Idaho Statesman: Idaho House Kills Medicaid Expansion Bill
House Republicans Friday gave the decisive last word on the session-long debate over funding health care for 78,000 lower-income Idahoans, voting unanimously to kill a Senate-approved bill to move the state toward a federally-approved, Idaho-driven solution. After lengthy morning caucuses of party leaders and then the rank-and-file, Republicans moved not to accept the amended version approved in the Senate Thursday. (Dentzer, 3/25)

The Tennessean: Study Heralds Medicaid Expansion Benefits As Rural Hospital Closes
States that expanded Medicaid programs using federal funding are reaping economic benefits, a new study finds as the long-running healthcare debate rages anew in Tennessee's legislature. Tennessee is among 19 states that have, thus far, opted to not expand coverage to those who fall in the uninsured gap between qualifying for traditional Medicaid and being qualified to buy insurance on the federally run exchange. ... Insure Tennessee, a tiered coverage system using federal Medicaid expansion funding, was pitched to the legislature ahead of a 2015 special session, as well as heard in regular session, but Senate committees blocked the proposal over concerns with a variety of issues. (Fletcher, 3/25)

Politico: Cruz's Missing Obamacare Replacement Plan
Everyone knows how Ted Cruz feels about Obamacare. He’s the guy who shut down the government in a bid to kill it — and should he reach the White House, he’d take a blowtorch to the law. But Cruz isn’t very clear about what — if anything — he’d do to replace a law covering 20 million people. And some establishment Republicans suggest that he address this head-on before the pivotal April 5 primary in Wisconsin, where Republican leaders have been more aggressive in fleshing out alternative health plans. (Pradhan and Demko, 3/27)

Fox News: Chelsea Clinton Laments 'Crushing' Health Care Costs Despite ObamaCare
Chelsea Clinton, in an implicit swipe at the impact of President Obama's health care law, recently told voters that many Americans still are facing "crushing costs" from health insurance even under the Affordable Care Act. (3/25)

Kaiser Health News: Health Care Fades Into The Background Of 2016 Election Cycle
With Obamacare battles largely behind us, presidential candidates in 2016 seem focused on other issues. Health care played starring roles in the 2008 and 2012 election cycles. President Obama's Affordable Care Act became the battle cry of politicians hoping to ascend to the highest office in the land. But Obamacare passed through the gauntlets of the U.S. Congress and Supreme Court, and came out in tact. Whether it's fatigue with the topic of health care, a shift in the public's priorities, or other campaign year distractions, how we pay for our doctor's visits has fallen from the top of the nation's priorities list. (Rovner, 3/28)

The Associated Press: Looking For Calorie Labels On Menus? Not Until 2017
Wondering how many calories are in that hamburger? Chain restaurants still don't have to tell you, despite a 6-year-old law requiring calorie labels on menus. Passed as part of the health care overhaul in 2010, the rules will eventually require restaurants and other establishments that sell prepared foods and have 20 or more locations to post the calorie content of food "clearly and conspicuously" on their menus, menu boards and displays. This month, the Food and Drug Administration said it will delay the rules — again — until 2017. (Jalonick, 3/28)

In other FDA news, a leading cancer expert blasts the agency for being slow to approve promising drugs —

The Miami Herald: Cancer Drugs And The FDA: Safety Vs. Saving Lives
One of America's leading cancer experts says many lives could be saved if patients got the best available treatment — and he places considerable blame on federal regulators for being slow to approve desperately needed drugs. “There are incredibly promising therapies out there,” writes Dr. Vincent T. DeVita Jr., former director of the National Cancer Institute. (Dorschner, 3/26)

Los Angeles Times: How A Healthcare Revolution Came To One Red State While The Obamacare Battle Raged On
Winnie Abbott desperately wanted a knee replacement when she came to Dr. Jeffrey Angel’s office here in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. Before Angel would operate, though, he had some requests for Abbott. She should take a class about the procedure and designate a family member to be her “coach” to help with recovery. And if she had problems after surgery, she needed to call a 24-hour number at Angel’s office rather than just go to the emergency room. This comprehensive approach to patients – focused not just on what happens in the doctor’s office but on how patients recover at home and how much their care costs – hasn’t always been the rule in American healthcare. But across the country, far from the vitriolic debate over Obamacare, it is driving a quiet revolution that is changing how doctors replace knees, communicate with patients, prescribe drugs, even deliver babies. (Levey, 3/25)

