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House Democrats are mounting yet another confrontation with the Justice Department that could lead to subpoenas, but this time it's not about special counsel Robert Mueller's report — it's about health care. Five committee chairman foreshadowed a possible subpoena as soon as May 24 if Attorney General William Barr declines to provide documents related to his decision to stop defending the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act — the health care law signed by President Barack Obama in 2010. (Cheney, 5/14)

Five chairmen of House committees sent letters to White House counsel Pat Cipollone and Attorney General William P. Barr on Monday demanding eight categories of documents pertaining to Trump’s decision to direct the Justice Department to intervene in a federal-court case seeking to eliminate the ACA in its entirety on constitutional grounds. The chairmen had requested the information in early April, but the deadline came and went without a reply from the White House. “This action could deprive millions of Americans of health insurance coverage, including 133 million people with preexisting conditions,” they wrote. “Given the grave consequences that would result if the Trump administration’s legal position were to prevail, it is Congress’s responsibility as an independent and coequal branch of government to understand how this decision was made.” (Bade, 5/14)

Democrats hope to combine the political power of the healthcare law — it was a central plank of their campaign to obtain control of the House in 2018 — with their effort to highlight what they call abuses of power by the Trump administration. In this case, they want documents showing why the Justice Department said it would support a legal effort to invalidate the entire healthcare law, including popular provisions such as protections for people with preexisting conditions. (Haberkorn, 5/14)

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), a 2020 presidential candidate, signed off Monday on a first-in-the-nation public-option insurance plan. The state will offer public health care plans that cover standard services to all residents, regardless of income, by 2021, Inslee said at a press conference. The plans will still be administered by private insurance companies, but the terms will be set by the state. Inslee called the bill a "template" for the U.S. (Hellmann, 5/13)

The plans won’t be available until January 2021, and it’s too early to know what exact coverage they will offer or how much they’ll drive down health-insurance costs. But in remarks Monday, Inslee called it the first state public-option plan in America and a counterweight to attempts by Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration to roll back health-care coverage. “This legislation is one way for our state to push back, to ensure that all Washingtonians have high-quality health-care insurance, an option they can afford that is available across the state of Washington,” said Inslee, who is also running for president. (O'Sullivan, 5/13)

Eligible residents who live in Washington State will have a new benefit available to them starting in 2025: a $100-per-day allowance for a variety of long-term care services, which will last up to a year. The money will come from a payroll tax that begins in 2022, according to rules in a bill that the state’s governor signed Monday. Residents’ employers will put 0.58 percent of their paychecks — $290 for every $50,000 in income — into a state fund. Washington does not have a state income tax. (Lieber, 5/13)

Inslee, surrounded by a large group of lawmakers and advocates of the measure, called it a "win for all Washington workers." "This benefit will be available for those who need it when the time comes to face the fact that daily living presents some challenges, and you need just a little help," he said before signing the measure. "This is going to make sure that help is there without bankrupting your family." (La Corte, 5/13)

Washington state has ordered two “sham” health care sharing ministries to stop selling plans in the state, arguing that they’re deceiving consumers into believing they’re purchasing traditional insurance. Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler says his office has received more than 20 complaints about the companies, Aliera Healthcare and Trinity Healthshare. (Demko, 5/13)

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan signed a first-in-the-nation measure Monday to make it easier for people without health insurance to find out if they qualify for low-cost insurance after they file their taxes. The new law will create a box for people to check on state income tax returns. If a taxpayer checks the box, the state's health care exchange will see if the person qualifies, based on information in the tax return. Those who qualify for Medicaid will be enrolled automatically. The exchange will reach out to people who qualify for private coverage. (5/13)

The bill that created the “Maryland Easy Enrollment Health Program” was among more than 180 pieces of legislation passed by state lawmakers that Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, signed into law during a State House ceremony on Monday. (Wood, 5/13)

