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Minnesota's Democratic governor said Wednesday that the Affordable Care Act is "no longer affordable" for many, a stinging critique from a state leader who strongly embraced the law and proudly proclaimed health reform was working in Minnesota just a few years ago. (10/12)

Gov. Mark Dayton's criticism comes as his state faces massive rate hikes and shrinking competition in its Obamacare insurance marketplace next year. Dayton's comments also come almost a week after Donald Trump and Republicans seized on former president Bill Clinton's remarks lamenting Obamacare's affordability problems. (Pradhan, 10/12)

Democrats have long acknowledged that improvements need to be made to the health law, but Dayton’s remarks go farther and are more negative than usual from members of his party. Dayton added that a "deadlocked" Congress is hurting the situation by preventing improvements from being made to the law. (Sullivan, 10/12)

A coalition of more than 50 conservative groups is calling on Congress to stop “bailouts” of insurance companies under ObamaCare. The groups, in a Wednesday letter to members of Congress, are calling for the passage of two bills that would keep funds away from insurers under two ObamaCare programs that have been the target of growing Republican outrage. The conservative groups are now further pressuring Republicans.  (Sullivan, 10/12)

A top economic adviser to President Obama on Tuesday urged against repealing the so-called “Cadillac” tax on high-cost insurance plans. “Certainly, the administration feels that the excise tax remains a sensible way of sort of addressing the distortions created by the exclusion, focusing on the least efficient plans while retaining strong incentives for employers to continue to offer coverage” Matt Fiedler, the chief economist on the Council of Economic Advisers, said at a Mercatus Center event on the effects of health care costs on economic well-being. (McIntire, 10/11)

President Barack Obama is recounting progress he says Hispanics have made over the course of his presidency and that he’s optimistic about future gains despite some of the rhetoric heard during election season. Obama is speaking to hundreds of people attending a reception for Hispanic Heritage Month at the White House. He says that during his presidency 4 million Hispanics have gained health insurance coverage. (10/12)

MNsure had several key technology vulnerabilities last summer, a federal report has concluded. The report from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General found that MNsure, the state-run health insurance exchange, did have security controls and policies to protect its website and data. But those controls didn’t always align with federal and state information security guidelines, and the inspector general’s scans of MNsure’s website and databases “identified numerous weaknesses.”... MNsure has been plagued with technology issues since its launch in 2013, including a website that consumers often found difficult to access and buggy back-end systems to manage cases on public programs. Many of those problems have been fixed since 2013, but others remain in progress. (Montgomery, 10/12)

Humana Inc. on Wednesday indicated that a downgrade in a key Medicare quality measure could lower its federal reimbursements, but the insurer said the poor grade wasn’t a fair indication of how its business is faring. The company boosted its per share earnings guidance for its September quarter and current year. Still, shares in the company tumbled 5% on Thursday to close at $168.44. (Steele, 10/12)

Humana Inc., the health insurer planning to merge with Aetna Inc., fell the most in more than three months after seeing a sharp decline in government ratings of plans it offers under Medicare. The percentage of Humana’s membership in plans rated four stars or higher dropped to about 37 percent, or 1.17 million members, in July from 78 percent, or 2.15 million, a year earlier, according to ratings published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, on Wednesday. The decline is mainly due to lower scores as a result of a recent CMS audit, Humana said in a statement. (Darie, 10/12)

Investors have taken a dim view of two big pending health insurance mergers. But the two deals are starting to diverge, which could give investors an opportunity. More than a year ago, four of the five largest private insurers agreed to mergers, which would consolidate the industry into three giants. The euphoria, which drove share prices to new heights, was short-lived. The Justice Department sued to block the two deals—between Aetna and Humana and Anthem and Cigna. (Grant, 10/12)

Trying to turn around a failing technology company is almost always a futile task — just ask Marissa Mayer at Yahoo or whoever it is who now runs BlackBerry. But the challenge becomes even more daunting if your company is afflicted by something deeper than a mere implosion of its business. If the company you’re rebuilding has been racked by questions about its ethics and culture, and if on some fundamental level it became derelict in its integrity, well, good luck trying to get that turkey to fly. (Manjoo, 10/12)

