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The Affordable Care Act’s historic expansion of health insurance coverage has brought medical care within reach of millions of Americans who previously couldn’t afford it, new research shows. The share of adults who skipped medical care because of costs dropped by nearly one-fifth between 2013 and 2015, according to a report from the Commonwealth Fund. (Levey, 12/20)

The rate of uninsured adults dropped to historic lows in a number of states between 2013 and 2015, according to a study released Wednesday by The Commonwealth Fund. According to the analysis, which compared state performance data using yearly information from the U.S. Census Bureau, the uninsured rate for adults ages 19 to 64 dropped in each of the 50 states during that time period. Over one-third of states, including the District of Columbia, had uninsured rates below 10 percent by the end of 2015. (Williams, 12/21)

A new report from the Commonwealth Fund adds to the evidence that the embattled Affordable Care Act has been doing its job.  Since the law's implementation, the number of people without health insurance has dropped in all states. It fell by at least three percentage points in 48 of them and the District of Columbia. The rates are now at "historic lows," said David Blumental, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that supports research on healthy policy issues.  (Burling, 12/21)

Like nearly 1.5 million people in Florida, de Anda has an ACA plan that she bought on the insurance exchange at healthcare.gov — coverage that includes psychiatric counseling, prescription drugs and hospitalization if she ever needs it. But now, worried that she might lose the coverage under President-elect Donald Trump, de Anda joined a protest outside the offices of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a Republican and frequent critic of the health law commonly known as Obamacare. (Chang, 12/21)

Donald Trump won't be sworn in as president for another month, but one of the first salvos in a forthcoming legal war against his administration was launched Tuesday as people who get subsidies under Obamacare asked to intervene in a lawsuit that threatens to shut down funding key to the health insurance program. (Gerstein, 12/20)

A group of ObamaCare enrollees on Tuesday filed a motion in federal court seeking to protect payments under the health law that Republicans say are illegal. The ObamaCare enrollees filed a motion in the case, known as House v. Burwell, seeking to become parties to the case and be represented to defend the legality of the ObamaCare payments, known as “cost-sharing reductions.” The consumers argue that they should be allowed to become parties to the case because once the President-elect Donald Trump enters office, the interests of ObamaCare defenders will no longer be represented. (Sullivan, 12/20)

Two people who got insurance through the 2010 health care law made a bid Tuesday to resuscitate a legal fight between House Republicans and the Obama administration that could jeopardize their coverage. Gustavo Parker and La Trina Patton asked the federal appeals court in Washington to allow them to intervene in the lawsuit, saying they want to defend the continued payment of subsidies that go to approximately 5.9 million people in their situation. (Rudger, 12/20)

Spooked by Trump's rhetoric and pledge to repeal Obamacare, several dozen independent researchers are racing to download key health care data and documents before Jan. 20. They say they began the effort on their own, and then got a boost from Jeanne Lambrew, the White House's top health reform official, who also sounded alarms the new administration might expunge reams of information from public websites and end access to data, researchers told POLITICO. (Diamond, 12/21)

Analysts with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday they would not count people with minimal insurance as being covered under an alternative to the Affordable Care Act. The CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation anticipate that under some ACA replacement proposals — which don’t clearly specify what type of coverage could be purchased with federal tax credits — insurers may start offering non-group plans that would not meet their expectations for adequate coverage, according to the blog post published Tuesday. (McIntire, 12/20)

In the immediate aftermath of the election, concerns about access to birth control have spiked. For many women, there’s a fear that the incoming Trump administration will repeal the Affordable Care Act, and with it, access to free contraception. (Desjardins, 12/20)

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to enroll 50,000 people in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act by the end of next year, a move officials said would save the city’s cash-strapped hospital system $40 million a year. President-elect Donald Trump and Republican leaders have vowed to repeal the Affordable Care Act.  Mr. de Blasio, a supporter of universal health care, said he believes growing enrollment will make that more difficult. (Gay, 12/20)

Tennessee, even without Medicaid expansion, saw a 4 percent decrease in uninsured people from 2010 to now, according to a variety of sources, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, WalletHub�����Ի� the Urban Institute. The biggest decrease came between 2013 and 2016, said LeeAnn Luna, author of the UT report. In addition to 268,000 people buying insurance on the exchange, some people realized they were eligible for TennCare and enrolled. An improved economy led to others landing jobs with insurance, Luna said (Fletcher, 12/20)

Healthcare.gov and its state marketplaces approved health care coverage and subsidies for nine fake applicants in another Government Accountability Office sting, according to a report from the agency. (Meyer, 12/20)

