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The only people more eager than progressive Democrats for hearings on Medicare for All are conservative Republicans. GOP lawmakers, fresh off an electoral shellacking fueled in large part by health care concerns, are now trolling Democrats with demands for hearings on the sweeping single-payer bill set to be introduced this month. They're confident that revelations about its potential cost and elimination of most private insurance will give them potent lines of attack heading into 2020 — an election that President Donald Trump is already framing as a debate about "socialism." (Ollstein, 2/10)

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who is mulling a 2020 presidential bid, says a plan to provide "Medicare for all" and take away private insurance, which has the support of several Democratic White House hopefuls, is “a bad opening offer.” Bennet is presenting himself as a moderate possible alternative in next year’s Democratic primary, although he has yet to formally announce his campaign. (Bolton, 2/10)

"Medicare-for-all" has become a rallying cry for progressive Democrats, especially in the early days of the 2020 presidential campaign. But many players in the health care industry are already lining up to oppose the idea. (Farmer, 2/8)

At Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s confirmation hearings 14 years ago, the first dozen questions were about whether he would respect the Supreme Court’s abortion precedents. He was still answering those questions Thursday night. In a surprise move, the chief justice joined the Supreme Court’s liberal wing in a 5-to-4 decision blocking a Louisiana law that could have severely restricted abortion in the state. Although he offered no reason for his vote, there is little doubt that he wanted to avoid sending the message that the court was ready to discard a 2016 decision, a precedent, in which it struck down a similar Texas law. (Liptak, 2/8)

Activists on both sides of the abortion debate are reacting cautiously to a 5-4 Supreme Court vote blocking Louisiana from enforcing new abortion regulations. They agree that the crucial tests of the court's stance are still to come. Depending on the viewpoint, the vote represented a temporary victory or setback — but not proof as to how the court might deal with a slew of tough anti-abortion laws working their way through state legislatures and federal courts. (Crary, 2/8)

Critics of Republican Sen. Susan Collins are angry over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's opinion in an abortion case, saying it's proof that he's not following through on his assurance to respect past Supreme Court decisions on abortion. Kavanaugh was on the losing side of a 5-4 ruling that blocked a Louisiana law requiring abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. (2/9)

The acrimonious debate over abortion that’s divided the country for generations is being reignited for the 2020 election with the Supreme Court’s tilt to the right and Democratic-led states moving to lift some restrictions on the procedure. New York has eased some restrictions on late-term abortions, and lawmakers in Virginia have proposed to do so. That has given anti-abortion advocates fresh arguments and targets. Both sides in the debate, at the same time, expect the Supreme Court with two conservative justices appointed by President Donald Trump to narrow abortion rights. (Edgerton and Kapur, 2/9)

Conservative and liberal states are pulling farther apart on the issue of abortion in response to the heightened possibility that the Supreme Court could limit access to some procedures. In Republican-led statehouses, such as Ohio and Kentucky, lawmakers are getting behind proposals to ban the procedure within the first trimester of a pregnancy. In more liberal legislatures, abortion-rights advocates are building momentum for laws like that just enacted in New York that loosen restrictions on late-term procedures and enshrine abortion rights into state codes. (Gershman, 2/8)

With the national abortion debate entering a new stage, a survey of U.S. obstetricians and gynecologists has found that while nearly 3 out of 4 had a patient who wanted to end a pregnancy in the past year, fewer than 1 in 4 were willing and able to perform one themselves. Among the doctors who answered questions about the procedure, 1 in 3 cited personal, religious or moral reasons for not providing abortion services. (Healy, 2/8)

As Democrats in New York last month celebrated Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s signing of a law expanding abortion rights in the state, anti-abortion campaigners predicted it would eliminate criminal penalties for violence that ends women’s pregnancies. The debate resurfaced over the weekend after the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, cited the Reproductive Health Act as the reason for dropping an abortion charge against a man who the police say fatally stabbed his former girlfriend when she was 14 weeks pregnant. (Southall, 2/10)

Wyoming pro-choice supporters were unnerved by the passage of two bills that set certain requirements on doctors two years ago. This year, two more anti-abortion bills have passed the house that people have their eyes on. (Beck, 2/8)

The new Democratic leadership of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee said Friday that it would investigate the influence exerted by three members of President Trump’s Florida beach club on the Department of Veterans Affairs. The move was viewed as an early, and powerful, indication that the committee, which has always been known as among the most bipartisan on Capitol Hill, could adopt a harder edge under the new Congress as empowered Democrats move to scrutinize the administration. (Steinhauer, 2/8)

The Trump administration is objecting to House Democrats' efforts to intervene in a legal challenge to the 2010 health care law, arguing that the House does not have an “institutional interest” in defending already-enacted laws. The administration's filing Friday argues that not only does the House not have an interest in defending the law, the chamber is already represented by a group of Democratic state attorneys defending the law and the congressional motion is not timely, as it comes months after those states intervened. (McIntire, 2/8)

