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Democrats fed up with the health insurance industry used President Barack Obama's overhaul to create nonprofit co-ops that would compete against entrenched corporations. Taxpayers put up $2.4 billion in loans to get the co-ops going. But a government audit out Thursday finds that co-ops are awash in red ink and many have fallen short of sign-up goals. (7/30)

Lawyers will argue over the constitutionality of Arizona's hospital "bed tax" Thursday in a case that could determine whether 350,000 residents remain covered under the state's Medicaid expansion. The case hinges on whether the assessment is a tax that should have been passed by a 2/3 vote in the state Legislature or a fee that can be passed by a majority vote. (Christie, 7/29)

Antiabortion Republican senators touted a bill Wednesday that would cut government funds to Planned Parenthood, intensifying the furor over a hidden-camera video depicting technicians at a Planned Parenthood facility gathering fetal tissue for use in research. The bill, which the Senate is expected to vote on before members disperse for the August recess, would bar federal funds for Planned Parenthood, which reported federal and state grants and reimbursements of around $528.4 million last year for providing services such as contraception, breast exams and testing for sexually transmitted diseases. (Stanley-Becker and Radnofsky, 7/29)

Senate Republicans unveiled a bill Wednesday that aims to block any federal dollars from reaching Planned Parenthood. The legislation is a response to a series of undercover videos produced by anti-abortion activists who claim the organization is selling fetal tissue to researchers. (Planned Parenthood says the costs are only related to handling of the tissue donations, and it has done nothing wrong.) (Kaplan, 7/30)

Either way, there's a renewed push in Congress to take away some or all of the $500 million in federal funds that goes to Planned Parenthood -- none of which, we should note, is legally allowed to pay for abortions. GOP leaders are smartly letting women in Congress lead the way. Male lawmakers dominate both the party's congressional contingent and the two bills introduced this week to defund the organizaton, but anti-abortion-rights advocates are hoping these three Republican women become the movement's faces. (Phillips, 7/30)

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Wednesday said she is likely to oppose a bill backed by Senate Republican leaders that would defund Planned Parenthood. “The problem is, in my state and many others, Planned Parenthood is the primary provider of women's health services in certain parts of my state, and as I understand the amendment, and again I'm still reviewing it, it immediately defunds Planned Parenthood,” Collins said. “So I don't know how you would ensure that all of the patients of Planned Parenthood could be absorbed by alternative care providers.” (Sullivan, 7/29)

Calling next week’s Senate roll call to defund Planned Parenthood a “legislative show vote,” GOP firebrand Ted Cruz said Republicans should do everything they can to eliminate federal money for the group — even if it means a government shutdown fight this fall. He’s not alone. On Wednesday afternoon, 18 House Republicans told leadership that they “cannot and will not support any funding resolution … that contains any funding for Planned Parenthood.” Meanwhile, GOP social conservatives like Sens. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Jeff Sessions of Alabama said they’d consider supporting an effort to attach a spending rider that would eliminate Planned Parenthood’s $528 million in annual government funding to must-pass spending legislation this fall. (Everett, 7/29)

Senate Republicans plan to vote on legislation next week stripping nearly $540 million from Planned Parenthood following the release of undercover videos that appear to show organization officials talking casually about selling fetal tissue and organs. Those videos, released by an anti-abortion group, have outraged abortion opponents and ignited a swift response on Capitol Hill. U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., is one of at least 20 sponsors of the defunding legislation; and Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Ballwin, led a group of House members in calling for congressional hearings into Planned Parenthood’s activities. (Howard, 7/29)

The surprise of today's Republican press conference on Planned Parenthood came when one of the freshman class's stars praised Hillary Clinton. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa.) described how undercover videos had found the family planning group's executives coldly discussing the sale of fetal body parts, and said that even Democrats were recoiling. "The American people, Republicans and Democrats alike, are horrified by the utter lack of compassion showed by Planned Parenthood for these women and their babies," said Ernst. "In fact, now, Hillary Clinton is calling these Planned Parenthood images disturbing, and I agree.” (Weigel, 7/29)