For the fourth straight year, City Hall is opening city recreation centers so health insurance navigators can meet with people interested in signing up for coverage under the Affordable Care Act before the Jan. 31 deadline. This time, however, it's happening as President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans make plans to repeal the law. (Danielson, 12/21)

More than a dozen Senate Democrats are urging President-elect Donald Trump to work with Congress and follow through on his campaign pledge to lower prescription drug prices. “The American public is fed up, with roughly 8-in-10 Americans reporting that drug prices are unreasonable, and that we must take action to lower costs,” the lawmakers wrote Trump on Tuesday in a letter that was spearheaded by Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and Al Franken of Minnesota. (Silverman, 12/20)

A group of Democratic senators took their plans to tackle rising drug costs to President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday, asking him to work with them and Republicans on the issue. In a letter dated Tuesday, the 19 senators named five areas for cooperation: allowing the Medicare program to negotiate prescription prices, increasing transparency, stopping abusive pricing, passing reform on incentives for innovation and supporting generic competition for branded drugs. (Humer, 12/20)

Senate Democrats aren’t going to quietly let President-elect Donald Trump forget his campaign promises regarding drug prices. Led by Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Al Franken (Minn.), 17 Democrats and two independents on Tuesday sent a letter to Trump outlining ways the two sides could collaborate to lower drug costs: allowing the secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate drug prices; increasing price transparency; stopping abusive pricing; incentivizing innovation; and ensuring competition. (McIntire, 12/20)

On the heels of headline-grabbing price spikes on prescription drugs, a bipartisan Senate report on Wednesday will call on Congress to take action to prevent huge, unjustified cost increases on decades-old prescription medicines that have no competition. The Senate Special Committee on Aging, reporting the results of a yearlong investigation, said that some drug companies behaved like hedge funds because of the influence of “activist investors.” These companies, the committee said, have developed a “business model that harms patients, taxpayers and the U.S. health care system.” (Pear, 12/21)

A new "war on drugs" is necessary to combat West Virginia's opioid crisis, Sen. Joe Manchin said Tuesday. The West Virginia Democrat's phrasing was a throwback to a highly criticized Nixon-era program of the same name. "We need to declare a war on drugs," Manchin said on CNN Tuesday when asked what President-elect Donald Trump should do about the opioid situation. (Hellmann, 12/20)

Prescription drugs costs are climbing faster than most other categories of health spending in New Hampshire, according to a new report by the state insurance department. The report found pharmacies collected one in five dollars spent on healthcare in the state in 2015 - that's up over prior years. (Rodolico, 12/20)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday he will seek a “permanent fix” to fortify a depleted health care program for retired coal miners that complicated negotiations earlier this month to keep the government funded. “We’re going to try to go for a permanent fix because these folks deserve to be protected,” the Kentucky Republican said in an interview on KET, a public television station, Monday night. “Their health care deserves to be protected. It’s important,” McConnell said. “It’s collateral damage from the decline of the coal industry, much of it attributable to the policies of Barack Obama, which I’m hoping the new president will reverse.” (Bowman, 12/20)

Congressional Republicans are plotting an ambitious health policy agenda for 2017, but lawmakers will still have to reauthorize the Food and Drug Administration user fee program for speeding along new drug and device approvals. Some experts who have worked in drug policy say the passage of the 21st Century Cures Act earlier this month could ease that process, as many of the policies that could have been proposed to pass alongside the reauthorization are now law. (McIntire, 12/20)

Peter Thiel, the iconoclastic Silicon Valley mogul who has been advising President-elect Donald Trump on technology policy, has become deeply involved in vetting candidates for other health and science posts in the administration, according to individuals familiar with his role. Thiel, who has already advanced a candidate to lead the Food and Drug Administration, has been discussing possibilities with other prospective appointees about a variety of health and science jobs. Among others, he recently spoke with Elias Zerhouni, a former director of the National Institutes of Health and president of global research and development for Sanofi, about a top White House science job. (Kaplan and Scott, 12/20)

Rep. Tom Price, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be Health and Human Services secretary, sold shares of once high-flying biotech company Gilead Sciences Inc. in March, while buying those of marquee drugmakers including Pfizer Inc. and Eli Lilly & Co. They are among the latest trades reported by Price, a Georgia Republican who’s long been an investor in medical stocks, according to congressional filings. Members of Congress are allowed to buy and sell shares, even if the committees on which they serve have a direct bearing on federal policies affecting companies whose stock they own. (Young, 12/21)

