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Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) denounced President Trump on Monday for reviving plans to repeal and replace ObamaCare, saying Democrats would “fight relentlessly” against it. “The American people already know exactly what the President’s health care plans mean in their lives: higher costs, worse coverage and the end of lifesaving protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” Pelosi said in a statement. (Sullivan, 6/17)

Pelosi said more than 140 House Democrats held home-district events on health care over the weekend. This focus is especially important for moderate Democrats eager show voters they’re trying to deliver on their campaign promises even as some of their colleagues push ahead with investigations of Trump’s business, associates and administration. “When we won the election in November, it was health care, health care, health care,” Pelosi said Monday at an event at East Los Angeles College in her home state of California. “People said ‘why was health care so important in the election?’ It was because it was so important in peoples lives.” (Litvan, 6/18)

President Trump has put the issue of health care back on the political front burner, providing ammunition to Democrats and worrying Republicans who think a new battle over ObamaCare will hurt their party in next year’s elections. Senate Republicans, defending 22 seats next year, thought they had put ObamaCare repeal behind them when they told Trump earlier this year that they have no intention of acting on a health care overhaul before the election. (Bolton, 6/18)

Health care is the top issue Democratic and Democratic-leaning independent voters hope the 23 presidential candidates will discuss during the party's first debates next week, a new poll shows. Health care was the topic that most Democratic voters — 87 percent — in the Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Tuesday said was “very important” for candidates to discuss in the debates on June 26 and 27. The topic beat out issues affecting women, climate change and gun policy as the next concerns that most people called “very important” for the discussions. (McIntire, 6/18)

Kaiser Health News: Democratic Voters Want To Hear Candidates’ Views On Health, But Priorities Vary

Nearly 9 out of 10 Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents said it is very important for candidates to discuss health issues. But 28% said they want candidates to focus on “lowering the amount people pay for health care,” and about 18% said Democrats should talk about “increasing access to health care,” the Kaiser Family Foundation poll reported. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.) That divide extends to specific health care proposals, mirroring the split on the issue among Democratic politicians. About 16% of the voters leaning Democratic said the party should discuss “protecting the [Affordable Care Act] and protections for people with pre-existing conditions,” while about 15% said they want candidates to talk about “implementing a single-payer or Medicare-for-all system.” (Luthra, 6/18)

The gap between former vice president Joe Biden and more liberal candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination was on display Monday before activists at a candidates forum in Washington, where representatives of the Poor People’s Campaign grilled the hopefuls on their approaches to poverty and racism. Biden outlined a new health-care proposal, which would build on the Affordable Care Act by increasing access for lower-income people. The former vice president’s tack on health care is less sweeping than the ­Medicare-for-all plan embraced by some of his Democratic rivals, which they touted later onstage. (Janes, 6/17)

“We have the greatest income inequality in the . . . United States of America since 1902. The fact here is, there is plenty of money to go around,” Biden said. He was the first of nine Democratic presidential candidates to address the Poor People’s Campaign Moral Action Congress at Trinity University. “This isn’t about punishment. . . . This is just plain fairness. Simple, basic fairness. And we have all the money we need to do it.” Among other things, he suggested that eliminating certain tax credits and other provisions would pay for universal access to Medicaid. “I think everyone is entitled to have total health care,” he said. “Every single person in the United States should have access to Medicaid right off the bat.” (Cunningham, 6/17)

A rogue Chinese scientist stunned the world last year when he announced the birth of genetically modified twin girls, prompting widespread outcry from the broader scientific community and calls for a “global moratorium” on editing human embryos that result in births. Yet months later, Democrats on Capitol Hill surprised many science policy experts when they attempted to roll back a related, 4-year-old ban on altering the DNA of embryos intended for pregnancies. (Facher, 6/18)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) responded Monday to comedian Jon Stewart’s criticism of his handling of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, saying that he didn’t know why Stewart was “all bent out of shape.” McConnell’s comments, made in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” came one day after Stewart blasted the Kentucky Republican’s leadership on the issue. “I want to make it clear that this has never been dealt with compassionately by Senator McConnell,” Stewart said on “Fox News Sunday.” “He has always held out until the very last minute, and only then, under intense lobbying and public shaming, has he even deigned to move on it.” (Sonmez, 6/17)

