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Major pharmaceutical companies will announce “voluntary, massive” cuts in drug prices in two weeks, President Donald Trump said Wednesday, without providing details. “We’re also working very hard at getting the cost of medicine down, and I think people are going to start to see for the first time ever in this country a major drop in the cost of prescription drugs,” Trump said while signing legislation making it easier for terminally ill patients to get access to experimental drugs. (Edney and Sink, 5/30)

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he expects major drug companies to slash prices on their products in two weeks, but did not provide details on which companies would do so or how such reductions would be made. Health care lobbyists in Washington said they were caught by surprise and had no idea what Trump was talking about. (Abutaleb and Holland, 5/30)

Trump touted the prescription drug pricing plan the administration released this month, and said the drug company CEOs would make the announcements because of pressure the administration had applied. “Because of what we did, they're going to announce voluntary, massive drops in prices,” Trump said. (McIntire, 5/30)

A White House spokesperson declined to provide details. Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders at her daily briefing said, “We do expect some specific policy pieces to come out on that soon,” but wouldn't elaborate. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the trade group for brand-name drug manufacturers, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump this month issued a 44-page plan to lower drug prices that included steps like requiring drugmakers to list prices in their advertisements, as well as government-funded pilot programs exploring new ways to hold the cost of medicines. (Ehley, 5/30)

A little-noticed part of President Donald Trump’s plan to reduce prescription drug prices could change the way Medicaid has paid for drugs for nearly 30 years. The change might save taxpayer dollars – but it also could make it more difficult for people with certain conditions to get the medicines that work best for them. Under Trump’s new plan, five pilot states will have the power to negotiate directly with drugmakers rather than adhering to the national price formula. And Medicaid programs in those states would be exempt from the requirement that they cover all FDA-approved drugs – an out that could mean huge savings if states refuse to pay for expensive medications. (Ollove, 5/30)

President Donald Trump signed legislation Wednesday aimed at helping people with deadly diseases try experimental treatments, calling it a “fundamental freedom” that will offer hope and save lives. Joined by families dealing with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease, and other diseases, Trump signed the so-called Right to Try bill and said he never understood why the issue had lagged for years and Congress hadn’t acted sooner. (Thomas, 5/30)

Most Democrats and public health groups oppose the bill, arguing that it could put patients in danger. “FDA oversight of access to experimental treatments exists for a reason — it protects patients from potential snake oil salesmen or from experimental treatments that might do more harm than good,” said Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. (Hellmann, 5/30)

President Trump claimed that a new law allowing access to experimental drugs would save “hundreds of thousands” of lives. But there is already a federal program in place, and similar state laws have had a minimal effect. (Qiu, 5/30)

Federal agents are struggling to stop opioid smugglers who are reaping vast profits, according to interviews and documents, as the number of Americans dying from drug overdoses continues to rise. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security say the drugs are shipped in such minute amounts that detecting them among cargo in a tractor-trailer is close to impossible. That the drugs increasingly are bought online and shipped directly to buyers — either through the Postal Service or commercial couriers like FedEx and UPS — makes inspections all the more difficult. (Nixon, 5/30)

President Donald Trump is overstating progress against the opioid epidemic, claiming “the numbers are way down” despite an increase of opioid-related deaths and overdoses in his first year in office. A look at his comments during a political rally in Nashville on Tuesday night. (Woodward, 5/31)

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is expected to make a return trip to the Arizona border this week, one day after a congressional subcommittee takes up the issue of opioids coming from Mexico in a special meeting in Phoenix. Ahead of Nielsen's visit — her second in two months — U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, R-Arizona, will preside over a House Border and Maritime Security subcommittee field hearing that will take testimony from Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and law enforcement and health officials. (Carranza, 5/30)

The collision of the opioid epidemic with criminal justice reform has created a boom for the rehab industry. ... But the less fortunate have become easy prey for rehabs with a tantalizing promise: freedom from addiction for free. (Harris and Walter, 5/31)

The Trump administration on Tuesday sought to explain the unknown whereabouts of nearly 1,500 undocumented children previously held in government custody after they entered the United States illegally before last December. The Health and Human Services Department said in April that in a 2017 survey of 7,635 unaccompanied migrant children who arrived at the U.S. border and were placed with a U.S. sponsor, a total of 1,475 could not be reached. The children's whereabouts were the subject of thousands of Twitter posts in recent days, some of which coincided with International Missing Children’s Day. (DeChiaro, 5/29)

Kaiser Health News: Another Cause Of Doctor Burnout: Being Forced To Give Immigrants Unequal Care

There are an estimated 6,500 undocumented immigrants in the U.S. with end-stage kidney disease. Many of them can’t afford private insurance and are barred from Medicare or Medicaid. Treatment of these patients varies widely from state to state, and in many places the only way they can get dialysis is in the emergency room. [Dr. Lilia] Cervantes and her colleagues interviewed 50 health care providers in Denver and Houston and identified common concerns among them. The researchers found that providing undocumented patients with suboptimal care because of their immigration status contributes to professional burnout and moral distress. (Harper, 5/31)

