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President Barack Obama made a personal bid Monday to shore up his signature health law as it heads into its final test of his administration, urging insurers selling plans on HealthCare.gov to stay the course and pledging redoubled efforts by the government to make the law a success. In a letter released publicly by the White House on Monday, Mr. Obama thanked insurers for participating in the health exchanges the federal government runs on behalf of three dozen states, which the Obama administration calls ‘the Marketplace,’ and acknowledged some of its recent turbulence. (Tau and Radnofsky, 9/12)

Following the exodus of UnitedHealthcare and Aetna from insurance exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama met Monday with the heads of some of the remaining payers to discuss the future of the federal insurance marketplace. The morning meeting took place before a series of congressional hearings this week that focus on rising premiums and limited exchange participation. (Dickson, 9/12)

President Barack Obama says he knows that progress in reducing the uninsured rate hasn't been without challenges. Obama says in a letter to the nation's health insurers that most new enterprises have growing pains and opportunities for improvement, and the health insurance marketplace shaped by his health care law, "while strong, is no exception." (9/12)

President Barack Obama on Monday urged U.S. insurers offering coverage next year under his national healthcare law to step up their efforts to enroll those who remain uninsured, especially younger and healthier Americans. Several big insurers, including UnitedHealth Group Inc, Aetna Inc and Humana Inc, have announced they will pull back from the Obamacare individual insurance market in 2017, citing financial losses due to the costs of covering members who are sicker than expected. (Kelly, 9/12)

President Barack Obama met with top executives from more than a dozen health insurers, including Humana Inc. and Cigna Corp., to re-affirm his support for the Affordable Care Act after several companies retreated from the law’s government-run insurance markets. Obama dropped in on a meeting on Monday in Washington between top White House health officials and the executives before the 2017 enrollment period, according to a White House official. Earlier in the day, the president sent a letter to all companies offering coverage in Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges. (Olorunnipa, 9/12)

President Obama and senior administration officials met with leaders from insurance companies participating in Affordable Care Act exchanges on Monday, underscoring the importance of their participation on the marketplace. The president also wrote a letter to all participating insurers in which he stressed the administration’s commitment to working with them and discussed recent actions the White House has taken to improve the marketplace. (Owens, 9/12)

Health insurance executives went to the White House on Monday and called for changes to ObamaCare that they say are necessary to keep the healthcare exchanges working. The executives discussed a series of their long-running complaints about ObamaCare including tightening up the rules for extra sign-up periods, shortening grace periods for people who fail to pay their premiums and easing restrictions on setting premiums based on someone’s age. (Sullivan, 9/12)

Eight of the states that will determine the Senate majority in November are likely to see significant reductions in the number of insurers participating in ObamaCare marketplaces. The likely departures of insurers in Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Arizona and Missouri are pushing the healthcare law toward the center of some of the most competitive Senate races in the country. (Ferris, 9/13)

[House Speaker Paul] Ryan is pushing a conservative ACA repeal-and-replace package. Although the speaker remains popular in his sprawling southern Wisconsin district—he won more than 80% of the vote in the Republican primary last month and 63% in his 2014 re-election contest—interviews with constituents and healthcare providers there indicate wariness about his proposals, which likely would drive healthcare policy if Republican Donald Trump is elected president. (Meyer, 9/10)

Republican lawmakers are denouncing the Obama administration after a watchdog report found that the ObamaCare marketplaces remain "vulnerable to fraud." The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office submitted applications from fictitious people for ObamaCare coverage. Those applicants in many cases were approved for coverage, with financial assistance, by the administration. (Sullivan, 9/12)

Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the Obama administration must take action to cut down on fraud within the system. ... The agency submitted 15 fictitious applications to the marketplace, and many were approved for coverage and financial assistance by the Obama administration. ... The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told the GAO that “some of GAO’s application outcomes could be explained by decisions to extend document filing deadlines,” according to the report. (McIntire, 9/12)

Health Republic Insurance of New Jersey,  one of 23 nonprofit consumer-operated and -oriented health plans established under the Affordable Care Act, has agreed to be taken over by regulators because of its "hazardous financial condition," the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance said Monday. The Newark, N.J., insurer lost $58.96 million in the six months ended June 30 and is expected to have a negative cash position of $17.3 million in January, according to the department's petition for a takeover filed Monday in the Chancery Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey. (Brubaker, 9/12)

