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The Supreme Court weighed moral theology and parsed insurance terminology on Wednesday in an extended and animated argument that seemed to leave the justices sharply divided over what the government may do to require employers to provide free insurance coverage for contraception to female workers. A 4-to-4 tie appeared to be a real possibility, which would automatically affirm the four appeals court decisions under review. All four ruled that religious groups seeking to opt out of the requirement that they pay for the coverage must sign forms and provide information that would shift the cost to insurance companies and the government. (Liptak, 3/23)

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often casts the deciding vote in close cases, appeared more aligned with the court's three other conservatives in favoring the challengers, which primarily were Roman Catholic including the archdiocese of Washington. The Christian employers call contraception immoral and argue that the government should not compel religious believers to choose between following their faith and following the law. They argue they should get the complete exemption from the mandate already given to places of worship such as churches, mosques and temples. (Hurley, 3/23)

The court’s four liberal members appeared convinced the government’s compromise met its legal obligation to accommodate religious objectors to the law. The more conservative justices sharply questioned why the government could relieve other employers of the contraceptive requirement—such as houses of worship, or companies using older, “grandfathered” plans—while denying identical treatment to the religious nonprofits. That appeared to leave the decision to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who early on in the argument recognized the practical difficulties of the challengers’ position, yet later suggested he strongly empathized with their moral imperatives. (Bravin and Radnofsky, 3/23)

A sharply divided Supreme Court on Wednesday considered whether Obamacare's birth control coverage requirement violated the rights of religious institutions, with Justice Anthony Kennedy — the likely swing vote — voicing concern about how big a loophole the court might create if it rules for the challengers. Kennedy suggested that large institutions like Catholic universities shouldn't be able to get out of the employee coverage requirement in the same way that other challengers, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor order of Catholic nuns, perhaps should. (Haberkorn and Gerstein, 3/23)

Despite the questioning, Leila Abolfazli, senior counsel with the National Women's Law Center, which filed a brief in the case siding with the government, said she believes it still has a chance of winning the case. She pointed to Kennedy's writings in the previous Hobby Lobby case from 2014. ... Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion in that case agreeing that part of the reason to rule in favor of Hobby Lobby was because there were less restrictive ways to make sure its employees got birth control coverage than by forcing Hobby Lobby to provide it directly—such as the accommodation afforded to religious not-for-profits. (Schencker, 3/23)

The court's liberals, led by its female justices, said the Obama administration had found a fair way to shield the employers from providing or paying for the contraceptives. “As in all things, it can’t be all my way,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said. “There has to be an accommodation, and that’s what the government tried to do.” Justice Elena Kagan said she could not understand how the Catholic charities could refuse to even notify the government they would not provide contraceptive coverage to their employees. You “object to objecting,” she said. (Savage, 3/23)

The hearing provided a vivid illustration of the difficulty the court — without Justice Antonin Scalia, who died last month — might have putting together the necessary five-member majority to decide its most important cases. In this case, it would mean the national law that has transformed health-care coverage would be implemented differently depending on where the organization and its employees are located. An inability to decide the case would mean the lower courts’ decisions would remain in place. The mandate has been upheld by eight of the nation’s regional appeals courts that have decided the issue and overturned in one. (Barnes, 3/23)

Contraception is among a range of preventive services that must be provided at no extra charge under the health care law. The administration pointed to research showing that the high cost of some methods of contraception discourages women from using them. A very effective means of birth control, the intrauterine device, can cost up to $1,000. Houses of worship and other religious institutions whose primary purpose is to spread the faith are exempt from the birth control requirement. Other faith-affiliated groups that oppose some or all contraception have to tell the government or their insurers that they object. (Sherman, 3/23)

Members of the Little Sisters of the Poor rallied along with their supporters in front of the court Wednesday, many carrying signs and buttons with "I'll Have Nun of It." Nearby were supporters of abortion rights and the Affordable Care Act. While the LSP leaders are nuns, the charity employs hundreds of lay workers who otherwise may be eligible for the insurance service. Similar non-profits would include certain hospitals, parochial schools, and private faith-based universities. (Mears, 3/23)

This was the fourth time before the court for Obama's prized Affordable Care Act, and it came on the sixth anniversary of the law going into effect. While it suffered a setback in a 2014 case over the so-called "contraceptive mandate" as applied to certain for-profit businesses, it has survived two major challenges to its broader insurance requirements and subsidies. (Wolf, 3/23)

