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Forty-six newly elected House Democrats pressed party leaders Monday to focus next year on legislative priorities like health care and infrastructure over investigations of President Donald Trump and his administration. "We must heed the call from our constituents," the group wrote in a letter to their leadership. The letter demonstrates how the huge class of freshman Democrats in the new Congress hopes to use its clout. (Fram, 12/3)

“While we have a duty to exercise oversight over the Executive Branch, particularly when the Administration crosses legal lines or contravenes American values, we must prioritize action on topics such as the cost of healthcare and prescription drugs, our crumbling infrastructure, immigration, gun safety, the environment, and criminal justice reform,” the freshmen wrote. “While we may not always agree on how to approach every issue, we are united in the belief that we have a mandate to debate, draft, and work across the aisle to pass legislation.” (DeBonis, 12/3)

President Trump, facing a Congress that will become dramatically more antagonistic toward him in January, has begun courting Democrats who could determine whether his next two years are spent scoring legislative deals or staving off an onslaught of congressional investigations. Trump’s charm offensive was on display Monday when he hosted Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) at the White House for a meeting that the two men had spent days trying to schedule. (Kim and Dawsey, 12/3)

Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York Democrat who has become a darling of the progressive left, was quoting from an article in The Nation about “massive accounting fraud” committed by the Pentagon from 1998 to 2015. But her suggestion that the $21 trillion in military transactions could have “already” paid two-thirds the cost of a “Medicare for all” health care system goes beyond what the article reported — and is misleading. For starters, the combined Pentagon budget from 1998 to 2015 was $9.2 trillion. One study by a libertarian economic think tank found that “Medicare for all” legislation by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, would cost the federal government $32.6 trillion over 10 years. So where did the $21 trillion figure originate? (Qiu, 12/3)

Regardless, in the situation Skidmore is describing, the $21 trillion is not one big pot of dormant money collecting dust somewhere. It’s the sum of all transactions — both inflows and outflows — for which the Defense Department did not have adequate documentation. “The same dollar could be accounted for many times,” as Philip Klein wrote in the Washington Examiner. (Rizzo, 12/4)

The US military budget is such a bloated monstrosity that it contains accounting errors that could finance two-thirds of the cost of a government-run single-payer health insurance system. All Americans could visit an unlimited array of doctors at no out of pocket cost. At least that’s a notion spreading on left-wing Twitter and endorsed and amplified by newly elected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of Democrats’ biggest 2018 sensations and an undeniable master at the fine art of staying in the public eye. Unfortunately, it’s not true. The idea spread like a game of telephone from a Nation article to the US Congress while losing a crucial point of detail: The Pentagon’s accounting errors are genuinely enormous, but they’re also just accounting errors — they don’t represent actual money that can be spent on something else. (Yglesias, 12/3)

China vows to stem the supply of the powerful opioid fentanyl flowing into the United States. It pledges to target exports of fentanyl-related substances bound for the United States that are prohibited there, while sharing information with American law-enforcement authorities. Such promises, echoed in the recent meeting between the countries’ presidents, ring familiar. (Wee, 12/3)

“I think it’s a very good thing,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown an expert on illicit economies at the Brookings Institution. “However, I wouldn’t hold my breath on how big that impact will be.” Trump and some U.S. politicians are describing the deal in sweeping terms, issuing statements that China plans to completely control the substance, said Bryce Pardo, an associate policy researcher at the Rand Corp. The Chinese, by contrast, have said they’re going to enforce existing regulations. Both appear to be playing to powerful domestic interests. (Bernstein and Zezima, 12/3)

Insys had bribed doctors and their employees with payments for sham medical events that often turned out to be parties. Physicians who didn’t write prescriptions for the company’s powerful opioid were cut off from the company’s money. There were lavish dinners, strip-club visits and gun-range outings, all of which led to booming sales of one of the world’s most powerful — and dangerous — pain drugs. (Griffin, 12/4)

Dentists who prescribe opioid painkillers to teenagers and young adults after pulling their wisdom teeth may be putting their patients at risk of addiction, a new study finds. The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine Monday, shines a light on the largely overlooked role dental prescriptions play in an epidemic of addiction that has swept the United States, leading to a record 70,237 drug overdose deaths in 2017. (Cohen, 12/3)