The latest in a series of undercover sting videos features a woman who says she worked for a company that harvested organs from fetuses aborted at Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood leaders say the videos are heavily edited and that they're not making money from facilitating fetal tissue donation for medical research. But the controversy over the videos is becoming a campaign issue — for both Democrats and Republicans. (McCammon, 7/29)

Hillary Clinton is friends with Planned Parenthood’s president and took a rare pause from her duties as secretary of state to keynote a Planned Parenthood gala, while her family foundation has worked with the group to promote birth control. So when Planned Parenthood found itself in the middle of a major scandal last week when anti-abortion activists released graphic undercover videos of executives discussing the alleged sale of aborted fetal tissue, Clinton’s support for the group was not so much a choice as a foregone conclusion — Planned Parenthood’s problem was Clinton’s problem, too. (Karni and Palmer, 7/30)

The Planned Parenthood clinic featured in an undercover sting video released on Tuesday says it has proof that it repeatedly told a fake tissue procurement company that it would not profit from processing fetal tissue and organs — contrary to what the video portrays. (Haberkorn, 7/29)

Under fire for its role in providing fetal tissue for research, Planned Parenthood asked the government's top health scientists Wednesday to convene a panel of independent experts to study the issues surrounding the little-known branch of medicine. Planned Parenthood's request to the National Institutes of Health came as Senate Republicans pressed their fight to bar the organization from receiving federal aid. Likely opposition from at least one GOP senator highlighted the long odds the GOP will face in a Senate showdown vote expected early next week. (Fram, 7/29)

The recent attacks on Planned Parenthood have highlighted the “ic” factor of procuring and delivering fetal materials, causing many to question the morality of the practice. But in the medical community, few would argue against their curative potential. A growing body of studies over the last two decades, has made stem cells, particularly those from fetal tissue, an appealing resource for researchers and pharmaceutical companies alike. (Caiola, 7/29)

Planned Parenthood shut down its website Wednesday after it was hit by a second cyberattack within one week. Officials confirmed Wednesday evening that the group was hit by a “denial of service attack” — a tactic that sends massive amounts of traffic to a site at one time to shut it down. (Ferris, 7/29)

The House voted Wednesday to cut workplace protections for Department of Veterans Affairs employees and extend their probationary period, making it easier to fire new staffers. The “VA Accountability Act of 2015” was approved with a 256 – 170 vote, largely, though not strictly, along party lines, despite a White House veto threat. (Davidson, 7/29)

The House on Wednesday approved a bill making it easier to fire or demote hundreds of thousands of employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, as lawmakers expressed continued frustration at the slow pace of change at the beleaguered agency. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., said the VA hasn’t moved quickly enough to respond to a scandal over long waits for veterans seeking medical care and falsified records by VA employees to cover up the delays. (7/29)

As part of the deal, Congress was also tacking on a provision to help the Department of Veterans Affairs avoid closing healthcare clinics amid its own budget shortfall. The agency will be able to tap $3 billion over the next two months to cover rising costs associated with providing veterans faster health services in order to avoid long wait times. (Mascaro, 7/29)

Congress will slide toward its August recess this week by doing what every high school student dreams of: putting off the hardest projects until later. ... In many ways, the last few months have been quite productive under Republican control, particularly when viewed through the lens of sheer expectations. ... After years of patches, lawmakers finally established a new formula for paying doctors under Medicare. ... Mr. Boehner, who has grown grudgingly accustomed to the chaff tossed up by the right, has found ways to work with just enough Democrats to lead the way on things like fixes to the Medicare payment system and some funding measures. (Steinhauer, 7/29)

The Pentagon on Wednesday awarded a $4.3 billion contract to modernize its health-records system to a team led by Leidos Holdings Inc. and Cerner Corp., the biggest federal information-technology project since the troubled rollout of the HealthCare.gov insurance exchange in 2013. (Cameron, 7/29)

