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Meanwhile, the White House pushed back against criticism that Mr. Obama had abandoned a commitment to long-term deficit reduction. Officials pointed to steps already taken to reduce health-care costs. ... An improving economy has sharply reduced annual deficits from more than $1 trillion early in Mr. Obama’s first term, when the government boosted spending sharply during the financial crisis. That has reduced the urgency for a deal to rein in spending on Social Security and Medicare, both of which are projected to boost deficits in the next decade as the baby boom generation retires. (Timiraos and Lee, 2/2)

The Republican preference is for continued austerity and lower taxes, which will probably be reflected in their own budget plans expected next month. To boost Pentagon spending as defense hawks want, their budgets are expected to slash more deeply into food stamps, healthcare and other safety-net programs. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), the House Budget Committee chairman, promised Sunday on Fox News that a Republican budget would re-imagine Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and “will do what the American people have to do with their homes and in their businesses every single day — and that’s not spend more money than what comes in.” (Mascaro and Hennessey, 2/2)

Outside budget hawks, though, gave Obama poor marks for his approach to entitlement programs. “Failing to address the drivers of the debt will ultimately undermine the president's other priorities,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. “The focus on promoting investment today will do little good if our massive debt is choking the investments of tomorrow.” The budget does propose changes to Medicare designed to curb its share of total government spending. The administration is planning to expand initiatives designed to further slow Medicare spending, which has been growing at historically low levels in recent years. (Hennessey and Parsons, 2/2)

Absent from the plan is any pretense of trying to address the main drivers of the long-term debt — Social Security and Medicare — a quest that has long divided both parties and ultimately proved impossible. The document instead indicates that Mr. Obama, after years of being hemmed in on his fiscal priorities because of politics and balance sheets, feels newly free to outline an ambitious set of goals that will set the terms of a debate between Democrats and Republicans and shape the 2016 presidential election. (Hirschfeld Davis, 2/2)

In his new budget, President Obama proposed on Monday to squeeze $399 billion over the next 10 years out of Medicare, Medicaid and other programs run by the Department of Health and Human Services. Under the proposals, many Medicare beneficiaries would have to pay more for their care and coverage. The president would, for example, introduce a co-payment for new Medicare beneficiaries who receive home health care services, and he would collect $4 billion over 10 years by imposing a surcharge on premiums for new beneficiaries who buy generous private insurance to supplement Medicare. (Pear, 2/2)

The Obama administration’s fiscal 2016 budget request calls for allowing the government to negotiate the price of prescription drugs and giving regulators new funding to fight Ebola. The Department of Health and Human Services request proposes a budget authority of about $1.09 trillion for fiscal 2016, up from $1.04 trillion in fiscal 2015. Of that, $83.8 billion is discretionary funding for the agency, an increase of $4.8 billion from fiscal 2015. (Armour and Burton, 2/2)

With patients facing greater exposure to the high cost of new medications, President Barack Obama on Monday called for government to use its buying power to squeeze drug companies for lower prices. Obama's budget asks Congress to authorize Medicare to negotiate on behalf of its beneficiaries for so-called "specialty" drugs that require hefty copayments from patients. They include biologics, which are medications derived from natural substances, ranging from insulin to some of the latest cancer treatments. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 2/2)

President Obama’s proposed 2016 budget takes a major swipe at waste and abuse in Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly, seeking more than $36 billion in cuts over the next decade to curb costly government overpayments to the industry. (Schulte, 2/3)

President Barack Obama's budget would strip away about $399 billion in federal health costs over a decade with the bulk of the proposed savings coming from reducing Medicare payments for drugs and services for people recovering from serious illness or injuries. Certain high-earners enrolled in Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled, also would pay more out of pocket for drug and outpatient services. (Young, 2/2)

HHS again faces an Obamacare funding gap: The money it expects to glean in fees from insurers doesn’t match up to the money it needs to operate the law’s health insurance exchanges. President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2016 budget released Monday includes an HHS request for nearly $2.2 billion to operate the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces. Nearly $1.6 billion would come from user fees on participating insurers. HHS asks for another $629 million for CMS to support exchange operations. (Pradhan, 2/2)