On Monday, NCADA announced that of the nearly 600 St. Louis-area adolescents who have participated in its Transitional Counseling Program since 2014, more than 75 percent successfully abstain from substance use throughout their enrollment in the grant-funded program, and more than 65 percent are still abstaining six months later. (Hemphill, 12/3)

A federal judge is considering halting the integration of CVS Health and Aetna — even though the two companies closed their merger last week. Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a hearing Monday floated the idea that CVS and Aetna keep their companies separate until he can determine whether the agreement the Justice Department struck with the companies clears anti-competitive concerns, according to a transcript of the hearing. (LaVito, 12/3)

It is highly unusual for a judge to make such an announcement, since Justice Department antitrust enforcers had approved the deal in October under the condition the companies sell Aetna’s Medicare drug business to preserve competition. The companies sold those assets to WellCare Health Plans Inc. When the Justice Department identifies concerns with a merger—and reaches an agreement with the merging companies to address them—a federal law called the Tunney Act requires the government to file the proposed settlement for approval by a federal court, which determines whether the deal is in the public interest. (Kendall, 12/3)

The ruling complicates CVS’s plans for the Aetna acquisition, a $68 billion deal that creates a health-care giant with a hand in insurance, prescription-drug benefits and drugstores across the U.S. CVS closed the takeover on Nov. 28 after obtaining final regulatory approvals and now faces the prospect that its plans for the combined company will be put on hold. “CVS Health and Aetna are one company, and our focus is on transforming the consumer health experience,” CVS said in a statement, without commenting further. (McLaughlin, 12/3)

The Trump administration on Monday urged states to scale back their certificate-of-need laws and scope of practice rules, as the executive branch promised to push back against hospital consolidations. In a sweeping 120-page report encompassing more than 50 policy recommendations, the White House blamed government and commercial insurance for putting up barriers to patients and hurting price transparency. (Luthi, 12/3)

The CMS will update star ratings to Hospital Compare in February after a 14-month delay to resolve issues, but the agency did not address some of critics' biggest concerns. The changes to the star ratings methodology, which was released to hospitals on Friday in a preview report, were minimal as the CMS maintains its use of the latent variable model, which analysts and hospitals have taken issue with for the way it assigns hospitals star ratings. (Castellucci,12/3)

The academic medical center uses the information to inform its community health needs assessment, which the Internal Revenue Service began to require in 2016 as part of the Affordable Care Act. It also directs Rush [University Medical Center's] movement into population health management as the industry recognizes that housing conditions, education and job opportunity directly impact a person's health. But without explicit rules guiding hospitals' interventions or setting a baseline level of funding, community benefit programs and their spending vary wildly. And as not-for-profit systems grow, public officials, community leaders and healthcare researchers have questioned whether community benefit programs justify providers' tax exemptions. (Kacik, 12/3)

WebMD and Georgia Health News analyzed 10 years of EMTALA violations by hospitals around the United States from March 2008 to March 2018. The records, obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request, show cases where complaints were substantiated by investigators for the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, meaning the hospital was found to be at fault. Our investigation found: More than 4,300 violations from 1,682 hospitals in total over 10 years. (Goodman and Miller, 11/29)

Seven Illinois hospitals are among the top 118 in the country, though two of Chicago’s most well-known institutions didn’t make the cut, according to the nonprofit Leapfrog Group’s annual list. The seven hospitals are Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Elmhurst Hospital, Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital in Geneva, OSF Holy Family Medical Center in Monmouth, Amita Health Resurrection Medical Center Chicago, Amita Health Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center Chicago, and University of Chicago Medical Center. (Schencker, 12/4)

The health plans sold on the marketplaces set up through the Affordable Care Act may work very well for people with low incomes, said Mark Rakowski, vice president of Children's Community Health Plan. But they are expensive for many people who receive subsidies and largely beyond the reach of those who don’t. (Boulton, 12/3)

There are just two weeks left to sign up for health insurance coverage for 2019 on the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Open enrollment ends Dec. 15, and after this deadline, many consumers will not be able to sign up for comprehensive coverage without experiencing a qualifying event. However, there is some conflicting information out there about the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Due to changes in the policy enacted by President Trump’s administration, some consumers may think the law is no longer in place, which is not exactly correct. (Tolbert, 12/2)

