�鶹Ů��

Can a single state make any real difference in a chaotic and unpredictable presidential primary season? Tuesday night’s dual Wisconsin primaries suggest so. The result was a clarifying glimpse into where Trumpism falters, where Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont can succeed, and whether each party’s establishment has the power to steer its own nomination. ... After Mr. Trump’s clumsy expressions of solidarity with opponents of abortion — suggesting at one point that there should be “some form of punishment” for women who have abortions — he won just a third of self-identified evangelical Christians. (Confessore, 4/6)

Ted Cruz rolled to a landslide victory Tuesday in Wisconsin’s hotly contested Republican presidential primary, capitalizing on a difficult stretch for Donald Trump to cut into the front-runner’s overall delegate lead and deliver a psychological blow to the billionaire mogul. ... In the closing days of the Wisconsin race, Trump burrowed in to try to close a polling deficit with Cruz. ... Trump also deployed his wife, Melania, to make a rare campaign appearance Monday night in Milwaukee — a move seemingly orchestrated to soften his image with women after a series of misstatements on abortion policy. But it was not enough. (Sullivan and Rucker, 4/5)

A week after Donald Trump said women who have illegal abortions should “face some sort of punishment,” the Republican presidential candidate tried to redeem himself on Tuesday by insisting that women should still vote for him because he will protect them from terrorists. (Bassett, 4/5)

Congressional officials say the Obama administration is about to announce it will transfer leftover money from the largely successful fight against Ebola to combat the growing threat of the Zika virus. The officials say roughly 75 percent of the $600 million or so would be devoted to the Centers for Disease Control. The agency focuses on research and development of anti-Zika vaccines, treating those infected with the virus and combating the mosquitoes that spread it. (Taylor, 4/6)

The Obama administration plans to spend unused Ebola funds to fight the Zika virus, a breakthrough that could ease the standoff with Congress over the administration’s request for emergency money for the crisis. The administration will jump-start the Zika effort using leftover money that Congress had given the health agencies to fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, according to two congressional sources. The biggest amount of unused money is $600 million that was intended to help 30 countries improve, and in some cases build, public health systems to make them better prepared to fight future infectious diseases. (Nather and Scott, 4/5)

Keera Galindo has lived 15 years with an unusually small head but only a few months with a public spotlight on the surprisingly common condition. Keera and scores of other Iowa children have microcephaly, meaning their brains and skulls are undersize. Few Americans had heard of the condition until last winter. That changed as news reports filled with alarming images from South and Central America, where babies are being born with a severe form of microcephaly after their mothers were infected with a mosquito-borne virus called Zika. (Leys, 4/5)

Mental health advocates are pressing Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill not to abandon a push to modernize the nation's ailing mental health system amid rising partisan tensions over President Obama's Supreme Court pick. The effort has picked up crucial bipartisan support in the Senate and galvanized dozens of groups representing patients, physicians and state and local leaders. The Obama administration has also backed calls for reform, proposing more than $500 million in new federal spending to expand mental health services nationwide. But election-year politics and uncertainty over funding are fueling concerns that years of collaborative work by lawmakers from both parties may not bear fruit. (Levey, 4/6)

The Senate faces a tight deadline if it’s going to pass a medical bill this year designed to speed drug and precision medicine developments. The legislation needs to be smoothed of kinks and on the floor within two weeks unless GOP leaders alter their overall schedule for the year. The Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will hold its third and final votes on a series of small bipartisan bills on Wednesday, but there’s still no deal on the most important issue — additional funding for the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. (Owens, 4/5)

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) says that her bill aimed at fighting high profile drug price spikes will likely not be considered as part of a health committee session on Wednesday. “I don't think it's going to come up tomorrow, but I'm assured by the chairman that it will be considered at some point,” Collins said Tuesday, referring to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.). The health committee is holding a markup Wednesday on the last batch of a series of innovation bills aimed at speeding up the FDA’s approval process for drugs. That package has been seen as a possible vehicle for some sort of provision related to drug prices, which have been a hot button issue on the campaign trail and elsewhere. (Sullivan, 4/5)

Senior executives at the Department of Veterans Affairs overseeing health care programs could appeal disciplinary actions against them only through internal department channels, under a formal proposal the department has sent to Congress. While other VA executives still could bring appeals to the Merit Systems Protection Board, that adjudicatory agency would have to give more deference to the department’s decisions, under the proposal. (Yoder, 4/5)