[Joe] Biden’s announcement that he will run for president in 2020, however, has resurfaced his dream: a White House that makes cancer a signature issue, backed by a politician whose life was so publicly upended by the disease. With much of the early debate in the Democratic primary centering on health care, Biden’s stint as cancer-advocate-in-chief and orchestrator of the Obama administration’s “Cancer Moonshot” could give him the opportunity to make the disease, its treatments, and his own grief central to the presidential election. (Facher, 5/14)

This is one of those inside-the-Beltway exchanges that probably leaves many Americans scratching their heads. Harris, a 2020 presidential hopeful, is a co-sponsor of Sen. Bernie Sanders’s plan to create a “single-payer” government-run health-care system. It’s called Medicare-for-all since it will be more all-encompassing than the current government-run program for the elderly. Harris made these remarks after Tapper asked her if she wanted to clarify comments she had made in a CNN town hall in January. At the time, her remarks “let’s eliminate all of that” were widely interpreted to mean doing away with private insurance. In her recent appearance, she argued that in context she was talking about health-care bureaucracy today. (Rereading the full exchange, she has a point.) She said she did think there was a role for private insurance in the government-run system. (Kessler, 5/14)

Kaiser Health News: Eric Swalwell’s Tweet About Georgia’s New Abortion Restriction Only Slightly Off-Key

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law Tuesday the state’s latest abortion restriction. Political reaction to the measure, which prohibits the procedure once a doctor can detect a fetal heartbeat — usually at about the six-week mark — was swift. ... Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, was among the critics who weighed in. “The so-called ‘heartbeat’ law outlaws abortion before most women even know that they’re pregnant,” Swalwell posted on Twitter. “This is one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in our country.” (Luthra, 5/14)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday reported a new total of 839 individual cases of measles across 23 states so far this year, as the largest outbreak of measles in the United States in a quarter century continued. Pennsylvania is the latest state with a measles outbreak, though most cases have occurred in New York, Michigan and Washington State. The disease spread in Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and in Rockland County, New York, before being carried to Michigan. A large outbreak in southern Washington State spread mostly among unvaccinated children under 10 years old. And in late April, hundreds of people were put under quarantine at two Los Angeles universities after an outbreak there. (Cai, Lu and Reinhard, 5/13)

In all, 23 states have reported cases this year. The vast majority of illnesses have been in New York — most of them among unvaccinated people in Orthodox Jewish communities. That pattern continued last week, with most of the 75 new cases coming from New York. (5/13)

Several states, including New York, are considering measures to restrict exemptions to school vaccination requirements on religious grounds.An Alabama lawmaker filed a bill last week to eliminate that state’s religious exemption. Connecticut lawmakers are considering amending legislation or adding a bill to the legislative session that would eliminate a religious exemption. Dozens of antivaccination advocates, many of whom said that their children were harmed by vaccines, testified for hours Monday in Connecticut at an informational hearing on the topic. (McKay, 5/13)

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), who is also running for president, signed a bill Friday that eliminated personal or philosophical exemptions from the MMR vaccine. “We should be listening to science and medicine, not social media,” Inslee said during a press conference. "It is science and truth that will keep us healthy, rather than fear.” (Weixel, 5/13)

This year's measles outbreak is the largest since the 1990s. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday that 75 more measles cases were confirmed last week in 23 states, bringing the U.S. total to 839 so far this year. The outbreak from 1989 through 1991 was much larger than today's, with more than 27,000 cases in 1990 alone. But the conditions that lead to that outbreak and what it took to end it are dramatically different from the ones the U.S. is seeing today. (Hogan, 5/13)

To fight the measles outbreak that has spread to 23 states, authorities must reduce vaccine exemptions and fight a tide of social media disinformation, a national expert told more than 200 students and faculty Monday at the Medical College of Wisconsin. ...Although measles was declared to have been eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, the nation has confirmed 839 cases this year through May 10. (Johnson, 5/13)