The New York Times: Heroin Epidemic Is Yielding To A Deadlier Cousin: Fentanyl
When Eddie Frasca was shooting up heroin, he occasionally sought out its more potent, lethal cousin, fentanyl. “It was like playing Russian roulette, but I didn’t care,” said Mr. Frasca, 30, a carpenter and barber who said he had been clean for four months. When he heard that someone had overdosed or even died from fentanyl, he would hunt down that batch. “I’d say to myself, ‘I’m going to spend the least amount of money and get the best kind of high I can,’ ” he said. Fentanyl, which looks like heroin, is a powerful synthetic painkiller that has been laced into heroin but is increasingly being sold by itself — often without the user’s knowledge. (Seelye, 3/25)

Meanwhile, Kaiser Health News and Stateline report on how the epidemic is affecting expecting mothers and their babies —

Kaiser Health News: Tiny Opioid Patients Need Help Easing Into Life
Swaddled in soft hospital blankets, Lexi is 2 weeks old and weighs 6 pounds. She's been at Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island since she was born, and is experiencing symptoms of opioid withdrawal. Her mother took methadone to wean herself from heroin when she got pregnant, just as doctors advised. But now the hospital team has to wean newborn Lexi from the methadone. As rates of opioid addiction have climbed in the U.S., the number of babies born with neonatal abstinence syndrome has increased, too — by five-fold from 2000 to 2012, according to the National Institute of Drug Abuse. (Gourlay. 3/28)

Stateline: Demand Surges For Addiction Treatment During Pregnancy
Nationwide, the number of pregnant women using heroin, prescription opioids or medications used to treat opioid addiction has increased more than five-fold and it’s expected to keep rising. With increased opioid and heroin use, the number of babies born with severe opioid withdrawal symptoms has also spiraled, leaving hospitals scrambling to find better ways to care for the burgeoning population of mothers and newborns. Among the most important principles is that expectant mothers who are addicts should not try to quit cold turkey because doing so could cause a miscarriage. Trying to quit opioids without the help of medications also presents a high risk of relapse and fatal overdose. (Vestal, 3/25)

And in other news about the opioid crisis —

The Associated Press: Federal Officials, Advocates Push Pill-Tracking Databases
The nation's top health officials are stepping up calls to require doctors to log in to pill-tracking databases before prescribing painkillers and other high-risk drugs. The move is part of a multi-pronged strategy by the Obama administration to tame an epidemic of abuse and death tied to opioid painkillers like Vicodin and OxyContin. But physician groups see a requirement to check databases before prescribing popular drugs for pain, anxiety and other ailments as being overly burdensome. (Perrone, 3/28)

The Boston Globe: Mass. Hospital Visits For Opioid Abuse Soar
The epidemic of opioid abuse in Massachusetts is often measured in deaths, such as the 1,099 people who succumbed to overdoses last year. But most people who are addicted don’t die. Instead, by the thousands, they wind up in hospitals. A newly released analysis by a health commission shows that opioid-related hospital visits in the state nearly doubled from 2007 to 2014. (Freyer, 3/28)

The Associated Press: New York's Stringent Paperless-Prescribing Law Takes Effect
New York is putting an end to most paper prescriptions for medicine as the nation's toughest electronic-prescribing law takes effect. As of Sunday, doctors, dentists and other health care professionals must electronically send prescriptions directly to pharmacies, instead of giving paper scripts to patients. There are exceptions for emergencies and unusual circumstances, and thousands of prescribers have gotten extensions. (3/27)

