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About 20 million Americans have gained coverage under ObamaCare since it was passed in 2010, but nearly 9 percent — 30 million people — still don’t have health insurance. All Democrats running for president say they want to provide universal health care coverage to Americans. But they have different ideas about how to get there. (Hellmann, 4/14)

House Democrats disagree sharply over where to take the nation’s health care system, but the infighting has eased — and for that they can thank President Donald Trump. The Trump administration’s renewed assault on Obamacare has quelled for the moment the simmering tensions over "Medicare for All" between Democrats’ vocal progressive wing and more moderate members and leaders. (Ollstein and Cancryn, 4/12)

President Trump has begun a fresh assault on the Affordable Care Act, declaring his intent to come up with a new health-care plan and backing a state-led lawsuit to eliminate the entire law. But Trump and Republicans face a major problem: The 2010 law known as Obamacare has become more popular and enmeshed in the country’s health-care system over time. Thirty-six states and the District of Columbia have expanded Medicaid — including more than a dozen run by Republicans — and 25 million more Americans are insured, with millions more enjoying coverage that is more comprehensive because of the law. (Winfield Cunningham, 4/13)

Publicly traded health insurer stocks took a hit this week amid fears that Medicare for All momentum and the federal government's proposal to nix drug rebates to pharmacy benefit managers could threaten their business models or even their existence. The stock price of the largest publicly traded insurers were all trading down on Friday and for the week, with Anthem taking the biggest hit, falling almost 14%. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 stock index was up. (Livingston, 4/12)

The Justice Department told a lawmaker this week that it had stopped defending a federal prohibition on female genital mutilation because of flaws in the law, two weeks after it also began fighting the Affordable Care Act in court rather than defend it. The department “reluctantly determined” that it could not appeal a federal judge’s decision to throw out a female circumcision case because the statute outlawing the practice needed to be rewritten, the solicitor general, Noel J. Francisco, wrote in a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. (Benner, 4/12)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that E. coli-contaminated ground beef was the suspected culprit in an outbreak that infected at least 109 people in six states. Investigators are a step closer to tracking down the source of contamination that has perplexed them since health officials in Kentucky and Georgia notified them on March 28. The CDC said 17 people have been hospitalized, though no deaths have been reported. (Horton, Brice-Saddler and Sun, 4/12)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Friday it has sent letters to Walmart Inc, Kroger Co and 10 other convenience store chains for selling tobacco products to minors. In the letters, dated April 5, the FDA asked the companies to submit a plan of action within 30 days, describing how they will address and mitigate illegal sales to minors. (4/13)

Three veterans killed themselves last week on Department of Veterans Affairs health care properties, barely a month after President Trump announced an aggressive task force to address the unremitting problem of veteran suicide. Mr. Trump’s executive order was a tacit acknowledgment of what the deaths rendered obvious: The department has not made a dent in stemming the approximately 20 suicide deaths every day among veterans, about one and a half times more often than those who have not served in the military, according to the most recent statistics available from the department. (Steinhauer, 4/14)

Democratic leadership and the party’s progressive flank are feuding over how best to lower drug prices. In recent weeks, tensions between the two camps have escalated, and some fights have even spilled into public view. In a high-profile tug of war, lawmakers hoping to strike an accord with the Trump administration have been forced to confront a faction pressing Democrats to instead pursue a bolder progressive agenda — albeit one that the GOP-controlled Senate would surely ignore. (Facher and Florko, 4/15)

[Oeter] Bach, the director for the center for health policy and outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, thinks that biosimilars, the would-be cheaper alternatives to the biologic drugs that are among the industry’s most expensive, are a lost cause. The government has been developing policies to foster a biosimilars market, one that would work like the generics market and ultimately drive down the price of versions of drugs like Epogen, Avastin, and Humira. But Bach and his frequent co-author, Mark Trusheim of the MIT Sloan School of Management, argue in two new blog posts in Health Affairs that it’s time to abandon that approach. (Herper and Silverman, 4/15)