A jury in Oakland, Calif., ordered Monsanto on Monday to pay a couple more than $2 billion in damages after finding that its Roundup weed killer caused their cancer — the third jury to conclude that the company failed to warn consumers of its flagship product’s dangers. Thousands of additional lawsuits against Monsanto, which Bayer acquired last year, are queued up in state and federal courts. The couple, Alva and Alberta Pilliod, used Roundup on their Northern California property for decades. In 2011, Mr. Pilliod, now 76, was given a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. In 2015, his wife, who is 74, learned she had the same disease. (Cohen, 5/13)

It was the third consecutive U.S. jury verdict against the company in litigation over the chemical, which Bayer acquired as part of its $63 billion purchase of Monsanto last year. Both other jury verdicts also came in California, one in state court and one in federal court. The jury in Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland on Monday said the company was liable for plaintiffs Alva and Alberta Pilliod's contracting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a spokeswoman for the couple said. (5/13)

The company now has until August to reevaluate its legal strategy and try to appease investors before the next scheduled trial. That trial will be the first to unfold outside the San Francisco Bay Area, often seen as an unfavorable setting for corporate defendants. It will be in St. Louis, the former headquarters of Monsanto and now home to Bayer’s global seed business. Bayer has appealed a $78.5 million verdict reached in August, the first Roundup case to go to trial. It has said it would appeal the second, a more than $80 million jury award decided in March. Some investors have pushed Bayer to settle the cases soon, though companies facing product-liability claims often bring a dozen or more cases to trial before seriously entering settlement talks. (Randazzo and Bender, 5/13)

Bayer said the jury was presented with "cherry-picked findings" inconsistent with a statement last month by the US Environmental Protection Agency, which announced that glyphosate was not a carcinogen and posed no public health risk when used as directed. (Nedelman, 5/13)

The jurors agreed that Alva and Alberta Pilliod’s exposure to Roundup used for residential landscaping was a “substantial factor” in their non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The jury awarded damages of about $55 million for the couple’s medical bills and pain and suffering on top of the punitive damages. The verdict will be vulnerable to a legal challenge by Bayer because courts have generally held that punitive damages shouldn’t be more than 10 times higher than compensatory damages.Roundup manufacturer Monsanto Co., which Bayer acquired last June, is the named defendant in similar U.S. lawsuits filed by at least 13,400 plaintiffs. (5/13)

The International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization, concluded in 2015 that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic for humans. Since 2017, the state of California has considered glyphosate a known carcinogen. (Peterson, 5/13)

Legislators and gun safety advocates often focus on how guns are purchased. But many lives could be saved, especially among children, if they looked more at how they are stored. In the last decade, guns killed more than 14,000 American children. A startling number of those deaths — more than a third — were classified as suicides, and around 6 percent as accidents. Many more children were injured. Nearly everyone agrees that children should not be able to buy guns, and no state lets them do so on their own. When children die by suicide in this way, it’s a result of being able to get hold of a gun that someone else already obtained — often legally. (Carroll, 5/13)

A surgeon recommended a hip replacement, but Kenneth Cevoli said no thanks. “They’re really quick to try to give you fake joints and make a bunch of money off you,” he said. At 71, Mr. Cevoli, a high-school guidance counselor in Teterboro, N.J., coaches cross country, teaches mogul skiing, surfs and works summers as a lifeguard on Cape Cod. Despite pain in his left hip and knee, he questioned the need for major surgery, worrying it would sideline him for too long. (Grady and Abelson, 5/13)

The research on brain stimulation is advancing so quickly, and the findings are so puzzling, that a reader might feel tempted to simply pre-order a genius cap from Amazon, to make sense of it all later. In just the past month, scientists reported enhancing the working memory of older people, using electric current passed through a skullcap, and restoring some cognitive function in a brain-damaged woman, using implanted electrodes. Most recently, the Food and Drug Administration approved a smartphone-size stimulator intended to alleviate attention-deficit problems by delivering electric current through a patch placed on the forehead. (Carey, 5/14)

A single injection of antibiotics significantly reduces the risk of infections when women who are giving birth require the aid of forceps or vacuum extraction, a new study concludes. The routine use of the prophylactic shot actually reduces antibiotic use in the long run, the study found. British researchers randomly assigned 3,420 women who had operative vaginal births to one of two groups: The first received a single shot of Augmentin (amoxicillin and clavulanic acid) within six hours of giving birth, and the second a placebo saline shot. (Bakalar, 5/13)