The Associated Press: Needle Exchange Debate Raises Prosecution Questions
As New Hampshire lawmakers decide whether to allow needle exchange programs, some of the biggest debate has been over how to handle the smallest amounts of drugs. Under current law, hypodermic needles and syringes can be dispensed only by pharmacists, and possessing a syringe containing any amount of heroin or other controlled drug is a felony. But faced with the state's growing drug crisis, the Legislature is considering a bill that would both clear the way for programs that allow drug users to swap dirty syringes for clean ones and would decriminalize residual amounts of drugs in syringes. It passed the House on Wednesday and now heads to the state Senate. (Ramer, 3/26)

The Associated Press: Indiana Counties Must Fund Needle Exchanges Sans State Help
One of Indiana's four legal needle exchange programs operates out of a cramped 10 foot-by-10 foot office in the basement of the local courthouse in Fayette County, which is struggling with a hepatitis C outbreak amid the state's growing opioid-abuse crisis. Though just seven intravenous drug users addicted to heroin are enrolled in the program, Paula Maupin, Fayette County's public health nurse, expects that to grow to 75 to 100 participants in the next year or so. The problem is, lawmakers banned state funding for the exchanges when they legalized them last year, even as Indiana's worst-ever HIV outbreak struck in another county. (Callahan, 3/27)

Politico: Slew Of Anti-Abortion Laws May Thwart Zika Research
Even as mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus advance northward, lawmakers in 18 states are trying to block the fetal tissue research that might reveal the keys to unlocking the disease and preventing the massive birth defects associated with it. The furor from the Planned Parenthood sting videos is driving the tide of bills, which range from outright bans on research using aborted tissue to prohibitions on tissue donations. Scientists say such laws in states like Florida, Arizona, Ohio and Indiana — along with an escalating probe of fetal tissue research by House Republicans — are becoming roadblocks to the research needed to combat Zika. (Norman, 3/27)

Reuters: U.S. Urges Waiting Period Before Conception After Zika Infection
U.S. health officials are recommending that women wait at least two months, and men at least six, before attempting to conceive after infection with Zika, a virus linked to thousands of suspected cases of birth defects in Brazil. The new guidance, issued on Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, follows prior recommendations by the agency that focused on preventing infections in women who were already pregnant. (Steenhuysen, 3/26)

Los Angeles Times: Brazil Seizes Abortion Drugs Sent To Women Living In Fear Of Zika
The messages from the expectant mothers in Brazil resonate with desperation. “I'm thinking of doing the worst,” one woman wrote when her order for abortion medication failed to arrive. “I really need help. I can no longer eat, and I cry all the time.” The messages were sent to an international advocacy group that had been providing abortion-inducing drugs free of charge to expectant mothers who fear that the Zika virus could cause severe birth defects. Now, however, the group has temporarily suspended its operations in the country because Brazilian authorities have confiscated the drugs in the mail. Abortion is prohibited in most instances in Brazil, and the drugs are illegal. (Simmons and Rigby, 3/27)

The San Jose Mercury News: San Diego County Reports California's First Confirmed Zika Case Acquired By Sexual Transmission
A San Diego County woman has been diagnosed with the first confirmed case of Zika virus acquired in California, public health officials said Friday. The woman came down with the virus in February after having sex with a Zika-infected man who had just returned from a trip to Colombia, officials said. (Seipel, 3/25)

The Washington Post: Doctors Are Worried About How Indiana’s Abortion Law Will Affect Their Patients
One day after Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) signed a controversial bill blocking women from seeking abortions based on medical diagnoses, doctors grappled with how the measure might affect their patients. ... Brownsyne Tucker-Edmonds, an Indianapolis gynecologist, said in a statement Friday that the law could dissuade physicians from performing a legal medical procedure and, by doing so, imperil their patients’ health. ... The mandate carries a host of requirements that are among the country’s strictest prohibiting abortion in the event of fetal anomaly or because of the sex or race of the fetus. (Paquette, 3/25)

The New York Times: Florida Governor Signs Law To Cut Funding For Abortion Clinics
Gov. Rick Scott of Florida signed a law on Friday that cut state funding to clinics that perform abortions. State funding of abortion was already prohibited in Florida, but the law signed by the Republican governor also cut off funding for preventive services at clinics that also provide abortions. (Stack, 3/25)

