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Following Sunday's mass shooting that left 50 people dead and dozens of others wounded, there were reports that the White House waived federal privacy law restrictions that prevent healthcare organizations in Orlando from openly discussing patients cases. (Conn, 6/13)

Location was everything when it came to treating the victims from the Pulse nightclub mass shooting. "I think in trying to search for saving graces and silver linings, the fact that this tragedy happened within two blocks of one of the country's top Level 1 trauma centers was such an advantage," said Dr. George Ralls, director of health and public safety at Orange County Government, referring to Orlando Regional Medical Center. By Monday afternoon, 29 shooting victims remained at (Orlando Regional Medical Center), five of them in grave condition. Surgeons had performed more than 30 operations. (Miller, 6/13)

The editor of a major medical journal wants to spark more research on preventing gun violence, a field scientists say has long been limited by a congressional appropriations rider. (Young, 6/13)

The ex-wife of the man who shot up an Orlando gay club early Sunday quickly told reporters that he was bipolar and that “he was mentally unstable and mentally ill.” She and the imam of the Islamic center that the shooter attended both attributed the violence to mental illness. But mental-health experts say such acts rarely carry such tidy explanations. (Kurtzman, 6/14)

Democrats in Congress are reviving a national push to allow gay men to donate blood following the deadly mass shooting that targeted a gay nightclub in Orlando. ... The FDA policy — which has been condemned by the American Medical Association — has sparked national outrage that advocates now hope to convert into long-awaited action. The LGBT Equality Caucus, led by Reps. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), is giving new life to the years-old campaign for the FDA to repeal its blood donation ban. (Ferris, 6/13)

In the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, citizens rushed to donate blood to help the survivors. Many of them included gay men who were desperate to contribute but were turned away. (Colliver, 6/13)

In the aftermath of the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando that killed 49 people and injured 53, blood centers were overwhelmed with individuals who wanted to donate. Gay men, however, weren't all allowed to do so—a policy harking back to the height of the AIDS crisis, and one that was quickly derided as discriminatory and an insult to a community under attack. (Tozzi, 6/13)

Five nonprofit organizations and community groups in Texas, including three in the Houston area, have been awarded a combined $4.78 million by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to boost efforts to enroll the state's nearly three-quarters of a million uninsured children, the federal agency announced on Monday. (Dean, 6/13)

Two Pennsylvania nonprofits will share nearly $1.5 million in federal money to increase low-income children's access to health care in the state - an award that is especially timely. (Wood, 6/14)

The non-profit community development group Structured Employment Economic Development Corporation, or Seedco, will receive $950,000 over the next two years to help find and enroll children who are eligible for public health insurance in Maryland, officials from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Cohn, 6/13)

The US Department of Health and Human Services and the Cuban government on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding to encourage cooperation between the two countries on health matters, another step in the Obama administration’s efforts to normalize America’s diplomatic relations toward its island neighbor. The long-estranged countries will work together on global health issues, including infectious diseases like dengue fever, and the medical challenges that come with aging populations, the department announced. (Scott, 6/13)

If ObamaCare were repealed, 24 million fewer people would have health insurance in 2021, according to a new study. The study from the Urban Institute finds that 14.5 million fewer people would have coverage through Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program and 8.8 million fewer people would have individual private coverage like that offered on the health law’s marketplaces. Another 700,000 fewer people would have health insurance through their jobs. (Sullivan 6/13)

More than half of the states have disclosed just how much higher their health care premiums could be next year under the Affordable Care Act, and some of the potential increases are jaw-dropping. But Illinois residents won't get their first look at proposed 2017 premiums until Aug. 1, and that has consumer advocates frustrated. (Sachdev, 6/13)

Maryland’s health cooperative filed a lawsuit Monday seeking to block the federal government from requiring it to pay more than $22 million in fees for a program designed to cover insurance company shortfalls. The lawsuit by Evergreen Health Cooperative Inc. is the latest twist in the saga of health insurance co-ops set up under the Affordable Care Act to compete against larger, established insurers. The co-ops were supposed to help keep premiums down by injecting competition into the industry. (Armour, 6/13)

