�������ýҕ�l

The Supreme Court, in an unsigned unanimous opinion, announced on Monday that it would not rule in a major case on access to contraception, and instructed lower courts to consider whether a compromise was possible. The opinion is the latest indication that the Supreme Court, which currently has eight members, is exploring every avenue to avoid 4-to-4 deadlocks, even if it does not decide the question the justices have agreed to address. (Liptak, 5/16)

The decision averted a 4-4 tie, which would have left different rules in place in different parts of the country concerning the availability of cost-free birth control for women who work for faith-affiliated groups. But the outcome was itself inconclusive and suggested that the justices could not form a majority to issue a significant ruling that would have settled the issue the court took the case to resolve. (5/17)

Both sides in the lawsuits had made concessions since the case was argued in March, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in announcing the decision from the bench. A pause will provide an opportunity for them to “arrive at an approach going forward that accommodates petitioners’ religious exercise while at the same time ensuring that women covered by petitioners’ health plans receive full and equal health coverage, including contraceptive coverage,” the opinion said. (Barnes, 5/16)

The Texas case is among seven related lawsuits the high court agreed to hear together in which religious nonprofits argue the mandate infringes on their religious freedom. The Obama administration says the groups are offered a way around the requirement through a mechanism that still gives women access to free contraception. (Ura, 5/16)

“We are all grateful to God and the Supreme Court justices that they…recognize our willingness to reach a resolution that allows us to abide by our faith and the government to achieve its goals,” said the lead case’s plaintiff, the Most Rev. David Zubik, Roman Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh. President Barack Obama said in a Monday interview with BuzzFeed that “the practical effect is, right now, women will still be able to get contraception if they are getting health insurance and we are properly accommodating religious institutions who have objections to contraception.” (Bravin and Radnofsky, 5/16)

The White House said on Monday that millions of American women will continue to have access to health insurance that they need, despite the Supreme Court's ruling in a case involving contraception coverage under the Obamacare law. "We were gratified by the ruling today," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters. "And this announcement does ensure that millions of women across the country can continue to have access to their healthcare. And it is a reflection of something we have long believed: which is that it is possible to prioritize both access to healthcare for everybody while protecting the religious liberty of every American." (Gardner and Heavey, 5/16)

The court took a tortured path to the Zubik decision. Two years ago in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell, the justices ruled the same Affordable Care Act contraception coverage requirement violated the religious beliefs of certain for-profit companies. The court said that the administration cannot require these owners to include birth control in their insurance plans. But the non-profit organizations operated under different rules than the for-profit businesses. (Haberkorn, 5/16)

It remains unclear exactly what the lower courts might do. In an effort to break what was clearly a 4-4 deadlock, the court in March asked each side for supplemental material outlining any potential compromises. The decision Monday referred to those new briefs as suggesting that providing contraceptive coverage without requiring notice from religious employers “is feasible.” But Sotomayor and Ginsburg, in their concurring opinion, noted that “the Courts of Appeals remain free to reach the same conclusion or a different one on each of the questions presented by these cases.” (Rovner, 5/16)

In the short term, the government can take steps to make sure that women covered by the groups' health plans have access to cost-free contraceptives. At the same time, the groups will not face fines for refusing to comply with administration rules for objecting to paying for birth control. (5/16)

Victory for House Republicans in federal court last week could mean significantly higher health insurance premiums for millions of people if the decision is upheld on appeal, the Obama administration said Monday. And much of the cost for those higher premiums could be passed on to the federal government and taxpayers, administration officials and health policy experts said. The ruling by Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia would block the administration from reimbursing insurers for discounts provided to millions of low-income people under the Affordable Care Act. Without that money, insurers would have to increase premiums for many people purchasing insurance through the health law’s online marketplaces, the administration said. (Pear, 5/16)

Last month, UnitedHealth began giving notice it will exit most of the marketplaces .... Although some of UnitedHealth's wounds were self-inflicted, other insurers are also struggling to manage their high-cost exchange population. Many are boosting premiums significantly. Experts predict the average rates for next year's ACA plans, which insurers are proposing now, could rise by double digits. ... The most significant factor behind next year's sharply rising prices, experts say, is that millions of “young invincibles,” who represent a large segment of the uninsured pool, have so far not signed up for Obamacare. (Herman, 5/14)