The Drug Enforcement Administration has reversed a plan to temporarily ban a plant that some users suggest could be an alternative to powerful and addictive opioid painkillers. In a notice set to be published Thursday in the Federal Register Thursday, the agency said it was withdrawing its plan to add two psychoactive components of the plant, known as kratom, to the list of the most dangerous drugs. (Caldwell, 10/12)

It's been a wild ride for kratom lately. Since Aug. 31, when the Drug Enforcement Administration announced its intention to classify the plant as a Schedule I substance, a group of kratom vendors filed a lawsuit against the government to block the move, angry advocates took to social media in protest and scientists questioned whether they would be able to continue kratom research. Now, the DEA is withdrawing its notice of intent to put kratom in the most restrictive category of controlled substances, with drugs like LSD and heroin. (Silverman, 10/12)

When doctors want to help untangle confusing and sometimes contradictory findings in the scientific literature, they often turn to specially crafted summary studies. These are considered the gold standard for evidence. But one of the leading advocates for this practice is now raising alarm about them, because they are increasingly being tainted by commercial interests. (Harris, 10/12)

Scientists at Eli Lilly are racing to wrap up a clinical trial on a drug that could be the first major advance in treating Alzheimer’s in more than a decade — or a crushing reminder of why the memory-destroying disease has bedeviled researchers for so long. This is the third time Lilly has tested the drug in large-scale trials. The first two tests flopped. But the company, which has spent about $3 billion on Alzheimer’s research over 25 years, believes it has finally identified the patients most likely to benefit from its therapy. (Garde, 10/13)

The promise of a revolutionary gene-editing technology is beginning to be realized in experiments aimed at curing sickle cell disease. Scientists reported Wednesday that they used the CRISPR-Cas9 system to correct a tiny genetic mutation that causes the blood disease, which affects millions of people around the world. (Netburn, 10/12)

This is your brain in space — and it does not look pretty. Scientists studying the effects of radiation in rodents say that astronauts’ exposure to galactic cosmic rays could face a host of cognitive problems, including chronic dementia. The UC Irvine-led study, published in Scientific Reports, adds to a growing body of research on the harmful effects humans may reckon with as they venture out longer and deeper into space, whether on trips to Mars or potentially beyond. (Khan, 10/12)

One-third of all public schools in the United States could be contaminated with toxic PCBs, according to a new report from Sen. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat. The report could be the most comprehensive investigation into the presence of this toxic substance in public schools since they were first used in classrooms across the United States more than 70 years ago. It found that up to 14 million American children could be exposed to PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls. The report estimated that it could cost upward of $52 billion to rid schools of this cancer-causing chemical. (DesRoches, 10/12)

Exercise may aid in weight control and help to fend off diabetes by improving the ability of fat cells to burn calories, a new study reports. It may do this in part by boosting levels of a hormone called irisin, which is produced during exercise and which may help to turn ordinary white fat into much more metabolically active brown fat, the findings suggest. (Reynolds, 10/12)

Retaining the ability to get up and about easily — to walk across a parking lot, climb a set of stairs, rise from a chair and maintain balance — is an under-appreciated component of good health in later life. When mobility is compromised, older adults are more likely to lose their independence, become isolated, feel depressed, live in nursing homes and die earlier than people who don’t have difficulty moving around. (Graham, 10/13)

Researchers at Stanford University and Microsoft just came out with a study that found that "Pokémon Go" significantly increased physical activity levels for die-hard players — many of whom were not active before they started playing the wildly popular game. In fact, engaging in the scavenger-hunt-type game led to a more than 25 percent increase in players’ activity levels over 30 days. That, researchers estimated, adds up to an extra 41 days of life expectancy for players ages 15 to 49 who keep up their addictive habit of searching for and catching virtual Pokemon characters as they walk around with their mobile phone game. (Shah, 10/12)