More than 95% of healthcare groups that have commented on President Trump’s effort to weaken Obama-era health insurance rules criticized or outright opposed the proposals, according to a Times review of thousands of official comment letters filed with federal agencies. The extraordinary one-sided outpouring came from more than 300 patient and consumer advocates, physician and nurse organizations and trade groups representing hospitals, clinics and health insurers across the country, the review found. (Levey, 5/30)

Top Trump health officials have indicated they want ACOs to take on more financial risk for patient care — but if the administration pushes the organizations too hard, it could wind up forcing providers out of the ACO program entirely and potentially undermine efforts to rein in health spending. More than 80 percent of Medicare ACOs are in payment arrangements that shield them from penalties for exceeding pre-determined spending targets — but rewards them for coming in under budget. (Pittman, 5/29)

Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday signed into law a bill that will require all New Jersey residents to have health coverage or pay a penalty, making the state the second in the country to adopt an individual health insurance mandate. Democratic lawmakers drafted the bill in response to Congress’ decision to repeal the federal mandate established under the Affordable Care Act. The repeal, the New Jersey lawmakers feared, would drive healthier people out of the state’s Obamacare market and cause premiums to spike. (Jennings, 5/31)

Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, the leading Democratic candidate for governor in New Mexico, profited from the state’s use of a high-priced health-insurance program for seriously ill patients, even after Obamacare made such programs virtually obsolete. As most states were shuttering their subsidized health-insurance programs for people with pre-existing conditions because they could get coverage through Obamacare, a firm co-founded by Lujan Grisham and a close political ally received millions of dollars to run New Mexico’s program, even as she served in Congress. (Pradhan, 5/30)

Small health insurers have every incentive to get bigger. That is the takeaway from Tuesday’s  announcement that WellCare Health Plans plans to buy privately held insurer Meridian for $2.5 billion. Like WellCare, Meridian specializes in government-sourced business such as Medicaid and Medicare Advantage. (Grant, 5/30)

As we often remind readers, the most complicated issues are the most susceptible to manipulation by politicians. If the subject is complex, it’s easier to mislead. So here’s a guide to the rescission debate, which revolves around acronyms like CHIP and CHIMPs. (Kessler, 5/31)

White Americans are increasingly critical of the country’s social safety net, a new study suggests, thanks in part to a rising tide of racial resentment. The study, conducted by researchers at two California universities and published Wednesday in the journal Social Forces, finds that opposition to welfare programs has grown among white Americans since 2008, even when controlling for political views and socioeconomic status. (Dewey, 5/30)

Allergan is exploring the sale of two relatively small businesses, in a bid to jolt sagging shares and ease the minds of worried investors. Allergan Chief Executive Brent Saunders told investors Wednesday that the company has begun a process to sell its women’s-health and infectious-disease businesses. (Rockoff, 5/30)

Saunders said that after the sales, the company would focus on four core businesses: medical aesthetics, central nervous system, eye care and gastrointestinal products. “We have a very strong pipeline in all those areas. Having a focus on those four areas will make Allergan a more exciting company,” he said in an interview. (Erman, 5/30)

Drugmaker Allergan issued a voluntary recall for nearly 170,000 birth control packs after it was revealed that a packaging error could cause unintended pregnancies. The recall targets sample packs of Taytulla that were distributed to doctors' offices and then given to patients. (Hellmann, 5/30)

Cut-price copies of expensive biotech drugs promise to slash the cost of treating serious diseases, including cancer, in rich and poor countries alike - but uneven regulation has created a lopsided market. Now the World Health Organization (WHO) is stepping in to assess the quality of such so-called biosimilars, offering a global stamp of approval that could make them more widely available, while also raising the quality bar. (Hirschler, 5/30)

When Laboratory Corp. of America disclosed pay for its chief executive in March, the company said he made $1.5 million in 2016. A week later, the diagnostic-lab chain filed a new document listing his pay at $10.9 million. Chief Executive David King didn’t get a retroactive raise. His employer just proofread its work. Such a big discrepancy is unusual, but LabCorp isn’t the only big company to make significant adjustments to past pay disclosures. (Francis, 5/30)

Ambien and similar sleep aids are well-known for sometimes causing some weird behavioral side effects, but changing one’s political or cultural views is not one of them. ... But people also have reported making phone calls, eating meals, having sex and doing other things that they don’t remember after taking so-called “sedative-hypnotic” medications. People charged with crimes occasionally even have tried “the Ambien defense.” Doctors call these “complex sleep behaviors.” On its official Ambien labeling, manufacturer Sanofi calls the side effects “abnormal thinking and behavioral changes” — changes that can include decreased inhibition. (5/30)

