USA Today: Feds Seek Insurance Sign-Ups As Clock Ticks Towards Enrollment Deadline
Four days before an enrollment deadline they vow not to extend, federal health officials on Thursday tried to dismiss suggestions Affordable Care Act sign ups slowed in January and emphasized that momentum is building toward Jan. 31. Instead, Andy Slavitt, acting administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, noted that December enrollment was particularly strong and he singled out 14 states where signups are running at least 20% higher than they were last year at this time. And Slavitt noted that Thursday traffic was 50% higher than a week ago, showing how interest is picking up during what he called "the final countdown." (O'Donnell, 1/28)

NPR: Still Uninsured? Buy A Health Plan This Week To Avoid A Tax Penalty
Federal health officials have this message for people who want health insurance: Don't wait. There are just four days left to sign up for an insurance plan under the Affordable Care Act, and officials from the Department of Health and Human Services are stressing that they won't extend the enrollment period this year beyond Jan. 31. (Kodjak, 1/28)

Marketplace: As ACA Deadline Approaches, Fines Loom
The deadline for getting health insurance through a government-run marketplace is January 31, and skipping out on insurance this year could cost you double what it cost last year as fines climb to $695 per adult, or 2.5 percent of household income — whichever is greater. But even with that bigger stick, Brian Blase with the Mercatus Center at George Mason said he expects plenty of people to sit this year out. (Gorenstein, 1/28)

The Sacramento Bee: Uninsured? Covered California’s Final Enrollment Push Ends This Weekend
For Covered California officials, it’s crunch time. They’ve spent $29 million on advertising, opened 500 storefronts, beefed up call centers and trained hundreds of health insurance enrollment counselors who speak 12 languages, from Arabic to Vietnamese. They’ve also rolled through 21 cities in a statewide bus tour to highlight this year’s open enrollment season, projecting the words “Enroll Now” on iconic buildings such as Sacramento’s Tower Bridge and San Francisco’s Coit Tower. (Buck, 1/28)

The San Jose Mercury News: Obamacare: Enrollment Deadline Looms
As the midnight Sunday deadline looms for hundreds of thousands of uninsured Californians to sign up for a health care plan -- or face steep fines -- it's gut check time for them, but also for Covered California. ... After a remarkable debut of signing up 1.1 million in Obamacare's first enrollment year, just 200,000 more people signed up last year -- 400,000 short of Covered California's goal. The exchange this year is being cautious about setting ambitious goals. But it's hoping it can add from 295,000 to 450,000 people this year. (Seipel, 1/28)

Kaiser Health News: Obamacare Sign-Ups Strong In N.C., Despite High Rate Hikes
North Carolina’s average premium increases on the Obamacare exchange are among the highest in the country, according to federal data. The Obama administration warned this open enrollment period, which closes Jan. 31, could be particularly tough because many of the sickest, and therefore most motivated, people already bought plans. And yet, sign-ups in North Carolina are on pace to be substantially higher than the two previous years. (Tomsic, 1/29)

The Austin American-Statesman: 5 Things To Know About The Deadline To Sign Up For Health Insurance
Sunday is the deadline to sign up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Here are five things to know. (Eaton, 1/28)

And a look at how people who move can sign up for coverage later —

Kaiser Health News: Federal Officials Clarify Rules On Getting New Health Coverage After A Move
After the open enrollment period ends on Sunday for buying coverage on the health insurance marketplaces, people can generally sign up for or switch marketplace plans only if they have certain major life changes, such as losing their on-the-job coverage or getting married. Following insurance industry criticism, last week the federal government said it will scrutinize people’s applications for such “special enrollment periods” more closely, including one of the most commonly cited reasons — relocating to a new state. (Andrews, 1/29)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Obama's Medicaid Expansion Plan Faces Tough Climb In Congress
President Barack Obama's gambit to financially entice more states to follow Louisiana's lead and expand Medicaid coverage will be facing a tortuous climb through Congress in the coming weeks. The third-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, said in a recent interview that he doesn't see the president's most recent offer standing much chance of passing either GOP-led chamber. (Rainey, 1/28)

The Concord Monitor: House Republicans Debate Medicaid Expansion Bill Backed By GOP Leadership
A Republican-authored bill to reauthorize Medicaid expansion faced its fiercest criticism from other Republicans during a public hearing Thursday, setting the stage of an intraparty fight over whether New Hampshire will keep more than 45,000 low-income residents on subsidized health insurance. The state’s Medicaid expansion program is set to end this year unless the Legislature votes to reauthorize it. (Morris, 1/29)