UnitedHealth Group and Humana are bailing on multiple exchanges that sell individual health insurance, and more than half of the not-for-profit co-ops have closed up shop. But other companies are willingly, and quietly, taking their place. ... While exits have garnered more attention, healthcare experts say the addition and expansion of other insurers shows how the marketplaces are still in their formative years. (Herman, 5/16)

An insurer’s decision to stop selling plans on the marketplace doesn’t necessarily mean it will stop selling individual coverage in that state altogether. This year, for example, Aetna stopped selling individual plans on the marketplaces in Kansas, Utah and the District of Columbia. But it continues to sell individual policies outside the marketplaces in Kansas and Utah, said T.J. Crawford, a spokesperson for Aetna. (Andrews, 5/17)

A growing number of Americans now support the idea of federally-funded healthcare, according to a new poll conducted by Gallup measuring response to each of the three remaining Presidential candidates' proposed healthcare policies. When presented with three different scenarios for the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), based on the candidates' positions, 58 percent of U.S. adults favored Sen. Bernie Sanders' idea of replacing the law with a single-payer, federally-funded healthcare system that provides insurance for all Americans. (Edison Hayden, 5/16)

The politics of Obamacare aren't all that complicated. Republicans have called for the Affordable Care Act to be "repealed and replaced" for years, with only sporadic attempts to articulate what the replacement would be. On the Democratic side, the question that's emerged over the course of the primary is whether or not the program should be expanded and improved (Hillary Clinton's argument) or if we should push for a complete overhaul, moving toward a "single-payer" system like Medicare (Bernie Sanders's argument). In a round of polling conducted this month, Gallup figured out which of those ideas was the most popular. And the result? It's sort of a three-way tie. (Bump, 5/16)

Donald Trump and Senate Republicans believe ObamaCare will re-emerge as an explosive political issue before the November elections. At a private strategy meeting on Thursday, Trump and Senate Republicans agreed that President Obama’s signature law could be a millstone around Hillary Clinton’s neck. Republicans point to reports of rising premiums in arguing the public will turn firmly against the reform law. They say a fight over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could help elect a GOP president this fall and keep the Senate in Republican hands. (Bolton, 5/17)

A federal agency on Monday released final rules on how employers can offer workers financial incentives of up to 30 percent of the cost of their cheapest health insurance plans to participate in wellness programs without violating federal laws protecting the confidentiality of medical information. The move from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission aims to clear up confusion over the way two federal laws protecting employees' medical privacy apply to the popular programs, which are designed to control medical spending by reducing obesity, smoking and other risk factors. (Wiessner, 5/16)

The final rules go into effect in 2017, and apply to all workplace wellness programs, including those that aren’t tied to an employer’s health insurance program, the EEOC said. [Brian] Marcotte of the National Business Group on Health said that the finalized rules vary little from rules the EEOC proposed last year, so they won’t radically change how most companies administer their health programs. “It’s business as usual for most employers,” he says. (Silverman, 5/16)

[Consumer] and disability-rights advocates, who had sought broad changes when the draft rules were unveiled last year, were clearly disappointed. The regulations don’t provide enough privacy protections, they said, and the programs can’t be considered voluntary with the level of incentives and penalties that were approved by the EEOC. “This could coerce employees into providing information that they would otherwise not provide about their health,” said Sarah Fleisch Fink, senior policy counsel with the National Partnership on Women & Families, which was among dozens of groups that wrote comment letters seeking changes in the draft rule. (Appleby, 5/17)

After a three-month delay, the Senate is acting on President Barack Obama's request for money to combat the Zika virus. The Senate is slated to vote Tuesday on three competing plans to battle the virus, with a bipartisan plan that cuts Obama's $1.9 billion request to $1.1 billion having the greatest chance to advance. The procedural vote would pave the way to add funds for the government's response to Zika to an unrelated spending bill. (Taylor, 5/17)

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives will try to pass legislation this week providing $622.1 million in funds to fight the spreading Zika virus, far less than the Obama administration has been seeking. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers introduced the measure on Monday, according to a statement. The bill would offset the new spending by taking $352.1 million from an Ebola fund and another $270 million from a Department of Health and Human Services administrative account. (Cowan and Gardner, 5/16)