Meg Boggs is on a mission to redefine the public perception of a woman's postpartum body. If she could tell moms two things to start them on a self-love journey it would be to "look in the mirror" and "get in the photo with your kids." The mother and blogger says she refused to be in photos the first couple of months of her daughter's life, "I regret so much that I wasn't in the photos with her. It's so important and you have to think about your kids and they are going to want you in the photos with them." (Brinkley, 5/12)

Psychiatric mental health (PMH) nurses include both registered nurses and advanced practice nurses. Nationally certified PMH registered nurses have been in the field at least two years and have completed 2,000 hours of mental-health clinical practice and 30 hours of continuing education. (Pattani, 5/13)

Floyd Scott started a health care practice about nine miles outside of Burlington in a one-room office 100 years ago. ... That one room medical practice evolved to a bustling medical center today with 20 employees, including specialties in behavioral health and nutrition. Piedmont Health received a grant from the Duke Endowment and bought the practice in 2002, according to Samuel Scott. (Knopf, 5/13)

Kaiser Health News: Dealing With Hospital Closure, Pioneer Kansas Town Asks: What Comes Next?

A slight drizzle had begun in the gray December sky outside Community Christian Church as Reta Baker, president of the local hospital, stepped through the doors to join a weekly morning coffee organized by Fort Scott’s chamber of commerce. The town manager was there, along with the franchisee of the local McDonald’s, an insurance agency owner and the receptionist from the big auto sales lot. Baker, who grew up on a farm south of town, knew them all. (Tribble, 5/14)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that whistleblowers across the country will have up to four years of additional time to bring False Claims Act cases in healthcare and other industries. The justices unanimously held in Cochise Consultancy v. U.S. ex rel. Hunt that FCA claimants can sue up to three years after the responsible federal official knew or should have known the relevant facts, but not more than 10 years after the alleged violation. (Meyer, 5/13)

The bitter battle over the death penalty continued Monday at the U.S. Supreme Court with the highly unusual release of explanatory statements from the court's conservatives as to why they reached such apparently contradictory decisions in two death cases in February and March. On Feb. 7, the court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote that Alabama could go ahead with its execution of a Muslim prisoner convicted of murder. The newly energized five-man conservative majority overruled the temporary stay put in place by the lower court because Alabama only allowed a Christian minister in the execution room and refused to allow the condemned man's Imam to be present. (Totenberg, 5/14)

As the Supreme Court rounds the final turns of the term, Justice Stephen Breyer seemed to launch a warning towards his conservative colleagues in an opinion released Monday. Be very careful before you overturn precedent, he said. Breyer's warnings, coupled with two unusual death penalty opinions and a rare vote from Brett Kavanaugh siding with the liberals on the bench, gave fodder to court watchers waiting anxiously to see how the court is interacting, and where the newly conservative majority is headed. (de Vogue, 5/13)

Nathaniel “Ned” David, the co-founder and president of Unity Biotechnology (UBX), is one of biotech’s big idea guys. Before starting Unity in 2011, David founded four other companies that raised $1.5 billion in financing and now employ 400 people. The idea behind Unity is particularly vast: The company is targeting the science around aging, and all the diseases that can result from it. Its first studies, due to read out over the next few years, are in arthritis and eye diseases like glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration. The goal, David says, is not to extend life, but to increase “healthspan,” the length of time during which people are healthy. (Herper, 5/14)

After more than a year of debate, New Jersey eased some of the provisions in a controversial rule that governs the sort of gifts and payments that drug makers can give to doctors. In a filing last week, the state acceded to complaints from the restaurant and hospitality industry that the initial proposal on meals was too restrictive and unrealistic. However, New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal left in place a $10,000 annual cap on what physicians can earn from drug makers for such activities as promotional speaking and consulting. Research work, however, is exempt. (Silverman, 5/13)