A new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that more than a third of those surveyed (and 40 percent of women) said there is “a wide-scale effort to limit women’s reproductive health choices and services.” (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.) Not surprisingly, Democratic women were more likely to say there is a wide-scale effort than Republican women (56 percent v 25 percent) and far more likely to say that they are “personally concerned” about women’s reproductive health choices (52 percent v 18 percent). (Rovner, 3/23)

Legal analysts have called the case Hobby Lobby Part 2, and like that landmark 2014 ruling by the high court, Zubik has implications far beyond the realm of reproductive health care. ... A ruling in favor of the religious nonprofits would not only undermine key provisions of the ACA, but it could lead to challenges to laws meant to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination, [Gretchen Borchelt, vice president for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center] said. (Smith and Martin, 3/23)

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell marked the sixth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act and a U.S. Supreme Court case contesting the law’s contraception workaround by extolling the ACA’s successes, and acknowledging frustrations some Americans have had with health costs. Ms. Burwell, speaking at an event on diabetes prevention, said the law has led to a drop in the number of uninsured Americans and health insurers that can no longer deny people coverage because of pre-existing conditions. “This progress has changed people’s lives,” she said. But in a nod to critics, she said many Americans are unhappy with their health care experience because of high costs. (Armour, 3/23)

States that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act saw more job growth, lower health inflation and spent less on social and health services unneeded once more residents had medical coverage, a new analysis shows. A new report issued by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said states that opted to expand Medicaid coverage for poor Americans are saving “in many cases, tens of millions of dollars.” (Japsen, 3/23)

In Ohio, 1.3 million people were uninsured in 2013 before the rollout of the federally run insurance marketplace and the expansion of Medicaid under the law. Today, according Trey Daly, Ohio director for Enroll America: An estimated 402,000 Ohioans are uninsured. About 243,000 Ohioans have bought plans through the federal marketplace, up from 234,000 after the 2014-15 enrollment period and 155,000 after the first open-enrollment period in 2013-14. (Kurtzman, 3/24)

The web portal used by millions of consumers to get health insurance under President Barack Obama's law has logged more than 300 cybersecurity incidents and remains vulnerable to hackers, nonpartisan congressional investigators said Wednesday. The Government Accountability Office said none of the 316 security incidents appeared to have led to the release of sensitive data on HealthCare.gov, such as names, birth dates, addresses, Social Security numbers, financial information, or other personal information. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 3/23)

People at high risk of developing diabetes lost about 5% of their body weight in a YMCA program that federal regulators said Wednesday was successful enough to expand. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) gave YMCAs nearly $12 million in 2011 to launch the program, which includes nutrition and fitness counseling and lifestyle coaching for Medicare recipients. The funding was provided by the Affordable Care Act, which also marked its 6th anniversary Wednesday. (O'Donnell, 3/23)

It is the first time an experimental prevention initiative has met the financial test to become part of the huge federal health insurance program for older Americans. ... Sylvia M. Burwell, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said prevention programs of this kind “help people live longer, fuller lives and save money across the [health care] system.” (Bernstein, 3/23)

Burwell said the intervention program could also save lives for people who aren’t covered by Medicare. Some insurers and employers already offer similar programs to their employees and customers, and others could do so to help the 86 million Americans who have a high risk of developing diabetes, Burwell said. This is the first preventive service program from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation that has become eligible for expansion within Medicare. The health law created the center to launch experiments that would change the way doctors and hospitals are paid, building networks between caregivers and training them to intervene before chronic illness gets worse. (Carey, 3/23)

One of every three Medicare dollars is spent on patients with diabetes, according to HHS, and the prevention effort saved Medicare about $2,650 per participant over 15 months. That's more than the cost of the preventive program. (Kodjak, 3/23)

Idaho lawmakers have failed to finalize a proposal to expand Medicaid eligibility that would appease the Republican supermajority in the waning days of the legislative session. Instead, two minor proposals were approved Wednesday by the House to devote more resources to studying the so-called Medicaid gap population. (Kruesi, 3/22)

Reginald Rogers owes his dentist a debt of gratitude for his new dentures, but no money. Indiana’s Medicaid program has them covered, a godsend for the almost toothless former steelworker who hasn’t held a steady job for years and lives in his daughter’s basement. “I just need to get my smile back,” Rogers, 59, told his dentist at a clinic here recently. “I can’t get a job unless I can smile.” Rogers is among the more than 240,000 low-income people who gained health coverage in the past year when Indiana expanded Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act. Rogers pays $1 a month -- a fee that is a hallmark of the state’s controversial plan. (Galewitz, 3/24)