ConnectiCare Insurance Co., which already is contesting a Department of Insurance rate decision in court, challenged the matter through a second venue Monday, the department’s administrative appeal process. The Insurance Department immediately began consultations with Attorney General George Jepsen’s office on how to proceed given the two-track challenge. And the state’s health exchange, Access Health CT, announced it would wait temporarily for the insurance department to resolve the rate appeal. (Phaneuf, 9/12)

The cost of health insurance plans offered under the Affordable Care Act will jump 20 percent or more next year under rates to be announced Friday by Maryland regulators. The CEO of Maryland's largest insurer defended the hefty rate increases and said the federal law that expanded health insurance to most Americans needs to be changed if it is to remain sustainable. (McDaniels, 9/12)

Just ahead of the next open enrollment period, the quasi-governmental state agency that runs Maryland's online health insurance marketplace has named Jonathan Kromm as acting executive director. Kromm, currently the deputy executive director of the Maryland Health Benefit Exchange, was tapped by the exchange's board to replace Carolyn A. Quattrocki, who is leaving Sept. 27 to become a deputy attorney general. (Cohn, 9/12)

State regulators have come up empty on a last-ditch effort to recruit more health insurers to the MNsure exchange next year, particularly to sell coverage outside the Twin Cities metro area. Last month, state officials asked potential insurers to specify waivers of state laws or rules that might allow them to newly offer coverage to residents buying insurance outside the seven-county metro area. No applicants surfaced as of Friday's deadline. (Snowbeck, 9/12)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is turning the Senate toward a short-term spending bill as lawmakers face an Oct. 1 deadline to avoid a government shutdown.  "I expect to move forward this week on a continuing resolution through Dec. 9 ... that includes funds for Zika control and for our veterans," the Senate Republican leader announced Monday on the Senate floor.  McConnell filed cloture on proceeding to a House legislative appropriations bill, which is expected to be the vehicle for the short-term continuing resolution (CR). (Carney, 9/12)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell filed cloture Monday on an appropriations bill that would serve as a vehicle for a stopgap funding measure to keep the government open and provide money to fight the Zika virus and aid veterans’ programs. Negotiations are still ongoing on a potential package — which would hitch a ride on the Legislative Branch appropriations bill — with several provisions undecided. (Easley, 9/12)

When Democrats balked once more last week at approving legislation to combat the Zika virus because the measure included limits on Planned Parenthood, some Republicans indicated a willingness to re-evaluate their position. But the pressing question for Republicans who want to pass a stopgap spending bill to keep the government running after Sept. 30 is whether enough of their ranks are willing to leave Planned Parenthood out of the legislation. (Huetteman, 9/12)

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are trying to craft compromise language on Zika funding that appeases both Republicans and Democrats on Planned Parenthood. One option under consideration would give the CDC authority to determine how to spend a Social Services Block Grant, Sen. John Thune told reporters after a meeting today in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office. In a prior Zika funding bill, the block-grant language included many health entities but not Planned Parenthood’s partner in Puerto Rico, sparking outrage among Democrats. (Haberkorn, 9/12)

For those still skeptical that the Zika virus is causing brain defects in babies infected in the womb, a new study provides some pretty strong evidence. Researchers from the University of Washington reported Monday that they infected a pregnant pigtail macaque monkey, then monitored the development of her fetus. Within three weeks of infection, there were already signs that the fetus’s brain had sustained damage. The white matter stopped developing, as did the size of the head. (Branswell, 9/12)

On Sunday, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s bout with pneumonia put this common, and commonly dangerous, infectious disease in the spotlight. When we posed some questions about pneumonia to physicians who specialize in lung health, primary care and women’s health, some surprising facts came to light. (Healy, 9/12)

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said she was feeling much better after a pneumonia diagnosis and promised to release additional medical records this week, moving to contain concerns about her well-being and forthrightness after she stumbled exiting a 9/11 ceremony. The pneumonia diagnosis, belatedly disclosed by her campaign Sunday, has taken Mrs. Clinton off the road and off-message just as her campaign was working to focus on her agenda. (Meckler, 9/13)

Hillary Clinton's campaign plans to release additional information about the Democratic presidential nominee's health following her pneumonia diagnosis revealed Sunday. "In the next couple days, we're going to be releasing additional medical information about Hillary Clinton," spokesman Brian Fallon said on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports." Fallon said that "there's no other undisclosed condition; the pneumonia is the extent of it." (Byrnes, 9/12)