The House plans to vote Tuesday night on more than two dozen amendments to the chamber’s fiscal 2020 spending bill for the State Department and foreign operations. Those roll call votes will put House lawmakers on the record about contentious issues like international family planning programs and global climate change agreements. (Scholtes, 6/17)

Increasingly, troubling questions are being raised about the treatment of mentally ill inmates in the nation's 3,100 local jails, possible patterns of neglect — and whether better care could have saved lives. A joint investigation by The Associated Press and the University of Maryland's Capital News Service finds many jails have been sued or investigated in recent years for allegedly refusing inmates medication to help manage mental illness, ignoring cries for help, failing to properly monitor them, or imposing excessively harsh conditions. (Cohen and Eckert, 6/18)

More than four years after Congress required the Department of Justice to assemble information about those who die in police custody, the agency has yet to implement a system for collecting that data or release any new details of how and why people die under the watch of law enforcement. The information vacuum is hampering efforts to identify patterns that might lead to policies to prevent deaths during police encounters, arrests and incarceration, say advocates and the congressman who sponsored the Death in Custody Reporting Act. (Ready, Gaskill and Eckert, 6/18)

The nation's jails face increasing pressures as they house large numbers of mentally ill and addicted inmates. But the policies that contributed to this problem are decades in the making. Here's a look at why the population of troubled inmates has increased in jails and what's being done to address the problem. (Cohen, 6/18)

A Marine with PTSD, a schizophrenic father, a granddad struggling with depression: They are just some of the many who've taken their lives in U.S. jails — a problem experts say is preventable with more training and safeguards. Here are their stories. (6/18)

North Carolina Children’s Hospital announced it would suspend heart surgeries for the most complex cases, some of which had a mortality rate approaching 50 percent in recent years, pending investigations by state and federal regulators and a group of outside experts. In a statement on Monday, UNC Health Care, which runs the hospital and is affiliated with the University of North Carolina, also introduced several initiatives to “restore confidence in its pediatric heart surgery program.” (Gabler, 6/17)

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services launched an investigation into the Chapel Hill facility after a New York Times report published last month. The article included audio recordings in which cardiologists were alarmed at the number of child deaths. (6/17)

Mandy Cohen, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services, quickly assembled a team to investigate the program. The team’s onsite work was completed Friday, according to Kelly Haight Connor, a spokeswoman for the state DHHS, giving them 10 business days to complete a report that then is to be submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for review. “While UNC Health Care and its Board of Directors have strong confidence in our extraordinary current pediatric heart surgery team, we believe it is vitally important that both current and future patients, our medical colleagues, key regulators, and the public share this confidence,” Charlie Owen, the UNC Health Care board of directors chairman, said in a statement released Monday. (Blythe, 6/18)

In the heart of Boston, Tufts Medical Center treats scores of health conditions, administering measles vaccines for children and pioneering next-generation tools that can eradicate the rarest of cancers. But doctors, administrators and other hospital staff struggled to contain a much different kind of epidemic one April morning last year: a wave of thousands of robocalls that spread like a virus from one phone line to the next, disrupting communications for hours. For most Americans, such robocalls represent an unavoidable digital-age nuisance, resulting in seemingly constant interruptions targeting their phones. (Romm, 6/17)

Retrieval-Masters Creditors Bureau Inc., whose business was blamed for a large-scale data breach that affected millions of Quest Diagnostics Inc. customers, filed for Chapter 11 protection, citing fallout from the security issue. The company, which collects patient receivables for medical labs under the name American Medical Collection Agency, listed assets and liabilities of as much as $10 million in its bankruptcy petition filed in the Southern District of New York. It’s aiming to liquidate, the company said. (Hill, 6/17)

At 13, kids are still more than a decade from having a fully developed prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in decision-making and impulse control. And yet parents and educators unleash them on the internet at that age—if not before—because they’re told children in the U.S. must be at least 13 to download certain apps, create email accounts and sign up for social media. Parents might think of the age-13 requirement as a PG-13 movie rating: Kids might encounter a bit more violence and foul language but nothing that will scar them for life. But this isn’t an age restriction based on content. Tech companies are just abiding by a 1998 law called the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which was intended to protect the privacy of children ages 12 or under. (Jargon, 6/18)