Officials confronting New York City’s surge in heroin trafficking said the past year has brought a troubling trend—a large influx of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 30 to 50 times more powerful than heroin. Fentanyl, which has long been prescribed for severe pain, has played a lethal role in the heroin epidemic sweeping the country. Scores of overdose deaths have been attributed to fentanyl, which is often combined with heroin to make the drug more potent, officials said. (O'Brien, 3/23)

Word is spreading around the state about a deadly form of opioid that’s killed at least 19 people in North Carolina since the new year. The problems have been caused by a drug known as furanylfentanyl, a powerful form of the synthetic opiate fentanyl. (Hoban, 3/23)

On a grim night in March, calls for opioid overdoses streamed into police stations across Cuyahoga County. One was for a 34-year-old man in North Royalton; another was for a 56-year-old woman in Parma; and still another was about a 28-year-old man found unresponsive in Cleveland Heights. All of them died, and not one stayed alive long enough to make it to the hospital. (Ross, 3/23)

Opioid-related hospital visits are “skyrocketing” in Massachusetts, with heroin-related visits jumping by 201 percent between 2007 and 2014, according to Health Policy Commission figures discussed Wednesday. Opioid-related hospital visits have increased from around 30,000 in 2007 to more than 55,000 in 2014, with non-heroin opioids accounting for the bulk of the trips, an analysis by the commission found. (Lannan, 3/23)

A controversial law that criminalizes women who give birth to drug-dependent babies will sunset later this year after a bill in front of a House committee failed Tuesday. The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, R-Lancaster, failed to receive the necessary approval from the Criminal Justice subcommittee, as a result of a tie vote on the six-member committee. (Ebert, 3/23)

A small but pivotal group of Tennessee representatives voted Tuesday to discontinue one of the state's most divisive criminal laws. Known as "fetal assault," the measure empowered prosecutors to arrest women who abuse heroin or pain pills during pregnancy, if their babies were born dependent. (Farmer, 3/23)

A bill that aims to protect babies born to mothers who used heroin or other opioids during pregnancy was introduced on Wednesday in the House as part of the government’s response to a Reuters investigation. The bipartisan measure would require federal and state governments to do a better job of monitoring the health and safety of babies born drug-dependent. Last week – and also in response to the Reuters investigation – a similar bill moved to the Senate floor and the U.S. Health and Human Services Department pledged reforms. (3/23)

Lawmakers left town Wednesday for their spring recess without voting on an emergency funding request for the Zika virus, as the Obama administration and congressional Republicans failed to resolve their disagreement over whether federal health agencies need more money to support research and preparedness. (Nather, 3/23)

Funny how feelings about sleep change over the years. Many children fight bedtime and are still getting up once or more during the night well into childhood. Meantime, adults often feel they can never get enough sleep, and if they're anything like me, have vivid fantasies about napping. Now a study suggests that a parent's own sleep quality may bias how they perceive their child's sleep issues. (Hobson, 3/24)

Patients who delay getting treatment and insurers who balk at paying for it are among job stresses that Chicago nurse Ben Gerling faces on a semi-regular basis. So there was no tail-dragging when his employer offered a few four-legged workplace remedies. Gerling and dozens of other nurses, doctors, students and staffers flocked to a spacious entrance hall at Rush University Medical Center after learning about special animal therapy sessions the hospital has organized. Three huggable pups named Rocco, Minnie and Dallis greeted almost 100 white-coat and scrubs-clad visitors at a recent session, happily accepting cuddles, ear rubs and treats. Big grins on the human faces suggested the feelings were mutual. (Tanner, 3/23)

Experiencing the world as a different gender than the one assigned to you at birth can take a toll. Nearly all research into transgender individuals' mental health shows poorer outcomes. A new study looking specifically at transgender women, predominantly women of color, only further confirms that reality. What's less clear, however, is whether trans individuals experience more mental distress due to external factors, such as discrimination and lack of support, or internal factors, such as gender dysphoria, the tension resulting from having a gender identity that differs from the one assigned at birth. (Haelle, 3/23)

Older Americans who engage in strenuous exercise are more mentally nimble, have better memory function and process information more speedily than do their more sedentary peers, new research suggests. And as they continued to age, participants who were very physically active at the start of a five-year study lost less ground cognitively than did couch potatoes, according to the study. The latest research, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology, is the most recent study to underscore the importance of moderate to intensive exercise in healthy aging. In addition to keeping diabetes, heart disease and osteoporosis at bay or in check, a welter of studies suggests a good workout is powerful medicine for the aging brain, preventing and treating depression and shoring up cognitive function. (Healy, 3/23)

