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Wherever he takes his campaign for governor, Abdul El-Sayed is followed by activists handing out information about “Medicare for all.” When he grabs the microphone, El-Sayed makes a promise: He’ll bring universal health care to Michigan. “Why can the CEOs of big insurance corporations take home $13 million a year when 600,000 Michiganders still don’t have access to health care?” asked El-Sayed, who is a doctor, at a campaign stop last week in one of the state’s poorest cities. “When are we going to have leadership that stands up for statewide Medicare for all?” (Weigel, 8/5)

Two years ago, 79 percent of Colorado voters rejected a ballot initiative to create a single-payer health system. Today, the idea — rechristened "Medicare for all" — has become a raison d’etre for Democratic candidates such as five-term Rep. Jared Polis, who recently beat back a crowded gubernatorial primary field in the purple state to take on Republican nominee Walker Stapleton. (Haberkorn, 8/3)

When the chips are down, you can always count on either political party to run Medicare attack ads. Polls indicate a neck-and-neck race in Ohio’s special election on Aug. 7 pitting Danny O’Connor, a Democrat, against Republican Troy Balderson to fill the state’s vacant seat in the 12th Congressional District. O’Connor has made headway by charging that Balderson’s support of President Trump’s debt-financed tax cut will lead to reductions in Social Security and Medicare spending, such as by raising the retirement age. In one ad, O’Connor says he stands “against any cuts to Social Security and Medicare” — potentially an unrealistic pledge, given the burdens placed on old-age programs by the retirement of the baby-boom generation. (Kessler, 8/4)

President Donald Trump says insurers are "going wild" about his new health care options and "millions and millions" of people will be signing up. But insurance companies say it will take time to design new plans and get approval from state regulators, and two major industry groups have actually expressed concern about potential downsides for consumers. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 8/6)

David Cotton and his family spent two decades building Meridian Health Plans into the biggest private provider of Medicaid benefits in Michigan and Illinois. It serves about 1.1 million members, with more than $4.3 billion of revenue forecast for 2018. Now they’re cashing out. WellCare Health Plans Inc. announced in May that it’s buying Meridian for $2.5 billion, a deal that includes two state insurance businesses and a pharmacy benefits manager. (Metcalf and Tracer, 8/6)

A federal judge said the Trump administration is responsible for finding hundreds of immigrant parents deported or released into the U.S. without their children in the wake of the government’s policy of separating families at the Mexican border. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said not finding those parents, as many as 400 who may have been deported primarily to Central America, could leave hundreds of children permanently orphaned. “That is 100% the responsibility of the administration,” Judge Sabraw said during a hearing Friday in San Diego. (Caldwell, 8/3)

The number of migrant parents who have signed away the right to be reunited with their children is significantly lower than the Trump administration has said before, according to fresh information the government filed in a family-separation court case. The latest figures show that 34 parents waived the chance to be back together with their children — compared with the 120 that the government reported a week earlier. Migrants’ advocates and congressional Democrats have challenged the idea that large numbers of parents were signing away those rights, contending that some — traumatized by the separations — were misled, did not understand the form or never signed in the first place. (Goldstein, 8/3)

Federal immigration officials on Friday dropped their request to detain an Austin woman who was jailed and charged two weeks ago with assault on a public servant while she was experiencing a mental health crisis. Tania Silva, 21, was released on a personal recognizance bond, which does not require payment, Travis County sheriff’s office spokeswoman Kristen Dark said. (Hall, 8/3)

ACongressional committee is stepping up pressure on three of the largest purveyors of opioids — Purdue Pharma, Mallinckrodt (MNK), and Insys Therapeutics (INSY) — by seeking a raft of documents concerning their controversial marketing and distribution practices. In letters sent on Thursday to the companies, the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked the drug makers to provide information pertinent to their role in the opioid crisis, such as relationships with doctors, oversight of suspicious orders, funding to outside organizations, training for sales reps, and policies for educational programs, among other things. (Silverman, 8/3)

In Demi Lovato’s first public statement since being hospitalized for an apparent drug overdose, the pop star says she is focused on her sobriety and “road to recovery.” “I have always been transparent about my journey with addiction,” Lovato wrote in a letter posted on her Instagram. “What I’ve learned is that this illness is not something that disappears or fades with time. It is something I must continue to overcome and have not done yet.” (Schmidt, 8/6)