Reuters: Florida Governor Signs Law Ending Funding To Clinics Providing Abortions
Florida Governor Rick Scott on Friday signed a law that cuts off state funding for preventive health services to clinics providing abortion and imposes abortion restrictions already being tested before the U.S. Supreme Court. Florida is among many states adopting new abortion laws as conservatives seek to chip away at the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. (Cotterell, 3/25)

Reuters: Federal Judge Blocks Section Of Alabama Abortion Law
A federal judge on Friday struck down an Alabama law that required abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. The ruling comes amid a wave of new abortion laws in states where conservatives are aiming to chip away at the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson in Alabama issued the 53-page ruling, saying the provision in the state's so-called Women's Health and Safety Act would effectively close the only abortion clinics in Alabama's three largest cities: Montgomery, Mobile and Birmingham. (Skinner, 3/25)

The New York Times: Investing For Your Future Health Care
Ken Dychtwald, who is 65 and is the chief executive officer of Age Wave, a consulting and research company focused on aging, decided in his 50s that he and his wife should buy long-term care insurance so they wouldn’t be a burden on each other or their children if they became ill or disabled. Mark V. Pauly, 74, a professor of health care management, business economics and public policy at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, considered long-term care insurance and decided against it. Both are experts in the field of aging and both understand, more than most, the potential cost of paying for care in later years. But they took different paths in addressing those needs. (Tugend, 3/25)

The New York Times: Health Savings Accounts: Unloved, But Worthwhile
Health savings accounts offer a rare, triple-tax benefit to those who are able to contribute and who qualify to save for future medical needs — which, among other things, means having a health insurance plan with a deductible of at least $1,300. Money goes into an H.S.A. tax-free, grows tax-free and is withdrawn tax-free, if spent on eligible medical costs. Yet some people find it difficult to commit to building up an H.S.A. to save for health needs. (Carrns, 3/25)

CNBC: It's Time To Get A Second Opinion Before Paying That Medical Bill
The next time you get a medical bill, don't pay it — at least not right away. It pays to check for errors first. Accounts of medical billing errors vary widely. While the American Medical Association estimated that 7.1 percent of paid claims in 2013 contained an error, a 2014 NerdWallet study found mistakes in 49 percent of Medicare claims. Groups that review bills on patients' behalf, including Medical Billing Advocates of America and CoPatient, put the error rate closer to 75 or 80 percent. ... For some consumers, spotting and correcting medical billing problems is getting easier. A forthcoming Aon Hewitt survey of 800 large and mid-size employers found that 45 percent offer advocacy services to help workers manage their health-care benefits(Grant, 3/27)

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: For Some, Cost Of Shingles Shot Hurts, Too
Cost has long been cited as a barrier to some Medicare beneficiaries receiving the shingles vaccine, but the problem is drawing fresh attention as awareness of the vaccine grows and wrinkles emerge with insurance coverage. ... Rules in the federal Affordable Care Act mean that many people age 60 to 64 with commercial health insurance can receive the shingles vaccine without paying anything out-of-pocket. But the health law regulations don’t apply to Medicare prescription drug plans — called “Part D” plans, for short. So, while all Medicare drug plans cover the vaccine, some beneficiaries like [Mike] Ambrose might have to first satisfy a deductible or make a sizable co-payment. (Snowbeck, 3/27)

Los Angeles Times: Two More Deaths May Be Linked To Contaminated Medical Scopes
Two patients died and six more were sickened in a new outbreak suspected of being caused by contaminated medical scopes, according to a regulatory report by device manufacturer Olympus Corp. The report shows that hospitals are continuing to use a device that was recalled in January, which experts have found to be extremely difficult to disinfect. The name and location of the hospital was not revealed in the report. (Petersen, 3/25)