The organization that represents some 63,000 Iowans with Alzheimer’s disease had its annual lobby day at the capitol today. Officials with the Alzheimer's Association say they want more accountability for health care workers providing dementia care. (Russell, 3/23)

Billionaire philanthropist Paul Allen has announced a $100 million commitment over 10 years to fund scientific endeavors at the “frontiers of bioscience" that he describes as having major implications for humankind. An initial set of grants, announced Wednesday, will go to Stanford and Tufts universities for the creation of new research centers and to individual scientists with unconventional approaches to projects in tissue regeneration, antibiotic resistance, gene editing and the development of brain circuitry. (Cha, 3/23)

Off-target assumptions on the cost of insuring 60,000 new Medicaid enrollees led to a temporary windfall for two health insurers, but state officials on Tuesday said they expect to collect most of the $133 million in remaining overpayments by June and all of it by the end of the year. However, questions remain about whether Rhode Island acted quickly enough to slow and recoup payments to United Healthcare and Neighborhood Health Plan from growing to $208 million last year, as identified in a report from Auditor General Dennis Hoyle on Monday. (Gregg and Anderson, 3/23)

The Alabama Legislature Wednesday gave final approval to a $1.8 billion General Fund budget, sending it to Gov. Robert Bentley. They’ll likely see it again. The Senate Tuesday voted 20 to 13 to concur in the House version of the budget, which level-funds most state agencies but gives the Alabama Medicaid Agency $85 million less than what the agency says it needs to maintain current services, which would allow it to begin implementation of a managed-care model for the program aimed at easing costs. ... Gov. Robert Bentley has said a budget with less than a $100 million boost for Medicaid would bring his veto and a special session. (Lyman, 3/23)

"The Flint water crisis is a story of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction, and environmental injustice." That's how an independent task force opened its final report on the lead-tainted water crisis in Flint. It concluded that primary responsibility for the crisis in Flint, Mich., lies with a state environmental agency called the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality — though it said others are also to blame. (Kennedy, 3/23)

Saying that “all eyes will be on Connecticut,” critics of two pending mergers of major health insurers have asked the state’s insurance commissioner to take steps they say would increase transparency in the review of Anthem’s proposed acquisition of Cigna. (Levin Becker, 3/23)

North Carolina has about 36,900 people incarcerated in state prisons and, according to numbers from the state Department of Public Safety, at least 14 percent, or about 5,100, of those people have a severe mental illness. Compared to the number of psychiatric beds available in the state, about 2,700, it’s clear that North Carolina’s prison system houses more patients with mental health problems than the health care system, said David Guice, who manages adult corrections and juvenile justice for DPS. (Hoban, 3/23)

The Kansas House on Wednesday passed a bill narrowing the scope of abuse claims the Attorney General’s Office investigates, with some revisions by a committee. Senate Bill 408 would move responsibility for investigating some cases involving children away from the Attorney General’s Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation Unit. Attorney General Derek Schmidt testified during a February hearing in favor of the bill, which he said would allow the unit to focus on abuse cases involving seniors and adults with disabilities. (Hart, 3/23)

Exercising its federal authority to investigate suspected abuse or neglect of developmentally disabled people, the Rhode Island Disability Law Center has opened its own examination of the February death of a 70-year-resident of a state-run group home, College Park Apartments on Mt. Pleasant Avenue. The death is already under investigation by Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin’s Medicaid Fraud and Patient Abuse Unit and the state Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), which operates the home, scheduled to close by Friday after its 14 remaining residents have been transferred to other facilities. And on Wednesday, the state police confirmed they, too, are investigating. (Miller, 3/23)

A proposed Alabama constitutional amendment would legally define a fetus as a person from the moment of fertilization, effectively banning abortion in the state. The House Health Committee on Wednesday debated but did not vote on the amendment. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Ed Henry, R-Decatur, is similar to ballot measures voted down in Mississippi, Colorado and North Dakota in recent years. The Oklahoma Supreme Court in 2012 ruled a similar amendment unconstitutional. (3/23)

The director of Veterans Affairs in Portland has stepped down. Joanne Krumberger was named director of the VA Portland Health Care System in May 2014. On Friday, she was gone. (Terry, 3/23)