New Hampshire Union Leader: Medicaid Expansion Draws More Than 200 At Hearing
A recovering drug addict and the president of the state’s largest health insurer were among those at a hearing Thursday who testified in favor of expanding Medicaid two more years. Most of the criticism of the plan to continue health coverage for about 47,000 state residents came from GOP lawmakers, who said state taxpayers could ill afford to commit scarce dollars to a program that has failed to deliver on its promises. (Rayno, 1/28)

The Concord Monitor: Medicaid Expansion Enrollees Testify At State House
Joy Martell used heroin for seven years before she ended up in jail on possession charges. Before that, the Manchester resident tried several times to get help, but without insurance, all the treatment programs were too expensive. But when Martell got out of jail in September, things changed. She became insured through the state’s Medicaid expansion program and started receiving treatment. The 28-year-old has now been clean for five months, and on Thursday she showed up at the State House to tell her story to lawmakers, a group that will decide this year whether to extend the health care program for two more years. (Morris, 1/29)

New Hampshire Public Radio: Medicaid Expansion Extension Gets First Public Hearing -- And Support From DHHS
Newly confirmed New Hampshire Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeffrey Meyers spent part of his first official day on the job lending his support to a plan to extend the state’s Medicaid expansion another two years. In his previous role as the health department's intergovernmental affairs director, Meyers had a main part in implementing New Hampshire's Medicaid expansion over the last two years. The Executive Council confirmed Meyers as commissioner Wednesday. (McDermott, 1/28)

Twin Falls (Idaho) Times-News: Medicaid Expansion To Get Hearing In Senate Committee
Two bills to expand Medicaid in Idaho are expected to get a hearing Tuesday. The state’s Democrats have pushed the idea for several years and Republicans have resisted for just as long. "Out of personal courtesy and professional courtesy to one of my colleagues, we will hear the bill,” Senate Health and Welfare Chairman Lee Heider, R-Twin Falls said. (Brown, 1/28)

The Associated Press: Idaho Legislature Schedules Medicaid Expansion Hearing
Idaho's Republican-dominated Legislature has consistently refused to consider expanding Medicaid - a provision under the Affordable Care Act. However, lawmakers have acknowledged for years that the state's current system of caring for the indigent is broken. Heider says he approved the hearing as a courtesy to Schmidt's longtime work on the issue. Meanwhile, Schmidt said that he doubts the bill will pass, but he's thankful for the opportunity. (1/28)

Idaho Statesman: Medicaid Expansion Plan Gets First-Ever Hearing In Idaho
The hearing is expected to draw quite a crowd. Medicaid expansion has been blocked in the legislature by Republicans over objections to further implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. With expansion stalled, Gov. Butch Otter’s administration this year proposed a state-funded plan to subsidize basic preventive care for up to 78,000 low-income Idahoans who don’t qualify for Medicaid currently, or for insurance subsidies available on the state health insurance exchange. The state program is not insurance and would not cover emergency or chronic care or prescriptions. (Dentzer, 1/28)

The Associated Press: Democrats Get Obama Pep Talk, Face Long Odds
House Democrats are heading home from their annual issues retreat energized by a pep talk by President Barack Obama but facing steep odds of reclaiming the majority that delivered Obama his greatest victories first-term victories. In Baltimore on Thursday evening, Obama said the country is “doing a lot better” than when he took office, citing progress against Islamic State forces and curbing Iran’s nuclear program — as well as lower gas prices, 18 million people gaining health insurance and 5 percent unemployment. (Taylor, 1/28)

The New York Times: For House Democrats, Support For Obama Agenda Came At A Cost
More than seven years into his presidency, Mr. Obama and House Democrats, led by the onetime speaker Nancy Pelosi, remain steadfastly united against Republicans who have seized control of Congress. ... The allegiance, however, has come at a steep political cost. The much-diminished House Democratic caucus is no longer able to force through major legislation, as it did when Ms. Pelosi used her majority to help a new president stimulate the economy, overhaul health care and impose new rules on financial institutions. (Herszenhorn and Shear, 1/28)

The New York Times: Walgreens Says No Customers’ Tests Will Be Done At Theranos Lab In California
Walgreens, the giant drugstore chain, offered the latest vote of no confidence for Theranos, the Silicon Valley laboratory testing company it had collaborated with to offer blood tests for some of its customers. In a statement issued on Thursday, Walgreens said that none of the tests for its customers could be performed at Theranos’s Newark, Calif., laboratory, which federal regulators just cited for violations of clinical standards. Walgreens said it was also suspending Theranos laboratory testing at its Palo Alto, Calif., store. (Abelson, 1/29)