House Republicans on Monday introduced a bill to provide $622 million in additional funding to fight the Zika virus this year. The measure is fully paid for, in part by shifting over unspent money that was intended to fight Ebola, the House Appropriations Committee said. The House is likely to vote on the bill, which would provide a fraction of the $1.9 billion requested by the White House, this week. (Sullivan, 5/16)

House Republicans introduced a Zika funding bill Monday that would provide $622 million for the fight — less than half of what the Obama administration wanted as the nation prepares for the likely spread of the virus this summer. (Nather, 5/16)

A man whose penis was removed because of cancer has received the first penis transplant in the United States, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Thomas Manning, 64, a bank courier from Halifax, Mass., underwent the 15-hour transplant operation on May 8 and 9. The organ came from a deceased donor. “I want to go back to being who I was,” Mr. Manning said on Friday. (Grady, 5/16)

The idea came from the patient himself. Devastated by a rare form of cancer that led to the removal of his penis in 2012, Thomas Manning asked his urologist to consider something radical and relatively untested. (Levenson, 5/16)

Back in 2012, Thomas Manning of Halifax, Massachusetts, suffered a serious groin injury when a heavy cart fell on him at work. As he was being treated for it, his doctors found an aggressive cancer growing in his penis, and amputated most of it. “He’s really an incredible person that after that surgery, totally unprovoked, said, ‘Doc, if I can have a penile transplant, I’m your patient,’ ” Manning’s doctor, MGH urologic oncologist Adam Feldman, told reporters on Monday. “And then shortly afterward was when the program started and I said, ‘You know … there just might be something here for you.’ “ It took more than three years for all the pieces to come together, but Manning, 64, has now received the country’s first penis transplant. Surgeons in South Africa and China have performed similar operations. (Goldberg, 5/16)

The timing could hardly have been worse. Just when an organ became available for the first-ever penis transplant in the United States, almost every last urologist in the country was at a conference in San Diego, Calif. (Boodman, 5/16)

Penis transplants have generated intense interest among veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, but they will require more extensive surgery since their injuries, often from roadside bombs, tend to be more extensive, with damage to blood vessels, nerves and pelvic tissue that also will need repair, Lee noted. The Department of Defense Trauma Registry has recorded 1,367 male service members who survived with genitourinary injuries between 2001 and 2013. It's not clear how many victims lost all or part of the penis. (5/16)

Drinking is more likely to be the cause of death in much of the Southwest than in other parts of the country. In parts of Appalachia and New England, it’s a drug overdose. Suicide by gun stands out as disproportionately lethal in parts of the Upper Midwest and Alaska. Although the top causes of death are similar for most states, many states have their own peculiar hard cases —types of deaths whose rates are higher than the national norm, a Stateline analysis of 2014 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. (Henderson, 5/16)

To see the explosive rise of proton-beam therapy, an expensive and controversial cancer treatment, look to the billboards of Belgium. Ion Beam Applications SA, the Belgian company that leads the global market for huge proton-beam machines, is selling so many systems lately that it needs to boost its 1,200-strong workforce by 400 workers. It launched a big recruitment drive across the country this year, featuring radio and newspaper spots along with dozens of billboards and posters. “It was very difficult to escape the IBA campaign,” said Chief Executive Olivier Legrain. (Roland, 5/16)

Researchers are shedding new light on why cancer is often a different disease for men than it is for women. A new study suggests that for many cancers, important differences in the genetics of tumors in men as compared with women may affect the development and aggressiveness of the disease or how it responds to treatment. Researchers said the findings could eventually affect drug development and lead to strategies for preventing and treating cancer that take a patient’s sex into account. (Winslow, 5/16)

A visit to the doctor’s office often comes with the sort of personal questions not asked anywhere else except, perhaps, the depths of an online dating quiz: How many sexual partners do you have? How much booze do you consume in a typical week? Do you smoke? Do you wear a helmet when you ride a bike? Is there a gun in your house? If that last query feels unusually probing, even for a medical exam, there’s good reason. The question is a bone of contention in states like Florida, where Gov. Rick Scott signed a 2011 law aimed at restricting doctors’ inquires about the firearms in their patients’ lives. Doctors who ask about guns, for their part, may fear finding themselves far afield from their comfort zones. (Guarino, 5/17)

