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State of Union speeches give presidents the chance to make their best case for the year ahead – and that pressure is particularly acute for President Donald Trump as he tries to help his party keep control of both chambers of Congress in the midterms. ... Recent polling from POLITICO/Morning Consult showed that 59 percent of voters surveyed want Trump to talk about improving the health care system, followed by 58 percent who want discussion of creating jobs and improving the economy. ... “I hope he makes some mention of it because it is important to conservative voters,” said Lanhee Chen, the policy director of the Romney-Ryan 2012 presidential campaign. (Cook, 1/30)

Most voters think President Trump's first State of the Union address should focus on improving the health-care system, according to a new Morning Consult–Politico poll. According to the poll, 82 percent of voters say it's important for Trump to address improving the health-care system in the speech, followed closely by the 81 percent who said it's important for him to talk about the economy and creating jobs. (Hellmann, 1/29)

Ahead of President Trump’s State of the Union, a pro-ObamaCare group is launching a months-long, six-figure television ad buy that slams last year’s Republican efforts to repeal ObamaCare, saying the bills would have lead to higher premiums and millions more without health insurance. The ads from Save My Care seek to “strengthen the Congressional firewall against repealing the Affordable Care Act, slashing Medicaid and sabotaging the health care system," Leslie Dach, Save My Care campaign chairman, said in a press release. (Roubein, 1/29)

President Donald Trump pledged to bring prescription drug prices “way down” and blasted pharmaceutical manufacturers for “very unfair” price discrimination overcharging Americans. Trump said it’s “very unfair to our country” that manufacturers charge Americans more for the same prescription drugs that they sell at a lower cost in other countries as he swore in former Eli Lilly & Co. President Alex Azar as his Health and Human Services Secretary on Monday. (Jacobs and Epstein, 1/29)

Trump also pointed to the disparity in the cost of prescription drugs in America compared to other countries, saying that “the exact same pill in an identical box from the same factory costs us much more than, many times more than it does in other countries. And nobody knows that process better than Alex. And we’re going to get it done because it’s very unfair for our country.” The remarks echoed back to statements Trump made almost exactly a year ago, when he met with pharmaceutical industry executives and said that “we have to get prices down for a lot of reasons.” Just a few weeks before, he said that the industry is “getting away with murder.” (Swetlitz, 1/29)

“As our new secretary, Alex will continue to implement the administrative and regulatory changes needed to ensure that our citizens get the affordable high quality care that they deserve,” Trump said at the White House. Azar will also be charged with curbing the opioid crisis, Trump said. “I think we’re going to be very tough on the drug companies in that regard and very tough on doctors in that regard,” he said. (Roubein, 1/29)

Did the Food and Drug Administration treat Amgen (AMGN) differently than Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) when reviewing applications for their drugs? A federal judge ruled late last week that the agency, in fact, may have acted inconsistently when it denied pediatric exclusivity for a blockbuster Amgen drug and ordered the FDA to explain its reasoning. The ruling could mean that Amgen may eventually win six months of pediatric exclusivity, which would allow the company to forestall generic competition to a best-selling drug. (Silverman, 1/30)

Three major employers, Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase, announced Tuesday they were  partnering to create an independent company aimed at reining in health care costs for their employees. The independent company would be jointly led by executives from all three companies and would be focused on technology that could increase transparency and simplify health care, according to the joint announcement. It will be free from the need to deliver a profit. (Johnson, 1/30)

The three companies provided few details about the new entity, other than saying it would initially focus on technology to provide simplified, high-quality health care for their employees and their families, and at a reasonable cost. They said the initiative, which is in the early planning stages, would be a long-term effort “free from profit-making incentives and constraints.” (Wingfield, 1/30)

"The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," Berkshire CEO Warren Buffett said in a statement. "Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable. Rather, we share the belief that putting our collective resources behind the country's best talent can, in time, check the rise in health costs while concurrently enhancing patient satisfaction and outcomes." (Cox, 1/30)

The health-care industry has been nervously eyeing the prospect of competition from Amazon for months. While the new company created by Amazon, Berkshire and JPMorgan would be for their U.S. staff only, this is the first big move by Amazon into the industry. The new collaboration could pressure profits for middlemen in the U.S. health-care supply chain. (Tracer and Somayaji, 1/30)