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller is one of 44 attorneys general who is taking part in a lawsuit alleging that 20 of the country's largest generic drug makers have conspired to inflate and manipulate drug prices. Miller said the suit argues that executives at drug manufactures Teva, Sandoz, Mylan, Pfizer and others had an "informal working relationship" to allocate markets and rig bids for more than 100 drugs. (Krebs, 5/13)

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said on Monday the state is joining dozens of others in suing generic drug manufacturers over prices. The lawsuit alleges that nearly two dozen drug companies reached tacit agreements to divide up the drug market and push prices higher to increase revenue. Generic drugs are copies of name-brand medications which are often prescribed as lower cost alternatives. (Nelson, 5/13)

Republican lawmakers in Ohio want every woman seeking a medical abortion informed that they could reverse that procedure. But the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says abortion-reversal treatments are not based on science and do not meet clinical standards. (Balmert, 5/13)

Gov. Brian Kemp signed House Bill 345 last week banning the practice at county and state jails and prisons. Corrections officials also would be banned from placing women in solitary confinement while pregnant or immediately after giving birth. The law goes into effect Oct. 1. (Prabhu, 5/13)

The legal age to buy tobacco and nicotine products in Maryland will be raised from 18 to 21, and the state will add vaping devices to the list of tobacco products, under legislation signed Monday by Gov. Larry Hogan (R). The law was passed in response to an uptick in teen vaping, which federal officials have declared an “epidemic.” The law will take effect in October. (Weixel, 5/13)

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has signed a measure to require patients to provide explicit consent before health care practitioners and medical students can conduct a pelvic, prostate or rectal exam while the patient is under anesthesia. The measure, which was approved unanimously by the General Assembly, was signed Monday. (Witte, 5/13)

Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing for California to spend more than $233 million over the next two years to battle substance abuse in the state's roughly three dozen prisons, an effort to stem the increasing frequency of inmate overdoses in recent years. (Goldberg, 5/13)

House Bill 3809, spearheaded by state Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth, originally would have allowed people to sue abusers or entities over certain types of abuse 30 years after they turn 18. But Goldman later carved out institutions that may be culpable in some way from the measure, telling The Houston Chronicle that “sexual assault is not something organizations do, it’s what individuals do.” (Pollock, 5/13)

As filed, the Senate bill prevents the government from taking “adverse action” against individuals for acting in accordance with their own “sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction, including beliefs or convictions regarding marriage.” Advocates fear that would embolden businesses to decline service to members of the LGBTQ community. (Platoff, 5/13)

Last minute changes to the state health and human services budget have raised concern for members of Iowa’s LGBTQ community and organizations that provide sex education services as well as abortions. On this episode of River to River, a look at two changes to the budget, both of which have been signed into law by Governor Reynolds. (Harrop and Kieffer, 5/13)

Even before Georgia lawmakers approved medical marijuana sales this year, the industry was angling to set up shop. Marijuana companies hired well-connected lobbyists and gave campaign contributions this year to help smooth passage of a bill that allows the drug’s cultivation and distribution. (Niesse, 5/13)

Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota is sharing her experiences with depression for the first time as she calls for more federal funding for mental health programs. The Democrat said she battled depression as a teenager and again in her late 30s, the Star Tribune reported. "It just sort of feels like all the colors in the world start to fade out," Smith said. "The things that gave you a lot of joy, there's nothing there anymore." (5/13)

A federal appeals court is about to again take up the issue of whether and how states can cut off federal Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood. A federal district judge blocked Texas' effort to stop Planned Parenthood funding in 2017. But a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said the district judge didn't follow proper legal standards. (5/14)

Five states have joined forces to try and block a new rule from the Trump administration they say weakens labor unions and their ability to collectively bargain for wages and benefits. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, announced the lawsuit on Monday with attorneys general in Washington, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Oregon. (5/13)

Health care spending for Minnesota businesses and their workers jumped 9.6% last year — nearly triple the national growth rate — as employers reported that old cost-cutting solutions have begun to run their course. Minnesota was an early user of strategies such as moving workers to high-deductible health plans and enticing them to pick cheaper generic prescription drugs. (Olson, 5/14)

