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Humana became the latest health insurer to serve notice that it might leave some Affordable Care Act exchanges next year, creating more uncertainty for customers ahead of this fall's enrollment window and presidential campaign, during which the law is sure to remain a hot debate topic. The insurer, which is being acquired by rival Aetna, said Wednesday that it expects to make a number of changes to its business for 2017, and that may include leaving some markets both on and off the exchanges or changing prices. Humana Inc. sold coverage in 15 states this year. (5/4)

Humana Inc. may become the latest health-insurance company to exit Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges in some states next year as it seeks to curb financial losses. (Alltucker, 5/4)

Insurers have begun to propose big premium increases for coverage next year under the 2010 health law, as some struggle to make money in a market where their costs have soared. The companies also have detailed the challenges in their Affordable Care Act business in a round of earnings releases, the most recent of which came on Wednesday when Humana Inc. said it made a slim profit on individual plans in the first quarter, not including some administrative costs, but still expects a loss for the full year. The Louisville, Ky.-based insurer created a special reserve fund at the end of last year to account for some expected losses on its individual plans in 2016. (Radnofsky and Wilde Mathews, 5/4)

Humana Inc. on Wednesday reported its profit tumbled 46% in the first quarter of the year, hurt by costs related to the Aetna Inc. merger and a rise in a key measure of the company’s medical costs. Still, results for the health insurer, which in July agreed to be acquired by rival Aetna, topped expectations. Chief Financial Officer Brian Kane said the company is encouraged by early indicators in its Medicare and health-care services businesses “but remain cautious while our health-care exchange experience continues to develop.” (Steele, 5/4)

With the Obama administration counting down its final year, many Democrats are finding less to like about the president's health care law, unsure about its place among their party's achievements. Sen. Bernie Sanders' call for "Medicare for all" seems to have rekindled aspirations for bigger changes beyond "Obamacare." That poses a challenge for Hillary Clinton, who has argued that the health care law is working and the nation should build on it, not start over. (5/5)

President Obama vowed federal support for the beleaguered residents of this city on Wednesday and said government officials at all levels should have prevented Flint’s water supply from being contaminated with lead. In his first visit to the city since the water crisis began, Mr. Obama received updates from local officials and residents, made a show of drinking filtered tap water, and told a crowd of about 1,000 people at a high school that they deserved more from their leaders. (Shear and Bosman, 5/4)

President Obama arrived here Wednesday to check in on a disadvantaged city that has been denied a most elemental government service — safe drinking water — but his visit turned into an outpouring of emotion from a community aggrieved by years of neglect from its elected officials. The president’s day in a city that has become a national symbol of disenfranchisement was intended to bolster confidence over a public health crisis related to toxic levels of lead contamination in Flint’s tap water. Obama drank from a glass filled with filtered Flint water to drive home his message that recovery efforts, slow off the mark, were finally making gains. (Nakamura, 5/4)

A Flint municipal official struck a deal with prosecutors Wednesday, pledging cooperation in exchange for reduced charges as authorities continue investigating lead contamination of the impoverished Michigan city's drinking water supply. Utilities administrator Mike Glasgow entered a plea to one count of willful neglect of duty, a misdemeanor, in exchange for dismissal of a felony charge of tampering with evidence. The state attorney general's office said the deal will take effect in one year. (5/4)

A year ago, Gov. Rick Snyder was stoking rumors of a presidential bid as a metrics-driven Republican whose ability to run government like a business transformed a troubled state. But the leadership style so lauded a year ago — the emphasis on problem-solving over politics, the laser-like focus on the bottom line, the reliance on emergency financial managers to whip troubled cities into shape — has proven to be his undoing. Now, he is viewed as the person ultimately responsible for one of the nation's biggest public-health disasters in memory — the lead contamination of a water system serving 100,000 people, and a possible link between the water system and an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease that killed 12 people. (Mack, Fonger and Counts, 5/3)