Medicare Part D drug plans should use the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs' SCRIPT standard for prior authorization purposes, the agency says in a proposed rule issued today. The standard is intended ease the submission of prior authorization requests through web portals, rather than fax or other paper methods, which the agency believes will speed up authorizations and streamline red tape surrounding some drug prescriptions. (Tahir, 6/17)

The number of children living in poverty has swelled over the past three decades in fast-growing, ethnically diverse states such as Texas, Arizona and Nevada as the nation's population center shifts south and west, a report Monday on childhood well-being shows. The annual Kids Count report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 18% of the nation's children live in poverty, down from the Great Recession. (6/17)

Looking at the well-being of Illinois’ children through a racial lens … shows big disparities, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s annual KIDS count report. Racial disparities show up on measures of health, educational achievement, and economic well-being. (McKinney, 6/17)

The 2019 Kids Count Data Book published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation used 2017 data to examine 16 areas of childhood well-being grouped into four categories: economic well-being, education, health, and family and community. Compared with other states, Texas ranked 39th in economic well-being, 30th in education, 39th in health, and 47th in family and community, for an overall ranking of 41st. (Zdun, 6/17)

California’s efforts to improve health care for children is being dimmed by high rents and housing prices, poorly performing schools, expensive child care and a host of other challenges, according to a new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.In many ways, the report reflects a familiar story for the state: Prosperity is unevenly divided, the education system is inadequate and families are worse off because of the shortcomings in public programs. (Finch II, 6/17)

New York State children are much more likely to have health insurance and less likely to die young than kids in other states, but high housing costs are impacting their economic well-being, according to a national study released Monday. The 30th annual “Kids Count” report from the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation also found that preschool is more common for 3- and 4-year-old New Yorkers than children elsewhere, and that teenage pregnancy is less prevalent. (Olson, 6/17)

Colorado is among the wealthiest, healthiest states in the nation but has a higher teen and child death rate than the national average, a rate that has grown worse over the past two decades. The reason is suicide, which reached an all-time high in 2017 and is the leading cause of death for Coloradans ages 10-24. (Brown, 6/17)

New Jersey’s quality schools and its access to health care help make it the fifth-best place to raise a child, according to the annual look at family well-being in America. For 30 years, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has published Kids Count, a compilation of data measuring health, wealth and stability, to draw attention to the needs of struggling kids and families. The goal is to influence politicians and policy makers who can make the changes that could improve thousands of lives. (Livio, 6/17)

Oklahoma ranks in the bottom 10 states in the nation for the overall well-being of its children, according to new data released Monday. The 2019 Kids Count Data Book ranks Oklahoma 42nd using census data from each state during 2017. The count was put together by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, with Oklahoma-specific data and distribution help from the Oklahoma Policy Institute.The report focuses on 16 various indicators within economic well-being, education, health outcomes and family and community connections. (Branch, 6/17)

The Annie E. Casey Foundation conducts an annual study called the Kids Count Data Book, meant to outline the needs of children across the country. The study ranks each state in four categories: Economic well-being, education, family and community, and health."We're definitely making improvements," Executive Director for the Children's Advocacy Alliance (CAA). (6/17)

The Annie E. Casey Foundation's 2019 Kids Count Data Book ranked the state 29th overall in its measure of how kids are doing in four categories: economic well-being, education, health, and family and community. Tami Silverman, president and CEO at the Indiana Youth Institute, said one bright spot is improved financial security. "We were happy to see that fewer Hoosier children are living in poverty than they had been, and to us that means that families are benefiting from the economic recovery," Silverman said. "It's taken a little bit more time, but the number of children living in poverty has decreased since 2010 by four percentage points." (Kuhlman, 6/17)

The well-being of Florida’s children has slipped in the latest national ranking, with a rise in the number of low birth-weight babies, more child and teen deaths and more teens abusing alcohol or drugs. And while the number of Florida children covered by health insurance had increased from 2010 to 2016, that trend started to reverse in 2017, when 68,000 more children were uninsured compared to a year earlier. (Santich, 6/17)

The share of children in Pennsylvania living in high-poverty neighborhoods has been steadily growing, according to new data released Monday by The Annie E. Casey Foundation as part of its annual “Kids Count” state-by-state review. Overall, the report ranked the state 17th in child well-being by various measures of poverty, health, education and family and community metrics. (Giammarise, 6/17)

