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President Trump is expected to announce in his State of the Union speech a national commitment to end transmission of the virus that causes AIDS, with a goal of stopping its spread in this country by 2030. A senior administration official with knowledge of Mr. Trump’s preparations confirmed the plan on Monday, in advance of the address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday evening. Government scientists have been working for months on the plan, which calls for an expanded effort to prevent infections and to treat those with H.I.V. (Pear and Rogers, 2/4)

Few other details were available Monday, but any effort to eradicate new HIV diagnoses would almost certainly have to focus on black and Hispanic men who have sex with other men, people between the ages of 25 and 34 and residents of Southern states. Those groups have for years borne a disproportionate share of new HIV diagnoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year, there were 38,739 new HIV diagnoses in the United States, according to the CDC. An estimated 1.1 million people had the virus in 2015, the CDC said, with about 15 percent of them undiagnosed. (Bernstein, Sun and Goldstein, 2/4)

Trump’s team has indicated the president may make overtures to Democrats by delivering a “unifying” message that contains proposals they could support, such as reforming prescription drug pricing, a commitment to end AIDS in the U.S. by 2030 and an infrastructure package. But it’s unclear how much of the speech will be dedicated to bipartisan themes compared with appeals to Trump’s base, typically the president’s go-to move in times of crisis. (Fabian, 2/5)

A guide to separating fact from fiction on subjects Trump is expected to address in Tuesday night's speech: What a difference a year makes. From predicting that the Affordable Care Act would "implode" and "explode," Trump now regularly claims credit for stable premiums under the health law. He's likely to keep repeating it, even though he's wrong. "The average benchmark exchange premium will decline for the first time in 2019 thanks to President Trump's policies," states a Jan. 20 White House information sheet, referring to the marketplace exchanges set up under "Obamacare." (Yen and Woodward, 2/4)

The White House primarily sees the speech—his second address to the nation on border security in the past month—as key to its efforts to win a public-relations battle in the standoff with congressional Democrats over border-wall funding, which led to the 35-day shutdown that left 800,000 workers without pay for weeks. (Ballhaus, 2/4)

Trump's first State of the Union address, delivered last January, was the third-longest ever delivered, clocking in at 1 hour and 20 minutes. That’s a near-historic amount of time, and just nine minutes shy of the overall record, which goes to President Bill Clinton’s final State of the Union address in 2000. Clinton also claims the No. 2 spot with his 1995 address, which lasted 1 hour and 25 minutes. (Forgey, 2/4)

In the days after President Trump was elected, some women saw his victory as reason to worry: Would he fulfill his campaign promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act? And if so, would it eventually become harder and costlier to obtain birth control? News organizations sounded the alarm: “Get an IUD Before It’s Too Late,” a Daily Beast headline warned. “Here’s Why Everyone Is Saying to Get an IUD Today,” said a New York Magazine piece. (Caron, 2/4)

Trump’s vow to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act unnerved women who feared losing an important ACA benefit — access to all forms of birth control with no out-of-pocket costs. Days after the election, social media lit up with exhortations to get an IUD. That high-cost option works for five to 12 years, potentially enough to outlast Trump’s presidency. For the new analysis, researchers from Harvard Medical School and Vanderbilt University used data from commercial health plans covering about 3.4 million women ages 17 to 45. (McCullough, 2/4)

While the rate changed little before and after Nov. 8 in 2015, the 2016 rate changed from 13.4 per 100,000 women before the election to 16.3 per 100,000 women afterward — a 21.6 percent increase. That means an additional 2.1 insertions per 100,000 women per day after the election or, if extrapolated to the 33 million women of reproductive age who have employer-sponsored health insurance, an additional 700 insertions per day — or 21,000 in a month. “I was and am quite impressed by those numbers,” said Pace. “That’s 21,000 additional IUDs or implants that we can associate with the election.” (Ebbert, 2/5)

The authors of the study said the increase could be attributed to fears that Trump would follow through on his campaign promise to repeal ObamaCare, which requires employers cover 18 types of contraception in their insurance plans with no copays for beneficiaries. The cost of an IUD without insurance coverage can range from $500 to $1,000, according to Planned Parenthood. (Hellmann, 2/4)

