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Congress on Tuesday sent President Barack Obama a sweeping bill that would for the first time regulate tens of thousands of toxic chemicals in everyday products, from household cleaners to clothing and furniture. In a rare display of bipartisanship in an election year, the Senate backed the measure on a voice vote after Republicans and Democrats spoke enthusiastically about the legislation. Backers of the bill said it would clear up a hodgepodge of state rules and update and improve a toxic-chemicals law that has remained unchanged for 40 years. (6/7)

In reauthorizing the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act on a voice vote, lawmakers are providing chemical manufacturers with greater certainty while giving the Environmental Protection Agency the ability to obtain more information about a chemical before approving its use. And because the laws involved regulate thousands of chemicals used in products including furniture, sippy cups and detergents, the measure will affect Americans’ everyday lives in ways large and small. (Eilperin, 6/7)

Public health advocates and environmentalists complained for decades that the 1976 law was outdated and riddled with gaps that left Americans exposed to harmful chemicals. Under current law, around 64,000 chemicals are not subject to environmental testing or regulation. But efforts to tighten the law had stalled for years. The authors of the bill say their breakthrough represents a pragmatic, politically viable compromise between better environmental standards and the demands of industry. Senator Tom Udall, Democrat of New Mexico, worked closely with the American Chemistry Council to come up with language that would win the support of the industry and pass through the generally regulation-averse Republican Congress. (Davenport, 6/7)

“The fact that Congress in a bipartisan and bicameral way has arrived at a solution that will provide the industry greater certainty and consumers greater public health protections is an enormous step forward,” Brian Deese, senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said in a recent interview. (Berzon and Harder, 6/7)

A key Senate panel approved a health funding bill Tuesday that would nearly double the federal support for fighting the nation’s opioid epidemic. The 2017 funding bill unveiled by Senators Roy Blunt of Missouri and Patty Murray of Washington, who head the subcommittee that oversees health spending, would increase spending for addressing opioid abuse to $261 million. That’s up $126 million from last year, a 93 percent increase. (Scott, 6/7)

A Senate Appropriations subcommittee approved $261 million in funding for the opioid crisis on Tuesday, a 93 percent increase over last year. The funding is part of $76.9 billion the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education favorably reported for the Department of Health and Human Services for the upcoming fiscal year. A full committee markup is scheduled for Thursday. The funding proposed for opioids, which subcommittee Chairman Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) noted was a 542 percent increase over 2015 levels, is still shy of the $600 million Democrats had proposed earlier this year during debate over the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act. Republicans blocked that funding when CARA, a bill targeting the opioid crisis, was on the floor. (McIntire, 6/7)

Members of Congress are kicking around several scenarios that would combine two or three health care bills into one large package, using the opioid legislation slated to be in House and Senate conference in the near future as a vehicle. The other pieces of legislation being discussed are a mental health bill and a medical innovation bill, according to a senior GOP aide. The aide cautioned that “this is a very fluid situation and there are a lot of potential scenarios. I don’t think anyone knows yet.” The various combination ideas are “trial balloons.” (Owens, 6/7)

Early evidence suggests that the Affordable Care Act is working — at least in one important respect, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Analysts Nicole Dussault, Maxim Pinkovskiy, and Basit Zafar state that the primary purpose of this law "is not to protect our health per se, but to protect our finances." And they've found a big difference between indebtedness trends in states that embraced the Medicaid expansion versus the ones that did not. (Kawa, 6/7)

Republicans controlling the Senate are abandoning an effort to use their power over the federal purse strings to block implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The more pragmatic approach came Tuesday on a huge $164 billion spending measure and reflects a hope by top Republicans like Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to remove veto bait from must-pass spending bills in hopes of advancing them more easily with Democratic support. (Taylor, 6/7)

More than two-thirds of state benchmark plans violate federal requirements to cover treatment for addiction disorders.The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse surveyed addiction treatment benefits offered among 2017 Essential Health Benefits benchmark plans and found none offered a comprehensive array of addiction treatment benefits. (Johnson, 6/7)