A judge sentenced an Annapolis urologist to five years in prison Thursday for his role in two “pill mills” that gave patients prescriptions for thousands of doses of powerful and addictive painkillers. Dr. Kofi Shaw-Taylor, 68, was sentenced by Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Judge Michael Wachs to two five-year concurrent sentences after pleading guilty to a charge of Medicaid fraud and another for conspiracy to commit Medicaid fraud. Those sentences, however, will be cut by nearly a year because of time he spent in home detention after his initial arrest in August 2017. (Stewart, 8/3)

Despite Minnesota’s professed commitment to battling opioid abuse, the state’s own health insurance program for the poor is among the biggest barriers in getting anti-addiction drugs to patients, according to doctors at several clinics across the state. Physicians use the drug Suboxone and its generic equivalents to help people recover from opioid addiction, but government red tape can delay getting the drugs into the hands of Medical Assistance enrollees — delays that can be deadly. (Howatt, 8/5)

In Ohio, the number of people, like Kreager, who are addicted to meth is increasing dramatically, authorities say. The drug's use has surged across the state, leading police to seize record amounts of the mind-altering stimulant. Users go on binges that leave them wired and hallucinating for days, according to court records and interviews with police, counselors and patients in treatment. (Caniglia, 8/5)

The man had come for a third opinion. Other doctors had told him he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, a neuromuscular disease that causes progressive paralysis, but he didn’t believe them. In his hometown of Ewing, Va. — just east of the state’s mountainous meeting point with Kentucky and Tennessee — a handful of his relations had had the same thing, and they knew it as cancer of the throat. They lost the ability to chew, swallow, and speak, they lost weight, and then they died. (Boodman, 8/5)

Becoming a mother used to be seen as a unifying milestone for women in the United States. But a new analysis of four decades of births shows that the age that women become mothers varies significantly by geography and education. The result is that children are born into very different family lives, heading for diverging economic futures. First-time mothers are older in big cities and on the coasts, and younger in rural areas and in the Great Plains and the South. In New York and San Francisco, their average age is 31 and 32. (Bui and Miller, 8/4)

A government legal opinion has dashed the hopes of an upstart nonprofit organization that wants to take over operation of the nation’s organ transplant network. Organs for Life, a new nonprofit critical of the way the transplant system is run, hoped to bid for the fiscal 2019 contract to oversee the vast and complex U.S. organ transplant system. That network includes more than 800 transplant programs and other organizations that serve them. (Bernstein, 8/3)

Research on alcohol consumption is in a pickle. There’s no question that pounding one drink after another is bad for your health. Things get murkier when it comes to “moderate” drinking. What does that mean? What’s the limit? Can a health-conscious person serenely order a second round? The alcohol industry has long embraced the notion that alcohol in moderation not only won’t harm you but is actually good for you. The hypothesis gained traction in the early 1990s when “60 Minutes” reported on what is called the French Paradox. (Achenbach, 8/5)

In the decades-long war over milk — with purveyors of cow juice on one side and the people who make an increasing array of ecru-colored plant- and nut-based drinks on the other — this is as close to consorting with the enemy as it gets. The manufacturer of a popular brand of almond milk has announced a recall for what some would say sacrilegious act: Somehow, cow's milk got into their almond milk. (Wootson, 8/4)

Research has linked breastfeeding in a baby’s first hour of life to reduced infant mortality. But worldwide, most babies are not breastfed during that critical first hour, according to a recent report, and that concerns many public health and child nutrition experts. (Santhanam, 8/3)

On July 23, the House passed the National Suicide Hotline Improvement Act, which seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of the Lifeline and the feasibility of implementing a 3-digit dialing code like 911, a number that could be easier to remember than the current 10-digit number. But some local crisis center directors that field Lifeline calls and advocates say this could place more pressure on an overwhelmed and underfunded network. (Kim, 8/5)

When she moved from Michigan to be near her daughter in Cary, N.C., Bernadine Lewandowski insisted on renting an apartment five minutes away. Her daughter, Dona Jones, would have welcomed her mother into her own home, but “she’s always been very independent,” Ms. Jones said. Like most people in their 80s, Ms. Lewandowski contended with several chronic illnesses and took medication for osteoporosis, heart failure and pulmonary disease. Increasingly forgetful, she had been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. She used a cane for support as she walked around her apartment complex. (Span, 8/3)

Len Fishman, director of the University of Massachusetts Boston’s Gerontology Institute, was talking about an urgent issue in a society that values “aging in place”: deciding the right time to leave your home and move into housing for seniors. ... Many older people are happier after moving to a place where life’s chores are eased, activities and social opportunities are on site, and a van goes right to the grocery store. (Teitell, 8/6)

