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Republicans and Democrats joined forces to speed legislation combating the misuse of opioids and other addictive drugs through Senate passage Monday, a rare campaign-season show of unity against a growing and deadly health care crisis. The measure passed by a 99-1 vote Monday evening. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, voted against it. (Fram, 9/17)

The package of 70 Senate bills costs $8.4 billion and creates, expands and renews programs across multiple agencies. It’s ambitious in scope, aiming to prevent the deadly synthetic drug fentanyl from being shipped through the U.S. Postal Service as well as allowing doctors to prescribe more medication designed to wean addicts off opioids, such as buprenorphine. “It doesn’t include everything all of us want to see but it has important new initiatives and it’s a step in the right direction," said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who has advocated several measures that are part of the package. (Itkowitz, 9/17)

The Senate legislation would give money to the National Institutes of Health to research a nonaddictive painkiller. It would also try to stop synthetic drugs from being shipped across the border by requiring foreign shippers to provide electronic data to help U.S. officials target illegal packages. Another provision would clarify that the Food and Drug Administration has the authority to require prescription opioids to be packaged in set amounts, for three or seven days, for example. Yet another provision aims to increase the detection and seizure of illegal drugs, such as fentanyl, by strengthening communications between the FDA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. (Andrews, 9/17)

The bill also includes the CRIB Act, a bill sponsored by Brown that would allow facilities designed to help babies born dependent on drugs to be reimbursed by Medicaid. That bill is co-sponsored by Portman. It would help treatment centers like Brigid’s Path in Dayton, which is set up specifically to deal with the health problems of babies born addicted. The bill also would clarify that babies who receive services in such recovery centers can continue to receive services after one year of age. (Wehrman, 9/18)

The Senate will now have to reconcile its bill with the House's, which passed earlier this summer. (Hellmann, 9/17)

Here’s a look at what else was in the bill, what policy ideas didn’t make the cut, and what ideas might be added back in the coming weeks and months. (Facher, 9/17)

Congress’ latest efforts to address the opioid crisis won’t be enough to stop the unrelenting scourge of overdose deaths across the country. Public health experts and first responders say the massive bipartisan legislation, H.R. 6 (115), which the Senate approved 99-1 on Monday, takes some important steps toward better access to treatment but lacks the urgency, breadth and steady long-term funding required to quell the emergency that takes 115 lives in the United States a day. (Ehley, 9/17)

The number of people who die of drug overdoses in New York City rose in 2017, but the rate at which people are dying is slowing, according to new data released Monday by the city’s health department. There were 1,487 confirmed unintentional drug overdose deaths in 2017, up 62 from 2016. The rate of unintentional deaths increased for the seventh straight year; one New Yorker dies every six hours from an overdose. (West, 9/17)

Four years after the opioid crisis took flight, grandparents and other relatives are still bearing a staggering share of parenting responsibilities – many still scarred by the unbearable events that brought them to this point. Thirty-three percent of children who have been removed from their homes were living with grandparents and other relatives in 2016 – up from 23 percent in 2012, according to a report from the University of New Hampshire Carsey School of Public Policy released in June. (DeWitt, 9/17)

For years, New Hampshire has relied on a largely patchwork strategy to address the opioid crisis, funding grassroots efforts community by community. ...Now, state officials want to change that. But implementing a new, statewide system is easier said than done. In some cases it will mean replacing initiatives that already exist. (Greene, 9/17)

Physicians who monitor prescription drug use can play an important role in identifying statewide misuse trends. Their efforts complement Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs, which are state-based databases that track prescription data to help reveal possible concerns. These programs, such as the “Texas Prescription Monitoring Program,” are necessary and useful to help curtail prescription and illicit drug misuse. (F. Leland McClure III, 9/17)

Morning Edition Host Rick Ganley met with [Moira] O'Neill at her office in Concord to talk about why DCYF has struggled to meet the demands of the opioid epidemic, and how opioid use has complicated the separation and reunification process between children and their parents. (Ganley and McIntyre, 9/17)