Sanofi, who makes Ambien, tweeted a response Wednesday morning: "While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication." Dr. Rachel Salas, associate professor of Neurology in the Sleep Medicine Division at Johns Hopkins Medicine, said “people could text or tweet while on Ambien and not remember.” She advises people to avoid sleeping near their phone or electronics while taking sleep medication. (May, 5/30)

The scientific research, too, suggests there’s good reason to be skeptical. It’s true that Ambien on occasion produces significant side effects, including hallucinations and memory lapses. But blaming the drug for bilious tweeting is a stretch. (Carey, 5/30)

A prominent cancer organization is for the first time recommending Americans initiate colorectal cancer screening at age 45 instead of waiting until age 50, a threshold long endorsed by many other medical groups. The new guidelines, from the American Cancer Society, would extend routine colorectal cancer screening to an additional 22 million American adults between the ages of 45 and 49 and send a clear message that colorectal cancer, which has been rising in young adults, is no longer just a disease of older people. (Rabin, 5/30)

The American Cancer Society, responding to a rise in colorectal cancer rates among younger people, is now recommending that adults undergo screening for the disease beginning at age 45 rather than 50. The organization, which announced the change in its guidelines Wednesday, said extensive analysis showed that lowering the starting age for screening would save lives. The recommendations apply to adults who are at average risk of the disease; this includes most people in the United States. (McGinley, 5/30)

Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death in the United States, most frequently diagnosed among adults over 65. To catch those typically slow-growing malignancies early, when they can often be cured, most doctors' groups recommend colorectal cancer screening starting at age 50. But the American Cancer Society this week changed its advice and is recommending that screening start five years earlier. (Neighmond, 5/30)

The guidelines are for men and women ages 45 to 75 of average risk for colon cancer; recommendations are different for people with certain conditions, like Crohn’s disease, or a family history of colon cancer. The group endorses six kinds of screening exams, from inexpensive take-home stool tests performed every year to colonoscopies done every 10. “All of these tests are good tests, and the choice should be offered to patients,” said the cancer society’s Dr. Rich Wender. “The best test is the test that gets done.” (Stobbe, 5/30)

The revision was immediately cheered by advocacy groups. “This recommendation will cover many of the people with early onset disease. It will save lives,” said Dawn Eicher, 41, of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, whose colon cancer was diagnosed at age 36 — 15 years after she began complaining of classic symptoms such as bleeding. (McCullough, 5/30)

Colorectal cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States, killing about 50,000 people each year. Since 1994, there has been a 51 percent increase in colorectal cancer among people ages 20 to 49, according to data collected by the National Cancer Institute. A 2014 study by researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center projected that, from 2010 to 2030, colon cancer would increase by 90 percent among patients ages 20 to 34, and by 28 percent among patients 35 to 49. For rectal and related cancers, the expected increases were 124 percent for the younger age group and 46 percent for the older group.(Viviano, 5/30)

The change in recommendations came on the same day the American Cancer Society's medical journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians published a study that found colorectal cancer incidence rates among adults under 50 rose by 51% since 1994. Rates among adults ages 55 and older have declined steadily during the same period. (Johnson, 5/30)

Melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, is on the rise with rates up about 7 percent in the last four years, and the condition is more prevalent among older men than women, according to data collected on millions of Americans with private health insurance. The findings come from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Index, which gathers medical claims data from 41 million insured members up to age 64. (Schaefer, 5/31)

Artificial intelligence, which is bringing us everything from self-driving cars to personalized ads on the web, is also invading the world of medicine. In radiology, this technology is increasingly helping doctors in their jobs. A computer program that assists doctors in diagnosing strokes garnered approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration earlier this year. Another that helps doctors diagnose broken wrists in x-ray images won FDA approval on May 24th. (Harris, 5/31)

It’s Sports and Fitness Day at the White House. That means President Trump — a man who has spoken out on the dangers of exercising and devours McDonald’s, KFC chicken, chocolate cake and double scoops of vanilla ice cream — will be lecturing the nation on the importance of staying fit. (Wan, 5/30)

The vast majority of older Americans and their caregivers are ready to give virtual health care a try: Nearly 9 in 10 adults ages 40 and over would be comfortable using at least one type of telemedicine for themselves or an aging loved one, says a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (Neergaard and Swanson, 5/31)

The fictional outbreak kept getting worse. It had a 10 percent fatality rate, about the same as the SARS virus that traveled around the world in 2002-2003. Because the virus in the drill was new, no one had previous immunity to it, and it spread quickly in large cities. As it killed more than 100 million people globally, health-care systems collapsed, panic spread, the U.S. stock market crashed, and the president, members of Congress and the Supreme Court were incapacitated. “We didn’t want to have a Disney ending,” Inglesby said. “We wanted to have a plausible scenario. We did know it would be jarring.” (Sun, 5/30)