The death of George Bush on the eve of World AIDS Day was a painful reminder for some of the most lethal days of the epidemic, when people — predominantly gay and bisexual — were struck down by an illness that few in the White House seemed to lose sleep over. For them, the 41st president was a slow-moving leader whose response to the crisis was hard to separate from his public uneasiness with gay men and lesbians. “If one was being charitable one could say it was a mixed legacy, but in truth it was a bad legacy of leadership,” said Urvashi Vaid, who led the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force from 1989 to 1992. “He did not lead on AIDS.” (Stack, 12/3)

Kansas will swear in its first two openly LGBT state lawmakers next month and the new Democratic governor promises to end a ban on discrimination over sexual orientation or gender identity in state hiring and employment decisions once she takes office. Yet other goals for LGBT-rights activists, such as expanding the state's anti-discrimination law covering landlords and private employers, might not be much closer to fruition — despite a historic national wave of victories by LGBT candidates and Gov.-elect Laura Kelly's promise to break with Republican predecessors on policy. (Hanna, 12/3)

The Chinese scientist who claimed to have created the world's first gene-edited babies, He Jiankui, is missing after his former employers denied that he was detained over the weekend, the South China Morning Post reports. A spokeswoman for his former workplace, the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, denied reports that He was being detained. “Right now nobody’s information is accurate, only the official channels are," the spokeswoman told the newspaper, while also declining to elaborate. (Keller, 12/3)

Reports claimed He was placed under effective house arrest in Shenzhen after making an appearance at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong last Wednesday. However, claims of He's detention were dismissed by his former-employer, Southern University of Science and Technology, according to South China Morning Post. The university declined to elaborate further. (Cheng, 12/3)

The chief of the World Health Organization says his agency is assembling experts to consider the health impacts of gene editing. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday that gene editing "cannot be just done without clear guidelines" and experts should "start from a clean sheet and check everything." Tedros' comments followed Chinese scientist He Jiankui's announcement last week that he had helped alter the DNA of newborn twins in hopes of making them resistant to the AIDS virus. (12/3)

Scientists were stunned because editing the human germline — the genomes of embryos, eggs, and sperm — has been considered taboo or at least not ready for reproductive use, because such changes would be inherited by descendants. And CRISPR’s safety, including the potential for unintended health effects, remains very much unknown. The birth announcement made [Dr. Kiran] Musunuru dig out his old emails — which he shared with STAT — and do some sleuthing. The University of Pennsylvania researcher quickly found that the student, Feifei Cheng, worked with He and presented a paper written with him at a meeting on genome editing this past April in China sponsored by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. That paper reported editing PCSK9 in human, monkey, and mouse embryos. (Begley, 12/4)

A study published Monday is pushing back against the notion that up to 40 percent of Americans should be taking statin drugs to reduce the risk of heart disease. The study, in the Annals of Internal Medicine, argues that current medical guidelines haven't adequately considered the risks from these widely used drugs. "Some harms are mentioned, but it's entirely unclear how they were considered when coming up with the recommendations," says Milo Puhan, a physician and epidemiologist at the University of Zurich and senior author of the new study. "In our approach we very explicitly considered the harms." (Harris, 12/3)

As with any medication, statins can come with side effects. Statins, drugs typically used to lower cholesterol, are relatively safe for most people. When they are taken specifically to prevent cardiovascular disease, a new study suggests, the side effects just might outweigh the benefits, depending on your age, sex and the specific statin you're taking. (Howard, 12/3)

Despite the muscle-building, flab-trimming and, according to recent research, mood-boosting benefits of lifting weights, such resistance exercise has generally been thought not to contribute much to heart health, as endurance workouts like jogging and cycling do. But a study published in October in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise provides evidence for the first time that even a little weight training might reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke. People appear to gain this benefit whether or not they also engage in frequent aerobic exercise. (Reynolds, 12/4)

Federal health officials said Monday that cases of the paralyzing, polio-like illness that was spiking in children in the United States this year appears to have peaked. In 2018, 134 cases of acute flaccid myelitis, or AFM, have been confirmed in 33 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another 165 cases are under investigation. In a statement, the CDC said officials expect the number of cases to decline for the remainder of the year. Most of the latest confirmed cases occurred in September and October. (Sun, 12/3)