The White House's proposed budget for 2016 would extend funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through 2019, a summary document indicated Monday. CHIP funding is due to expire on Sept. 30, and without action from lawmakers, more than 8 million children could lose their health insurance coverage. (Viebeck, 2/2)

Mr. Obama has proposed a $168.8 billion budget [for the VA], compared with $163.9 billion in 2015. He is requesting $70.2 billion in discretionary funding for the department, nearly 8% more than in 2015. Discretionary funding includes items like medical care, research and construction, but not things like disability compensation payments, which are considered to be mandatory funding. The department would also be able to use some $3 billion in funds collected from things like payments from health insurers and copays for discretionary purposes. (Kesling, 2/2)

President Obama is seeking $83.8 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Health and Human Services for a broad range of efforts, from ongoing support of the health-care law to speeding development of medical innovations to safeguarding the nation’s food supply. The budget includes $4.9 billion for the Food and Drug Administration — a nine percent increase over 2015 funding levels. That would include additional resources for the agency to continue to implement the far-reaching Food Safety Modernization Act, signed by President Obama in 2011, which aims to improve the safety of both imported and domestically produced foods. The White House also wants a new, single agency housed at HHS to oversee food safety. (Dennis, 2/2)

Disease doesn’t discriminate by political party. And lawmakers of all stripes seem poised to embrace one of the flashiest proposals in Obama’s budget: a $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative, which aims to harness the power of genetics research to accelerate the development of treatments and cures. ... Look for this proposal to survive and lead to a boost in appropriations for the National Institutes of Health. And while we’re talking health: The president may also find bipartisan support for his proposal to invest $100 million to combat abuse of prescription opioids and heroin. (Simon, 2/2)

The White House's 2016 budget proposal takes aim at prescription drug abuse with a variety of new measures designed to lower the number of Americans killed by opioid overdoses. The budget, released Monday, would increase funding for programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, and other agencies to fight prescription drug abuse. (Viebeck, 2/2)

President Obama devotes Tuesday to defending his health care law. In the morning, Obama meets with ten people who have written him letters about how the Affordable Care Act has helped them. ... The Obama event with letter writers takes place as the Republican-run House plans to vote again Tuesday to repeal the law, saying it has led to higher insurance premiums and canceled policies. Obama has vowed to veto the House bill, though previous efforts to repeal the health care law have stalled in the Senate. (Jackson, 2/3)

President Barack Obama is seeking to shore up support for his health care law by putting its beneficiaries on display at the White House. The White House says Obama will meet Tuesday with 10 Americans from across the country who wrote him letters about how they benefited from the Affordable Care Act. Obama plans to speak and hold a photo-op with them in the Roosevelt Room. (2/3)

More than 10.1 million people have enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program in the first 14 months since marketplace enrollment began, the Obama administration reported Monday. (Pugh, 2/2)

Hawaii Pacific Islanders, including about 7,500 Micronesians, will automatically be enrolled in insurance mandated by the federal health care law on March 1 after losing their Medicaid coverage Feb. 28. The 7,500 Micronesians are among the more able-bodied among nearly 14,000 citizens of Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia who are living in Hawaii. Medicaid or Medicare coverage still will be retained by people who are blind, pregnant, disabled or 65 years old or older. (2/2)

The Supreme Court could be months away from blowing a huge hole in Obamacare — and Republicans on Capitol Hill are at odds over how they’ll respond if their side wins. It’s the latest example in a long-running quandary for Republicans: They don’t agree on what alternative, if any, their party should offer to President Barack Obama’s signature health care law. But the issue is taking on new urgency for the GOP congressional leaders as the court takes up a case that could leave more than 5 million people without Obamacare’s crucial subsidies. (Haberkorn and Raju, 2/3)

“Under Obama, Average Family Premiums Have Increased $4,154.” The RNC circulated this talking point during the State of the Union address, and it is now popping up in the twitter feeds of Republican House members and state parties. But this is a zombie statistic; a version of it keeps coming back no matter how many times we try to debunk it. So let’s try to explain once again why it does not really say much about health-care inflation under the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. (Kessler, 2/3)