The Ohio Department of Medicaid says it is working on a proposal to the federal government to allow the health-insurance program to cover some of the care at Brigid’s Path, the state’s only standalone recovery center for drug-exposed infants. The nonprofit center opened in December in the Dayton area and has had to limit services to eight infants at a time, despite high demand and 24 beds. (Price, 9/17)

In coming weeks, long after Hurricane Florence’s winds and rains have faded, its aftermath will still pose life-threatening hazards: snakes, submerged sharp objects, bacterial infections and disease-carrying mosquitoes. People are trapped by floodwaters and facing dwindling supplies of medicines, food and drinking water. Carbon monoxide poisoning is a danger as people crank up portable generators, and respiratory viruses will circulate in crammed shelters. (Wan, Sun and Johnson, 9/17)

Before Florence pummeled the East Coast, ultimately killing at least 17 people and causing untold millions in damage, some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies wrestled with a major dilemma: Should they suspend operations at manufacturing plants in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, risking shortages of important drugs and vaccines? GlaxoSmithKline chose to close a plant that makes asthma inhalers, while Novartis shut down a facility that manufactures oral-dosage generic drugs. Pfizer and Merck, meanwhile, decided to scale back operations at multiple North Carolina facilities, closing some entirely. (Blau, 9/17)

When Dazia Lee tries to bring order to the disorder of that night, it helps her to think in numbers. She thinks of the exact times of every decision, every call, every bit of bad news — reference points leading until the very last when, at 10:20 a.m. on Monday, she received a call from a county detective saying that the body of her 1-year-old son, Kaiden, had been found 15 feet underwater. (McCoy, 9/17)

The death toll from Hurricane Florence rose Monday to 32, and the misery in the Carolinas might be many days from cresting. The historic storm has disrupted life for millions of people, and the surging floodwaters have spawned an environmental calamity across a vast region pocked with manure ponds and coal ash pits. (Sullivan, Siegel, Berman and Achenbach, 9/17)

Stephen Smith spent Sunday night sleeping in the stairwell of a parking garage as Florence continued to lash this city, days after the hurricane made landfall nearby. He hadn’t eaten for two days, and his feet ached from walking to and from the homeless shelter where he usually sleeps, to check whether it had reopened. He had stayed in a hotel for three nights, but his money ran out. His preferred park bench at a nearby lake was covered with tree branches. So he opted for the stairwell. (Siegel, Zezima and Phillips, 9/17)

Federal officials on Monday gave the go-ahead to the proposed merger between Cigna, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, and Express Scripts, a major pharmacy benefit manager. The $52 billion deal, announced last March, is one of two proposed transactions involving pharmacy companies before the Justice Department. Last December, Aetna, another giant insurer, announced its plan to join forces with CVS Health, the drugstore chain that is the main independent rival to Express Scripts, in a $69 billion deal. (Abelson, 9/17)

Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim who leads the Justice Department's antitrust division said the regulators' six-month investigation into the deal concluded it is "unlikely to result in harm to competition or consumers." In particular, the agency said the merger would not lessen competition in the sale of PBM services because Cigna's in-house PBM business is small and at least two other large PBMs and several smaller ones remain in the market. The agency also said competition from other vertically-integrated companies and PBMs and the prospect of losing customers makes it unlikely that Cigna and Express Scripts would hike prices for their rivals after merging. (Livingston, 9/17)

The new company will marry Cigna's business of managing health plans for corporations and the government with Express Scripts' role handling pharmacy benefits for those same customers. Express Scripts also owns specialty pharmacies that distribute pricey drugs. "We are pleased that the Department of Justice has cleared our transaction and that we are another step closer to completing our merger,” Cigna Chief Executive David Cordani said in a statement. (Humer, 9/17)

The two companies say they could save money if they coordinated care with prescriptions, but they have not gone into specifics about how the merger would help lower costs for patients or employers. (Weixel, 9/17)

The companies said, to date, that they had obtained clearances from departments of insurance in 16 states, and are working with regulators in the remaining jurisdictions to obtain clearances for the merger. Cigna and Express Scripts said they expect the deal will close by year-end 2018, subject to the satisfaction of all closing conditions. (Nakrosis, 9/17)