But the findings come with several big caveats. The study doesn’t prove that the election caused the uptick in LARCs. The researchers only looked at women who had been enrolled in commercial insurance for at least a year, so the results can’t be applied to women with public health coverage, no health insurance, or newly commercially insured women. It also only looked at the month following the election. That means the study might not capture women who sought LARCs after the election, but hadn’t yet received one a month after the election. (Thielking, 2/4)

An edited Q&A with the study's lead author, Dr. Lydia Pace of Brigham and Women's Hospital. (Goldberg, 2/4)

Senate Democrats blocked abortion-related legislation on Monday night in the wake of a political firestorm sparked by a Virginia abortion-rights bill last week. Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) tried to pass legislation that penalizes doctors who fail to "exercise the proper degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or attempted abortion."  (Carney, 2/4)

Ohio’s health director increased the fine on a Toledo’s last abortion clinic to $15,000 from $3,000 for safety and procedural violations after a patient with potential post-abortion complications was improperly transferred to a hospital in 2017. And Capital Care Network appealed to the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas after the decision by state Health Director Lance Himes. (Prosser, 2/4)

Federal regulators in June took the unusual step of announcing they would shut down a New York-based nonprofit organization responsible for recovering human organs for transplantation. On Friday, regulators reversed that decision even though the organization, LiveOnNY, has received poor performance scores for nearly a decade and its organ recovery rates remain among the lowest in the nation. LiveOnNY, the second largest of 58 federally designed organ procurement organizations, confirmed Monday that its contract with the federal government was renewed. The organization declined interview requests and said it would not comment on how it plans to boost organ donation in the New York region. (Kindy and Bernstein, 2/4)

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to digitize its Vietnam-era combat records in a bid to speed the verification of claims over mental health issues for aging vets. The agency issued a “request for information” for companies interested in converting the archival text files into Excel-type spreadsheets. Data filtering will then be used to quickly verify potentially traumatic events claimed by ex-military personnel, according to a notice from the department. (Norman, 2/2)

A coalition of conservative groups is urging President Trump to stop the Food and Drug Administration's "aggressive regulatory assault" on businesses that sell e-cigarettes. The FDA under Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has cracked down on e-cigarette sellers and manufacturers amid an epidemic of use among minors. But the conservative groups, led by Americans for Tax Reform, argued the FDA is pursuing policies that are "more extreme than those contemplated by the Obama administration." (Hellmann, 2/4)

Hospital prices are the main driver of U.S. healthcare spending inflation, and that trend should direct any policy changes going forward, according to a new study. For inpatient care, hospital prices grew 42% from 2007 to 2014 while physician prices rose 18%, according to researchers who studied the Health Care Cost Institute's claims data for people with employer-sponsored insurance from Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare Group. Similarly, for hospital-based outpatient care, hospital prices increased 25% while physician prices grew 6%, the new Health Affairs study found. (Kacik, 2/4)

Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest maker of health-care products, has agreed to settle the bulk of consumers’ lawsuits alleging it sold defective artificial hips and misled patients about their dangers, according to a lawyer for the plaintiffs. “The parties have reached an agreement that hopefully will resolve most, if not all, of the litigation,’’ said attorney Mark Lanier, one of the leaders of the consolidated 10,000-suit litigation against J&J and its DePuy unit, maker of Pinnacle hip-replacement devices. He declined to provide details of the settlement. (Feeley and Korosec, 2/4)

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has given people in the Georgia insurance exchange more time to visit WellStar Health System doctors and presumably not face higher out-of-pocket costs. The contract for exchange coverage between Anthem and Marietta-based WellStar ended Monday. But instead of making WellStar exchange patients out of network immediately, Anthem said it would allow another 90 days of network coverage for those members who selected, were assigned or tried to choose a WellStar-affiliated primary care physician. (Miller, 2/4)

An advocacy group for patients with Type 1 diabetes is calling out a new UnitedHealthcare policy that expands an existing agreement with Medtronic and makes the manufacturer's medical devices the "preferred" insulin pumps for children with the autoimmune condition. On Friday, Minnetonka-based UnitedHealthcare published a bulletin to health care providers saying the Medtronic product would become the preferred insulin pump for children age 7 and older who are receiving a prescription for an insulin pump for the first time. (Snowbeck, 2/4)