The Food and Drug Administration Wednesday gave marketing clearance for a device that can potentially revamp stroke care by allowing paramedics in the field to diagnose severe strokes requiring specialized treatment. The Lucid Robotic System is aimed at one of the central dilemmas of modern neurology: How to quickly identify patients with the most severe strokes who could benefit from being taken immediately to hospitals that can perform a complex clot-removal procedure, potentially helping to avoid major disability. (Burton, 5/30)

Hundreds of survivors of domestic violence have come through the doors of neurologist Glynnis Zieman's Phoenix clinic in the past three years." The domestic violence patients are the next chapter of brain injury," she says. ... While many patients initially seek out the clinic because of physical symptoms, such as headaches, exhaustion, dizziness or problems sleeping, Zieman says her research shows anxiety, depression and PTSD usually end up being the most severe problems. (Stone, 5/31)

The suicide rate for female veterans has soared 85 percent in recent years, leading the military, VA and advocacy groups to try new ways to improve women's mental health care during and after service. One key focus: how to tailor the sometimes tricky jump from the military to the civilian world. Women's experiences in the military are different from men's, so their transition needs to be different, too, said retired Army Col. Ellen Haring, director of research for the advocacy group Service Women's Action Network (SWAN). (Price, 5/30)

The Virginia legislature voted Wednesday to make government health insurance available to 400,000 low-income residents, overcoming five years of GOP resistance. The decision marks a leftward shift in the legislature and an enormous win for Gov. Ralph Northam (D), the pediatrician who ran on expanding access to health care. (Vozzella and Schneider, 5/30)

The House passed the Senate bill within hours; it will now go to Mr. Northam’s desk. The measure includes a requirement that many adult recipients who don’t have a disability either work or volunteer as a condition of receiving Medicaid — a provision that was crucial to getting enough Republicans on board. (Goodnough, 5/31)

White House officials, including budget director Mick Mulvaney, urged Virginia lawmakers this year not to expand Medicaid. ... But Virginia GOP Speaker Kick Cox said the Trump administration’s openness to conservative reforms, including work requirements, “was probably the biggest key” in getting Republican support for Medicaid expansion this year. And a failure by the GOP-led Congress to repeal and replace the health law helped spur several Republican state legislators to flip positions. (Suderman, 5/31)

As votes were still being counted on election night in 2017, then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said the blue wave would finally sweep Medicaid expansion through the General Assembly. When that prediction came true Wednesday night, members of the big Democratic freshman class of 2018 were some of the last people left on the floor of the House of Delegates, savoring the moment and sharing the news on their phones. (Moomaw, 5/30)

The breakthrough — made possible by a coalition of Democrats and a handful of Republicans in the statehouse — continues the expansion of the government safety net made possible by the 2010 healthcare law, often called Obamacare. Virginia’s move also serves as something of a retort to President Trump and his Republican allies in Congress, who have called for sweeping cuts in federal aid to states for Medicaid. (Levey, 5/30)

Virginia has yet to work out the final details of the work requirement, but Senate proponents of the policy rejected arguments from expansion opponents that the requirement would be weak and unenforceable. Northam has not said he supports work requirements, but he has said he will sign any legislation that expands Medicaid. (Weixel, 5/30)

[Gov.] Northam was able to make inroads with statehouse Republicans — who had long rebuffed his Democratic predecessor Terry McAuliffe‘s expansion efforts — after the GOP suffered major electoral losses in November that nearly flipped control of one legislative chamber to Democrats. (Pradhan, 5/30)

The company that processes applications for Kansas’ privatized KanCare Medicaid program faces potentially steep fines if it doesn’t fix problems, responsible for massive backlogs, by the end of this week. Maximus, a Maryland-based company that specializes in managing “human service programs” for states and the federal government, has operated the “KanCare Clearinghouse” since 2016. There have been problems from the start. (McLean, 5/30)

A measure to expand Medicaid under ObamaCare in Utah will appear on the ballot in November after it was certified as having enough signatures. Liberal groups hailed the announcement from the state’s lieutenant governor as they hope to make the deep-red state the 33rd to expand the health insurance program for the poor under the health law. (Sullivan, 5/30)

The National Health Law Program sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Tuesday that said it received multiple reports from individuals and organizations that were unable to submit comments. The 30-day public comment period ends on June 5 and the letter asks that the deadline be extended for at least one week after repairs to the website. (Ochoa, 5/30)

California’s right-to-die law for terminally ill patients will apparently remain suspended for at least another month after a judge on Wednesday reaffirmed his ruling that the law was illegally considered and passed during a special legislative session on health care. (Egelko, 5/30)