Rep. George Holding won the Republican primary for a newly redrawn district in North Carolina, beating Rep. Renee Ellmers, who became the first GOP incumbent to lose in a primary this year. Holding, who was first elected in 2012, had 52 percent of the vote with nearly two-thirds of precincts reporting when The Associated Press called the race. Ellmers, a three-term incumbent who was drawn into a new district this year and a rare incumbent-on-incumbent primary with Holding, trailed with 24 percent of the vote. Greg Brannon, a two-time Senate primary candidate, also got 24 percent. ... But an important factor in Ellmers being turned out was a rift with social conservatives over her brief opposition to the 20-week abortion ban. She stalled a vote planned to coincide with the March for Life in January 2015 — the biggest annual event for anti-abortion groups — to ensure that the rape exception didn’t mandate women to report the rape to police. (Schneider, 6/7)

North Carolina Republican Rep. Renee Ellmers went out with a bang Tuesday when she mocked the weight of a party activist who didn't support her re-election campaign during a stop at a polling place. Ellmers, who lost a primary for her House seat in North Carolina's Second District to a challenger backed by conservative groups Tuesday, told a former GOP official she had "gained some weight," when she stopped to vote earlier that day. The loss is also of note because Ellmers was opposed by conservative groups, but backed by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who recorded robocalls on her behalf. (Moody, 6/7)

Donald Trump’s inconsistencies on health policy are baffling experts and deepening the doubts that conservatives have about his candidacy. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has put forward a healthcare plan on his campaign website that leaves out many of the bolder promises he has made during debates and speeches. (Sullivan 6/8)

The top health insurance lobby on Tuesday announced an overhaul of its membership fees, less than one year after losing two of its biggest members. America’s Health Insurer’s Plans approved the first “major restructuring” since 2003, the group wrote at the bottom of a statement announcing its new chairmen. ... The powerful lobby, which worked closely on ObamaCare, has seen seen as losing clout. Over the last year, AHIP lost both UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest insurer, and Aetna, the second-largest. (Ferris, 6/7)

Minnesota’s market for individuals and families to buy private health insurance has fallen far short of enrollment projections, and actually got smaller between December and March. Both factors were highlighted by a report Tuesday from the trade group for Minnesota health insurers, and they add to concerns that premiums could be on the rise again next year. (Snowbeck 6/7)

As HealthSpan winds down its business, MetroHealth and Medical Mutual Insurance of Ohio are picking up the pieces to create a new insurance product they say will cut premium costs by 15 percent. (Ross, 6/6)

Microsoft scientists have demonstrated that by analyzing large samples of search engine queries they may in some cases be able to identify internet users who are suffering from pancreatic cancer, even before they have received a diagnosis of the disease. The scientists said they hoped their work could lead to early detection of cancer. Their study was published on Tuesday in The Journal of Oncology Practice by Dr. Eric Horvitz and Dr. Ryen White, the Microsoft researchers, and John Paparrizos, a Columbia University graduate student. (Markoff, 6/7)

Congress finally came through for Idaho’s Trevor Schaefer on Tuesday night. Ending seven years of work for the cancer survivor from Boise, the Senate gave final approval to “Trevor’s Law,” legislation that will require the federal government to document and track childhood and adult cancer clusters in Idaho and around the nation. (Hotakainen, 6/8)

New research attempting to calculate the risk of the Zika virus at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro may reassure organizers and many of the more than 500,000 athletes and fans expected to travel to the epicentre of the epidemic. Controversy about the global gathering in August has grown as more about the disease becomes known. ... One Sao Paulo-based research group predicted the Rio Olympics would result in no more than 15 Zika infections among the foreign visitors expected to attend the event, according to data reviewed by Reuters. (Steenhuysen, 6/7)