Congressman Andy Harris of Maryland has not had a formal interview with President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team for National Institutes of Health director or any other position in the administration, he told STAT. “I’m not making a pitch,” Harris said in an interview. “I just made it clear to some folks who do health care with the Trump team that I would be willing to help, if they thought I could help in any way.” Harris pointed to three positions in particular that he’s not pitching himself for: NIH director, surgeon general, and the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. (Facher, 12/20)

In a critical step in a longstanding fight, Texas formally said on Tuesday that it was ending Medicaid funding of Planned Parenthood, a move the group said could affect 11,000 patients. The office of inspector general for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission issued a final notice terminating Planned Parenthood’s enrollment in the state-funded health care system for the poor. If it is not stopped, the termination will be effective in 30 days. (Mele, 12/20)

Planned Parenthood will no longer receive funding from Texas's Medicaid program, state health officials announced Tuesday. Officials delivered a final legal notice to Planned Parenthood, the Texas Tribune reports, and the change will take effect in 30 days unless the organization files an appeal with the state. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and state health officials first moved to cut Medicaid funding last year when controversial undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials surfaced. (Hellmann, 12/20)

After more than a year of delays, Texas is officially kicking Planned Parenthood out of the state’s Medicaid program. In a move that could affect thousands of low-income women, state health officials on Tuesday delivered a final legal notice to defund the organization from the Medicaid program through which it provides family planning and women’s health services to the poor. Planned Parenthood had previously received $3.1 million in Medicaid funding, but those dollars will be nixed in 30 days, according to the notice which was obtained by The Texas Tribune. (Ura, 12/20)

The Department of Veterans Affairs has quietly released quality-of-care ratings for its medical centers across the country, despite years of refusing to share them with the public. The move follows a USA TODAY investigation that revealed ratings for 146 VA medical centers for the first time earlier this month. VA Secretary Bob McDonald complained at the time that their publication across the USA TODAY Network caused “unwarranted distress” to veterans and could dissuade them from getting care. (Slack, 12/20)

ProPublica has sued the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, claiming the agency failed to promptly process a request for correspondence with a consultant about Agent Orange, a toxic defoliant used during the Vietnam War. The lawsuit, filed late Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., alleges that the delays violated the Freedom of Information Act, a 50-year-old law whose mission is to provide the public with information about government operations. (Ornstein, 12/20)

Cleveland Clinic Chief Executive Officer Delos “Toby” Cosgrove and Luis Quinonez, head of a company that provides health-care services to the military, are being considered by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the Veterans Affairs Department, according to a person familiar with the process. Both men were meeting with Trump Tuesday at the president-elect’s estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where he’s spending the Christmas holiday. (Jacobs and Pettypiece, 12/20)

President-elect Donald Trump met Tuesday met with candidates for his unfilled Cabinet positions, including prospective hires to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, a beleaguered agency that the Republican businessman has vowed to overhaul. Vice President-elect Mike Pence met with members of his incoming national security team a day after acts of violence rocked the world. (Lemire, 12/20)

Connecticut was among the states and cities that would be hurt by the merger of Anthem and Cigna, a government witness in an antitrust trial said Tuesday. David Dranove, a Northwestern University health care economics professor, said the merger would result in higher prices and poorer care in many metropolitan areas and in certain states, including Connecticut, that already have few choices of health insurers. (Radelat, 12/20)

Aetna and Humana on Tuesday closed a weeklong defense of their $37 billion merger, accusing the Justice Department of exaggerating the deal's impact on competition among private Medicare plans. In a hearing on the deal, the health insurers over the last two days relied on testimony from former Clinton economic adviser Jonathan Orszag to counter the DOJ’s antitrust claims. Orszag, who served as the companies' primary expert witness, testified that the DOJ's evaluation of the merger is deeply flawed and isn't reflective of the health insurance market. (Cancryn, 12/20)

The nation’s response to health emergencies like bio-terror attacks and natural disasters is slow, short-term and underfunded, according to a new report on emergency preparedness. The Trust for American’s Health, a public health advocacy group, said a lack of ongoing planning and resources left holes in the budgets of other health priority programs – such as for hepatitis C and measles outbreaks –from which money was borrowed but rarely fully restored. (Goldstein, 12/20)

A new report finds Ohio met six of 10 indicators of public-health preparedness, signaling it could do more to prepare for a statewide emergency. The report by the nonprofit Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation graded the nation’s ability to prevent, detect, diagnose and respond to infectious-disease outbreaks. (Huson, 12/21)