A Riverside Superior Court judge on Wednesday morning rebuffed an effort to restore California’s End of Life Options Act, which gives dying patients the right to end life on their own terms. So the state must try again. The next motion — urging the judge to cancel a ruling last week invalidating the law — is set for June 29, a month from now. (Krieger, 5/30)

A judge has thrown out a 2016 California law allowing terminally ill people to end their lives after finding that the Legislature unconstitutionally approved it during a special session. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra asked an appeals court to block and reverse last week’s decision by Riverside County Superior Court Judge Daniel Ottolia. The court denied the request to immediately block the ruling. But experts say Becerra has other legal options and could ask the state Supreme Court to weigh in to try to restore the law. (Taxin, 5/30)

Step by methodical step, the Trump administration is remaking government policy on reproductive health — moving to limit access to birth control and abortion and bolstering abstinence-only sex education. Social and religious conservatives praise the administration for promoting “a culture of life.” But women’s-rights activists and some medical experts view the multi-pronged changes as a dangerous ideological shift that could increase unintended pregnancies and abortions. (Alonso-Zaldivar and Crary, 5/30)

In a case that has implications for Missouri, Planned Parenthood has asked a federal court for a restraining order to block an Arkansas law that effectively bans medication abortions. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up Planned Parenthood's challenge to the law, which requires abortion providers to contract with back-up physicians with hospital admitting privileges. Planned Parenthood says it has sought in vain to find such physicians. Medication abortions involve a combination of two pills. The woman takes the first at an abortion clinic and typically takes the second at home. Complications from the procedure are rare, with fewer than 1 in 400 patients requiring hospitalization. (Margolies, 5/30)

A spokesman for Gov. John Bel Edwards said Wednesday that the Democrat has signed the bill , which would only take effect if a federal court upholds a similar law in Mississippi. Senate Bill 181 imposes a prison sentence of up to two years for someone who performs the procedure after 15 weeks. A woman who has an abortion could not be criminally charged under the bill. (Izaguirre, 5/30)

Virginia’s attorney general has issued an official opinion that a state law prohibiting the concealment of dead bodies does not apply to stillborn fetuses, a move that will hearten supporters of abortion rights and dismay opponents. The opinion comes after the Virginia Court of Appeals recently upheld the controversial conviction of a southern Virginia woman who was tried and found guilty under the statute for disposing of a fetus that died in her womb, leading to a miscarriage. She was sentenced to five months in jail. (Jouvenal, 5/30)

The first women’s health clinic in Colorado to provide abortion services is at risk of losing nearly 20 percent of its overall funding should proposed changes to the national family planning program come to fruition under President Donald Trump’s administration. The Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center, which has two locations in Longmont and Boulder, receives about $500,000 each year in funding through Title X, a federal grant program dedicated to providing family planning services as well as preventative health services. (St. Amour, 5/30)

Minnesota’s attorney general is suing an Arizona-based pharmaceutical company, alleging it illegally marketed a painkiller made from the synthetic opioid fentanyl. The lawsuit was filed Wednesday against Insys Therapeutics. The suit accuses the drugmaker of encouraging physicians to prescribe the painkiller Subsys at higher doses than recommended. (5/30)

Minnesota's attorney general and the state's Board of Pharmacy sued a pharmaceutical company Wednesday, alleging it illegally marketed a fentanyl painkiller and violated state restrictions on giving doctors gifts. The lawsuit says the painkiller was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug administration to treat pain in cancer patients but that Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics marketed it for other conditions and at higher doses. (Collins, 5/30)

Native American tribes across the country have filed or are considering filing lawsuits against drug companies over the nation's opioid epidemic. These suits, which includes one filed by the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma, seek to recoup costs for social services and other programs the tribes funded as a means to treating record-high addiction rates among Native Americans. (Heisig, 5/29)

After a Leon County circuit judge ruled last week that smokable marijuana is allowed under a 2016 constitutional amendment, the plaintiffs in the case are asking her to lift a delay of her ruling that was automatically imposed when the Florida Department of Health appealed. People United for Medical Marijuana and other plaintiffs, including patients with Lou Gehrig’s disease and HIV, filed a motion late Tuesday asking Circuit Judge Karen Gievers to clear the way for her ruling on smokable marijuana to take effect. (Saunders, 5/30)

As legal marijuana spreads and the opioid epidemic rages on, the number of drugged drivers killed in car crashes is rising dramatically, according to a report released today. Forty-four percent of fatally injured drivers tested for drugs had positive results in 2016, the Governors Highway Safety Association found, up more than 50 percent compared with a decade ago. More than half the drivers tested positive for marijuana, opioids or a combination of the two. (Bergal, 5/31)