Republican-led states that blocked Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion have found a way to embrace it, under pressure from businesses to tap the flood of federal dollars it brings. Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Haslam called lawmakers into a special session this week to consider accepting federal money to extend public health-care assistance to more of the poor. (Olorunnipa and Newkirk, 2/3)

A conservative group is targeting Republican state legislators who won’t sign a pledge to oppose Medicaid expansion in Montana, holding events this week in the lawmakers’ districts to publicize the no-pledge stance. Americans for Prosperity-Montana -- part of the conservative, free-market organization founded by the billionaire owners of Koch Industries of Wichita, Kansas -- also is sending postcards and making telephone calls into the Republicans’ districts, telling voters to call the lawmakers and ask them to oppose Medicaid expansion as part of “Obamacare.” (Dennison, 2/2)

One thing is clear with respect to Medicaid expansion in Illinois: It will cost more than anticipated. How much more is the question. State lawmakers in 2013 expanded the definition of who was eligible for the federal-state program that provides free health care for the poor, with the federal government agreeing to foot the bill for new members through 2016 as part of the Affordable Care Act. (Hirst, 2/2)

When state legislators voted to open up Medicaid to more people starting in 2014, they estimated it would cost the state $573 million through 2020. But higher-than-expected enrollment and higher per-member cost estimates could mean the cost to the state is north of $2 billion. (Tribune graphics, 2/2)

As expected, Gov. John Kasich's two-year state budget continues to fund Medicaid expansion but it also tweaks the program to encourage Ohioans to move off the state- and federally-funded health insurance program. ... More than 450,000 Ohioans have signed up under the expansion -- more than 120 percent greater than the Kasich administration initially projected. Kasich wants to charge premiums for adults above 100 percent of the federal poverty level -- more than $11,770 for an individual or $24,250 for a family of four. The premiums would cost $15 to $22 a month. (Borchardt, 2/2)

Kansas’ worsening budget problems are making it harder to generate a legislative discussion about expanding Medicaid. Rep. Tom Sloan, a moderate Republican from Lawrence, is attempting to piece together an expansion proposal that he hopes Gov. Sam Brownback and GOP conservatives might be willing to consider. He’s borrowing elements from plans crafted by conservative Republican governors in Indiana, Tennessee, Wyoming and other states that have received or are seeking federal approval for more private-sector approaches to expansion. (McLean, 2/2)

Conservatives lawmakers are following through this week on their promise to repeal Obamacare: Sen. Ted Cruz on Monday introduced a bill to repeal the health law and the House GOP will vote Tuesday to do the same. (Diamond, 2/2)

House Republicans want to postpone the full repeal of Obamacare for six months to allow time to come up with a replacement plan. The delay would be part of the repeal bill they plan to vote for on Tuesday. (Haberkorn, 2/2)

President Barack Obama is threatening to veto a Republican bill that would repeal his health care law. The White House says the Affordable Care Act is working and is improving care for Americans. Officials say repealing the law would take health coverage away from millions of Americans and prevent others from gaining coverage. (2/2)

The Obama administration issued its 10th veto threat of the year Monday, promising to scuttle a House bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The veto threat wasn't surprising -- Obama has long said he would defend his landmark legislative achievement with his veto pen if necessary. (Korte, 2/2)

Medical experts reacted with alarm Monday as two top contenders for the Republican presidential nomination appeared to question whether child vaccinations should be mandatory — injecting politics into an emotional issue that has taken on new resonance with a recent outbreak of measles in the United States. First, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, while visiting a vaccine laboratory here, called for “some measure of choice” on whether shots guarding against measles and other diseases should be required for children. Then, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), an ophthalmologist who is also readying a 2016 campaign, said in two U.S. television interviews that he thinks most vaccines should be voluntary, citing “many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” (Rucker and Helderman, 2/2)