For Les Ralston, 1991 was a dark time. The AIDS crisis had ravaged the gay community, and many of his friends were dead or dying. No effective treatment had been found for HIV, and many people were afraid to go near those with the disease. “A lot of people were dying at home without any food,” Ralston recalled. So when he saw a note on a billboard seeking volunteers to help a D.C. organization, Food & Friends, deliver meals to people with AIDS, Ralston, a systems analyst for the IRS, signed on. By 1995, he had quit his government job and was working full-time for the organization. (Bahrampour, 8/4)

Snapchat offers several features that can animate your face with special effects. However, doctors believe people are seeking plastic surgery to permanently look like the filtered versions of themselves. (Parker, 8/4)

As legalization of recreational and medical marijuana continues to expand, police across the country are more concerned than ever about stoned drivers taking to the nation's roads and freeways, endangering lives. With few accurate roadside tools to detect pot impairment, police today have to rely largely on field sobriety tests developed to fight drunk driving or old-fashioned observation, which can be foiled with Visine or breath mints. (Westervelt, 8/4)

Civil strife in Congo has surged in recent years, driving millions of people from their homes. The United Nations reports 2.8 million Congolese are internally displaced, and a million of those people live in refugee camps or villages in North Kivu Province, where at least 20 people have died of the Ebola virus in recent days. Fighting an outbreak of the Ebola virus is dangerous and complicated in the best of circumstances. Congo only recently concluded its battle to contain the last outbreak, in Equateur Province in the northwest corner of the country, a much more stable region where ending the outbreak nonetheless took months, hundreds of international volunteers and tens of millions of dollars. (Wilson, 8/4)

The number of confirmed cases in Congo's new outbreak of the Ebola virus has risen to 13, including three deaths, the health ministry said late Saturday. The World Health Organization has warned that this new outbreak of the deadly virus in North Kivu province poses a particular challenge as the region is a "war zone" with several active armed groups and thousands of displaced people. (8/4)

An outbreak of the Ebola virus declared this week in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo is believed to have killed 33 people, the health ministry said on Saturday. Thirteen cases of the haemorrhagic fever have been confirmed, including three deaths, the ministry said in a statement, adding that suspected cases had been detected in both North Kivu and neighbouring Ituri province. (Ross, 8/4)

A thorough examination of the Cohen Network’s record — including internal documents, emails and dozens of interviews with current and former employees — reveals a different story from the one the Cohen Network tells about itself. The clinic at the University of Southern California was doomed by the Cohen Network’s mismanagement and insistence on a narrow focus that helped only a subset of veterans, former employees said. (Arnsdorf, 8/3)

This is the monthly meeting of the Santa Cruz Veterans Alliance’s Compassion Program. Veterans gather to learn about local veterans services, talk to others who are self-medicating with marijuana and pick up a voucher for free cannabis at the SCVA’s dispensary. (Almanzan, 8/3)

Healing by horticulture is not a new concept. It doesn't work for everyone but Green Veterans, which recently opened a chapter in Milwaukee, is leveraging urban gardening and agriculture as an alternative therapy for people with PTSD and other trauma-related experiences, said Brian Sales, leader of the Milwaukee chapter of Green Veterans. (Jones, 8/5)

Hospitals will be required to post online a list of their standard charges under a rule finalized Thursday by the Trump administration. While hospitals are already required to make this information public on request, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said the new rule would require the info be posted online to "encourage price transparency" and improve "public accessibility." (Hellmann, 8/3)

Federal health officials reversed course on a plan to withhold public disclosure of hospital infection and safety problems that are the third leading cause of death in the U.S., a new rule announced late Thursday shows. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said they will publicly report the errors, injuries, and infections the agency proposed removing from one of the public reporting programs. The information will now be published on the federal Hospital Compare site and in a downloadable database and will include the dates and details. (O'Donnell, 8/3)

Now that hospitals' uncompensated-care claims affect how much the federal government pays them, the industry is bracing for heightened scrutiny of its reporting. This is the first fiscal year of a three-year phase-in during which the CMS will use hospitals' charity care and bad debt, together known as uncompensated care, to calculate their disproportionate-share hospital payments. (Bannow, 8/4)

The CMS on Thursday finalized its plan to eliminate the so-called 25% rule that would ding long-term care hospitals' Medicare reimbursement rates. Under the long-postponed policy, if more than a quarter of a long-term care hospital's patients came from a single acute-care hospital, the long-term care hospital would receive a reduced Medicare reimbursement rate for patients exceeding that threshold. (Dickson, 8/2)