Kaiser Health News: Ideas To Curb Surprise Medical Bills Percolate With Rare Bipartisan Push

Surrounded by patients who told horror stories of being stuck with hefty bills, President Donald Trump recently waded into a widespread health care problem for which almost everyone — even those with insurance — is at risk: surprise medical billing. Trump’s declaration that taming unexpected bills would be a top priority for his administration echoed through the halls of Congress, where a handful of Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been studying the problem the past couple of years. (Luthra and Huetteman, 2/5)

When Purdue Pharma reformulated its signature pain drug OxyContin in 2010, its aim was to make the pill “abuse-deterrent.” But the change may have had an unanticipated and disastrous public health impact, according to a new study: accelerating a nationwide spike in hepatitis C infections. When the new version of OxyContin became far more difficult to crush or ingest nasally, many opioid users switched to injecting illicit heroin after 2010. That shift, researchers found, caused hepatitis C rates to spike three times faster in states with the highest non-medical OxyContin use. (Facher, 2/4)

Those findings, in a paper published Monday in Health Affairs by researchers at the RAND Corp., imply that the opioid crisis has also been a factor in another issue that Congress, the administration and the states are struggling with: drug prices. Hepatitis C treatments cost around $20,000 to $30,000 per course of treatment, putting a huge burden on state Medicaid budgets. “Even if we could find a way now to stop all overdoses, we’re going to carry the burdens of these infectious diseases for a really long time, and they are very expensive,” said David Powell, a senior RAND economist who led the study. “That’s just kind of another cost of this crisis that hadn’t really been captured before.” (Siddons, 2/4)

The bill, AB362, was authored by Assemblywoman Susan Eggman, D-Stockton, and co-authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco. It’s the second time the duo have worked together to launch a safe injection pilot program in San Francisco. A similar bill they co-authored was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown in October, but Gov. Gavin Newsom has said he is receptive to the idea of a safe injection site. (Fracassa, 2/4)

Members of the legislature’s Public Health Committee heard testimony during a public hearing Monday from those for and against Sen. President Pro Tem Martin Looney’s proposed bill to add opioid use disorder and withdrawal as conditions that qualify for the palliative use of marijuana. (Megan, 2/4)

But there is, finally, a serious quest for a suicide cure. Ketamine is at the center, and crucially the pharmaceutical industry now sees a path. The first ketamine-based drug, from Johnson & Johnson, could be approved for treatment-resistant depression by March and suicidal thinking within two years. Allergan Plc is not far behind in developing its own fast-acting antidepressant that could help suicidal patients. How this happened is one of the most hopeful tales of scientific research in recent memory. (Koons and Langreth, 2/5)

A large review of studies has found no solid evidence that vitamin and mineral supplements have any effect in preventing cognitive decline or dementia. The meta-analysis, published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, included 28 trials with more than 83,000 cognitively healthy people 40 and older. The reports covered a wide range of vitamins and minerals, alone and in combination, in various dosages, with follow-ups as long as 18 years. Eight studies looked at the antioxidants beta carotene, vitamin C and vitamin E. (Bakalar, 2/4)

Tribal casinos receive a lot of attention. What doesn’t receive as much attention is the higher incidence of problem gambling among Native Americans compared to the rest of the population. Washington University Professor David Patterson Silver Wolf has studied how the Native American population has a higher rate of gambling addiction than the average rate in the general population. Estimates put the problem-gambling rate among Native Americans at 2.3 percent, more than double the rate among all adults. (Johnson, 2/5)

While she was still pregnant, [Alyssa Martin] and a team of doctors devised a plan to try to save the twins. The boys’ best hope was an experimental drug — a form of copper injected under the skin twice a day — designed to counteract the effects of that mutated gene, which wreaks such havoc on the body’s copper levels that it often kills boys before age 3. If the medication was to have a chance of working, doctors believed, it was crucial that the twins get it within weeks after birth — so time was of the essence. (Robbins, 2/5)