Florida Gov. Rick Scott plans to drop by Capitol Hill next week to push for emergency funds to combat the Zika virus. Without asking for a specific amount of money, Scott will request that lawmakers treat the Zika threat like they would a hurricane: something to be prepared for in case of devastation. His trip is planned for May 11-12. (Mazzei, 5/4)

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) will meet with GOP leaders in Congress next week, urging them to drop the “political grandstanding” and quickly approve funds to fight the Zika virus. ... The governor did not say how much money his state needed to prepare for the outbreak, but pointed out that more than 100 cases have already been reported in Florida. Scott is the latest Florida Republican to call on GOP leaders to end their months-long fight with the White House over how much money to spend fighting Zika. (Ferris, 5/4)

Bill Baer was the ultimate Washington antitrust insider when he came to the Justice Department in 2013: At law firm Arnold & Porter,, he'd counseled the biggest U.S. companies, including deal machine General Electric Co., on getting mergers over the finish line. Now, as Baer's career advances - he's just been named to the No. 3 position at the Justice Department - he'll still be overseeing the antitrust watchdogs at his former division as they turn to a pair of proposed mergers that have the potential to radically reshape U.S. health care. (McLaughlin, 5/4)

Deaths from hepatitis C in the United States continued climbing in 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday, but experts hope the trend will reverse over the next few years as more people with the virus receive highly effective new treatments. The agency also found that more Americans died from complications of hepatitis C in 2013 than from 60 other infectious conditions combined, including H.I.V., tuberculosis and pneumococcal disease. But while there has been an explosion in new hepatitis C cases among young opioid addicts who inject heroin and other drugs with shared needles, the rising deaths are largely among baby boomers who contracted the virus decades ago and have deteriorated over time. (Goodnough, 5/4)

Baby boomers, born between 1945 and 1965, are the hardest hit group. They account for 75 percent of all hepatitis C infections. Many of them have unknowingly been living with the infection for years and were most likely infected during medical procedures after World War II, when injection and blood transfusion technologies were not as safe as they are now, health officials said. About 3.5 million Americans have chronic hepatitis C infection, and the number of deaths related to the disease has been on the rise in recent years despite the availability of new drugs that cure the disease. (Sun, 5/4)

"Not everyone is getting tested and diagnosed, people don't get referred to care as fully as they should, and then they are not being placed on treatment," said Dr. John Ward, director of CDC's division of viral hepatitis. At the same time, surveillance data analyzed by the CDC shows an alarming uptick in new cases of hepatitis C, mainly among those with a history of using injectable drugs. From 2010 to 2014, new cases of hepatitis C infection more than doubled. Because hepatitis C has few noticeable symptoms, said Ward, the 2,194 cases reported in 2014 are likely only the tip of the iceberg. (LaMotte, 5/4)

The drugmaker Purdue Pharma launched OxyContin two decades ago with a bold marketing claim: One dose relieves pain for 12 hours, more than twice as long as generic medications. Patients would no longer have to wake up in the middle of the night to take their pills, Purdue told doctors. One OxyContin tablet in the morning and one before bed would provide “smooth and sustained pain control all day and all night.” On the strength of that promise, OxyContin became America’s bestselling painkiller, and Purdue reaped $31 billion in revenue. But OxyContin’s stunning success masked a fundamental problem: The drug wears off hours early in many people, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. (Ryan, Girion and Glover, 5/5)

Dozens of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday unanimously called for the agency to rethink its approach to opioid abuse amid a worsening epidemic nationwide. (Ferris, 5/4)

Doctors who prescribe painkillers should be required to undergo training aimed at reducing misuse and abuse of the medications, according to federal health experts, though they acknowledge the challenge of putting such a mandate in place. The group of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration voted unanimously Wednesday that the agency should change its risk-management programs for opioid painkillers, highly addictive medications at the center of a national epidemic of addiction and abuse. (Perrone, 5/4)

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Wednesday called for more robust training for doctors who prescribe opioids, highlighting the medical community's role in combatting addiction. (Ferris, 5/4)