House Democrats are warming to gun-control legislation once considered risky for all but the safest incumbents, but remain uncertain whether they will vote this year on some of the more far-reaching bills. In a sign of the changing political climate around gun-safety legislation, some of the more vulnerable House Democrats, including those who just ousted GOP incumbents, said they would support a ban on assault-style weapons. For Democrats, such legislation has long been considered a gamble, with its potential to trigger the wrath of the National Rifle Association and voters swayed by the gun lobby. (Peterson, 2/10)

In the year since the deadly mass shooting at a Florida high school, more and more states have passed laws making it easier to take guns away from people who may be suicidal or bent on violence against others, and courts are issuing an unprecedented number of seizure orders across the country. Supporters say these "red flag" laws are among the most promising tools to reduce the nearly 40,000 suicides and homicides by firearm each year in the U.S. Gun advocates, though, say such measures undermine their constitutional rights and can result in people being stripped of their weapons on false or vindictive accusations. (Foley, 2/9)

It's hard to empathize with someone who carries out a school shooting. The brutality of their crimes is unspeakable. Whether the shootings were at Columbine, at Sandy Hook, or in Parkland, they have traumatized students and communities across the U.S. Psychologist John Van Dreal understands that. He is the director of safety and risk management at Salem-Keizer Public Schools in Oregon, a state that has had its share of school shootings. In 2014, about 60 miles from Salem, where Van Dreal is based, a 15-year-old boy shot one student and a teacher at his high school before killing himself. (Chatterjee, 2/10)

New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rank Missouri sixth in U.S. for gun death rate, including intentional and accidental shootings. The CDC reports 1,307 Missourians died from gunshot wounds in 2017, an increase over the previous year.Laurie Punch, a trauma surgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, considers gun violence a major threat to public health. (Farzan, 2/9)

President Donald Trump has vowed to end the nation’s HIV epidemic in a decade — but to do so, he’ll need to win over skeptics in the health community and on Capitol Hill, tamp down concerns from faith leaders and navigate hurdles inside his administration. The ambitious State of the Union pronouncement has been undermined by Trump’s own actions: He’s tried to cut nearly $1 billion in global HIV/AIDS funding, roll back protections for patients living with the disease and strike down health benefits for LGBTQ Americans. “There’s a lot of distrust between the community and the administration, understandably,” said Carl Schmid, deputy executive director of the AIDS Institute, who was recently tapped to help lead Trump's advisory council on HIV/AIDS. “This could be a good opportunity to show they’re committed to this.” (Diamond, Cancryn and Ehley, 2/9)

In the summer of 1985, Mike Petrelis was savoring life as young, openly gay man in New York City. He'd landed a cool job working for a film publicist who mostly handled foreign art films. He'd found an affordable apartment — not far from the gay mecca of Greenwich Village. Then one day, Petrelis noticed a sort of blotch on his arm. He went to a doctor, who ran a new kind of test, and gave Petrelis the verdict: "You have AIDS." (Aizenman, 2/9)

President Trump made religious leaders a contentious promise at this week’s National Prayer Breakfast: Faith-based adoption agencies that won’t work with same-sex couples would still be able to get federal funding to “help vulnerable children find their forever families while following their deeply held beliefs.” The president offered no details, but a plan is already in motion. (Cha, 2/8)

The head of the Food and Drug Administration is questioning whether electronic cigarette maker Juul and its new partner Altria are following through on pledges to help reverse the boom in underage vaping. FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb on Friday posted letters he sent to Juul and Altria, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes and other tobacco products. He called for a joint meeting to discuss what he calls "inconsistent" statements from the companies. (Perrone, 2/8)

The chemical compounds are all around you. They're on many fabrics, rugs and carpets, cooking pots and pans, outdoor gear, shampoo, shaving cream, makeup and even dental floss. Increasing numbers of states have found them seeping into water supplies. There's growing evidence that long-term exposure to the perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl compounds, or PFAS, can be dangerous, even in tiny amounts. (Knickmeyer, Casey and Flesher, 2/11)

Under President Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency inspected fewer industrial facilities during 2018 than at any time over the past decade, according to data released by the agency Friday. The sharp drop in inspections and evaluations last fiscal year — to roughly 10,600 — is only half the number EPA conducted at its peak in 2010, and continues a downward trend that began in 2012. Other enforcement activities at the agency experienced similar declines, according to EPA figures: The number of civil cases the division started and completed in 2018 hit a 10-year low, and the $69 million in civil penalties it leveled represents the lowest in nearly a quarter-century. (Eilperin and Dennis, 2/8)