According to the CDC, in 2014, there were 120 confirmed cases between August and December; in 2015, there were 22 confirmed cases; in 2016, there were 149 confirmed cases; and in 2017, 35 confirmed cases were reported. The agency said Monday that it has previously seen a drop in cases in November. "That pattern appears to be repeating in 2018 because states have reported fewer PUIs [patients under investigation] over the past couple of weeks. CDC expects this decline to continue," it said on its AFM investigation website. (Goldschmidt, 12/3)

Over 90 percent of confirmed cases of AFM have been in children, and since 2014, AFM cases have occurred in 46 states and the District of Columbia, the CDC said. (Weixel, 12/3)

Steve Singer, who has bipolar and borderline personality disorders, knows when he’s on the verge of a mental health crisis. The female voice he hears incessantly in his head suddenly shuts up, and the hula hoop he gyrates while walking to the grocery store stops easing his anxieties. That’s when he gets to a hospital. Usually, talking briefly with a nurse or social worker calms him enough to return home. But this year a hospital placed him on a locked ward, took his phone, and had an armed guard watch him for 20 hours before a social worker spoke with him and released him. (Belluck, 12/3)

Lori Lynn Adams was a mother of four living in poverty when Hurricane Floyd struck North Carolina in 1999, flooding her trailer home and destroying her children’s pageant trophies and baby pictures. No stranger to moneymaking scams, Adams was convicted of filing a fraudulent disaster-relief claim with FEMA for a property she did not own. She also passed dozens of worthless checks to get by. Adams served two year-long prison stints for these “blue-collar white-collar crimes,” as she calls them. Halfway through her second sentence, with her children — three toddlers and a ­14-year-old — temporarily under county supervision, Adams said she got a phone call from a family court attorney. Her parental rights, he informed her, were being irrevocably terminated. (Hager and Flagg, 12/3)

Diagnosing attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder is inherently subjective. New research highlights how this can get especially tricky with young children. It shows that ADHD rates are significantly higher among children who are the youngest in their class compared with those who are the oldest. ADHD is characterized by difficulty concentrating and constantly active, sometimes disruptive behavior. (Reddy, 12/3)

All over the country, specialized strike teams of doctors are giving hope to families who are desperately searching for a diagnosis. The medical sleuths have cracked more than a third of the 382 patient cases they're pursuing, according to a recent paper in the New England Journal of Medicine. The specialists, scattered across 12 clinics nationwide, form the Undiagnosed Disease Network (UDN).  Since the program began in 2014 they've identified 31 previously unknown syndromes. (McClurg, 12/3)

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal is leading a campaign to determine whether new “5G” wireless technology is safe and is asking the federal government for proof the cutting edge radiofrequency does not pose health risks – including cancer. ...Blumenthal said 5G technology “is a vast improvement” over the 2G and 3G radio waves that allow wireless devices like cell phones and computers to operate. (Radelat, 12/3)

The Metro Minute’s recent primer on the causes and symptoms of shingles prompted e-mails from over a dozen local readers who expressed frustration about long waits to be vaccinated for the often painful condition. The vaccine, Shingrix, has been so popular that clinics and pharmacies are having trouble keeping it in stock. (Fernandez, 12/3)

Then scientists at Foundation Medicine, a Cambridge biotech, ran a new diagnostic test to sequence the DNA of cancer cells in his prostate gland, which had been surgically removed. The bad news was that he had a rare form of the disease, marked by an extraordinary number of genetic changes in the cancerous cells. The good news: The new test showed that he might respond to any of three new immunotherapy drugs. (Saltzman, 12/4)

In his 28-page decision, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman said Congress “overstepped its bounds” in prohibiting the practice in 1996, adding that FGM is a “’local criminal activity’ which, in keeping with long-standing tradition and our federal system of government, is for the states to regulate, not Congress.” The judge’s decision voided the charges of FGM and conspiracy against two Michigan doctors accused of cutting at least nine minor girls in a Detroit clinic: Dr. Jumana Nagarwala, the Michigan physician accused of performing FGM on the girls, and Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, who was accused of allowing Nagarwala use his clinic for the procedures. (Thoet, 12/3)