A bill aimed at tackling the epidemic of opioid and heroin abuse won final passage in the Senate Tuesday night. It now goes to Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who plans to sign it. (Levin Becker, 5/4)

Say you suspect your loved one is using heroin or some other opioid and you’re worried about them overdosing. If a new bill making its way through the state legislature becomes law, you’ll be able to walk into any pharmacy in the state and get access to a drug that blocks opiate overdoses. (Hoban, 5/4)

Seattle police say bicycle officers have saved three people from potentially fatal heroin overdoses since they started carrying an overdose-reversal drug in mid-March. (5/4)

Prince Rogers Nelson had an unflinching reputation among those close to him for leading an assiduously clean lifestyle. He ate vegan and preferred to avoid the presence of meat entirely. He was known to eschew alcohol and marijuana, and no one who went on tour with him could indulge either. But Prince appears to have shielded from even some of his closest friends that he had a problem with pain pills, one that grew so acute that his friends sought urgent medical help from Dr. Howard Kornfeld of California, who specializes in treating people addicted to pain medication. ... But he arrived too late. (Eligon, Kovaleski and Coscarelli, 5/5)

In his final weeks, Prince hid signs of trouble from his fans, stonewalling reports of an overdose that required an emergency plane landing and making a brief public appearance to reassure them. But privately, the superstar was in crisis, seeking help from a prominent addiction expert that ultimately came too late. The day before he died, Prince’s representatives reached out to a prominent California doctor who specializes in treating addiction and set up an initial meeting between the two, the doctor’s Minneapolis attorney, William Mauzy, said Wednesday. He said the doctor, Howard Kornfeld, couldn’t leave right away so he sent his son, Andrew, who flew out that night. (Burbach, 5/4)

The U.S. Attorney and the Drug Enforcement Administration in Minnesota are officially joining the investigation into the circumstances of Prince's death, they announced Wednesday. The federal law enforcement agencies issued a statement saying they could "augment" the local Carver County Sheriff's Office investigation with "federal resources and expertise about prescription drug diversion," which may have played a role in Prince's sudden and still officially mysterious death at his Paisley Park compound on April 21 in suburban Minneapolis. (5/4)

The death of Prince has helped fuel a national conversation about opioid painkillers as investigators look into whether a drug overdose killed the pop superstar, whose cause of death hasn’t been released yet. Prince would hardly be the first famous figure to battle opioid addiction. But it’s not just a celebrity problem. (Clarridge, 5/4)

At least three patients died last year at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena in an outbreak suspected to have been caused by tainted medical scopes, according to a newly discovered regulatory report. Huntington hospital officials had confirmed in August that three patients were sickened the previous month but declined to say more about their condition. They later told Olympus Corp., the scope’s manufacturer, of the deaths, according to the company’s report to federal regulators. (Petersen, 5/5)

Kaiser Health News' Lydia Zuraw reports: "Frozen vegetables are a staple in many diets, so a huge recall of them has us peering at the packages in our freezers. On Tuesday evening, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced an outbreak of the Listeria monocytogenes bacteria and frozen vegetables and fruits are believed to be the cause. More than 350 products like green beans, broccoli, peas and blueberries sold under 42 brands at U.S. and Canadian grocers including Safeway, Costco and Trader Joe’s have now been recalled." (Zuraw, 5/5)

The odds that you’ve seen a doctor in the last year vary quite a bit depending on where you live — but so far, the way your state has implemented the Affordable Care Act doesn’t seem to have much to do with it, government data show. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that 17.3% of American adults did not have a home base for their medical care in 2014, and 34% had not seen or talked to a doctor in the last year. (Kaplan, 5/5)