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) has been the voice of the health insurance industry for years, but questions have been swirling about whether the association carries the same political clout it once did. Three of the country’s five largest insurance companies have left the group, and the industry has lost some key policy battles with the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress. (Weixel, 1/30)

The most recent open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act marketplaces was unique. It was the first administered under anyone other than former President Obama, it was half as long as previous periods, and it was the last open enrollment for which the individual mandate applies. These different circumstances may be signals of what’s to come for the ACA. (Tolbert, 1/29)

As Wednesday’s midnight deadline approaches to enroll in a 2018 healthcare plan under the Affordable Care Act, health insurance broker Jonathan Greer is fielding calls from harried consumers buying policies at the last minute. He’s noticed, however, that many people are still confused about the recent repeal of the law that affects individuals. (Seipel, 1/29)

Kaiser Health News: Idaho ‘Pushing Envelope’ With Health Insurance Plan. Can It Do That?

For the past year, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have led a charge to roll back the Affordable Care Act, signaling an openness to state changes. Now, Idaho has jumped in, saying it will allow insurers to ignore some ACA rules on plans not sold on the marketplace, aiming to make these state-based plans less costly. Several of the changes are viewed by the law’s supporters as hits to its core consumer protections. (Appleby, 1/30)

Hospital and health system mergers set a record in 2017, with a new report saying networks of care providers bulked up to offer a broader range of services and prepare for new contracts that ask health systems to take financial risk. The consulting firm Kaufman Hall tracked 115 hospital deals last year, including four in Minnesota. It was the single-highest annual tally since the company started tracking mergers in 2000, and was particularly noteworthy for deals involving systems with at least $1 billion in revenue. (Snowbeck, 1/29)

In 2016, Adventist Health began delivering healthcare services to Whole Foods' employees in Southern California. The partnership, in which Whole Foods bypassed insurance companies and negotiated directly for services from Roseville, Calif.-based Adventist, gave the organic supermarket chain access to a tailor-made health plan that it couldn't get from the traditional insurance market. Now the 19-hospital system is looking to scale the care navigation expertise developed while caring for Whole Foods employees to its Medicare accountable care organization. (Livingston, 1/27)

McLaren Health Care's chief financial officer always asks himself the same question before throwing his system's money into a healthcare venture: Is this something we'd use? "Why do you want to invest in a company with products that you have no desire to ever want to use?" Dave Mazurkiewicz said. In that spirit, Mazurkiewicz is giving McLaren's support—in the form of an undisclosed financial investment—to a healthcare venture platform that won't necessarily call upon outside experts to vet potential ideas. Rather, it'll call upon its own investors—mostly health systems, but also insurers and healthcare vendors—to learn about what works in the industry. (Bannow, 1/29)

A majority of physicians don't believe pay for performance programs are effective solutions for quality improvement and cost control, according to a new survey from Leavitt Partners. Just 22% of the 621 doctors surveyed thought accountable care organizations would lower spending, and 21% supported using bundled payments to drive down costs. At the same time, 29% of doctors thought both ACOs and episode-based payment would improve patients' health outcomes. (Castellucci, 1/29)

The Senate rejected a bill on Monday to ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, a largely symbolic vote aimed at forcing vulnerable Democrats to take a stand that could hurt their prospects for re-election in states won by President Trump. By a vote of 51 to 46, the measure fell well short of the 60-vote threshold required for the Senate to break a Democratic filibuster. The outcome was not a surprise, and the vote fell mostly along party lines. (Stolberg, 1/29)

The legislation has become a core plank of the antiabortion movement’s federal strategy, and its leaders pressure lawmakers to repeatedly cast votes on the issue to raise public awareness. The House passed an identical bill in October on a party-line vote and has passed similar legislation three times since 2013. President Trump secured the support of many social conservatives when he promised during his campaign to adopt the antiabortion movement’s top priorities, including the ban on abortions after 20 weeks. His administration has taken other significant steps to restrict access to the procedure, including allowing states to exclude abortion providers like Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid and Title X family-planning programs. (Hackman and Andrews, 1/29)