President Donald Trump was declared "in very good health" by the White House physician on Friday after four hours of examinations in what amounted to a test of whether his doctor's order that he follow a healthier diet has paid dividends. Specific details on Trump's weight, cholesterol levels and blood pressure were not released in a statement from White House physician Sean Conley after Conley and 11 specialists put the 72-year-old president through a battery of medical tests. (2/8)

But Dr. Sean Conley, a Navy officer who is the president’s physician and the current director of the White House medical unit, released no details about what a team of 11 specialists had found in the course of a four-hour examination of Mr. Trump. Dr. Conley said that “reports and recommendations are being finalized,” but did not say if, when or in what form they would be publicly released. Last year, after Mr. Trump’s first full examination as president, the White House took the unusual step of having Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, then the president’s physician, deliver a lengthy report in the White House briefing room and then answer questions from reporters. Dr. Jackson was widely ridiculed for using excessive language in describing the president’s health. (Rogers and Altman, 2/8)

The exam took about four hours at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Mr. Trump, 72 years old, didn’t undergo procedures requiring sedation or anesthesia, the memo stated. Dr. Conley performed and supervised the evaluation with a panel of 11 board-certified specialists. (Leary, 2/8)

For generations, residents of the Southern California border town of Calexico watched with trepidation as their river turned into a cesspool, contaminated by the booming human and industrial development on the other side of the border in Mexico. Noxious sewage filled with feces, industrial chemicals and other raw waste regularly comes in through the New River, which flows from Mexico’s Mexicali Valley and through Calexico, leaving neighborhoods along the waterway engulfed in pungent fumes. (Del Real, 2/9)

Seven adult detainees at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Houston have been diagnosed with mumps, but the contagious disease is contained, the city's health department said on Saturday. "Since these individuals were isolated inside the facility during the period they were infectious, we do not anticipate these cases posing a threat to the community," Dr. David Persse, Houston's local health authority and emergency medical services medical director, said in a statement. ICE's Houston Contract Detention Facility houses approximately 950-1,000 adults. (2/9)

Many things affect your health. Genetics. Lifestyle. Modern medicine. The environment in which you live and work. But although we rarely consider it, the degree of competition among health care organizations does so as well. Markets for both hospitals and physicians have become more concentrated in recent years. Although higher prices are the consequences most often discussed, such consolidation can also result in worse health care. Studies show that rates of mortality and of major health setbacks grow when competition falls. (Frakt, 2/11)

In the simplest terms, blockchain is a shared record of transactions. It enables participants in a group to securely share data with each other without a middleman and keep track of what was exchanged and when. Instead of that record being located on a single, hackable computer, it is maintained across multiple computers, which makes the information extremely difficult to tamper with or delete. That tamper-proof characteristic, along with a process that ensures any information put into the blockchain is valid, enables trust between the group participants. So in the case of the blockchain-enabled provider directory, if one insurance company in the alliance calls a doctor's office to verify an address and updates that information in the record, all members of the alliance would see the change. That means less work for the rest of the insurers and the doctor's office. (Livingston, 2/9)

Providence St. Joseph Health leveraged data to reduce its knee replacement costs by more than $1 million a year. The Renton, Wash.-based integrated health system first analyzed what drove variation across its 51-hospital network and targeted the use of antibiotic-infused bone cement. Hypothetically, it can stave off infections. But the pre-mixed product added significant cost without substantial evidence that it was effective. Looking at a two-year dataset of about 20,000 knee replacements performed at Providence St. Joseph, there wasn't a distinct difference in the quality data for patients who received the antibiotic-infused cement and the cement without it. (Kacik, 2/7)

Anti-vaccine activists packed a public hearing Friday to oppose a bill that would make it harder for families to opt out of vaccination requirements for measles, mumps and rubella amid the state’s worst measles outbreak in more than two decades. An estimated 700 people, most of them opposed to stricter requirements, lined up before dawn in the cold, toting strollers and hand-lettered signs, to sit in the hearing, which was so crowded that staff opened up additional rooms to accommodate the crowd. Many gathered outside afterward for a rally. (Sun and Young, 2/8)

The modern anti-vaccination movement has picked up recently, despite research finding that the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) is not linked to autism. “I want to remind you that the MMR vaccine is extremely safe and highly effective,” Washington state health secretary John Wiesman told lawmakers, according to the Times, adding that “all reputable scientific studies have found no relation between measles and autism.” (Frazin, 2/9)

Ethan Lindenberger, frustrated by years of arguments about his mother’s anti-vaccination stance, staged a quiet defection on Reddit. The Norwalk, Ohio, teenager needed advice, he said, on how to inoculate himself against both infectious disease and his family’s dogma. At 18, he was old enough, Lindenberger explained. He wanted to get vaccinated. But he didn’t know how. “My parents think vaccines are some kind of government scheme,” Lindenberger wrote days before Thanksgiving. “But, because of their beliefs I’ve never been vaccinated for anything, god knows how I’m still alive.” (Horton, 2/10)