The head of the World Health Organization said Monday it can fight the deadly Ebola outbreak in Congo despite the withdrawal of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, insisting: "We can cover it." The comments by WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus came in the wake of commentaries in two medical journals appealing to the CDC to return to the epidemic zone in Congo — saying its expertise is needed. The U.S. experts have been sidelined for weeks, ordered away from the region because of State Department security concerns. (12/3)

Kaiser Health News: In Grandma’s Stocking: An Apple Watch To Monitor Falls, Track Heart Rhythms 

For more than a decade, the latest Apple products have been the annual must-have holiday gift for the tech-savvy. That raises the question: Is the newest Apple Watch on your list — either to give or receive — this year? At first glance, the watch appears to be an ideal present for Apple’s most familiar market: the hip early adopters. Its promotional website is full of svelte young people stretching into yoga poses, kickboxing and playing basketball. (Bluth, 12/4)

Should authorities be able to deny handgun licenses for hateful tweets? A New York lawmaker is raising the question with a bill that would require police to scrutinize the social media activity and online searches of handgun license applicants, and disqualify those who have published violent or hateful posts. (Hill, 12/4)

Barnes said she paid attention to the February mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland and felt horrible for the kids and their families. But it was impossible, she said, not to compare the media and political attention to that horrible spasm of gunfire in white suburbia to the reaction to chronic gun violence in mostly black Opa-locka or Liberty City, two of Miami-Dade’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods. (Rabin, 12/3)

Rockford, about 90 miles northwest of Chicago, is one of the first cities to effectively end homelessness among veterans, according to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Officials consider its programs a model for other cities. Its goal is now to eliminate all homelessness by 2020. Rockford and dozens of other cities accepted a challenge posed by then-First Lady Michelle Obama in June 2014 to end veteran homelessness, creating a network for city officials to brainstorm and share ideas. Since then, some 63 communities and three states have followed Rockford’s lead to be certified as having solved the problem, including bigger cities like Miami, which was certified last summer. Other major metros, including Chicago, Los Angeles and New York have also signed on to the challenge. (Snow, 12/4)

The Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, N.J., has been revitalized. The tree-lined river that runs beside it has not. Half a century ago, the herbicide Agent Orange was manufactured along the banks of the Passaic River. Poison hosed off factory floors drained into the waterway, where it sank to the bottom and became toxic sludge. The estimated cost of cleaning it up and compensating for environmental damage could run as high as $11.8 billion. (Brickley and Morgenson, 12/3)

As evidence mounted that Newark’s drinking water was contaminated by lead, top officials began an urgent giveaway of tens of thousands of filters and told residents that the problem was limited to one of the city’s two treatment plants. But city documents and other records show that an engineering study that led to the distribution of filters, which was made public in October, only focused on one plant. Now the state is directing Newark to assess whether treatment methods at the second plant are protecting water from being contaminated by lead. Since 2017, samples of tap water taken at residences served by that plant have shown elevated lead levels. (Leyden, 12/3)

Emergency medical services take 10 percent longer to arrive on the scene in poor neighborhoods compared to wealthy areas, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). People in poor neighborhoods waited on average four minutes longer to receive medical assistance for cardiac arrest in 2014, the study's researchers found. They used 2014 data because it was the most recent available as of June of last year. (Brinbaum, 12/3)

Nearly two dozen children at a long-term care facility showed symptoms of a viral infection and two had died by the time New Jersey’s health department was notified about the outbreak this fall, said Dr. Shereef Elnahal, the department’s top official. At a hearing Monday on the deaths of 11 children at the facility, Elnahal told a legislative committee that he has formed new internal policy requiring him and his principal deputy to be notified of any outbreaks where pediatric deaths have occurred. (12/3)

Deputies fatally shot a psychiatric patient who they say was threatening to harm people with a sharp piece of glass at a South Florida behavioral health center. News outlets report the shooting happened late Saturday at the University Hospital center in Tamarac, which is near Fort Lauderdale. (12/3)

Nashville is planning to hire the current head of TennCare as the city’s top health official. The Nashville Metro Public Health Department announced Monday that it has chosen Dr. Wendy Long, the director of the state’s TennCare program, to serve as the city’s new director of health. Long’s hiring is conditional on a vote by the city’s Board of Health on Dec. 13, but board leadership is already foreshadowing approval. (Kelman, 12/3)