Anti-abortion advocates have made a priority of passing the 20-week ban, which is based on the premise that a fetus can feel pain at that point. The bill passed the House, 237-189, in October. The bill's author, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), said the United States is one of only seven countries, including North Korea and China, that allow abortion after 20 weeks. "We're never going to give up until we get America in a better place," he said on the Senate floor. (Haberkorn, 1/29)

About 20 states already have similar bans. Republicans and anti-abortion activists argue the bill is necessary because advances in science and medicine make it possible for babies born prematurely to survive earlier than in previous years. (Hellmann, 1/29)

Connecticut’s Democratic senators on Monday helped block a bill in the Senate that would have outlawed abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The Senate’s vote on the “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act” was 51-46, but the GOP needed 60 votes to overcome a Democratic filibuster of the bill. (Radelat, 1/29)

Top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee are demanding the Trump administration explain why it's running months behind in a process to fund organizations that supply reproductive health services to low-income women. There are about 60 days before Title X family planning grants expire for some recipients, and in the past, they've typically been given 60 to 90 days to apply for more funding. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also needs time to review and approve applications. (Hellmann, 1/29)

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Monday that dozens of federal agents and analysts will form a team to disrupt illicit opioid sales online, an emerging front in the government’s campaign to thwart a deadly epidemic. “Criminals think that they are safe online because they’re anonymous, but they are in for a rude awakening,” Sessions said to law enforcement officials gathered in Pittsburgh’s federal courthouse. “We have already infiltrated their networks, and we are determined to bring them to justice.” (Horwitz, 1/29)

When Mark Greenberg had arthroscopic knee surgery in 2017 he was surprised he got a prescription for 50 pills of the pain reliever Percocet from a fellow doctor. Percocet contains oxycodone, an opioid commonly used to treat pain but has a high risk of addiction. “I never filled the prescription,” says Dr. Greenberg says, a pain management physician in Ashland, Ore. “I certainly didn’t need any pain medications for a relatively painless surgical procedure.” (Reddy, 1/29)

A defendant in Judge George Grasso’s Bronx courtroom didn’t show up for a court date Monday because he was receiving inpatient opioid treatment, his lawyer said. The defendant, the judge noted, did the right thing by switching from outpatient treatment, where his social worker said he had struggled. “I want you to tell him that Judge Grasso is very much appreciative and supportive and respectful of his decision-making process,” the judge told the social worker in court. (Ramey, 1/29)

A Georgia doctor has pleaded guilty to illegally providing prescriptions for opioids that were sold throughout a so-called Irish Travelers community in South Carolina. The State reports 76-year-old Fred Gilliard pleaded guilty to illegally distributing oxycodone Monday. Prosecutor Jay Richardson says the general practice doctor who specialized in addiction therapy provided the Irish Travelers with prescriptions for drugs that were sold throughout the Murphy Village community. Richardson says Gilliard also asked female patients for sex. (1/30)

In 2016, Mohave County had more opioid prescriptions than people. The vast rural county in northwest Arizona dispensed 127.5 opioid prescriptions per 100 residents that year, making it Arizona's most prolific county by that measure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Alltucker, 1/29)

Chemo or no chemo? That is the question. Doctors are at odds over whether some women with breast cancer should have chemotherapy—one treatment among the arsenal long seen as crucial to fighting the disease, along with surgery and radiation. Many oncologists are shunning chemo as risky and ineffective at combating some early-stage breast tumors. Traditionally, the majority of women with invasive breast cancer were treated with some combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. (Lagnado, 1/29)

It’s been one of the vexing questions in medicine: Why is it that most people who have heart attacks or strokes have few or no conventional risk factors? These are patients with normal levels of cholesterol and blood pressure, no history of smoking or diabetes, and no family history of cardiovascular disease. Why aren’t they spared? To some researchers, this hidden risk is the dark matter of cardiology: an invisible but omnipresent force that lands tens of thousands of patients in the hospital each year. But now scientists may have gotten a glimpse of part of it. (Kolata, 1/29)

Actress Olivia Munn revealed on a podcast in 2016 that she had frozen her eggs. She was 35 at the time. “Every girl should do it,” she said confidently. “For one, you don't have to race the clock anymore. You don't have to worry about it, worry about your job or anything. It's there. ”When some celebrities, fertility clinic representatives and other proponents talk about egg freezing, they often make it sound like a sure thing. You go in, get your eggs put on ice, then go back a few years later. A doctor fertilizes them, puts the embryos inside you, and months later a baby pops out.If only it were that easy. (Cha, 1/29)