How much should presidential candidates tell the public about their health?Hillary Clinton, 68, was recently diagnosed with pneumonia, and the public didn’t know about it until two days later, when she abruptly left a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony feeling unwell and needing to be helped into a vehicle. If Donald Trump, 70, were elected, he would be older than any previous president at the start of his first term — and, like Clinton, he hasn’t released detailed records about his health beyond a doctor’s letter. Both candidates promised Monday to release more detailed medical records soon. (Pearce, 9/13)

In his second term as president, Dwight Eisenhower looked like an old man. He’d had a serious heart attack in 1955, requiring extensive hospitalization. Ike later suffered a stroke. In contrast to his seeming senescence, his successor, John F. Kennedy, seemed vibrant and flamboyant. The reality was that Eisenhower was not really that old — he was just 62 when first elected. And Kennedy wasn't actually that  vigorous, and indeed was secretly afflicted by serious medical problems, including Addison’s disease, that his aides concealed from the public. (Achenbach and Cunningham, 9/12)

For veterans of the presidential campaign trail, getting sick is just part of the candidate’s job description. So while Hillary Clinton’s bout with pneumonia and faintness at a Sept. 11 memorial service has set off more speculation about her overall health, old campaign hands don’t seem nearly as fazed. “Candidates, like most in high stress/high travel jobs, are constantly dealing with annoying coughs, colds, whatever,” Stuart Stevens, Mitt Romney’s campaign manager in 2012, told STAT in an email. “It’s hard to take a day or two off and rest and that just makes it worse. It just happens. To everybody.” (Scott, 9/12)

The Department of Veterans Affairs over the summer quietly stopped sharing data on the quality of care at its facilities with a national database for consumers, despite a 2014 law requiring the agency to report more comprehensive statistics to the site so veterans can make informed decisions about where to seek care. For years, the VA provided data on a number of criteria to the Hospital Compare web site run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the Department of Health and Human Services. The site includes death and readmission rates and other measures of quality for public and private hospitals around the country, as well as national averages. (Slack, 9/12)

The VA is developing a program called Reach Vet, which will identify veterans who may be at an increased risk of suicide based on any mental health diagnoses and other information that might suggest a mental health need, such as seeking treatment for insomnia, said Stephanie Davis, suicide prevention coordinator for VA Health of Eastern Kansas. People who receive psychiatric care early tend to have better health outcomes, she said. (Hart, 9/12)

A spokesman for the troubled Tomah VA Medical Center said Monday that officials will provide a briefing for Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson's staff within the next 24 hours as the senator presses for answers about an apparent suicide of a U.S. Army veteran. Brian Rossell, 29, of Wausau, went missing Sunday and his body was discovered Thursday in Lake Wausau. Rossell's mother had told local media in Wausau that her son sought help from the Tomah VA during the summer and was turned away. (Glauber, 9/12)

A clinical simulation center is opening on the campus of the Orlando Veterans Affairs Medical Center this week, featuring an ambulance bay, two operating rooms, three intensive care units and a "patient" that responds to anesthesia like a real human. There are other simulation centers in VA medical centers, but SimLEARN is the largest simulation facility across the VA and one of the 10 largest simulation centers in the United States, officials said. (Miller, 9/12)

The sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead, newly released historical documents show. The internal sugar industry documents, recently discovered by a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest that five decades of research into the role of nutrition and heart disease, including many of today’s dietary recommendations, may have been largely shaped by the sugar industry. (O'Connor, 9/12)

In 1964, the group now known as the Sugar Assn. internally discussed a campaign to address “negative attitudes toward sugar” after studies began emerging linking sugar with heart disease, according to documents dug up from public archives. The following year the group approved “Project 226,” which entailed paying Harvard researchers today's equivalent of $48,900 for an article reviewing the scientific literature, supplying materials they wanted reviewed, and receiving drafts of the article. The resulting article published in 1967 concluded there was “no doubt” that reducing cholesterol and saturated fat was the only dietary intervention needed to prevent heart disease. (9/12)

As nutrition debates raged in the 1960s, prominent Harvard nutritionists published two reviews in a top medical journal downplaying the role of sugar in coronary heart disease. Newly unearthed documents reveal what they didn’t say: A sugar industry trade group initiated and paid for the studies, examined drafts, and laid out a clear objective to protect sugar’s reputation in the public eye. That revelation, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, comes from Dr. Cristin Kearns at the University of California, San Francisco, a dentist-turned-researcher who found the sugar industry’s fingerprints while digging through boxes of letters in the basement of a Harvard library. (Bailey, 9/12)

