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The small but growing parade of cities battling obesity by imposing taxes on sugary drinks ran into a wall last month, when California outlawed the practice. But that wall, meant to stand until 2031, is already looking flimsy. Public health advocates are moving to bring it down in two years by persuading voters to pass a hefty statewide tax on soda. (7/23)

By prioritizing economic growth and reducing the tax and regulatory burdens on U.S. business, Mr. Trump has helped to create an economy with more job openings than ever before. As if by magic, the invisible hand of a freer marketplace is now generating new benefits as employers compete to fill all those open positions. ...Imagine that—an expansion of insurance coverage without a new federal program. It seems that in order to persuade workers to supply enough labor to meet business demand, companies are increasing overall compensation via expanded benefits. Amazing! Some readers will no doubt view this as the most beautiful reform of all, because it doesn’t cost the Treasury a nickel. (James Freeman, 7/23)

Members of Congress have famously failed to fulfill campaign promises to repair or replace the Affordable Care Act. Those unfulfilled promises have left states looking for new ways to fix their broken health-care systems. As Congress hems and haws on health care reform, states have been lining up to ask the Trump administration for administrative relief under the ACA’s innovation and Medicaid 1115 waivers. Too often, executive branch offices have denied or unduly delayed those requests. And now the federal judiciary has joined Congress and the administration in blocking states from enacting commonsense health care reforms. (Rea Hederman and Lindsey Boyd Killen, 7/23)

Washington policymakers increasingly face a crossroad in American health policy between two broad and vastly different directions. One leads toward a market-based system, based on consumer choice and competition; the other, toward a government-controlled, single-payer system, like that of United Kingdom, where health care financing and delivery is implemented through the British National Health Service.Whatever direction lawmakers choose, the consequences will be profound for both doctors and patients. Champions of a single-payer system often claim that a government-controlled health system, run by Washington officials, would provide an efficient practicing environment for physicians. The British NHS experience, however, suggests otherwise. (Kevin Pham and Robert E. Moffit, 7/24)

Today is my first day back at work after more than two weeks of vacation — my time off started July 4, fittingly enough (a few weeks of independence beginning on Independence Day). The news, of course, doesn’t go on holiday when we do (nor, evidently, do President Trump’s efforts to destabilize everything he comes in contact with). Now that I’m back, I thought I’d check in with the Gun Violence Archive to see whether gun violence took a holiday too. It didn’t, of course. Our fellow Americans continued to kill themselves and others with abandon, from toddlers shooting siblings to violent criminals killing police officers. In fact, from July 4 through Sunday night, the Gun Violence Archive recorded at least 1,930 shooting incidents in which at least 730 people died and 1,731 people were wounded. That’s an average of at least 38 people killed and 91 wounded per day. And it doesn’t include most firearm suicides, which rarely get mentioned publicly and so are aren’t picked up by the Gun Violence Archive from daily reports. (Scott Martelle, 7/23)

This week, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Veterans’ Affairs celebrated the one-year anniversary of the VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, with a hearing on implementation of the law since its enactment. Unfortunately, like the law itself, the hearing was a missed opportunity in terms of meaningful VA reform. One of the statements that acting VA Secretary Peter O’Rourke made throughout the hearing was that it’s impossible to fully gauge the success of the program after only one year; after all, the VA is a large bureaucracy and it is slow to change. (Rory E. Riley-Topping, 7/23)

From July 21 to July 24, 1976, more than 2,000 members of the Pennsylvania chapters of the American Legion attended their annual state convention at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel on Philadelphia’s Broad Street. In the days that followed, Dr. Sidney Franklin, a physician at the Philadelphia V.A. Hospital, began treating several retired servicemen for odd, or atypical, forms of pneumonia. (Howard Markel, 7/23_

Fiat Chrysler’s announcement that its hard-charging CEO was being replaced following “unexpected complications" after a surgery did not offer many details: the kind of surgery. Details about the complications — or their severity. But corporate governance experts say that as CEO disclosures go, the announcement about Sergio Marchionne offered more than companies are required to share. It also reflects the dilemma that boards of directors face when balancing CEO privacy, the needs of shareholders for information and a growing ethos of transparency about the health of high-profile executives. (Jena McGregor, 7/23)

Earlier this year, I challenged those who control what happens — Republican leaders of the Iowa House and Senate, and a Republican governor and her appointees that head state agencies — to craft an older Iowans agenda, publicize it, commit to it, and get to work on it. They didn’t do it. Once again, our leaders were content to talk about some of the issues and then find an excuse (“we have no money,” “now is not a good time,” “let’s deal with this next year,” etc.) to avoid action. (John Hale, 7/23)

Few pieces of legislation have made more of a difference to more Californians more quickly than the bill two years ago to tighten school vaccination laws. ...The new law has worked like a champ, raising dangerously low levels of immunity in California back up to the public health minimum, 95 percent of the population. But that’s a statewide number, and outbreaks, when they happen, do so locally. (7/23)