In the interview, Lindenberger said he had gone without vaccines for diseases like measles, rubella, mumps and hepatitis for his entire life due to his mother’s anti-vaccine beliefs. He told the publication that his mother, Jill Wheeler, was influenced by online misinformation, including a debunked study that claims certain vaccines could lead to autism and a theory that claims vaccines were linked to brain damage. (Folley, 2/9)

At a time of widespread measles outbreaks in the Pacific Northwest, causing Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee to declare a state of emergency, more minors are raising questions about whether they can provide their own consent to get vaccines. According to the CDC, for month of January this year, measles have been confirmed in 10 states, with the agency monitoring other outbreaks in New York state and New York City. (Morris and Simon, 2/9)

The weekend brought a break in new measles cases amid an outbreak centered in the Vancouver area. Clark County Public Health reported no new confirmed or suspected cases. Meanwhile, blood tests confirmed a man with measles-like symptoms in the Salem area did not have the highly contagious virus. That leaves the number of Clark County cases at 53, with two more cases suspected. Outside of the county, that number is 58, including four people in Oregon and one man in King County. (Njust, 2/10)

Thousands of Oregon children would have to get vaccinated or stay out of school under a bill being prepared by Rep. Mitch Greenlick, D-Portland. The proposal comes amid a measles outbreak that has infected 52 children in Clark County and has spread to Oregon, where four people have been infected. Greenlick’s bill, which is still being finalized, would eliminate non-medical exemptions for unvaccinated school children. (Zarkhin, 2/11)

Thousands of Kansas children and teens go without vaccines that could save their lives. A series of policy changes, though, could protect more Kansans against everything from cervical cancer to swift-acting meningococcal disease. ...Outbreaks of meningococcal disease are rare but aggressive and scary where they occur. Nearly a third of patients suffer serious effects, such as brain damage, loss of limbs or even death. Kansas would require the vaccine that protects against four types of the disease. A separate vaccine against another type seen in recent college campus outbreaks would not be required. (Llopis-Jepsen, 2/8)

Three years after California stopped allowing families to easily opt out of childhood vaccines, the number of kids getting medical waivers has tripled—the result, critics say, of some doctors loosely issuing exemptions to help families get around the law. The decrease has left some counties, including Nevada and Plumas, below the recommended vaccination rate required for “community immunity” against dangerous diseases such as measles and whooping cough. (Aguilera, 2/10)

A new pill that can kill the flu virus in 24 hours with a single dose has become the most-prescribed influenza treatment in Japan, which is suffering through its worst flu season in two decades. But some doctors are backing away from the drug after new evidence emerged about mutant viral strains that prevent it from working well in some patients. The pill, called Xofluza, was discovered by Osaka-based Shionogi 4507 & Co., and it was approved last year by regulators in Japan and the U.S. In the U.S., it is marketed by Roche Holding AG’s Genentech unit. (Fujikawa and Davis, 2/11)

In a scenario playing out in more and more classrooms around the world, a Dallas teenager recently asked her classmate if anything was wrong, noting that she hadn't been acting like herself. The brusque reply: "Just leave me alone." The ninth-graders at the Uplift Hampton Preparatory school were role-playing as part of a program that aims to teach teens how to spot the signs of depression in themselves and others. (2/9)

Jason Reeves, 32, struggled for years to find his way, frequently running afoul of the law and grappling with mental health issues. In spite of it all, his mother, Paulette, stood by him, trying to help her son climb out of his personal morass. This month, everything came crashing down. (Winston, 2/10)

He is famous for his founding roles at Facebook and Napster, but these days the billionaire philanthropist Sean Parker is turning his attention to fighting cancer. Three years ago, he announced a $250 million investment to build teams of scientists for immunotherapy research, one of the hottest fields in taking on cancer. In an interview with STAT last week in his hotel suite overlooking Central Park, Parker spoke intensely about his belief that the government needs to move far more aggressively in investing in biotech, life sciences, and health care. (Berke, 2/11)

Kaiser Health News: A ‘Fountain Of Youth’ Pill? Sure, If You’re A Mouse.