One of the indicators checks whether states have increased — or at least maintained — their spending on public health. Twenty-six states met that standard from fiscal year 2014–2015 to fiscal year 2015–2016. Kansas and North Carolina are the only two states that have cut their public health budgets three consecutive years. Nationally, median public health spending in fiscal year 2016 was $37.20 per person. Kansas spent $12.13 per person for public health. Missouri’s public health budget was only $5.88 per person. (Thompson, 12/20)

At the center of the nation’s opioid crisis is a simple fact: Large numbers of Americans experience serious pain, and the vast majority of those who have used strong painkillers for a long period say they work. That’s one key takeaway from a new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation national poll of long-term opioid users, people who have taken the drugs for at least two months during the past two years. (Guskin, 12/20)

As the nation grapples with a devastating opioid epidemic, concerns have primarily focused on young people buying drugs on the street. But America’s elderly also have a problem. Over the past several decades, physicians have increasingly prescribed seniors pain medications to address chronic pain from arthritis, cancer, neurological diseases and other illnesses that become more common in later life. (Gold, 12/21)

Drug makers will be required to establish drop-off centers to accept unwanted or expired medications, under an ordinance passed Tuesday by the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors. The bill requires drug makers to pay the full cost of establishing and operating a network of centers to take unwanted or unused pharmaceuticals. (Cuff, 12/20)

A prominent medical journal on Monday published a scathing attack on global health advice to eat less sugar. Warnings to cut sugar, the study argued, are based on weak evidence and cannot be trusted. But the review, published in The Annals of Internal Medicine, quickly elicited sharp criticism from public health experts because the authors have ties to the food and sugar industries. (O'Connor, 12/19)

There's a bump in the number of cases of the mumps this year in the United States. This highly infectious disease is much less hazardous than it was decades ago, but health officials are still reacting strongly to several big outbreaks. (Harris, 12/20)

Physicians have warned for years about the connection between sleep apnea and heart failure — two dangerous conditions that can contribute to each other. But one of the two, sleep apnea, often goes undiagnosed. Sunil Sharma, a sleep medicine specialist at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, has a possible solution:  When patients are in the hospital with heart failure, screen them for the sleep disorder. In a new study, Sharma and colleagues found that heart patients whose apnea was identified in the hospital were just as likely to stick with a treatment plan as those who were diagnosed with the sleep problem on an outpatient basis. (Avril, 12/20)

Two thin tubes that connect the ovaries to the uterus have assumed an outsize role in the battle against ovarian cancer. Research increasingly points to the likelihood that some of the most aggressive ovarian cancers originate in the fallopian tubes. Most doctors now believe there is little to lose by removing the tubes of women who are done bearing children — and potentially much to gain in terms of cancer prevention. (Wiener, 12/21)

A criminal investigation into this city’s water crisis reached into the top ranks of supervision over Flint on Tuesday as Michigan officials announced felony charges against two former state-appointed emergency managers, accusing them of fixating on saving money rather than on the safety of residents. (Davey and Smith, 12/20)

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette filed another round of criminal charges Tuesday in  the ongoing water crisis in Flint, the latest action in a nearly year-long investigation to hold accountable those responsible for a disaster that exposed thousands of children to dangerously high lead levels. Schuette announced felony charges against four people, including two former state-appointed emergency managers who oversaw a disastrous switch of the city’s drinking water source to the Flint River. Darnell Earley, whom Gov. Rick Snyder (R) put in charge of the city’s finances from late 2013 through early 2015, and Gerald Ambrose, who held the emergency manager position through April 2015, could face decades in prison. (Dennis, 12/20)

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said the latest charges indicate that investigators weren’t afraid to pursue officials at any level of government who bore responsibility for the water crisis. “The tragedy that we know as the Flint water crisis did not occur by accident,” Mr. Schuette said at a news conference Tuesday morning. “No. Flint was a casualty of arrogance, disdain and a failure of management, an absence of accountability, shirking of responsibility.” (Maher, 12/20)

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's criminal investigation of the Flint water crisis moved a step closer to the highest levels of state government Tuesday as he brought felony charges against two former emergency managers who reported to former Treasurer Andy Dillon and were appointed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. Schuette, who also charged two former City of Flint public works employees Tuesday, would not say how far the investigation would go, only that it will follow the evidence and nothing is off the table. (Egan and Anderson, 12/20)

There is a well-established link between lead exposure and learning disabilities, but early childhood education has been shown to counteract the effects. In Flint, Michigan, where the youngest residents have been the most vulnerable to lead poisoning, the city has opened a free child care center in an attempt to counteract the harmful effects on developing brains. (Sreenivasan, 12/20)