[Mike] Duggan's pitch is one of 68 that launched Boston's first opioid hackathon. Almost 200 counselors, computer coders, architects, doctors and current and former addiction patients gathered last weekend for a day of stories and speeches and then two days of hacking. (Bebinger, 9/12)

Kratom is made from the leaves of a small tree native to Southeast Asia that is a relative of the coffee plant. According to David Kroll, a pharmacologist and medical writer, farmers and indigenous people have used it for hundreds of years as both a stimulant to increase work output and also at the end of the day as a way to relax. The leaves are often brewed like a tea, or crushed and mixed with water. In the U.S., kratom has become popular among people coping with chronic pain and others trying to wean themselves off opioids or alcohol. (Silverman, 9/12)

The nation’s ongoing opioid problem comes with staggering physical and emotional costs to patients and families. But the dollar cost to the health system has been harder to peg. Now a new report shows a more than 1,300 percent rise in spending by health insurers in a four-year period on patients with a diagnosis of opioid dependence or abuse. From 2011 to 2015, insurers’ payments to hospitals, laboratories, treatment centers and other medical providers for these patients grew from $32 million to $446 million — a 1,375 percent increase. (Appleby, 9/12)

Lawmakers are trying to draw attention to a rapidly emerging overdose crisis caused by synthetic drugs, less than two months after a bill to combat prescription opioid and heroin abuse was signed into law. The opioid measure included provisions that make it easier for the government to prosecute drug traffickers, but synthetic drugs pose a different kind of challenge that wasn’t addressed in the legislation. While most drugs are on a list of controlled substances, synthetics can escape law enforcement scrutiny if the chemists who make them tweak their formulas slightly. (Siddons, 9/13)

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health turns 100 this year. The school came to life during a time when women frequently died during childbirth and infant mortality was a grave concern. Inadequate nutrition, sanitation and often-fatal diseases were common. Since then, public-health agencies in the United States and abroad have had numerous victories, such as the eradication of smallpox. In 1916, the average life expectancy at birth in the United States was around 52. Today, it’s nearly 79. But public health remains a complex and challenging field — figuring out how to control gun violence and addiction, exploring the science of aging, keeping refugees healthy, closing the gap on health-care disparities in minority populations. (Kvatum, 9/12)

Last summer, Djimon Hill and his family made a risky but potentially life-altering decision: The teen would undergo deep brain stimulation surgery to implant electrodes that might alleviate the movement disorder, dystonia, that accompanies his cerebral palsy. ... With tiny, reflective balls taped to his limbs and torso, Djimon is directed through a sequence of commands. On a nearby computer screen, he appears as a constellation — dots connected by colored lines — moving in a calibrated, three-dimensional environment. (Simpson, 9/12)

When vision problems are diagnosed and corrected at an early age, children can avoid lifelong problems. Amblyopia, or "lazy eye," for example, can often be reversed before age 7 with a temporary eye patch. Untreated, it can lead to permanent loss of sight. This poses lasting challenges. Among the visually impaired, median household earnings are about 60 percent of the national average. Nearly a third live in poverty. (9/12)

Like it or not, Facebook has the potential to lift your well-being, a new study suggests. Researchers found that when people who care about you send personal messages to you through the social media site, the benefits can be significant. Actions such as simply hitting "like" and passively reading wide-ranging posts are unlikely to have an impact, however. (Doheny, 9/12)

Governor Charlie Baker will announce on Tuesday a substantial shift in how the state’s criminal justice system handles mentally ill people, moving the troubled Bridgewater State Hospital away from a prison model and toward a more clinical approach. The administration plans to shift mentally ill inmates convicted of state crimes out of the state prison in Bridgewater and into a separate facility, leaving behind other mentally ill inmates charged with sometimes minor crimes but not convicted. Baker would also beef up mental health services and place sharp limits on the contact that correctional officers have with inmates — contact that proved deadly in the case of 23-year-old Joshua Messier, who died in 2009 as guards wrestled him into restraints. (Sharfenberg, 9/13)

On a hot summer day last month, Sydney, 15, and Laney, 8, were enjoying their last two weeks of freedom before school started. The sisters tried to do flips over a high bar at a local playground. “You’ve got to pull your hips into the bar, like you’ve got to kick up like that,” explained their mother, Selena. ... Both girls have been diagnosed with mental illnesses — Sydney with bipolar disorder and Laney with a similar illness called disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. ... School has been a real challenge for them. That’s not unusual for the 1 in 5 children with a mental illness. (Gold, 9/13)