The rate of suicides in Ohio increased by 24 percent from 2008 and 2017, according to a new study analyzing vital statistics. And details about who is being most affected can help in the fight to reverse the trend, advocates say. Among those details are that the highest rates of suicide are in Appalachian counties and the suicide rate among men is four times higher than women. (Viviano, 5/13)

In a case that highlighted problems in insurance networks, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has agreed to pay the $87,000 in outstanding medical bills of a Newnan cancer patient, state officials say. The patient, Diane Conine, went to Piedmont Newnan hospital for emergency care in January, and had surgery there to remove a tumor on a kidney. (Miller, 5/13)

Cuyahoga County budget chief Maggie Keenan warned a County Council committee on Monday that the county will run out of money by year’s end to help care for neglected or abandoned children and other human services. Keenan also projected that the county will need an additional $33 million next year because the need for such services now exceeds the revenues generated by the county’s two existing Health and Human Services taxes. (Astolfi, 5/13)

Anne Arundel Medical Center and the Doctors Community Health System announced plans to create a new regional health care system that will cover Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties. In a statement released Monday, the two hospitals systems said they are working toward a definitive agreement — pending completion of a due diligence process and standard regulatory approval. (Harris, 5/13)

The family of a woman who died in custody at the Jackson County Detention Center in 2017 has filed a wrongful death lawsuit claiming workers ignored the woman's pleas for help and falsified her medical records. ReGina Thurman died "a horrible and preventable death" about 14 hours after arriving at the jail on Jan. 20, 2017, according to the lawsuit filed in Jackson County Circuit Court by Thurman's family earlier this month. The Kansas City Star first reported the lawsuit on Monday. (Haxel, 5/13)

San Franciscans give their local government a “B-” grade, despite widespread sentiment that the city has failed to make meaningful progress on its biggest problem — homelessness. That’s according to the results of the latest biennial San Francisco survey — a barometer of how residents feel about the city’s libraries, transportation, parks and public safety services. (Fracassa, 5/13)

A 60-second public service announcement created by a junior at the Cody High School won third place in the Operation Prevention video challenge. The program aims to educate students nationally about the science behind addiction. The video titled "Wanna" features a 9-year-old who wants to try many things and that eventually includes drugs. (Kudelska, 5/13)

Officials say a dog disease that can be passed to humans has been confirmed in Iowa. The state veterinarian, Dr. Jeff Kaisand, says several cases of canine brucellosis have been confirmed at a commercial breeding facility for small dogs in Marion County. The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship says it is notifying people who have custody of the exposed dogs. Both the animals and the facilities are quarantined while the dogs undergo testing. (5/13)

During the confirmation fight for Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, abortion rights activists warned that with his ascension to the Supreme Court, abortions would be criminalized, putting at risk the health and lives of thousands of women who, like their grandmothers’ generation, would be forced to resort to back-alley abortions if they did not have the means to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to a state where abortion was legal. (Jennifer Rubin, 5/13)

Georgia’s much-discussed new law on abortion is one of the most restrictive in the nation. Abortion will be banned as early as six weeks into pregnancy — before many women even know they are pregnant. This law goes even further, though: Although the intent of the law is to block abortion, it has opened a vigorous debate about whether women who miscarry could be questioned or even prosecuted. The new law, which goes into effect Jan. 1, gives a 6-week-old fetus the legal status of a human being. (Aaron E. Carroll, 5/14)

HB 7070 is discriminatory and misleading. Even the name of the bill, “An Act Concerning Deceptive Advertising Practices of Limited Services Pregnancy Centers” is troubling. The irony is the bill that’s aims to stop deception is itself being deceptive. HB 7070 targets faith-based organization and speech. (Lisa Maloney, 5/12)