Five years ago, Dr. Ira Kirschenbaum, an orthopedic surgeon in the Bronx who replaces more than 200 knees each year, would have considered it crazy to send a patient home the same day as a knee replacement operation. And yet there he was this year, as the patient, home after a few hours. A physician friend pierced his skin at 8 a.m. at a Seattle-area surgery center. By lunch, Kirschenbaum was resting at his friend’s home, with no pain and a new knee. (Jewett, 12/21)

State officials say conditions for staff and patients at Kansas’ two state-run psychiatric hospitals are improving but still need work. Representatives from the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, Osawatomie State Hospital, Larned State Hospital and the Kansas Organization of State Employees spoke Monday and Tuesday to a legislative committee overseeing the hospitals. (Wingerter, 12/20)

Six workers at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center say management tried to keep them from speaking out about possible patient infections and unsafe working conditions by asking them to sign confidentiality agreements. The hospital had requested interviews with the workers after they spoke to The Times about their fears that patients were being sickened by dirty conditions that management had ignored. (Petersen, 12/20)

When out-of-town patients used to travel to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, some would find that their best option for staying close to the hospital for early-morning surgery involved a trip over the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey. Enter the Edge Hotel, a 54-room property that opened in the fall of 2015 in Upper Manhattan, an area with few other lodgings. (Hughes, 12/20)

About 400 students who attend Cerritos Elementary School were surprised Tuesday when each of them received a gift, resulting in some shocked looks and cheers. "Each of you is so precious to us," said Cassie McCarty, director of mission integration at Dignity Health Glendale Memorial Hospital. Leading up to the gift delivery, hospital employees, including physicians, board members and staff as well as volunteers, bought a gift for each of the 409 students who attend Cerritos. (Corrigan, 12/20)

[Steven] Horvitz, the Russells' family doctor, has signed up with R-Health, an Elkins Park company that has a contract to provide what is called direct primary care to beneficiaries of the New Jersey State Health Benefits Program and School Employees’ Health Benefits Program. Under the three-year pilot, which started last month when R-Health's contract took effect, as many as 60,000 teachers, police, firefighters, and other state and local government employees will be allowed into the program. It's a free add-on to their current plans and is designed to give doctors more time to spend with patients, with the goal of reducing long-term spending on health care. (Brubaker, 12/ 20)

The chairwomen of the state House and Senate health committees joined Tuesday to announce legislation aimed at providing basic dental care to hundreds of thousands of children and elderly Georgians who have limited access to a dentist. (Salzer, 12/20)

A South Georgia elementary school has three dental chairs set up for kids who don’t have a regular dentist. But those chairs at Turner County Elementary School in Ashburn have sat vacant for the past three years, even though many kids there need dental care, says Brenda Lee of Family Connection of Turner County. That’s because Georgia doesn’t allow dental hygienists to practice in such a setting without a dentist present in the building. (Miller, 12/20)

Kids First Health Care is a nonprofit medical provider for people from birth to 20-years-old who otherwise could not afford health care. It opened in 1978 at 4675 E. 69th Ave. in Commerce City as a school-based clinic for the old Adams City High School campus. Now, that site is the nonprofit’s year round headquarters. In nearly 40 years, Kids First has opened four clinics in schools in the Adams 14 School District — Kearney Middle School, Lester Arnold High School, Adams City Middle School and inside the new Adams City High School. There’s also one in Westminster at the Gregory Hill Early Childhood Center. (Mitchell, 12/20)

Hundreds of Minnesota children who have suffered the trauma of being removed from their birth parents, and are now living in foster care, could soon receive state-funded intensive psychotherapy services to give them safer, more stable lives. Minnesota officials hope the mental health services, rolled out at a time of soaring foster care caseloads, will cut the persistently high number of children who cycle in and out of foster care placements without finding safe and permanent homes. (Serres, 12/21)

A three-judge appeals court panel on Tuesday heard arguments connected to a lawsuit filed in 2009 by the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City. The lawsuit charged that HCA had failed to live up to agreements forged when the for-profit hospital company bought the nonprofit Health Midwest hospitals in 2003. (Stafford, 12/20)

A month after California voted to approve Proposition 64 and legalize recreational marijuana, law enforcement officials throughout the state are prepping for what many view as the obvious: a jump in the number of people driving under the influence of pot. (Puente, 12/20)