A special legislative session that starts today will consider Gov. Asa Hutchinson's proposal that would continue the state's expanded Medicaid program that provides health coverage to about 267,000 low-income Arkansans, while making changes the governor says would encourage recipients to stay employed and take responsibility for their health care. The formal call for the session that Hutchinson issued Tuesday did not include his proposal to hire private companies to manage and provide benefits to some Medicaid recipients as a way to save state tax dollars. (Davis, 4/6)

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson says he won't put his proposal to have private firms manage some Medicaid services before lawmakers as they convene for a special session this week. ... Lawmakers opposed to Gov. Asa Hutchinson's managed care legislation are leaving open the possibility they'll try with a competing proposal during this week's special session. The group of lawmakers on Tuesday released their proposal to have the state hire private firms to coordinate services for the developmentally disabled and mentally ill. Unlike Hutchinson's proposal, under the competing plan Arkansas would continue paying Medicaid providers directly. Hutchinson earlier Tuesday said he wouldn't include his managed care proposal on the session agenda at the urging of legislative leaders. (4/5)

About 50,000 low-income adults will be able to continue their health care coverage for two more years after Gov. Maggie Hassan signed House Bill 1696 into law Tuesday. ... The bill extends the New Hampshire Health Protection Program for two more years until Dec. 31, 2018 while adding a work requirement — something federal regulators have never approved — and having hospitals and insurance companies pay the state’s share of the cost, about $40 million. (Rayno, 4/5)

Hassan said continuing this program is a positive step for New Hampshire. “It’s clear that expansion is strengthening the health and financial security of our citizens and we know that reauthorization is also critical to our businesses, our economy and the ongoing battle with substance abuse,” Hassan said. Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley touted the fact that the measure relies on no tax dollars but most importantly the program will continue to expand access to treatment for those battling addiction. (Sutherland, 4/5)

New Hampshire’s newly approved Medicaid expansion is riding on a hope that hospitals and insurance carriers will voluntarily help foot the bill, or else it’s doomed. Legislation Gov. Maggie Hassan signed into law Tuesday, which reauthorizes the expansion for two more years, relies on those organizations to voluntarily donate an estimated $40 million to the state to help fund the program’s operation. ... The voluntary donations from health care organizations were the linchpin of Republican support, because it means the state doesn’t have to use taxpayer money to cover the program. The federal government pays 100 percent of Medicaid expansion costs. But aid from Washington will start to decline in 2017, and the state is on the hook for an estimated $50.8 million over the next two years. (Morris, 4/5)

If you've ever taken the time to give Yelp your two cents about a hospital, you'll be happy to know that someone's listening and that they've deemed the crowdsourced information not only useful — but unique. In what is believed to be the first large-scale analysis of such data, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania looked at 17,000 Yelp reviews of 1,352 hospitals from consumers. They found that the online information provides a broader sense of a facility than the current gold standard — a U.S. government survey that costs millions of dollars to develop and implement each year. (Cha, 4/5)

The hackers who seriously disrupted operations at a large hospital chain recently and held some data hostage broke into a computer server left vulnerable despite urgent public warnings since at least 2007 that it needed to be fixed with a simple update, The Associated Press has learned. The hackers exploited design flaws that had persisted on the MedStar Health Inc. network, according to a person familiar with the investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss the findings publicly. (Abdollah, 4/6)

Cybercriminals have targeted hospitals with growing frequency in recent years, identifying the millions of recently digitized patient files as a treasure trove of unguarded information. Hospitals have historically been vulnerable to security breaches due to their reliance on expensive, aging medical equipment, their inability to halt patient care to perform time-consuming software updates, and a workflow that depends on the constant input and accessing of data on different devices. Those complications, combined with the high black market value of medical records, makes such facilities prime targets for a growing number of sophisticated criminals. (Caiola, 4/5)

The cloud era and big data are poised to give consumers access to their medical records like never before – whenever and wherever they need it, says Karen DeSalvo, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s acting assistant secretary and the national coordinator for health information technology. She told Wall Street Journal reporters and editors that she wants to refocus health data around people, not records. Over time, that could help overcome the for-profit “blocking” of patient data. (Loten, 4/5)