Corrections officials scrambled to salvage a psychology internship program at the state’s troubled juvenile prison after a national accrediting agency found it was poorly supervised, records show. Visitors from the American Psychological Association found interns weren’t given enough time to do their assessments, did not understand what was expected of them, were trained by staff who were not familiar with psychological tests and sometimes were not evaluated by their bosses. (Marley, 9/12)

In 2014, medical identity theft cases jumped an estimated 22 percent compared with the prior year, according to the most recent annual study by the Ponemon Institute, a cybersecurity research firm in Traverse City, Mich. At the same time, more than a third – 35.5 percent – of all U.S. data breaches last year hit hospitals, health care providers and health insurance companies, according to the San Diego-based Identity Theft Resource Center. In the past several years, an estimated 2.3 million U.S. adults have been victims of medical ID theft, according to Ponemon. (Buck, 9/12)

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine Monday appealed a ruling allowing Toledo’s last abortion clinic to remain open. DeWine asked the Ohio Supreme Court to reverse a July decision by the Sixth District Court of Appeals in Lucas County to uphold a ruling by the Lucas County Common Pleas Court that Capital Care Network could keep its doors open. The Ohio Department of Health ordered the clinic to close because it did not have a transfer agreement with a nearby hospital to provide care to patients in case of emergency. (Candisky, 9/12)

The state will fight an appellate court ruling that regulations governing an abortion clinic, and the way Ohio enacted them, are unconstitutional.  The Ohio Department of Health, represented by lawyers in Attorney General Mike DeWine's office, filed notice Monday with the Ohio Supreme Court that it would  appeal the case, a lawsuit by Capital Care Network. Capital Care, which operates a clinic in Toledo, already has won judgments in Lucas County Common Pleas Court and Ohio's 6th District Court of Appeals. (Higgs, 9/12)

Abbott Vascular won regulatory approval in July for its Absorb stent, a first-of-its kind artery device that dissolves into the bloodstream. Hospitals are already marketing the availability of the product with TV, radio and billboard ads. Experts are still debating whether the device offers any additional medical benefit over traditional stents in exchange for its premium price. But the attribute that might be most compelling to patients is that they just don't want a foreign object left in their body. (Rubenfire, 9/10)

Getting diagnosed with cancer is scary enough. But if surgery is involved, with all its potential complications, any patient wants to find the best hospital.Unfortunately, there’s no certain way to tell. But CalQualityCare.org, operated by the California Health Care Foundation, can give a strong clue. Most experts agree that for specific procedures such as lung, pancreas, esophageal or rectal cancer surgeries, higher volume hospitals have better outcomes and lower mortality. The Oakland-based nonprofit used a state database to see each hospital’s volume for 11 cancer surgery types. It found that in 2014, an alarming number of San Diego County hospitals did far fewer specific cancer surgeries than what is recommended. (Clark, 9/12)

Montrose Memorial Hospital is facing allegations that it discriminated against its older nurses, firing or forcing them to resign while showing preferential treatment toward younger staffers. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed suit against the Western Slope hospital on Friday in U.S. District Court of Colorado, accusing Montrose Memorial of widespread age discrimination since at least 2012. In one case, a  nurse who worked at the hospital for 27 years was fired in 2012 for policy violations for which younger nurses were treated more leniently, the suit alleges. (Rusch, 9/12)

The job state officials are bidding competitively to clean out the old Charity Hospital in New Orleans is expected to cost $10 million and take at least six months to complete. It's been more than 11 years since Hurricane Katrina struck and the old hospital was abandoned as the city flooded from levee failures. In the aftermath, only medical records were removed from the building, and photos on websites taken by people who explore abandoned buildings show that much of the medical equipment and furniture remained as it was when abandoned. (Litten, 9/12)

The doctor [Larry Bedard] is taking steps toward bringing it out into the open by introducing a resolution at Tuesday’s board meeting for Marin Healthcare District, which governs Marin General. The resolution, if approved, would direct the hospital’s administrative and medical staff to review and research the clinical and legal implications of using medical marijuana in the hospital and report back to the board. Bedard initially planned to introduce a resolution to allow patient use in the hospital but stepped back from that last month after the Drug Enforcement Agency declined to remove marijuana from its list of dangerous drugs, keeping it in the same category as such drugs as heroin and LSD. (Colliver, 9/12)

