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John S. McCain, the proud naval aviator who climbed from depths of despair as a prisoner of war in Vietnam to pinnacles of power as a Republican congressman and senator from Arizona and a two-time contender for the presidency, died on Saturday at his home in Arizona. He was 81. According to a statement from his office, Mr. McCain died at 4:28 p.m. local time. He had suffered from a malignant brain tumor, called a glioblastoma, for which he had been treated periodically with radiation and chemotherapy since its discovery in 2017. (McFadden, 8/25)

For John McCain, a lifetime of courage, contradictions and contrarianism came down to one vote, in the middle of the night, in the twilight of his career. The fate of President Donald Trump's long effort to repeal Barack Obama's health care law hung in the balance as a Senate roll call dragged on past 1 a.m. on a July night in 2017. (Benac, 8/27)

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also voted against undoing the health care law, said on CNN that McCain “felt very strongly about virtually every issue that he tackled, but it was never based in partisanship.” Collins recalled the huddle among the three Republicans before McCain cast his vote. “Lisa and I crossed the Senate floor to where John was sitting, and we knew that he was struggling with the issue,” she said. “We sat down and started talking with him, and all of a sudden he pointed to the two of us and said, ‘You two are right.’ And that’s when I knew that he was going to vote no.” (Warmbrodt, 8/26)

Kaiser Health News: McCain’s Complicated Health Care Legacy: He Hated The ACA. He Also Saved It.

There are many lawmakers who made their names in health care, seeking to usher through historic changes to a broken system.John McCain was not one of them. And yet, the six-term senator from Arizona and decorated military veteran leaves behind his own health care legacy, seemingly driven less by his interest in health care policy than his disdain for bullies trampling the “little guy.” (Huetteman, 8/25)

Mr. McCain was frequently referred to as a “maverick,” an image he cultivated to advance his political goals, including two failed presidential runs. After those defeats, he became known as a conservative lion of the Senate, who — despite his famous temper — believed that partisan disputes and civility could coexist in Washington. (Stack, 8/26)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose effort to repeal President Obama’s signature health-care legislature failed because Mr. McCain withdrew support in a striking, late-night vote, said: “In an era filled with cynicism about national unity and public service, John McCain’s life shone as a bright example. He showed us that boundless patriotism and self-sacrifice are not outdated concepts or clichés, but the building blocks of an extraordinary American life.” (Corse, 8/26)

Sen. John McCain’s death touches off a number of questions about who will succeed him, putting the spotlight on Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, who will choose a replacement. A spokesman for Gov. Ducey said Sunday any appointment won’t be announced until after Mr. McCain has been laid to rest. “Now is a time for remembering and honoring a consequential life well lived,” the spokesman said. (Hughes, 8/26)

About 14,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most common form of adult brain cancer, every year. It will kill all but 15 percent within five years. Barely half live 18 months. Of two dozen experimental drugs tested in clinical trials for newly diagnosed glioblastoma in the last decade, zero improved survival. The last drug to do so, by an average of about two months, was temozolomide, approved in 2005. The newest experimental treatment, based on electromagnetic waves, bought patients an average of five more months. (Begley, 8/25)

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for eight years under President Obama, was arrested in Brooklyn on Friday morning and charged with groping a woman in his apartment in October 2017, the police said. A 55-year-old woman came forward to the police in July and said that Dr. Frieden squeezed her buttocks against her will nine months earlier, on Oct. 20, the police said. She told investigators the incident happened as she was leaving a gathering at Dr. Frieden’s residence on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights. (Wilson, 8/24)

Dr. Frieden was hosting a get-together at his home when the incident occurred, according to a senior law-enforcement official. Dr. Frieden squeezed the unidentified woman’s buttocks “on the way out the door” as people were exiting, added the official, who didn’t know if there were any other witnesses. The woman is someone who has been known by Dr. Frieden and his family for a number of years, according to two people familiar with the matter. (Kanno-Youngs and Betsy McKay, 8/24)