Blue Cross and Blue Shield chief operating officer Alan Hughes has abruptly resigned from the state’s largest health insurance company, an apparent casualty of an ongoing technology fiasco that has prevented thousands of Blue Cross customers from enrolling and triggered an investigation by the N.C. Department of Insurance. Blue Cross, the state’s largest health insurer, announced Hughes’ resignation Tuesday. The company said Hughes was replaced by Gerald Petkau, the company’s previous chief financial officer. Petkau will oversee the company’s customer service, claims processing, project management and IT functions. (Murawski, 4/5)

The champion behind an anticipated proposal roiling the retirement-advice industry is a civil servant most Washington outsiders have never heard of. Phyllis Borzi, a 69-year-old assistant labor secretary, is an unlikely advocate for the rule, given the Labor Department doesn’t typically get involved with investment advice. ... She became a congressional staffer in 1979, working on employee benefits. Later, she drafted a large section of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, a 1985 law that guarantees health benefits at some cost to workers after leaving a job. The work earned her the nickname among Labor Department staff as “the mother of COBRA.” She has said her work in Congress introduced her to many female constituents who were ill-prepared for retirement despite working hard for many years, leading her to conclude the system was flawed. (Hayashi, 4/5)

A new study finds African-American patients are often treated differently when it comes to medicine and care. The survey of more than 500 people, 400 of them medical students, found implicit bias exists that may help explain why black people are sometimes undertreated for pain. Among its findings: Medical students believed that African-Americans felt less pain than white patients, and even thought their skin was thicker. (Ifill, 4/5)

Numerous studies have shown that black patients are less likely than their white counterparts to receive pain medicine for the same injury. Now, new research from the University of Virginia suggests a reason why. It found that a substantial number of white medical students and residents believe black people are less sensitive to pain. (Cornish, 4/5)

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help illuminate one of the most vexing problems in pain treatment today: That whites are more likely than blacks to be prescribed strong pain medications for equivalent ailments. (Somashekhar, 4/4)

A new study reveals that in a group of 222 white medical students, half judged as possibly, probably or definitely true at least one of 11 false beliefs about racial differences. And that is not without potential consequences for the patients these medical students may one day treat, the new research suggests. (Healy, 4/4)

First author Kelly Hoffman, a sixth-year PhD candidate in psychology at the University of Virginia, said that to her knowledge, this is the first study that connects racial bias about biology, racial perception of pain, and the accuracy of medical advice. (Swetlitz, 4/4)

An anti-abortion activist who made undercover videos at Planned Parenthood clinics said in a social media posting that California Department of Justice agents raided his home Tuesday. Agents seized all video footage from his apartment, along with his personal information, David Daleiden said in a Facebook post. Daleiden, the founder of a group called the Center for Medical Progress, said agents left behind documents that he contends implicate Planned Parenthood in illegal behavior related to the handling of fetal tissue. (4/5)

California investigators on Tuesday evening searched the apartment of David Daleiden, the anti-abortion activist behind the series of sting videos released last summer showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing fees for fetal tissue and organs. California Attorney General Kamala Harris said last summer that she would investigate whether Daleiden broke laws in the course of his sting operation, which spurred a huge political battle over Planned Parenthood's federal funding. Daleiden filmed part of his project in Planned Parenthood clinics in California. (Haberkorn, 4/5)

Daleiden characterized Tuesday's search as "an attack on citizen journalism." "This is no surprise -- Planned Parenthood's bought-and-paid-for AG has steadfastly refused to enforce the laws against the baby body parts traffickers in our state, or even investigate them," he said. A spokeswoman for the attorney general said the office cannot comment on the ongoing case. A federal judge has rejected Daleiden's journalistic claims, noting that the activist and his team used fraudulent tactics, including false identities, and selectively edited the material they captured on tiny cameras disguised as shirt buttons and hidden in water bottles, despite state laws prohibiting secret recording. (St. John, 4/5)

Threats and violence directed at U.S. abortion clinics increased sharply in 2015, according to the National Abortion Federation, which attributed the surge to the release of undercover videos intended to discredit Planned Parenthood. "In my more than 20 years with NAF, I have not seen such an escalation of hate speech, threats and calls to action against abortion providers," said Vicki Saporta, the federation's CEO. (4/5)