A new study offers a reality check to anyone who says a mammogram saved her life. For every woman in whom mammography detected a breast cancer that was destined to become large and potentially life-threatening — the kind that screening is intended to head off — about four are diagnosed with one that would never have threatened their health. But the surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation that follows such diagnoses can be traumatic, disfiguring, toxic, or even life-shortening even as it’s unnecessary. Prior estimates of how many mammogram-detected cancers are overdiagnoses, meaning they don’t need to be treated, have ranged from 0 to 54 percent. (Begley, 10/12)

More than half of breast cancers newly diagnosed in the United States are likely cases of mistaken identity that subject women to needless anxiety, treatment and expense, researchers reported Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study also found that the value of mammograms as a life-saving tool has been significantly overstated. Instead, the introduction of more effective treatments should get most of the credit for improving survival rates among women diagnosed with breast cancer, the researchers concluded. (Healy, 10/12)

A rising number of American women are planning to have children someday, despite generally falling birth rates in the country in recent years, according to new numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thursday. Half of US women between the ages of 15 and 44 say they intend to have children in the future, up from 46 percent in 2002. And experts say that could be a sign that future parents are more confident in the economy — and with that, their ability to handle the financial responsibilities of having kids. (Thielking, 10/13)

A homeopathic product company says it will discontinue the sale of its teething medicines, following federal warnings about their safety and unconfirmed reports linking the medicines to infant deaths. The company, Hyland’s, has manufactured teething tablets and gels — designed to relieve pain and irritability when an infant’s teeth are coming in — for more than 90 years. Hyland’s has “chosen to discontinue the distribution of our Hyland’s teething medicines in the United States,” the company wrote in an open letter published on its website. “This decision was made in light of the recent warning issued by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) against the use of homeopathic teething tablets and gels. This warning has created confusion among parents and limited access to the medicines.” (Scott, 10/12)

More than 400 teething babies given homeopathic remedies to help ease gum pain developed serious health problems over the past six years, including seizures, shortness of breath, vomiting, and constipation, according to an investigation by U.S. regulators. At least 10 died. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning parents and care providers about the potential dangers from the teething products, though its investigation isn’t yet complete. The agency said it hasn’t conclusively determined that homeopathic products were directly responsible for the deaths, and it didn’t identify any of the brands. (Cortez, 10/12)

In the fight against Zika and future disease outbreaks, aerial drones might help by delivering medical supplies to remote areas and ferrying back lab samples for testing, or by dropping squadrons of sterile mosquitoes over an affected area to halt spread of a virus. Those are among the ideas selected by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, to receive $3.3 million in funding for testing and development. Other possible innovations, many of them currently being tested overseas, include mining data to forecast future outbreaks and harnessing the collective power of mobile phones to improve disease surveillance, according to Wednesday’s announcement. (Chang, 10/12)

In the nine months since the first travel-related Zika case was confirmed in Florida, more than 1,000 others have tested positive for the virus. The majority have been infected overseas, but the number of homegrown cases has been going up too, reaching 150 since June 30, when the first local case was confirmed in Miami's Wynwood neighborhood. On Wednesday, the state health department reported five new travel-related Zika cases, and six new local cases, which have been linked to Miami-Dade County. (Miller, 10/12)

Regina Borthwick, director of clinical care coordination at Hays Medical Center, said home visits and follow-up calls are important parts of efforts to keep patients from being readmitted to the hospital. ... Hospitals have had a strong incentive to reduce readmissions since 2012, when a provision of the Affordable Care Act took effect that requires most hospitals to track readmissions within 30 days after a Medicare patient was discharged. Hospitals with higher-than-expected rates are penalized. Some people have raised concerns, however, that hospitals are being punished for taking low-income and seriously ill patients, who typically have higher readmission rates. Borthwick said the Hays hospital was able to reduce its readmissions by calling to follow up with patients, connecting them with health care resources and educating patients about their conditions in everyday terms. (Wingerter, 10/12)

The contract to provide health services to the more than 20,000 men and women in state prisons is back up for grabs with the current quarter billion-dollar deal is set to expire in early 2017. The current provider, Centurion of Tennessee, signed a $270 million in 2013 that was set to expire this year. That contract has been extended through February 2017, but the state has officially opened a bidding process to allow any company to vie for the lucrative deal, said Tennessee Department of Correction spokeswoman Neysa Taylor. (Boucher, 10/12)