Republicans running to fill Marco Rubio’s U.S. Senate seat bragged at a dinner in Boca Raton, Florida, last week about opposing red-light traffic cameras and trying to impeach the Internal Revenue Service commissioner. The one thing they didn’t mention was the Zika virus, which could loom large in the November election. Florida, the ultimate swing state in the race to determine control of the White House and Senate, is on the front lines of the mosquito-borne virus, which has swept through South America and the Caribbean, leaving a trail of birth defects. Zika may still be on the fringes of the state’s politics, but it could become the sleeper issue of the election. Officials waging war against the virus are already running short of money, even on the edge of Walt Disney’s Magic Kingdom. (Dennis, 6/7)

Fourteen Ohioans, including one woman from Columbus, have tested positive for the Zika virus, but federal funding aimed at researching and developing could be at least a month away. (Wehrman, 6/8)

According to the Wyoming Department of Health, the Zika Virus should have little to no presence in Wyoming this summer. There have been 618 cases of Zika in the United States reported to the Centers for Disease Control over the past year. (Niemeyer, 6/7)

Deaths linked to opioid drugs in Massachusetts nearly tripled in the past five years, according to state data, while in Maine, opioids drove a 31% year-over-year climb in drug-related deaths in 2015. As those trends underscore New England’s acute problem with heroin and prescription drugs, the region’s six governors, including four Democrats and two Republicans, gathered at Harvard Medical School in Boston Tuesday to address how they are fighting the problem. (Kamp, 6/7)

Pressing for the same or nearly the same limits on opioid prescriptions is one of the ways New England’s Republican and Democratic governors are working together to address the drug epidemic. The six regional governors gathered in Boston Tuesday for an opioid panel. (Bebinger, 6/7)

In Manchester, more than 100 people died of overdoses last year. Despite those grim numbers, it’s a surprisingly positive atmosphere on a Thursday night at Hope for New Hampshire Recovery, a substance abuse recovery center in the heart of New Hampshire’s largest city. (Ganley and Brindley 6/8)

Too many people are overdosing on a diarrhea drug that has opiate-like effects, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday. Many are accidental overdoses but people also report taking the drug, called Imodium, on purpose to help curb cravings for highly addictive opioid drugs. (Fox, 6/7)

Nearly 19,000 people. That’s how many Americans died in 2014 due to overdosing on prescription pain medication, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported. The Food and Drug Administration, states and health insurance companies are all tackling this public health epidemic. (Gorenstein, 6/7)

Synthetic designer drugs, especially synthetic opioids like fentanyl implicated in the death of pop star Prince, pose an "unprecedented" threat for U.S. overdoses and deaths, especially among youth, the country's top anti-drug official said on Tuesday. (Harte, 6/7)

As rates of syphilis infections in the United States continue to rise, doctors should increase screening for the disease among high-risk individuals, according to new recommendations from a government-backed health panel. People with the highest risk of infection, including men who have same-sex partners and people living with HIV, should be tested every three months, rather than once a year, according to recommendations released Tuesday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF). (Bowerman, 6/8)

Doctors should offer testing for syphilis to men who have sex with men, people living with HIV and others at an increased risk of the sexually transmitted disease, a U.S. government-backed panel recommended on Tuesday. (6/7)

Uncle Sam wants you to turn over your health records. And Dr. Robert Califf, the cardiologist who now runs the Food and Drug Administration, is determined to make that happen. The Obama administration has set a goal of recruiting 1 million volunteers to hand over their genetic and health data, as part of the $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative. (Keshavan, 6/7)

The most widely quoted study, according to the National Eating Disorders Association, shows men represent 25 percent of all anorexia and bulimia nervosa cases, and 36 percent of binge eating disorders. Dr. Brad E.R. Smith, medical director of the multi-location Rogers Memorial Hospital behavioral health system, agrees research is needed on numbers. (McCarthy, 6/7)

As rates of melanoma rise, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine are suggesting a possible solution: screenings at primary care physicians’ (PCP) offices. In a study presented Tuesday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago, researchers found that, on average, participants screened for skin cancer at their PCP had melanomas that were nearly twice as thin as those who were not screened by their doctor. (6/7)

More than one-third of all adults in the U.S. say they have fair or poor dental health — and low-income people suffer the most from lack of treatment. The main reason is cost, according to a survey conducted by the American Dental Association Health Policy Institute and Families USA. (Ehley, 6/8)