The newly-appointed head of California’s nursing board says his ratcheted-up effort to clear a persistent licensing backlog has been successful. In early August, staff at the Board of Registered Nursing, which is charged with vetting nurses for licensing in California, had not progressed beyond applications from recent graduates filed in March. One month later, the agency appears to have cleared a substantial portion of the backlog, reporting on its website that it is now processing applications that new nurses filed in early August. (Brown, 9/13)

Twin Cities hospital operator Allina Health said Monday that 440 staff nurses have crossed picket lines or plan to do so by their next scheduled shift. Meanwhile, thousands of nurses belonging to the Minnesota Nurses Association remain on strike at Allina facilities. The strike began on Labor Day, prompting Allina to bring in about 1,500 replacement nurses hired through agencies. Even then, nearly 375 permanent staff nurses had already committed to working through the strike, Allina spokesman David Kanihan said. (Cooney, 9/12)

A nursing home in Festus could be forced to shut down after not providing enough food for residents and violating minimum standards for cleanliness and care, according to federal inspection reports. A lawyer for the home’s operator says he believes all the residents have already been moved. The closure is possible because the facility will no longer be eligible for Medicaid or Medicare funding because of the problems. (Bernhard, 9/13)

New York State is extending the period for workers and volunteers to seek medical benefits and lost wages resulting from their involvement in the rescue and recovery operations in Lower Manhattan after the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, at a ceremony on Sunday for the 15th anniversary of the attack, signed legislation reopening the window for people to file claims with the state, for two years after the previous deadline elapsed. The law extends the filing deadline to Sept. 11, 2018. (Santora, 9/12)

The Office of State Ethics is taking the rare step of seeking authority to subpoena personal financial information that Insurance Commissioner Katharine L. Wade has failed to provide the lawyer responsible for determining if Wade has a conflict of interest ruling on Anthem’s proposed acquisition of  Cigna. The Citizens’ Ethics Advisory Board will be asked Thursday to formally begin a hearing process that allows state ethics attorneys to compel Wade and others to turn over documents in an effort to determine whether Wade and her husband would profit from Wade’s approval of the deal combining the nation’s second- and four-largest health insurers. (Pazniokas, 9/12)

A nonprofit for insurance professionals is opening a Houston chapter that will provide grants and volunteer hours to organizations focused on children, education and veterans, the Insurance Industry Charitable Foundation announced Monday. "With the launch of the Houston Chapter, we are excited for the opportunity to extend that reach to support local communities in the Houston area via our grants program and volunteer service," Jason Warden, chairman of the Houston chapter and regional vice president of The Hartford, said in a news release. (Rumbaugh, 9/12)

A retired Indianapolis fertility doctor said he used his own sperm around 50 times instead of donated sperm that his patients were expecting, impregnating several women decades ago, but later denied it, according to court documents. Dr. Donald Cline, 77, pleaded not guilty Monday to two felony obstruction of justice charges for misleading authorities who were investigating complaints from two of the now-adult children against him. (Kusmer, 9/12)

CalPERS’ four-week open enrollment period for health benefits began Monday, with a couple changes for its 1.4 million beneficiaries. CalPERS members this year will get expanded resources to choose health care plans online, and to receive health care statements electronically. CalPERS said the milestone marks the first time that a majority of its members automatically will receive health care information online, potentially saving about $1 million a year in publication costs. (Ashton, 9/12)

When the EPA ordered drinking water systems nationwide to test their water for a long list of unregulated contaminants, North Carolina water systems scored high on tests most systems would wish to fail. Some of the highest levels nationally of a likely cancer-causing chemical 1,4 dioxane were detected in North Carolina water systems in the Cape Fear River Basin, which supplies water to more than 120 public water systems used by 1.5 million residents. (Clabby, 9/12)

Five states are voting this fall on whether marijuana should be legal, like alcohol, for recreational use. That has sparked questions about what we know – and don't know – about marijuana's effect on the brain. Research is scarce. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug. That classification puts up barriers to conducting research on it, including a cumbersome DEA approval application and a requirement that scientists procure very specific marijuana plants. (Bebinger, 9/13)

A “potalyzer” that can detect whether a driver is under the influence by marijuana is being perfected by Stanford University researchers. Magnetic biosensors on the mobile device developed by materials science and engineering professor Shan Wang and her team can detect the presence of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in saliva, according to a Stanford news release. Like a breathalyzer is used in alcohol impairment cases, police would be able to use a cotton swab to collect a spit sample and results would be available on a smart phone or laptop in three minutes. (Lee, 9/12)

Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare’s Community Care Award gives businesses with from two to 100 employees the chance to win $10,000 for developing a project idea that is judged to have the best chance to enhance the Richmond area’s health and wellness. Projects must be coordinated with a nonprofit partner that will help implement the idea in the community. (Demeria, 9/12)

Global IT company Atos will acquire Dallas healthcare software company Anthelio Healthcare Solutions  for $275 million to expand the company's reach in the U.S. healthcare market, company officials announced Monday. Anthelio offers IT services to manage technology and electronic health records for hospitals, physician practices and other healthcare providers. It also offers software-enabled financial management software. The company has about 1,700 employees in the U.S. and India, including about 100 in its corporate headquarters in Dallas. (Repko, 9/12)

As President Obama’s graying hair suggests, the American presidency is perhaps the most grueling and stressful political job there is. This year, both major party candidates for that job are past the nation’s customary retirement age. And while submitting health records is not a requirement for the job, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would be doing American voters a great service by furnishing a much clearer picture of their physical health than the abbreviated and sunny reports provided so far. (9/12)

Calls are growing for an independent panel of physicians to evaluate the health of candidates, as is the suggestion that unedited medical records be available for public review. Before either option gains more traction, however, it’s worth asking where they might lead us. (David Brown, 9/12)

Hillary Clinton has Parkinson’s, according to one Trump supporter. Or an undisclosed “cognitive illness.” Or has just endured one too many falls and too much blood thinner. There are no numbers on just how many Americans believe Clinton is hiding a dire medical condition, but the short video of Clinton nearly collapsing and being ushered into a van on Sunday morning triggered far more than the typical concern you might expect about the well-being of a 68-year-old in a highly stressful environment. The Drudge Report's headline for nearly a day: "Will she survive?" (Diamond, 9/12)

For weeks, the official position of the chattering classes was that any inquiry into Clinton’s health was “sexist.” ... On Tuesday, Clinton herself was asked if discussion of her health was sexist. She replied with a long, ironic, “hmmmmmm” that typified her gift for political subtlety and nuance. The same day, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza asked, dyspeptically, “Can we just stop talking about Hillary Clinton’s health now?” Five days later, after Clinton’s near collapse at ground zero, he declared, “Hillary Clinton’s health just became a real issue in the presidential campaign.” (Jonah Goldberg, 9/12)

Here’s what you know about Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s health because you saw it, or read about it, in the news: She is suffering from a case of walking pneumonia that caused her to wilt in the heat on Sunday. But, wait, here’s what you may not know but others are sure of: Clinton has a severe neurological disorder. She’s suffering from a brain tumor. She has dementia. She is such a sick woman that she isn’t likely to have the mental capability to fulfill her duties as president — should she be elected. The reason you may not know these things is that they, of course, aren’t true. (Neal Gabler, 9/13)

What, now Hillary Clinton can’t even get sick? The presidential candidate stumbled to her car after visiting the 9/11 Memorial on Sunday, saying she felt “overheated.” In the process, she set conservative speculation ablaze. She has a heart condition. She has the language disorder dysphasia. She has a stunt double. And something fell out of her leg. I haven’t seen Republicans show this much concern for a woman’s health in, well, ever. (Nicole Brodeur, 9/12)

Call the doctor, I think I’m coming down with a case of déjà vu. I probably shouldn’t have said so in print, lest someone think it’s a symptom of a brain disorder. Hillary Clinton’s health episode at the 9/11 memorial service over the weekend has cranked up another round of armchair medical diagnoses ranging from cancer to Parkinson’s disease. (Kathie Obradovich, 9/12)

Last month, eight people in Florida were charged in a massive insurance fraud scheme that ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars. A number of compounding pharmacies in the Tampa Bay and Miami areas were found to be submitting fraudulent reimbursement claims and covering them up with bribes and kickbacks; experts believe that thousands of consumers had their personal information misused in the scheme. All of this comes as a key federal agency is considering stricter oversight of the growing—and dangerously under-regulated—field of compounding pharmacies in the United States. (Sally Greenberg, 9/12)

Federal regulations put in place as part of the Drug Quality and Security Act of 2013 aim to make drugs produced at compounding facilities safer than ever before. These new regulations have generated significant pushback from the compounding community. They have also placed many of these pharmacies at a crossroads: they must choose either to limit what they produce to lessen federal oversight or invest in a higher quality, larger-scale operation so they can offer a greater range of solutions for patients and providers. (Shaun Noorian, 9/9)