Dr. Thomas Frieden, who for years informed the public about dangers to their health, sat stone-faced as a judge warned him not to approach the woman, who accused him of groping her on Oct. 20, 2017, in his Brooklyn home. Frieden, who also is a former New York City health commissioner, was arrested earlier Friday on three charges: forcible touching, sex abuse and harassment. His attorney, Laura Brevetti, entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. (8/24)

A spokesman for Frieden said: “This allegation does not reflect Dr. Frieden’s public or private behavior or his values over a lifetime of service to improve health around the world.” (Garde and Branswell, 8/24)

As New York’s health commissioner under then-Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I), Frieden was the architect of controversial public health policies. Among them was a citywide ban on workplace smoking, including restaurants and bars. New York City also became the first place in the United States to eliminate trans fats from restaurants. Earlier, working in the health department’s tuberculosis branch, he realized that the city’s campaign against antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis would require going out and making sure that patients finished their course of medicine. He set up a program that did so, including locking up homeless people if he had to. The tuberculosis control program he led lowered the incidence of cases that were resident to multiple drug treatments. (Berman and Goldstein, 8/24)

Dr. Thomas Frieden has been a giant in public health for decades. Now, sexual misconduct charges threaten not only his legacy but also his vision for leading a global effort to combat disease outbreaks and chronic diseases. Frieden, who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for eight years, had plotted a third act in his long career with an organization called Resolve To Save Lives. Like a CDC in miniature, Resolve was built in Frieden’s image and focused its attention on two of his banner global health issues: heart disease and epidemics. Frieden raised $225 million from wealthy donors to get Resolve off the ground in 2017, chasing the oft-stated goal of saving 100 million lives over 30 years by working with countries around the world on public health initiatives. (Garde, 8/26)

U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp says in a television ad released last week that 300,000 North Dakota residents with pre-existing medical conditions couldn’t get health insurance before former President Barack Obama’s health care law. Health care is a big issue in midterm races across the country, and has become especially charged in North Dakota, where Heitkamp’s re-election race against Republican U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer is seen as critical to control of the Senate. (MacPherson, 8/24)

Activists gathered at an Orlando park on Thursday to call on Governor Rick Scott to remove Florida from a lawsuit that challenges the Affordable Care Act. The lawsuit, which was filed by 20 states in February, says the ACA is unconstitutional. If it is successful, the lawsuit could eliminate the ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions. (Pagano, 8/24)

Many consumers have anxiety about getting health insurance right. There are several different strategies available for health coverage, but few comprehensive resources to help consumers evaluate their options. Further, the Tennessee Health Care Campaign, one of the groups in Tennessee that helps consumers with health insurance, announced earlier this month that it won’t apply for federal funding to help consumers find coverage in 2019. (Tolbert, 8/24)

Individual behaviors are the largest contributors to premature death, accounting for 40%, according to a 2007 New England Journal of Medicine story, while healthcare made up just 10%. The concept of social determinants of health was first introduced to U.S. policy in the 1960s when President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a War of Poverty that brought about Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, Job Corps and Head Start. (Johnson, 8/25)

The movement to better address the social and environmental factors that affect health has insurance companies and other payers looking beyond the hospital or clinic and stepping into the community to give patients help where it's needed. That might mean giving patients free Lyft rides to the doctor's office; connecting them with a food bank or footing the bill for home-delivered meals; or financing temporary housing. Medicaid programs in some states are requiring insurers to screen beneficiaries for social and environmental factors that could lead to poor health. (Livingston, 8/25)

Colorful umbrellas dotted an otherwise bleak cemetery landscape as chaplains led a crowd of about 50 people in prayer. Kate Plants, the organizer of the memorial service, stood by an ash tree, crying. The ceremony was a memorial for the potential souls lost in one of the biggest mishaps in the history of modern reproductive technology, the “catastrophic failure” of a cryogenic tank at the University Hospitals Fertility Center in Cleveland. Four-thousand eggs and embryos had been destroyed in a single weekend. Five of them belonged to Plants, 33. (Cha, 8/24)