It's 2:00 p.m. and you have a few more hours until the end of your workday. Your eyes sting, your vision is getting blurry and your head hurts. The computer screen that you've been staring at for the past six hours seems so bright that you want to shut your eyes. ... Depending on whether you consult an optometrist or an ophthalmologist, you might get different answers on what ails you. Is it computer vision syndrome? Is it digital eyestrain? Is it just dry eyes and some eyestrain? The most common definition is given by the American Optometric Association, which coined computer vision syndrome and digital eyestrain as a group of vision-related problems from viewing digital screens for a long time. (Tan, 5/4)

The number of new HIV infections annually in the United States has dropped by an estimate 11 percent from 2010 to 2015, though it didn’t fall enough to meet goals set by the Obama administration’s 2010 comprehensive national HIV/AIDS strategy, new research from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Pennsylvania. (Cohn, 5/4)

Patients treated at specialty cancer hospitals have a 10 percent lower chance of dying in the first year than those who receive care at community hospitals, according to a study of Medicare claims and other data published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (Chang, 5/4)

Two Planned Parenthood affiliates filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday over a decision by Kansas to cut off Medicaid reimbursements to the abortion provider that was largely based on allegations lodged against its affiliates in other states. The lawsuit filed by the Planned Parenthood affiliate for Kansas and Mid-Missouri and another for the St. Louis region came only a day after the state Department of Health and Environment sent a letter to the Kansas and Mid-Missouri organization that its Medicaid funding would be cut off as of next week. (5/4)

Planned Parenthood, a U.S. women's healthcare and abortion provider, has filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Kansas over a plan to strip it of government healthcare funding, court records showed. (O'Brien, 5/4)

Oklahoma is ending its contracts with two Planned Parenthood organizations that provide health services to thousands of mostly low-income women and families, the head of the state's Medicaid agency said Wednesday. Oklahoma Health Care Authority Chief Executive Officer Nico Gomez said the agency notified Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma and Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma in February of its intent to terminate provider agreements with the two affiliates. (5/4)

Starting later this month, women in Utah seeking an abortion 20 weeks or more into a pregnancy will first have to be given anesthesia or painkillers — drugs that are intended not for them, but for the fetus. Those are the terms of a new law that has made Utah the first state in the country to require what doctors here are calling “fetal anesthesia” for the small percentage of abortions that occur at this point in a pregnancy. The law, passed by the Republican-controlled State Legislature and signed in late March by Gov. Gary R. Herbert, a Republican, has opened a new front in the heated debate over fetal pain. (Healy, 5/4)

At least one Alabama abortion clinic will be forced to move under a bill the state Legislature passed Wednesday. The House of Representatives voted 73-19 for the legislation in the final hours of the 2016 session, sending it to the governor. The bill prohibits the Department of Public Health from issuing or renewing licenses for clinics within 2,000 feet of any K-8 public school. Proponents of the legislation say the bill is to safeguard school children from anti-abortion protests outside of clinics. (Brown, 5/4)

One of the country's most outspoken abortion providers has filed a civil rights complaint against the hospital where she works, saying that it has wrongly banned her from giving media interviews. Last fall Diane Horvath-Cosper, an obstetrician and gynecologist, did a lightning round of media interviews after a shooting attack killed three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic, raising new safety concerns at health care facilities that perform abortions. But one week after that, Horvath-Cosper says, she was called to a meeting with top officials at MedStar Washington Hospital Center in the District of Columbia. They said it was a security matter. (Ludden, 5/5)

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday signed into law a bill raising the legal purchase age for cigarettes and other tobacco products to 21 years from 18. The new law, which takes effect June 9, is a big boost to a movement that is turning into the next major challenge to the $100 billion tobacco industry. It capped a difficult day for the tobacco industry. (Mickle and Lazo, 5/4)

California becomes just the second state after Hawaii to raise the lawful age to buy tobacco products, a move that backers applaud as a sure way to curtail harm to adolescents and reduce the number of adult smokers. (Aliferis, 5/5)

Brown signed five closely watched bills, which will also expand smoking restrictions in the workplace and on school properties. California now joins jurisdictions like Hawaii, New York City and San Francisco that have bumped the tobacco-buying age to 21 in an effort to block young people’s route to obtaining tobacco. (Koseff, 5/4)