Women tend to have more youthful brains than their male counterparts — at least when it comes to metabolism. While age reduces the metabolism of all brains, women retain a higher rate throughout the lifespan, researchers reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (Hamilton, 2/4)

Some religious traditions, coupled with a misunderstanding of mental illness, can stop people from getting mental health care. Individuals may be told to pray the illness away or trust in God to heal them, psychologists and social workers say. The impact is especially profound for the African American community, research shows. (Pattani, 2/5)

The gene-editing tool that has revolutionized biology is becoming even more powerful. CRISPR, as the system is known, allows scientists to target and snip a specific sequence of letters on a strand of DNA with unprecedented precision. That has opened up new possibilities for treating genetic diseases, helping plants adapt to global warming and even preventing mosquitoes from spreading malaria. (Netburn, 2/4)

The benefits of a healthy sex life aren’t limited to young adults, according to a British study that found intimacy and sexual activity are important for older adults’ well-being, too. In the study of nearly 7,000 men and women, ages 50 to 89, quality of life was higher in those who reported any kind of sexual activity in the past year, such as kissing, researchers found. Being emotionally close to one’s partner during sex also resulted in higher scores on the quality of life questionnaire for both men and women. (Mishra, 2/5)

Chronic pain is the most common reason people give when they enroll in state-approved medical marijuana programs. That's followed by stiffness from multiple sclerosis and chemotherapy-related nausea, according to an analysis of 15 states published Monday in the journal Health Affairs. (2/4)

Alecia Domer has had seasonal pollen allergies since she was a child. But she’s never had to carefully watch what she eats. That is, until the age of 42, when she had lunch one day and shortly afterward, her throat and stomach felt like they were on fire and her face turned beet red. “I didn’t know what I had eaten, it was so insane,” says Ms. Domer, 51 years old, a resident of Needham, Mass. (Reddy, 2/4)

Bud Light is touting that it doesn't use corn syrup, but that doesn't make it nutritionally much different from its competitors. The best-selling beer in the U.S. ran a medieval-themed Super Bowl ad on Sunday night that mocked rivals Miller Lite and Coors Light for using the sweetener. Social media chatter over the ad got a boost when the National Corn Growers Association expressed its disapproval in a tweet. (2/4)

Bud Light made an enemy of the corn industry on Sunday by boasting in a Super Bowl ad that, unlike its fiercest competitors, it does not brew its beer with corn syrup. While corn lobbyists responded in anger, and competing brands fought back, some viewers were left to wonder: Does it matter if corn syrup is used during fermentation? (Victor and Caron, 2/4)

California doctors would be barred from treating or performing surgery on children born with genitals that don't fit a single gender or are otherwise atypical unless it's medically necessary or the child consents, under a bill unveiled Monday. It's the latest effort by state legislators to give minors more control over their bodies and gender identities. (2/4)

Connecticut lawmakers are considering legislation that would ban female genital mutilation, partly because of a U.S. District Court judge's ruling last fall that determined a federal prohibition was unconstitutional. The General Assembly's Public Health Committee heard testimony Monday on one of several bills proposed this session barring the procedure known as female circumcision or cutting. Advocates said 28 states have enacted laws to combat it, and Connecticut needs to join them. (2/4)

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer took steps Monday to restructure and rename the state environmental agency that drew criticism for its handling of the Flint water crisis under former Gov. Rick Snyder. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality will become the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy. The agency will house new public advocacy offices for clean water and "environmental justice" to investigate complaints about water quality and help ensure fair consideration of low-income and minority community interests. (2/4)

The superintendent of a small school district in Indiana has resigned after she took a sick student to the doctor and paid for his treatment with her son’s insurance last month, resulting in a felony insurance fraud charge, police said. Casey Smitherman was arrested in January on charges including official misconduct and identity deception, then released on bail, according to court records. At the time, she was the superintendent of Elwood Community School Corporation in Elwood, Ind., a town of about 8,500, about 45 miles north of Indianapolis. (Wang, Rosenberg and Wootson, 2/4)