When patients use a telemedicine service offered through their health insurer or employer, they can get modest routine care at any time, without having to go to a doctor’s office or urgent care center. But they usually know very little about the doctor or nurse on the other end of the phone or on the screen. “It’s a blind date,” said John Jesser, an executive with Anthem, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, which offers its customers telehealth services through LiveHealth Online, giving them access to medical care 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Now American Well, the company behind Anthem’s service, is betting that people would rather choose the doctors or nurses they consult with online, much as they select an urgent care center or a specialist. (Abelson, 5/16)

The new software that the Brigham’s parent company, Partners HealthCare, bought for its hospitals and clinics is modernizing the way it tracks patients’ medical care. Doctors and nurses will know more about their patients more quickly — from emergency room visits to medications. Partners executives say this will result in safer care. But for [the] nurses and doctors at Partners, the new system has become a disruptive presence. They say it has an insatiable demand for information that, keystroke by keystroke, click by click, overwhelms the already tightly wrapped day inside a hospital, eats away at time with patients, and sometimes forces them to work longer shifts. (Dayal McCluskey, 5/17)

A coalition of health groups has launched a new campaign to ask voters in November to increase California's tax on cigarettes by $2 per pack, this time enlisting deep-pocket supporters to counter a tobacco industry that blocked several attempts in the past. Billionaire Tom Steyer, who was the nation’s largest individual political donor in 2014, spending $74 million that year, is leading the campaign for the tobacco tax. He has funneled $1 million into collecting signatures to qualify the measure for the Nov. 8 ballot. (McGreevy, 5/17)

A campaign to raise California's cigarette tax by $2 a pack said Monday it has collected enough signatures to qualify the proposal for the Nov. 8 ballot and raise the prospect of a pocketbook jolt for smokers in the nation's most populous state. (Spagat, 5/17)

Projecting big deficits in coming years, the Georgia agency that runs the state employee and teacher health plan is hunting for savings through an array of strategies. Clyde Reese, commissioner of the Department of Community Health, told GHN last week in an interview that the agency is conducting an audit to ensure that all dependents covered by SHBP are indeed eligible for those benefits. (Miller, 5/16)

The U.S. attorney's office in Memphis has reached a settlement with Methodist Healthcare over allegations that it did not provide effective communication with a deaf patient under the American with Disabilities Act. (5/17)

Three industry heavyweights are vying to run the prescription-drug business for one of the nation’s biggest health-care buyers, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. Express Scripts and UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRx unit are each trying to unseat the current pharmacy-benefits contractor, CVS Health. The stakes are high for the companies and CalPERS, which is struggling along with many employers nationwide to contain fast-rising drug costs. The agency’s medical costs are closely watched as a harbinger of what big employers and their workers might be facing across the country. CalPERS spends more than $8 billion annually on medical care for 1.4 million state and local government employees, retirees and dependents. About a quarter of that, or $1.8 billion, goes to prescription drugs. (Terhune, 5/17)

Over the last decade, many schools have seen the number of cases grow from just a few a year to upwards of several dozen, often transforming guidance offices into de facto psychiatric wards, educators say. But helping students through this journey is complex. They may return to school after receiving treatment fragile, self conscious, and overwhelmed. They’re stressed about being behind in class, confused over how to explain their absences to peers and teachers, and in many cases, tormented by mood swings as their doctors figure out the right dosage of medication. (Vaznis, 5/17)

Nearly half the counties in Florida, including Orange, Osceola and Volusia, have a high percentage of adults without health insurance, according to new estimates released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau. (5/17)

More than 120,000 state employees — including in excess of 11,000 in Richmond — now have a health care center devoted exclusively to their use. (Demeria, 5/16)

A bill that will reduce the number of consecutive months families can receive welfare was signed Monday by Gov. Sam Brownback, who says it will help push people out into the work force faster. SB 402 will reduce the time frame a family can receive Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to 24 months from 36 months, unless a family gets a hardship exemption. (Lowry, 5/16)

In 2014, when Colin Forward wanted to bring together Central Florida's health innovators, he had no idea that in two years the group would become one of the largest health-care innovation Meetups in the Southeast. (Miller, 5/16)