Brown did not comment on the other bills that he signed, but state Sen. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina) said approval of his bill raising the smoking age will save lives. “The governor’s signature on Tobacco 21 is a signal that California presents a united front against Big Tobacco," Hernandez said in a statement. "Together, we stand to disrupt the chain of adolescent addiction." The package of bills was touted as the “most expansive” effort to control tobacco use in the state in more than a decade. The bills were backed by a coalition of medical groups including the American Heart Assn, American Lung Assn., American Cancer Society and the California Medical Assn. (McGreevy, 5/4)

But Brown vetoed the piece of legislation that reportedly scared tobacco companies the most -- Assembly Bill X2 10, authored by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica -- which would have allowed counties to enact local cigarette taxes. In his veto message, Brown wrote that endorsing new taxes on a "blanket basis" goes too far, especially as anti-tobacco activists inch closer to placing a $2-per-pack cigarette tax on the November ballot that the industry is expected to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat. (Calefati, 5/4)

The new laws also ban the sale of electronic cigarettes to anyone under 21 and restricts where they can be used in public places. That stipulation was swiftly condemned by the Smoke-Free Alternatives Trade Association, which called the limitations to vapor products, some of which contain no tobacco, "counterproductive to public health." "California took a step backwards today by reclassifying vapor products as tobacco," it said. (Berlinger and Rose, 5/5)

Tobacco interests have threatened to target the changes at the ballot box if they are signed into law. Industry or other opponents would need to collect 366,000 valid signatures by early August to ask voters to reject the new laws in November. "The fierce opposition from Big Tobacco on this measure proves just how important this law is and how much their business model relies on targeting our kids," state Sen. Ed Hernandez, an Azusa Democrat and author of the tobacco age bill, said in a statement. (5/5)

Vape away. Increasingly popular e-cigarettes and cigar varieties could be exempt from some government safety regulations if House Republicans have their way. It’s a move that alarms Democrats and public health advocates who argue that it could lead to unsafe products. Legislation approved by a House committee last month would ease rules proposed by the Food and Drug Administration to regulate e-cigarettes for the first time. The legislation would prevent the FDA from requiring retroactive safety reviews of e-cigarettes that are already on the market and exempt some premium and large cigars from those same regulations. E-cigarette products introduced in the future would still undergo the safety reviews. (Jalonick, 5/5)

Lawmakers here early Wednesday reaffirmed Arizona as the only state to not participate in a program that offers health care to children of the working poor. A proposal to restore the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, known in Arizona as KidsCare, stalled in the State Senate this week as lawmakers passed a $9.6 billion budget. Senate leaders voiced concern that the federal government would eventually cut payments to the children’s health care program and that the state would be forced to assume the cost. (Santos, 5/4)

Pregnant women and new mothers using legally prescribed medications may no longer face prosecution under an Alabama statute that is the nation’s harshest law against drug use during pregnancy. (Martin, 5/4)

Colorado lawmakers are sending a bill to the governor's desk that would create a state office for suicide prevention responsible for initiating a new plan to decrease suicides. (5/4)

About 120 frail prisoners a year would be released to live in a nursing home under a plan approved by the Michigan House late Wednesday. The legislation now goes to the Senate for consideration at a time when the number of geriatric prisoners and associated health costs are rising. The plan could save the state's prisons up to $5.4 million a year, because medically frail prisoners cost between three to five times more than other prisoners, according to an analysis from the House Fiscal Agency. (Gerstein, 5/4)

A proposal to limit non-compete clauses in physician contracts and expand the type of entities that could employ doctors – viewed by proponents as a way to protect or increase competition in health care delivery – won final passage from legislators Tuesday night. (Levin Becker, 5/4)

Iowa’s insurance regulator has taken the federal government to court regarding the liquidation of insurance company CoOportunity Health. Insurance Commissioner Nick Gerhart filed a suit Tuesday against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. At issue is whether a local order for CoOportunity's liquidation applies to the federal agencies. (Patane, 5/4)