A Hawaii state lawmaker has introduced a bill intended to effectively ban cigarette sales statewide. State House member Rep. Richard Creagan’s (D) bill would raise the minimum smoking age incrementally each year to 30 in 2020, 40 in 2021, 50 in 2022, 60 in 2023 and 100 in 2024. The current legal smoking age in Hawaii is 21. (Anapol, 2/4)

Legislators in regulation-averse Texas are weighing a public health push to raise the tobacco sales age from 18 to 21. And one of the biggest tobacco companies is backing them. A victory would put the Lone Star State on a track with progressive bastions like California, Massachusetts and New York City that have enacted similar curbs — and in sync with a nationwide push to curb youth smoking that extends to e-cigarettes. (Rayasam, 2/4)

The number of people with measles rose two more cases Monday to 49, according to Clark County Public Health. One person who is between 30 and 40 years old has measles -- the oldest person so far. There’s only one other adult who has been diagnosed with measles. Nine people are suspected of having measles and await test results before they’re announced. (Harbarager, 2/4)

Federal court records have revealed new details and eye-raising emails in the case of two Middle Tennessee health care CEOs who allegedly plotted to forge the signature of a dead patient and used illegal kickbacks to defraud Medicare out of millions. John Davis, 41, the former CEO of Comprehensive Pain Specialists, and Brenda Montgomery, 71, the head of CCC Medical, were indicted last April by federal prosecutors. Montgomery pleaded guilty to fraud in January and is awaiting sentencing. Davis has pleaded not guilty to all charges. (Kelman, 2/4)

Oregon’s much-criticized system for delivering health care to the poor received a big vote of confidence from the private sector this week when 24 organizations notified the state, that they hope to get into the coordinated care organization business. Coordinated care organizations, or CCOs, oversee, coordinate and in many cases provide health care for nearly 900,000 Oregonians on the Oregon Health Plan, the state’s version of Medicaid. (Manning, 2/4)

Senate Bill 1211, introduced by state Sens. Heather Carter, R-Cave Creek, and Kate Brophy McGee, R-Phoenix, would remove an exemption in state law that allows facilities such as Hacienda HealthCare to operate without complying with typical state licensing requirements. The federal government still has oversight of intermediate-care facilities for people with intellectual disabilities, so the facilities are not operating entirely free of regulation. (Innes, 2/4)

California lawmakers will need to grant nurse practitioners across the state more autonomy, increase opportunities to study medicine and expand doctor training programs in order to avoid a looming healthcare crisis, according to a report released Monday by the California Future Health Workforce Commission. The report outlines a $3-billion plan for ensuring the state has enough doctors, nurses and home care workers to meet the needs of Californians at a time when Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to dramatically expand healthcare access for lower-income and immigrant communities. The commission, created by healthcare, education and business leaders and co-chaired by UC President Janet Napolitano, plans to pitch the proposal to Newsom and legislative leaders in the coming weeks. (Gutierrez, 2/5)

Dr. David Torchiana, as chief executive of Partners, grappled with this complex dynamic while leading an effort to better integrate the hospital system. Now, with Torchiana’s abrupt announcement last week that he soon plans to retire, Partners and its flagship hospitals find themselves at another crossroads as they consider how aggressively to push further integration. (Dayal McCluskey and Kowalczyk, 2/5)

One of the more difficult items on Gov. Ned Lamont’s initial to-do list is to craft a new taxing arrangement with Connecticut’s hospitals — and the stakes are huge. Lamont must contend with an industry that insists it was misled, overtaxed and otherwise abused by his predecessor. (Phaneuf, 2/4)

Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed bold steps to ensure more Californians have health coverage, but a new report underscores that his success may depend in part on large-scale investments to expand the state’s health care workforce. A coalition of health, labor and education leaders, in a report released Monday, cited a dearth of health care workers in many regions of the state and recommended spending up to $3 billion over 10 years to address the shortfall. It’s not clear where that money would come from, though the report cited several possible sources. (Gorman, 2/4)

In the past five years, the number of people in California who were deemed incompetent to stand trial and referred by a judge to state hospitals for treatment increased by 60 percent, state figures show. Such referrals happen when doctors determine that defendants are unable to understand legal proceedings or cooperate with their attorneys. Often this leaves people who need mental health treatment stuck in county jails, waiting to be transferred to a state hospital. (Wiener, 2/4)