Entrepreneur.com/Houston Chronicle: Walgreens Pumps The Brakes On Theranos Partnership Amid Problematic Lab Audit
In a statement, Walgreens -- Theranos’s first retail partner, which operates blood-testing centers in 40 locations throughout Arizona and one in Palo Alto, Calif. -- said that Theranos “must immediately cease sending any clinical laboratory tests…to the Theranos lab in Newark, Calif., for analysis. In addition, Walgreens is suspending Theranos laboratory services at its Palo Alto, Calif., store, effective immediately.” (Weiss, 1/28)

The Associated Press: Walgreens Tells Theranos To Stop Using Lab Under Scrutiny
The company said Thursday that it told Theranos to either send tests to a certified lab in the Phoenix area that Theranos runs or to an accredited third-party lab. (1/28)

KQED: Walgreens Suspends Theranos Blood-Testing At Palo Alto Store
Theranos responded to news of the CMS findings by stating that the agency’s inspection took place last year, and that the report doesn’t reflect current practices. The Silicon Valley company also said it is taking corrective steps. Theranos Vice President of Communications Brooke Buchanan said in an email statement today that, “We look forward to continuing to work with Walgreens to provide access to reliable, high quality, and low-cost lab testing services.” (Brooks, 1/28)

CNN Money: Walgreens Cracks Down On Theranos
Walgreens is Theranos' big retail partner: It has more than 40 Theranos Wellness Centers in its stores. But it's not clear how much of an impact dropping the Newark lab will have, since Theranos said that it processes 90% of its tests in its Arizona lab. (O'Brien, 1/28)

The Arizona Republic: Walgreens Halts Use Of Theranos' California Lab Amid Safety Concerns
The decision appears to have little immediate affect on anyone who uses Theranos' testing centers inside 40 metro Phoenix Walgreens stores. Those centers remain open, and blood samples collected there will be processed at Theranos' lab in Scottsdale or at an accredited third-party lab. (Alltucker, 1/28)

The Boston Globe: Partners Offers $1 Million In Innovation Grants To Employees
Partners HealthCare, as it steps up efforts to commercialize research done at its labs and hospitals, is offering up to $1 million in grants for employees who come up with promising ideas for new drugs, devices and other inventions that have the potential to improve patient care. The grants, up to $100,000 each, are open not just to researchers, but to anyone in Partners’ workforce of 64,000 who has a good idea. The small sum is intended to help early-stage ideas get off the ground. (Dayal McCluskey, 1/28)

Entrepreneur.com: What You Need To Know About Employee Health Scorecards
Employee health is one of the biggest investments employers and their employees make all year. Some major businesses are now calling for more accountability for workplace wellness among employers. Employee health scorecards feel like a natural progression of HR metrics for measuring employee benefits and wellness initiatives. If used properly, they could allow HR professionals to benchmark their benefits plans and employee health with competitors in their industries. (Straz, 1/28)

The New York Times: Drug Shortages Forcing Hard Decisions On Rationing Treatments
In recent years, shortages of all sorts of drugs — anesthetics, painkillers, antibiotics, cancer treatments — have become the new normal in American medicine. The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists currently lists inadequate supplies of more than 150 drugs and therapeutics, for reasons ranging from manufacturing problems to federal safety crackdowns to drugmakers abandoning low-profit products. But while such shortages have periodically drawn attention, the rationing that results from them has been largely hidden from patients and the public. (Fink, 1/29)

STAT: Patient Mix-Ups Happen More Often Than You Might Think. Why The Easy Fix Isn't Easy At All.
Identifying patients correctly is one of a health provider’s most basic functions. Get it wrong, and anything from a billing mistake to a catastrophic medical error may follow. Yet in the United States, hospitals and medical practices routinely mix up identities — or, more generally, fail to match the all right records with a patient. Nationally, according to a study from the RAND Corporation, health providers mismatch patients and records 8 percent of the time on average. (McQuaid, 1/28)

The Associated Press: Report Details Issues At Reservation Hospitals
Broken sanitation equipment, a baby delivered unattended in a bathroom, doctors operating without credentials and lack of immediate care in the emergency department are among the dozens of serious deficiencies federal inspectors found last year during unannounced visits to two federally administered hospitals that provide care to Native Americans. The Associated Press obtained records of the inspections, which were conducted in October and November by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare at hospitals on the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Indian Reservations, showing that patients were receiving substandard services — so much so in one emergency room that it put lives at risk. (Cano, 1/28)

Politico: Is Zika The New Ebola?
The latest Obama administration crisis comes on the wings of a mosquito. After muted warnings about a mosquito-borne virus in Brazil associated with a surge of babies born with abnormally small heads and brain damage, the World Health Organization on Thursday ramped up the alarm, warning the Zika virus is “spreading explosively” through the Americas — teeing up a familiar playbook of panic over an unfamiliar disease. Federal health officials say they expect Zika spread in the United States but that any outbreak would be limited. The White House and a growing list lawmakers are trying to get ahead of a firestorm, with reassuring images and messages. But as the Ebola panic demonstrated in 2014, it’s hard to communicate subtle public health messages in the best of circumstances. (Kenen and Haberkorn, 1/28)