The Associated Press: Lawsuit Claims Medical Device Caused Brain Damage After Bellevue Surgery
A software designer is suing a California company, claiming its medical device used to treat aneurysms malfunctioned and caused him to suffer brain damage. The Penumbra Coil 400 was used to treat an aneurysm Dennis Montgomery suffered in 2013, according to his lawyer, Peter Mullenix. He said during the surgery at Overlake Hospital in Bellevue, the doctor placed 90 percent of the coil into the aneurysm, but the last 10 percent got stuck in the intracranial artery. (Bellisle, 3/26)

NewsHour: Why Cancer Is So Hard To Fight In Rural Kentucky
Cancer is epidemic in eastern Kentucky, a result of medical illiteracy, limited access to care, unhealthy lifestyles and poverty. In fact, life expectancy in the region is five years shorter than the rest of the nation. But state health officials are aiming to change that with comprehensive prevention and education initiatives. (Judd, 3/25)

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Rural Counties In State Generally Fare Poorly In Overall Health
Rural counties in Wisconsin have higher rates of premature death overall than urban counties — and almost one in five rural counties saw rises in premature death rates over the past decade. They also have higher rates of smoking, obesity, child poverty and teen births than their urban counterparts. (Boulton, 3/26)

Georgia Health News: Legislature OKs Tax Credits For Donations To Rural Health Care
After some maneuverings at the eleventh hour of its 2016 session, the General Assembly passed a bill that would allow an individual or corporation to get a state tax credit for donating money to a rural health care organization. The proposal had appeared to be blocked recently when a Senate health committee rejected the idea. But the tax credits passed in the after-midnight voting on the last day of the legislative session Thursday. (Miller, 3/25)

The Kansas Health Institute News Service: 'Bed Tax' Increase Put Off Until Veto Session
Legislators adjourned their regular session and left on a monthlong break without passing a “bed tax” increase that nursing home organizations say is vital to their members. The organizations believe legislators will act on Senate Bill 457 in the upcoming veto session and provide an infusion of federal cash at a time when nursing homes across the state are struggling with delayed Medicaid reimbursements. (Marso, 3/25)

The Kansas Health Institute News Service: State Offers Medicaid Eligibility To Help Nursing Homes
Nursing home representatives were breathing a sigh of relief Friday as the state announced a program to help them get Medicaid money for some residents whose applications are stuck in processing delays. The delays — traced back to a computer system switch in July and administrative changes in January — have led to thousands in unpaid bills for facilities and prevented some frail Kansans from finding a nursing home bed. (Marso, 3/25)

The News-Gazette: Illinois' Health Care Debt Near $2.8B; Payments Over A Year Behind
Approaching a 10th month without a budget, Illinois has racked up a mound of unpaid claims, about $2.8 billion worth, in its state employee group insurance program. Payment delays to health insurers and providers are now averaging 15 months, according to Meredith Krantz of Illinois Central Management Services. That's due not only to the current budget impasse but years of under-funding in the group insurance program that has caused regular payment delays of eight months or longer, she said. (Pressey, 3/25)

The News Journal: State: End Transgender Health Insurance Discrimination
Delaware has become the 15th state to ban insurance companies from limiting or excluding health care coverage for transgender people. Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart issued a bulletin Wednesday that specifically prohibits private insurers from denying, canceling, terminating, limiting, restricting or refusing to issue plans based on a person's gender identity, transgender status or if the person is undergoing a gender transition. (Rini, 3/25)

PBS NewsHour: The Cherokee Nation Wants To Reverse The ‘Silent Epidemic’ Of Hepatitis C
The Cherokee Nation, one of the largest Native American tribes, has become the first community in the U.S. to set a goal of eliminating hepatitis C from its population. Tribe officials plan to screen 300,000 members, whose prevalence of infection for the virus is five times the national rate, and treat them with drugs that have proven 90 percent effective. (Fee and Rothman, 3/27)

The Columbus Dispatch: Parents Of Autistic Kids Frustrated By Lack Of Residential Treatment Options
The Steffens are among an untold number of Ohio families doing their best to care for volatile children whose developmental disabilities and mental-health disorders have led to behavioral crises. Even when doctors say residential treatment is desperately needed — Andrew’s developmental pediatrician has made that recommendation, [Jamie] Steffen says — parents can face a near-impossible struggle to find, or pay for, a suitable center. (Price, 3/28)

