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State officials across the country are stepping up to show the leadership that Congress has failed to muster to urge that opioid manufacturers be held accountable for the devastation of the national drug epidemic. Attorneys general from 36 states including Washington, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, wrote to Senate leaders last week, asking them to increase penalties on drug manufacturers that fail to report suspicious transactions and don’t maintain effective controls to keep their drugs out of the illegal market. This is a reasonable proposal in the face of the scourge of opioid addiction and deaths and the complicity of at least one manufacturer. (5/30)

For the first time in history, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans under age 50. For the first time in nearly a quarter century, U.S. life expectancy has declined, driven by diseases of despair like alcoholism and drug addiction. And for the first time in a long time, policymakers and providers are serious about trying new approaches and making a real investment in turning the tide on addiction. (Bill Frist, 5/31)

When I was chairman of the House Budget Committee in 1997, Republicans and Democrats in Washington saw past our differences to balance the federal budget for the first time in decades. Working together, we managed to follow up that success with three more balanced budgets. Yet it’s been 17 years since lawmakers and the White House approved a spending plan that didn’t add to the national debt. ...The answer is clear. Republicans and Democrats in Congress must put aside divisive (and pointless) sound-bite politics and at long last get serious about meaningful spending restraint and entitlement reforms. Those discussions should begin with proposals to deal with the costs of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, which are the greatest contributors to spending and debt. Congressional leaders from both parties must pledge to vote on a package of meaningful reforms. (Gov. John R. Kasich, 5/30)

Imagine the horror of learning you have a terminal illness for which science has not yet come up with a treatment. Now imagine receiving the same diagnosis, and then learning a promising new treatment exists that could save your life — but you can’t get access to it thanks to governmental obstacles. ...Democrats in Washington managed to take an issue that unified literally thousands of legislators from both parties in 40 states, and turned it into a divisive, party-line vote. Thanks to Trump, Americans facing terminal diagnoses will now have a new chance at life. How tragic — and pathetic — that Democrats refused to join him in making that happen. (Marc A. Thiessen, 5/30)

Last week, I previewed 10 books I want to tackle during the summer reading season. I finished the first one, “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” by Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter John Carreyrou, over the holiday weekend. It tells the story of blood-testing startup Theranos Inc., which at one point had a value north of $9 billion — making it one of the biggest so-called unicorns in the world. Today it is essentially worthless. (Barry Ritholtz, 5/30)

“The drug lobby is making an absolute fortune at the expense of American consumers,” said President Donald Trump from the White House Rose Garden a few weeks ago. He was announcing his plan to reduce the cost of prescription drugs in this country. Unfortunately the speech was more rhetoric than substance. And the rhetoric was not very promising — unless you’re a drug company. Pharmaceutical stocks surged after the president spoke, an indication investors saw higher prices and profits ahead. "What Trump laid out is policy that Big Pharma can love," said Robert Weissman, president of the advocacy group Public Citizen. (5/30)

The mass shooting at a school in Texas on May 18 brought renewed calls for stricter gun-control laws. This focus should  include another, less-visible, aspect of the crisis: The killing by firearms of hundreds of women each year by their intimate partners. It’s clear that gun control is a women’s issue. Of the 39,000 gun deaths in America In 2016, 456 were from mass shootings. But, on average, more than 561 women are killed by these weapons each year by their husbands, ex-husbands, common-law husbands or boyfriends, according to the Associated Press. (Kara Alaimo, 5/30)

A working paper released this week by researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at employee pay data from 2011 to 2016. It concluded that employers who were forced to raise minimum wages for lower-paid workers also raised the hourly wages of higher-paid workers to maintain parity. However, the same study also found “robust evidence” that employers who raised the minimum hourly wages also reduced the amount they paid for their employees’ health-care benefits to cover those added costs. (Gene Marks, 5/30)

As America focuses on one epidemic — the opioid crisis — another goes entirely ignored. American health-care workers are dying by suicide in unprecedented numbers. Earlier this month, a medical student and a resident at NYU medical school completed suicide less than a week apart. ...My junior colleague was among an estimated 400 physicians who took their lives in 2016. (Vinita Parkash, 5/31)

Four years after the world’s largest Ebola epidemic claimed more than 11,000 lives in West Africa, a new outbreak of the deadly virus is brewing, this time in Democratic Republic of Congo. In sharp contrast to the 2014-2016 outbreak — when authorities delayed several months before declaring a global public health emergency — the World Health Organization and major donors this time have moved quickly to prepare. (William Garvelink, 5/30)

Last month the Texas Supreme Court decided In Re Cypress Medical Center, a case focused on whether the payments hospitals receive for insured patients are relevant to determining the price an uninsured or out-of-network patient must pay. The question of how to measure the reasonable and customary value of health care services is being raised frequently in courts across the country.This is an important issue for everyone, not just uninsured and out-of-network patients. Why? Because high hospital prices are a key reason that health care in the United States is more expensive than any other developed country. (George A. Nation III, 5/30)

The suspension of California’s nearly 2-year-old right-to-die-law late last week came as a shock. After all, it had taken a quarter-century to get the law passed in the first place, and by all accounts, it was working well. It’s a moderate, reasonable measure with many safeguards built in, and it has apparently been used sparingly and as a last resort by terminally ill people seeking an alternative to pain and suffering during their last six months of life. Worse yet, the law — which allows patients with a prognosis of six months or less to live the right to obtain lethal drug prescriptions from their physicians — was struck down not on the merits, but on a technicality: that it was passed in a special session of the Legislature called specifically to address the issue of Medi-Cal funding. (5/31)

The law has given terminal patients of sound mind the humane option of dying with dignity — on their own terms, rather than in excruciating pain. Arguing, as opponents do, that this harms these Californians rather than helps them ignores this reality: In about 5 percent of cases for terminally ill patients, it’s impossible to manage a dying patient’s pain with medication. (5/30)