Yale University is installing a vending machine that sells emergency contraception including the "morning-after pill," or Plan B, along with other over-the-counter medications and items aimed at improving sexual health, the university's newspaper, the Yale Daily News, reported. The college will reportedly launch the vending machine before winter break. The Plan B will be sold for $49.99, a price comparable to the contraceptive's cost at local pharmacies, Yale College Council representative Ileana Valdez told the newspaper. (Birnbaum, 12/3)

Colorado’s care of the intellectually and developmentally disabled is riddled with oversight problems that are wasting taxpayer dollars and leaving clients in jeopardy, a state audit released Monday found. The audit reviewed care and spending at the state’s 20 Community Centered Boards. The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, which administers the state’s Medicaid program, contracts with those boards to provide services. (Osher, 12/3)

Despite their special protection for pregnancy under the 1986 law, the records show that pregnant women remain vulnerable to violations, though not for all the same reasons. Now, instead of not treating patients who don’t have insurance, a practice called patient dumping, some hospitals turn away women in labor because they no longer have dedicated obstetrical units or enough staff who are properly trained to handle pregnancy and labor complications. (Goodman and Miller, 12/3)

Developer KDC has released details about the new office campus it's building for health care giant Baylor Scott & White. The 300,000-square-foot office project is under construction on the edge of Dallas' Deep Ellum district. The more than $70 million project is in the 3700 block of Elm Street near Baylor's East Dallas hospital campus. (Brown, 12/3)

First, they found it on a dog in New Jersey. Then, it spread beyond the Garden State, latching on to pets, people and livestock throughout the northeast and into Appalachia. As of this week, this invasive species has spread to Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and both Arkansas and North Carolina – two states that border Tennessee. ...The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention last week issued a warning about this invasive tick species, which appears to be spreading widely through the United States and has been known to carry pathogens. No ticks have been found in Tennessee yet, but the CDC warns the tick is serious threat to livestock, so Tennessee’s farmers should be wary of the creepy-crawly bug. (Kelman and May, 12/3)

Officials at a preschool in Hawaii have apologized after young children were given Pine-Sol instead of apple juice to drink during a morning snack time, a mix-up that health officials said occurred because the two liquids were “the same color.” The incident involving the household cleaning liquid took place on Tuesday at the preschool at Kilohana United Methodist Church in Honolulu. (Wang, 12/3)

In a public notice posted Friday, hospital administrators said housekeeping staff at the public hospital’s Daly City clinic on Nov. 6 mistakenly recycled a box of medical records instead of shredding them. A hospital staffer had left the box under her desk overnight. (Ho, 12/3)

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson filed a lawsuit Monday against an Indiana medical services company after hackers stole more than 8,000 health records of Minnesota patients in 2015. In the federal court filing, Swanson alleged that Medical Informatics Engineering violated Minnesota’s consumer protection and data privacy laws when they failed to use “basic” security measures to protect their web-based electronic health records services from hackers. (Achterling, 12/3)

MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center broke ground Monday on a $70 million surgical pavilion that will house 14 state-of-the-art operating rooms. They will replace older, undersized rooms that are now spread over two areas in the adjacent hospital. The Rosedale facility won approval from state regulators last year for the new 80,000-square-foot, two-story building that connects directly to the existing hospital. The hospital joins others in the region in modernizing older buildings and equipment and seeking to offer patients and their families better and safer experiences. (Cohn, 12/3)

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AFM is a rare but serious condition. It affects the nervous system, specifically the area of the spinal cord called gray matter, which causes the muscles and reflexes in the body to become weak. (Moini, 12/4)

In Oklahoma, there is a 4-year-old boy named Jack Mickey who adores turtles. He carries around a stuffed turtle that he has had since birth. He has turtle stickers, turtle coloring books and turtle fact-books. For Halloween, he went as a turtle, of course. So last week, before Jack underwent his 22nd surgery to treat a rare spinal disease called early onset progressive infantile scoliosis, his mother pulled up Twitter and asked if fellow users might be willing to tweet a few images, videos or facts about turtles that she could share with her son to cheer him up. (Bittel, 12/3)