The award to the Leidos Partnership for Defense Health — which includes Cerner, an electronic-health-records manager; Accenture Federal; and Leidos, a government contractor based in Reston, Va. — was considered an upset among industry experts. Many had predicted that the bid anchored by Epic Systems, considered a titan in the medical-records field, would land the contract. (Brittain, 7/29)

Cerner Corp. is part of a team of health information companies that has snagged a coveted multibillion-dollar contract to overhaul the U.S. military’s electronic health records, the Pentagon announced Wednesday. The victory is a win for Cerner, Kansas City’s fastest-growing large company and one of the top health information technology firms in the country. Cerner partnered with defense technology contractor Leidos, Accenture Federal Services and Intermountain Healthcare in the bid for the $4.3 billion, 10-year defense contract. The Leidos-led team beat out two other partnerships, one of them including Cerner’s major rival, Epic, a Wisconsin-based health IT firm that also is a leading provider of electronic health records technology. (Rosen and Wise, 7/29)

Epic Systems Corp. and IBM Corp. on Wednesday lost their combined bid for a contract initially worth $4.3 billion from the Department of Defense for a new system for electronic health records. A team consisting of Cerner Corp. — Verona-based Epic's largest competitor — along with Leidos Inc., a military information technology contractor, and Accenture Federal Services was awarded the contract. (Boulton, 7/29)

Health insurance provider Anthem said Wednesday its second quarter net income rose 18% to $859.1 million as health care costs and medical enrollment by new members surged. After adjusting for some items, earnings per share totaled $3.10, beating analysts’ estimate of $2.74. (Yu, 7/29)

The company said it now expects medical enrollment to grow by 750,000 to 950,000 this year, up 50,000 from its previous range. Anthem has benefited from enrollment growth and improved medical cost performance lately. In the latest quarter, medical enrollment grew 3.4% from a year earlier to about 38.5 million as of June 30. Enrollment in its commercial and specialty business edged up 0.8% from a year earlier to 29.8 million members, while members in its government business grew 13.1% to 8.8 million. (Dulaney and Wilde Mathews, 7/29)

Anthem has pumped up its 2015 forecast again after earnings jumped more than 17 percent in its most recent quarter, helped by a surge in government money. The Blue Cross-Blue Shield carrier now expects 2015 adjusted earnings to top $10 per share, which is up from an upgraded forecast in April to greater than $9.90 per share. (7/29)

Humana Inc., which has agreed to sell itself to Aetna Inc., on Wednesday reported a better-than-expected 25% jump in profit in its second quarter, though revenue disappointed as the health insurer faces challenges in its Medicare Advantage business. Shares slipped 0.3% in premarket trading. (Dulaney, 7/29)

The leaders of the top five health insurers periodically get together to discuss policy issues, Aetna Inc. Chief Executive Mark T. Bertolini told investors in a private meeting earlier this month. The group had a nickname, he joked: the G5. Soon, that could be down to the G3. (Wilde Mathews, 7/29)

Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered state health officials to inspect Planned Parenthood offices that perform abortions, saying he is troubled by videos describing the organization’s procedures for providing tissue from aborted fetuses for research. The Republican governor said Wednesday the state will take quick legal and regulatory action if any of the 16 facilities in Florida are found in violation of the law. (Kennedy, 7/29)

Pro-life advocates gathered at the “Women Betrayed Rally” in Houston to condemn Planned Parenthood after two controversial videos surfaced. The Houston protest was part of a nationwide movement demanding an end to federal funding of Planned Parenthood in light of two videos purporting that Planned Parenthood sells fetal body parts. The “Women Betrayed” rallies took place across 65 cities and an estimated 12,000 people participated nationwide. (Fowler, 7/29)

Anti-abortion activists rallied in cities across the country in recent days, invigorated by the release of videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the procurement of fetal tissue for research. (Siders, 7/29)