Antitrust enforcers signed off on Cigna Corp.’s $54 billion takeover of pharmacy-benefit manager Express Scripts Holding Co., clearing one of two health-care deals that stand to reshape the industry. Approval by the Justice Department smooths the way for the deal to wrap up by the end of the year, the companies said Monday in a joint statement. While some state regulators have yet to sign off, the U.S. review was one of the last major steps for the agreement the companies struck in March. (Tracer and McLaughlin, 9/17)

The Justice Department reportedly is also close to approving CVS Health’s blockbuster acquisition of Aetna, which would create one of the country’s biggest health care companies. The looming approval of the deals comes two years after Obama administration regulators blocked a major proposed consolidation in the health insurance industry over concerns about diminished competition. DOJ successfully sued in 2016 to halt Anthem’s proposed acquisition of Cigna and Aetna’s merger with Humana. (Demko, 9/17)

Imerys SA, which supplies talc to Johnson & Johnson, isn’t taking chances as another jury weighs whether to sock the health-care giant with a punishing verdict. A unit of Imerys agreed to settle its part of a California woman’s lawsuit blaming both companies for causing her cancer with asbestos-tainted talc at the conclusion of a four-week state-court trial in Pasadena, just before the case was sent to jury for deliberations. The terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed when the judge announced it Monday. In July, a St. Louis jury ordered J&J to pay $4.69 billion in damages to 22 women who blamed their ovarian cancer on exposure to asbestos in the company’s powders. (Feeley, Favot and Fisk, 9/17)

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, under mounting pressure from senators of his own party, will call President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, and the woman who has accused him of sexual assault before the committee on Monday for extraordinary public hearings only weeks before the midterm elections. In setting the hearing, Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, backed down from a committee vote on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, planned for this Thursday, and pushed a confirmation once seen as inevitable into limbo. (Stolberg and Davis, 9/17)

The hearing will pit his credibility against an explosive accusation made by Christine Blasey Ford, a California college professor, who said he sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. Mrs. Ford told the Washington Post that when she and Judge Kavanaugh were teenagers at a party in the Washington, D.C., area, he and a friend pulled her into a bedroom. Judge Kavanaugh pinned her down on the bed, groped her and attempted to remove her clothing before she escaped, Mrs. Ford said in the article. Mrs. Ford, now a professor at Palo Alto University in California, described the episode as aggressive. “I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” she told the Post. She said that Mr. Kavanaugh appeared to be intoxicated during their encounter. Efforts to reach Mrs. Ford weren’t successful. (Tau, Andrews and Peterson, 9/17)

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a crucial swing vote, indicated that if it emerged that Kavanaugh had been untruthful about the incident, he would not be fit to serve on the court. “Obviously, if Judge Kavanaugh has lied about what happened, that would be disqualifying,” Collins said, adding that “having the opportunity to observe her being questioned, read a transcript and a deposition and make that kind of assessment is so important.” (Sonmez, Kim, Sullivan and Wagner, 9/17)

Mitch McConnell, preeminent cut-throat political tactician, is going with a softer touch to salvage Brett Kavanaugh’s suddenly endangered Supreme Court confirmation. With Kavanaugh’s seemingly slam-dunk elevation to the Supreme Court facing resistance from a handful of key GOP senators, McConnell convened a marathon meeting with Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans and his leadership team on Monday. (Everett and Bresnahan, 9/17)

President Trump’s routine reaction to allegations of sexual assault is to deny, retaliate and repeat. He has dismissed accusations against himself as “phony” and “false,” and when presented with claims against other men, the #MeToo-era president tends to side instinctually with the accused. But in the case of federal judge Brett M. Kavanaugh — whose Supreme Court nomination is suddenly endangered after a woman accused him of sexual assault when they were in high school — Trump on Monday was uncharacteristically muted. (Costa, Rucker, Parker and Dawsey, 9/17)

Republicans are bracing for political aftershocks from the sexual assault accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, with some expressing fear that the coming investigation will refocus the nation’s attention on an issue that could drive up the Democratic vote in the midterm elections. The initial hope that the conservative Kavanaugh’s appointment would encourage turnout by grateful GOP voters this fall has been tempered by new fears that more voters, especially independent women, might head to the polls with fresh anger about Republican handling of sexual impropriety after a new round of public hearings. (Scherer, 9/17)