Kaiser Permanente of Georgia had the highest patient satisfaction rating in its region for the seventh consecutive year, as compiled by J.D. Power. Kaiser, which serves nearly 300,000 members in metro Atlanta and Athens, earned 765 of a possible 1,000 points in the survey of the South Atlantic region, which includes South Carolina and North Carolina. (Miller, 3/23)

IBM Corp. breached its state contract in the company's failed attempt to privatize Indiana's welfare services but is still entitled to nearly $50 million in state fees, the state Supreme Court said Tuesday in a ruling that also opens the door for Indiana to seek up to $175 million in damages. The high court's ruling in the long-running case upholds a February 2014 state Court of Appeals ruling and reverses a trial court judge's finding that Indiana had failed to prove IBM breached the $1.3 billion state contract it won in 2006. Under that contract, an IBM-led team of vendors had worked to process applications for food stamps, Medicaid and other public safety-net benefits through the call centers, the Internet and fax machines that residents could use to apply for those benefits. (Callahan, 3/22)

Unless Congress finds a way to repeal the Affordable Care Act over the next 10 months -- after more than 60 failed attempts -- President Barack Obama will leave office with his signature legislation intact, and running pretty smoothly. Obamacare, which turns six today, has reduced the share of Americans without health insurance by half, provided people without job-based coverage access to affordable high-quality options, and prevented people from being denied insurance because of preexisting health conditions. Meanwhile, health-care costs have grown more slowly than they did before the law was passed. (3/23)

The Affordable Care Act generates so much partisan heat and draws so much media attention that many people may have lost perspective on where this law fits in the overall health system. The Affordable Care Act is the most important legislation in health care since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid. The law’s singular achievement is that 20 million people who were previously uninsured have health-care coverage. What sets the ACA apart is not only the progress made in covering the uninsured but also the role the law has played rewriting insurance rules to treat millions of sick people more fairly and its provisions reforming provider payment under Medicare. The latter is getting attention throughout the health system. (Drew Altman, 3/23)

Happy birthday, ObamaCare. If only you were strong enough to blow out six candles. After a difficult gestation, an awkward birth and a few trips to the ER (aka the Supreme Court), the Affordable Care Act turns 6 years old on Wednesday. It made it through nursery school and kindergarten, but it’s still a very troubled child. (Sreedhar Potarazu, 3/23)

What is a “substantial” burden on religious freedom? For four Supreme Court justices, the answer may be: whatever a religious objector says it is. That was the implication of a brief exchange during oral arguments on Wednesday morning, in one of the most significant cases of the court’s current term, involving a religious challenge to women’s access to free birth control. If the justices split 4-4, they would leave the issue unresolved until a new justice is confirmed, which could be a year or more from now. (Jesse Wegman, 3/23)

Millions of Americans are finding Obamacare to be unstable ground. ... Because of fluctuations in income, millions of Americans move back and forth between Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplace, leading to significant health and financial costs for individuals, states and insurance companies. This cycling across different forms of insurance is called “churning.” (Dhruv Khullar, 3/23)

On Wednesday, an eight-member Supreme Court heard a challenge to the requirement under Obamacare that employer health insurance plans cover birth control. The case was brought by nonprofit organizations with religious objections to contraception. But questions from the bench suggested that the justices might be evenly split on whether the complicated arrangement worked out by the Obama administration to balance religious freedom and women's health violates the nonprofits' rights under existing law. If so, two outcomes are possible: The justices could hand down a 4-4 ruling that would not establish a binding precedent around the country, leaving the law open for interpretation. Or they could decide to have the case reargued next term in the hope that a successor to the late Justice Antonin Scalia will have been confirmed by the Senate. (3/24)

If the Obama administration had thought long and hard about the meaning of religious freedom, one of the nation’s most fundamental rights, it would not have ended up in the Supreme Court on Wednesday doing battle over free birth control with Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious non-profits. (3/23)

The Obama administration has gone out of its way to accommodate the religious beliefs of employers who don’t want to provide insurance coverage for birth control required by the Affordable Care Act. There is an outright exemption for churches and other houses of worship. Religiously affiliated non-profit organizations can opt out, too. They simply fill out a form stating their objection and send it to their insurance company or the government. Then, the insurance company must provide the non-profits’ employees with the coverage directly, without the employers’ involvement. These employers are exempted, but the women get the essential birth control coverage they need. (Gretchen Borchelt, 3/23)

High prescription drug prices make most Americans' blood boil, with the same drugs costing up to six times more here than in Western Europe, where drug prices are regulated. However, one cause of high prices has received scant attention: the delays in bringing generic drugs to the market. This problem, costing consumers billions of dollars each year, should be a top priority for Dr. Robert M. Califf, who was just confirmed by the Senate as the new Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). (Andrew L. Yarrow, 3/23)