A former academic administrator and business executive was tapped to lead Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio and Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio. (Candisky, 4/5)

Mississippi would ban a commonly used second-trimester abortion procedure under a bill headed to Gov. Phil Bryant's desk. The House voted 85-32 Tuesday to approve Senate changes to the legislation. Gov. Phil Bryant's spokesman didn't immediately respond to questions about whether he would sign the bill. Bryant generally opposes abortion. The measure would outlaw a procedure called dilation and evacuation unless an abortion is required to prevent a mother's irreversible physical impairment. (4/5)

A lawmaker wants to allow California addicts to use heroin, crack and other drugs at supervised facilities to cut down on overdoses, joining several U.S. cities considering establishing the nation's first legal drug-injection sites. The proposal introduced Tuesday comes as San Francisco, Seattle, New York City and Ithaca, New York, weigh ordinances to set up the facilities, citing the success of a site operating in Canada since 2003. (Noon, 4/5)

State officials have reached an agreement with the maker of the opioid overdose reversal drug naloxone to receive a $6 rebate for each dose of the drug purchased by a Connecticut government agency. Attorney General George Jepsen wrote to Amphastar Pharmaceuticals in September to ask about what he described as a dramatic increase in the price of the drug, which he said occurred as Connecticut and other states were seeking to make it more available to first responders. (Levin Becker, 4/5)

Drug treatment providers in California and elsewhere have relied for decades on abstinence and therapy to treat addicts. In recent years, they’ve turned to medication. Faced with a worsening opiate epidemic and rising numbers of overdose deaths, policymakers are ramping up medication-assisted treatment. President Barack Obama last week said he’d allocate more money for states to expand access to the medications. He also proposed that physicians be able to prescribe one of the most effective anti-addiction drugs, buprenorphine, to more patients. (Gorman, 4/6)

Thousands of people 50 and older are diagnosed with HIV each year in the United States, a development that has significant consequences for the health care and social support they need and the doctors, counselors and others who provide it. Older people tend to be sicker when the infection is finally discovered. They usually have other health conditions that accompany aging and often are too embarrassed to reveal their illness to family and friends. (Bernstein, 4/6)

Federal regulators are poised to enact new restrictions on psychiatry’s most controversial treatment, electroconvulsive therapy, which treats people with acute mental illnesses by sending a seizure-inducing jolt of electricity through their brains. A draft rule under consideration at the Food and Drug Administration would reclassify ECT as safe and effective — and only moderately risky — for adults with severe depression who haven’t responded to medication or other therapies. (Graham, 4/6)

Subway is moving ahead and posting calorie counts on menu boards nationally despite another delay in a federal rule requiring the information. The sandwich chain says its new menu boards with calorie counts are already rolling out around the country and should be up in all 27,000 of its U.S. stores by April 11. The decision to forge ahead comes as restaurant chains have awaited the Food and Drug Administration's final guidance and enforcement of a rule requiring food sellers with 20 or more locations to post the information. ... As part of the federal health care overhaul, a rule was passed in 2010 requiring major chains to post calorie counts on menus with the goal of helping Americans make better food choices. (Choi, 4/5)

Florida health officials, in a settlement announced Tuesday, agreed to improve access to health care for poor children, ending a long-running class-action lawsuit that had accused the state of shortchanging doctors and leaving low-income families to trek long distances to visit specialists. The state reimbursed doctors so little for Medicaid services that many doctors refused to treat the patients, lawyers argued in a suit filed in 2005 by pediatric doctors on behalf of nine plaintiffs. Hundreds of thousands of children who were on Medicaid never received checkups, and for years, 80 percent of the children never saw a dentist, the worst rate in the nation. (Robles, 4/5)

Florida officials will boost access to health and dental care for poor children in settlement of an 11-year-old class-action lawsuit, the groups behind the legal action said on Tuesday. The settlement calls for Florida to increase payments to physicians who treat poor children and sets benchmarks for preventative and dental treatment to be met over five years, according to the Philadelphia-based Public Interest Law Center, which represented the plaintiffs. (Dobuzinskis, 4/6)