A federal judge denied the Trump administration’s request to throw out a lawsuit over a new military-readiness policy that could result in all service members who are HIV positive being fired starting Oct. 1. U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema on Friday said it’s too soon to tell if the government has a good reason for its new “Deploy or Get Out!” directive, which aims to weed out soldiers who can’t deploy overseas for more than 12 consecutive months for any reason, including HIV status. (Larson, 9/14)

Starting Oct. 1, the Veterans Affairs Department will step in to manage about 81,000 authorizations for the ongoing private-sector care of approximately 50,000 veterans in the VA Choice program. Lawmakers and providers are watching how the VA handles the responsibility as the department is poised to take a larger role in processing claims thanks to the recently passed VA Mission Act. (Luthi, 9/17)

The National Quality Forum on Monday released its first-ever set of quality measures for rural hospitals and ambulatory care facilities to improve quality of care and access in rural communities. The NQF urged the CMS to adopt the measures, developed by a 25-member multi-stakeholder group including hospitals, for the traditional Medicare program first and perhaps later for Medicare Advantage plans and integrated delivery systems. (Meyer, 9/17)

The CMS issued sweeping regulation Monday meant to ease Medicare regulations. The overall goal is to reduce administrative burden on providers and ease access to care for patients. Collectively, the CMS estimates the provisions will save providers $1.12 billion every year. The CMS wants to prevent hospitals from rejecting patients being transferred from competitive ambulatory surgical centers. Currently, surgical centers must have a written transfer agreement with a hospital or ensure all physicians performing surgery have admitting privileges in a nearby hospital. The CMS proposes removing that requirement, citing complaints from the "largest ASC trade association." (Dickson, 9/17)

The Affordable Care Act’s embattled requirement to cover contraceptives ought to include the smartphone app that’s FDA-cleared to prevent pregnancy, according to experts. But it’s anyone’s guess how that might work. The company that makes the app, also called Natural Cycles, clearly thinks insurers might be willing. Its product costs $79 per year or $9.99 per month. Soon, someone will fill an open position at the company and begin liaising with U.S. insurers — including, potentially, Medicaid. (Sheridan, 9/18)

Abortion opponents are working to change the election's outcome especially in battleground Senate races by reminding their allies of President Donald Trump's effort to push through that chamber a federal 20-week ban on the procedure. The election effort comes after Trump asked the audience at a May gala benefiting the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List to help him reach midterm voters. He highlighted a House-passed bill (HR 36), which didn't pass the Senate, to ban abortions after five months. (Raman, 9/18)

Most employees like the free doughnuts, cake and other confections that get parked “in the usual place” at work. But exploding rates of obesity and diabetes make sugar more like cigarettes to some employers. Tempting treats are the new secondhand smoke. The rules at Health IQ in Mountain View, Calif., sounded pretty sour when they went viral earlier this year: “There is no sugar, candy bars, soda (diet or otherwise) allowed in our office. If you bring some it will get thrown away.” Chief executive Munjal Shah said the rules, more flexible than they sounded, were relaxed after the social media outrage. The company, however, still wags a finger at secondhand sugar. (Winkler, 9/17)

Mobile Mini, a portable storage company based in Phoenix, is among a growing number of companies realizing that mindfulness and other wellness practices can improve the work environment. ...A recent United Healthcare study found 89 percent of employees believe meditation or mindfulness had a positive impact on a person's overall health and well-being. (Castle, 9/17)

A school-based survey shows nearly 1 in 11 U.S. students have used marijuana in electronic cigarettes, heightening health concerns about the new popularity of vaping among teens. E-cigarettes typically contain nicotine, but many of the battery-powered devices can vaporize other substances, including marijuana. Results published Monday mean 2.1 million middle and high school students have used them to get high. (Johnson, 9/17)