The Associated Press: Scientists: More Research Needed Into Zika-Microcephaly Link
The release of new figures apparently finding fewer cases of microcephaly in Brazil than first feared is adding force to calls for more research into the link between the rare birth defect and the spreading Zika virus. Health experts have been looking at 4,180 suspected cases of microcephaly reported since October in Brazil, where authorities said the birth defect could be linked to the virus and announced that 220,000 military personnel were being deployed to help eradicate the Aedes aegypti mosquito that transmits Zika. (Barchfield and Stobbe, 1/28)

The Associated Press: In Face Of Zika Virus, Women Ponder Abortion, Childlessness
Maria Erlinda Guzman desperately wants a baby, and has been undergoing fertility treatments at El Salvador's largest women's hospital. But now, she fears her dream of motherhood may be dashed by Zika. After her country took the extraordinary step of advising women to avoid pregnancies for two years due to concerns about the rapidly spreading virus, the 34-year-old now plans to start using contraception. She worries that she may be too old to conceive by the time it is considered safe to do so. (Sherman, 1/29)

And while the CDC says it is operating in full outbreak mode, experts say Zika is not causing outbreaks in the U.S. —

Reuters: CDC Says In Full Outbreak Mode In Response To Zika
U.S. disease detectives have moved into full outbreak mode over the Zika virus, assembling a team of hundreds of experts to try to better understand its impact as it spreads in the Americas. ... The World Health Organization on Thursday said it would consider next week whether to declare Zika an international health emergency, and estimated that as many as 4 million people could be affected by the virus as it spreads in Latin America and the Caribbean to North America in the coming months. (Steenhuysen, 1/29)

USA Today: Zika Virus Not Causing Outbreaks In Continental U.S.
Although a number of returning U.S. travelers have been infected with the Zika virus while visiting Latin America, the mosquito-borne virus is not causing outbreaks in the continental U.S., health officials said Thursday. Thirty-one Americans in 11 states and Washington, D.C., have been diagnosed with a Zika infection contracted while traveling abroad, said Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those are isolated cases, however, and very different from the Zika epidemic in Brazil, which had an estimated 1 million Zika infections by the end of last year. (Szabo, 1/28)

NPR: U.S. Health Agencies Intensify Fight Against Zika Virus
A human study of Zika virus vaccine could begin as early as this year, U.S. health officials told reporters Thursday. But the officials cautioned that it could be years before the vaccine is available for wide use. The news came as the Zika virus continues to spread through the Americas. Still, a large outbreak is seen as unlikely in the U.S. "There's still a lot we don't know, so we have to be very careful about making any absolute predictions," says Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (Stein, 1/28)

STAT: Could A Drug That Tamps Down On Inflammation Lift The Fog Of Depression?
One of the world’s largest drug makers is testing a radical new approach to treating depression — by dialing down inflammation in the body, rather than tinkering with chemicals in the brain. (Mullard, 1/28)

WBUR: Living With Dementia, A Former Addiction Counselor Relies On A Patient He Once Helped
Every week, Kevin Davis gives Frank Fisher a shower. Usually it’s Sunday afternoon. When Kevin arrives at the rehabilitation center in Jamaica Plain, Frank recognizes him, but he may not remember exactly why he’s there — one symptom of his dementia. Kevin keeps coming back to help, because 20 years ago, Frank changed his life. (Lantz)

The New York Times: A Single Cell Shines New Light on How Cancers Develop
It was just a tiny speck, a single cell that researchers had marked with a fluorescent green dye. But it was the very first cell of what would grow to be a melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Never before had researchers captured a cancer so early. The cell was not a cancer yet. But its state was surprising: It was a cell that had reverted to an embryonic form, when it could have developed into any cell type. As it began to divide, cancer genes took over and the single primitive cell barreled forward into a massive tumor. (Kolata, 1/28)

On autism, KHN reports on a possible link to maternal weight and diabetes while The Tennessean writes about two autistic brothers with vastly different lives —

The Tennessean: Two Sons With Autism: 1 Incarcerated, 1 Thriving
Juli Liske awaited two letters. One from her older son, Dylan, 26 years old and a heroin addict locked away in a detention center five hours north. The other for her younger son, Ben, an academically advanced student who, at 15 years old, was already anticipating early admission to Vanderbilt University. Two brothers with the same medical diagnosis but vastly different experiences — “a heavenly dream and an unthinkable hell.” (Bliss, 1/28)