Thousands of former patients of Health Diagnostic Laboratory, a Virginia lab that was sold after health regulators accused it of illegally paying doctors for work, have gotten bills for blood work done as far back as 2009 as bankruptcy lawyers try to collect money for the company’s final debts. The Richmond lab’s operations, which tested for cardiovascular diseases like diabetes, were taken over last fall by a competitor. But under the fine print of the sale, the power to collect old bills was kept by lawyers who are properly closing Health Diagnostic Laboratory down. (Stech, 5/16)

You go to the hospital to get well, of course. But you might not realize that you’re taking a sizable risk of getting sick or injured while hospitalized. Each year, for instance, one in 25 hospital patients contracts an infection. And a Medicare patient has a one in four chance of experiencing injury, harm or death when admitted to a hospital. (Hellman, 5/16)

Racing against the clock, lawyers for the family of brain-dead toddler Israel Stinson have filed a federal appeal, seeking to prevent Kaiser Permanente’s Roseville hospital from taking the child off a ventilator by Friday’s court-ordered deadline. (Buck, 5/16)

Gloria Silott spends most days in her wheelchair, socializing very little and verbalizing only with muffled “yes” or “no” answers. Immobilized by a stroke 15 years ago, she cannot speak clearly or express herself. Typically, say staffers at Eskaton Care Center Greenhaven, she has a flat, sad affect. (Buck, 5/16)

Sept. 15, 2006, was an exciting day for Matt Nader, an offensive tackle on his high school football team. His family cheered as his team battled its No. 1 rival. Then, in an instant, Nader's life changed. He collapsed, unconscious and with no pulse. His heart had stopped. His parents, both physicians, performed CPR until paramedics rushed him to a hospital. (Mann, 5/17)

New Hampshire’s third medical marijuana dispensary opened Sunday in Lebanon. Temescal Wellness, the company operating the dispensary, opened up another dispensary in Dover a little over a week ago. About a week before that, another dispensary operated by a company called Sanctuary ATC opened in Plymouth. (McDermott, 5/17)

Articulating his view of judicial restraint during an address to Georgetown University law graduates in 2006, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that the Supreme Court should keep its rulings limited strictly to the issues squarely before it, because, as he put it, “if it is not necessary to decide more to a case . . . it is necessary not to decide more.” That doctrine of avoidance goes double for cases in which it is impossible for the court to decide anything at all — or so it would seem based on the justices’ hyper-cautious disposition Monday of a controversial case involving religious-freedom objections to the contraceptive mandate under the Affordable Care Act. (5/16)

An evenly divided Supreme Court skirted the major legal questions arising from a dispute over President Obama’s healthcare program and instead announced a compromise Monday designed to clear the way for women working for religious organizations to receive the free birth control promised under the Affordable Care Act. In a short, unanimous decision, the justices said that the Catholic charities who filed the suits and the Obama administration – at the high court’s strong urging -- had agreed in recent weeks that the female workers may "receive cost-free contraceptive coverage" without infringing on the religious rights of the church-based employers. (David G. Savage, 5/16)

The Supreme Court devised an unusual legal halfway house on Monday that may finally resolve the saga of the Little Sisters of the Poor and their challenge to ObamaCare’s birth-control mandate. The question now is whether the Obama Administration will accept this invitation for a compromise that respects free religious exercise, or continue to force believers to submit to government. The Little Sisters, an order of Catholic nuns who run hospices, object to their health insurance plan covering contraception including abortifacients. They and other nonprofit religious organizations like parochial schools and soup kitchens sued over the 2012 “accommodation” that supposedly allowed them to opt out. Typical of this Administration’s pinched understanding of religious liberty, the Little Sisters believe the “self-certification” form they must sign implicates them in a moral offense. (5/16)

The long saga of the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate — which requires that contraception be covered as part of private health plans — took another turn at the Supreme Court today. And the Court — which, don’t forget, is still divided 4-4 between liberals and conservatives — sent it back down to the appeals courts, essentially telling them to find a solution to this problem that the religiously-affiliated organizations in this case will find acceptable, practically begging them to be reasonable while doing everything it can to make sure their tender feelings aren’t hurt. (Paul Waldman, 5/16)