While West Virginia’s children are faring better in two categories this year — health, and family and community — the state’s overall ranking of child well-being dropped this year, from 40th last year to 43rd, according to the 2019 KIDS COUNT Data Book, released Monday. The national data book, released by the Anne E. Casey Foundation, uses 16 factors spread across health, family and community, economics and education to determine the well-being of children in each state. (Coyne, 6/17)

At a time when the failure to immunize children is driving the biggest measles outbreak in decades, a little-known database offers one way to gauge the safety of vaccines. Over roughly the past dozen years in the United States, people have received about 126 million doses of vaccines against measles, a disease that once infected millions of American children and killed 400 to 500 people each year. During that period, 284 people filed claims of harm from those immunizations through a federal program created to compensate people injured by vaccines. Of those claims, about half were dismissed, while 143 were compensated. (Belluck and Abelson, 6/18)

Vaccines have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives in recent years. According to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccines have prevented more than 21 million hospitalizations and 732,000 deaths among children in a 20-year period. (Belluck and Abelson, 6/18)

By scanning the DNA of 3,600 children from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the team narrowed down the genetic profiles that help establish long-lasting immunity after vaccinations for two major bacterial diseases: tetanus and meningitis-causing MenC. In the future, they can use those profiles to tailor vaccines to an individual’s needs — reducing potential side-effects and predicting in advance how many doses a person might need before they take a shot. (Akpan, 6/17)

A state appeals court says a Bay Area physician under investigation by the Medical Board of California must turn over medical records of three youngsters he has exempted from vaccinations, an issue now being heatedly debated in Sacramento. Dr. Ron Kennedy of Santa Rosa works at an “anti-aging” medical clinic and is not the primary-care physician for two of the children he exempted, according to court documents. (Egelko, 6/17)

The first time a doctor told Gina Balzano that she was too fat to have a baby was in 2013. She was 32, weighed 317 pounds and had been trying to get pregnant since soon after she and her husband, Nick, married in 2010. Balzano — whom I have known since high school — lives in Waltham, Mass., and works in special education. She’s the kind of person whom others often go to with their problems, but her own predicament, after three years of negative pregnancy tests, had left her feeling overwhelmed. “I’ve always had horrible, heavy, painful periods, so I thought something was wrong,” she says. “But I didn’t know enough to know what to worry about.” She told herself it was time to find out. (Sole-Smith, 6/18)

“They’re just getting so blunt,” Ruby Corado said. “It’s just out there. It used to be more isolated.” Corado could be talking about support for the LGBT community. The Pride parades across the region this month drew huge crowds. And they’re not just drag queens and shimmy-shimmy dancers with in-your-face protests. Social media has been filled during Pride Month with heterosexual couples and families showing up in rainbow regalia supporting LGBT rights with the same verve as they would a Fourth of July parade. (Dvorak, 6/17)

Shakespeare wisely recognized that sleep “knits up the ravell’d sleave of care” and relieves life’s physical and emotional pains. Alas, this “chief nourisher in life’s feast,” as he called it, often eludes millions of people who suffer from insomnia. Desperate to fall asleep or fall back to sleep, many resort to Ambien or another of the so-called “Z drugs” to get elusive shut-eye. But except for people with short-term sleep-disrupting issues, like post-surgical pain or bereavement, these sedative-hypnotics have a time-limited benefit and can sometimes cause more serious problems than they might prevent. (Brody, 6/17)

Last year, Mom’s Organic Market founder and chief executive Scott Nash did something many of us are afraid to do: He ate a cup of yogurt months after its expiration date. Then tortillas a year past their expiration date. “I mean, I ate heavy cream I think 10 weeks past date,” Nash said, “and then meat sometimes a good month past its date. It didn’t smell bad. Rinse it off, good to go.” It was all part of his year-long experiment to test the limits of food that had passed its expiration date. In the video above, we interviewed Nash about his experiment and examined where expiration dates come from and what they really mean. (Taylor, 6/17)

Dr. Louise Aronson says the U.S. doesn't have nearly enough geriatricians — physicians devoted to the health and care of older people: "There may be maybe six or seven thousand geriatricians," she says. "Compare that to the membership of the pediatric society, which is about 70,000." Aronson is a geriatrician and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. (Gross, 6/17)