Kaiser Health News: Combined Effects Of Maternal Obesity, Diabetes ‘Substantially' Raise Autism Risks
While the incidence of autism spectrum disorder has increased in recent years, what’s behind it remains relatively mysterious and even controversial. But a major study could shed new light on some of the maternal health factors that may increase children’s risk of developing the condition. (Luthra, 1/29)

And researchers try to shed new light on why middle-aged white Americans are dying at a higher rate —

Kaiser Health News: Study Finds 'Mortality Gap' Among Middle-Aged Whites
Don’t blame suicide and substance abuse entirely for rising death rates among middle-aged white Americans, asserts a new study out Friday. They’re both factors, but the bigger culprit is almost two decades of stalled progress in fighting leading causes of death -- such as heart disease, diabetes and respiratory disease -- according to a Commonwealth Fund analysis of data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Gillespie, 1/29)

The Boston Globe: Nursing Homes Pledge To Boost Worker Pay
The Massachusetts nursing home industry is promising to boost the pay of thousands of workers who make only a few dollars above minimum wage now that the state budget proposed by Governor Charlier Baker contains an extra $30 million for nursing homes. But advocates for nursing home residents want more than a promise: They want the Baker administration to specifically mandate that part of the money go to higher wages for workers, many of whom are immigrants and single mothers. (Lazar, 1/29)

NPR: Texas Tries To Repair Damage Wreaked Upon Family Planning Clinics
For the past five years, the Texas Legislature has done everything in its power to defund Planned Parenthood. But it's not so easy to target that organization without hurting family planning clinics around the state generally. Of the 82 clinics that have closed, only a third were Planned Parenthood. (Goodwyn, 1/28)

The Associated Press: Kentucky House Votes To Amend Informed Consent Law
The Kentucky House voted Thursday evening to amend the state’s informed consent law to allow real-time video consultations between doctors and women as an option at least 24 hours before an abortion. The 92-3 vote reflected a rare compromise between legislative Democrats and Republicans on the polarizing abortion issue. ... House members added so-called telemedicine as an option for women and doctors to comply with the informed consent law. The House version offers the option of face-to-face meetings in person or by video. (Schreiner, 1/28)

The Chicago Tribune: Consumers Caught In The Middle Of Insurers, Hospital Payment Disputes
Some Chicago-area consumers were surprised to learn this month that insurance companies can at any time limit their access to doctors and hospitals in health plans. Land of Lincoln Health announced last week on its website that it will drop the University of Chicago's top-flight medical center from its network as of March 1, after the two sides couldn't agree to terms on reimbursement rates. The removal blindsided people who began coverage with the Chicago-based insurer Jan. 1. Customers thought their U. of C. doctors would be covered all year long because the doctors were listed in Land of Lincoln's network directory when the customers bought plans during open enrollment in the public marketplace under the Affordable Care Act. Trimming networks after enrollment season ends is not uncommon in Illinois and other states, highlighting glaring holes in state insurance regulations, consumer advocates say. (Sachdev, 1/28)

Alaska Dispatch News: Walker Administration Proposes Medicaid Reforms Outlined In Recent Report
A new version of a Medicaid bill from Gov. Bill Walker’s administration would institute some of the reform recommendations for the $600 million program outlined in a recent report to the Alaska health department. The substitute for Walker’s Senate Bill 78 would require creation of a system to make sure Medicaid patients have day-to-day health care providers overseeing their care. It would create an analytics initiative to help the health department share data with medical providers. It would allow the state health department to work with providers on initiatives aimed at cutting down on non-emergency use of the emergency room by Medicaid patients. (Herz, 1/28)

The San Jose Mercury News: Options Limited For California Caregivers Shouldering Burden Of Growing Alzheimer'S Crisis
[Patt] Martin was among the 15.7 million Americans who contributed an estimated 17.9 billion unpaid hours to caring for people with Alzheimer's in 2014, according to the Alzheimer's Association. The organization says that 41 percent of those caregivers had a household income of less than $50,000, and 17 percent had to give up their jobs. Faced with physical, emotional and economic hardships, 40 percent of caregivers reported bouts of depression, the association says. (Wessel, 1/28)

The Pioneer Press: Audit: More Than $100M Paid To Ineligible Public Program Recepients
More than 80,000 Minnesotans enrolled in public health programs for which they weren’t eligible last year, an estimated cost to taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars. The expensive problem was caused partly by miscommunication and poor training at the Department of Human Services, but the audit that uncovered the errors said software issues are primarily to blame. (Montgomery, 1/28)