North Dakota state lawmakers passed the first “heartbeat” bill in 2013 — a law that banned abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which can happen as early as six weeks, before a woman even knows she is pregnant. Lower courts ruled it unconstitutional, based on the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, and the high court refused to hear the appeal. Iowa passed a similar bill last year, and a state judge declared it unconstitutional, too. (Mettler, 4/12)

The new anti-abortion tilt of the U.S. Supreme Court has inspired some states to further restrict the procedure during the first trimester of pregnancy and move to outlaw abortion entirely if Roe v. Wade ever falls. But the rush to regulate has exposed division among groups and lawmakers who consider themselves staunch abortion opponents. On Thursday, Ohio became the latest state to ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected. For a long time, Ohio Right to Life supported a more gradual approach to restrict the procedure and deemed what's come to be called a "heartbeat bill" too radical — until this year. (Farmer and Fortier, 4/12)

The abortion debate is intensifying in North Carolina over a Republican measure supporters say will ensure doctors care properly for live babies delivered in unsuccessful abortions. Abortion-rights activists argue the proposal slated for state Senate floor debate late Monday is unnecessary for a non-existent problem and is designed to intimidate physicians and women who need medically necessary later-term abortions. (4/15)

This year, it happened again: Reidel underwent a colonoscopy at Norwood Hospital — which is fully covered by her insurance plan — only to discover that the anesthesiologist who worked there was not. The bill: $2,490. What happened after Reidel, 64, received these unexpected medical charges illustrates one of the most frustrating and unpredictable aspects of the health care system: It was only after dozens of phone calls and numerous letters to insurance companies and the providers that she got these bills dismissed. (Kowalczyk, 4/13)

The latest plan to control rising drug prices in Massachusetts is also the most controversial. It would set so-called upper payment limits on drugs that state regulators deem unreasonably expensive. No one — including doctors, pharmacies, hospitals, health insurers and patients — could be required to pay more than that cap. (Bebinger, 4/12)

Since the 1990s, activists in cities such as Chicago, San Francisco and New York have led the nation in practicing harm reduction, a set of tools such as needle exchanges and naloxone distribution designed to help people addicted to drugs make incremental improvements to their health. But in the Bible Belt, many Southerners who held conservative views often criticized harm reduction as something that encouraged — not ended — the use of drugs. Those practices, in many states, were banned outright. But attitudes have shifted, given the sheer scale of the epidemic, proof that some harm reduction efforts save lives as well as taxpayer dollars, and the changing cultural view of drug users. (Blau, 4/15)

A plan to stem opioid addiction, including the proposed establishment of a syringe exchange program, will be unveiled Monday at the Roanoke City Council meeting. Council members will be briefed by the Roanoke Valley Collective Response, a group representing 80-plus organizations that came together last year to address the crisis. (Gendreau, 4/13)

The tools for treating drug addiction are there — they just aren't reaching most of the people who need them. That's the conclusion reached by the National Academies in a report last month on the opioid epidemic: only a fraction of the estimated 2 million Americans addicted to opioids — including heroin, fetanyl and prescription painkillers — receive medications proven to help manage their condition. It's a predicament long recognized by addiction specialists. Just 38 percent of U.S. counties have a clinic for treating addiction to drugs, alcohol and other substances, according to federal figures. (4/14)

In the first three months since The Doorway — the state's new "hub-and-spoke program" for substance-use disorders — opened, more than 1,400 people have sought help there. That number includes both people seeking direct services, and family or friends looking for information about how to help a loved one, according to statistics from the state Department of Health and Human Services. There were 1,011 individuals seen in person, and 592 accessed The Doorway by calling the 2-1-1 helpline (some did both).Statewide, The Doorway staff have provided 631 clinical evaluations and made 776 referrals to treatment in those first three months. (Wickham, 4/14)