An Alabama inmate found dead in his cell apparently killed himself just weeks after testifying in a trial accusing the state of denying proper mental health care to prisoners, officials said Tuesday. The Department of Corrections said Jamie Wallace, 24, was found dead in an apparent suicide five days earlier. He was found hanged in his cell at the Bullock County prison, about 45 miles southeast of Montgomery. (12/20)

The owner of a medical imaging company allegedly defrauded Medicare and Medicaid of more than $1.5 million, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in Topeka. Cody Lee West, 38, did business as C&S Imaging Inc., a mobile diagnostic testing facility based in Paragould, Arkansas. The facility provided ultrasound services to chiropractors and other medical providers in Kansas. According to the complaint, West told chiropractors he would provide them with ultrasound equipment and a technician at no charge. The chiropractors would bill for the services. (Margolies, 12/20)

Donald Trump is unorthodox, to say the least, when it comes to his opinions about the drug industry. The GOP has historically been a staunch ally for drug companies. But during and after the campaign, the Republican president-elect has sworn he would bring down drug costs, flirting with policies that sound more in line with Bernie Sanders than Paul Ryan. Trump’s ascent is now generating whispers at the highest levels of industry about whether the Republican Party will remain a bedrock of support. Is Trump an aberration — or is he a sign of things to come? (Scott, 12/20)

Congressional Republicans reportedly are considering creating a “piggy bank” to store savings from repealing Obamacare to pay for a replacement plan — and, if they do, that would be good news for the drug industry. As STAT previously reported, the biggest risk for drug makers in the repeal-and-replace debate is probably “offsets,” spending cuts designed to help the GOP pay for its own health care plan down the line. But if Congress instead uses a budgetary mechanism to keep the savings of Obamacare repeal in escrow — the “piggy bank” — to pay for their replacement at a later date, that likely lessens the need for a separate set of cuts that could target pharma. (Scott, 12/16)

Japan said Tuesday it plans to review drug prices annually instead of once every two years in an attempt to curb rising health care spending, rebuffing criticism from the U.S. government and pharmaceutical companies. The move reflects global concern over high pharmaceutical prices, an issue that President-elect Donald Trump has said he wants to address. Stocks in the industry fell earlier this month after Mr. Trump told Time magazine, “I’m going to bring down drug prices.” (Warnock and Landers, 12/20)

Despite having some success in launching and developing new drugs in recent years, the returns on R&D efforts by a dozen of the biggest pharmaceutical companies has declined from 10.1 percent in 2010 to a projected 3.7 percent this year, according to a new report. During that period, the average peak sales for each drug reached $394 million, which represented an 11.4 percent year-over-year drop from 2010, according to the analysis by the Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions. And while costs to discover, develop, and launch a drug have largely stabilized at slightly more than $1.5 billion, the upshot is that blockbuster costs are not producing blockbuster sales. (Silverman, 12/19)

When Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) opened a probe into huge price hikes for some generic drugs two years ago, an attorney for Heritage Pharmaceuticals wrote the lawmakers that the company had not seen “any significant price increases” for its antibiotic. And Heritage declined to provide any documents. (Silverman, 12/19)

Of all the major health-care stocks to own in 2016, perhaps the worst to own has been Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc. Despite getting a new chief executive, promising to pay down its debt, and overhauling its operations, the drugmaker has seen its shares lose 87 percent of their value in 2016. The year-to-date decline is bigger than any of Valeant’s peers belonging to the 60-member Standard and Poor’s 500 Health Care Index. The drop would also make it the eighth-worst on the 180-member Nasdaq Biotechnology Index, whose largest loser was Concordia International Corp. -- a drugmaker sometimes compared to Valeant. The bonds have plunged as well. (Hopkins and Armstrong, 12/16)

Quiet, please! The rough ride for Valeant Pharmaceuticals International continues. Analysts at Morgan Stanley downgraded the stock on Thursday due to woes like “declining business trends and significant leverage.” But, according to chief executive Joseph Papa, those analysts may not have hit on the biggest issue they face: “Noise” in the media. (Grant, 12/15)

At least twice a week, Tanja Vanderlinde says patients call in to say they can’t afford drugs. High-deductible health plans mean they have to dip into their own pockets to pay for generic antibiotics such as doxycycline, a “gold standard’’ for Lyme disease, said Vanderlinde, an internist at Concord Hospital Medical Group in New Hampshire. Doxycycline used to cost about 10 cents for a 100-milligram capsule. Its list price rose to as much as $4.92 in 2013 before dipping to as little as $1.23 recently.“It’s crazy,” Vanderlinde said. (Langreth, 12/16)