Renowned Harvard University geneticist David Sinclair recently made a startling assertion: Scientific data shows he has knocked more than two decades off his biological age. What’s the 49-year-old’s secret? He says his daily regimen includes ingesting a molecule his own research found improved the health and lengthened the life span of mice. Sinclair now boasts online that he has the lung capacity, cholesterol and blood pressure of a “young adult” and the “heart rate of an athlete.” (Taylor, 2/11)

It's the middle of the night and you wake up to the disturbing sound of your little one crying and sniffling with a cold, sore throat or fever. And, if you're like many parents, you reach into the medicine cabinet, seeking some relief. But giving medication — and getting the dose right — can be more challenging than you might think. Jesse and Shannan Ridall live in Palmyra, Pa., with their three young children. Jesse says the lined markings on dosing devices of children's medicine can be confusing, especially when they show both teaspoons and milliliters. (Neighmond, 2/11)

It was an ironic discovery: Medical centers designed to treat patients could actually be harming them. In 1994, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report that found that incinerators used by many hospitals throughout the United States were a top of emitter of harmful air pollutants, including mercury and dioxin. (Vinopal, 2/8)

How close is a cure for multiple sclerosis? That’s difficult to answer: Researchers are still working hard to understand the potentially disabling disease. But MS studies are growing. In 2018, the term “multiple sclerosis” appeared in the titles of more than 3,000 articles in PubMed, the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s search engine for academic research on life sciences and biomedical topics. That’s a torrent of information. (Blakemore, 2/10)

The past three decades have seen a drop in the number of nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke, but those numbers are no longer declining, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 58 million American nonsmokers – or 1 in 4 – were exposed to secondhand smoke from 2013–2014, the CDC said. (Washington, 2/11)

Sometimes it takes the licensing and advertising of a treatment to get patients to seek help, even for a medical problem that is often painful and psychologically devastating. Such is the case with Peyronie’s disease, a scarring and bending or curving of the penis that can make sexual intercourse difficult or impossible for both straight and gay men. It most often afflicts middle-aged men, usually the result of an injury that may not have been noticed. Injury can occur during a sports activity, accident or vigorous sex when the erect penis is bent or pounded against bone. (Brody, 2/11)

Tracey Thomsen Anderson, 57, a retired ad agency copywriter from Colorado Springs, sleeps nine or 10 hours every night, and has done so her entire life. “My ability to sleep through ridiculous circumstances was legendary as a kid — parties, fireworks, I slept through a car wreck once,” she says. “I can get by on eight for a day or two, but I feel like a zombie all day with anything less than nine.” (Cimons, 2/9)

At first, Lilly Grey Rudge objected to her classes starting later. Delaying the first-period bell nearly an hour until 8:45 a.m. meant that her mother could no longer drive her, and Lilly Grey would have to take two buses to Ballard High in Seattle. Now, more than two years since the change, the 16-year-old junior is a fan. (Cohen, 2/9)

Snoring is the top reason that patients come to see Jennifer Hsia, a sleep surgeon at University of Minnesota Health in Minneapolis. Most of the time, they come in not because they are worried about their health, but because their partner has been complaining about the noise. “It’s very rare that I have someone come in and say, ‘I think I have sleep apnea,’ ” she says. “It’s more, ‘I’m snoring quite badly and my bed partner wants me to do something about it.’ ” (Sohn, 2/9)

When Carol Gee turned 55, she made a new friend: 4 a.m. In the past, she usually slept through it. But once she entered menopause, it became her new wake-up time. “I would go to sleep and wake up every morning around the same time, almost like you set the clock,” says Gee, who is now 68. She’s not the only older adult to have experienced an exasperating shift in her sleep cycles. In 2017, a national poll conducted by the University of Michigan found that 46 percent of adults 65 and older have trouble falling asleep on a regular basis. (Blakemore, 2/10)

A lot of people out there don’t get enough sleep — more than 1 in 3 American adults, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you’re one of them, you probably know there are two main treatments for improving sleep: behavioral methods and medications. When you’re desperate for a good night’s sleep, medications sure do sound appealing. But there are caveats with them all — the prescription pills, the over-the-counter products and the herbal supplements. (Adams, 2/9)

It has taken nearly six years, detours for bitter legal challenges, and tens of millions of dollars in legal fees, but the foundational CRISPR-Cas9 patent for which the University of California applied in March 2013 will soon be granted, according to documents posted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Friday, throwing yet another monkey wrench into genome editing’s tangled IP landscape. (Begley, 2/8)

On Thursday, operators of a health care center in Phoenix where an incapacitated woman was raped and gave birth last year announced that they would close it down. But on Friday, the operator, Hacienda HealthCare, backtracked. It said it now planned to stay open, under increased state oversight, after regulators balked, saying in a letter that they were concerned about the “health and safety” impacts of moving the center’s patients elsewhere if it was shuttered. (Zaveri, 2/8)

One day after Hacienda HealthCare announced it would close its intermediate-care facility where a patient was raped, the state has stepped in to keep it open. ...Officials with those two state agencies on Friday pushed back on Hacienda's announcement that it would close the 60-bed facility at 1402 E. South Mountain Ave. and instead gave the nonprofit entity an ultimatum: Bring in a third-party manager or allow the state health department to assume licensing authority. (Innes, 2/8)