A 24-year-old employee of the University of Maryland School of Medicine is in critical but stable condition after he was shot outside the university’s downtown Baltimore hospital Monday morning, police and hospital officials said. The shooting at the University of Maryland Medical Center roiled Baltimore’s medical community, a tight-knit group in which some doctors already have called for measures to abate gun violence in Baltimore and beyond. (Meehan and Cohn, 2/4)

Hundreds of Northern California wildfire victims desperate for housing and living in recreational vehicles on their burned-out lots were ordered off their properties Monday after federal authorities threatened to cut off funding for the state's biggest natural disaster cleanup. The Paradise Town Council unanimously rescinded a two-month-old law allowing residents to live in temporary shelters on their burned out properties before the lots are cleared and certified safe for habitation. The unanimous vote Monday occurred after an emotional and tense meeting that was the first in Paradise city hall since the Nov. 8 fire destroyed most of the city of 27,000 people. (2/4)

St. Petersburg Sen. Jeff Brandes’ closely watched bill that would repeal a ban on smoking medical marijuana nearly died in a Florida Senate committee hearing on Monday. But after the vote tied and was then reconsidered, it cleared its first hurdle Monday with a tight 6-4 vote. (Gross, 2/4)

Hear that crunching sound? It’s the eggshells that 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls are stomping through, backing up and stomping upon all over again, as they attempt to satisfy the base’s delicate demands for Medicare-for-all. The left-wing die-hards sometimes argue that supporting Medicare-for-all should be a litmus test for anyone seeking the 2020 nomination because it’s not only good policy but good politics, too. The entrenched establishment may claim  it’s a “radical” idea, but surveys suggest it is mainstream. (Catherine Rampell, 2/4)

Announcing that, as President, she would “eliminate” private health insurance from the American marketplace puts Harris to the left of the British Labour Party, most French socialists, and even increasing parts of Sweden’s system. In fact, as Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs noted on Twitter, her plan puts her to the left of Aneurin Bevan, one of the founders of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). (Raheen Kassam, 2/4)

Guess who is now claiming, at least implicitly, that Obamacare isn’t working? Democrats.That’s the silent premise on which the argument in favor of “Medicare for All” rests. And it is reasonably clear that the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee will be running on Medicare for All. (Robert Robb, 2/4)

When then-President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law in the summer of 1965, he declared, “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine.” Johnson’s pledge was as prophetic as it was audacious: Medicare fundamentally transformed health care, giving seniors unprecedented access to the medicine and services they need to live longer, healthier lives. That promise now hangs in the balance. (Former Gov. Howard Dean, 2/4)

The internet has long been a place for the free exchange of ideas, regardless of the ideological beliefs of the posters. Indeed, the idea of internet censorship is anathema to Americans, whose free speech is protected by the First Amendment.But what can be done about the growing amount of harmful misinformation intended to influence thousands of people to make decisions that put not only their lives, but the lives of their and others’ children, at risk? Such is the situation for the anti-vaccination, or “anti-vax,” community, thousands of whose members flock to social media pages where they promptly remove “pro-vax trolls,” and post fear-mongering memes and exaggerated personal anecdotes. (Rachel Alter and Irwin Redlender, 2/4)

In so many domains, life is improving across the world. It doesn’t always feel that way. In surveys, Americans overwhelmingly believe that world poverty is getting worse or staying the same (it’s getting much better). And they tend to underestimate, by a wide margin, the percentages of children in the developing world who are receiving vaccines. Public health campaigns have been a big reason for major improvements, but urgent priorities remain. (Austin Frakt and Aaron E. Carroll, 2/4)

For the third consecutive year, life expectancy in the United States has declined. In fact, for the past 60 years our life expectancy has dropped in comparison to other rich countries. As we consider the state of our union, we should ask ourselves how this is possible, since the United States spends more on health care than any other country in the world. We think medicine will fix our problems. We should invest in medical treatments, but we must face disappointing results from medical research: Even the best clinical care has little effect on population life expectancy. (Robert M. Kaplan, 2/4)