Customers responded with enthusiasm when Antoine Dow first added a healthy choices menu to his grocery store in 2007. The owner of A & Ms. Dot's Grocery, at 1600 Druid Hill Ave., began offering protein smoothies and fresh lemonade sweetened with honey to provide an affordable and healthy alternative, he said. He said that same drive motivated him to testify in front of the City Council Health Committee on Tuesday, in support of a bill that would require warnings about sugar-sweetened beverages on advertisements, menus and other locations where the beverages are sold. (Massey 6/7)

In the wake of a mass shooting, a furious political debate inevitably erupts: Does gun violence stem from mental-health issues or from easy access to firearms? A policy solution that attempts to skirt the contentious divide is to make it harder for people with a history of mental illness to own a gun. A new Health Affairs study followed 81,704 adults with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or depression who were receiving treatment through the public behavioral health systems in two Florida counties to measure the effectiveness of such policies. About 12.8 percent were restricted from purchasing a firearm for mental-health reasons. Federal and state laws prohibit people from obtaining guns if they have been committed for mental-health treatment involuntarily, found not guilty of a crime due to insanity, been found incompetent to stand trial, or deemed mentally unable to manage their affairs. (Johnson, 6/7)

Keeping guns away from those with serious mental illness could help reduce gun suicides. That’s according to a new study out this week in the Health Affairs journal that looked at more than 81,000 adults in Florida with serious mental illness. Researchers got data on residents in Tampa and Miami with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression who received care in a publicly-funded health care setting; that data was married with court records and health records. (Aboraya, 6/7)

The House Energy and Commerce committee will mark up a major mental health reform bill next Wednesday, a significant step forward for the long-delayed legislation... Democrats are now signaling that they could support the new bill after a number of changes. (Sullivan and Ferris, 6/7)

Just before 6 p.m., a prison transport van pulled up to a state mental hospital in central Maryland. Inside were two deputies and James Geeter, a 77-year-old man arrested for trespassing at a library in Prince George’s County — and so mentally incompetent that a judge ordered treatment before he could face the charges. Four hospital staffers, including the clinical director, met the deputies at the door that night last month and turned them away. The psychiatric facility was full. The deputies and their prisoner returned to the county’s jail, where Geeter took a spot on a list of 84 inmates throughout Maryland waiting to get into one of the state’s five forensic hospitals — including some inmates charged with violent felonies. The crisis at Maryland’s mental hospitals is playing out nationwide, putting pressure on jails and testing the patience of judges. (Morse, 6/7)

Finding the capacity to care for acute mental health cases in Vermont has been a challenge in recent years, especially since Tropical Storm Irene shut down the state mental hospital. (Keefe 6/7)

The state of Delaware said Tuesday that it would phase in a new policy to treat all hepatitis C patients in its Medicaid program. (Sapatkin 6/7)

A federal judge on Tuesday weighed a Planned Parenthood request to block Kansas from cutting off Medicaid funding because the women's health provider performs abortions, saying she was "disappointed" the state resisted her earlier suggestion to hold off on halting the money until the matter could go to trial within months. U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson did not say after more than two hours of arguments when she might decide whether to block the state health department's action. (Suhr, 6/7)

Maryland hospitals want health regulators to approve a larger increase in hospital rates than the one proposed by state health staff when they vote Wednesday on rates for the next fiscal year. (Cohn 6/7)

The Gardens Regional Hospital and Medical Center Inc. filed for bankruptcy after losing money providing health care to depressed southern Los Angeles neighborhoods, where fewer patients can afford the cost of health care. Lawyers who put the 137-bed hospital into chapter 11 protection on Monday said that since 2010, state and federal medical insurance programs have slowly whittled down reimbursement payments to the facility, which took in more than 8,500 emergency-room patients last year. (Stech, 6/7)