Marijuana's main mind-altering ingredient was detected in nursing mothers' breast milk in a small study that comes amid evidence that more U.S. women are using pot during pregnancy and afterward. Experts say the ingredient, THC, has chemical properties that could allow it to disrupt brain development and potentially cause harm, although solid evidence of that is lacking. (Tanner, 8/27)

Kaiser Health News: Pediatricians Put It Bluntly: Motherhood And Marijuana Don’t Mix

The strong direction to women and pediatricians comes as more than half of states, including California, have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use, and studies show that a growing number of babies are being exposed to the drug. The march toward marijuana legalization has outpaced scientific research about its effects. Because marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug — by definition, one with potential for abuse and no approved medical use — federal law has limited research on it. But in a detailed review of the existing safety data published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, researchers concluded that enough concerns exist about both short-term growth and long-term neurological consequences for children to recommend against it. (Gold, 8/27)

Planned Parenthood’s midtown Kansas City clinic can no longer perform medication abortions after its license officially expired on Aug. 10. Clinic officials say they sought timely renewal of its license, but state health officials delayed it after saying they were unable to conduct a complete inspection of the facility in June. The clinic had no abortion provider on the premises at the time, having stopped performing medication abortions on March 29 when its previous provider left. (Margolies, 8/24)

The British government announced on Saturday that women in England would legally be allowed to take an abortion pill at home for the first time, following in the footsteps of decisions by Scotland and Wales. Under the new regulation, set to take effect by the end of this year, women will be able to take the second of two early abortion pills “in the safe and familiar surroundings of their own home,” the government said. Currently, women seeking to terminate a pregnancy in the first 10 weeks must take two pills — mifepristone and misoprostol — at a clinic, 24 to 48 hours apart. (Joseph, 8/25)

It’s been years since the tobacco industry promised to stop luring young people to smoke cigarettes. Philip Morris International says it is “designing a smoke-free future.” British American Tobacco, likewise, claims to be “transforming tobacco” into a safer product. But while the Food and Drug Administration weighs plans to cut nicotine in cigarettes, making them less addictive, Big Tobacco has been making the most of the time it still has using social networks to promote its brands around the world. (Kaplan, 8/24)

The leaders of a small start-up, PAX Labs, gathered at a board meeting in early 2015 to review the marketing strategy for its sleek new electronic cigarette, called Juul. They watched video clips of hip young people, posed flirtatiously holding Juuls. And they talked about the name of the gadget, meant to suggest an object of beauty and to catch on as a verb — as in “to Juul.” While the campaign wasn’t targeted specifically at teenagers, a former senior manager said that he and others in the company were well aware it could appeal to them. After Juuls went on sale in June 2015, he said, the company quickly realized that teenagers were, in fact, using them because they posted images of themselves vaping Juuls on social media. (Richtel and Kaplan, 8/27)

A group funded by the tobacco industry has launched a massive ad blitz against a ballot initiative to fund Montana's Medicaid expansion program and other health programs by raising the cigarette tax by $2 per pack and taxing vaping products for the first time. Montanans Against Tax Hikes booked air time starting in mid-August on television stations in Billings, Missoula, Butte and Bozeman, Great Falls, Helena and Glendive, according to purchase orders filed with the Federal Communications Commission records. (Volz, 8/24)

Taking a low-dose aspirin every day has long been known to cut the chances of another heart attack, stroke or other heart problem in people who already have had one, but the risks don’t outweigh the benefits for most other folks, major new research finds. Although it’s been used for more than a century, aspirin’s value in many situations is still unclear. The latest studies are some of the largest and longest to test this pennies-a-day blood thinner in people who don’t yet have heart disease or a blood vessel-related problem. (Marchione, 8/26)

Daily use of a prescription-grade fish oil pill, first marketed by GlaxoSmithKline before going generic, failed to prevent serious cardiovascular events or death in people with diabetes, according to results from a large clinical trial presented Sunday. The negative outcome of the study, called ASCEND, adds to the growing body of scientific evidence casting doubt on the long-term heart benefit of products containing omega-3 fatty acids. (Feuerstein, 8/26)