The report comes less than a week after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a crackdown on companies that produce and sell e-cigarettes in response to their failure to keep the devices out of the hands of minors. The 2017 Monitoring the Future survey from the University of Michigan reported that more than 2 million middle and high school students called themselves current users of vaping products, and FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb called it an “epidemic of nicotine addiction” among American youth. (Kaplan, 9/17)

Thousands of foster children may be getting powerful psychiatric drugs prescribed to them without basic safeguards, says a federal watchdog agency that found a failure to care for youngsters whose lives have already been disrupted. A report released Monday by the Health and Human Services inspector general’s office found that about 1 in 3 foster kids from a sample of states were prescribed psychiatric drugs without treatment plans or follow-up, standard steps in sound medical care. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 9/17)

An estimated 6.3 million children died before their 15th birthdays in 2017, or one every five seconds, mostly due to a lack of water, sanitation, nutrition and basic healthcare, according to report by United Nations agencies on Tuesday. The vast majority of these deaths – 5.4 million – occur in the first five years of life, with newborns accounting for around half of the deaths, the report said. (Kelland, 9/17)

When researchers first discovered a link in the late 1990s between childhood adversity and chronic health problems later in life, the real revelation was how common those experiences were across all socioeconomic groups. But the first major study to focus on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) was limited to a single healthcare system in San Diego. Now a new study — the largest nationally representative study to date on ACEs — confirms that these experiences are universal, yet highlights some disparities among socioeconomic groups. People with low-income and educational attainment, people of color and people who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual had significantly higher chance of having experienced adversity in childhood. (Haelle, 9/17)

In response to criticism that it soft-pedaled the cancer risk from consuming alcohol, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism changed information on its website to say that “there is a strong scientific consensus of an association between alcohol drinking and several types of cancer” and that the Department of Health and Human Services lists alcohol as a known human carcinogen. The new description of the cancer risk of alcohol brings NIAAA’s website in line with the National Cancer Institute’s. Previously, in wording that dates to 2013, NIAAA’s website had said, “Drinking too much alcohol can increase your risk of developing certain cancers.” (Begley, 9/17)

Zuckerberg has begun to use the fortune he earned from creating one of the world's most valuable companies to invest in [The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative]. In October, he revealed that he plans to sell up to 75 million shares, worth more than $12 billion at the time, by March 2019 to fund the project. ... CZI has been around now for about two and a half years, and has ballooned to 250 employees, with about half of them hailing from the technology sector. ... Zuckerberg shared a few more details onstage in a 2016 conference call, where he declared "we have a real shot at preventing, curing or managing" most diseases in the next 100 years, particularly heart disease, cancer, stroke, neurodegenerative and infectious diseases. (Farr, 9/15)

Whether a single private entity should be able to set the direction of how the genes of so many living things are used was a piece of a broader debate at the United Nations this month. There, delegates from across the world were discussing the development of a global legal framework for genetic resources in the high seas, a vast realm outside any one nation’s control. For those interested in the future of innovation, inequality and even dairy alternatives, a closer look at what exactly is being patented offers intriguing hints. (Murphy, 9/17)

Dick Tracey didn't have to visit a tall building to get over his fear of heights. He put on a virtual reality headset. Through VR, he rode an elevator to a high-rise atrium that looked so real he fell to his knees. "I needed to search with my hand for something solid around me," he said. (9/18)

A torn ACL, the tiny band of tough connective tissue in the center of the knee, has marked the downfall of many a football star. ...On Monday, a privately held biotech startup in Boston said it has raised $22.5 million to continue developing its new treatment for the often devastating injury. Among the investors: the union that represents National Football League players. (Saltzman, 9/17)

Personality tests are hugely popular, though if you ask working psychologists, they’ll tell you the results are little better than astrological signs. But a new study, based on huge sets of personality data representing 1.5 million people, has persuaded one of the staunchest critics of personality tests to conclude that maybe distinct personality types exist, after all. In a report published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior, researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois identify four personality types: reserved, role models, average and self-centered. (Guarino, 9/17)