Last week, the Georgia legislature passed HB 481, a bill that defines an unborn child as a “living, distinct person” entitled to “full legal recognition.”Under this law, not only will abortions be treated as murders, but miscarriages will be subject to criminal investigation, as they already are in a number of states. As many commentators have pointed out, this bill and others like it that grant “personhood” to fetuses display a profound ignorance of the biology of reproduction. Nearly 15 percent of recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage — a conservative estimate. The total rate of miscarriages may be as high as 50 percent. (Kathleen Crowther, 5/12)

President Trump recently announced a new rule, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, that allows doctors, hospitals, insurers and other providers of health care to refuse to deliver or fund services like abortion, assisted suicide or procedures for transgender patients that they say violate their religious views. The action has been criticized by Democrats and civil liberties groups, with some arguing that it serves as a pretext for discrimination against marginalized groups and threatens to substitute religious views for sound medical advice. (Sandeep Jauhar, 5/13)

The portable contraption is not much bigger than a toaster oven. Pop in the cheek swabs, and in just 90 minutes it can determine whether two people are related. Originally developed in collaboration with the departments of Justice and Defense, the technology, called Rapid DNA, is already in use in police departments for forensic purposes. This month, the Department of Homeland Security announced the technology’s latest application: a pilot program to test asylum-seeking families at the U.S.-Mexico border. (Nara Milanich, 5/13)

I had the pleasure — and the misfortune — of publishing several articles with Uwe Reinhardt, the legendary Princeton economist who died in 2017 as a very young 80-year-old.The pleasure was that Uwe was a great co-author with amazing insights. His ability to present complex ideas in an accessible way will be clear if you read his just-published final book, “Priced Out,” which explores the economic and ethical costs of health care in the U.S. (Gerard Anderson, 5/14)

Second to deaths spurred by the opioid crisis, eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric diagnosis. Yet insurance companies resist covering life-saving treatment. (Chevese Turner, 5/13)

The massive administrative savings, bargaining power and increased efficiency of a single-payer system such as an improved Medicare for All can save enough money to provide everyone in the U.S. with comprehensive benefits, protect us from medical bankruptcy and allow us to visit the doctor or hospital of our choice. We can seek care when needed, not just when we can afford the copays and deductibles. (Johnathan Ross, 5/12)

While President Trump and Republicans continue their assault on the Affordable Care Act and the 21 Democratic candidates for president talk about their health care proposals, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature are working to reduce the number of uninsured Californians — without raising taxes. The two-prong approach provides a model for how states can get closer to universal coverage despite the complexities of the current health care system. (5/10)

Three dozen states have expanded Medicaid, and more than 800,000 uninsured Floridians could be covered if Republican legislators would embrace expansion. Yet they refuse to touch it even though the federal government would cover 90 percent of the cost and the uninsured rate in Florida is rising while it is falling in other states. (5/10)

Physician practices are struggling with debt incurred by patients with high deductible health plans. When patients cannot afford their care, independent physician practices -– which are often small, locally owned offices –- may not be able to afford to keep their doors open. (David Emmel, 5/10)

All people deserve affordable, reliable, and accurate reproductive health care. Yet with unethical and illegal policies like the Title X gag rule, the Trump-Pence administration is committed to eroding access to care. (Chrissy Houlahan, Madeleine Dean, Mary Gay Scanlon, 5/13)

Those supporting the current public option bills claim they would help small businesses by reducing costs. In fact, the opposite is true. Expanding government-run coverage would destabilize the private market risk pools and lead to higher premium costs for small business owners struggling to stay in business. (Julie Chubet, 5/14)

With all the outrage aimed at so-called anti-vaxxers for causing the current U.S. measles outbreak, it’s easy to overlook the fact that the vast majority of measles deaths worldwide happen to children whose parents desperately wanted to get them vaccinated but couldn’t. By focusing efforts on developing countries where the outbreaks are many times bigger and deadlier, some scientists think it might be possible to eradicate the virus soon, as they did 40 years ago with smallpox. (Faye Flam, 5/13)