The pharmaceuticals weren’t working. The 15-year-old boy was having several seizures per day, and his parents were concerned his life was in danger. So Suzeanna and Matthew Brill, of Macon, Ga., decided in February to let their son try smoking marijuana — and his seizures stopped for 71 days, they say. But Georgia is not among the states that have legalized medical marijuana, and the Brills’ decision led to the boy, David, being taken away from his parents, who face possible fines and jail time after being charged with reckless conduct for giving him the drug. (Victor, 5/30)

When Oregon lawmakers created the state’s legal marijuana program, they had one goal in mind above all else: to convince illicit pot growers to leave the black market. That meant low barriers to entry that also targeted long-standing medical marijuana growers, whose product is not taxed. As a result, weed production boomed — with a bitter consequence. (Flaccus, 5/31)

Traditional medications tend to target the symptoms of a condition, but CBD goes after the cause of those symptoms, he said. Pharmaceuticals generally stimulate or block receptors to provide their function, while cannabis-based treatments change or adjust receptors in the brain. This means CBD can be used to treat a range of disorders, including anxiety, depression and epilepsy — which affects about a third of people diagnosed with autism. (Schuba, 5/30)

Gov. Greg Abbott’s suggestions for limiting mass shooting deaths in Texas include a bevy of changes to state law, a culture shift in how law enforcement officers patrol their communities, increases in mental health practices at schools and help for educators who want to improve their abilities to remove potentially dangerous students from classrooms. (Formby, 5/30)

And [Gov. Greg Abbott] asked state legislators to “consider the merits” of passing a so-called red flag law that would allow the police, family members or a school employee to petition a judge to temporarily take guns away from someone deemed a threat to themselves or others. Texas would become one of only about 10 states with red flag laws, if legislators were to pass such a law, though proposals for similar legislation are pending in more than a dozen other states. (Oppel, 5/30)

A handful of the recommendations involved gun safety in Texas, a state that embraces its gun-friendly reputation and has more than 1.2 million people licensed to carry handguns. (Stengle, 5/30)

As New Orleans marks its 300th birthday, the city has yet to achieve health equality for all of its residents, according to a new report The Data Center issued Wednesday (May 30). The report says discrimination in the health care system throughout the city's history has had an adverse effect on the longevity and quality of life of its African-American residents. Even today, the report points out that there 25-year difference in life expectancy between people who live in New Orleans ZIP codes 70124 and 70112, neighborhoods only five miles apart, but where residents are 3 percent and 75 percent black, respectively. (Clark, 5/30)

A Dallas County office charged with overseeing tens of millions of dollars for HIV and AIDS patients has been plagued with incompetence, poor leadership and a lack of training, according to a scathing federal report. Federal inspectors singled out leaders as "unable to demonstrate requisite skills and knowledge needed to effectively" run the program. Other staff members, meanwhile, "were unable to articulate the full range of responsibilities within their positions, and how their work contributed to achieving" the program's goals, according to Thursday's report by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, which was obtained Tuesday by The Dallas Morning News. (Martin, 5/30)

Tom Berry, of Pembroke, is urging state lawmakers to look at the tragedy of his son's death and make changes to a law that allows courts to involuntarily commit someone to addiction treatment. The law, known as Section 35, allows someone to ask a judge to civilly commit a person to addiction treatment if the person's substance use is deemed dangerous. ..."He was released with no guidance or notification to the court or his family," Berry said. (Becker, 5/30)

On Wednesday, Thomas Berry, 52, of Pembroke fought back tears at the State House while testifying in favor of a bill that would require health providers to notify families of patients released early from their court-mandated treatment under the state’s Section 35 law. ...Had he known his son was on the street, Berry said, he would have brought him to a facility in Falmouth to continue his treatment, which had been the original plan. (Andersen, 5/30)

Business leaders in Massachusetts often list rising health care costs as a top concern. Now 20 groups -- representing restaurants, retailers, manufacturers and bankers -- have formed a coalition to reduce health costs. And they've selected their first target: avoidable emergency room visits. (Bebinger, 5/30)

The person who wins the four-way race to become California’s next insurance commissioner will inherit a job with broad authority over policies that cover homes, businesses, cars and even airplanes. But medical insurance? Not so much. The commissioner’s direct control over health insurers is limited, because the California Department of Insurance — headed by the commissioner — regulates only a small slice of the market.Still, the job carries the power of the bully pulpit, amplifying the commissioner’s voice on matters of regional, statewide and national importance. (Bartolone, 5/30)

Businesses that focus on generating human organs won't have to pay state business taxes for ten years under a bill signed into law today by Governor Chris Sununu. Backers of the bill, including companies set to benefit, say it could mean great things for New Hampshire. (Rogers, 5/30)

In a recent letter to members of the Cuyahoga County Council, the former nursing supervisor at the county jail issued blistering criticisms of Director of Corrections Ken Mills, including accusations that Mills' mismanagement of the jail endangered medical staff and deprived inmates of proper care. (Astolfi, 5/30)