The politics of medicine, morality and free will have collided in an emotional debate over vaccines and the government’s place in requiring them, posing a challenge for Republicans who find themselves in the familiar but uncomfortable position of reconciling modern science with the skepticism of their core conservative voters. As the latest measles outbreak raises alarm, and parents who have decided not to vaccinate their children face growing pressure to do so, the national debate is forcing the Republican Party’s 2016 presidential hopefuls to confront questions about whether it is in the public’s interest to allow parents to decide for themselves. (Peters and Perez-Pena, 2/2)

As the country deals with what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is calling a record number of measles cases, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a rumored 2016 presidential contender, has jumped into the national debate on vaccines. (Peralta, 2/2)

President Barack Obama called the science behind vaccinations “indisputable” on Monday, but he was not always such a staunch believer in getting children vaccinated. In 2008, as a senator and presidential candidate, Obama discussed the possible link between vaccines and autism. (Breitman, 2/2)

The Disneyland measles outbreak has forced a reckoning on the politics of vaccination: Likely GOP presidential candidates are stumbling over the issue, President Barack Obama has forcefully weighed in, and several states are pushing to make it harder to exempt children from vaccinations. On Monday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie had to backpedal on the question of parental choice in vaccinations. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul drew fire for connecting vaccines to mental disorders. (Villacorta and Shah, 2/2)

Carl Krawitt has watched his son, Rhett, now 6, fight leukemia for the past 4 and a half years. For more than three of those years, Rhett has undergone round after round of chemotherapy. Last year he finished chemotherapy, and doctors say he is in remission. Now, there’s a new threat: measles. Rhett cannot be vaccinated, because his immune system is still rebuilding. It may be months more before his body is healthy enough to get all his immunizations. Until then, he depends on everyone around him for protection — what’s known as herd immunity. (Aliferis, 2/3)

Why are vaccine rates so low at some California schools? One reason is that some parents have exempted their kindergartners from vaccinations because they don't believe in them. Another reason: parents who enroll their child on a "conditional" basis, promising that they'll catch up on the state-required vaccines at some point. Some schools never actually follow up to ensure kindergartners get the vaccinations required by the state, according to the California Department of Public Health. (Lin, 2/2)

Aetna said its overall membership stood at 23.5 million at the end of 2014, an increase of about 6 percent. Last month, the company said it expected to report overall membership for last year to be higher than the 23.4 million members it had previously projected. Aetna, like its rival health insurers, has benefited from higher enrollments driven by requirements under the federal Affordable Care Act. However, the industry has maintained concerns over rising care costs, particularly for expensive new drugs to treat hepatitis C. (Calia, 2/3)

Aetna’s fourth-quarter earnings slid 37 percent as the health insurer spent more to grow its business, but its performance matched expectations, and the company raised its forecast for the year. The Hartford, Conn., company said Tuesday that it now expects full-year operating earnings of at least $7 per share, up from its previous forecast for at least $6.90 per share. (2/3)

Health insurer Centene Corp's quarterly profit more than doubled as it added more Medicaid members under Obamacare. (2/3)

Gilead Sciences Inc. is scheduled to announce its fourth-quarter earnings Feb. 3. Here is what you need to know. ... Last year, Gilead’s Sovaldi had the top-selling drug launch in history with more than $8.5 billion in sales through the end of September. The fourth-quarter results will give a hint how Gilead’s newest hepatitis C pill, Harvoni, approved Oct. 10, will fare. ... Harvoni sales face a big challenge that Sovaldi didn’t: competition. The Food and Drug Administration approved AbbVie Inc.'s Viekira Pak on Dec. 19. To win business from health plans, both companies are presumed to be offering discounts off their drugs’ list prices. The discounts will damp its revenues, which is why it will be worth listening for any indication how much Gilead is discounting Harvoni. (Rockoff, 2/2)

Opponents of Proposition 45, a health insurance rate regulation initiative that was overwhelmingly defeated by California voters, spent big in the run-up to the November election. Final campaign finance reports filed Monday with the secretary of state showed that opponents spent $55.7 million to defeat the measure, up from $42.1 million in the campaign's Oct. 23 report. (Lifsher, 2/2)