The Associated Press: Deal Would Ban Solitary Confinement For Some Indiana Inmates
A proposed settlement of a class-action lawsuit that targets Indiana's treatment of seriously mentally ill inmates is a game-changer, a plaintiffs' attorney said Thursday, that ensures the state will treat those inmates "the best we can in prison." The agreement, which took three years to reach, bars solitary confinement for most seriously mentally ill state inmates and significantly improves their access to mental health care. (Callahan, 1/28)

The Chicago Sun-Times: Emanuel Steps Up Crisis Intervention Training For Cops, 911 Operators
Five years after closing six of the city’s 12 mental health clinics, Mayor Rahm Emanuel is stepping up crisis intervention training for Chicago Police officers and 911 operators to improve the city’s response to emergencies involving people suffering from mental illness. The police shootings of Laquan McDonald in October 2014 and Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones in December 2015 are only the most recent examples of incidents where deadly consequences might have been avoided if police officers and 911 operators had been better trained, said Alexa James, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Chicago. (Spielman, 1/28)

The Urban Institute: The Implications Of A Finding For The Plaintiffs In House V. Burwell
[In a lawsuit] the House of Representatives claims that the cost-sharing reductions (CSRs) the Obama administration paid to low-income enrollees ... in Marketplace coverage were inappropriate .... We use the Urban Institute’s Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model (HIPSM) to estimate the amifications of eliminating federal reimbursement of CSRs. ... We find that premiums for silver Marketplace plans would increase $1,040 per person on average. ... The higher premiums would in turn lead to higher federal payments for Marketplace tax credits because such payments are tied to the second-lowest-cost silver plan premium. ... On net, Marketplace enrollment would decrease by 1.0 million people because enrollees ineligible for tax credits could find less expensive coverage elsewhere, and federal government costs would increase $3.6 billion in 2016. (Blumberg and Buettgens, 1/27)

The Urban Institute: What Does The Failure Of Some Co-Ops And The Possible Pullout Of United Healthcare Mean For The Affordable Care Act?
[T]he failure of several health insurance cooperatives (co-ops) ... has received widespread media attention. Some have argued that ... their failure is a major blow to the ACA’s viability. Also recently, United Healthcare (United), the nation’s largest insurer, announced in an investor call that ...it is considering withdrawing from many or all marketplaces in 2017. In this brief we look at the experience of co-ops and United, and we argue that they have not been major players in many markets and their exits will not be overly disruptive. Further, we provide evidence that health insurance markets are increasingly dominated by competition among Blue Cross–affiliated insurers, managed-care insurers that previously served the Medicaid population ... and provider-sponsored insurers. (Holahan, Blumberg and Wengle. 1/27)

The Kaiser Family Foundation: Marketplace Health Plan Options For People With HIV Under The ACA: An Approach To More Comprehensive Cost Assessment
This analysis provides estimates of the costs HIV positive individuals might expect to face when enrolled in marketplace health plans and describes the characteristics of plans that might offer the greatest value. Altogether, costs in 300 different enrollment scenarios are examined .... The plans with the lowest premiums examined here were not, in most cases, the most cost-effective plan option based on either of the cost measures used in this analysis. This analysis suggests that enrollees at the lowest income levels, who have the greatest access to cost-sharing reduction (CSR) subsidies, could find the lowest expected costs in silver level plans .... Commonly, silver plans provide the least liability for those at lower incomes while platinum plans provided the least liability for those with higher incomes. (Dawson and Kates, 1/28)

Commonwealth Fund/Annals Of Internal Medicine: Using Behavioral Economics to Design Physician Incentives That Deliver High-Value Care
The field of behavioral economics is built on the premise that human behavior is not always rational. ... Health care organizations are increasingly entering into contracts that reward them for improving outcomes and reducing spending. But they often struggle to translate these goals into effective incentive programs for physicians making the decisions that are key to achieving cost savings and quality improvements. Monetary incentive programs fail to account for the way emotions and social status, among other variables, factor into providers’ decisions. ... Insights from behavioral economics can help health care organizations engage providers by working with human limitations rather than fighting against them. (Emanuel et al., 1/19)

Here is a selection of news coverage of other recent research:

Reuters: More Research Needed To Prevent Elder Abuse
Maltreatment and abuse have important effects on the health, quality of life and even the lifespan of elderly people, but there is very little evidence on ways to stop it, according to a new research review. Elder maltreatment can include physical injury, emotional abuse like screaming or threatening, illegal use of financial resources, sexual abuse, intentional or unintentional neglect, as well as using physical or chemical restraints. (Doyle, 1/23)

Reuters: Adding Behaviorial Therapy To Meds Reduces Depression Long-Term
When depression does not respond to antidepressant medication, replacing it with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) or adding CBT to treatment may be effective and last for several years, according to a trial in the U.K. Three to five years after having up to 18 CBT sessions, trial participants were less depressed than those who didn’t get the added behavioral therapy, suggesting a long-term benefit that makes CBT cost-effective, the authors conclude. (Doyle, 1/27)