A nonprofit group in Philadelphia is fighting in court to be allowed to open the first facility in the country for people to use illegal opioids under medical supervision. The group, called Safehouse, has the backing of local government, yet faces a legal challenge from federal prosecutors. The idea of supervised injection sites is to offer people a space where they can use drugs under the supervision of trained medical staff, who are prepared with the overdose-reversal drug naloxone. (Allyn, 4/13)

A new campaign has launched in Virginia to help pregnant mothers who abuse opioids or other drugs. The Roanoke Times reports that several groups have partnered to launch an effort to connect women with recovery programs. The program is called “Mother-up” and its website is mother-up.org. Participating groups include the Children’s Trust, Carilion Clinic and the Virginia Department of Social Services. (4/15)

In 2017 it was a Somali community in Minnesota. In 2014 it was the Amish in Ohio. This year, it is Orthodox Jewish communities in New York and Eastern Europeans in Washington state. Insular and close-knit religious or cultural groups have seen some of the worst measles outbreaks in the U.S. in recent years. About 75% of measles outbreaks over the past five years—defined as three or more linked cases—took place in such tightknit communities, says Nancy Messonnier, acting director of the CDC’s Center for Preparedness and Response, and an expert on immunization and respiratory diseases. (Reddy, 4/15)

Mayor Bill de Blasio has fostered a close relationship with the city’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community during his political rise in New York. He represented the Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park, Brooklyn, when he sat on the City Council, and that community coalesced behind Mr. de Blasio when he ran for public advocate and then mayor. Mr. de Blasio has courted donors from the Orthodox community and gave at least two of them, Jona S. Rechnitz and Jeremiah Reichberg, spots on his first inauguration committee. (Mays, 4/15)

Some school districts in the U.S. are booting unvaccinated students from campuses where infectious-disease cases have been confirmed, as the spread of measles accelerates in some states. Birmingham Public Schools in Michigan recently told families with students at Derby Middle School that students who are unvaccinated against measles have to stay out of school for 21 days after one child was diagnosed with the disease. (Hobbs, 4/13)

As the recent measles outbreak in Clark County has shown, a disease being preventable doesn’t mean people will do what they can to prevent it. A disease once thought eradicated can come roaring back if not enough people are vaccinated against it. Public-health officials and doctors face myriad obstacles when trying to persuade patients to get vaccinated. The trouble can range from falsehoods spread on social media, to lax laws, to tailoring messages for a wide range of audiences. (Blethen, 4/13)

According to the CDC, the percentage of Ohio toddlers who have received the recommended doses of vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella has declined in recent years. National Immunization Survey data showed 95.6 percent of 19- to 35-month-old Ohio children had the vaccine in 2014. But by 2017, the percentage had dropped to 88.3 percent. (Price, 4/12)

Health officials have confirmed a third case of the measles in Connecticut this year. An adult from New Haven County was exposed to the disease last month during a visit to Brooklyn, N.Y., the state Department of Public Health said Friday. (Carlesso, 4/12)

Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, co-sponsored the 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act while serving as a Democratic congressman from Rhode Island. In 2013, he founded the not-for-profit Kennedy Forum to support parity in health insurance coverage for behavioral and addiction treatment and advance evidence-based practices. Kennedy, who wrote a 2015 memoir about his and his family’s struggles with mental illness and addiction, currently is pushing regulators and large employers to crack down on insurers that discriminate against people who need behavioral care. Kennedy recently spoke with Modern Healthcare senior reporter Harris Meyer. The following is an edited transcript. (Meyer, 4/13)

The closing of an inpatient psychiatric unit in Lander has highlighted another issue in the state's mental healthcare system. That's the difficulty of transporting a mentally ill patient to and from a hospital. If a person in northern Wyoming needs inpatient psychiatric care, the first thing they need to tackle is how to get to the hospital. (Kudelska, 4/12)

Mental health is a largely stigmatized conversation among young Latina women and other women of color in the Eastern Coachella Valley, a rural, unincorporated area of Riverside County. In 2018, a small group of young women, ranging from ages 15-25, and their adult allies launched a new storytelling collective called ¡Que Madre! Media with the goal of challenging those stigmas through storytelling. (Rodriguez, 4/14)