A federal judge has released the state of Delaware from a 2011 settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, affirming that the state has reformed its public mental health system. Local news organizations report that U.S. District Court judge Leonard P. Stark signed the order Tuesday after the DOJ and the state filed a motion to dismiss the settlement agreement. (10/12)

How should the Georgia Medicaid program spend the $110 million penalty to be paid by Tenet Healthcare as part of a fraud case settlement? The net amount is the biggest Medicaid fraud recovery in Georgia history, according to the state Attorney General’s office. By law, it must go to Medicaid, not to the state’s general treasury. The money is part of Tenet’s payment of more than $513 million to settle the case of Medicaid fraud involving some metro Atlanta hospitals. The Texas-based chain has since sold all its Georgia hospitals, but the misconduct occurred while Tenet was the owner. (Miller, 10/12)

A Colorado spokesman for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs violated privacy rules when he disclosed protected medical information about a Vietnam veteran more than two years ago to The Denver Post, but the agency did little more than retrain him, the agency admits in a recent letter. Sallie Houser-Hanfelder, director of VA’s Eastern Colorado Health System, said in a two-page letter to Michael Beckley that while his protected health information “was impermissibly disclosed to the news media, resulting in a privacy breach,” the misconduct was just a gaffe in paperwork rather than malicious. (Migoya, 10/12)

A California district attorney on Wednesday announced a civil lawsuit against two fetal tissue companies, claiming they have illegally sold fetal tissue for profit. The issue of profits from the sale of fetal tissue was thrust into the spotlight last year due to undercover videos targeting Planned Parenthood. Multiple state investigations have since found no wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood. In this case, though, the Orange County district attorney says two companies, DaVinci Biosciences and DV Biologics, which share some of the same owners, illegally sold fetal tissue for profit. (Sullivan, 10/12)

Founded in 2007 by a team of medical students, BRIDGE stands for Building Relationships and Initiatives Dedicated to Gaining Equality. BRIDGE Healthcare is open from 5:30 to 9 p.m. every Tuesday and staffed by first- and second-year students who confer with their fourth-year peers. The clinic is overseen by physicians who donate their time and expertise, and those doctors must approve all medical treatments as well as write all prescriptions. The collaborative effort also includes students and professionals in the fields of physical therapy, social work, public health and pharmacology. (McKenzie, 10/12)

The Albany soda tax is one of three similar measures on Bay Area ballots this November — San Francisco and Oakland have also proposed such a tax. All three are modeled on one passed in Berkeley in 2014. Albany’s tax would charge distributors at one cent per fluid ounce and includes an exemption for distributors serving businesses with less than $100,000 in gross receipts per year. All three raise taxes on distributors, rather than the actual sale of sweetened beverages, and all send the money rasied to the general fund. (Esper, 10/12)

Seventy-seven percent of Florida voters support medical marijuana, according to a new survey of likely voters. The University of North Florida poll shows broad support for expanding access to the drug, which is currently available to people with certain chronic illnesses. UNF pollster Michael Binder says the results bode well for proponents of Constitutional Amendment 2, who need the support of 60% of voters in order to pass the measure. (Payne, 10/11)

A beverage processing plant in Hopkins has been identified as the likely source of a Legionnaires' disease outbreak in that community. Samples from a single cooling tower at Citrus Systems, Inc., contained Legionella bacteria, which causes Legionnaires' disease, public health investigators said Wednesday. The company's products aren't affected. The bacteria exactly matched the strain taken from patients who contracted the respiratory infection, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. (Benson, 10/12)

The Minnesota Department of Health reported Wednesday that the three-year-old cooling tower at the Citrus Systems juice manufacturing plant near downtown Hopkins was the culprit, and that testing found an exact genetic match between Legionella bacterial samples from the tower and from four of the sickened patients. The tower was sanitized on Sept. 27, and no new infections have been reported since Sept. 23, meaning “the outbreak for all intents and purposes is over,” said Richard Danila, deputy state epidemiologist. (Olson, 10/12)