It’s about the size of a pack of vending-machine Oreos, costs $1,000, and, although it can’t leap tall buildings, it can do something genomics researchers value much more: The pocket-sized MinION has sequenced a human genome by reading longer strings of DNA than reported for any other device. In doing so, it has filled in 12 gaps in the supposedly completely sequenced (but not really) human genome, scientists said on Monday. The human genome remains incompletely sequenced, nearly 15 years after the project to do so declared victory, because most sequencing methods can’t decipher certain parts of the 3-billion-bases-long blueprint of heredity. To do so requires reading thousands of bases — the A’s, T’s, C’s, and G’s that constitute the genetic code — in a continuous ribbon. (Begley, 1/29)

E-cigarette users are possibly putting themselves at risk for developing heart disease, lung and bladder cancers, according to a new report. The findings, though preliminary, indicate that the devices—which aerosolize nicotine and contain no tobacco—may not be as safe as previously assumed. The study, conducted by researchers from the New York University School of Medicine, exposed mice to e-cigarette smoke (ECS) for 12 weeks at a dose and duration equivalent to light e-cigarette smoking for 10 years in humans. By the end of the trial, the smoke had caused DNA damage in the animal’s lungs, bladders and hearts, as well as limiting lung proteins and important DNA repair. (Wolf, 1/29)

Years of scolding from health experts about a good night’s rest may be breaking through. Americans are finally getting more sleep — about 18 minutes more per weeknight compared with 2003. It may not sound like much, but researchers say it’s a positive sign. (Chokshi, 1/29)

A fitful night's sleep and a habit of daytime catnapping may be an early-warning sign of Alzheimer's dementia, according to new research conducted in humans and mice. Restless nights and sleepy days are a common pattern in patients with full-blown Alzheimer's. Those disrupted circadian rhythms are a symptom that can upend the lives of caregivers and cause confusion and anxiety in patients. (Healy, 1/29)

The former NFL wide receiver with “FEAR GOD” etched on his biceps and his mother’s name written over his heart opened the worn black composition book with a faded newspaper photograph of retired NBA player Metta World Peace taped to the cover. Titus Young was once classified among the most dangerous inmates at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles and spent most of his days in lockdown. In early 2017, he started to write. (Fenno, 1/29)

Climate change is all doom and gloom, quite literally.  ... But a new study from the peer-reviewed journal Global Environmental Change surveyed 342 people and found a link between climate change concern and depression and anxiety. The hardest hit: women and low-income people who are worried about the planet, Reuters reports. (Nelson and Huttner, 1/29)

The human papillomavirus, or HPV, is now the most common sexually transmitted disease, and one local researcher is urging dentists to get on board to warn patients about it. But talking about HPV — and how it can be spread through oral sex — can be awkward. (Griffin, 1/29)

For the second time this month, St. Tammany Parish Coroner Dr. Charles Preston on Monday (Jan. 29) sounded the flu alarm with a statement imploring North Shore residents to get inoculated against the virus if they have not yet done so. "In the strongest possible terms, I encourage everyone over six months of age to have a flu shot," Preston said. Federal health officials said Friday that the number of patients seeking care for flu-like symptoms continues to rise sharply at a time when many experts hoped that new cases would begin to taper off. (Chatelain, 1/29)

Millions of Americans are suffering from the influenza virus in what public health experts say is an unusually active and dangerous flu season, the result of several distinct strains of a disease that are likely to kill tens of thousands in the United States. Influenza activity is widespread in 49 states — all but Hawaii — and flu rates are at high levels in 40 states and in Puerto Rico, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). About 6.6 percent of all hospital and doctor visits so far this year are for flu-like illnesses. (Wilson, 1/30)

While recent data shows that flu-related hospitalizations have fallen across the state and in Franklin County, health officials warned Monday that the virus is still widespread and dangerous. As of Jan. 20, about halfway through this 33-week flu season, there have been 7,353 influenza-related hospitalizations in Ohio, including 567 in Franklin County, according to the most recent Ohio Department of Health report. (Viviano, 1/29)