Alzheimer’s disease will become eligible for treatment with medical marijuana in Minnesota next year, making it the 14th health condition approved since the state’s cannabis program began in 2015. The Minnesota Department of Health announced Monday that it was adding the degenerative neurological disorder to the program, despite limited evidence on the effectiveness of treatment with cannabis. Some studies have found that marijuana inhibits the formation of tau proteins that accelerate dementia and memory loss related to the disease. (Olson, 12/3)

Ohio’s medical marijuana Patient and Caregiver Registry went live Monday, as state officials anticipate product will soon be for sale in dispensaries. The registry is for physicians who have state approval to recommend medical marijuana for patients with any of 21 qualifying ailments, such as cancer, Multiple sclerosis or post-traumatic stress disorder. (Hancock, 12/3)

One of the clear messages of the midterm elections was the enthusiasm Americans have for the Affordable Care Act. Now that more people have better access to individual health insurance, they want to keep it. It’s time for Congress to move on from fighting Obamacare and work to improve it. (12/3)

Lost in the current debate over imposing “work requirements” for Medicaid eligibility has been how such requirements might actually benefit recipients and what “work-free Medicaid” actually costs them. It is time for states to reassess those true costs and benefits. (Rea S. Hederman Jr. and Andrew J. Kidd, 12/3)

Going to the doctor in the United States is like dining at a restaurant where the menus don’t list prices. At this restaurant, the chef decides what you should eat, and someone else entirely calculates the bill. The chef is considered an artist unencumbered by financial details so he or she can focus on preparing the best food possible. Yet with no consideration of cost, the chef decisions could result in a surprising and shocking bill that you cannot afford and which potentially goes unpaid, bankrupting the restaurant in the process. (Deb Gordon, 12/3)

The term “physician compensation” could be among the top phrases in health care this year. Though it’s always been a hot topic, it got hotter when the Trump administration announced a proposal that would affect nearly 40 percent of Medicare payments. That plan would replace a fee scale that compensated doctors more for seeing sicker patients with a flat-fee model that reimburses them at the same or similar rates regardless of the condition being treated or complexity of the visit. (Halee Fischer-Wright and Todd Evenson, 12/4)

The shortage of psychiatrists who accept insurance in the United States is a serious problem. Suicide rates are climbing in the U.S. and nearly one in five Americans lives with mental illness. Yet among the 43.4 million people with a mental illness in the U.S., only about 43 percent received treatment in the past year. Psychiatrists not accepting insurance is a major barrier to receiving treatment. (Kelly A. Kyanko and Susan H. Busch, 12/3)

Sometimes the future arrives in waves, advancing abruptly and then withdrawing. Last week, a Chinese researcher named He Jiankui announced that he had successfully altered the genetic code of a pair of twin girls born this month. He said that while they were still embryos, he had edited the babies’ genes to make them resistant to HIV infection, but offered few further details. (Elizabeth Bruenig, 12/3)

Recently, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published an article commenting on the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendation for a "drinking check-up" for all adults when they visit their primary care doctors. For those who consume alcohol above recommended limits, the task force advised doctors to “provide ‘brief counseling’ to help patients reduce their drinking.” (Sandeep Kapoor, 12/3)

In 17th and 18th century Europe, the rise of egalitarian ideals created the need for a scientific account of women’s inferior status. Thus was born gender biological complementarity — the notion that, as historian of science Londa Schiebinger explains in The Mind Has No Sex, “Women were not to be viewed merely as inferior to men but as fundamentally different from, and thus incomparable to, men.” It has been with us in one way or another, roping in science to explain the gender status quo, ever since. (Daphna Joel and Cordelia Fine, 12/3)

California’s latest mega-fire disasters have refocused attention on the state’s challenge of the future: how to manage forests and scrubland so wildfires will be less frequent and catastrophic. But often missing from the discussion are the underpaid, marginalized laborers who make up much of the state’s wildlands management workforce. The work of thinning forests, clearing brush, replanting timberland and restoring ecosystems involves backbreaking work with chainsaws and other tools. These jobs typically come with low pay, dangerous work conditions, no job security, little labor law enforcement and scarce training for increasingly complex tasks. (Collier and Wilmsen, 11/27)