Kaiser Health News: Miracle Machine Makes Heroic Rescues — And Leaves Patients In Limbo

The latest miracle machine in modern medicine — whose use has skyrocketed in recent years — is saving people from the brink of death: adults whose lungs have been ravaged by the flu; a trucker who was trapped underwater in a crash; a man whose heart had stopped working for an astonishing seven hours. But for each adult saved by this machine — dubbed ECMO, for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation — another adult hooked up to the equipment dies in the hospital. For those patients, the intervention is a very expensive, labor-intensive and unsuccessful effort to cheat death. (Bailey, 6/18)

This past New Year’s Eve, I expressed thanks for getting through another year. I was 50, with a wife and two kids. I ran most days, and my freelance career was going well. Two days later, I was nearly dead. The cause was a cardiac arrest. Blood flow to my heart wasn’t the issue. Instead, it was an “electrical problem,” the doctors told me. Cardiologists would later confirm that there was no blockage of my arteries. A random electric malfunction caused an arrhythmia that stopped my heart. (Wasserman, 6/18)

Many studies have found that obesity is associated with an increased risk for prostate cancer. Now a new study suggests that the degree of risk may depend on where in the body the fat is. The report, in the journal Cancer, included 1,832 Icelandic men. All underwent CT scans to measure subcutaneous fat in the abdomen, the visceral fat surrounding internal organs, and fat in the thighs. (Bakalar, 6/17)

The father of a victim of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre has won a defamation lawsuit against the authors of a book that claimed the shooting never happened — the latest victory for victims’ relatives who have been taking a more aggressive stance against conspiracy theorists. The book, “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook,” has also been pulled to settle claims against its publisher filed by Lenny Pozner, a man whose 6-year-old son Noah was killed in the shooting. “My face-to-face interactions with Mr. Pozner have led me to believe that Mr. Pozner is telling the truth about the death of his son,” Dave Gahary, the principal officer at publisher Moon Rock Books, said Monday. “I extend my most heartfelt and sincere apology to the Pozner family.” (Eaton-Robb, 6/18)

Democratic presidential hopeful Eric Swalwell on Monday stood outside the National Rifle Association headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, to unveil a gun-control plan that includes banning assault weapons, instituting a gun buyback program and requiring licenses for all gun owners. The California congressman promised to “restore hope in America’s cities, so people don’t resort to the lowest form of communication: violence.” (Cammarata, 6/17)

Activists on both sides of the abortion divide clashed Monday on a bill in Massachusetts that would let women obtain an abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy in cases of "fatal fetal anomalies." The bill, called the "Roe Act" by supporters, would amend current state law, which allows abortions after 24 weeks only to preserve the life or health of the mother. (6/17)

Crowds on both sides of the issue, wearing pink in support or red in opposition, swarmed the State House, filling the auditorium where the Judiciary Committee was taking testimony and spilling into two overflow areas. Attorney General Maura Healey and U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan were among the supporters who showed up to testify in support of the bill, which backers said would stop women from having to travel out of state for an abortion if they learn late in pregnancy that the fetus won't survive. (Murphy, 6/17)

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson appointed a former judge who has supported an anti-abortion pregnancy center — and been disciplined for publicly doing so — to an administrative panel that could handle a licensing dispute with the state's only abortion clinic. The Missouri Supreme Court in 2015 reprimanded former Macon County Associate Circuit Judge Philip Prewitt for encouraging people to donate to local charities on Facebook, including Ray of Hope Pregnancy Care Ministeries, an anti-abortion nonprofit. (6/17)

A state court judge in St. Louis on Friday ordered Missouri to restore Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood’s affiliates in that city. Judge David L. Dowd ruled that the legislature’s fiscal 2019 appropriations bill for the Medicaid program violated the state constitution by barring payments to abortion providers and their affiliates. He found the bill ran afoul of the constitution’s requirement that appropriations bills can’t refer to other laws when fixing their amount. (Margolies, 6/17)

More outpatient treatment geared toward LGBTQ people who struggle with substance use will be making its way to Ohio in the coming months. BrightView Health, an addiction treatment center based in Cincinnati, piloted a therapy group in January for individuals who identify as LGBTQ and have substance use issues. (Royzman, 6/17)