Dr. Pieter Cohen of Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance has raised red flags in the past about the quality and claims of supplements — vitamins, herbs, all sorts of substances sold to improve health but regulated far, far less than medical treatments. Now, he warns in a JAMA Internal Medicine piece titled "Probiotic Safety — No Guarantees" that probiotics face similar issues. (Goldberg, 9/17)

When a relationship ends but love remains, it can be both frustrating and embarrassing. Dessa, a well-known rapper, singer and writer from Minneapolis, knows the feeling well. She'd spent years trying to get over an ex-boyfriend, but she was still stuck on him. "You're not only suffering," she says, "You're just sort of ridiculous. Discipline and dedication are my strong suits — it really bothered me that, no matter how much effort I tried to expend in trying to solve this problem, I was stuck." (Cole and Kellman, 9/18)

The man stood casually on the subway tracks, his face showing no sign of terror as he stared down a 360-ton train. The train operator spotted him and stopped the train just in time, sparing his life. Then the man climbed onto the platform and disappeared. “It was totally bizarre how he was so calm,” Doug Latino, a subway rider, said of the man he recently saw on the tracks at Grand Central Station in Manhattan. (Fitzsimmons, 9/17)

The Coca-Cola Company said Monday it is "closely watching" the expanding use of a cannabis element in drinks, another sign cannabis and cannabis-infused products are getting more acceptance in mainstream culture and a harder look from long-established pillars of American business. (9/17)

When they talk about the impact of ballot Question 1, Massachusetts hospital executives keep repeating one big number: $1 billion. That’s how they’ve described the approximate cost — annually — of the question that seeks to regulate nurse staffing. (Dayal McCluskey, 9/17)

Democrat Tony Evers challenged GOP Gov. Scott Walker to drop his Obamacare lawsuit Monday as Walker and his running mate insisted they would make sure those with pre-existing conditions are covered if they win in court. ...Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch have pledged to call a special legislative session to require coverage of pre-existing conditions if they succeed with their lawsuit against Obamacare, which is formally known as the Affordable Care Act. (Marley and Spicuzza, 9/17)

Minnesota has confirmed a third case of measles in the last six weeks. It's a worrisome trend for state health officials, who are urging people to get vaccines in order to prevent an outbreak like the one that happened last year. (Cox, 9/17)

A Johnson County teenager has been charged with raping a 13-year-old at an Olathe child welfare office where children have been kept overnight because of a shortage of foster care beds. Michael Anthony Hamer, 18, was charged last week with rape and aggravated indecent liberties of a child under 14. (Bauer and Rizzo, 9/17)

An Eagan man who ran a network of personal care assistant services fraudulently obtained more than $4 million in Medicaid funds, according to charges unsealed against him Monday. Victor Nenghimobo Clement, 53, was barred from participating as a Medicaid provider due to a previous conviction in Ramsey County for Medicaid fraud. In the current case, an investigation by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit named Clement as the leader and found he arranged for other people to open PCA agencies, which he managed, according to the criminal complaint filed in Ramsey County District Court by the Attorney General’s office. (Gottfried, 9/17)

The number of people with sexually transmitted diseases in Maryland is growing rapidly and many might not even know they are infected, fueling the spread. The rise in STDs is happening across the state and not just in trouble spots such as Baltimore, which has a history of high rates. The spread of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia are of particular concern to public health officials and doctors, who say they are treating many more cases. (McDaniels, 9/18)

Thanks in part to her experiences and research, the American Osteopathic Association discussed recommending that every state legalize “expedited partner therapy,” so both STD patients and their sexual partners can get prescriptions, even if the doctors or nurses haven’t personally examined the partners. (Marso, 9/18)

In his native Syria, Mahmoud spent months in captivity in a crowded room three floors underground, never seeing the sun. Disease spread quickly among the prisoners, he said. Food was scarce, often spoiled. Mahmoud said his captors, foot soldiers of Syrian President Bashar Assad, tortured him and shot him in the leg.“I was in jail for seven months. They let me go, but I was physically sick, and tired,” the 29-year-old refugee said, speaking inside a cheerful, modern medical clinic here with signs posted in English and Arabic. “I had infections, inflammation. I’m still trying to get treated for it all.” (Brown, 9/17)