NPR: Why Poverty May Be More Relevant Than Race For Childhood Obesity
As researchers have searched for ways to explain the childhood obesity epidemic in the U.S., many have posited that a child's race or ethnicity alone can put them at greater risk of becoming overweight or obese. Kim Eagle, a professor of internal medicine and health management and policy at the University of Michigan, was skeptical of this thinking. His hunch was that poverty was a much more important part of the equation. (Rancano, 1/22)

The Miami Herald: Study Finds African American Children Have Low Hodgkin Lymphoma Survival Rates In Florida
A new study on pediatric Hodgkin lymphoma from the UM Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center has found that African-American children and teenagers diagnosed with the disease have substantially inferior survival rates than their white and Hispanic counterparts. But they fare even worse in Florida than on a national level. Lymphoma cancer – where white blood cells in the immune system grow abnormally – is the third most common form of cancer in children and teenagers. Hodgkin lymphoma makes up almost half of all lymphoma diagnoses and is highly curable. According to the American Cancer Society, the first stage of the disease has a 90 percent five-year survival rate. (Miller, 1/24)

The Washington Post: Bernie Sanders’s Ideas Are Not Too Bold. They Are Too Facile.
"If The Washington Post wants to say that our ideas are bold, I accept that,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Thursday in response to a critical editorial we ran about him. “We’ve got to create an economy that works for the middle class. And whether The Washington Post likes it or not, that’s what I intend to do.” In fact, we would love that — and we were heartened that Mr. Sanders chose to engage with our editorial. Yet our disagreements with Mr. Sanders are not as he portrayed them; they do not concern the problems he chooses to address or the boldness with which he proposes to address them. What concerns us is not that Mr. Sanders’s program to tackle these issues is “radical,” as he put it, but that it is not very well thought out. We are far from the only ones, for example, to point out that his health-care plan rests on unbelievable assumptions about how much he could slash health-care costs without affecting the care ordinary Americans receive. (1/28)

The New York Times: Single Payer Trouble
A week ago I worried about the Sanders health plan; it looked as if he was low-balling costs in an effort to obscure how hard making such a plan would be, and how many currently well-insured people would end up being losers. ... Now Kenneth Thorpe, a health policy expert (and a long-term supporter of health reform who believes that single payer would be a good thing if politically feasible) has tried to crunch the numbers, and it really doesn’t look good. Thorpe estimates that the plan would actually require about twice as much new revenue as Sanders claims. (Paul Krugman, 1/28)

Huffington Post: Pressed On Obamacare Replacement, Ted Cruz Dodges The Question
For a moment during Thursday's GOP debate, it looked like a leading Republican presidential candidate might actually explain how he intends to replace Obamacare. And then -- poof -- the moment passed. It happened when Fox News host and moderator Bret Baier asked Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) about the Affordable Care Act -- and decided to press Cruz on what he intended to do about people now getting health insurance because of the law. ... Truth is, Republicans don’t have a better alternative to the health care law. All of their plans result in far fewer people having insurance, or the people with insurance having much weaker coverage -- because making coverage available to all, at affordable prices, requires a combination of spending, taxes and regulation that Republicans can’t abide. (Jonathan Cohn, 1/28)

The Washington Post: Republicans Should Use The ACA Enrollment Bust To Offer A Better Health Plan
The two fundamental objectives behind Obamacare — universal coverage and cost containment — have not been reached. We have, however, spent a boatload of money and raised taxes for many. Around 5 million people got booted off of their insurance plan, many of whom therefore could not keep their doctors. Like so much else of the social welfare state, the problem is not that Obamacare accomplished nothing. It is that it accomplished far less, at far higher cost, and with far less personal choice than might otherwise have been available. (Jennifer Rubin, 1/28)

The Des Moines Register: To Obama: Save Our Medicaid Program
Every single Democrat in the Iowa Senate —a majority of the chamber’s members — signed a letter sent to President Barack Obama this week asking for help. Stop Gov. Terry Branstad from privatizing management of our state’s Medicaid program, they urged. Deny his request for federal permission to proceed. (1/29)

Des Moines Register: Iowa Is Not Ready For Medicaid Transition
Senate Democrats have submitted a letter to President Obama and other federal officials about our concerns over Governor Branstad’s unilateral decision to privatize Iowa’s Medicaid program. We appreciate the decision by federal officials in December to delay implementation of Medicaid privatization until at least March 1. ... But Iowa still isn’t ready. Since the delay by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) more than 40 days ago, we have seen no evidence that the Iowa Medicaid Enterprise and the out-of-state companies picked to help privatize Medicaid have taken the steps necessary to ensure the health and well being of more than 560,000 Iowans. (State Sen. Dick Dearden, 1/29)