Dorothy Mack had crippling back pain and deteriorating eyesight. Helen Pace used a walker and could barely hear. Teresa Ammons suffered a stroke in 2017 and couldn’t drive. Although each woman had a different frailty, their final circumstances were strikingly similar: They were all seniors on fixed incomes, they all lived alone, and they all died when the Camp fire roared through their mobile home park. (Newberry, 2/10)

Of note: No laws specifically address the long-term risk of repeated hits to the head, which currently is a major concern in contact sports, particularly football. We aggregated state laws to create an easy way for you to compare yours with others in a series of graphics. (Harris, Rangarajan and Miner, 2/9)

Patients in MassHealth, the Massachusetts Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program, will no longer have to schedule an in-person appointment to see their therapist, psychiatrist or substance abuse counselor. Instead, they can now use interactive audio and video technology, or "telehealth," the Baker Administration announced Friday. The announcement follows a report from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation that highlighted "critical gaps" in access to mental health care and addiction services. (Harrison, 2/8)

A Florida man has been charged with sexually assaulting a mentally disabled woman who became pregnant four years ago at a group home where he worked as a caregiver. Willie Shorter, 58, was charged with lewd and lascivious battery on a disabled adult after a test showed his DNA matched that of the child of the woman who was identified only as "DB," Rockledge, Florida, police said in a court affidavit. (2/8)

A federal judge has criticized Massachusetts for being too slow to provide mental health services to low-income children. The Boston Globe reports U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor in Springfield rebuked the state in an order Thursday and denied its request for those services to be removed from court oversight. (2/9)

A Republican state lawmaker in Arizona has introduced a resolution that would declare pornography a public health crisis. A measure introduced by state Rep. Michelle Udall (R) passed through the Arizona House Committee on Health & Human Services on Thursday, the first hurdle in its path to a full vote, AZ Central reported. (Gstalter, 2/9)

An internal review by Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital has found more than a dozen incidents in which children in the hospital’s heart unit were harmed by the care they received. The cases should have been immediately reported to state officials, the hospital’s interim president told employees during private town halls this week. None were reported until recently. (McGrory and Bedi, 2/10)

It started with a few bites of ice cream with cashew and ended with a ride in an ambulance run by an Orthodox Jewish emergency medical service. In 2017, 2-year-old Rus Amster was on her way home with her family after Shabbat lunch in Baltimore when she began throwing up. Within minutes, her stomach was swollen with puffy blotches, and she had difficulty breathing. (Miller, 2/10)

The St. Louis Department of Health's new director plans to make addressing the city's high rate of sexually transmitted diseases a top priority. Fredrick Echols will become the city’s new health director Feb. 19, Mayor Lyda Krewson announced Thursday. Echols is currently director of communicable diseases for the St. Louis County Department of Public Health. (Fentem, 2/9)

The Georgia Department of Public Health said 5 percent of patient visits to doctors were for the flu during the week ending Feb 2. That’s up from 4.4 percent of visits the week before, according to the most recent report released on Friday. (Oliviero, 2/8)

The Boston Public Health Commission will partner with Project RIGHT Inc. and Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center to provide greater community outreach and support to Grove Hall’s residents, the city said in a statement. The new Grove Hall team will join existing teams in Dorchester, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, East Boston, and Mattapan, the statement said. (Hilliard, 2/9)

Workers who manage assets at Eagan-based Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota look after a portfolio of investments and holdings with a value of roughly $1.6 billion. Over the past 12 months, Blue Cross officials have decided to try leveraging this expertise by creating a business called Aware Asset Management, a federally registered investment adviser that large companies including other insurers can hire for help with managing investments. (Snowbeck, 2/9)

Executives with a Northeast Ohio memory care company, which has Alzheimer’s and dementia patients, say the section of Ohio medical marijuana law covering caregivers is nearly impossible to adhere to. The issue with the caregiver section of state law, combined with the conflicting marijuana prohibition in federal law, makes the decision difficult over whether to give patients the drug at KemperHouse, which has facilities in Strongsville and Highland Heights, serving about 160 residents. (Hancock, 2/8)

A DeSoto psychiatric hospital — which the federal government said had put patients in “immediate jeopardy” of harm — will continue to receive Medicare funding after officials agreed to a special oversight arrangement. Dallas Behavioral Healthcare Hospital was set to lose access to the money Friday after federal inspections reported serious lapses in patient care. But the feds say the hospital this week signed what is known as a systems improvement agreement with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Chiquillo, 2/9)

Kaiser Permanente Colorado, the largest insurer in the state, is laying off about 200 employees — again. The latest round of layoffs, which follows 200 jobs cut in November, is the result of Kaiser shaking up its operations after recording millions of dollars in losses. (Seaman, 2/8)