Hospitals and many insurance carriers care about patient satisfaction. It especially matters to hospitals because insurance payments can be influenced by how patients rate the care they receive, as well as by the health of the patient, which hospitals usually report. Many people in the health care profession are put off by this. They argue that patient satisfaction scores aren’t necessarily aligned with outcomes. Moreover, they say that trying to improve satisfaction is a waste of time. (Aaron E. Carroll, 9/12)

Simply removing information such as names and addresses from a dataset doesn’t render the data anonymous and ensure that an individual can’t be identified. Conferring real privacy protection means carefully assessing the re-identification risk, setting acceptable risk thresholds, and transforming the data using de-identification standards. Several such guidelines and standards exist for doing this. The Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST), for example, recently released a de-identification framework that organizations can use when creating, accessing, storing, or exchanging personal information. Other organizations, like the Institute of Medicine and the Council of Canadian Academies have adopted similar standards that permit sharing sensitive data while managing the risks of re-identification. Current evidence shows that the risk of re-identification using these approaches is very small. (Sam Wehbe, 9/12)

Come November, the grim trudge across the increasingly barren Obamacare landscape begins anew. A first tranche of states has approved 2017 rates with cardiac-arrest-inducing premium increases. And in many places across the nation, people will find drastically fewer choices of plans. Insurers fled because they didn’t want to lose more money on a government-run market that is so far out of whack. (9/13)

A year later, I remain haunted by the death of a friend, 39 when he shot himself, because I’m pretty sure his life could have been saved. Local police called his death a “suicide by gunshot” — one of more than 20,000 people a year who take their own lives with a firearm. Yes, it’s true: More people use guns to kill themselves than to kill others, according to 2012 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Suicides may be the great untold story in the gun debate. (Steven Petrow, 9/12)

Was DEET scarier than Zika, I wondered, as I read about incidents of seizures, impaired cognitive function, and death associated with the repellent, developed for jungle warfare during World War II and used in Vietnam. “There’s no doubt that if you used DEET every day for a long period of time, it would not be good,” Dr. Alster emailed me after I pestered her. “But in the short term, there is NO BETTER mosquito repellent. So if you want to minimize your risk of Zika or Chikungunya, use it!” (Maureen Dowd, 9/12)

Congress is back in session. With the election looming, this means a frenetic dash to pass bills on a number of big ticket items, including the budget and Zika funding. While the legislative fight over these issues will likely dominate the headlines, we cannot forget about other below-the-radar, but nevertheless critical, issues. One critical, but below-the radar, issue is a Senate bill that could force the manufacturer of innovative drugs that are used to treat serious illnesses to prematurely turn over samples and patented information to generic manufacturers. (Wayne Winegarden, 9/12)

The U.S. is experiencing political polarization over many issues, including health. There are few examples where Democrats and Republicans in Congress, as well as those among the public who identify with the two parties, agree on a set of policies. One of these exceptions involves policies to address the opioid abuse crisis facing the country today. (Robert Blendon, Caitlin McMurtry, John Benson, and Justin Sayde, 9/12)

About 1 of every 6 Californians lives in poverty, which helps explain why almost 12 million state residents are enrolled in Medi-Cal — the state’s version of Medicaid, the health insurance program for impoverished Americans that’s jointly funded by federal and state taxpayers. California’s enrollment is by far the largest in the country. Yet because the state is relatively wealthy, California has to pick up a larger share of its Medicaid costs than almost every other state does. The higher a state’s median income, the smaller the fraction of Medicaid costs that the federal government will pay. (9/13)

The current state of the Virginia budget requires that we revisit the issue of Medicaid expansion. There has been a lot of confusion and misinformation about the impact and costs of expansion. ... Medicaid expansion would have made the budget shortfall smaller. More important, we still have the opportunity to take this action, making medical care available to 400,000 Virginians while relieving some of the difficult budget decisions that lie ahead. (Virginia Secretary of Health and Human Resources William A. Hazel, 9/12)

National studies ranking Iowa at the top for children’s well-being have consistently shown that our state is a wonderful place for kids to grow up in a healthy, safe environment and be nurtured to become productive adults. (Charles M. Palmer, 9/12)

Now, Sears is in hot water with the state Medical Board for allegedly writing an excuse note that allowed a little boy not to receive any vaccinations, even though Sears never bothered gathering medical evidence that vaccines were dangerous for the child. California’s tough new vaccination law allows children not to be immunized when there’s a valid medical reason. But the case for which Sears faces discipline, including possible loss of his medical license, is puzzling. (Karen Klein, 9/12)