Surprise inspections at four Massachusetts psychiatric hospitals found such prevalent patient care problems that state officials have taken the unusual step of sending in an onsite monitor to oversee improvements. (Kowalczyk, 5/5)

N.C. Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin said Wednesday he expects to issue a fine against Blue Cross and Blue Shield “in the millions of dollars” for ongoing technology problems that have botched coverage, billing and payments for thousands of customers and doctors in the past four months. The unprecedented fine would culminate a trail of mishaps that resulted in the resignations of two Blue Cross executives so far in one of the most challenging periods in the Chapel Hill insurer’s history. Goodwin noted that the nationwide computer failure that prevented enrollments in the Affordable Care Act was repaired in about two months, while Blue Cross’ technology problems in North Carolina have dragged on twice as long. (Murawski, 5/4)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has awarded $260 million in funding to health clinics across the country including here in St. Louis. Myrtle Hilliard Davis Comprehensive Health Centers Inc. was awarded $998,470 for facility renovation, expansion, or construction, HHS announced Wednesday. (Liss, 5/4)

Cancer Treatment Centers of America has laid off 81 employees at its medical center in north suburban Zion, a company spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday. (Sachdev, 5/4)

In another rebuke by state health officials, Anthem Blue Cross has been fined $415,000 for failing to promptly or completely answer consumer complaints, according to the California Department of Managed Health Care. (Buck, 5/4)

Starting June 9, terminally ill Californians with six months or less to live can request a doctor’s prescription for medications intended to end their lives peacefully. If that sounds simple, it won’t be. California’s End of Life Option Act creates a long list of administrative hurdles that both patients and their doctors must clear. (Bazar, 5/5)

County Executive Steve Schuh's administration is considering options to shift management of more than 300 public school nurses from the county Department of Health to a private company or hospital. (Huang, 5/4)

Margaret Farley’s father fell within five days of entering a Kansas nursing home. He died within seven days of surgery to treat his injuries. Falls like his, Farley said, are one of the biggest dangers that nursing home residents face. They occur when there aren’t enough staff members to care for residents, and they can result in costly, dangerous injuries. (Kite, 5/4)

America’s health insurers are undergoing a crisis of consensus with respect to their engagement with Obamacare. Between 2010 (when the Affordable Care Act was signed) and 2014 (the first year of taxpayer-subsidized coverage in the health insurance exchanges), it was widely understood that health insurers had scored a big win. After all, which other industry could get the federal government to pass a law mandating individuals purchase its product or service as a condition of residency in the United States? (John Graham, 5/4)

Since 2012, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has introduced more than a dozen new Medicare payment models. Most of them emanate from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), whose strategy is to launch various initiatives, evaluate them rapidly, and expand those that reduce spending without harming quality of care. (Robert E. Mechanic, 5/5)

The Medicare Advantage program, which offers private plan alternatives to traditional Medicare, is surging in popularity among Medicare beneficiaries. More than 30% of about 55 million beneficiaries are enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan, up from 16% a decade ago. Yet among policy experts it remains as controversial as ever. At issue: do Medicare Advantage plans cost more or less than traditional Medicare? (Austin Frakt, 5/4)

Accountable care organizations (ACO’s) promise to save us. Dreamed up by Dartmouth’s Eliot Fisher in 2006, and signed into law as a part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, we have been sold on the idea that this particular incarnation of the HMO/Managed Care will save the government, save physicians and save patients all at the same time. I dare say that Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva together would struggle to accomplish those lofty goals. Regardless of the daunting task in front of them, the brave policy gods who see patients about as often as they see pink unicorns, chose to release the Kraken – I mean the ACO – onto an unsuspecting public based on the assumption that anything was better than letting those big, bad, test ordering, hospital admitting, brand name prescribing physicians from running a muck. (Dr. Anish Koka, 5/4)