Peter Beilenson, chief executive of the 40,000-member co-op, said in a statement Monday that the system is providing “a financial boon for the country’s largest and most established health insurers, at the expense of new, innovative insurers.” He added that the cost would eat up 26 percent of Evergreen’s 2015 revenue from premiums. CMS declined to comment on pending litigation. Evergreen is required to make the payment under CMS’s “risk adjustment” program, an element of President Obama’s 2010 health-care overhaul that aims to provide financial protection for organizations that participate in the new health-care exchanges and end up with sicker, more expensive customers because of a rule that prohibits them from denying coverage for preexisting conditions. Under the system, insurers with healthier patients pay those with sicker customers. (Hicks, 6/13)

While the charge won't put Evergreen out of business, it would be a big setback for one of the most successful and one of the few remaining health insurance co-ops established by the federal health reform law. The higher-than-expected fee could wipe out nearly half of Evergreen's reserve cash, the suit said, putting the co-op's solvency at risk, and destroy plans to meet a major milestone in 2016 — profitability. (Gantz, 6/13)

Even as they race to control a spiraling heroin and prescription opioid crisis, doctors, public health officials and community leaders in many states are struggling to get care to addiction patients because of persistent opposition to the Affordable Care Act from local political leaders. As a result, thousands of poor patients are languishing on waiting lists for recovery programs or are unable to get medicine to combat addiction because they can’t afford prescriptions, according to health officials nationwide. Most states expanded their Medicaid programs through the health law, often called Obamacare, giving poor adults in those states health insurance and a way to pay for addiction treatment. (Levey, 6/13)

Nearly 60 percent of Americans have leftover narcotics in their homes, and 20 percent have shared those with another person, according to a survey published Monday that provides more evidence of how opiates find their way into the hands of people other than patients with doctors' prescriptions. The survey of 1,032 people, which was published online in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, shows that nearly three-quarters said they provided the opiates to someone else to help that individual manage pain. Another 17 percent said they did it because the other person could not afford medication or didn't have insurance. (Bernstein, 6/13)

As lawmakers grapple with how best to combat the nation’s prescription painkiller abuse crisis, a recent survey is shedding light on how patients who get these medications -- drugs such as OxyContin, methadone or Vicodin -- sometimes share or mishandle them. According to findings detailed in a research letter published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, about one in five people who were prescribed the highly addictive drugs reported having shared their meds with a friend, often to help the other person manage pain. Most people with a prescription either had or expected to have extra pills left after finishing treatment. And almost 50 percent didn’t know how to safely get rid of the drugs left over after their treatment was complete, or how to store them while going through treatment. (Luthra, 6/13)

The entire General Assembly appears on board to offering easier access to a prescription drug already known to have reversed more than 2,000 overdoses of heroin or other opium-based drugs in North Carolina. The House agreed unanimously Monday night to legislation creating a statewide standing order at any pharmacy to prescribe naloxone. (6/13)

Roxanne Granberry had a separate bank account from her husband and sometimes a separate home. But a jury in an Alexandria federal court decided that the couple should go to prison together for illegally buying and selling prescription painkillers. William Granberry, who pleaded guilty in February, would print false prescriptions for the opioid oxycodone. Friends and relatives would then collect the pills at pharmacies in the D.C. area for sale on the black market. Over eight years, prosecutors estimate that the group sold about 130,000 pills for around $25 apiece, netting a profit of $3.25 million. (Weiner, 6/13)

A few months ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a startling map that showed the parts of the U.S. that could harbor mosquitoes capable of carrying Zika. Many readers, including myself, thought, "Zika could come to my town! It could come to Connecticut! To Ohio and Indiana! Or to northern California! Oh goodness!" The map made it look like a vast swath of the country was at risk for Zika, including New England and the Upper Midwest. Well, not quite. (Doucleff, 6/13)

One of the leading critics of the World Health Organization says he was recently invited to sit on the U.N. health agency's Zika emergency committee — only to have his invitation rescinded when he refused to sign a confidentiality clause. Last month, Canadian professor Amir Attaran and colleagues wrote an open letter to WHO, accusing it of shirking its responsibilities by not considering whether to recommend delaying or canceling the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. (6/14)

