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A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is fighting to keep attention focused on last session's top health issue — abuse of prescription opioids, heroin and other drugs —  although Obamacare now dominates the health policy discourse. The group hopes to pressure Congress to provide financial support to states for prevention and treatment, even as Republicans pursue an overhaul of the Medicaid system that could make it harder for states to pay for those services. (Siddons, 2/28)

Taylor Sprague was among the last of 1,089 people in Maryland to die from an opiate overdose in 2015, and as the new year rolled around, the epidemic's death toll continued to mount. Final data for 2016 is expected to show that some 2,000 people in Maryland died after overdosing on heroin or other opiates. Opioid overdoses now rank among cancer, strokes and heart attacks as the top killers in Maryland. State health officials say their goal for the next two years is to slow the rate at which the problem is worsening. (Duncan, 2/28)

After years of surging opioid prescriptions, leading to addiction and deaths, the pendulum swung back hard against abuse, culminating in the July shutdown of the Seattle Pain Centers (SPC), a chain of eight Washington clinics. That state action, amid allegations of improper oversight that may have contributed to patient deaths, sent 8,000 patients looking for new providers. Pain-treatment experts express sympathy for “legacy” patients like [Chris] Hegge, who were prescribed high doses of opioids before a new approach took hold with new state rules in 2012. (Young, 2/27)

In 2015, nearly 1 percent of all babies born in Orange County suffered from opioid withdrawal. That’s 249 babies, a noticeable jump from 2014, when 158 newborns were affected, Hardy said. These rates have increased tenfold in the past decade, making Orange the third-most-affected county in Florida behind Hillsborough and Duval, Hardy said. (Miller, 2/27)