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As presidential hopefuls debate how much more money to pour into our broken system, they should consider how much we already spend. In a new report out Monday, my Johns Hopkins colleagues and I found that nearly half of our federal tax dollars are being spent on health care. Bear with me because I know these are a lot of numbers. But let’s add it up. Start with the 27% of federal spending that goes to Medicare, which covers seniors and the disabled, and Medicaid, which covers low-income Americans. (Marty Makary, 9/16)

The New York Times has detailed how Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., came to be fixated on Canada's health care system. That fixation manifested itself again during the Democratic presidential debate in Houston. It started with an illness that befell his mother while Sanders was in high school. His family struggled to pay for her care, until she died in 1960, in her mid-40s. That experience "instilled in him the desire to ensure everyone had access to medical care," as the Times put it. (Sally Pipes, 9/15)

The big, solvable issue in our healthcare system is the 30 percent of every healthcare dollar that is squandered on administrative overhead — paperwork, the pre-approvals, denials, and appeals that are an integral part of myriad for-profit private insurance companies. That’s around $1 trillion every year. Only a single-payer system like Medicare for All can cut that trillion dollars in half, by eliminating that bureaucratic waste. That half — $500 billion — can be redirected to providing comprehensive healthcare to all Americans. It’s not free. We’ll all pay for it in taxes, which for most of us will be less than what we’re currently spending on premiums, co-pays, deductibles, and other healthcare expenses. (George Bohmfalk, 9/12)

“MULTI-MODALITY solution.” “Real-time data analytics.” “Breakthrough technologies with high specificity and sensitivity.” These empty buzzwords take on an eerie edge when you hear their aim: “early diagnosis of neuropsychiatric violence.” The White House is considering a plan to study whether monitoring the mentally ill could prevent mass shootings. The proposal is at once a distraction and too dangerous to ignore. (9/14)

In the early morning hours of Aug. 4, outside a crowded bar in Dayton, Ohio, a gunman fired at least 41 rounds in 32 seconds, striking 26 people. Nine of those victims died in the shooting.The gunman was able to fire so many rounds so quickly because he used a 100-round magazine. That meant he didn’t have to stop firing to reload. If police hadn’t already been on the scene and able to return fire so quickly, many more almost certainly would have lost their lives. (U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, 9/14)

The Trump administration's “zero tolerance” policy, which triggered the automatic separation of thousands of toddlers, tweens and teenagers from their families last year, was an act of systematic child abuse orchestrated by a White House bent on prosecuting a war on undocumented migrants. The misery caused by that callous policy was glimpsed at the time — through photographs of sobbing children and accounts from devastated parents — by Americans whose revulsion prompted Mr. Trump to reverse course. Only now has the children’s suffering been methodically documented by a government agency. (9/15)

Former Vice President Joe Biden had a big night at Thursday’s Democratic presidential candidate debate in Houston. A lot was at stake, and I was not alone in focusing on the cogency of his answers.  Regarding Biden’s health care plans, former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary and rival candidate Julián Castro accused him of confusing the details, "Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago? (Marc Siegel, 9/15)

As a rising number of e-cigarette users are hospitalized with severe respiratory illnesses, the consequences of vaping are clear and potentially fatal. The Trump administration took a prudent step by proposing a ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes. In Florida, State Rep. Jackie Toledo, R-Tampa, has filed legislation to raise the legal age to 21 to purchase vaping and tobacco products. Getting e-cigarettes off the market for teenagers and young adults is the right move, and a broader public education campaign is needed to spread the word about the health risks of vaping. (9/13)

When I walked into the exam room, Jack started waving a bill at me. “You cost me $1,500!” he almost shouted. “Why didn’t you warn me about the price of that visit?” When Jack called a few weeks earlier, I hadn’t been able to tell over the phone if he had pneumonia, the flu, or bronchitis, so I asked Jack, a retired medical colleague of mine, to come in to the office. As our health system’s finance office later explained to me, Jack’s new coverage was a high-deductible plan, and he had never before received a bill. My apologies and explanations were feckless. Jack observed ruefully, “I recovered from the bronchitis, but not from that bill.” (Walter J. O'Donnell, 9/16)

Stanley Goldfarb knew what he was talking about. Last week the former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania medical school wrote in these pages that climate change, gun control and “other progressive causes only tangentially related to treating illness” were beginning to corrupt medical training. His piece spurred a social-media eruption that immediately proved his point. Left-wing medical Twitter —yes, there is such a thing—piled on with virtue signaling that distorted Dr. Goldfarb’s argument. He didn’t write that doctors shouldn’t have opinions about political issues. He wrote that those issues shouldn’t interfere with the scientific and clinical training essential to producing doctors who can serve patients. (9/15)

The anti-vaccination effort is kindled by people who feel overwhelmed, disempowered and ignored. More importantly, they have lost confidence in our social institutions and believe those institutions are actively trying to harm them and their families. To take it a step further, this is a symptom of a greater problem, like the Tea Party movement, the Occupy protests, the rise of populist politicians like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, Brexit, etc. (Mike Madrid, 9/14)