Just off U.S. route 30 in western Nebraska, on Buffalo Bill Avenue, sits the Lincoln County Historical Museum. Inside is an unexpected exhibit that I think about as a cruel and unnecessary measles outbreak spreads in the U.S. The exhibit consists of a massive cylindrical iron lung, constructed of gray-green metal, manufactured in the 1930s by the Wiesner-Rapp Co. of Buffalo, N.Y. It was the first iron lung purchased in Lincoln County, to be used in St. Mary’s Hospital to treat children with polio, also known as infantile paralysis. (Bob Greene, 5/13)

More African American men and women aged between 35-64 are dying due to heart failure compared to people the same age in other racial groups, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology said this month. Heart failure means that the heart is not pumping blood around the body the way that it should. Research has shown that institutional racism is one of the reasons African Americans acquire and die from cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure. (Ifeanyi M. Nsofor, 5/13)

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker has released a plan to combat gun violence. Alongside some familiar proposals — including universal background checks on gun purchases and bans on semi-automatic rifles (“assault weapons”) and high-capacity magazines — he has some bolder ideas, and these could do even more to advance the cause of gun safety. His plan is a welcome addition to the debate on gun violence in the Democratic presidential campaign and in the nation at large. (5/13)

At first blush, the news that Gilead — the company that makes Truvada, the medication that prevents H.I.V. infection — will donate enough of the drug to treat 200,000 patients a year through 2030 seems like unequivocally good news. Some 40,000 Americans are newly infected with H.I.V. every year. Reducing that transmission rate is the key to eradicating the virus in the United States, as President Trump has vowed to do by 2030. And increasing access to Truvada is widely seen as the best way to do that. (5/13)

Kindergarten is a German word that literally means “children’s garden.” Last week, California decided that their children’s gardens in public schools would include instruction on gender identity. The mind reels.It would be a mild understatement to say this is controversial. Religious conservatives fought this, as one might expect. But one doesn’t have to be a religious conservative to wonder if this isn’t a misplaced policy that says more about adults’ ideology than children’s needs. (Henry Olsen, 5/13)

Opioid-related overdose deaths in our state climbed 400 percent from 2012 to 2017, with over 1,000 deaths for each of the past two years. Fentanyl related deaths now account for over 70 percent of overdoses. Connecticut is in a public health state of emergency and it’s critical that our leaders find multi-pronged solutions to mitigate this epidemic. (Dita Bhargava, 5/10)

Missouri leads the rest of the Midwest in the rate of opioids prescribed. No wonder, when every other state in the country has a statewide prescription drug monitoring program that allows doctors and pharmacists to identify and interrupt doctor-shopping and prescription drug abuse. Monitoring can also prevent fatal overdoses from mixing medications that should never be taken at the same time.Missouri still does not have such a system, principally because conservative lawmakers here fear that a government database could also be used to keep someone tagged with a possible addiction from buying a gun. (5/13)

Guardianship can be an important legal tool for very vulnerable, severely cognitively impaired individuals who need someone – usually a trusted family member – to step in to make financial, medical, and other decisions, if they are unable to do so. But guardianship should only be used when other less restrictive ways of supporting a person are not available. That’s because it is ripe for abuse, neglect, and exploitation in the wrong hands. (Karen Buck, 5/13)

In 2016, Gershoff co-authored a meta-analysis of over 50 years of research on spanking. It found that even mild spanking can cause significant harm, including increased aggression, mental health problems, anti-social behavior and cognitive difficulties. (Gil Duran, 5/11)

It doesn’t seem as if Sen. Paul Boyer is asking for much. He wants to give victims who were sexually assaulted as children more time to hold their rapists accountable. More time to do what they can to ensure that other children, today’s children, are protected. Only in Arizona would such a thing be controversial. Controversial enough, in fact, that Senate President Karen Fann refuses to put the bill up for a vote. (Laurie Roberts, 5/13)

Not only do we have a moral imperative to prevent gun violence, we also can save resources by stopping shootings in our communities. Gun violence brings high health care, law enforcement and criminal justice costs to California taxpayers. (Julius Thibodeaux, 5/12)