A fitness app that posts a map of its users’ activity has unwittingly revealed the locations and habits of military bases and personnel, including those of American forces in Iraq and Syria, security analysts say. The app, Strava, which calls itself “the social network for athletes,” allows millions of users to time and map their workouts and to post them online for friends to see, and it can track their movements at other times. The app is especially popular with young people who are serious about fitness, which describes many service members. (Perez-Pena and Rosenberg, 1/29)

The concerns raised by the online map went beyond sensitive military sites, with evidence that Strava could help reveal the movements of international aid workers, intelligence operatives and millions of other people in many countries. In the latest discoveries Monday, Internet sleuths found ways of using the publicly available Strava data to identify individual users of the tracking service by name, along with the jogging routes they use in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. (Sly, Lamothe and Timberg, 1/29)

Scientists around the globe nowadays regularly take to the internet to scrutinize research after it’s been published — including to run their own analyses of the data and spot mistakes or fraud. And as interest in this so-called post-publication peer review has swelled, one lawyer argues, biotech and pharma companies would do well to take note. If companies and their investors aren’t reading these sites, they may be the last to know when industry-funded research is called into question. (Oransky and Marcus, 1/30)

Child development experts and advocates are urging Facebook to pull the plug on its new messaging app aimed at kids. A group letter sent Tuesday to CEO Mark Zuckerberg argues that younger children — the app is intended for those under 13 — aren't ready to have social media accounts, navigate the complexities of online relationships or protect their own privacy. (O'Brien and Ortutay, 1/30)

A federal judge on Monday blocked a controversial state law that requires miscarried or aborted fetuses to be cremated or buried. U.S. District Court Judge David Ezra of San Antonio issued a preliminary injunction that bars Texas officials from carrying out the law, which would have taken effect Thursday. (Bureau, 1/29)

U.S. District Judge David Ezra in Texas also said the law approved last year by the Republican-controlled legislature may violate constitutional due-process provisions. "No health and safety purpose has been articulated despite (the regulation's) presence in the Texas Health and Safety Code," Ezra wrote, adding the halt was to remain in place until a decision from a forthcoming federal bench trial. (Herskovitz, 1/29)

The current fight is over Senate Bill 8, a law passed during the 2017 legislative session that has a provision forcing health care facilities to bury or cremate any fetal remains from abortions, miscarriage or treatment for ectopic pregnancy, regardless of their patients’ personal wishes or beliefs. That provision was supposed to go into effect Feb. 1. (Evans, 1/29)

California would be the first state to require public universities to offer medication abortion under legislation approved in the state Senate Monday, a bill that if signed into law would mark a vast expansion of a service that's rare on college campuses. None of the 34 University of California or California State University campuses currently offer abortion services at their health centers, instead referring students to outside providers. A group of private donors, some of them anonymous, plan to pay for up to $20 million in startup costs, including ultrasound equipment and training for both medical and billing staff. (1/29)

The board of D.C.’s only public hospital violated the city’s Open Meetings Act in December when it excluded the public from its discussion and vote to permanently close the hospital’s nursery and delivery rooms, a top District ethics official has determined. Traci L. Hughes, director of the D.C. Office of Open Government, said in a ruling issued Friday that the board of United Medical Center in Southeast Washington committed violations of the law, which is designed to ensure transparency of government actions. (Jamison, 1/29)

Minnesota’s system of preventing violence in senior homes is badly broken and can only be fixed with stronger state oversight and tougher penalties against facilities and perpetrators of abuse, a state work group concluded Monday after weeks of work. Their report, released late Monday, calls for “immediate and dramatic” reforms in Minnesota’s regulation of senior care facilities. (Serres, 1/ 29)

A working group on how Minnesota should respond to elder abuse is recommending a sweeping overhaul of the state’s system for protecting seniors and vulnerable adults. The elder care working group released a series of recommendations Monday evening; the panel was created in November. The group was made up of representatives of five advocacy groups that work on behalf of Minnesotans in long-term care facilities. (Magan, 1/29)

A new report into the troubled Milwaukee Health Department found that staffing shortages, inadequate training, high turnover and poor coordination contributed to the failure by its lead prevention program to follow up with thousands of families who had lead-poisoned children. In two cases last year, children with extremely high levels of lead in their blood were returned to their homes without the city testing to see whether the residences were lead-free, said the report, released Monday night by Mayor Tom Barrett at a news conference. (Bice and Spicuzza, 1/29)