For the first time, a drug has been shown to help people lose weight and keep it off for several years without raising their risk for heart problems — a safety milestone that may encourage wider use to help curb the obesity epidemic. The drug, Belviq, has been sold in the United States since 2013 and is the first of several new weight-loss medicines to succeed in a long-term heart safety study now required by federal regulators to stay on the market. (Marchione, 8/26)

Who is to blame for fattening up Americans and killing their hearts? McDonald’s, it seems, is not even in the running. In fact, when you compare the fare under the Golden Arches with many of the dishes served at chain restaurants around the country, a Big Mac with large fries and soda begins to sound like health food. Hungry for a hearty breakfast? You could — if you dare to test the resilience of your heart — try the Cheesecake Factory’s Breakfast Burrito: “warm tortilla filled with scrambled eggs, bacon, chicken chorizo, cheese, crispy potatoes, avocado, peppers and onions, over spicy ranchero sauce.” Nutritional information: 2,730 calories (more than a day’s worth, so I hope you’ll skip lunch and dinner), 4,630 milligrams of sodium (two days’ worth) and 73 grams of saturated fat (more than three days’ worth). (Brody, 8/27)

Symptoms of poor cardiovascular health may be linked to an increased risk for Parkinson’s disease, a new study has found. Researchers used data on 17,163,560 South Koreans over 40 years old and found 44,205 cases of Parkinson’s over the course of a five-year follow-up. They looked for five cardiovascular risk factors that define the metabolic syndrome: abdominal obesity, high triglycerides, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and high glucose readings. The study is in PLOS Medicine. (Bakalar, 8/24)

More Americans die from the effects of heat than of any other form of severe weather, and this summer has seen one heat wave after another. Some places in the U.S. and elsewhere have recorded their highest temperatures ever. In fact, the average temperature around the planet over the past four years has been the highest ever recorded, and nine of the 10 hottest years were all in this century. (The other was 1998.) All of this would suggest that more people must be experiencing heat-related illness or death. But it's more complicated than that. (Joyce, 8/26)

Falling from an airplane would ruin most people's day. But if you're James Bond, it's no big deal. After getting pushed out of a plane in the 1979 film Moonraker, Bond initiates a midair fight with a nearby skydiving villain and takes the evildoer's parachute. As his enemy plunges to the ground, Bond fights off a second bad guy, deploys his chute and floats gracefully to Earth. Piece of cake. (Chisholm, 8/24)

This Saturday will mark a year since Minnesota experienced its most severe measles outbreak in recent history, and public health officials are still trying to get the word out about measles vaccinations. Last year, the state had 75 cases of the disease, making it the largest outbreak since 1990. (Richert, 8/24)

But even as more stories like Ray Griffin’s come out — and even as evidence mounts about the connection between head injuries and CTE as well as other diseases like Parkinson’s — the number of colleges offering the sport isn’t shrinking. In fact, it’s growing. (Kessler, 8/24)

Federal health officials say they've confirmed more than 500 cases of people who became sick with an intestinal illness after eating McDonald's salads. The illnesses reported earlier this year are linked to the cyclospora parasite, which can cause diarrhea, intestinal pain, nausea or fatigue. The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that 507 cases have been confirmed in 15 states and New York City. (8/24)

On Tuesdays and Fridays, an estimated 19,000 people stream down the hill from Congo’s North Kivu province to cross the border into this small town (Mpondwe, Uganda), many of them headed to a sprawling open-air market. In recent weeks, crossing the border has become more difficult as Ugandan health authorities have beefed up precautions against the spread of the Ebola virus. An outbreak centered in North Kivu is responsible for 105 confirmed or suspected cases, including 67 deaths, according to Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who has just returned from the area. (Sun and Bernstein, 8/24)

The world has never been so prepared for an Ebola outbreak, but the latest emergence of the virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s conflict-ridden east is proving the most dangerous in years. Seventy-two out of 111 patients who have been infected with the hemorrhagic fever have died, making this outbreak the deadliest in more than a decade in Congo, where the disease was first diagnosed in 1976 and named after the nearby Ebola River. (Bariyo and McKay, 8/26)