Smoking has been the No. 1 preventable cause of cancer for decades and still kills more than 500,000 people a year in the United States. But obesity is poised to take the top spot, as Americans’ waistlines continue to expand while tobacco use plummets. The switch could occur in five or 10 years, said Otis Brawley, a Johns Hopkins oncologist and former chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. The rise in obesity rates could threaten the steady decline in cancer death rates since the early 1990s, he said. (McGinley, 4/14)

Noelle Johnson, 42, was diagnosed with her first cancer — a soft tissue sarcoma under her right arm — in 1999 when she was 21. In 2013, her physicians found six different cancers in her breasts. In the years that followed, surgeons discovered and removed numerous masses they deemed “premalignant” from her ovary, her uterus, her leg, arm and chest wall, aiming to get them out before they turned cancerous. Each tumor was distinct, that is, none resulted from the spread of any of the others. For Johnson, having multiple primary tumors diagnosed at an unusually young age was both scary and baffling. “It was crazy,” recalls Johnson, who lives in Windsor, Col., where she operates a day-care center in her home. “My world started to spin. It was a huge red flag.” (Cimons, 4/14)

In 2016, Jennifer Cook, a California schoolteacher who had breast implants in 2010, noticed a change in one of her breasts. So when a school play she attended with her class had a line in it about breast cancer and implants, she got nervous. After a quick online search turned up some scary stories, she got scanned and soon learned she had four masses around the implant — two of which were behind the implant, and therefore not palpable and not visible on a regular mammogram or ultrasound. She was diagnosed with something called breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma, or BIA-ALCL. (Berger, 4/13)

When thinking about cancer therapy in recent years, Dorothy’s famous line from “The Wizard of Oz” comes to my mind: “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” Most fellows in oncology — including myself — begin their training by caring for patients with leukemia because they need a lot of monitoring. Patients with leukemia often are diagnosed with severe bleeds or infections and need treatment urgently. For decades, treatment for acute leukemia had been largely the same: seven days of a constant drip of drugs through an IV, followed by weeks in the hospital to monitor for complications — kidney problems, infections and other life-threatening side effects. (Parikh, 4/14)

Families come in all varieties. Some we’re born into; others we get to choose; still others are accidental. Thirty-five years ago, I unwittingly (and unwillingly) joined the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center family when I became a patient there. On that evening, when I was alone and afraid hours before surgery for metastatic testicular cancer, a young man entered my room in that famous New York hospital wearing a pale blue coat. Alan explained that he was a hospital volunteer, a member of what was then called the “patient-to-patient” program; it took me 30 minutes to realize that meant he was a testicular cancer survivor who had been matched to me. (Petrow, 4/13)

"Is Gardasil 9 right for me?" my patient asked during a recent office visit. She is 45, recently divorced from her husband of 20 years and crafting her online dating profile. She’s also wondering whether she is a candidate for the vaccine that protects against nine strains of the human papilloma virus (HPV) — a virus that causes most cervical, oral and anal cancer. Ten years ago, L — I’m referring to her by her first initial to protect her privacy — brought her then preteen daughter to a pediatrician to get her immunized against HPV. (Miller, 4/13)

When Merdis Wells visited the diabetes clinic at the University Medical Center in New Orleans about a year ago, a nurse practitioner checked her eyes to look for signs of diabetic retinopathy, the most common cause of blindness. At her next visit, in February of this year, artificial intelligence software made the call. The clinic had just installed a system that's designed to identify patients who need follow-up attention. (Harris, 4/14)

More than 883,000 people had data exposed in healthcare breaches reported to the federal government last month. That's down from a whopping 2 million people whose data was compromised in healthcare breaches reported in February, according to HHS' Office for Civil Rights, the agency that maintains the government's database of healthcare breaches. (Livingston, 4/12)