When a furor erupted over the rapidly rising price of EpiPens this summer, the drugmaker Mylan offered a solution: a coupon for the expensive drug. People who need the EpiPens to protect themselves from life-threatening allergic reactions could use the coupon to get up to $300 off at the pharmacy counter if their insurance plan has a deductible or a co-payment. (Margot Sanger-Katz, 10/12)

Much about our current political climate may be volatile, but one feature seems to be as stable as the Rockies: Americans’ dislike of the Affordable Care Act. The Kaiser Family Foundation, which has been tracking this sentiment almost since the law’s passage in early 2010 (its latest reading shows unfavorable opinion of Obamacare outpolling favorable 47% to 44%) thinks it may have a clue as to why that is. Its poll also shows that the vast majority of Americans still have no idea about what the law has accomplished. (Michael Hiltzik, 10/12)

Universal health coverage is a global aspiration supported by both the World Health Organization and the United Nations. The World Health Organization has defined universal health coverage as ensuring that “all people obtain the health services they need without suffering financial hardship when paying for them.” The UN resolution supporting universal health coverage specifically avoided defining a particular type of health financing system, but called on member states “to ensure that health financing systems evolve so as to avoid significant direct payments at the point of delivery.” (Michael D. Rawlins, 10/11)

On January 15, 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised pregnant women not to travel to areas where the Zika virus was spreading. Six months later, more than 60 countries or territories have reported new local transmission of Zika. By August 4, 2016, nearly 1700 cases of travel-associated Zika infection, including 479 in pregnant women, had been reported in the continental United States; Puerto Rico is experiencing rapid and extensive spread of the epidemic.1 Florida has documented 5 symptomatic and 8 asymptomatic locally acquired Zika infections in a 6-block area north of downtown Miami. Comprehensive mosquito control efforts, including reduction of standing water, provision of repellants containing diethyltoluamide (DEET), and application of pyrethroid insecticides and larvicides using backpack sprayers and trucks to eliminate adult and larval forms of mosquitoes, were initiated on confirmation of the first cases. Persistent findings of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes led to a decision to also use aerial spraying with naled and larvicide within 3 days of documentation of the risk of ongoing Zika transmission. (Thomas R. Frieden, Anne Schuchat and Lyle R. Petersen, 10/11)

The standard diagnostic technology for identifying microbes, decades old, is simply too slow and imprecise to help most patients. The good news is that scientists have developed far better technology, capable of diagnosing thousands of different infections quickly, and with remarkable precision. But doctors won’t be able to use it until federal regulators grant approval, and unfortunately, this process is about to get much harder, if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration stays on its current course. (Steven Salzberg, 10/12)

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 42 percent of US adults ages 18 and older received the flu vaccine in the 2015–16 flu season. This is just one example of US adults’ not receiving vaccinations at recommended levels, which can lead to avoidable costs of doctor visits, hospitalizations, and lost productivity. (10/12)

To be clear: Science is the most powerful force in the world for improving human health and well-being. It consistently pays enormous returns on society’s investment, transforming the way we live and work. It’s only natural that expectations run high. That said, the time frame for the big therapeutic payoffs is often misunderstood. The scientific path from biological insights to medical impact is often long and winding. (Eric Lander, 10/12)

Although much of the attention to Proposition 206 has been directed toward restaurant and other service workers, there is a larger and more vulnerable population that will be significantly impacted by raising the minimum wage in Arizona: seniors and those who care for them. As the president of the Arizona In-Home Care Association, I represent an industry that has been hit hard in recent years by the Affordable Care Act and other federal legislation and unfunded mandates. Proposition 206 goes a step beyond in terms of its direct impact to our elderly and disabled population. (Mark Young, 10/12)

Proposition 60 is a workplace safety measure to protect young performers in the porn industry who are now routinely and illegally exposed to sexually transmitted diseases. The callous mistreatment of these often socially marginalized young men and women employees by their bosses has gone on for too long. Proposition 60 will give state health officials more tools to enforce an existing law requiring condoms be worn in adult films to protect performers. The law is based on regulations formulated in 1992 by federal health professionals. (Gary Richwald, 10/12)