A company briefly owned by Allergan, which recently vowed to limit price hikes on its medicines, is the latest drug maker to be accused of price gouging in the United Kingdom. From 2008 to mid-2016, Auden Mckenzie raised the price of its generic version of 10 mg hydrocortisone tablets by more than 12,000 percent, compared with cost of a brand-name version that was sold by a different company before the generic came on the market. (Silverman, 12/19)

For many years, University of Utah Health Care kept the blood-pressure medication vasopressin on hospital crash carts for use in emergencies. But, after watching the drug’s price surge, the nonprofit company is removing the drug from all 100 carts. The goal isn’t to use the drug on fewer patients, but rather to reduce the amount of it that sits around unused, said Erin Fox, who oversees medication policy for Salt Lake City-based University of Utah Health. (Evans, 12/18)

Today we’ve updated our Dollars for Docs interactive database, adding an additional year of data and some new features that make it easier to see how much money your physician receives from pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Dollars for Docs now includes payments made from August 2013 through December 2015. (Grochowski Jones, Tigas and Ornstein, 12/13)

A new federal effort is underway to keep biopharmaceutical manufacturing stateside — and scale up the production of complex biological drugs. A new high-tech trade group, dubbed NIIMBL — the pithy shorthand for the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals — on Friday received $70 million from the Department of Commerce. On top of that, NIIMBL will be getting another $129 million from a public-private consortium of 150 companies, academic institutions, and nonprofits, as well as 25 states. (Keshavan, 12/16)

Is Vivek Ramaswamy the smartest guy in biotech? His business model all but depends on it. The 31-year-old former hedge fund manager has raised $1 billion in just two years to play a sprawling game of pharmaceutical moneyball — sifting through the thousands of would-be drugs that larger companies have left to gather dust and picking out a few gems he believes can be developed into blockbuster medicines. (Garde, 12/15)

In a huge blow to Gilead Sciences, a federal jury ordered the company to pay $2.54 billion to Merck in order to resolve a long-running patent dispute concerning its Sovaldi and Harvoni hepatitis C treatments, which have been blockbuster sellers. The verdict is the latest twist in a heated battle between the two drug giants over hepatitis C patents, which have proven extremely lucrative over the last few years. Since its launch three years ago, Sovaldi has generated more than $19 billion in sales for Gilead, while Harvoni, which is an enhanced version of its predecessor, has notched more than $23 billion since becoming available in 2014. (Silverman, 12/15)

As drug prices have spiraled upward in the past decade, tens of millions of generally law-abiding Americans have committed an illegal act in response: They have bought prescriptions outside the U.S. and imported them. One was Debra Miller, of Collinston, La., who traveled to Mexico four times a year for 10 years to get diabetes and blood pressure medicine. She quit in 2011 after the border patrol caught her returning to the U.S. with a three-month supply that had cost her $40. The former truck driver drew a stern warning not to do it again, but got to keep her pills. (Bluth, 12/20)

According to Valeant CEO Joe Papa, speaking at a BMO health care conference on Wednesday, the company's biggest problem is click-hungry journalists writing negative articles, which he characterized as "noise." And there I was, thinking it was the continued decay of the specialty pharmaceutical firm's business in the shadow of a $30 billion debt load, a biblical list of pending lawsuits and investigations, and a near-complete lack of tangible evidence of improvement. (Max Nisen, 12/15)

A key feature of Republican plans to replace Obamacare is allowing market forces to boost innovation and competition among healthcare providers. “Unleashing the power of choice and competition is the best way to lower healthcare costs and improve quality,” declares House Speaker Paul Ryan in his conservative manifesto “A Better Way.” (David Lazarus, 12/20)

Despite the public shaming of Valeant and Mylan, little is done by Congress to curtail or rollback price increases that far outpace inflation. While Congress may occasionally hold hearings to put pressure on drug makers, it will not be enough to prevent collusion of the entire drug delivery ecosystem to improve their bottom lines at the expense of the commercial employers funding healthcare. (Bob Kochker, 12/19)

Gilead Sciences Inc. is learning how losing money can sometimes force you to spend even more money. The pharma giant may owe $2.54 billion to Merck & Co. Inc. for infringing on its hepatitis C (HCV) drug patents, a federal jury said on Thursday. A judge may yet decide Gilead has to pay as much as three times that figure and give up a portion of future sales. (Nisen, 12/16)