Anxious parents peppered Los Angeles County health officials with questions about the safety of their children after an individual at Johns Burroughs High School was diagnosed with a possible case of tuberculosis recently. The two dozen parents who attended a special meeting held at the school wanted to know if their children had been exposed to the disease and if there was a risk of it spreading to the general public. Officials with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health worked at assuaging their fears. (Nguyen and Carpio, 1/29)

Mental health therapists say the audits and payment recoupments are having a chilling effect on their ability to treat people who need counseling either several times a week or for a long period of time. They’re questioning whether they violate parity laws that require insurers to cover mental and behavioral health care the same way they cover medical care. (Marso, 1/29)

Robert R. Neall won a unanimous recommendation from a Senate committee Monday to be confirmed as Maryland’s secretary of health. The swift approval of Neall’s nomination by the Senate Executive Nominations Committee came as a stark contrast with the panel’s handling of Gov. Larry Hogan’s last nominee to lead the Department of Health. Last year the committee repeatedly delayed hearings on Dennis R. Schrader’s nomination, prompting Hogan to withdraw his nomination but to leave him in charge of the department over legislators’ objections. (Dresser, 1/30)

This bill mimics a recently implemented San Francisco ordinance, which as of Jan. 1 required businesses — both public and private — to provide lactation facilities to their workers by 2019, or face fines. Lactation rooms in offices mean mothers won’t have to choose between staying at home to express milk or doing it in an uncomfortable environment, like a restroom stall. (Thadani, 1/29)

A religious organization that serves the poor in Southern California filed a lawsuit Monday to try to stop local governments from forcing homeless people out of a big encampment along a riverbed trail. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by the Orange County Catholic Worker group and seven homeless people claims a broad range of violations of constitutional protections by the governments of Orange County and the cities of Anaheim, Costa Mesa and Orange. (1/29)

Two-year-old Maverick Hawkins sits on a red, plastic car in his grandmother’s living room in the picturesque town of Nevada City, Calif., in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. His playpal Delilah Smith, a fellow 2-year-old, snacks on hummus and cashews and delights over the sounds of her Princess Peppa Pig stuffie. It’s playtime for the kids of the provocatively named Facebook group “Pot smoking moms who cuss sometimes.” (Varney, 1/30)

A little more than six years ago, Lisa-Maria Carter had an operation to remove a benign ovarian cyst. She ended up losing her hands and feet. A Tampa jury on Friday awarded Carter more than $109 million in damages from the University of South Florida. The surgery took place at Tampa General Hospital through USF’s college of medicine, which employed the surgeon. (Sullivan, 1/29)

Gary Maynard, the compliance director for the Orleans Parish jail tasked with running the jail until it is released from the federal consent decree, resigned Monday (Jan. 29). U.S. District Judge Lance Africk wrote in a court order that he was "dissatisfied with the pace of reform" at the jail. Maynard was named compliance director in August 2016, bringing four decades of corrections experience including as director of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Corrections. His tenure has lasted beyond the year anticipated by Africk, who enforces the consent decree. (Lane, 1/29)

The tractor trailer-sized structure sits outside Grady Memorial Hospital’s ER, looking like some huge tent assembled outside a major entertainment or sports event. Typically, the Atlanta safety-net hospital sees 400 ER patients a day. Lately, though, the number has moved above 500. (Miller, 1/29)

A jury on Monday declined to award any money to a 4-year-old Portland boy who suffered profound brain damage after he contracted herpes from his mother at birth. Attorneys for Jonah Johnson had sought $46.5 million, saying obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Carrie Miles should have recognized that the boy's mother was infected with the disease when she arrived at the emergency room of Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center in Northwest Portland. (Green, 1/29)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is giving states the opportunity to conduct demonstration projects to integrate work and other “community engagement” requirements as a condition of participation for certain enrollees. ... Pilot programs are a good way to test new policy ideas. Applying new ideas in a practical setting helps identify real world challenges and allows them to be evaluated for real world effectiveness. But pilot programs need not, indeed, must not supplant efforts by Congress to pursue more meaningful statutory changes in Medicaid. Nor do they in any way diminish the need to strengthen existing work requirements in cash assistance welfare programs. (Nina Owcharenko Schaefer, 1/28)