Puerto Rico's only active air ambulance company announced Tuesday that it has suspended its services, blaming a multimillion-dollar government debt amid a deepening economic crisis that has affected basic services in the U.S. territory. Aeromed said in a statement that it has been negotiating with Puerto Rico's government for nearly three years, but that health officials last week rejected a deal to make a minimum payment of $4.4 million, a portion of a much larger overall debt. (6/7)

Vanderbilt University Medical Clinic is taking steps to help transgender patients from across the state navigate the thorny process of getting care as officials look to connect them with a full compliment of specialists who could aid their transitions. (Fletcher 6/7)

Margarita Solis regularly drives to Flint distribution centers to load up on bottled water, as thousands of residents have done in the city coping with a lead-contaminated water crisis. ... The city of nearly 100,000 has been dealing with the lead contamination since switching from the Detroit system, which draws from Lake Huron, to the Flint River in April 2014 as a short-term measure to save money while another pipeline to the lake was under construction. ... The struggles have been acute for members of some Spanish-speaking households, who say it took several months to learn about the water problems and the need for filters. State officials said there are no Spanish language print media or radio outlets in Flint devoted to news. What’s more, some people in the country illegally have been afraid to provide information to anyone in exchange for water or other basic help lest they be deported or questioned by law enforcement officials. (Karoub, 6/8)

No children tested positive for elevated lead in their system during screening for nearly 300 children at Creston Elementary in Southeast Portland on Tuesday, Multnomah County health officials reported. Students at Creston were exposed to high levels of lead in drinking water at the school this year, prompting the large screening for elevated lead levels. (Hammond, 6/7)

Last summer, North Carolina became the first state in the nation to pass a law creating an advisory council for rare diseases. Now, collaborative efforts are looking for ways to increase awareness, offer better screening, and find treatments. (Nigam 6/8)

First Year Cleveland, a city-county initiative designed to reduce the region's high infant mortality rate, has been awarded nearly $3 million from the state department of Medicaid to fund its work. (Zeltner, 6/8)

Though many expected a messy fight over Texas’ telemedicine rules next year, medical and industry groups are coming together to try to hammer out a compromise over how health care can be provided remotely. (Walters, 6/8)

T. Hampton Hopkins has been named president of the Carolinas College of Health Sciences, replacing Ellen Sheppard, who retires June 30 after 22 years with the college, 15 as president. Hopkins has served as dean of student affairs and enrollment management at the college since 2001 and will be the third president when he assumes the role June 12. (Garloch, 6/6)

Connecture Inc., a Brookfield software company that designs online marketplaces for health plans, said Tuesday that it has bought ConnectedHealth LLC, a Chicago benefits technology company. (Boulton, 6/7)

Few people have the unusual set of professional experiences that Dr. Lonny Shavelson does. He worked as an emergency room physician in Berkeley for years — while also working as a journalist. He has written several books and takes hauntingly beautiful photographs. Now, just as California’s law aid-in-dying law takes effect this week, Shavelson has added another specialty: A consultant to physicians and terminally ill patients who have questions about how it works. “Can I just sit back and watch?” Shavelson asked from his cottage office. “This is really an amazing opportunity to be part of establishing policy and initiating something in medicine. This is a major change … [that] very, very few people know anything about and how to do it. (Aliferis, 6/8)

Cancer drugs predictably cost much more in the U.S. than in poor countries and even other wealthy nations, but a study shows they are less affordable in some developing countries despite the lower price. Relative to their ability to pay, cancer patients in China and India face much higher prices than wealthier U.S. patients, according to the research released Monday. Australia had the most affordable prices, for both cancer medicines under patent and less-expensive generics. (6/6)

Americans pay the highest prices in the world for cancer drugs, but the treatments are least affordable in lower income countries, according to the results of a new study released on Monday. The study of cancer drug prices in seven countries, which did not take into account discounts or rebates to list prices, was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. The lowest drug prices were found in India and South Africa. But after calculating price as a percentage of wealth adjusted for the cost of living, cancer drugs appeared to be least affordable in India and China. (Beasley, 6/6)

U.S. senators want five drugmakers to account for increases in the price of a drug that’s used to reverse the effects of prescription and illegal opioids, as the number of Americans overdosing on painkillers and heroin has skyrocketed in recent years. (Edney, 6/6)