More than 2,300 children are in foster care in Cuyahoga County - 520 of them are in the county's permanent custody. Of those, half are in the process of being adopted, while the rest are in a holding pattern, often waiting until they reach 18 and age out of the system altogether. (Atassi, 5/30)

Craig Nordman had pleaded guilty to conspiracy to bribe doctors and money laundering and faced a maximum combined sentence of 25 years, but he received a 21-month sentence in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors. Since charges were announced in 2013, more than 50 people, including more than three dozen doctors, have pleaded guilty in the scheme involving Biodiagnostic Laboratory Services. The Parsippany, New Jersey-based blood testing lab used a variety of methods to bribe doctors to send patients' blood samples to be tested — and often for tests that weren't necessary. (Porter, 5/30)

The death toll from Hurricane Maria appears to have been 4,645, despite the official count of 64. That’s 4,645 citizens of the U.S. It’s a disgrace. (Jonathan Bernstein, 5/29)

As macabre as such statistics may be, death tolls after natural disasters set the tone for the public’s reaction — and the government’s. One reason Hurricane Katrina struck so hard at the nation’s conscience in 2005 was the shocking number of deaths: That storm killed 1,800 Americans. The public gave more to charity, and expected more from Washington, knowing how much human misery the storm inflicted. That reality makes it important to get those grim facts right. And scandalous when governments — like Puerto Rico’s — get them so drastically wrong. ...Puerto Rico is a part of the United States, and the deaths of 4,645 Americans from a natural disaster is a national tragedy. The Trump administration and Congress need to start treating it that way. (Gerald Herbert, 5/30)

When Hillary Clinton was running against Donald Trump in 2016, she boiled down concerns about his temperament to a central question: “Imagine Donald Trump sitting in the Situation Room, making life-or-death decisions on behalf of the United States,” she said. The attack was centered on national security, but the argument went beyond the role of commander in chief to broader questions about Trump’s ability to handle any number of potential crises. How would he react to a public health emergency? How would he deal with a natural disaster? We now have an answer to this question as the scope of devastation from Hurricane Maria becomes more clear. (Jamelle Bouie, 5/30)

One wonders how proud Trump is now and whether he realizes a natural disaster — in which he showed far less interest than Houston’s Hurricane Harvey — on his watch had nearly three times as many fatalities as Katrina. Further study is warranted to determine how many of those who died were victims of government negligence in the weeks and even months following Hurricane Maria. (Jennifer Rubin, 5/30)

Last October, President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico for a photo op, 13 days after Hurricane Maria had ripped across the island, leaving its residents, communities, roadways and power grid in tatters. ...Trump emphasized all that the federal government had done to assist Puerto Rico when he wrapped up his speech. ...On Tuesday the New England Journal of Medicine published a new estimate of the lives lost on Puerto Rico due to Hurricane Maria: about 4,600. That stands in stark contrast to the 16 deaths the president cited in October, and the official death toll of 64 that the Puerto Rican government has stood by for months. Trump, undaunted, gave himself a “10” when asked by White House reporters to grade the federal response to Hurricane Maria about a month after it first ravaged Puerto Rico. (Timothy L. O'Brien, 5/30)

On Tuesday, researchers at Harvard published a new study showing that the death toll from Hurricane Maria was 75 times higher than what the government had previously reported. By that calculation, it was 290 times higher than the 16 fatalities President Donald Trump himself announced during a visit to the island last year, during a bizarre appearance in which he contrasted the devastation in front of him with “a real catastrophe, like Katrina.” (We now know that Maria was more than twice as deadly as Katrina.) With the exception of the 1900 hurricane that wiped out Galveston, Texas, Maria killed more Americans than any other disaster on record, including the Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake. It killed more people than the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Tim Murphy, 5/30)

State officials across the country are stepping up to show the leadership that Congress has failed to muster to urge that opioid manufacturers be held accountable for the devastation of the national drug epidemic. Attorneys general from 36 states including Washington, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, wrote to Senate leaders last week, asking them to increase penalties on drug manufacturers that fail to report suspicious transactions and don’t maintain effective controls to keep their drugs out of the illegal market. This is a reasonable proposal in the face of the scourge of opioid addiction and deaths and the complicity of at least one manufacturer. (5/30)

For the first time in history, drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death for Americans under age 50. For the first time in nearly a quarter century, U.S. life expectancy has declined, driven by diseases of despair like alcoholism and drug addiction. And for the first time in a long time, policymakers and providers are serious about trying new approaches and making a real investment in turning the tide on addiction. (Bill Frist, 5/31)