Smallpox virus caused an estimated half-billion deaths in the 20th century before the World Health Assembly declared it eradicated in 1980. Our ability to diagnose and treat infectious diseases has advanced tremendously over the last century, but they continue to pose significant threats to the For example, the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has become one of the worst in decades. Congress has already made substantial investments to guard against these threats and should ensure continued funding before the current authorization expires in 2020. (Brian T. Garibaldi and Lisa L. Maragakis, 2/4)

Among the many vexing issues faced by companies that conduct clinical trials, at least two of them — the large number of participants needed for trials and participants’ fears they will be end up getting a placebo — can be eased by using an innovative approach to collecting comparison data called synthetic control arms. With the skyrocketing cost of clinical trials, the proliferation of digital data, and a new FDA commitment to considering real-world data in regulatory decision making, it’s the right time to begin using synthetic control arms. Medical product development is at the brink of a new age of evidence generation, an environment that’s ripe for disruption. The next step requires risk taking, not something this industry is known for. (Jen Goldsack, 2/5)

We’ve read the recent headlines:“U.S. birth rate plummets to lowest point in 30 years.” “U.S. fertility rate declines for seventh year running.”It turns out we’re 16 percent below the level needed for our population to replace itself. Most coverage includes an expert who aims to assuage any concern. He points out that this decline may actually be a positive sign. It shows women have more control over pregnancy than ever and are making the decision not to have as many children. (Danielle Eldredge, 2/2)

There’s plenty of public awareness about the dangers of skin cancer, but much less about the benefits of sun exposure. Our skin isn’t just a passive, inert covering. Taking in sun allows the body to manufacture vitamin D, and more recent research suggests that when exposed to sunlight, skin helps regulate blood pressure. It’s possible that current recommendations to stay out of the sun might be counterproductive for darker-skinned people, who are at lower risk for skin cancer and higher risk of hypertension. (Faye Flam, 2/4)

“Live everyday like it’s your last.” If another person repeats that trite aphorism to me, in an attempt to soften my brother’s death with a philosophical spin, I think my head will explode. If I lived every day like it was my last, I would not go to work or brush my teeth. I’d spend every day eating raw cookie dough and chicken wings. (Michael J. Stern, 2/1)

In an effort to address California’s housing crisis, Gov. Gavin Newsom committed during his campaign to building 3.5 million homes in the next seven years. But that annual average of 500,000 new homes is without precedent in California history. It has been 30 years since the state has managed to construct even half that many new residences in one year. If nothing else, the new governor deserves credit for his ambition. (Dan Schnur and Steve Westly, 2/1)

Ohio may finally be turning the corner on drug-overdose deaths, and that is exactly the right time to keep the pressure on to fight opioid addiction. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently pointed to Ohio as having the largest decrease nationally in drug-overdose deaths. The distinction is not all that much a cause for celebration, given the state was previously identified as being second only to West Virginia for having the most fatal overdoses per capita. (2/5)

Los Angeles County leaders often call their jail system the nation’s largest mental hospital, and to our great collective shame, they are correct. The jails are where we dump thousands of people who really ought to be in psychiatric hospitals, community-based rehabilitation programs or supportive housing. Those facilities were supposed to be built decades ago to replace state mental institutions, which too often served as abusive warehouses for society’s sick and unwanted. The state institutions closed on cue — but precious few of the humane, treatment-oriented alternatives were ever built.So now we “house” much of the mentally ill population on the street, until breakdowns or other crises lead to confrontations and criminal charges. Then they go to jail. (2/4)

Kentucky legislators are back in Frankfort with another hypocritical and dangerous bill intended to threaten pregnant people’s access to reproductive health care. Under the guise of “freedom from discrimination” and “ethical and humane treatment,” House Bill 5 seeks to prohibit physicians and other medical professionals from performing abortions if they have “knowledge that the pregnant woman is seeking the abortion, in whole or in part, because of … the sex … race, color, or national origin, …diagnosis, or potential diagnosis of Down syndrome or any other disability.” (Joan Kofodimos, 2/4)