State corrections officials have started to provide Suboxone and related abuse-treatment drugs to select state prisoners in Berlin and will soon expand Suboxone-based treatment to prison facilities in Concord, they announced Monday. Twenty-three inmates at the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility met the criteria for the expanded medically assisted treatment program during the first one-day clinic to select inmates for the program on June 6, corrections officials said. (Hayward, 6/17)

Citing an "ecosystem of addiction," Nevada Attorney General Aaron D. Ford announced Monday he is expanding a complaint against manufacturers, distributors, pharmacies, and individuals the state says are responsible for the opioid addiction crisis in Nevada. The lawsuit lists more than 40 defendants, including Teva Pharmaceuticals, Actavis Pharma, Purdue Pharma, members of the Sackler family who controlled Purdue Pharma, Walgreen Co., Walmart Inc. and CVS Pharmacy. (Silverman and Boyette, 6/18)

Rhode Island lawmakers are moving forward on a spending plan that includes money to train all 911 call takers to respond to cardiac arrests and other medical emergencies. The $220,000 earmarked in the budget for the 2020 fiscal year, which begins July 1, follows an investigation by The Public’s Radio and ProPublica that raised questions about whether the lack of training for the state’s 911 call takers is costing lives. (Arditi and McKeon, 6/17)

Last month, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who co-sponsored a bill to raise the purchasing age limit for traditional and e-cigarettes from 18 to 21, said the changes were “not a zero-sum choice” between health and agriculture. [Paul] Hornback, who serves as a Republican state lawmaker in Kentucky, agrees. “I believe public health can win — and farmers can win,” Hornback said. He thinks tobacco growers could diversify their crops, improving their long-term economic outlook, while seeing a potential improvement in teen health. (Blau, 6/17)

Iowa Department of Human Services Director Jerry Foxhoven resigned Monday at the request of Gov. Kim Reynolds. Reynolds’ office did not say why she asked for Foxhoven's resignation two years after she appointed him to the position. (Sostaric, 6/17)

Gov. Kim Reynolds pushed out the leader of Iowa's Department of Human Services on Monday without explaining why. Leaders of the agency, the state's largest, are often the target of criticism — and Jerry Foxhoven was no exception. But he was an upbeat champion of the department's work, and he had repeatedly drawn public praise from the governor. Reynolds announced Foxhoven's departure early Monday afternoon in a news release announcing a new interim department director, Gerd Clabaugh. The release ended with, "Clabaugh replaces Jerry Foxhoven, who resigned effective today." (Leys, 6/17)

A new Texas law signed on Friday will increase a state fund subsidizing unreimbursed trauma care by $31 million and repeal a controversial program that previously benefited hospitals. The legislation repealed the Drivers' Responsibility Program, under which people were hit with hefty surcharges in addition to fines for traffic violations. Drivers saw their licenses suspended or even faced jail time for outstanding fees. (Luthi, 6/17)

Officials at embattled Hacienda HealthCare say they are trying to figure out the "best path forward" for residents of the company's intermediate-care facility after maggots were discovered near a patient's incision. The Arizona Department of Health Services late Friday issued a Notice of Intent to Revoke the license of Hacienda HealthCare's 60-bed facility for individuals with intellectual disabilities. (Innes, 6/17)

UnitedHealth Group is rejecting some demands of the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of being too stingy in its coverage of mental health care. Earlier this year, a judge in California ruled in favor of the patients who filed a class-action lawsuit, saying the company put profits over patients. (Roth, 6/17)

Failure to provide basic life support when a patient was found unresponsive, poor nutrition resulting in rapid weight loss and grimy living conditions are just a few of the problems that have landed five Louisiana nursing homes on a list of facilities targeted for increased government scrutiny. The list identified over 400 nursing homes across the U.S. that failed to meet certain health and safety requirements, making them eligible for a program that requires more frequent inspections. (Woodruff, 6/17)

Kaiser Health News: Texas Is Latest State To Attack Surprise Medical Bills

Texas is now among more than a dozen states that have cracked down on the practice of surprise medical billing. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed legislation Friday shielding patients from getting a huge bill when their insurance company and medical provider can’t agree on payment.The bipartisan legislation removes patients from the middle of price disputes between a health insurance company and a hospital or other medical provider. (Lopez, 6/18)