Two drug makers — Roche’s Genentech and OSI Pharmaceuticals — announced a deal on Monday to pay $67 million to resolve charges they made misleading statements about the effectiveness of the Tarceva drug to treat non-small cell lung cancer. (Silverman, 6/6)

Recent congressional attempts to speed up the Food and Drug Administration approval process for antibiotics and some medical devices make only a tentative step toward addressing high drug prices. Drug development costs, driven higher by increasingly stringent FDA regulations, reduce competition and ultimately lead to higher prices for consumers. Yet many policy proposals neglect the FDA's role in driving up those prices. Drug development costs have skyrocketed over the last quarter century. Researchers at the Center for the Study of Drug Development estimated the cost of drug development in three studies stretching back to the early 1990s. According to their estimates, in 1991 a pharmaceutical company had to earn $412 million to make new drug development a worthwhile investment. By 2003, this number more than doubled to $1.047 billion. By 2016, the number more than doubled again to $2.558 billion (all numbers are in 2013 dollars). The estimates show that in the last quarter century, the cost of drug development increased more than six times. (Abdukadirov, 6/6)

Massachusetts is again a forceful presence at the annual Biotechnology Industry Organization’s convention, underscoring the state’s undisputed status as a hub for drug discovery. But as the gathering opened here this week, the Bay State also emerged as a focal point in the growing backlash against soaring prescription drug prices, which can run tens of thousands of dollars a year for mass market medicines and hundreds of thousands for rare-disease therapies. While the cost-containment campaign is raging nationally, Massachusetts has grabbed the spotlight on several fronts. (6/6)

At a medical meeting last winter, a drug-industry executive flipped his nametag around so he could have more open conversations with the liver-disease scientists who were presenting their research. “They didn’t recognize who I am. No one does,” recalled John Milligan, who a few months later was named chief executive of Gilead Sciences Inc. Dr. Milligan may find it increasingly difficult to stay so anonymous as he settles into the pilot seat at Gilead, a company that has catapulted into one of the industry’s biggest sellers and most controversial drug pricers. (Rockoff, 6/6)

A nationwide experiment to see whether incentives will change physicians' prescribing behavior and reduce drug spending needs more input on study design and possible unintended consequences, says the author of a perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine. In the article, published online June 2, Deborah Schrag, MD, MPH, chief of the Division of Population Sciences in the Department of Medical Oncology with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, outlines concerns regarding the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) plan to change the way it reimburses physicians. (Frellick, 6/7)

Despite opposition from the pharmaceutical industry, Vermont late last week became the first state in the country to require drug makers to justify price hikes for medicines. The law is part of a wave of state legislation that comes in response to growing concern over the rising cost of prescription drugs. Around the country, lawmakers have been introducing bills in hopes of forcing drug makers to either disclose costs or explain pricing. These demands reflect industry arguments that rising prices reflect rising R&D costs. “This bill is about accountability,” Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin said in a statement. (Silverman, 6/6)

A growing number of sick Americans are traveling thousands of miles to India. Why? For huge discounts on prescription drugs. Scores of life-saving medicines are sold for much lower prices in India, attracting foreigners who have been denied access to, or can't afford, them at home. (Wu, 6/2)

Senator Marco Rubio’s essay criticizing the FDA for failing to approve eteplirsen, an investigational drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy made by Sarepta Therapeutics, highlights a glaring misunderstanding of the drug approval process. Public appeals like Rubio’s and those made by Duchenne families are perfectly appropriate and make for interesting public theater. But they have essentially zero effect on the FDA’s decision-making cascade. As a former FDA medical officer and senior medical analyst, as well as a former investigational medicine research scientist at Pfizer, I don’t always agree with the regulatory decisions the FDA makes. However, I do support the time-tested process for approving new drugs. (David Gortler, 6/2)