One of the biggest victories for the plaintiffs requires insurance plans to provide a "reasonable opportunity" for pediatricians to earn rates that are on par with Medicare, which typically pays more than Medicaid. In later years, those reimbursement opportunities will extend to specialists, addressing a huge gap in the system by improving doctor participation in the Medicaid program and preventing children from having to travel long distances to receive treatment. (Kennedy, 4/5)

[H]ealthcare for needy children had become a public relations nightmare for the state. Administrators at the Department of Health last year purged 13,000 children from one of the premier Medicaid plans for youngsters, Children’s Medical Services, and had shuttered CMS offices, including clinics for children with disfigured faces and other disabilities. Public outrage over the cutbacks, and other agency moves, may have cost the health department’s secretary, John Armstrong, Senate confirmation. (Marbin Miller, 4/5)

North Carolina's Medicaid program is again mistakenly overpaying some doctors and hospitals, an annual compliance audit released Monday found. This time, state auditors disclosed a likely program-wide cost: $835 million. (Robertson, 4/5)

According to a release from DHHS, the department will “continue its efforts to educate providers about documentation standards and will target education and training to specific provider types if they are consistently having issues.” (Hoban, 4/5)

What was a woman accused of 11 counts of dependent adult abuse and ongoing criminal conduct doing working for AmeriHealth Caritas Iowa, one of the three private, out-of-state Medicaid management companies hired by the state to serve low-income and disabled Iowans? That was the question burning in the mind last week of Jennifer Duncan, a whistle-blower and mother whose son was one of the adults Tonya Nicole Fustos of Glenwood is accused of ripping off. ... James Martin Davis, Fustos' attorney, said his client is pleading not guilty to the charges. ... Davis said he hasn't seen all the state's evidence, but an Iowa Department of Human Services investigation concluded last summer that Fustos was not responsible for exploiting clients. (Rood, 4/5)

The last two mental health providers under investigation for possible Medicaid fraud have been cleared by New Mexico's top prosecutor. Attorney General Hector Balderas sent a letter Tuesday to state lawmakers informing them of the outcome in the cases of the nonprofits Pathways and TeamBuilders. (Bryan, 4/6)

The New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, has opened an investigation into a series of transactions surrounding the lifting of a deed restriction on a Manhattan nursing home that enabled its purchase by a luxury condominium developer for $116 million. The attorney general’s office began sending subpoenas on Friday to the developer and several other companies involved in the transactions involving 45 Rivington Street, a former school building on the Lower East Side that had been a nonprofit health care center for AIDS patients until last year. (Goodman, 4/5)

The New York state attorney general’s office is investigating the series of transactions that led to the sale of a Manhattan health-care facility to a residential developer, the office said Tuesday. Subpoenas from the office were sent out last week to several players involved in the deal, a spokesman for Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. The subpoenas were from the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, according to people familiar with the matter. (Dawsey and Davis O'Brien, 4/5)

Kindred Healthcare announced it has signed an agreement to sell 12 long-term acute care hospitals to Curahealth LLC for $27.5 million. Kindred President and CEO Benjamin A. Breier said in a statement Monday that the transaction creates both strategic and financial value for the Louisville-based health care giant. (4/5)

Louisiana-based LHC Group will become the majority owner and operator of two of Northern Arizona Healthcare's home health agencies and a hospice under a joint venture agreement. Terms of the deal were not disclosed on Monday. (4/5)

Fairview Health Services said Tuesday it will acquire the UCare health plan, which had been struggling since losing contracts with the state to cover low-income people enrolled in the MinnesotaCare and Medical Assistance programs. (4/5)

The MetroHealth System says it will begin serving patients in several former HealthSpan buildings in the Cleveland area over the next two weeks. Medical buildings in Parma, Cleveland Heights and Bedford were opened to patients on Tuesday. A facility in Rocky River facility will start serving patients on April 18, and a new medical office will open at the Galleria YMCA in August to serve the downtown population. (Ross, 4/5)

Melissa Benjamin has labored for 16 years as a home health aide for various employers. What she has never been paid, despite her field of work, is a dollar of health insurance by any of them. For most of those years, she turned to Medicaid to cover her medical costs. At $10 an hour, "I make so little that I can't afford a premium," she said. (Olinger, 4/5)

