health-tracking poll, however, indicate that this problem is smaller than conventional wisdom and critics have suggested. (Drew Altman, 2/4)

Are house calls really dead, as we suggested in a blog post Monday? Dr. Michael Oppenheim begs to differ. Oppenheim, 76, has spent virtually his entire career making house calls in Los Angeles. The core of his practice is serving as an on-call doctor for hotels and for travel insurance companies whose foreign subscribers fall ill while visiting here. But he also does shifts for Heal, a new Uber-like service that dispatches doctors to homes at a charge of $99 per visit to patients without insurance to cover the house call. (Michael Hilzik, 2/2)

So-called “surprise medical bills” are a head-scratching phenomenon that one might expect to see in the satirical website The Onion than as part of a serious policy discussion. Take the case of a recent report from Montana Public Radio about an air ambulance trip for a 2-year-old girl with a heart condition who had to be transported to a hospital 600 miles away. It turns out that the air ambulance company was not in the network for the family’s health insurance plan. They ended up with a bill for $56 000. (Larry Levitt, 2/3)

But there is less distance between Sanders and Clinton than meets the eye. Their sharpest programmatic differences (other than on Sanders’s mixed gun-control record) are over his sweeping ideas: breaking up the largest banks, establishing a single-payer health-care system and providing universal free college education. These disagreements are closely connected to their competing theories of change. Clinton believes in change through incremental steps: toughening financial regulation, building on Obamacare, expanding access to scholarships and grants without making college free for everyone. One-step-at-a-time reform is the best way to reach a larger goal, she believes. And proposals that are too big are doomed to fail — politically for sure, and probably substantively as well. (E.J.Dionne Jr., 2/3)

There’s new reason to think the numbers in the Bernie Sanders health care plan don’t add up. On Wednesday, the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, released an analysis of Sanders’ proposal to replace existing health insurance arrangements with a single, government-run plan that would look something like Medicare. (Jonathan Cohn, 2/3)

In opining on Bernie Sanders health care plan, columnist Megan McArdle asks, But don t single-payer systems cost less? Then she answers her own question in the negative: Not unless you have a plan to make health care workers accept less pay ... . She neglects the important question of overhead. (Waldman, 2/3)

Like any service provider or business, Planned Parenthood has the right to expect that an application to conduct a legal activity will be addressed professionally and expeditiously by the appropriate state agency. And Kentuckians, regardless of their personal feelings about abortion, have every right to expect Bevin to respect the rule of law, rather than try to bend it to his will. (2/3)

On Wednesday, officials from Michigan and the federal Environmental Protection Agency were called before a House committee to explain how they let the drinking water in Flint become poisoned by lead. Also testifying before the committee was a mother of four whose tap water has been so contaminated since early 2015 that her family has had to use bottled water for drinking and cooking and has often showered at friends’ homes outside the city. (2/4)

On Jan. 23, as the cleanup from Winter Storm Jonas began outside of my apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a patient posed a seemingly straightforward question to me: Should I cancel my upcoming trip to Florida? This woman was concerned about potentially contracting the Zika virus — a mosquito-borne illness known to cause fever, rash, joint paints, and, it appears, a devastating birth defect called microcephaly. In theory, I was the right person to ask. I’m an infectious disease specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and my research focuses on the ethical implications of medical decision-making. But this case was tricky because the patient was in her first trimester of pregnancy, and more importantly, she happened to be my wife. (Matt McCarthy, 2/2)

The governor's order gives new authority and responsibility to Florida's embattled surgeon general, Dr. John Armstrong, which he must wield wisely. He is charged with determining the resources his Department of Health needs from the state and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect the public. He is also to direct Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam to spray for mosquitoes in residential areas of the four counties. (2/3)