Mosquitoes bearing Zika — a virus that can cause birth defects when contracted by pregnant women — are expected to reach the United States as soon as this summer, with Florida and Texas likely to be among the hardest-hit states. But in both, support for women’s health care, along with family planning resources, has been dramatically scaled back, in part because of funding restrictions placed on women’s clinics that, in addition to other services, provide abortions. Also, both states declined to expand Medicaid. Those decisions, many advocates say, are putting a squeeze on the health care system’s ability to educate women about Zika’s risks and minimize its impact. (Luthra, 6/14)

A typical travel insurance policy won’t reimburse you for trip expenses if you cancel because you’re afraid of traveling to a country where there have been reports of an outbreak of a disease such as the Zika virus. But if you purchased a “cancel-for-any-reason” policy, your claim is more likely to be approved, said Megan Freedman, executive director of the U.S. Travel Insurance Association, a trade group. (Andrews, 6/14)

The patients who came into the schizophrenia research lab grew easily confused. They struggled to complete simple tasks. Brandon Chuang, a research assistant just out of college, liked working with them, but found them a bit odd. Within a year, he would turn out to be one of them. (McFarling, 6/14)

Millennials, the thoroughbreds of texting, may lag behind previous generations when it comes to old-fashioned hand strength. In a study of Americans ages 20-34, occupational therapists found that men younger than 30 have significantly weaker hand grips than their counterparts in 1985 did. The same was true of women ages 20-24, according to the study published online by the Journal of Hand Therapy a few months back. The findings suggest that it's time to update what constitutes normal hand strength. The norms are used to assess the severity of injuries and how well people are recovering. (Jacewicz, 6/13)

Across the country, tens of thousands of public schools could be contaminated with toxic polychlorinated biphenyls – compounds more commonly known as PCBs, which were used widely in building materials such as window caulk. PCBs have been linked to everything from skin conditions to cancer. (6/11)

A study published Monday says teenagers who use electronic cigarettes are far more likely to begin smoking the real thing than teens who don't try "vaping." "We're concerned that kids who experiment with e-cigarettes may be moving on to other types of tobacco products, like combustible cigarettes, which are arguably a lot more dangerous," University of Southern California researcher Jessica Barrington-Trimis tells Reuters. (Pinckard, 6/14)

Updated sleep recommendations for children and teens point to the benefits of getting enough sleep and the dangers of getting too little. "At least 25 percent of 12-year-olds get less than the recommended nine hours of sleep per night and there is increasing evidence that this impacts learning and memory," said Dr. Stuart F. Chan of Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, who helped write the new American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) guidelines. (6/13)

The difference between enthusiasm for work and addiction to it can sometimes be difficult to discern, especially when it's so easy to take work home on a smartphone or laptop. To find out how many people are true workaholics, researchers from the University of Bergen surveyed thousands of people in Norway using the Bergen Work Addiction Scale, which uses diagnostic criteria for several kinds of addiction. (East, 6/13)

People who use marijuana for many years respond differently to natural rewards than people who don't use the drug, according to a new study. Researchers found that people who had used marijuana for 12 years, on average, showed greater activity in the brain's reward system when they looked at pictures of objects used for smoking marijuana than when they looked at pictures of a natural reward — their favorite fruits. (6/13)

Richmond-based United Network for Organ Sharing plans to implement several technology and data tools within its network of organizations over the next year to increase the number of organ transplants nationwide. Under contract with the Health Services and Resources Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, UNOS manages the country’s Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network. (Demeria, 6/13)

There’s no doubt that technology is changing the face of medicine. Today, surgeons can perform minimally invasive procedures with the assistance of a robot or replace missing limbs with bionic ones. Radiologists can read imaging studies from halfway around the world. There are specialists providing remote services to patients with strokes, women with high-risk pregnancies and critically ill neonates. Mental-health professionals are now able to offer life-changing care to patients who would otherwise be unable to access these services. And pediatricians in their offices can look into aching ears while the child remains in his or her living room . . . sort of. All of this is a far cry from the Norman Rockwell image of a doctor from decades ago. But while there was an undeniable charm to the physician with the black leather bag, modern technology has improved medical care in ways we never dreamed possible. When used inappropriately, though, it can cause substantial harm. (Hayes, 6/13)