Dr. Atul Gawande has described his new health care company as a “nonprofit” that will operate independently from the three massive corporations providing its funding — a firewall he said is crucial to ensuring its mission stays focused on the needs of patients. ...A person familiar with the inner-workings of the enterprise told STAT that its corporate creators view it as a non-profit-seeking internal unit “that serves the three founding companies.” This person stressed that the new entity, even though designed to accomplish public good, is a private organization that is accountable to its funders, not to people in need of health care solutions outside it walls. (Ross, 8/6)

Health systems are grappling with competing priorities, trying to corral costs while still attracting and keeping top executive talent with competitive salary and benefit packages. Judging by the steady increase in executives' total compensation over the past several years, it seems that health system boards are not compromising executive pay in their cost-containment efforts. (Kacik, 8/4)

Prime Healthcare Services, one of the nation’s largest hospital systems, agreed Friday to pay $65 million to settle allegations of Medicare overbilling in California. The company and CEO Prem Reddy agreed to settle a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that 14 of its hospitals unnecessarily admitted patients and also “upcoded” patient diagnoses, exaggerating their illnesses in order to receive more Medicare money. (8/3)

Prime Healthcare Services Inc. will pay the bulk of the settlement, while Chief Executive Prem Reddy will pay $3.25 million and the system’s nonprofit affiliate will pay an undisclosed small amount, according to the Justice Department and a Prime spokeswoman. Ontario, Calif.-based Prime also agreed to a five-year corporate integrity agreement with the U.S. Health and Human Service Department’s inspector general. The agreement requires Prime to have an “independent review organization” scrutinize its Medicare bills. Under the terms, the settlement resolves allegations against Prime and its nonprofit affiliate Prime Healthcare Foundation without a determination of liability. (Evans, 8/3)

Texas schools have been adding metal detectors and armed personnel in an effort to improve campus security in response to the deadly May attack at a Houston-area high school that left eight students and two teachers dead. Among the steps that Texas apparently won't be taking anytime soon is tightening restrictions on gun access for people deemed dangerous to themselves or others. (8/5)

Nikolas Cruz was an 18-year-old junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., when a spate of disturbing behavior led to a fateful meeting about the future of his schooling. Education specialists told Mr. Cruz he should transfer to Cross Creek, an alternative school for students with emotional problems where he had thrived in ninth grade. His mother, Lynda Cruz, agreed. (Mazzei, 8/4)

A psychiatrist who spent hours talking with mass murderer James Holmes says that what led Holmes to open fire in a crowded Colorado movie theater was a one-of-a-kind vortex of his mental illness, his personality and his circumstances — and some other, unknown currents that will probably never be uncovered. "A big part of it is, it's hidden in Holmes' mind, and he can't see it either," William H. Reid said in an interview with The Associated Press about his new book, "A Dark Night in Aurora: Inside James Holmes and the Colorado Mass Shootings." (8/5)

There are 18 wildfires now blazing across California, which means many of the state's residents are waking up to the smell of smoke and hazy skies. The Carr fire near Redding has scorched at least 145,015 acres and killed seven people, and three fires in Mendocino County are all less than an hour away from Santa Rosa — where some neighborhoods burned to the ground last year. (McClurg and Snow, 8/5)

Renowned health policy researcher Dr. Elliott Fisher has been placed on paid administrative leave from his position as director of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice pending an investigation into his workplace conduct. Adam Keller, the institute's chief of strategy and operations, also has been placed on leave. Both men are barred from entering Dartmouth property or attending Dartmouth-sponsored events during the investigation, a university spokeswoman said Wednesday. (Meyer, 8/3)

The term “country doctor” may call a horse and buggy to mind. But handling a horse used to be just one of a rural doctor’s many skills. A country doctor might be called on to practice dentistry, dispense prescriptions and deliver babies over a wide swath of territory. The Country Doctor Museum brings that history to life. The Bailey, N.C., museum is dedicated to interpreting the history of medicine in rural America — a history that spans 200 years. (Blakemore, 8/5)

In 2016, the infant mortality rate in the United States was 5.9 deaths per 1,000 live births, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which listed the 2016 infant mortality rate in Michigan as 6.4 deaths per 1,000 live births. The Detroit Health Department wants to create a new reality for pregnant moms in Detroit through by providing social support and clinical services. Almost a year after launching in August 2017, SisterFriends Detroit has been able to form more than 220 pairs of "sister friends" aimed at reducing the city's infant mortality rate. (Paige, 8/5)