Mayor Martin J. Walsh has taken a stance in the fight for accessible menstrual products, rolling out a pilot program providing free tampons and pads to all 77 Boston Public Schools serving students in grades 6 through 12. While touted as a step forward by Walsh and Interim Boston Public School Superintendent Laura Perille, some have already criticized the attempt as inadequate. (Kempe, 6/17)

San Francisco supervisors are considering whether to move the city toward becoming the first in the United States to ban all sales of electronic cigarettes. It's part of an effort to crack down on youth vaping. The supervisors will vote Tuesday on measures to ban the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes in San Francisco until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration completes a public health review of the devices. The plan would also ban manufacturing e-cigarettes on city property. (6/18)

As home to one of the nation’s highest rates of new HIV diagnoses, South Florida will receive help from the federal government to raise awareness of the virus that causes AIDS and to ultimately reduce new infections as part of President Donald Trump’s national plan to end the epidemic. Meeting with local researchers, doctors, healthcare system executives and elected officials at Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital on Monday, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the federal government wants to emphasize innovation and combat stigma about HIV. (Chang, 6/17)

Kaiser Permanente plans to consolidate its Oakland, Calif., headquarters from seven locations into one to reduce overhead costs and provide what Chairman and CEO Bernard Tyson described as a "community benefit" to the city. The health system announced Monday it will break ground on the new Kaiser Permanente Thrive Center in 2020, a 1.6 million-square-foot building that will accommodate its more than 7,000 national and Northern California regional administrative employees. (Facher, 6/17)

Longtime Nashville nonprofit Family and Children's Service celebrated the Monday opening of their new facility, named in honor of former Tennessee First Lady Honey Alexander, wife of U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander. Founded in 1943, FCS is one of Music City's oldest nonprofits and works to "fill the gaps" in social services by connecting children and families to resources they need. (Wigdor, 6/17)

McLaren Health Care Corp. is fighting back against a state order that it take further measures to reduce potential patient exposure to the bacteria that causes Legionnaires' disease. McLaren, a 14-hospital not-for-profit system based in Grand Blanc, Mich., responded forcefully late Friday to an order by the state of Michigan that it take the additional measures at its 378-bed hospital in Flint by asking for a state administrative hearing on the issue and seeking to subpoena numerous state officials. (Greene, 6/17)

A former federal contract employee who administered drug tests to people on federal probation pleaded guilty to bribery Monday after admitting to falsifying test results in exchange for money, federal prosecutors said. Michael A. Brown, 47, of Waldorf, Md., pleaded guilty to a federal bribery charge as a part of a plea agreement, according to a statement released by U.S. Attorney Robert K. Hur’s office. (Williams, 6/17)

For decades, economists and health-care experts have warned about flawed incentives and rising costs in America’s system for employer-sponsored health insurance. That system, through which more than 150 million Americans get their coverage, has proved difficult to reform — until now. Last week, the White House finalized a rule that allows employers to fund health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) that can be used by workers to buy their own coverage on the individual market. This subtle, technical tweak has the potential to revolutionize the private health insurance market. (Avik Roy, 6/17)

It’s not just that surprise billing is a giant pain for consumers — usually requiring calls and letters to providers, insurers, and, when all else fails, to the attorney general’s office — it’s that ultimately someone has to pay what amounts to enormously inflated costs. And those costs send health care premiums for employers and most consumers soaring. (6/17)

Back when he was a mere real estate developer, Donald Trump understood the power of claiming that something spectacular exists even when it doesn’t, which is why he added 10 imaginary floors to Trump Tower so he could say it was 68 stories high instead of its actual 58. Although most of us would call that “lying,” it can be an effective strategy so long as people don’t check, or if they find out the truth but don’t really care. (Paul Waldman, 6/17)

Nearly half a million individuals with opioid use disorders are hospitalized each year in the United States. While they are in the hospital, medical providers often treat complications of this disorder, such as bloodstream infections, but rarely directly address their addiction. That’s like pumping up a flat tire without ever looking for the nail that caused the problem. Our national failure to treat opioid addiction in the hospital setting is costing lives and wasting valuable resources. (Richard Bottner and Christopher Moriates, 6/18)

