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As Republican lawmakers celebrate the passage of a tax bill that will make the wealthiest Americans richer, many lower-income families are faced with the real possibility that their children will soon lose their health insurance because Congress didn’t care enough to renew funding for it. The Children’s Health Insurance Program has enjoyed bipartisan support since its creation in 1997. It covers about nine million kids from families who are not affluent by any stretch of the imagination but happen to earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. (12/20)

Across the nation, nearly 9 million children rely on the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for their health care in a given year. However, the families of the 174,000 Pennsylvania children currently enrolled in CHIP are about to receive notices informing them that their insurance is being canceled. The failure to reauthorize CHIP is a betrayal of the trust placed in Congress. ... Since its inception at the national level, CHIP has enjoyed bipartisan backing. While there is room for disagreement on many issues, agreement on the value CHIP has been and should remain a bright spot of consensus. (Sen. Bob Casey, 12/20)

Together, we have ensured more patients are able to see a doctor, have expanded dental care for low-income children and have improved the efficiency of our health care system. Unfortunately, that progress is in danger due to federal gridlock, and the consequences will hit California’s lower-income children and pregnant women especially hard. (Catharine Baker, 12/20)

In October, the government tried and failed to keep an undocumented teenager in federal custody from ending an unwanted pregnancy. Yet officials appear to have learned little from 17-year-old Jane Doe’s victory in court over the government’s effort to keep her from the abortion clinic. Again, it has fought tooth and nail — and failed — to prevent two more pregnant teenagers from getting the medical care they desired. (12/20)

Last week, I withdrew my name from consideration to be assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. My appointment had been put on indefinite hold by the Senate Armed Services Committee, and I felt the Defense Department needed to fill the position without undue delay. Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines deserve the full complement of Pentagon appointees to support them. I am sorry not to be able to assist Defense Secretary Jim Mattis .... But unfortunately, I do not possess one credential the committee wanted to see: I do not support the unrestricted ownership of semiautomatic assault weapons by civilians. (Dean L. Winslow, 12/20)

Nearly a decade ago, California became the first state in the nation to pass a law requiring that hens, veal calves and pregnant pigs be raised in cages that gave them space to move. ... the state Legislature passed a companion law (AB 1437) mandating that any farmer in the country who wanted to sell eggs in California had to comply with the welfare standards set for hens in the state. ... One of the law’s most vocal Congressional opponents is Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who represents the largest egg-producing district of the largest egg-producing state in the country. He’s pushing the Protect Interstate Commerce Act (H.R. 3599), which would prohibit any state from setting more restrictive standards for out-of-state agricultural products than the federal government imposes nationally or the producer’s own state mandates. (12/21)

[Virginia Gov.-elect Ralph] Northam also soft-peddled Medicaid expansion, warning of the program’s rising costs and the need to contain them. It was Northam at his best — conciliatory, comforting, professional. Progressives went ballistic. Tom Perriello, whom Northam walloped in the Democratic primary in June, demanded a vote on expansion before the 2019 elections, casting expansion as “a policy that is morally right & good for VA economy.” ... But sharing power means compromise. Compromise would seem to indicate that a straight up-or-down vote on Medicaid expansion isn’t possible. Republicans will never go for it, and in the event of a tie vote, legislation expanding Medicaid would die. (Norman Leahy, 12/20)

Hands On Medicine is a small independent primary care clinic in North Portland committed to serving both Medicaid patients and those covered by private insurance. Most of our Medicaid patients are insured by FamilyCare, one of 16 "coordinated care organizations" around the state that receive public dollars from the state to cover health care for low-income Oregonians. ... I can speak to the disastrous consequences it would have for Hands On Medicine, our patients, and indeed the 115,000 citizens insured by FamilyCare in the Portland metro area. (Jacob Aiello, 12/20)

An epidemic of opioid abuse is ravaging the United States and, as we look for ways to respond to it, some see cannabis as part of the solution, while others see it as part of the problem. This is just one area in which unbiased scientific research is necessary, but outdated federal legislation, having concluded almost 50 years ago that there is no medical value to cannabis, is blocking all meaningful efforts to understand the real benefits and risks of the plant. (Daniele Piomelli and Bob Solomon, 12/21)