The American Medical Association has launched a new project with Sling Health, a national biotechnology incubator, in an effort to integrate physician perspectives into new technology development as early as possible. The two groups debuted the project, called the Clinical Problem Database, on the AMA's Physician Innovation Network, an online forum that connects physicians with digital health companies seeking clinician feedback. (Cohen, 4/12)

Sutter Health agreed to pay $30 million to settle allegations that the Sacramento, Calif.-based health system submitted inflated diagnosis codes to the CMS for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries, the Justice Department announced Friday. The CMS pays private insurers a set amount per person to administer program benefits under Advantage plans and adjusts the payments based on "risk scores," calculated using demographic information and health status data. Sutter and its affiliates contracted with certain Medicare Advantage organizations and received a share of the reimbursement for the beneficiaries under Sutter's care. (Kacik, 4/12)

The managed care plan, known as Medicare Advantage, pays a per-person fee to health insurance plans to provide care to enrolled beneficiaries. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services adjusts those capitation fees based on the health status and demographic information of each enrollee. Commonly referred to as risk scores, these adjustments pay more for patients who have a more severe diagnosis. Sutter and its affiliates — Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation, Sutter Pacific Medical Foundation, Sutter Gould Medical Foundation, and the Sacramento region’s Sutter Medical Foundation — contract with the health insurance plans to care for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries. In exchange, the health plans paid Sutter a portion of the payments received from CMS. (Anderson, 4/13)

Sutter Health, a nonprofit organization that runs several medical foundations and hospitals, has contracts with Medicare Advantage private plans. It collects part of the Medicare payments for patients it treats. According to the allegations, the Sutter affiliates submitted unsubstantiated diagnoses for certain patients that elevated their risk score, which meant the private plans and Sutter collected more money. Among the Sutter affiliates named in the complaint were Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation, Sutter Pacific Medical Foundation in San Francisco and the North Bay, Sutter Gould Medical Foundation in the Central Valley, and Sutter Medical Foundation in Northern California. (Allday, 4/12)

Rhode Island’s state police superintendent is recommending that all of the state’s 911 call takers be trained to provide emergency medical instructions over the phone before first responders arrive. Col. James M. Manni on Friday confirmed that he is asking Gov. Gina Raimondo to have all 34 telecommunicators and eight supervisors in the 911 emergency center certified in emergency medical dispatch, or EMD. EMD certification is required for people who answer emergency medical calls in every other New England state. (Arditi, 4/12)

Some 2,000 families have stopped accepting foster children in the past five years — almost as many as the total number of foster families currently in the system. The departures have further strained the longstanding gap between available foster homes and the thousands of abused and neglected kids who need a safe haven. (Lazar, 4/13)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday released a suite of proposals for how to confront the soaring wildfire liability costs that pushed PG&E Corp. into bankruptcy and threaten the financial health of the state’s other utilities. The ideas include creating a California wildfire fund to spread costs from fire-related lawsuits, and modifying a state liability standard that makes utilities responsible for damages arising from fires sparked by their equipment, even if they aren’t found negligent in maintaining it. (Blunt, 4/12)

As many as one out of five in-network claims made for Ohio patients with Obamacare are denied, according to research by the Kaiser Family Foundation.When a health insurance claim is denied, that leaves patients or providers to cover the cost, leading to unexpected medical bills for patients or unpaid debt for health systems. (Christ, 4/14)

Powerful storms swept across the South on Sunday after unleashing suspected tornadoes and flooding that killed at least eight people, injured dozens and flattened much of a Texas town. Three children were among the dead. Nearly 90,000 customers were without electricity in Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Georgia as of midday Sunday, according to www.poweroutage.us as the severe weather left a trail of destruction. Two children were killed on a back road in East Texas when a pine tree fell onto the car in which they were riding in a severe thunderstorm Saturday near Pollok, about 150 miles (241 kilometers) southeast of Dallas. (4/14)

Border Patrol agents dropped off asylum-seeking migrants in New Mexico's second most populous city for the second day in a row Saturday, prompting Las Cruces city officials to appeal for donations of food and personal hygiene items and a state medical program to seek volunteers to provide health assessments of migrants. The migrants were being temporarily housed at a homeless shelter in Las Cruces, a city recreation center and a campus of social service agencies, city officials said in a statement. (4/13)

The Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency is assisting nearly 8,000 people between the ages of 16 and 24 with intellectual disabilities, helping some obtain certifications for everything from nursing to robotics. The program at Georgia Tech, one of the country’s elite universities, represents perhaps the most ambitious attempt yet to “mainstream” such young adults after a long history of segregating, isolating and giving up on them. (Oliviero, 4/12)

New Jersey preschoolers have the highest rates of autism ever measured in the United States, a rate that has increased faster than in other states studied, researchers at Rutgers University reported Thursday. The rate of autism among children in the state has tripled in a generation. (Washburn, 4/12)

Texas lawmakers are considering reforms aimed at improving the state's worst-in-the-nation nursing home quality, seeking to build on laws passed in recent years that have yet to demonstrate an effect. The proposals — to limit antipsychotics and improve hiring practices — come against a backdrop of decreased federal oversight and few new initiatives to lift quality in other states. (Rayasam, 4/15)

A new law standardizing Kansas’ response to child-on-child sexual assault could cost $126,000 and result in more than 3,200 treatment referrals a year. Gov. Laura Kelly signed legislation Friday that directs the Department for Children and Families to immediately refer a minor to treatment if the agency receives a report that the child sexually abused another child. The new statute also requires the department to document whether treatment was provided to the child accused of abuse, the reasons for needing it and the outcome. (Ujiyedin, 4/12)

Massachusetts was the first state in the nation to make social justice goals a cornerstone of marijuana legalization. But two years in, those equity provisions are giving way to old inequities, small players are being squeezed by the bigger national ones, and the question of which minority entrepreneur most deserves the neighborhood’s trust is proving to be hard to discern, a Spotlight Team review shows. (4/13)

The state of Missouri needs to know how many patients will be asking for legal medical marijuana in the next few years, but first officials must decide which estimate to believe. Advocates who spearheaded November’s successful ballot measure legalizing the drug have put the number at about 200,000 users. (Marso, 4/12)

Viewed in its own right, the recently re-introduced John S. McCain Opioid Addiction Prevention Act (S. 724/H.R. 1614) reflects simultaneous allegiance to patients with chronic or ongoing pain, to patients with acute or temporary pain who may be at risk of addiction and eventual overdose, to children and others who may find excess opioid medications and abuse them and to those who care for these individuals. U.S. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and U.S. Reps. John Katko (R-N.Y.) and Thomas R. Suozzi (D-N.Y.) took great care in assuring that approach. (Steven C. Anderson, 4/14)

In a span of 24 hours, the prospects for chronic pain patients treated with opioid medication vastly improved. On April 9, the Food and Drug Administration made official what hundreds of doctors have been saying for years: Patients whose intractable pain is being treated with opioids should move off them slowly, if they are to be tapered at all. The agency said it received reports of “uncontrolled pain, psychological distress, and suicide” among patients who have become dependent on opioids when that medication is suddenly “discontinued or the dose rapidly decreased.” (Sally Satel, 4/14)

Last week, New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced extraordinary measures to counter the growing measles outbreak among the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The decision to declare a health emergency and order mandatory vaccinations of the whole community represents the strongest state response to a mounting public health crisis in decades. The controversy over measles outbreaks among ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in New York City and its surrounds has become a flash point amid the growing national controversy over the resurgence of the anti-vaccination movement. (Julia Bowes, 4/15)

There has been appropriate handwringing since 2010 about the affordability of Affordable Care Act plans in the marketplaces. But new data show that health insurance is decidedly less affordable for lower income people who get coverage at work than for their counterparts with similar incomes in the marketplaces. Why it matters: It’s another example of how, when we focus so much on the ACA markets, we lose sight of problems in the employer-based health system where far more people get their coverage. For lower-wage workers, their coverage is decidedly worse than ACA coverage is. (Drew Altman, 4/15)