As right-wing populism fuels a growing crackdown on democracy and civil liberties, lawyers and human rights advocates aren’t the only people getting nervous. Public health experts are too. Why? Because studies and anecdotal evidence demonstrate quite clearly that as authoritarianism rises, indicators of health fall. ... Several researchers have found a statistically significant relationship between the level of freedom or democracy in a country and the health of its population. (Jonathan Cohen, 12/20)

Donald Trump’s supporters, in conservative writer Salena Zito’s memorable formulation, take him seriously but not literally. They will be forgiving if, say, he doesn’t literally get Mexico to pay for a border wall, or if he doesn’t literally ban all Muslims from entering the United States. But in other areas, Trump’s supporters perhaps should have taken him literally — because they now may have a serious problem. ... The Urban Institute estimated this month that under the partial repeal plan previously passed by Republicans in Congress, 30 million people would lose insurance, 82 percent of them would be in working families and 56 percent would be white. (Dana Milbank, 12/20)

Where should Democrats head after their recent electoral rout? As it happens, coming fights about federally subsidized health insurance offer the party a golden opportunity to engage people far beyond its urban strongholds, in communities that will be hard hit by Republican plans to shrink Medicaid, privatize Medicare and eliminate the taxes that pay for Obamacare subsidies. (Theda Skocpol, 12/21)

We have no idea what President-elect Donald Trump really thinks about Social Security and Medicare, those mainstays of old America. On the campaign trail, he said nice things about both. We do know that Trump promised to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, this era’s effort to improve the lot of the uninsured. We also know that all three will be under attack in a matter of weeks when the new president and new Congress take office. (12/20)

The United States Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, released a comprehensive report on the state of the nation’s now widely accepted addiction crisis. The report, "Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General's Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health," is the first of its kind and, as Murthy says, aims to provide “a cultural shift in how we think about addiction.” It is no longer reasonable for anyone within the addiction treatment arena, nor the public at-large, to label addiction as anything less than a chronic brain disease. (Jacob Levenson, 12/20)

Doctor’s appointments may soon be hard to come by. According to a new study, the United States will be short up to 90,000 doctors by 2025. This shortage will hit rural and poor urban areas hardest – largely because the vast majority of newly minted doctors don’t end up practicing in these locales. (G. Richard Olds, 12/20)

California is facing a $20 billion healthcare emergency. That’s how much the state stands to lose in annual federal spending if Republicans repeal the Affordable Care Act. (Tom McMorrow, 12/21)

A key feature of Republican plans to replace Obamacare is allowing market forces to boost innovation and competition among healthcare providers. “Unleashing the power of choice and competition is the best way to lower healthcare costs and improve quality,” declares House Speaker Paul Ryan in his conservative manifesto “A Better Way.” The problem with that, however, is that the healthcare industry — hospitals, drug companies, insurers — have worked tirelessly to prevent the medical marketplace from functioning with sufficient transparency and efficiency to allow consumers to benefit from classic supply-and-demand economics. (David Lazarus, 12/20)

In Kansas, there is an issue central to the success of local businesses and the growth of our state’s economy. It helps address the state’s budget crisis, brings much-needed jobs to our state and allows us to sit in the driver’s seat — coming up with our own solutions, encouraging personal responsibility and making sure our tax dollars are wisely spent. The issue might surprise you. It is expanding the state’s Medicaid program, KanCare. (Joe Reardon and Gary Plummer, 12/20)

When mental health issues become visible, it often happens explosively and tragically. The shootings at Newtown and Virginia Tech, along with countless other deadly crimes, were carried out by mentally unstable individuals. About a year ago, an Iowa veteran dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder was angered by two teens who were horsing around at an Ankeny McDonald’s. He shot and paralyzed one of them. (Kirk Norris, 12/20)

As you might expect, many Republicans are giddy with excitement over all the new laws they’ll be able to pass, as they remake America into a paradise of liberty, prosperity and strong old-fashioned values. But there’s danger lurking there, too, because a whole bunch of promises they’ve made in recent years are now going to have to be kept, and they won’t have a Democratic president to use as an excuse for avoiding ideologically important but politically perilous actions. For now I want to focus on just one of those actions: defunding Planned Parenthood. ... This is likely to be big trouble for Republicans — indeed, it could be their first major legislative defeat next year. (Paul Waldman, 12/20)

We traveled out of state for a late-term abortion – the very kind just outlawed in Ohio. We made this choice, knowing that termination would be a better option than continuing a pregnancy that would result in a stillborn. The politicians who helped pass this new law either don’t know or don’t care that many women who have late-term abortions face similar circumstances. And because of the political climate in Ohio, women like me often do not get the proper care or support unless they leave the state. (Batsheva Guy, 12/20)