Ohioans would see their sales taxes increase and their income taxes fall, while some adults on Medicaid would have to start paying premiums for their health care, under a plan outlined by Gov. John Kasich Monday. ... Meanwhile, adults are likely to have to pay premiums on Medicaid of around $15 to $20 a month if their income reaches or surpasses the federal poverty level – $11,670 for a single adult. Ohio's Medicaid system already requires participants to pay copays. The administration hopes charging premiums to roughly 100,000 of Medicaid's better-off adults will help prepare them for life after Medicaid as their incomes improve. (Thompson, 2/2)

Gov. John Kasich’s budget envisions a four-year phase-out of up to 13,000 independent providers who bill Medicaid for in-home care, a move that would significantly alter much of the state’s fastest-growing industry. (Sutherly and Price, 2/3)

Gov. John Kasich's state budget plan would continue to fund an expansion of Medicaid as his administration seeks to charge a monthly premium to certain residents on the health care program, state officials said Monday. The administration would need federal approval to charge the monthly fee to low-income individuals on the federal-state Medicaid program. (2/2)

The federal government is increasing the amount of the Medicare payments it makes to hospitals according to their performance on variety of measures. The federal Hospital Value-Based Purchasing program is one of three initiatives specified by the 2010 Affordable Care Act used to adjust hospitals’ Medicare reimbursements. (Kitchenman, 2/2)

Finances were one of the barriers to Alison Hymes’ release from Western State Hospital — not hers, but the state’s. Her placement at an assisted living facility in Charlottesville depended on whether her social workers could secure extra funds from the Discharge Assistance Program. DAP is designed to support individuals leaving state hospitals resume their lives in the community. Her hospital records which she shared with Post show that there was no more DAP funding available at the local level and her social workers had to appeal to the state for extra money, which eventually came through. (Shin, 2/3)

Jackson County supervisors have approved a resolution authorizing Sheriff Mike Ezell to establish a program to charge inmates for access to a registered nurse for non-emergency medical attention. Ezell wants to charge the inmates seeking non-emergency medical attention a $10 fee per visit. [Mississippi] state law allows Ezell to charge inmates, and he is working on setting up that program. (2/3)

Maryland officials are holding a briefing on a new law that ensures privacy of confidential medical information for survivors of domestic violence. It applies to victims who seek reproductive health care, mental health care, medical treatment or counseling. (2/3)

Four elderly sex offenders who live at the state mental health institute here have been taken off Iowa's public sex-offender registry, raising fears that state officials will quietly transfer the offenders to private nursing homes should the facility be closed. Opponents of the planned hospital closure have been buzzing about the four offenders' rumored removal from the online registry. State officials confirmed the deletions Monday, but said the action was unrelated to the possible closure of the mental hospital. (Leys, 2/2)

Fewer women in North Carolina got pregnant and gave birth in 2013 than in the previous two years, according to data from the North Carolina State Center for Health Statistics, and paralleling that drop in pregnancies was a falling rate of abortions. North Carolina’s pregnancy statistics mirror a national trend in which fewer women have gotten pregnant and had abortions. (Hoban, 2/3)

A unit of Community Health Systems Inc, one of the largest U.S. hospital groups, and three of its hospitals have agreed to pay $75 million to settle claims that they made illegal donations to county governments in New Mexico to secure federal funding. The lawsuit, filed by a whistleblower employee in 2005 and joined by the U.S. government in 2009, claims that the three hospitals made donations to three New Mexico counties in order to get federal matching funds from a program that provided extra Medicaid funding to rural hospitals. (Pierson, 2/2)

Will a measles outbreak persuade more parents to vaccinate their children? That’s the question people are asking as concern grows about the outbreak linked to Disneyland that has spread to 67 cases across seven states. Some doctors have expressed hope that parents will be more likely to get their children immunized. I hope they’re right, but research suggests that the long-term effects of the outbreak could be worse, not better. The social and political conflicts we’ve seen emerge over the outbreak threaten to polarize the issue along political lines and weaken the social consensus in favor of vaccination. (Brendan Nyhan, 2/2)