First the good news: Though it was more a TKO than a straight-up ruling, the Little Sisters of the Poor prevailed at the Supreme Court on Monday in their fight against the ObamaCare contraceptive mandate. True, the justices made clear that they were not ruling on the merits, which is why so many headlines speak of the court’s having “punted” on the case. Even so, in a unanimous decision they made the path forward much easier for the sisters and much more difficult for the Obama administration. (William McGurn, 5/16)

The Little Sisters of the Poor weren’t the only temporary winners at the Supreme Court on Monday. The U.S. economy also received a reprieve as a 6-2 majority remanded a case that could have opened up a vast new avenue for class-action lawsuits. The case concerns the standing to sue under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This 1970 law has become a favorite class-action vehicle of the plaintiffs bar, and Spokeo v. Robins was an attempt to leverage the ability to file a class-action suit even though it isn’t clear that Thomas Robins suffered a concrete injury. A federal judge dismissed the case for lack of standing, but the friends of the trial bar on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals revived it. (5/16)

Every day that passes without a ninth justice undermines the Supreme Court’s ability to function, and leaves millions of Americans waiting for justice or clarity as major legal questions are unresolved. On Monday, the eight-member court avoided issuing a ruling on one of this term’s biggest cases, Zubik v. Burwell, which challenges the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers’ health care plans cover the cost of birth control for their employees. In an unsigned opinion, the court sent the lawsuits back to the lower federal courts, with instructions to try to craft a compromise that would be acceptable to everyone. (5/16)

The U.S. health insurance industry has lost a few billion dollars selling policies on Affordable Care Act exchanges. It’s why many carriers are seeking large premium increases next year and why at least one major carrier is dropping policies in most states. (Jonathan Cohn, 5/16)

Bernie Sanders’s chances at enacting a “political revolution” are all but gone. But that doesn’t mean his policy agenda won’t continue to be felt in this election or future Democratic platforms. One of his signature proposals is to move the country’s health care system to a government-run, single-payer system. Last week, Hillary Clinton nodded in that direction, suggesting that she would be open to allowing Americans older than 50 to buy into the government Medicare program that currently covers those 65 and older. (Margot Sanger-Katz, 5/16)

Last Thursday, the Obama administration suffered a legal setback, when a federal judge in Washington ruled that the administration exceeded its authority by paying out cost-sharing subsidies to health insurers under the Affordable Care Act. The administration will doubtless appeal the case, which was brought by the Republican-led House of Representatives, but whether those appeals succeed may well depend on whether courts view the case as one of statutory interpretation, or one with constitutional implications. In its briefs in the case, the administration tried to portray House v. Burwell as a successor case to King v. Burwell, another lawsuit surrounding Obamacare subsidy payments, which the Supreme Court decided in June 2015. (Chris Jacobs, 5/16)

The Affordable Care Act is being subjected to judicial torment. The latest agony is last week’s ruling by a federal judge that the law failed to appropriate funds needed to help cover low- to middle-income people. The case, brought by Republican members of Congress, shouldn’t have been allowed to go forward in the first place, because a dispute between Congress and the president about the scope of appropriations isn’t a matter for the courts. It’s also wrong on the merits, since it assumes that legislation should be interpreted to thwart itself. The Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court will probably overturn it. (Noah Feldman, 5/16)

With an average 78 Americans dying each day from overdoses of prescription opioid painkillers and heroin, it’s clear that the U.S. is losing the war on drugs. The epidemic has spread to suburbia and rural areas. The death toll from heroin has more than tripled since 2010. And the nation is desperate for answers. Congress is working on bipartisan measures that would give states, localities and non-profit groups money to finance an array of education, treatment and law enforcement programs. Final passage can't come a moment too soon. But it's all rather standard fare. (5/16)

There are no “safe heroin injection sites.” The only “safe” approach to heroin is not to take it. For addicts, the humane public health response is to help them get and stay sober, or at the very least, opioid replacement therapy in sustained treatment. Any approach without these goals is cruel and dehumanizing — not healing, but perpetuating harm. Addiction is a treatable disease. Millions of Americans are in recovery — living healthy, productive lives. Supporting addicts’ heroin use maintains their disease, administering the poison that causes their illness and diminishes their lives. A government-approved place for unlimited heroin injection creates the conditions for never-ending addiction and gives government a drug dealer’s power over the addicted. (John P. Walters, 5/16)