When doctors prescribe medicine, more than just their patients count on them to get it right. Society as a whole has an interest in keeping certain drugs under control -- and the evidence shows that when it comes to opioid pain relievers and antibiotics, some doctors are failing to do so. (5/4)

It's not exactly breaking news. But two new reports highlight how Americans are struggling with high out-of-pocket medical costs even as most of the presidential candidates slog through their epic, insult-laden primary election battles hardly talking about the issue. The findings suggest there will be strong public pressure for a solution no matter who wins the November election. (Harris Meyer, 5/4)

U.S. correctional institutions, local courts, and police officers frequently encounter people with untreated or undertreated serious mental illnesses, often coupled with substance-use disorders. These encounters usually stem from the alleged commission of a misdemeanor — trespassing, panhandling, petty theft — or a minor, nonviolent felony. Each year, about 11.4 million people are booked into local U.S. jails, where on any given day, 745,000 of them are held. An estimated 16.9% of jail detainees have a serious mental illness,1 which means that nearly 2 million people with such illnesses are arrested each year. (John K. Iglehart, 5/5)

There’s no doubt that the public has a deep interest in understanding the origins of the opioid abuse epidemic that continues to spiral out of control and has harmed so many people, especially in Kentucky. Pike Circuit Judge Steven Combs can shed light on a critical public-health issue and preserve the openness of Kentucky’s courts and public agencies by unsealing court records in the state’s case against Purdue Pharma, the company whose criminally misleading marketing of the painkiller OxyContin has contributed to so much addiction, crime and social dysfunction. (5/4)

On March 2, 2002, I was playing with toys that fart in a Spencer Gifts when my mom called me. She just wanted to say hi and tell me she loved me. At the time, we’d been fighting quite a bit. I was 14, and she was addicted to prescription painkillers. Both of us were hard to deal with. She claimed to be sober but wasn’t. The summer before, when I’d broken my foot, she stole my Vicodin. She said she wanted to keep it safe so I wouldn’t take too much and become an addict like her. But I didn’t believe her. I counted how many were in the bottle when she took it away, and then counted again several hours later. Four were missing. Duh. But I didn’t confront her. I didn’t know how to. (Mollie Kotzen, 5/5)

As police continue to investigate the role prescription narcotics may have played in the death of the musician Prince, a group of advisers to the Food and Drug Administration recommended mandatory training for doctors who prescribe these powerful painkillers. The hope is that this initiative will help stem what some are calling an epidemic of overdose deaths involving opioids. The F.D.A. is not required to follow advice such as this, though it often does. (5/5)

We know that people who have access to quality health coverage are more secure, have better health outcomes and don't have to worry that one illness or injury will put them and their family in a downward spiral. This is particularly true for the formerly incarcerated who, after serving their time, might not have access to the health coverage that will help them get back on their feet. (Vincent DeMarco, 5/4)

Parents helplessly watch the open, vacant unseeing eyes of their child, knowing inside their kid's brain an electrical firestorm rages. The seizure passes, and the immediate parental relief is tempered by hard experience: This is just a break until it happens again — and it always, always happens again. (Jennifer and Chuck Porcari, 5/4)

Fat jokes: Criticism comes with being a columnist. It’s only fair. This newspaper gives me a lot of space to share my opinions. It’s reasonable some people will disagree, even vehemently so. But there’s one trend I notice in negative responses I receive that I struggle to understand. (Daniel Finney, 5/4)

This year’s Drinking Water Week, May 1-7, serves to remind all of us that safe drinking water doesn’t just happen. A case in point is the recent public outrage and questions regarding the safety of tap water as a result of toxic lead levels in Flint, Mich. During past year, the serious consequences of improperly treated water have affected thousands of Flint residents, most of whom had implicitly trusted the quality and safety of their water. As the story of Flint with its political ramifications and alleged malfeasance by water regulators and city officials unfolded, media and community advocates began to call into question the integrity of all water utilities and regulators. If it can happen in Flint, could it happen here? (5/4)