It is bad enough that many misguided parents are endangering their own children by refusing to let them be vaccinated against measles and other contagious diseases. But it is shockingly irresponsible of them to put other children and adults at risk of catching measles from their unvaccinated children. (2/3)

The measles outbreak that began at California’s Disneyland — and spread like pixie dust — along with several other, smaller flare-ups, has health officials warning of worse to come. Preventable infectious disease is making its return to the developed world, this time by invitation. ... Resistance to vaccination on the left often reflects an obsession with purity. Vaccines are placed in the same mental category as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), DDT and gluten. But the problem with organic health care is that the “natural” rate of child mortality is unacceptably high. Organically raised children can get some very nasty ­diseases. Opposition to vaccination on the right often reflects an obsession with liberty — in this case, freedom from intrusive state mandates. It has always struck me as odd that a parent would defend his or her children with a gun but leave them vulnerable to a microbe. (Michael Gerson, 2/2)

The U.S. is experiencing an outbreak of measles and other diseases long thought to be eradicated, and some politicians aren’t helping as much as they could. On this score President Obama has it all over Chris Christie. California reports 59 confirmed measles cases, and the U.S. reported 644 in 2014, the most in a quarter-century. In 2012 the U.S. had its biggest whooping cough epidemic since 1955. Nearly 50,000 Americans contracted the disease, which caused 20 deaths—mostly infants under three months. The outbreaks are the result of plunging vaccinations rates, as more parents believe false information about vaccines, including claims that they cause autism. (2/2)

Has New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie been hearing the same debate I have? If he has, why on earth would he say that this is a subject where we’re served by “balance”? Parents have rights, absolutely. But this doesn’t just impact their own children. This impacts everyone else’s, too. People who do not understand how diseases work are making everyone else worse off, for no good reason, which we can tell because a disease we thought we had eradicated is now making a comeback. (Alexandra Petri, 2/2)

Today’s tempest on the trail of possible Republican presidential nominees has been New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s seemingly weak defense of vaccinating American children. By calling for “balance” in government policy, and saying that “parents need to have some measure of choice,” Christie was blasted by both liberals and conservatives. By late morning he seemed to be backing off his comments. But Christie's apparent attempt to appeal to vaccination opponents, while a surprising strategy for a governor in a densely populated state, is consistent with a plausible Iowa caucus strategy: an attempt to lock up a small faction of voters. (Jonathan Bernstein, 2/2)

Things got pretty hot in the vaccine debate on Monday as the lines of an emerging culture war were sketched out. On one side, there was President Obama, who urged parents to get their kids vaccinated, calling the science behind vaccines “indisputable. … I just want people to know the facts and science and the information. And the fact is that a major success of our civilization is our ability to prevent disease that in the past have devastated folks.” Then on the other side were likely Republican presidential hopefuls Chris Christie and Rand Paul. Both said parents should have more choice in whether to their kids get vaccinated. Paul took it further, citing “many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” The divide seemed clear. But wait. Was it? Or had Obama, while campaigning in 2008, actually said something different? That’s at least how Vox called it on Tuesday afternoon. Its headline: “Obama supports vaccines now — but pandered to anti-vaxxers in 2008.” (McCoy, 2/3)

Although Congress has already rejected a number of those ideas, Obama is right to press lawmakers to reframe the budget debate. ... Meanwhile, the growing cost of federal healthcare programs and other entitlements is leaving a diminishing pot of funds for other federal priorities. Obama's budget seeks to slow the growth of Medicare and Medicaid, but his cost cutting wouldn't solve the long-term problems in federal entitlements or end the year-in, year-out accumulation of debt. That's a real shortcoming. (2/2)

The great unmentionables in Mr. Obama’s budget are entitlements, which roll on largely untouched. The share of the budget that is “mandatory”—not part of annual appropriations—is 15.1% of GDP in 2016 and jumps to 16.6% by 2020, gradually crowding out everything else the government is supposed to do. Medicaid spending will nearly double to $567 billion in 2025 from $301 billion in 2014. Most of that is ObamaCare. Meanwhile, the Social Security “off-budget surplus” that has long financed current spending on everything except retirement is shrinking and goes negative in 2017. This means senior benefits will soon have to be paid out of general tax revenues. (2/2)