One lesson from Holland’s experience with euthanasia is that doctors and nurses can powerfully influence a person’s decision to end his life. The most vulnerable people are those who are depressed and dependent on another’s care. They are easily influenced by the caregiver’s veiled cues. Slippery-slope arguments are often unpersuasive. Do this bad thing, and that really bad thing will necessarily follow. But in this case the really bad things are a tippy-toe down the slippery slope. That should give legislators in states like New York pause before they move to legalize euthanasia. Medical professionals should not be given the incentive to see their patients as sacks of valuable organs rather than as human beings. (F.H. Buckley, 6/17)

At a time when data and data science are increasingly essential to improving cancer care, oncologists and cancer researchers often lack the training needed to understand and leverage the data to their fullest extent. Similarly, data scientists often lack an understanding of cancer biology and a patient’s journey through the disease, both of which are necessary to gather and query data appropriately to answer a myriad of important biological and clinical questions. (Stephanie Birkey Reffey and Jerome Jourquin, 6/18)

In “The Story of My Abortion,” Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat from Washington, told of her painful decision to have an abortion in an effort to call attention to “the deeply personal nature of reproductive choice.” “I have never spoken publicly about my abortion. In some ways, I have felt I should not have to,” she wrote. In the comments, several readers agreed. “Abortion stories do not need to be told,” wrote Colleen, a reader in Washington. “We do not need others to concede that we probably did the right thing.” (Rachel L. Harris and Lisa Tarchak, 6/17)

I am sitting in my psychologist’s office. He specializes in behavioral therapy, which is wonderful, but I’m not sure how to behave anymore. Three summers ago, I wrote a memoir as a love letter to my family, a lasting gift to my young son after I was gone. I wanted to explain what it was like to try — and perhaps fail — to overcome my diagnosis of Stage 4 cancer in a culture that believes everything happens for a reason. I had spent my 20s becoming the leading expert in the American prosperity gospel, the message of health, wealth and happiness that populates megachurches with assurances that we can all “live our best lives now.” (Kate Bowler, 6/17)

When the next pandemic strikes, we’ll be fighting it on two fronts. The first is the one you immediately think about: understanding the disease, researching a cure and inoculating the population. The second is new, and one you might not have thought much about: fighting the deluge of rumors, misinformation and flat-out lies that will appear on the internet. (Bruce Schneier, 6/17)

Of the 36,300 people who are homeless in the city of Los Angeles, about 27,000 are living outside or in their cars and RVs, according to the most recent count. Yet there are only 31 public toilets operated by the city for the homeless. That’s a lot of people waiting for a bathroom — if there’s one near them at all or open when they need it. That’s a profound problem, obviously, because no one should be compelled to use sidewalks and alleyways as toilets, and the rest of us shouldn’t have to live with the results of that. But it’s not just a moral issue or a quality-of-life issue — it’s also a serious public health threat that needs to be addressed. (6/18)

Outside my office, near Eastern Market, a depressing ritual enfolds about 10 a.m. every day.Just as the liquor store opens, a crowd of highly agitated and usually very loud people gathers around, some panhandling, others waiting to get their fix of booze for the next couple of hours. Just two blocks from the nation’s Capitol, this part of the Hill is ground zero for gentrification. The neighborhood is vibrant. There’s a Trader Joe’s across the street, expensive coffee shops down the block and Michelin-rated restaurants around the corner.  (John Feehery, 6/17)

One of the causes of declining rural health care access is hospital consolidation. The number of hospitals has declined dramatically over the past decade, and a focus on larger hospitals means that it doesn’t make sense for hospitals to open in sparsely populated areas. Government regulations are partly responsible for this trend. (Alex Muresianu, 6/14)

We cannot let the new Point in Time Count derail us from increasing allocations for shelter, as well as building truly affordable housing. Our mayor, along with the majority of our City Council, has demonstrated a willingness to tackle these issues and work to end and prevent homelessness. All of us in our community need to support that effort. (Gabby Trejo and Bob Erlenbusch, 6/18)

In a party-line vote – Republicans for, Democrats against – the Ohio House is seeking to require those claiming compensation for injuries they suffered on the job in Ohio to answer a question about their citizenship. Approved 58-36, the amendment to Ohio’s pending workers’ compensation budget, House Bill 80, would ask a claimant if he or she is a U.S. citizen, or an “illegal alien or unauthorized alien” or someone who has an alien registration number, “or other signifier that the claimant is authorized to work.” (6/14)