Several family members of accused criminals who were held in jail after being ruled incompetent to stand trial are suing the state of California over lengthy delays in placing the defendants in state hospital beds. Felony defendants who a judge deems incompetent because of mental illness or developmental disabilities are supposed to go to a state hospital for treatment and training until they can understand the charges against them and help an attorney prepare a defense. (Sewell, 7/29)

Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's administration has been working in recent weeks to come up with a new state funding arrangement that could help fend off possible strikes at unionized nursing homes across the state. Office of Policy and Management Secretary Ben Barnes said state officials have been meeting privately with union officials to find a way of fairly distributing $26 million in additional state and federal funds, in each of the next two years, to both union- and non-union homes. (Haigh, 7/29)

Kansas officials have decided against participating in the Excellence in Mental Health Act, a federal initiative that could have generated millions of dollars for behavioral health programs throughout the state. Instead, according to Angela de Rocha, a spokesperson for the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, KDADS and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment would prefer to “build upon the flexibility and innovative possibilities of KanCare” to work with community mental health centers and managed care organizations “to build capacity and improve outcomes in the behavioral health system.” (Ranney, 7/29)

New York City's Department of Health is investigating an outbreak in the Bronx of deadly Legionairre's disease, city officials said Wednesday. Since July 10, there have been 31 cases reported and two people have died from the ailment, caused by a bacteria known as Legionella, according to the city's Department of Health. Legionella often is traced to plumbing systems. (Eversley, 7/29)

A federal judge sentenced former Sacred Heart Hospital owner Edward Novak to 4 1/2 years in prison Wednesday for a massive kickback scheme the judge said callously treated elderly and impoverished patients like "commodities to be bought." "People have a right to expect that decisions about their health care are going to be based on need and not on whether there is money to be made," U.S. District Judge Matthew Kennelly said in imposing the prison sentence, fining Novak $770,000 and ordering him to pay a whopping $10.4 million in forfeiture. (Meisner, 7/29)

Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia, who runs the sprawling Cook County Jail here, has an indelible childhood memory of police officers pounding on the aluminum walls of the family’s double-wide trailer home in North Carolina, rifling through cupboards and drawers, and arresting her father on charges of selling marijuana. Dr. Jones Tapia, then 8, had to call her mother home from work. (Williams, 7/30)

New numbers compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show deaths from cancer are dropping around the South, along with the rest of the United States. For decades, cancer death rates climbed slowly until about 1990, when the trend started to turn around. Since that time, deaths from cancer have steadily decreased. Ruth Petersen, who leads cancer prevention efforts for the Department of Health and Human Services said the decrease is the result of a complicated group effort. (Hoban, 7/30)

Many called it socialized medicine. A rising Republican warned that we’d "spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.” Donald Trump talking about Obamacare in 2015? No, Ronald Reagan urging Congress to vote against the creation of Medicare. This week marks 50 years since the passage of Medicare. If addressing inequality is a real priority for Republicans officials — particularly those in the South — they should take a cue from history, embrace the health law, and expand Medicaid. (Sherrod Brown and Tim Kaine, 7/30)

July 30 marks 50 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed Medicare into law. The only birthday gift this middle-age government program merits is a reality check. Health insurance for senior citizens was part of LBJ’s expansion of the welfare state, all in the service of establishing a “Great Society.” Yet many beneficiaries today are struggling to secure access to high-quality care. Future beneficiaries, meanwhile, are forking over billions of dollars today to keep a program afloat that may be bankrupt when they retire—unless fundamental reforms are enacted. (Sally C. Pipes, 7/29)

Rather like a broken record, I have been warning for years that historically low rates of increase in health-care spending would not last. Now it’s time for a different warning: The higher rates of growth now expected are moderate and should be seen in context. Media outlets–especially headline writers–should take care not to dramatize them. (Drew Altman, 7/30)