The real problem is that neither Obama nor Congress wants to tackle the cost of popular entitlements such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps and veterans' benefits. Those programs are surging in cost because the number of retirees is growing and because health care costs have, until recently, risen much faster than inflation. But mostly, they are going up because they operate on autopilot. Together, the entitlements are expected to cost a staggering $2.3 trillion this year, according to CBO. That's three-fifths of all spending. In 10 years that figure is forecast to hit $3.6 trillion — nearly the cost of Obama's entire budget. Early in his presidency, Obama claimed to care about that danger. (2/2)

And at a time when senior poverty is increasing, we must expand, not cut, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. As most Americans know, billionaire campaign contributors and corporate lobbyists exercise enormous influence in Washington, which is why the rich get richer while almost everyone else gets poorer. Enough is enough! Let's join together and fight for a budget that helps working families, and not just the top 1%. (Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., 2/2)

This spring, the Supreme Court will rule in a case that could devastate Obamacare's health insurance expansion. Here's The Upshot's guide to the King v. Burwell case. (Margot Sanger-Katz, 2/3)

A bunch of people are about to find out that they got too much in subsidies, and now they owe the IRS hundreds, possibly even thousands, of dollars. Many of those people won't have the money, and they are about to get very upset. So the Barack Obama administration did what it has done before: nursed the program forward with administrative rulings that minimize the political blowback. Presumably the idea is that by the time it actually lets the cost side take effect, so many people will be getting subsidies that it will be effectively impossible to repeal. (Megan McArdle, 2/2)

Gov. Steve Bullock made waves with the unveiling of his “Healthy Montana Plan,” which would expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. He and his allies support the plan with claims the expansion will be accomplished with “free money” from the federal government and will provide high-quality health care to 70,000 people. But Montanans should not be fooled. This is nothing more than ObamaCare by another name — and it will cost Montana taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and do little to improve the health conditions of the most vulnerable. (Zachary Lahn, 2/2)

Daughters of Charity Health System, a Catholic nonprofit that operates six hospitals primarily for poor and elderly Californians, is reaching the last bead on its fiscal rosary. The chain is losing money at an alarming rate and wants to sell itself to Prime Healthcare Services, but prominent Democrats and a powerful union have called on Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris to block the deal. For all its faults, however, Prime remains the best hope for keeping the six hospitals open and their vital services operating. Harris should approve Prime's purchase with conditions designed to keep it from abandoning the Daughters' mission and abusing the healthcare system. (2/2)

When Pope Francis put in a word for “responsible parenthood” on his way back from the Philippines the other day, he added an off-the-cuff remark that grabbed headlines: Catholics, he said, do not need to breed “like rabbits.” The problem, however, is precisely the opposite: If only Catholics could breed like rabbits. Given rabbit biology, and the church's restrictions on contraception, that would make “responsible parenthood” easier for the faithful to accomplish. (Malcolm Potts, 2/2)

As we wrote last week, many fewer people benefit from medical therapies than we tend to think. This fact is quantified in a therapy’s Number Needed to Treat, or N.N.T., which tells you the number of people who would need to receive a medical therapy in order for one person to benefit. N.N.T.s well above 10 or even 100 are common. But knowing the potential for benefit is not enough. We must also consider potential harms. (Aaron E. Carroll and Austin Frakt, 2/2)

The message from supporters and the media is clear: Like women's rights, voting rights, gay marriage and hikes to the minimum wage, it's only a matter of time before physician-assisted suicide becomes legal because, after all, it is the right thing to do. If this bill [introduced in the California Assembly] fails, supporters promise a ballot initiative in 2016. As someone who supports all those other liberal causes, yet opposes physician-assisted suicide, I'd ask my fellow progressives to shine a cold hard light on this issue. We have been the target of a decades-long branding campaign that paints hastening death as an extension of personal freedoms. We should bring the same skepticism to physician-assisted suicide that we do to fracking and genetically modified food. (Ira Byock, 1/30)