Cultural practices, resettlement struggles and the challenge of finding dentists willing to take Medicaid make good oral hygiene extremely hard for many refugees. Medical experts say tooth and gum decay is a serious issue that can lead to future health problems, from digestive struggles to diabetes and heart disease. (Choi, 9/18)

In California, the state with the highest poverty rate, tooth decay in children outpaces the national average. Hoping to save both teeth and money, the state is addressing the problem with an overhaul of Denti-Cal, part of the Medi-Cal health system for low-income Californians. (Gorn, 9/17)

State regulators on Monday (Sept. 17) got rid of a rule that limited the number of patients Louisiana doctors can recommend medical marijuana to. The Louisiana Board of Medical Examiners met Monday to consider changing several rules that currently place restrictions on patient access to medical marijuana. That included a patient limit rule that prevented Louisiana doctors licensed under the state's medical marijuana program from recommending the drug to more than 100 people at a time. (Clark, 9/17)

Kaiser Health News: Day-Tripping To The Dispensary: Seniors In Pain Hop Aboard The Canna-Bus

Shirley Avedon, 90,­­ had never been a cannabis user. But carpal tunnel syndrome that sends shooting pains into both of her hands and an aversion to conventional steroid and surgical treatments is prompting her to consider some new options. “It’s very painful, sometimes I can’t even open my hand,” Avedon said. (O'Neill, 9/18)

Can you say you believe women when it’s deeply inconvenient for you to do so? When your decision to believe her could hinder you from getting other things you want? A few weeks ago, a reader emailed me saying he really missed seeing Matt Lauer and Charlie Rose on television. The reader was angry at all the women who had accused them of harassment. He was inclined to disbelieve these women, in fact, with a rationale mostly related to his own sense of nuisance: His mornings were more pleasant when Matt Lauer was on the air. What about when it’s not Matt Lauer — when it’s a Supreme Court nominee? What about when the nominee’s confirmation vote is scheduled for Thursday in the Senate Judiciary Committee? What about when you’re a Republican senator, and you think the accused man can be the kind of justice that America desperately needs, and all you have to do to get him on the bench is to decide that this particular woman is lying? (Monica Hesse, 9/17)

Before the latest explosive development in his nomination process, Brett Kavanaugh already had a track record for telling little lies. ... During the ongoing confirmation hearing process, Kavanaugh told senators he considers Roe v. Wade settled law. But in e-mails he wrote during the Bush administration, Kavanaugh left the door open to reaching the opposite conclusion. In other words, what he wanted the public to know about his thinking as he underwent Supreme Court vetting was different from his private legal analysis. During previous judicial confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh also said “no” when asked if he received documents stolen from the Senate Judiciary Committee. But based on e-mails provided to Congress, Kavanaugh did see the stolen documents. (Joan Vennochi, 9/17)

Most Republicans would wish to speed the process along — partly because, after November, their Senate majority isn’t guaranteed. They may rightfully complain that the accusation should have been made and examined earlier. Nonetheless, it’s in their interests now to pause. Rushing Kavanaugh on to the court under these circumstances would unleash a righteous fury that would likely hurt Republicans most. Far more important, it might gravely damage the court, the Senate, the White House and the nation — by telling women, not for the first time, that they are second-class citizens. (9/17)

There is a small, dark part of me that thinks it would be fitting if Republicans shove Kavanaugh through despite the allegations against him. Anyone Trump nominates is going to threaten Roe v. Wade. Kavanaugh would at least make plain the power dynamics behind forced pregnancy. We would lose Roe because a president who boasted of sexual assault, elected against the wishes of the majority of female voters, was able to give a lifetime Supreme Court appointment to an ex-frat boy credibly accused of attempted rape. Kavanaugh, helped by an all-male Republican caucus on the Judiciary Committee, would join Clarence Thomas, whose confirmation hearing helped make the phrase “sexual harassment” a household term. They and three other men would likely vote against the court’s three women. The brute imposition of patriarchy would be undeniable. (Michelle Goldberg, 9/17)