The guns are nearly silent now. The Obamacare debate ended mostly unresolved. The Affordable Care Act is still on the books, but it’s been beaten to within an inch of its life. The quiet that replaced all the thunder from the left and right in Washington comes from the unsettling recognition that nobody really won, but a lot of people lost. Congress somehow managed, after all the ado, to neither repeal it, replace it nor fix it. ... One dim light of hope comes from the growing number of “red” states that are considering expanding their Medicaid programs. (1/29)

A new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation has found out-of-pocket health-care costs for Medicare beneficiaries are likely to take up half of their average Social Security income by 2030. As many seniors already know, Medicare does not cover an increasing number of expenses related to health care. Among these are supplemental insurance premiums, deductibles, long-term care and dental services. (Michelle Singletary, 1/26)

Last week, Aminatou Sow, the co-host of the popular millennial podcast “Call Your Girlfriend,” tweeted out a story: Less than 24 hours before she was scheduled for surgery, a representative from the hospital called and demanded she pay her $4,000 deductible before the procedure could take place. When Sow protested, the hospital factotum agreed to a compromise if she paid half her deductible up front. (Helaine Olen, 1/29)

General Electric’s multi-billion-dollar loss in a unit that sold long-term-care insurance is a blow from which the iconic company is still reeling. But it’s also a harbinger of a much greater challenge for society at large: paying to care for the growing number of Americans who can’t look after themselves. (1/29)

Missouri will spend about $147 million this year on health care for its 32,500 prison inmates. That could go up by $236 million if a judge orders the state to treat just 2,500 of its prisoners with Harvoni, a new drug that can cure hepatitis C. An already bleak state budget picture could get considerably bleaker. But 2,500 people, whose serious medical needs the state has a legal obligation to meet, would get potentially life-saving treatment. (1/29)

Hospitals are getting better at combating sepsis. Doctors and nurses across the country have done incredible work to improve sepsis awareness. They are preventing more sepsis-causing infections before they ever occur, and they are reaching for antibiotics quicker when sepsis is suspected. Yet advances in sepsis treatment protocols are fueling another massive health care issue: the rise of drug resistance and superbugs. (John McDonough, 1/29)

Without a single “no” vote, Arizona lawmakers quickly passed Gov. Doug Ducey’s opioid legislation despite expressing legitimate concerns about the possible unintended consequences. ...It will take scrupulous and continuous monitoring to make sure those who need opioids to control pain do not suffer because the state passed regulations inspired by those who abuse these powerful drugs. (1/29)

For scare value, the 2014 Ebola epidemic looms largest in recent memory; while it ended by killing “only” 11,310 people in West Africa, it looked for a time as if it might become a global catastrophe. But for deadliness, the 1918-19 Spanish influenza pandemic, which killed at least 50 million people, dwarfs any infectious outbreak of the past 100 years. ...“The End of Epidemics,” Jonathan D. Quick’s alarming, cautionary plea for preparation, is both welcome and disturbing—as it should be, given the litany of risks he lays out with the assistance of veteran business writer Bronwyn Fryer. “The threat has never been greater,” writes Dr. Quick, a physician and public-health expert with 40 years of experience fighting disease in more than 70 countries. “Population growth, urbanization, international travel, food animal production practices, forest clearance, and a rapidly warming climate all increase our collective risk.” (Meredith Wadman, 1/29)

While campus centers provide quality health care at minimal cost to students, none offer abortion care. Each month, as many as 519 students at the 34 University of California and California State University campuses must seek abortions off-campus. (Connie Leyva and Kaitlyn Trevino, 1/29)

Dieter beware: U.S. News & World Report, in its high-profile January cover story on "best diets," calls the DASH and Mediterranean diets tops for health, though these regimens represent the failed nutritional status quo of the last 50 years. DASH is listed first in the U.S. News rankings, but authoritative reviews have found that it's been tested on only about 2,000 subjects (mostly middle-aged hypertensives) in studies lasting no longer than six months. Its effects can hardly be generalized to all Americans. (Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz, 1/28)