When I was chairman of the House Budget Committee in 1997, Republicans and Democrats in Washington saw past our differences to balance the federal budget for the first time in decades. Working together, we managed to follow up that success with three more balanced budgets. Yet it’s been 17 years since lawmakers and the White House approved a spending plan that didn’t add to the national debt. ...The answer is clear. Republicans and Democrats in Congress must put aside divisive (and pointless) sound-bite politics and at long last get serious about meaningful spending restraint and entitlement reforms. Those discussions should begin with proposals to deal with the costs of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, which are the greatest contributors to spending and debt. Congressional leaders from both parties must pledge to vote on a package of meaningful reforms. (Gov. John R. Kasich, 5/30)

Imagine the horror of learning you have a terminal illness for which science has not yet come up with a treatment. Now imagine receiving the same diagnosis, and then learning a promising new treatment exists that could save your life — but you can’t get access to it thanks to governmental obstacles. ...Democrats in Washington managed to take an issue that unified literally thousands of legislators from both parties in 40 states, and turned it into a divisive, party-line vote. Thanks to Trump, Americans facing terminal diagnoses will now have a new chance at life. How tragic — and pathetic — that Democrats refused to join him in making that happen. (Marc A. Thiessen, 5/30)

Last week, I previewed 10 books I want to tackle during the summer reading season. I finished the first one, “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” by Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter John Carreyrou, over the holiday weekend. It tells the story of blood-testing startup Theranos Inc., which at one point had a value north of $9 billion — making it one of the biggest so-called unicorns in the world. Today it is essentially worthless. (Barry Ritholtz, 5/30)

“The drug lobby is making an absolute fortune at the expense of American consumers,” said President Donald Trump from the White House Rose Garden a few weeks ago. He was announcing his plan to reduce the cost of prescription drugs in this country. Unfortunately the speech was more rhetoric than substance. And the rhetoric was not very promising — unless you’re a drug company. Pharmaceutical stocks surged after the president spoke, an indication investors saw higher prices and profits ahead. "What Trump laid out is policy that Big Pharma can love," said Robert Weissman, president of the advocacy group Public Citizen. (5/30)

The mass shooting at a school in Texas on May 18 brought renewed calls for stricter gun-control laws. This focus should  include another, less-visible, aspect of the crisis: The killing by firearms of hundreds of women each year by their intimate partners. It’s clear that gun control is a women’s issue. Of the 39,000 gun deaths in America In 2016, 456 were from mass shootings. But, on average, more than 561 women are killed by these weapons each year by their husbands, ex-husbands, common-law husbands or boyfriends, according to the Associated Press. (Kara Alaimo, 5/30)

A working paper released this week by researchers at the National Bureau of Economic Research looked at employee pay data from 2011 to 2016. It concluded that employers who were forced to raise minimum wages for lower-paid workers also raised the hourly wages of higher-paid workers to maintain parity. However, the same study also found “robust evidence” that employers who raised the minimum hourly wages also reduced the amount they paid for their employees’ health-care benefits to cover those added costs. (Gene Marks, 5/30)

As America focuses on one epidemic — the opioid crisis — another goes entirely ignored. American health-care workers are dying by suicide in unprecedented numbers. Earlier this month, a medical student and a resident at NYU medical school completed suicide less than a week apart. ...My junior colleague was among an estimated 400 physicians who took their lives in 2016. (Vinita Parkash, 5/31)

Four years after the world’s largest Ebola epidemic claimed more than 11,000 lives in West Africa, a new outbreak of the deadly virus is brewing, this time in Democratic Republic of Congo. In sharp contrast to the 2014-2016 outbreak — when authorities delayed several months before declaring a global public health emergency — the World Health Organization and major donors this time have moved quickly to prepare. (William Garvelink, 5/30)

Last month the Texas Supreme Court decided In Re Cypress Medical Center, a case focused on whether the payments hospitals receive for insured patients are relevant to determining the price an uninsured or out-of-network patient must pay. The question of how to measure the reasonable and customary value of health care services is being raised frequently in courts across the country.This is an important issue for everyone, not just uninsured and out-of-network patients. Why? Because high hospital prices are a key reason that health care in the United States is more expensive than any other developed country. (George A. Nation III, 5/30)

The suspension of California’s nearly 2-year-old right-to-die-law late last week came as a shock. After all, it had taken a quarter-century to get the law passed in the first place, and by all accounts, it was working well. It’s a moderate, reasonable measure with many safeguards built in, and it has apparently been used sparingly and as a last resort by terminally ill people seeking an alternative to pain and suffering during their last six months of life. Worse yet, the law — which allows patients with a prognosis of six months or less to live the right to obtain lethal drug prescriptions from their physicians — was struck down not on the merits, but on a technicality: that it was passed in a special session of the Legislature called specifically to address the issue of Medi-Cal funding. (5/31)

The law has given terminal patients of sound mind the humane option of dying with dignity — on their own terms, rather than in excruciating pain. Arguing, as opponents do, that this harms these Californians rather than helps them ignores this reality: In about 5 percent of cases for terminally ill patients, it’s impossible to manage a dying patient’s pain with medication. (5/30)