Believe it or not, America may be debating ObamaCare yet again. “Repealing but not replacing”—a terrible idea, you may remember—has come bouncing back like a bad penny. This time the effort is judicial rather than legislative, but it will run up against the same wall: The logic of American health care still pushes in the directions President Obama chose. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act 5-4 in 2012 because Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s liberals. But the grounds were narrow: The chief justice appealed to Congress’s taxing power viewing the ACA’s penalty for not purchasing health insurance as a tax. Odd, many ACA supporters thought at the time, but we’ll take it. (Alan S. Blinder, 4/14)

While some health systems have successfully reduced medical errors, improved their use of evidence-based guidelines, and coordinated care across doctors, most continue to struggle — and patients pay the price.With grossly uneven quality and a body of existing solutions, does health care need more imitation and less innovation? As Anna M. Roth and Thomas H. Lee suggested in the Harvard Business Review, maybe we should be anointing more chief imitation officers — people who scour the literature and the country for effective practices to bring home — and fewer chief innovation officers. (Dhruv Khullar, 4/12)

Many of psychology’s concepts and terms have, in recent decades, entered our vernacular. Political pundits speak casually of “confirmation bias” — the way people focus selectively on evidence that backs up their existing beliefs — and many laypeople know the purported role of serotonin in producing a sense of well-being. Psychological discoveries continue to sharpen and refine our understanding of human suffering and of the human condition more broadly. Nonetheless, many myths about psychology persist.  (Stephen Hardi, 4/15)

When He Jiankui announced the birth of twin girls whose DNA he had modified when they were embryos using the CRISPR gene-editing tool, he justified his actions on the ground that he had given the two girls lifetime immunity from HIV infection. The Chinese scientist claimed that he had altered a gene called CCR5, which allows the AIDS-causing virus to infect an important class of cells in the human immune system.Not only was He ethically wrong in doing this work, but its scientific basis was even weaker than generally recognized. (Henry T. Greely, 4/15)

PM 2.5 kills people. There has been little dispute that microscopic particulate matter in air pollution penetrates into the deepest parts of the lungs and contributes to the early deaths each year of thousands of people in the United States with heart and lung disease. One recent study called PM 2.5 “the largest environmental risk factor worldwide,” responsible for many more deaths than alcohol use, physical inactivity or high sodium intake. (John Balmes, 4/14)

Leigh syndrome is a terrible disease. In the worst cases, it emerges shortly after birth and claims one major organ after another. Movement becomes difficult, and then impossible. A tracheotomy and feeding tube are often necessary by toddlerhood, and as the disease progresses, lungs frequently have to be suctioned manually. Most children with the condition die by the age of 5 or 6. Leigh syndrome is one of hundreds of so-called mitochondrial diseases, which are caused by defects in the specialized cellular compartments — called mitochondria — that produce 90 percent of the body’s energy. (4/12)

The legislature’s passage last week of an anti-abortion “heartbeat” bill became inevitable in November. That’s when the state’s voters elected Mike DeWine Ohio’s governor and when they decided that Republicans should stay in charge of the state Senate and Ohio’s House.DeWine signed the heartbeat bill Thursday. It’s sponsored by Sen. Kristina Roegner, a Hudson Republican. Next, a federal judge will almost certainly forbid Ohio to enforce the measure. (Thomas Suddes, 4/14)

The Ohio legislature and Gov. Mike DeWine have acted to deny women in the state the ability to make their own decisions about their health and families. Last week, DeWine signed a bill that, if allowed to go into effect, would outlaw abortion care at or after six weeks, before most women even know they are pregnant. That our state’s politicians would criminalize patient care should alarm all Ohioans and sets a concerning precedent for the practice of medicine. (David Hackney, 4/15)

The very symptoms causing desperately ill patients to spill into our streets are being protected in the name of compassion. This is dialing back to a Medieval understanding of psychiatric illness and is absolutely outrageous, particularly in the era of effective treatments which can restore patients to stability. (Drew Pinsky, 4/13)