With Sacramento’s fentanyl-related overdoses at center stage, a state Senate committee unanimously approved the first step in stiffening penalties for major drug traffickers in California who sell large amounts of the potentially lethal painkiller. (Buck, 4/5)

A measure to raise the age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21 in Illinois got initial approval Tuesday, with the lawmaker behind the proposal telling colleagues he wants to make it harder for youth to pick up a lifelong habit. (Moreno, 4/5)

Dr. Karen Kinsell has been the only physician in Clay County for the past 11 years. Kinsell, an internist and graduate of Columbia University’s medical school in New York, earns far less than a typical physician. Vacations simply don’t happen. She stays very busy seeing the residents of Clay County, an impoverished rural area hard against the Alabama line. Patients come from all over southwest Georgia, and even from Alabama. (Naqvi, 4/5)

Less than three miles separate the vacant lots of Miami’s Overtown neighborhood from the manicured hedges of Brickell Key — a short distance with a big difference in life expectancy for children, according to new research published Wednesday. The Miami life expectancy map, created using U.S. Census Bureau population data and Florida death records, found that a child reared in Overtown will live an average of 71 years while one raised in Brickell Key can expect to live about 86 years. (Chang, 4/5)

A new task force seeks to address a growing prenatal care crisis in Bexar County, where almost 40 percent of live births involve women who didn’t receive such care or only got it late in pregnancy. Composed of staff from the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District and Healthy Families Network, a group of 40 local organizations, the task force met for the first time in February and is only at the starting gates of fixing the problem, a health department official told participants at a town hall meeting Tuesday. (Fletcher Stoeltje, 4/5)

Officials with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare have approved a 15-month contract extension with Optum Idaho, which manages mental-health and substance-abuse treatment for Medicaid recipients. (Kruesi, 4/5)

A North Texas drug-compounding business and its founders have filed a libel lawsuit against The Dallas Morning News, its parent company A.H. Belo Corporation and staff writer Kevin Krause. RXpress Pharmacies and Xpress Compounding, two drug compounders partly owned by Fort Worth pharmacist Lewis Hall and his son Richard Hall, are seeking “$50 million in damages caused by the negligence, gross negligence or intentional conduct” by the newspaper and Krause. (Halkias, 4/5)

Kathy Lynch cried when a jury's verdict was read out loud in court. Porter Superior Judge Mary Harper told the courtroom, "Not guilty," for all 16 counts against Lynch. Several days later, Lynch teared up again reliving the dramatic scene. The owner of Kouts Health Care Clinic was cleared last week of all 16 charges against her accusing her of illegally issuing weight loss drugs to clinic patients. Lynch, a nurse practitioner since 1989, said her clinic has lost 90 percent of its patients since she was indicted. (Davich, 4/5)

The numbers were stunning, even to those who already knew that scores of injured workers were being prescribed potentially dangerous amounts of painkillers. More than 9,300 workers — nearly 20 percent of claimants receiving medication paid for by the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation — had prescriptions sufficient to render them physically dependent on opioids. (Price, 4/6)

Stacy Warden slides the last spoonful of oatmeal and apple sauce into her 7-year-old son's mouth, then returns, frowning, to the paperwork spread across her kitchen table. The documents show Noah, who has cerebral palsy and does not talk or walk, used every penny of his annual disability benefits, capped at $36,400. Except he didn't, according to Warden, who keeps a meticulous accounting of her son's state Medicaid funding. The records from Noah's case manager at Imagine! — one of 20 community-centered boards in Colorado where children and adults with disabilities access tax-funded therapy and care — say Noah used $14,600 in respite care in one year, which Warden knows did not happen. (Brown, 4/5)

Doctors have a unique perspective into disadvantaged segments of society. We are among the most well-educated, well-compensated and resourceful professionals — but we’re also intimately familiar with the most marginalized populations. We don’t just grasp intellectually what it means for poor families when politicians cut affordable housing initiatives, slash food-assistance programs, or refuse health insurance expansions. We feel it. We’re frustrated when a mother can’t get approval for the medications she needs; we’re helpless when consoling families of dead teenagers in violent communities. As physicians, we’re uniquely situated to give voice to the voiceless because we know what politicians know, but also because we feel what patients feel. We have stories to tell, particularly for those who can’t tell their own. (Dhruv Khullar, 4/6)