More than 265,500 kids in Tennessee ages 2 to 17 have been diagnosed with a mental health issue, according to estimates by the state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. Approximately 62,000 adolescents ages 12 to 17 have had a major depressive episode in the past year. And very few districts in the state meet the recommended national guidelines of having one psychologist for every 1,000 students. This year some Middle Tennessee school districts cut funding for school psychologists; others simply don't have money in their budgets to hire enough to meet the student needs. (Bliss, Meyer and Kelman, 8/26)

The Driver Responsibility Program, which state lawmakers enacted in 2003, charges additional fees for certain offenses like speeding, driving without insurance and driving while intoxicated. ... The program came about as legislators were searching for a way to fund the state’s emergency trauma care system, a vastly expensive enterprise that requires regional networks of hospitals with state of the art equipment and on-call physicians. (Smith, 8/27)

Two people in New Orleans have tested positive for West Nile virus health officials confirmed on Friday (Aug. 24). One developed West Nile fever, a viral infection similar to a flu. The other person developed neuroinvasive disease, a more serious form of the virus causing infection in the brain and spinal cord, health officials said. Both residents developed symptoms the week of July 30. State health officials said this week that Louisiana has reported 53 human cases of West Nile virus this summer. (Clark, 8/24)

The family of the late rock star Prince is suing a doctor who prescribed pain pills for him, saying the doctor failed to treat him for opiate addiction and therefore bears responsibility for his death two years ago, their attorney announced Friday. Prince Rogers Nelson died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl April 15, 2016. Authorities say Dr. Michael Schulenberg admitted prescribing a different opioid to Prince in the days before he died, oxycodone, under his bodyguard's name to protect the musician's privacy. Schulenberg has disputed that, although he paid $30,000 to settle a federal civil violation alleging that the drug was prescribed illegally. (8/24)

OhioHealth's Food is Health initiative allows diabetics identified as food-insecure to take home up to 15 pounds of free fresh produce and canned goods for each member of their household once a week or every two weeks based on the level of need. The program is funded through the center's operating budget for its residency teaching program. Residents and medical school students advise patients on nutrition, food preparation and challenges to healthy eating. They also work on strategies to help them overcome those issues. (Johnson, 8/25)

Dylan Dyke’s best friends are ducks.There Dylan is playing cards with “Bill.” There he is swimming with “Nibbles.” In another photo online, the 12-year-old with autism is seen talking to his two animals outside in Georgetown Township, Mich. Earlier this year, Dylan even drew a picture of a duck and wrote an acrostic, defining his feathery friends as “Determined,” “Undefeatable,” “Caring” and “Kind." (Bever, 8/24)

The requirements for the second round of school safety grants are raising concerns among family and mental health advocates who fear they may criminalize student behavior and undermine efforts to address the mental health needs of students in Wisconsin's schools. Six organizations, including NAMI Wisconsin and Wisconsin Family Ties, are calling on the state Department of Justice to revise the terms schools must meet to access the more than $51 million available in the latest round of grants. (Johnson, 8/24)

A Massachusetts man is accused of stealing more than $6,000 in EBT benefits from a disabled client. The Plymouth County District Attorney's Office says 35-year-old Christopher Gardner, of Pembroke, was indicted Friday on two larceny counts. (8/24)

Even as he approached death, Sen. John McCain was a leader. His decision on Friday, one day before he died, to terminate disease-focused therapy and direct his care toward comfort resonates deeply with me. Diagnosed last summer with glioblastoma, a generally fast-moving and incurable brain cancer, McCain had been undergoing treatment and living his life, even casting a deciding vote that helped quash the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. His decision represents true leadership for me and many others with cancer. Two years ago, I too was diagnosed with glioblastoma. As a young husband and father, it took some time for me to come to terms with the diagnosis. But over the course of my journey, I’ve come to learn that in coping with this disease, and probably any other, the “big decisions” that garner attention come at the end of a series of smaller decisions that may be just as important and stressful. (Adam Hayden, 8/26)