The Associated Press: Leading Private-Sector Health System Woos Veterans In Ads
A leading hospital system in the U.S. is courting military veterans with a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, raising concerns from some veterans groups that private sector marketing could weaken the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system. The campaign tag lines — "Veterans have a choice in healthcare" and "You honored your oath, and so do we" — emphasize consumer preference and the shared values of medical professionals and the military. (3/25)

Kaiser Health News: Pharmaceutical Company Has Hiked Price On Aid-In-Dying Drug
When California’s aid-in-dying law takes effect this June, terminally ill patients who decide to end their lives could be faced with a hefty bill for the lethal medication. It retails for more than $3,000. Valeant Pharmaceuticals, the company that makes the drug most commonly prescribed by physicians to aid patients who want to end their lives, doubled the drug’s price last year, one month after California lawmakers proposed legalizing the practice. “It’s just pharmaceutical company greed,” said David Grube, a retired a family doctor in Oregon, where physician-assisted death has been legal for 20 years. (Dembosky, 3/28)

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Move To Electronic Health Records Begins To Transform Health Care
Health systems and physician practices have spent tens of billions of dollars to move from paper to electronic records, and few companies have benefited more from the transition than Epic. The company employs 9,600 people, up from 2,017 in 2005, and had revenue of about $2 billion last year, up from $370 million in 2005. (Boulton, 3/26)

Los Angeles Times: State Isn't Using Blood-Test Data That Could Help Focus Exide Cleanup Efforts
The state of California has blood test results showing high levels of lead in children living near the closed Exide battery plant in Vernon but is not using the information to direct its massive cleanup of lead-contaminated homes and yards. Health experts say the test results should be used to help pinpoint neighborhoods most in need of swift cleanup because children there have been exposed to more of the poisonous metal. (Barboza and Poston, 3/26)

The Miami Hearld: Stem Cell Therapy: No Longer Just For High-Paid Athletes
Treating sports injuries with stem cell therapy, a procedure normally reserved for top athletes, is becoming more mainstream. Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning reportedly traveled to Europe a few years ago for stem-cell therapy to treat a neck injury when he was with the Colts, according to news reports. (Manning has not publicly acknowledged this). Hundreds of NFL players have used stem-cell therapy, which the NFL views as a medical treatment, not a steroid issue, according to a report in Sports Illustrated. The magazine noted how running back Chris Johnson had injured his knee and used stem cells to rebuild the cartilage. (Villa, 3/36)

The Hartford Courant: Services For Developmentally Disabled Adults In Jeopardy
For 18 years, school has been a savior for Jessica Zangrillo. Aside from the love of her family, it has been the linchpin that has kept her out of the abyss, or from falling in so far that she couldn't climb out. She has autism and an intellectual disability. From school, she has learned the skills that should allow her to live a rewarding life — but only if the structure, the engagement, the predictability, the stimulation of her school life can continue once she graduates in June. (Kovner, 3/26)

Bloomberg: Obamacare Is On The Back Burner In Election
No issue has aroused more partisan passion over the past six years than the Affordable Care Act. Yet the law is playing only a secondary role in the U.S. elections. Sure, Republican presidential candidates cater to their base by vowing to repeal and replace Obamacare, and on the Democratic side, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont promises to replace it with a government-run universal coverage system. (Albert R. Hunt, 3/27)

Louisville Courier Journal: Dems See Obamacare As Issue To Run On
In a strange but little-reported turn of events, Democrats in the General Assembly appear to have concluded that they can run on Obamacare – or against Republican Gov. Matt Bevin’s attempts to change it. President Obama has been so bad for the Kentucky Democratic Party that it lost the governor’s office last fall and is close to losing its 95-year hold on the state House. (Al Cross, 3/25)