Minnesota’s medical marijuana program could undergo sweeping changes under a new House bill that aims to increase patient access and ease restrictions on producers. The state’s two medical marijuana producers could open twice as many dispensaries under the proposal from state Rep. Heather Edelson, DFL-Edina. Parents of adolescent patients would also be allowed to administer the medicine on school grounds. (Faircloth, 2/9)

Citing a “tremendous safety threat,” Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis is asking President Donald Trump to use his executive power to allow banks to do business with state-authorized medical marijuana companies. Medical marijuana has become a multibillion-dollar industry throughout the nation, but banks are shunning cannabis companies because pot remains illegal under federal law. (Kam, 2/8)

The Supreme Court has just handed down a pair of decisions that illustrate an important truth: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is not, as many conservatives believe, some kind of traitor to their cause, an unreliable ally who will stab them in the back whenever he gets the chance. In his own way, he’s as devoted to the fortunes of the Republican Party as any of the other conservative justices. But unlike Samuel A. Alito Jr. (generally recognized as the most partisan judge on the court) or Brett M. Kavanaugh (who will almost certainly challenge Alito for that distinction), Roberts is playing a longer game. He’s trying to save the GOP from itself. (Paul Waldman, 2/8)

Roe V. Wade and subsequent Supreme Court precedents stand for the proposition that a woman has a constitutional right to choose abortion, subject only to federal and state regulations that do not impose an “undue burden” on that right. At a time when Americans distrust all branches of their federal government, the Supreme Court’s legitimacy challenge can be stated as a question: Will a court with a five-justice conservative majority, appointed by Republican presidents hostile to Roe, move swiftly to strike down, or hollow out, that well-established precedent? (2/9)

In America, we are entering a new chapter in the effort to protect life. Many of the old euphemisms obscuring the truth about abortion are fading and, for better or for worse, Americans no longer can avoid the truth. (Kristen Waggoner, 2/8)

Perhaps you missed it, but this week the House of Representatives held its first hearing on gun violence in eight years. I know, I know. You’ve had a lot to keep track of, what with everything from the meltdown in Virginia to Jeff Bezos’ selfies. But about the hearing. Testimony centered on a bill that would make it harder for people to buy guns without thorough background checks. Supporters pointed out that right now it’s ridiculously easy to get lethal weapons from an unlicensed seller who is not going to check to see if said purchaser might have a record of violence, stalking or involuntary commitment for mental illness. (Gail Collins, 2/8)

Katie Tulley suffers from an incurable bladder disorder so painful that it feels “like tearing skin off your arm and pouring acid on it, 24/7,” she said. On scans, the organ looks like an open sore. Ms. Tulley, a 37-year-old Louisianan who used to work with autistic children, manages her pain with a fentanyl patch. The opioid gives her a few precious hours out of bed to help her parents, do online volunteer work and occasionally leave home for something other than a medical visit. “I don’t get a euphoric feeling,” she said, noting that she has lowered her dose to avoid feeling woozy and impaired. Now, because of legal concerns about overdose risk, her doctors have considered stopping her medication, even though she has never misused it. (Maia Szalavitz, 2/9)

Policymakers in Ohio and across the country have begun to recognize [medication-assisted treatment] as an important tool in treating addiction – and recent efforts to integrate these elements into our state Medicaid program are an important step toward widespread adoption.There are still many barriers to overcome. (Dr. Shawn A. Ryan, 2/7)

Many important issues were debated during the recent midterm elections, but few more than Americans’ desire to fix our health-care system. Whether its drug prices or the cost of emergency room visits, pre-existing conditions or the opioid epidemic, patients are often stuck in the middle between providers of care and how to pay for services. Patients of air ambulance services are no different. While these issues are complex and the solutions challenging, it’s clear that one industry in particular needs to do more for patients — private insurers. Consumers who pay monthly premiums for insurance deserve to know they’ll have coverage when it counts. (Carter Johnson, 2/9)

Barack Obama famously and falsely said, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period.” But . . . what if you don’t like your doctor? Let’s say you, like me, are one of the 20 million Americans who work for themselves—no boss, but also no corporate-tax deduction for health insurance. The smart move is to get a high-deductible insurance plan. Now it suddenly matters what doctors charge: $500 to take your blood pressure and bang your knee with a rubber hammer, $1,200 for a blood test that uses pennies worth of chemicals to tell you your hemoglobin levels are fine. Plus four months to get an appointment, and then the doctor asks you to fax an authorization. What? It’s 2019. It’s time to fire your doctor. (Andy Kessler, 2/10)

The Trump administration’s disregard for women’s rights is reflected in its attempt to remove the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that insurers cover birth control and its expansion of the “global gag rule” banning U.S. funding to international organizations that so much as discuss abortion. The latter policy is now set to prevent women across the globe from receiving a powerful new HIV medication when it is made available, while men will have unfettered access to it. (Meredith Kernan and Cameron Nutt, 2/8)