A newly emerged accusation of attempted sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh deserves a full airing before the confirmation process advances. If these allegations prove credible, it means Senate Republicans are about to confirm yet another justice whose respect for women and their right to control their own bodies is in serious question. (9/17)

It’s tempting to celebrate the Senate’s Monday night vote to pass its massive legislative package meant to curb the nation’s opioid epidemic. In this political climate — and given this administration’s record on health-care issues — you might be willing to take any sort of victory at all. But this bill is not worth celebrating. It’s an illustration of how little Republicans care about the opioid crisis. (Robert Gebelhoff, 9/17)

Every day, nearly 200 people across the country die from drug overdoses. Opioids have been the primary driver of this calamity: first as prescription painkillers, then heroin and, more recently, illicitly manufactured fentanyl. The death toll has risen steadily over the past two decades. The Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency that most directly oversees access to opioids, deserves much of the blame for these deaths. Because of its incompetence, the opioid crisis has gone from bad to worse. The solution: overhauling the agency, or even getting rid of it entirely. (Leo Beletsky and Jeremiah Goulka, 9/17)

We must insist that this country hold a national, federal inquiry that covers all 50 states. In doing so, the United States will not be leading, but following, many other countries around the globe that have already conducted such national public inquiries — like tiny Ireland, which took the lead in the last decade with three government reports and now has a fourth national ongoing inquiry by a Mothers and Babies Commission of Inquiry into mistreatment of mothers and infants in homes run by Catholic orders. (Arthur McCaffrey, 9/18)

The fall from grace last week of Dr. José Baselga, the former chief scientific officer of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, illuminated a longstanding problem of modern medicine: Potentially corrupting payments by drug and medical device makers to influential people at research hospitals are far more common than either side publicly acknowledges. ... Medical journals and professional organizations have also told The Times that they are looking for ways to streamline the disclosure process for doctors and to better track those disclosures themselves. Those are good first steps, but if institutions charged with curing the sick are serious about finally stopping the corruption of medicine by money, they’ll need to do much more than that. (9/14)

Our organization, World Central Kitchen, is a small nonprofit founded in 2010, after the Haiti earthquake, to deliver smart food solutions after such disasters. Last year, we organized chefs, cooks and thousands of volunteers to prepare and deliver more than 3.7 million meals to Americans in Puerto Rico after the hurricane. We did not own any delivery trucks, helicopters or superpowers. We just got to work, as a team, to feed people. Along the way, we found doctors and nurses who were going hungry while they were trying to save lives without reliable power or vital medical supplies. There were National Guard troops who hadn't eaten a real meal in weeks. We found that there was ample water on the island but a chronic lack of public-health information and a disregard for getting regular water supplies to the people. (José Andrés and Richard Wolffe, 9/17)

More students than ever before are entering college with pre-existing mental health conditions, and medication can be an important component of their care. But many students stop taking medications when they arrive on campus — the exact moment their stress levels shoot up. The result can be a resurgence of mental illness symptoms, side effects students don't realize can occur from the sudden stop, and in the worst cases, self-harm and even suicide. (Aneri Pattani, 9/18)

Ableism kills. I’ve watched my fellow patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome, suffer and even die from the ignominy of a suspect disease. Patients often can’t get effective medical care, their disability insurance applications are rejected, their marriages are torn apart, they’re abandoned by their families, they end up in poverty and food insecurity, and sometimes they die, occasionally from the disease itself, more often from suicide. As terrible as this litany is, nothing has brought home to me the dangers of prejudice against those who are chronically ill like the new Netflix documentary series “Afflicted.” (Julie Rehmeyer, 9/18)

Most Republican politicians in Texas, from Gov. Greg Abbott on down, have vehemently opposed any expansion of Medicaid even though the federal government would pay 90 percent of the cost. They grandstand as if their recalcitrance is fueled by public will, but the TMC poll showed 60 percent of Texans think the state would be healthier if more people had Medicaid insurance. They’re right. An additional 1.2 million of Texans would have health insurance if the state’s program were expanded under the Affordable Care Act. That includes nearly 625,000 Texans who can’t afford to buy private health insurance but make too much to qualify for Medicaid under the state’s current eligibility rules. (9/14)