The Fiscal Times: 7 Ways Obamacare Failed Americans And Shortchanged The Country
Back in 2009, when the law was proposed, and in 2010, when it was signed, the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) proponents were giddy with optimism. Proponents proclaimed the many promises of Obamacare. Millions of people would be enrolled by 2016. The number of uninsured would decline dramatically. Health-care costs and premiums would drop. Everyone would have coverage. The federal deficit would decrease. Of course, as President Obama promised, people would be able to keep their plans and their doctors. (Diana Furchtgott-Roth, 3/25)

Modern Healthcare: A Sputtering Jobs Machine
Each time the general economy went into a tailspin, the great healthcare job machine kept puttering along. In the parlance of the dismal science, the sector served as an economic stabilizer. During the worst of the last recession in 2008 and 2009, the U.S. economy lost 8.8 million jobs. But the economic dislocation was actually far worse. If you leave out healthcare, more than 14 million Americans lost their jobs. It was only a gain of 5.5 million jobs in the healthcare sector that prevented the Great Recession from becoming a second Great Depression. (Merrill Goozner, 3/26)

The Washington Post: A Cheaper Rx
If you had to reduce economic science to a single phrase, it might be this one: Incentives influence behavior. Now the federal government is about to test that proposition in an effort to curb Medicare spending on prescription drugs dispensed by physicians, which grew from $9.5 billion in 2005 to $22 billion in 2015. (3/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Ending The Prescribe-Don’t-Tell Charade For Off-Label Drugs
Earlier this month the Food and Drug Administration reached a settlement with Amarin, a small pharmaceutical firm, allowing it to promote its drug Vascepa for treatments that the agency had not specifically approved. The company had sued the FDA, claiming a First Amendment right to “engage in truthful and non-misleading speech.” The agency maintained that the settlement was “specific to this particular case and situation.” In reality, it is a watershed that could fundamentally change the way drug companies market their products. (Joseph V. Gulfo, 3/27)

The Cleveland Plaindealer: Step Therapy Requirements Jeopardize Patient Safety
When you're injured or sick, who do you think should decide which prescription medication will help you feel better, your doctor or your health insurance company? I'm betting just about everyone reading this said the doctor. Well, I am a doctor and I can tell you that all too often, the choice is made by the insurance company, no matter what you or your doctor wants. And it's not a question of what medication is best for your situation, it's a question of what's cheapest for the insurer. (Dr. Michael Bourn, 3/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Valeant: Blame Our Accounting, Please!
To anyone who thinks the trouble at Valeant Pharmaceuticals arises primarily because $58 million in revenue was booked in the wrong quarter, there’s an array of attractive bridges available for your inspection and purchase. (Holman W. Jenkins Jr., 3/25)

The Huffington Post: The Supreme Court’s Conservatives Don’t Seem To Know What Obamacare Actually Does
The Supreme Court has taken four big whacks at the Affordable Care Act in as many years. But the conservative justices still don’t seem to understand how it works. During oral arguments this week in Zubik v. Burwell — a set of seven challenges to Obamacare’s contraceptive-coverage mandate on behalf of religious nonprofits — Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues on the court’s conservative wing gave the impression that they don’t really grasp what the ACA’s health insurance exchanges do, or indeed how the market for health insurance itself even functions. (Jeffrey Young and Cristian Farias, 3/24)

The New York Times: Protecting Employees’ Health Data
Does your back hurt? Do you have diabetes? Are you taking birth control pills? You and your doctor know the answers to these questions, and now others may too: businesses that are contracting with employers to collect and analyze employee health data. But federal privacy law does not provide safeguards for how this information is used. (3/26)

The New York Times: The State Assault On Planned Parenthood
Last summer, after deceptively edited videos were used to accuse Planned Parenthood of selling fetal tissue, congressional Republicans voted to block all federal financing for the organization, and threatened to shut down the entire federal government if they didn’t get their way. The charges against Planned Parenthood were completely bogus — investigations in 12 states found no wrongdoing, and one, in Texas, resulted in the indictment in January of the video makers. By then, however, the damage was done. (3/28)