In Connecticut, 21.4 percent of women report experiencing depression, compared with 13.4 percent of men, according to 2015 Department of Public Health data. Millennial women in the state experience depression four more days in an average month than their male counterparts, the Status of Women data project reported this year. (Shaddox, 8/5)

The state’s day care regulator fired back at a federal report released Friday that said Georgia will miss a key deadline requiring that it conduct national criminal background checks on child care workers. Difficulties with staffing, funding and coordination with other states will keep the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning from putting its full system in place by the Sept. 30 deadline, according to the audit report by the watchdog for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (Mariano, 8/3)

The Orange County medical examiner wants to be the first in Florida to use CT scanning technology for autopsies. ...Medical Examiner Dr. Joshua Stephany says the new technology would allow his staff to complete autopsies quicker and more accurately. (Prieur, 8/3)

Forty years ago this week, President Jimmy Carter declared Love Canal a national health emergency when the small community near Niagara Falls, New York, learned that their homes and school were built on 22,000 tons of chemicals. Today, many residents in the area, which was deemed safe by authorities, claim to be facing health problems. (Thompson , Rothman and Regan, 8/5)

After two decades of flat or reduced funding from its chief client — state government — community-based agencies are struggling to retain both their programs and the low-paid staff who deliver care for thousands of poor, disabled and mentally-ill adults and children. Depending on the vantage point, Connecticut’s nonprofit social services sector is viewed as either the best means to preserve the state’s safety net or as the cheapest route to drive down government spending. (Phaneuf, 8/6)

A Cobb County medical group has agreed in federal court to pay $1.2 million for re-using sinus catheters and making false claims to Medicare. Northwest ENT Associates, based in Marietta, allegedly violated the False Claims Act, federal prosecutors said Friday. (Brasch, 8/3)

During his decades-long career, Capt. Neal Urch, jail administrator for Henderson County, has seen first-hand the dangers faced by law enforcement both on the streets and behind prison walls. To increase safety at the jail, Urch is helping the county bring in a Special Operations Group, created to better control the inmate population, mitigate use of force and prevent officer and inmate injuries. (Walter, 8/4)

America’s health-care debate is entering a new phase. Liberals, inspired by self-described socialists such as Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative-to-be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are excited about the possibility of “Medicare for All.” Republicans have at the same time largely abandoned efforts to enact major reforms of health care. This new phase of the debate is full of opportunity for Republicans, and peril for conservatives. But perhaps it would be better to say that the debate is reverting to an older pattern. For roughly four decades, liberals have highlighted the flaws of the existing health-care system, chiefly high costs and unequal access, and proposed increased governmental involvement as the solution. Conservatives talked up the dangers of bigger government, chiefly even higher costs and the disruption of existing arrangements, and reminded voters of the virtues of the status quo. (Ramesh Ponnuru, 8/3)

A new study released by Charles Blahous at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University has received a lot of attention this week. It concludes that the “Medicare for all” proposal endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and others would “increase federal budget commitments by approximately $32.6 trillion during its first 10 years of full implementation.” The study goes on to point out that “doubling all currently projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections would be insufficient to finance the added federal costs of the plan.”  (Marc Siegel, 8/4)

The Kochs have a clear challenge: How do you undermine growing support for an idea that will improve the health and finances of most Americans? They’re trying to invert the formula that CEO gave me years ago: Take a plan that gives us more, and make us think it’s less. That’s where Charles Blahous comes in. Blahous, a longtime Republican aide, is affiliated with the Koch-funded, right-wing Mercatus Center. His attack on M4A (Medicare For All) has been widely reported as predicting an “astronomical” cost. Blahous is entitled to his conservative ideology, as discredited as I believe it is. My biggest problem is with his math, not his mindset. Blahous says that M4A will add $32.6 trillion to government spending over a 10-year period. That number is overstated, and ignores the “invisible taxes” Americans currently pay to private corporations every year. (Richard Eskow, 8/3)

The federal program known as welfare delivers cash assistance to less than 1 percent of the United States population. This is far smaller than the share of those aided by food stamps, or by other government support like disability benefits, unemployment insurance, college grants and medical benefits. But none of those other social programs have captured the public imagination or pervaded American politics as thoroughly as welfare, a piece of the safety net that helps about 2.5 million people. Its outsize influence has remained — and could soon become larger — even as the program itself has shrunk to its smallest size. (Emily Badger, 8/6)