Presidential front-runner Donald Trump recently unveiled a proposal that would authorize Americans to buy prescription drugs imported from countries like Canada. The measure sounds appealing; who wouldn't want cheaper medicines from our northern neighbor's safe pharmacies? Unfortunately, there's a reason this proposal sounds too good to be true: It is. (Robert Blancato, 4/6)

The memo to which I refer is the confidential talking-points briefing from organized opponents of abortion rights on how to deal with the difficult question: "If abortion is tantamount to murder, then shouldn't a woman who obtains an abortion be prosecuted as an accessory to murder?" Trump, the Republican presidential hopeful, famously stammered his way though an answer to a version of this question last week during a town hall interview, concluding that "there has to be some form of punishment" for the woman. (Eric Zorn, 4/5)

My granny is 97 this year. Papaw died more than a decade ago. For 50+ years, they ran a little country store in rural Appalachia where most everyone was poor. The store was next door to a school, built not long after the civil war. It's where granny went (1st-12th grade). Education was a value. The entire community took part in making sure it happened for young people. Granny was postmistress and mentor to generations of kids who came to her for help with almost everything. If she didn't know the answer, she would work with them to figure it out. Papaw would regularly take people in our community the 15 or so miles back and forth to town for doctor's appointments. He would haul coal to help people stay warm in winter. I never saw Papaw say no to anyone who needed help. Papaw himself had been raised by his grandmother in Alabama. His mother died in childbirth and his father was not around much. In part, I am convinced this is where his deep humanity came from. (Theo Edmonds, 4/5)

Using predictive algorithms that prioritize consumer preferences, these companies are finding inventive new ways to engage customers with games, stories, and sharing tools sent to their mobile devices. Pharmaceutical companies should be doing the same thing. But many of them aren’t, or aren’t doing it well. (Glen de Vries, 4/5)

Instead of the ongoing lawsuits that Gov. Bevin has filed against abortion clinics, it would be much more prudent to focus the public’s and state’s attention on a necessary cause -- ending anti-abortion harassment, targeting, violence, and terrorism. Based on our extensive research into extreme anti-abortion harassment, baseless attacks by politicians on doctors and medical facilities providing safe, comprehensive reproductive medical care exacerbate a dire situation in this country where abortion providers rightfully fear for their lives because of ongoing threats from anti-abortion extremists. (David S. Cohen and Krysten Connon, 4/5)

Still rough but basically sound, the redevelopment plan for the beloved but battered old Cook County Hospital building and its surroundings has the makings of a good design prescription. The plan would breathe new life into one of Chicago's great buildings, a palace of healing that symbolizes compassionate care for the poor. It also could bring urban vibrancy to the Illinois Medical District, a sprawling collection of medical research buildings, labs and university facilities that now resembles a dull suburban office park. (Blair Kamin, 4/5)

Over the past several months, microbiologists and public health experts around the world have been alarmed by the discovery of a gene conferring resistance to colistin, a so-called “last resort” antibiotic. The gene, MCR-1, was discovered in China last year, and thereafter quickly identified in E. coli samples from six continents. Because this type of gene is highly transferable, it will, in all likelihood, spread to other hard-to-treat bacteria. What global health leaders have been warning of for years has now become reality. (Allan Coukell, 4/5)

Genetically modified mosquitoes are in the news for good reason: They may be our best hope for controlling the mosquito-borne Zika virus. The Food and Drug Administration has issued a preliminary finding of no significant environmental impact and is seeking public comment on a plan to test them in a field trial in the Florida Keys. So you might think this will resolve the Zika crisis, which has caught the world’s attention because of an unexpected spike in microcephaly in babies born to women infected during pregnancy and in the incidence of the paralytic Guillain-Barré syndrome in Zika-infected adults. (Nina Fedoroff and John Block, 4/6)

The World Health Organization jumped into action on the Zika virus outbreak in 2016, in sharp contrast with the WHO’s much slower 2014 response to the Ebola outbreak. Research on international organizations and on how health issues are framed can help explain the difference. The WHO confirmed an Ebola outbreak in March 2014. Five months and nearly 1,000 deaths later, the WHO announced that the West African Ebola outbreak was a “public health emergency of international concern.” (Amy S. Patterson, 4/5)