Not all pain medication users are addicts. That sentence had to be my first because it is a truth that is not well represented. The media have chosen to tell you ever more frightening tales about prescription pill abuse without letting you know about us — the responsible users. Opioids, narcotics, barbiturates, muscle relaxers, corticosteroids, or tricyclics are a part of our daily medication regimen, but we aren’t looking to get high. (Nicole Hussey, 5/16)

In a quest to bring new medical products to Americans, Congress is considering a grand bargain. Legislation passed last year by the House would provide billions more dollars for medical research and encourage faster approval of prescription drugs and devices. The Senate is currently working on a set of companion bills in hopes of crafting a compromise measure. (Ed Silverman, 5/17)

The growing, global epidemic of data breaches—including those in healthcare—are making people gun shy about online services, including the exchange of medical records, according to a Census Bureau survey. A 2015 Commerce Department survey of 41,000 households was light on healthcare specifics, but noted that consumers around the world use the Internet to send and store personal medical data, business communications, and even intimate conversations. (Joseph Conn, 5/16)

Aside from whatever a visit to the doctor costs you in money, it also costs you in time. A lot of it. End to end, the travel and waiting time for a doctor’s appointment can take several hours — often disrupting work or school. Only 17 percent of it — 20 minutes, on average — is spent actually seeing the doctor, according to a study by the University of Pittsburgh physician Kristin Ray and colleagues at the Harvard Medical School and the RAND Corporation. (Austin Frakt, 5/16)

“Isn’t this a depressing finding?” several interviewers asked me. If you look only at the headlines, yes, it can be depressing. Dig deeper, though, and this finding points the way to smarter and more effective ways to lose weight and keep it off. (Stanford, 5/16)

Last June, after it became clear that their 3-month-old son, Nathan, needed a liver transplant, Rob and Christina Whitehead of Mokena, Ill., created a Facebook page to tell his story. Word spread quickly. “More than a hundred people called our donor hotline,” recalled Talia B. Baker, director of the Living Donor Liver Transplant program at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. In August, Nathan received a transplant. He’s had some complications, but nine months later, videos show him cruising happily with his walker. Nathan’s case is not unique. “There have been several instances where people have posted a need for an organ for a baby or an adult and we’ve had a massive outpouring,” Baker said. (David Bornstein, 5/17)

"How is this legal?" This is one of the first questions people ask when they hear about what happens at the Judge Rotenberg Center, a residential school for disabled children and adults just south of Boston. For decades, JRC has worked off a treatment model of reward and punishment — punishing its clients severely when they misbehave. In particular, JRC is the only program of any kind in the United States to use electric shock as a form of behavior modification. (Shain M. Neumeier, 5/16)

Recently a momentous, fabulous, electrifying thing happened. My son, my wife and I got into the car, and she asked him, as she always does, where he would like to go. “No idea,” he said. No idea!? Ellen and I sat up in our seats. Our spirits rose like party balloons. No idea! We burst out laughing, and Walker smiled like a stand-up comedian who had just landed a joke. Walker is not a 1-year-old starting to put words together. He’s a handsome, 30-year-old, 6-foot-3 man with severe autism. He speaks, a little. He converses not at all. He can barely tell people his thoughts. We had only very rarely heard a casual, flip response like this. (Robert Hughes, 5/16)

“We’re being taxed into oblivion.” With those words, Connecticut Hospital Association Senior Vice President Stephen Frayne this January summed up the plight of hospitals across our state. But the powers-that-be at the State Capitol aren’t listening. (Tony Hwang, 5/16)

Here in Smolyan, disabilities and illnesses are often left untouched by the medical establishment and chronic illness is woven into the fabric of everyday life. I know this must be the case in every country without good medical care, but it was the first time I had seen it up close. (Sophia Padelford, 5/13)

Illinois has taken a go-slow approach to medical marijuana, limiting risk by allowing the industry to operate as a pilot program until the start of 2018. So far, so good: The highly regulated system, designed to provide relief to patients suffering from 39 specific ailments, such as cancer and Parkinson's, has operated smoothly since it started last year. (5/13)