In a 1988 hearing, Congress took the cosmetics industry to task for a rash of health and safety problems. Cosmetologists were reporting serious respiratory and nervous system damage. At least one woman had been permanently disfigured by flammable hair spray. And according to government data, nearly 1,000 toxic chemicals were lurking in countless other personal care products. ... That was 30 years ago. To date, no such reforms have been passed. (2/9)

Two decades ago, my personal and professional lives collided when my wife was diagnosed with cancer. Together we experienced the lack of transparency and synchronization across the health care continuum. That changed the lens through which I viewed my role in the health care technology community from profession to purpose. (Leigh Anderson, 2/11)

One of the great challenges of our time is to prevent Social Security and other programs for the elderly from taking over the national government. It may already be too late. Recently, the Congressional Budget Office reported that federal spending on the 65-plus population amounts to 40 percent of non-interest outlays, up from 35 percent in 2005. By 2029, the CBO projects it to be 50 percent. (Robert J. Samuelson, 2/10)

Want to fall effortlessly into profound slumber and sleep like a baby? Everyone knows that infants can be lulled to sleep by gentle rocking. Well, now it seems that what works for babies works for adults, too. New research shows that a slow rocking motion not only improves sleep but also can help people consolidate memories overnight. And this, in turn, tells us something interesting about how much the brain is affected by what seem to be purely physical interventions. (Richard A. Friedman, 2/10)

Mention the words “women’s health,” and Alzheimer’s disease may not immediately come to mind. It should. The greatest emerging risk to women’s health can be summed up in this stark statistic: Every 65 seconds in the United States a new brain develops Alzheimer’s. Two-thirds of them belong to women, and no one knows why that is. (Maria Shriver, 2/11)

When Bernie Sanders ran for president, he promised to fight for free public college, universal health insurance and a $15 minimum wage. ... A few years later, these supposedly pie-in-the-sky proposals are wildly popular among Democrats and have entered the political mainstream as important topics of discussion. Free public college, health care for all, a living wage: These are all important causes that will improve life for millions. But there’s another proposal that belongs on the progressive to-do list: universal affordable high-quality child care. In fact, I would put it ahead of free public college: It would help more people and do more to change society for the better. (Katha Pollitt, 2/9)

A lawyer and I stepped into a windowless conference room in her office building in Washington, D.C., and she reflexively closed the door. I had forgotten to restock my tissues and would soon regret that. By then, I had been interviewing American mothers about their work-family conflict for several weeks. I asked women I had just met what their bosses said to them when they announced a pregnancy, what their parental leave was like, if they could ever work remotely when a child was sick. This time, I didn’t get even 20 minutes into the conversation before the woman I was interviewing dissolved in tears. (Caitlyn Collins, 2/9)

An outbreak of measles, which is causing a full-blown public health emergency in the Pacific Northwest, is a wake-up call to states like Massachusetts that have seen a worrying rise in vaccine rejection. The Commonwealth’s numbers are headed in the wrong direction, and it shouldn’t take a crisis here to tighten the rules that have allowed too many parents in Massachusetts to skip shots for their kids and thereby endanger the entire community. (2/8)

Many evolutionary biologists are fond of pointing out that the human body is not adapted to modern life, which often involves sitting for hours at a time and toiling in artificial light and consuming mounds of processed sugar (“There’s no food in your food,” as the Joan Cusack character says in “Say Anything”). But the same design problem, it could be argued, is true of the human brain: It was not engineered to process the volume of information we’re getting, and at the rate we’re getting it. "Our brains evolved to help us deal with life during the hunter-gatherer phase of human history, a time when we might encounter no more than a thousand people across the entire span of our lifetime,” writes the neuroscientist Daniel Levitin in “The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload.” (Jennifer Senior, 2/9)

About 1 million Californians can’t safely drink their tap water. Approximately 300 water systems in California currently have contamination issues ranging from arsenic to lead to uranium at levels that create severe health issues. ...Gov. Gavin Newsom proposes taxing water across California to create a dedicated fund to solve the problem. (2/10)

Health professionals are cheering California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “California for All” vision. Newsom’s early actions to expand health care access and prioritize housing, jobs and income security and early childhood education — the “social determinants of health” — are vital strategies to reduce persistent and unacceptable health inequities across the state. (Linda Rudolph and Will Barrett, 2/10)

The consequences of an ongoing syphilis outbreak in Kansas City have been dire.One child died in 2018, and eight others were born with congenital syphilis, a lethal infection passed from pregnant mothers to babies. In fact, pregnant women in Kansas City are increasingly contracting syphilis and passing the potentially deadly disease to their newborn children, according to Kansas City Health Department officials. (2/8)