Florida’s Legislature received a surprise Medicaid bill this month: $433 million in unpaid insurance reimbursements, owed jointly with the federal government. The $433 million is due to the 11 private companies that have managed the state’s public health insurance program for low-income and disabled people since 2014, when Florida privatized its Medicaid programs to save money. The insurers were underpaid over the past two years, state officials acknowledged on Monday. (Chang, 6/13)

Patient advocacy groups in Kansas remain concerned about a Medicaid drug policy scheduled to take effect July 1. Known as “fail first” or “step therapy,” the policy requires providers participating in KanCare, the state’s privatized Medicaid program, to start patients on less expensive drugs before moving them to more expensive alternatives if medically necessary. (McLean, 6/13)

The number of Tennessee children covered by Medicaid grew by more than 4 percent from 2014 to 2015. ... Federal officials attribute the increase, particularly the growth in coverage around the country, to more families being able to access coverage through the Affordable Care Act. (Fletcher, 6/13)

Medicaid expansion in Louisiana has long been pitched as a way to save the state money, get uninsured people healthier and help stabilize Louisiana's fragmented health care system. But for the New York-based BeneStream, Medicaid expansion also has created a business model. The company's CEO, Benjamin Geyerhahn, founded the company on the idea that because the working poor stood to benefit the most from Medicaid expansion, there were probably going to be companies out there that needed help ensuring their employees enrolled. Geyerhahn was right: Since states began expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, BeneStream has enrolled thousands of Medicaid patients for companies that seek out their services because large numbers of their employees don't earn enough to pay for private insurance. (Litten, 6/13)

Arizona health officials say about three in every 10 kindergartners who enrolled during the most recent school year without measles vaccines didn't have exemption forms. According to Arizona Department of Health Services data, hundreds of Arizona schools did not require all parents to turn in signed waivers when they enrolled their unvaccinated children in 2015, The Arizona Republic reported. (6/14)

Negotiators have returned to the bargaining table but report no progress in contract talks to avoid a strike by nearly 5,000 nurses at five hospitals in the Minneapolis area. Representatives from the Minnesota Nurses Association and Allina Health met Monday at the request of a federal mediator.

The union that represents 4,800 nurses at Allina Health in the Twin Cities said negotiators made no progress in talks with a federal mediator Monday. The Minnesota Nurses Association said nurses at Abbott Northwestern, Mercy, United, and Unity hospitals and Phillips Eye Institute still plan to walk off the job Sunday at 7 a.m. and will picket all five facilities. (Septic, 6/13)

The union representing 3,300 nurses at Brigham and Women’s Hospital voted Monday to authorize a one-day strike, setting the stage for a possible walkout this month. The vote comes after nine months of increasingly acrimonious contract negotiations between the Massachusetts Nurses Association and Brigham, one of the flagship teaching hospitals owned by Partners HealthCare. (McCluskey, 6/14)

New Hampshire has become the first state to launch a campaign solely aimed at breaking down the stigma around mental illness and improving treatment and prevention. (Sutherland, 6/13)

One year after state lawmakers decided to slash $350 million in funding for pediatric therapy services provided to children with disabilities, Texas is finally poised to move forward with the planned cuts that were delayed for months after in-home therapy providers sued to stop them. They lost that court battle in April but have vowed to continue putting up a fight. (Walters, 6/14)

New York is poised to expand access to breast cancer screening under an agreement reached by top state lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who made combating the cancer a priority after the successful cancer treatment of his girlfriend, Food Network star Sandra Lee. Under the deal, the state would order hospitals to expand hours when mammograms are offered and require insurance companies to eliminate deductibles and co-pays for the screening and some other diagnostic tests. Lawmakers are expected to formally approve the proposal this week. Cuomo listed the item as one of his top priorities for the final days of the 2016 session, which is expected to end later this week. (Klepper, 6/13)

Considering how much we already pay for health care, you have to wonder why doctors, hospitals and insurance providers so often fail to coordinate their patients’ care. Your primary care doctor, the hospital you visit and the various specialists you are sent to are typically part of different organizations that do not communicate effectively with one another. Balls get dropped and care suffers. In part, it’s a consequence of siloed medical practice. (Austin Frakt, 6/13)