Los Angeles Times: Finally, VA Is On The Right Path
Nearly five years after a group of homeless veterans sued the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for allegedly misusing its sprawling property in West L.A., the department has finally approved a draft master plan that will focus the campus more sharply on the people it was intended to serve. The plan still has to undergo environmental and historic preservation reviews before it can become final. Nevertheless, its clear aim is to turn the campus from a place mainly used for dispensing medical care into an inviting locale designed not just for vets' medical care, but also for their social, recreational, counseling and housing needs. (1/29)

JAMA: Aspirations And Strategies For Public Health
Public health is responsible for extraordinary achievements over the past century, such as remarkable gains in life expectancy and substantial decreases in infectious disease mortality, and could make similar critical contributions to health in this century. Public health should be ascendant, but ample evidence suggests that it is on the defensive today, underappreciated, and underfunded. Government actions to improve the health of populations are widely suspect, as illustrated by the controversies involving efforts to curb soda container sizes in New York City, state and federal efforts to limit reproductive health rights, and global efforts to address climate change. (Sandro Galea and George J. Annas, 1/28)

Reuters: Why Zika May Be As Tough To Beat As Ebola
New York University obstetrician and gynecologist Taraneh Shirazian has been seeing some very worried women — those with pregnancies who have traveled through Latin America and the Caribbean in the last few months. As the scale of Zika virus outbreak becomes apparent, they are terrified that their unborn children may have been affected. She struggles to know what to tell them about the risk they may face. The data is simply not available. What is clear, however, is that the Americas appear to be facing a health crisis on a scale and potential complexity that could be compared to West Africa’s 2014 Ebola outbreak. (Peter Apps, 1/28)

Bloomberg: Curing Cancer Requires Easier Access To Genetic Data
Vice President Joe Biden's yearlong push to cure cancer by marshaling the resources of the federal government will no doubt involve every kind of cancer study and devote much effort to bringing new investment -- public and private -- to the work. In one critical corner of cancer research, however, a lot of progress could be made with little new spending, if Biden would help clear a few obstacles. This is the effort to learn more about which of the so- called variant genes in human DNA cause cancers to start growing. Knowing this, medical scientists could better tell who is at risk and how to prevent and treat the disease. Today, researchers know only a fraction of those variant genes because they lack access to crucial genetic data. Biden could help them get the information they need. (1/28)

The New England Journal of Medicine: Opioid Prescribing For Chronic Pain — Achieving The Right Balance Through Education
In recent decades, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in opioid prescribing for chronic pain. That growth has been associated with increasing misuse of prescription opioids and has led to increases in deaths due to unintentional opioid overdose and in the number of people seeking treatment for opioid-misuse disorders. There’s probably 100% agreement that we, as a profession and society, have become overly opioid-centric in our management of chronic pain. Far more controversial are the role of long-term opioid therapy in managing chronic pain and the best strategy for ending the epidemic of prescription-opioid misuse. (Daniel P. Alford, 1/28)

The Dallas Morning News: Lesson In Planned Parenthood Videos — Choose Your Heroes Carefully
This newspaper’s advice in July was to not draw conclusions until everyone learned more about the secretly recorded videos of Planned Parenthood medical officials discussing fetal-tissue handling practices. Unfortunately, too many politicians couldn’t help themselves and jumped at the chance to demonize the women’s health provider. But facts are increasingly getting in the way, most recently this week, when a Harris County grand jury cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing and instead returned indictments against two anti-abortion activists involved in producing the sting tapes. (1/28)

The Wall Street Journal: The Food Pyramid Scheme
The federal government’s dietary guidelines have changed little since first being issued in 1980. A revised set of recommendations released this month includes a new cap on added sugar, but this is unlikely to end the guidelines’ failure for 35 years to check the rise of obesity and diabetes. The problem, simply put, is a reliance on weak science. (Steven E. Nissen and Nina Teicholz, 1/28)

The New England Journal of Medicine: The Residency Application Process — Burden And Consequences
A recurring question facing medical education is the value of the fourth year of medical school. Some observers have called for eliminating this final year of study altogether. Others, particularly residency program directors, have raised concerns that medical students aren’t being adequately trained for entering residency. ... If the fourth year is potentially expendable, why isn’t it being used to meet the needs and desires of medical students, residents, and residency programs? Surely, a year is sufficient time to address these curricular goals. Unfortunately, meeting these needs is more challenging than one might expect, at least in part because the process of preparing for and applying to residency programs has become overly burdensome. (Eva M. Aagaard and Mona Abaza, 1/28)