One of the biggest stories in science right now is the fight over the Crispr patents. Crispr is a gene editing technique that promises to allow previously unthinkable feats of bio-engineering. It was discovered in stages, like most scientific breakthroughs, by multiple teams working at various universities and research institutes around the world. The final, key advancements were made more-or-less simultaneously by two teams of researchers -- one based in California and led by Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier, the other based at the Broad Institute in Massachusetts and headed by Feng Zhang. (Noah Smith, 3/23)

Current efforts to enhance rewarding value rather than volume of health care focus principally on transitioning fee-for-service Medicare payments into alternative payment models, such as accountable care organizations or bundled payment arrangements. But to promote rewarding value, we also need to focus on long-term prevention that can improve outcomes over the long run. The Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation, under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), recently announced a model test for population-based reductions in projected 10-year cardiovascular risk. But many other opportunities for prevention-focused innovative payment models remain. One important opportunity is addressing chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes. (Sameed Ahmed M. Khatana, Ann L. Albright and Darshak M. Sanghavi, 3/23)

Senate Democrats recently ramped up their efforts to force businesses to pay managerial employees overtime. The reform is only the latest attempt by Democrats to tamper with — and ultimately ruin — our economy through wage and price controls. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, for instance, support a dramatic hike in the federal minimum wage, as well as Medicare overhauls that amount to government price controls on drugs. All of these proposals mistakenly assume that the federal government knows better than businesses and consumers what goods and labor are worth. (Michelle Ray, 3/23)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's new guidelines for doctors on responsibly prescribing painkillers such as Oxycontin and Vicodin bring important additional attention to the opioid crisis gripping our nation. The CDC's reason for issuing these guidelines is clear – almost 29,000 people fatally overdosed on prescription opiates or heroin in 2014 – and addiction continues to be a growing problem in communities across the United States. (Chuck Ingoglia and Becky Vaughn, 3/23)

The crisis that led officials in Ithaca, N.Y., to consider opening a supervised-injection center for heroin users, part of what the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called a national epidemic of overdose deaths, is sadly familiar to us here. Overdose deaths and H.I.V. infection among injection drug users were so high nearly 20 years ago that Vancouver declared a public health emergency. With open drug use and needles discarded in the streets of downtown Vancouver, we responded in 2003 by opening North America’s first supervised-injection center for heroin and other injection drugs. (Patricia Daly, 3/23)

You think of yourself as proactive and prepared. You’ve thought through a smart retirement plan. Your car maintenance is up to date. Even your dog’s shots are up to date. But have you had your Medicare annual wellness visit? Probably not. According to Medicare, fewer than 20% of those who qualify for this free benefit take advantage of it. If you care about your health and long-term well-being, it’s a benefit you can’t afford to pass up. (Molly Mettler, 3/23)

The newly dead have stories to tell and lessons to teach. But we aren’t listening. Autopsy, once a mainstay of medicine, is now often an afterthought. (Mary Fowkes, 3/23)

While public health officials in the western hemisphere are trying to figure out how to stop the mosquito-borne Zika virus, few seem to have noticed that, even if eliminated in a year or two, the Zika virus could have profound long-term demographic effects in affected countries. (Robert Book, 3/23)

It’s a case of bad news and lousy publicity adding up to good, remedial legislation. On Wednesday, Gov. Rick Scott signed into law one bill that creates a needle-exchange program to battle and, it is hoped, slow the spread of HIV through intravenous drug use. The governor also put his signature on legislation that requires state crime labs to test rape kits within 120 days of receiving them. These two bills alone speak highly of lawmakers’ bipartisan effort to tackle head-on two unsustainable scourges. And we commend Gov. Scott for following through, acknowledging the challenges that the laws will now confront. (3/23)

The festival, which was co-founded by Robert De Niro in 2002, has placed a film purporting to defend Wakefield and accusing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of a cover-up on its program this spring. The film is called "Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Conspiracy." Its director: Andrew Wakefield. (Michael Hiltzik, 3/23)

The abundant deficiencies of Gov. Rick Snyder's administration are laid bare in a scathing report issued Wednesday by the task force the governor himself appointed to postmortem the Flint water crisis. The appointment of this task force was the governor's response, in the days after he finally acknowledged that the water in Flint was not safe to drink, to critics demanding accountability from an administration that for too long seemed unmoved by the events unfolding in Flint. (3/23)