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When Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin was ousted earlier this year, most of Washington wrote it off as another result of President Trump’s chaotic management style. Perhaps, but the change also reflects the state of pandemonium long associated with the VA. Caring for veterans has never been a straightforward task in the U.S. (Rebecca Burgess, 6/26)

This year will be the last in which uninsured Americans are forced to pay ObamaCare’s penalty for lack of coverage. The change—part of the GOP’s tax reform—comes as relief on the demand side of health insurance. Yet nothing has changed on the market’s supply side. Without additional reforms to ObamaCare’s restrictions on insurers, millions of Americans will continue to choose from a limited range of lackluster plans. (John C. Goodman, 6/26)

If your health care is covered by Medicare, like more than 55 million of your fellow Americans, where you live partly determines what Medicare will pay for. The process for deciding what items and services are covered from region to region needs reform. (Scott Whitaker, Jack Richmond and Bruce Williams, 6/27)

Each year, more Americans are dying of overdose than have ever been killed from car accidents, guns, or HIV/AIDS. An American under 50 is now more likely to die of an overdose than from any other cause. And the numbers continue to climb. In fact, in the next 12 minutes, another American will fall victim. Not only this constitutes a public health emergency but is also unweaving the very fabric of our society. It is hard to accept that this has happened to our country, especially to family, friends, neighbors and community members that we love. It does not have to be this way. One bill in particular could put us, finally, on the path out of this crisis: the Comprehensive Addiction Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, introduced by Elizabeth Warren in the Senate and Elijah Cummings in the House. (Leana S. Wen and Rahul Gupta, 6/26)

The lack of transparency and communication significantly undermines each’s ability to combat fraud and abuse within the Part D program, as well as to reduce overprescribing. That’s why I introduced the Strengthening Partnerships to Prevent Opioid Abuse Act, which will make common-sense changes to encourage greater data sharing and coordination between CMS and insurers. (Jim Renacci, 6/26)

This week, our nation’s psyche was rocked yet again with news — and video — of how Antwon Rose, a 17 year-old black American teenager, was fatally shot in the back by police while fleeing a traffic stop. His tragic death, and the responses now reverberating throughout the country, casts a deeply disturbing shadow over our research results, reported this week in The Lancet, which shed light on this grim fact: police killings of unarmed black Americans lead to poorer mental health among black Americans across the country. (Alexander Tsai, Jacob Bor and Atheendar Venkataramani, 6/27)

America has a long history of removing indigenous children from their families — and often, it came with the “best of intentions. After the Indian wars — when active genocide became passé — the first Indian Boarding School was built. Even after the Native societies were struck down and penned-in within reservation borders, something about our people’s continued existence remained a threat. (Colleen Echohawk, 6/26)

This month, National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins seemed to shut down a noxious ethical problem. The agency released a 165-page internal investigation of an alcohol consumption study that had been funded mostly by beer and liquor companies. The study’s lead investigator and NIH officials were in frequent contact with the alcohol industry while designing the study, which, according to the postmortem, seemed predetermined to find alcohol’s benefits but not potential harms, such as cancer. In several email exchanges published in the report, NIH scientists seemed to joke about taking a drink every time somebody said “cheers,” which was a proposed acronym for their study. Collins ended the trial and promised to create new ethical boundaries for how NIH officials deal with industry. But the intellectual corruption at our government research agencies runs much deeper, and this was only the latest scandal involving hidden corporate influence. (Paul D. Thacker, 6/22)

In recent years, a growing number of states have expanded Medicaid to able-bodied adults to help more families access health care. Instead of achieving that goal, Medicaid expansion has pushed millions of newly eligible individuals into the program’s substandard insurance rolls and denied health care to the truly needy. Fortunately, Michigan recently passed sweeping reforms that will help sick and able-bodied Medicaid recipients obtain quality health care. In June, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder signed a bill that requires able-bodied adults to work, volunteer, or attend job training for 80 hours per month to remain eligible for Medicaid. The Medicaid rules would apply to healthy individuals aged 18 to 62. Those who fail to meet these requirements will be shifted out of the program. Michigan’s reforms are part of a national effort to refocus Medicaid back to helping the truly needy. (Charlie Kateb, 6/26)

After the horror stories revealed in this newspaper about how for-profit companies are failing tens of thousands of Texans in the state's managed-care Medicaid system, we had hoped to hear a little contrition in a recent Austin hearing. Instead, what we got was a whole lot of defensiveness and shocking refusals by company execs to take responsibility for shortcomings in the care they provide for some of the state's most chronically ill children, as well as the disabled and elderly. What seems clear is that it'll be up to lawmakers to fix the gaping holes in this system, starting with holding these companies accountable for doing the job they're being paid billions to do. (6/26)

Iowa lawmakers took great pride last legislative session in passing a bill aimed at improving access to mental health services, and deservedly so. Gov. Kim Reynolds was also pleased.“This legislation was pushed over the finish line by individuals and families who knew firsthand the importance of having a robust mental health system and the pain caused when services they or a loved one needed weren’t there,” she said at the bill-signing ceremony. But most people need health insurance to access those services. That reality is apparently lost on the GOP-controlled Iowa Legislature and Reynolds. (6/26)