Gov. Scott Walker has one signature move, and it’s so tired that it’s a wonder anyone still falls for it: He creates or exacerbates a problem, then claims to be the only one who can save us from it. ...The latest example comes in the form of health insurance expenses. (Emily Mills, 8/3)

The changes in the proposed 2018 Farm Bill puts the SNAP-Ed program in the hands of a nationwide educational system that is uniquely positioned to meet these expectations. Through Ohio State University Extension, the SNAP-Ed program will be a continued success that helps low-income Ohioans lead healthier lives, be better parents and learners, and be more productive in their jobs. (Pat Bebo and Rick Klemme, 8/5)

My parents. The drug addicts. In 2012, four years after my mom’s overdose death, I began corresponding with my dad, Steve, then an inmate in jail. He and I had been estranged for years. I blamed him for making my mother an addict — essentially, for killing her. However, when my husband and I became parents, I had an overwhelming need to know how my parents came to choose drugs over me. Steve was the only one left to ask. (Sosha Lewis, 8/3)

Our son Adam died in September 2015. He overdosed on fentanyl, but the start of his addiction began with opioid prescription painkillers from past surgeries that were in the kitchen cabinet of our New Hampshire home, innocently next to vitamins, Tylenol, and cake sprinkles. Ordinary stuff. Now, we have extraordinary grief. We've spent every day since then thinking about what we could have done differently. If you've lost a child to an opioid overdose, you find that for every answer you come up with, there are many more questions to face. We didn't even consider locking our prescription opioids – why would Adam or our three other children be interested? We never thought there was a chance that our unguarded opioids would tempt them or worse, lead to addiction. (Jim and Jeanne Moser, 8/3)

Recent high-profile celebrity suicides have gotten people talking about mental-health care. Unfortunately, too many Americans from all walks of life are not seeking the help they need to care for their most important organ, their brain. This applies to those experiencing thoughts of self-harm and symptoms of bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental-health problems. Often, the barrier is awareness of their right to mental-health care under the law. (Kate Farinholt, Jean Harris and Rhonda Thissen, 8/3)

The #MeToo movement has shown not only how rampant sexual abuse is, but also how often third parties disregard it — or even enable it. At least 16 people admitted witnessing or knowing of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse; his behavior was notorious within Miramax and the Weinstein Company. (Zachary Kaufman, 8/3)

Planned Parenthood’s 4,000 health centers in every state make up just 13 percent of the Title X health centers, but they serve 41 percent of all Title X patients. HHS does not dispute these facts. So why does HHS want to stop low-income patients getting family planning and other healthcare services from Planned Parenthood under Title X? (David Schwartz, 8/5)

When accounts of abuse emerged in June from a detention center for migrant minors in Virginia — children as young as 14 stripped naked, shackled, strapped to chairs, their heads encased in bags, left for days or longer in solitary confinement, and in some cases beaten and bruised — it sounded like a scene from the Soviet gulag. This institution, the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center, near Staunton, couldn’t possibly be in America. And if it was, it had to be an extreme outlier — a place that, while overseen by the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Department of Health and Human Services, simply could not typify the federal government’s handling of children, undocumented or not, who make their way into this country. (8/5)

Using online platforms such as GoFundMe to solicit donations for health-related needs can help people access legitimate health services and avoid medical debt. But this kind of medical crowdfunding also raises funds for a multitude of scientifically unsupported procedures. We are particularly concerned about crowdfunding campaigns for unproven and unlicensed stem cell interventions, for which there is little or no evidence of safety and effectiveness. Campaigns that seek donations for unproven stem cell interventions waste donors’ money, spread misinformation, and obscure the significant risks that unproven stem cell procedures can pose to patient safety. (Jeremy Snyder, Leigh Turner and Valorie A. Crooks, 8/6)

The gold standard of medical research, the randomized controlled trial, has been taking a bit of a beating lately. An entire issue of the journal Social Science and Medicine was recently devoted to it, with many articles pointing to shortcomings. Others have argued that randomized controlled trials often can’t address the questions that patients and physicians most want answered. I recently wrote about the limitations of the method in studying effectiveness, which is what we care about in real-world situations. (Aaron E. Carroll, 8/6)

A lot underlies persistently high infant mortality rates in parts of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County. Poor maternal health, lack of health access, inadequate education about safe sleep practices and insufficient breastfeeding support lead the list of usual suspects. (8/5)

Yes, we need increased mental health funding for a variety of reasons. But there is still more that can be done legislatively to lower shootings and fatalities. (Jack Bernard and Doug Skelton, 8/4)