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Americans love, love, love to hate on government, for all its foibles and failures. But we conveniently forget that good government has also solved, curtailed or prevented a lot of problems over the years, including epidemics, economic ills and environmental crises. When government works, it becomes largely invisible, taken for granted, wiping out both crises and the traumatic memories of those crises. Bad government we remember and loathe and curse to our children; but good government is often a victim of its own success, the cure so effective that we forget how horrifying the ailment it eradicated was. (Catherine Rampell, 5/30)

The fact that the opioid crisis is becoming a hot-button political issue is no surprise. Considering 130 Americans die every day from an opioid overdose — that’s one every 11 minutes — the situation simply cannot be ignored. In fact, Americans are now more likely to die from an overdose than they are in a car accident, and the effects of this crisis have put a tremendous strain on our first responders and emergency services. Not to mention, the epidemic of addiction takes a devastating toll on families, especially children, and communities around the country. Frustrated by the lack of real solutions, constituents are demanding their elected officials do something to help stop, or at least slow, the rate of addiction and death. Elizabeth Warren has taken a bold step with her CARE Act proposal that would provide $100 billion over the next ten years to ramp up access to treatment through a broad range of organizations, local governments, and both public and nonprofit entities. (Michael Cartwright, 5/30)

Progressives in New York are pushing single-payer legislation that they claim will reduce health costs and improve care, but not even their friends in the public unions are buying it. As labor leaders know all too well, government control inevitably leads to higher costs and taxes and lower quality of service.New York’s state Senate and Assembly held a hearing Tuesday to consider legislation that would put the state in charge of health benefits for its 8.6 million residents. What do you know? The loudest opponents were union officials who howled that the bill would undermine collective bargaining, raise costs and lead to rationing. (5/30)

Over the past several years, teenage suicide rates have spiked horrifically. Depression rates are surging and America’s mental health over all is deteriorating. What’s going on? My answer starts with technology but is really about the sort of consciousness online life induces. When communication styles change, so do people. In 1982, the scholar Walter Ong described the way, centuries ago, a shift from an oral to a printed culture transformed human consciousness. Once, storytelling was a shared experience, with emphasis on proverb, parable and myth. With the onset of the printing press it become a more private experience, the content of that storytelling more realistic and linear. (David Brooks, 5/30)

Appointments with my doctor make me nervous. That’s highly ironic, because I’m a doctor, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who regularly deals with high-risk pregnancies. But ever since developing preeclampsia during my first pregnancy eight years ago, the thought of having my blood pressure taken triggers flashbacks and anxiety. The silver lining is that my experience has changed the way that I care for patients.Preeclampsia affects upward of 10% of pregnant women. Its main signal is high blood pressure, but it can also cause headaches and damage the kidneys. In severe cases, women can have seizures or suffer liver damage. It is also a leading cause of maternal and fetal death. (Shivani Patel, 5/31)

A recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) on dietary sodium intake adds overwhelming weight to the already strong imperative to reduce the amount of sodium in the U.S. food supply.1 Some food companies had used the ongoing work on this report as a reason to slow sodium-reduction efforts, citing the possibility of substantial changes to existing conclusions about sodium and health. The report, however, confirms that sodium intake among adults should be reduced from an average of 3400 mg per day to 2300 mg per day and links excess sodium intake to cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and stroke — chronic conditions that have staggering direct and indirect costs in the United States. (Jane E. Henney, James A. O’Hara and Christine L. Taylor, 5/30)

Historically, genetic evaluation has been dominated by a clinician-centric traditional model in which a patient’s physician had the central responsibility for testing, such as ordering the test and communicating the results. Conversely, in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) model, consumers are more empowered because they can order their own tests, obtain samples using home test kits, and receive the results directly from the laboratory or company that provides the test. The DTC market has expanded substantially, reigniting controversies over the potential implications of DTC testing for genetic health risks.cHowever, little attention has been paid to the emergence and effect of new models of genetic testing that fall in a middle ground between the DTC model and the traditional model, which is also known as the hybrid laboratory model. (Kathryn A. Phillips, Julia R. Trosman and Michael P. Douglas, 5/30)

Because the city of Los Angeles does not have enough shelter beds for its outsize homeless population, homeless people have been allowed for more than a decade to sleep on the sidewalks at night. Thanks to new court settlement, they now have the right to keep a nearly unlimited amount of possessions with them on the sidewalks of skid row. This is not what progress looks like in the homelessness crisis. (5/31)