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The last time Chief Justice John Roberts took it upon himself to write the opinion fending off a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, he seemed to signal that he was done entertaining existential threats to the law.“In a democracy, the power to make the law rests with those chosen by the people,” he wrote in King v. Burwell in 2015. “Our role is more confined — to say what the law is. That is easier in some cases than in others. But in every case we must respect the role of the Legislature, and take care not to undo what it has done.” (12/28)

Federal District Judge Reed O’Connor’s determination last Friday overturning the entire Affordable Care Act won’t actually affect much — unless it is upheld at the Supreme Court, probably not until 2020 — but it ought to spark a substantive legislative response from House Democrats. President Trump was quick to gloat and to invite Democrats to negotiate a replacement. (Jon Kingsdale, 12/20)

No patient leaves the hospital hoping to return soon. But a decade ago, one in five Medicare patients who were hospitalized for common conditions ended up back in the hospital within 30 days. Because roughly half of those cases were thought to be preventable, reducing hospital readmissions was seen by policymakers as a rare opportunity to improve the quality of care while reducing costs. (Rishi K. Wadhera, Karen E. Joynt Maddox and Robert W. Yeh, 12/21)

In 2008, our mother asked my sister, Maya, and me to meet her for lunch. When we arrived, our mother didn’t seem like herself. We wondered what was going on. Then she took a deep breath and reached out to us both across the table.“I’ve been diagnosed with colon cancer,” she told us.I know that many can relate to the emotions I felt in that moment. Even just reflecting back on it now fills me with dread. It was one of the worst days of my life. (Sen. Kamala Harris, 12/29)

Some significant expenses decline as we age: Most mortgages are eventually paid off, and ideally children grow up and become self-supporting. But health care is one area in which costs are almost certain to rise. After all, one of the original justifications for Medicare — which kicks in at age 65 — is that older people have much higher health care needs and expenses. (Austin Frakt, 12/24)

Although the future of American electricity production will center on renewable sources, such as solar and wind, coal still fuels the plants generating about 30% of the power that lights and cools our homes, runs factory machinery and keeps computers like the ones used to produce this editorial working. This coal-fired energy pathway begins, often, under the Appalachian Mountains, where generations of miners have hewed the black rock from subterranean seams. It’s dangerous work, and not just because of rockfalls, explosions and methane leaks. The coal and silica dust kicked up in the process of cutting through coal and stone kills lung tissue in miners who breathe it in. And even as the nation’s reliance on coal has been necessarily declining — it is the worst of the fuel sources for releasing greenhouse gases — the rate of “black lung” diagnoses has increased. (12/27)

A renowned cardiologist, Richard Paulus spent 21 years treating thousands of patients in eastern Kentucky. King’s Daughters Medical Center in Ashland even put his name on the front of its heart center. But in 2015 Dr. Paulus was indicted by federal prosecutors, accused of putting stents into the coronary arteries of people the government said didn’t need them. Concerned about the quantity of coronary-stent procedures performed at King’s Daughters, federal prosecutors hired a pair of doctors to review Dr. Paulus’s old cases. In some patients, Dr. Paulus had reported arterial blockages of 60% while the government’s doctors said that the patients’ angiograms—essentially chest X-rays—showed blockage of 30% or less. The government took this as proof that Dr. Paulus had misdiagnosed patients as part of a scheme to defraud Medicare, Medicaid or private insurance companies. (Kyle Clark and Andrew George, 12/27)

Ohio needs a broad-based public health agenda. We can start by requiring legislators to contemplate the health impact of the policies they propose prior to adopting them. Only then will we fully understand the true costs of cutting taxes and the far-reaching benefits of state investments in public programs that promote economic stability and healthy communities. (Amanda Woodrum, 12/30)

In many rural communities across Texas, the health care delivery systems are on life-support or nonexistent, leaving too many Texans vulnerable with limited or no access to care. In a state as resourceful as Texas, this is unacceptable.Of the 254 counties in Texas, 170 are rural, with nearly 20 percent of the state's population, or more than 3 million people, still residing in what can be considered "rural" areas. (Dan McCoy, 12/31)