The debate over hospital mergers traditionally has focused on whether allowing hospitals within a local community to merge drives up prices in that community. A new study from the University of Southern California sounds a much louder alarm. The study found that the domination of the state’s hospital segment by two big systems, Sutter Health and Dignity Health, not only drove up prices everywhere their institutions were located but allowed even nonaffiliated hospitals to charge more. That’s a warning for policymakers at the federal level and in many states, where hospital mergers are on the rise. (Michael Hiltzik, 6/13)

There’s a common misconception that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is forbidden from studying gun violence. That’s simply not true. A number of murky rules have left the agency unclear as to what it is and isn’t allowed to research when it comes to guns. But an outright ban? No. (Seema Yasmin 6/13)

The mass shooting in Orlando on Sunday was appalling in scale: 49 killed in a single attack. But it’s not unusual for dozens of Americans to be killed by guns in a single day. Gun homicides are a common cause of death in the United States, killing about as many people as car crashes (not counting van, truck, motorcycle or bus accidents). Some cases command our attention more than others, of course. Counting mass shootings that make headlines and the thousands of Americans murdered one or a few at a time, gunshot homicides totaled 8,124 in 2014, according to the F.B.I. (Kevin Quealy and Margot Sanger-Katz, 6/13)

More than six years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Republicans are still trying to craft a workable plan to repeal and replace it. The latest attempt was unveiled in May by Rep. Pete Sessions from Texas and Sen. Bill Cassidy from Louisiana. It would provide every American adult with $2,500 to buy health insurance while abandoning Obamacare’s top-down, regulation-driven approach. As a Republican who believes that Obamacare has not fixed longstanding national healthcare issues, and as a healthcare professional who believes that real reform is one of the most important issues in politics, I support the underlying principles of the Sessions-Cassidy plan. I want reforms that empower patients with greater choice, protect the doctor-patient relationship, decrease costs and increase quality. (Joel L. Strom, 6/13)

Few areas of scientific investigation are more controversial than embryo research, yet few are more brimming with potential. The field promises valuable insights into early human development and new possibilities for treating diseases and disorders. For more than 35 years, there has been broad international agreement that no scientist can experiment on an embryo that is more than 14 days old. This red line was established as scientific guidance in the United States in 1979, and it was incorporated into British law after the 1984 Warnock inquiry into in vitro fertilization. Other nations, including Australia, Sweden and China, have since adopted the same limit, either in law or through scientific regulation. (Kenan Malik, 6/14)

When the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) recently issued a proposed rule to allow advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs), to practice to the full extent of their education and training, it should have been lauded as an important step towards providing our nation’s veterans with direct access to the high quality patient care they deserve. (Pamela F. Cipriano and Albert J. Shimkus, Jr., 6/13)

As a resident physician-in-training in a large teaching hospital, my job is to learn from senior physicians and to help treat patients. It’s sometimes surprising how much autonomy I am given as a newly minted doctor. After appropriate training, with little-to-no supervision I can run morning rounds, perform a spinal tap, and lead a Code Blue to try to revive a patient whose heart had stopped. But that autonomy doesn’t extend to end-of-life conversations, even though it should. Residents often assume that a physician who has known a patient for years rather than days should begin these especially difficult conversations. (Ravi Parikh, 6/13)

Elizabeth Holmes' big idea was a smart medical device that could perform many sophisticated blood tests from just a finger prick. This would be a small miracle for patients who hate needles. In the Silicon Valley fairy-tale version of her career, Holmes and her company, Theranos, would make billions by making life easier for millions. Deerfield-based Walgreens bought into the idea, investing $50 million. The plan was to dispense Theranos blood tests at thousands of Walgreens drugstores, providing customers with a cheap, effective alternative to doctor's office visits — and those scary needles. (6/13)

Like 48 other states, California has an online database that records all the prescriptions issued for potentially habit-forming or abuseable drugs, such as OxyContin and Ritalin. The hope is that the system will deter patients from “doctor shopping” to obtain excess quantities of a drug, and help authorities crack down on healthcare professionals who negligently — or cynically — prescribe pills on demand. (6/14)

The state of Texas is experiencing a health care workforce crisis, and the most severe shortage is in mental health. So why, then, has the Texas Medical Association taken legal action to ensure that marriage and family therapists in Texas may no longer diagnose and treat mental health disorders? (Sarah Woods, 6/13)