The opioid epidemic is far from contained — the national death toll from drug overdoses climbed to a record high last year. But some states and cities are bucking the trend and showing how governments can get a grip on the worst drug crisis in American history. In 2017, overdose deaths in the United States jumped 10 percent, to about 72,000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last week. The new data show that people are dying from opioids that are more potent and more dangerous than were available in years past. The C.D.C. also found that many people who overdose are simultaneously using multiple drugs like heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamines and benzodiazepine, an anti-anxiety medicine, and that the crisis has spread across the country, from rural and suburban areas to cities. (8/24)

“Dr. Chan, please, please keep me alive a little longer and God will surely bless you.” I am watching a 68-year-old man fall apart. He has been through five different types of chemotherapies, yet his kidney cancer continues to grow and metastasize, spreading to different organs. He now sits hunched in his wheelchair. With his worsening diarrhea, and sores in his mouth, he no longer eats with pleasure. Sleeping a few hours without pain has become a luxury. I have been talking to him about palliative care, how focusing on reducing symptoms instead of treating his cancer directly can provide him relief. I even share with him the results of studies showing he could potentially live longer with that strategy. But he wants to beat the cancer. He believes what will help him live longer is more chemotherapy — so that is what we discuss. This leaves me in an uncomfortable state: caught between my medical recommendation to pursue less aggressive care and my patient’s primal desire to rid his body of cancer. (Isaac Chan, 8/24)

On Dec. 30, 2017, as snowflakes fell outside his window, my husband and the love of my life, J.J. Hanson, took his last breath. He was 36 years old. I was with him, holding our two young sons in my arms. We had known the day would come — J.J. had been living with terminal brain cancer for three and a half years. But that was more than three years longer than his doctors had expected. ...Our struggle was taking place around the same time Brittany Maynard’s story made headlines across the country. Maynard suffered from the same cancer as J.J. and was roughly the same age, but she famously decided to end her own life through assisted suicide in Oregon and to advocate its legalization in her home state of California. I didn’t know it then, but J.J. later admitted that during his illness, he sometimes felt such despair that he may have taken a lethal prescription had it been legal in New York, where we lived, and if he had it in his nightstand during his darkest days. (Kristen Hanson, 8/26)

Serena Williams made headlines when she shared that she almost died as a result of giving birth to her daughter. Sadly, her experience is all too common for women in the United States — especially black women, who are three to four times more likely than non-Hispanic white women to die as a result of giving birth: Nationally, the maternal mortality ratio is 40.0 deaths per 100,000 live births for black women, compared to 12.4 for white women, according to the latest available Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, from 2014. (Marcela Howell and Linda Goler Blount, 8/25)

In recent days, headlines across the globe have carried the news of a record numbers of measles cases occurring all over Europe. Half a century after the measles vaccine was developed, these stories seem to be from a different era. Sadly, they are not.Understanding why this virus has resurfaced to such an alarming degree is essential to our effort to tame it. (Amesh Adalja, 8/26)

An Iowa teenager last summer found himself conscripted into a national debate over health care. The state’s largest insurer, Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, was threatening to pull out of the ObamaCare market. One reason, a Wellmark executive said, was a single patient whose care cost $1 million a month. The young man (never publicly named) has hemophilia, which prevents his blood from clotting. The standard treatment, infusions of the missing clotting factor, is expensive. In severe cases, a patient can require several infusions a day. What if there were a cure? Researchers are developing therapies that could permanently alter a patient’s genes, allowing his body to produce the clotting element. The early results are promising. Patients would live longer, better lives. And with thousands of hemophilia cases nationwide, the potential savings for insurers—and for Medicaid—are enormous. But when? (Kate Bachelder Odell, 8/24)

Doctors and experienced patients know that health insurance coverage is a promise rather than actual care and that delivery on that promise is variable. Many times large deductibles and co-pays block patients from receiving needed treatments. For me, a frustrating experience occurs when one of my patients needs a non-steroidal salve to soothe an ache or a quality of life drug for their erectile dysfunction or a potentially life saving CT Scan or MRI that their insurance won’t approve. Many times, a tortuous appeal process is unsuccessful. (Marc Siegel, 8/25)