The U.S. healthcare system isn't sustainable in its current form with increasing prices, and the disparate approaches to care across states, hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and income. Americans receive relatively poor care for their billions of dollars spent, as judged by several metrics comparing our nation with others. The high cost of health care is such a threat to the future economy that it has united our three radically different candidates for president. Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders all agree on one strategy to help fix it: they want to allow the government — specifically the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid — to directly negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. (Stephen Brozak, 6/6)

Move over, Big Pharma. Big Biotech is coming for you. As drug developers and investors from around the world gather in San Francisco this week for the annual BIO International Convention, a new look at the biotech industry shows the biggest players are starting to behave more and more like pharmaceutical giants. There are 17 biotech companies in the US that generate more than $500 million per year in revenue. And they’re increasingly focused on buying innovative new products through mergers and acquisitions, rather than developing them in house, according to a report from EY (formerly Ernst & Young) released Monday. (Mehana Keshavan, 6/6)

Seen as a narrative of soulless profiteers versus innocent, needful patients, the crisis of high pharmaceutical prices has produced a convenient gallery of villains: the board of Gilead Sciences, for instance, which priced its hepatitis cure at what it thought the market would bear (nearly $100,000); Martin Shkreli, for another, whose Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the rights to an existing drug used by HIV patients and jacked up its price 5,000%. (Michael Hiltzik, 6/1)

Poverty in the U.S. seems intractable, even as safety net spending rises each year. Most policy makers, meanwhile, remain locked in trench warfare over whether to increase spending further or cut it, launch new programs or restrict current ones. But what if states had more flexibility to move federal dollars between antipoverty programs -- not to increase spending or cut it, but to find its most effective use? (Oren Cass 6/7)

Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin is making good on his campaign promise to close the doors on Kynect, the state’s Obamacare exchange. While Democratic former Governor Steve Beshear and a handful of Obamacare supporters have made waves about that decision, it has raised a bigger question: Does it make sense to run a state-based exchange? Kynect is causing higher premiums for most residents of Kentucky, is not fiscally sustainable, and serves almost exclusively as a channel for Medicaid enrollment — Gov. Bevin is prudent to push to switch to the federal exchange. (Josh Archambault, 6/7)

The Summer Olympic Games are scheduled to begin on Aug. 5 in Rio de Janeiro, and it appears that will happen under the dark shadow of the Zika virus. Unfortunately, current conflicts between doctors and the World Health Organization are provoking confusion about the virus. In turn, that’s creating a tremendous amount of anxiety and even fear among athletes who usually would be extremely excited about participating in the Olympics. (6/7)

Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena will participate in California’s assisted suicide law when it takes effect Thursday. But that could change down the road. I reported last month that medical leaders at the hospital quietly had voted for the facility's hundreds of doctors and affiliated personnel to opt out of the End of Life Option Act, which allows physicians to prescribe medication to hasten the death of terminally ill adults. (David Lazarus, 6/7)

While authorities investigate where Prince obtained the drugs that killed him, as well as the scandal that’s rocked the University of Minnesota wrestling team, a small scene reflecting the country’s growing opioid problem played out in an almost-empty federal courtroom Monday with a pharmacist as the unlikely protagonist. (Jon Tevlin 6/7)

A national icon dies of an accidental overdose. A media frenzy develops as public scrutiny focuses on the new, highly potent drug that is suspected of killing him. At the same time, a measure has been proposed in Congress that would impose harsh new mandatory prison sentences for offenses involving tiny quantities of the new drug. (Jeremy Haile and Michael Collins, 6/7)

While it is already too late for the victims of overdose, there are many more people for whom heroin and prescription-opioid abuse do not have to spell the end. I see every day in my work with Evergreen Treatment Services that people do recover, and many will fight fiercely for the chance. They need our help, not our judgment. We have to increase access to and acceptance of the tools in our toolbox, particularly medication-assisted treatment. (Molly Carney, 6/7)

In an emotional speech, Vice President Joe Biden urged the 30,000 oncologists attending the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual conference to work together in the search for a cure for cancer. Biden called for more collaboration among among oncologists and researchers and easier access to clinical trials and expanded databases. (Maria Castellucci, 6/6)