Doctors don’t like to talk about death, and they often avoid doing so. Most physicians — including me — never studied palliative care in medical school and were rarely trained in how to communicate with patients. By the time I finished residency in 2002, I had to show competency in running Code Blues, inserting arterial lines and performing lumbar punctures, but not a single senior physician had to certify that I could actually talk with patients. (Angelo Volandes, 7/29)

Loren Mandell Wood of Burlington came into the world 11 days ago at an "out-of-pocket maximum" cost of as much as $5,100. On Wednesday, he did not appear prepared to pull that money out of his pocket. And his mom, who testified at a state hearing on health insurance rates, said the family surely couldn't either. "Our monthly premiums are $465 per person. That includes Loren, who's not yet contributing financially to our household," Bekah Mandell told the Green Mountain Care Board amid laughter in the room. "That means we pay a total of $1,395 a month in premiums alone. That's before we get to the copays and before we get to the deductibles. That's significantly more than our mortgage, and frankly it's significantly more than we can afford." (Dave Gram, 7/29)

The Center for Medical Progress, a group apparently created to produce undercover videos targeting Planned Parenthood, released its third such video on Tuesday. The video makes the same allegation as the first two: that Planned Parenthood is engaged in the illegal sale of “baby body parts.” It does not prove this allegation any more than the first two videos did (the bulk of the new video focuses on a woman who once worked for the tissue supplier StemExpress). What it does show, yet again, is how committed Planned Parenthood’s opponents are to paint it as something other than what it is: a nonprofit that provides many health services, including but not remotely close to mainly abortions. (Anna North, 7/29)

Planned Parenthood has been a trusted nonprofit provider of women’s health care for nearly a century. Each year, 2.7 million people come to our health centers for high-quality, nonjudgmental, compassionate care. Since our very beginning, our health centers, providers and patients have come under outrageous attacks, political and otherwise. These attacks are not about us. They are about the ability of women across the country to access health care. Period. (Cecile Richards, 7/29)

Democrats have been picking fight after fight in the culture wars, believing they have the upper hand with socially liberal younger votes. But that assumption is now being tested in the wake of videos of Planned Parenthood doctors blithely discussing the harvesting of fetal body parts. (7/27)

We first acquired the stem cells from the red receptacles of a local hospital’s labor and delivery ward, delivered to our lab at the University of Southern California. I would reach into the large medical waste containers and pull out the tree-like branches of the placenta, discarded after a baby had been born. Squeezing the umbilical cord that had so recently been attached to new life, the blood, laden with stem cells, would come dripping out. (Nathalia Holt, 7/30)

Cutting off health insurance to college students is more morally suspect than the contraceptives at the root of the decision. Wheaton College, which opposes Obamacare's contraception mandate, announced it will stop providing health insurance to students altogether when the current plan expires at the end of this week, rather than fund base coverage for birth control. (Heidi Stevens, 7/29)

Yesterday, the 11th Circuit handed down a substantially revised opinion in Wollschlaeger v. Governor, the Florida “Docs vs. Glocks” case. (I’d been following the controversy for quite a while, but didn’t have a chance to blog about the earlier opinion, which was handed down a year ago.) The court upheld the law, which limits doctors’ speech to their patients about the patients’ gun ownership. But I think the court is mistaken, and the law should have been held to violate the First Amendment. I share many people’s skepticism about much of the “public health” anti-gun advocacy; but I think this is no basis for suppressing doctors’ speech this way. (Eugene Volokh, 7/29)

The fight against Alzheimer's disease tallied a small victory last week, when two new drugs were found that possibly slow its relentless attack on brain cells. But the search for a cure isn't moving nearly quickly enough. Alzheimer's kills about 100,000 Americans every year and undermines the final years of life for some 5 million more. Forgetfulness and disorientation are the first symptoms, soon followed by trouble communicating, cooking and getting dressed. By the end, victims are often unable to recognize friends and family, eat or walk on their own, or understand anything happening around them. (7/29)