I would hope that our political appointees and elected officials would support having more information at their disposal than not. Curiosity, and a willingness to acknowledge experiences and needs other than your own ought to be a prerequisite for serving the people. (Emily Mills, 8/24)

The debate over President Trump’s pick to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court is heating up, and health care is at the very center of the fight. From the day Justice Kennedy announced his resignation, we all knew that abortion rights and Roe v. Wade would be a key point in the nomination battle. Trump warned us himself as a candidate! And those of us from this part of the country know all too well Vice President’s Mike Pence’s longtime effort to shortchange women’s reproductive health (and shutter Planned Parenthood everywhere). But as the experts analyze Brett Kavanaugh’s rulings and stances on the issues, Trump’s nominee is emerging as a threat to health care far more broadly. The Affordable Care Act itself is at risk. (Kim Greene, 8/24)

Governors leave legacies. Some are programs. Some are policies. And sometimes a legacy is how he (someday, she) campaigned to win the governorship, a job the Ohio Constitution says holds "the supreme executive power of this state." Republican John Kasich's two-term governorship will end Jan. 14. And there's a strong case to be made that Ohio's Medicaid expansion, an incontestably positive move Kasich accomplished despite the opposition of some other Statehouse Republicans, will be seen as Kasich's lasting legacy. (Thomas Suddes, 8/25)

You might know Mary. Maybe you shop at the same grocery store, belong to the same church or have the same favorite Indians player. Mary takes medication to control her diabetes. A few years back, she lost her job and could no longer afford her medicine or her regular visits to the doctor.vWhen her symptoms got bad, she got scared and went to the emergency room. It happened more than once. Then, in 2014, Ohio expanded Medicaid, the government program that provides health coverage to low-income adults, children, pregnant women, the elderly and the disabled. (Akram Boutros, 8/26)

In 2015, Florida lawmakers rejected a plan to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Ahead of the 2018 elections, a panel of the state’s leading voices is urging the next governor and legislature to revisit that politically charged battle, calling it the most pressing health care matter facing the state. In the latest survey of the Florida Influencers, respondents were asked to rank six proposals to address health care concerns in the state by order of importance. A clear majority -- 69 percent -- said Medicaid expansion should be at the top of the list. (Adam Wollner, 8/26)

Put this one under the category of nothing makes sense in the world any more. The state of Kansas is looking to extend a contract with a Medicaid application processing company that by most accounts provided lousy service. Under the new arrangement, the state would pay Maximus Inc. of Reston, Virginia, more while absorbing some of the administrative duties involved. Huh? (8/27)

For more than four years, against strong Republican opposition, the General Assembly battled a proposal to expand Medicaid coverage to nearly 400,000 lower-income Virginians. Finally, this year, expansionists prevailed. Soon the additional people will be covered. But before popping the champagne, consider who is still left behind. The Virginia Mercury, a new online news and analysis outlet, reported that as many as 323,000 Virginians will still have no health-care coverage. They will be left to the mercy of free health clinics and hospital emergency rooms if something goes wrong. (Peter Galuszka, 8/24)

As a nation, we’re experiencing one of the best economies that we’ve had in decades. Unemployment is down, wages are up, and with over six million available jobs across the nation, there’s never been a better time to be a job-seeker. And that means that there’s no better time than now to move the millions of able-bodied adults currently trapped on welfare off the sidelines and into these available jobs. Congress and the Trump administration have capitalized on this unique opportunity by pushing for historic welfare reform that expands work requirements for able-bodied adults receiving food stamps in the House Farm Bill and by rolling out the same work requirement for state Medicaid programs. (Kristina Rasmussen, 8/26)

For more than a decade, we have witnessed bipartisan failure by Congress to pass meaningful health system reform. Obamacare was neither affordable nor protective for patients; the uninsured who have been “covered” by Obamacare have illusory benefits at an enormous price. The junk insurance now being offered as Trumpcare is just a meaner version of bronze plans. This bipartisan failure is killing Americans, their family budgets and our federal government. Preventable injury to hospitalized patients is the fifth leading cause of death in this country. If the safety record of American hospitals were true of the airline industry a 747 would crash every other week. (8/26)