The Daily Commerical: Medicaid For Kids Is Insufficient
Knowledge is power. And the knowledge to be gained through a privately funded survey of Florida pediatricians could help generate the power to change the state’s woeful record on health care for its neediest children. As part of the 17-question survey, more than 5,000 pediatricians and pediatric specialists have been asked whether they participate in Florida’s Medicaid managed-care program, what the wait times are for Medicaid patients, and whether the managed-care companies create barriers to health care for young patients. (3/25)

USA Today: Indiana Abortion Law Won't Help The Disabled: Column
I was driving across Wisconsin, headed for an Easter weekend in Minnesota, when I heard that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence had signed a bill imposing a wide swath of restrictions on access to abortions. My son, a 9-year-old with Down syndrome, was listening to Bon Jovi on his iPad, mostly quietly enjoying the music in his headphones. Every so often, though, he’d call out “Mommy! Daddy!” Then he’d pump his fist and shout, “Rock and roll!” The new law, HB 1337, “prohibits a person from performing an abortion if the person knows that the pregnant woman is seeking the abortion solely because of: (1) the race, color, national origin, ancestry, or sex of the fetus; or (2) a diagnosis or potential diagnosis of the fetus having Down syndrome or any other disability.” (David M. Perry, 3/26)

The Des Moines Register: Grassley Protects Rights Of People And The Unborn
President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by Antonin Scalia brings into sharp focus the role the next justice will play in shaping our nation for a generation or more. Just as the court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade — which Justice Scalia called an “absurdity” — ushered in abortion on demand up to the point of birth, Scalia’s replacement will be a key vote in deciding cases that will either cement Roe as the law of the land, or crumble it. (Jenifer Bowen and Marjorie Dannenfelser, 3/24)

The Washington Post: Block Grants: The ‘Poisoned Chalice’ Of Social Policy
If you pay attention to the fiscal philosophy of many of today’s conservatives, you will quickly discover that they love block grants. What’s a block grant? It’s a fixed amount of money sent from the federal government to the states to administer a program. Sounds innocuous, I know. But consider programs such as food stamps (now called SNAP) and Medicaid that aren’t administered as block grants (though states pay a portion of Medicaid costs). The funds from the federal government are, importantly, flexible (not fixed) in these cases. They ebb and flow to meet the needs of people eligible for the programs as, for example, they ramp up in recessions and down in expansions. (Jared Bernstein, 3/28)

Los Angeles Times: Block Grants Are Just Budget Cuts In Disguise — And The Targets Are Antipoverty Programs
The most popular panacea offered by conservatives for the supposed burden of federal funding that comes with strings attached is the "block grant." The idea is that states and localities know best how to serve their citizens — especially their disadvantaged citizens — so the feds should just give them bundles of money for social programs and let them decide how to spend it. Much better than the government trying to manage these programs from far-off Washington, D.C. (Michael Hiltzik, 3/25)

Detroit Free Press: Three Things Snyder Is Still Getting Wrong In Flint
Residents in Flint were exposed to lead-contaminated water for months after the city switched its water supply, under the oversight of a succession of Snyder-appointed emergency managers. The local plant wasn't ready to operate full time, or to handle corrosive Flint River water — and the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality botched its responsibility to ensure that the water was treated to make it safe for human consumption. Because it didn't require the appropriate treatment, the river water leached lead from Flint's aging lead service lines. When evidence mounted that there was a problem in Flint, Snyder's administration worked to discredit the folks whose objections should have been heard. And even after Snyder acknowledged the problem in October, the state's response didn't reflect the severity of the crisis. (3/26)

The Des Moines Register: Iowa Fails To Protect Seniors From Sex Predators
Does the state have an obligation to protect the residents of a nursing home when a sex offender is placed there by order of the court? Not necessarily, the Iowa Court of Appeals says. In upholding the partial dismissal of a lawsuit filed by the estate of a woman who was sexually assaulted in an Iowa nursing home, the court said last week that state officials don't always have a “duty of care” to protect the public from sex offenders. (3/27)