The Wall Street Journal: Surprise Bills For Many Under Health Law
Many consumers with health coverage through the Affordable Care Act are facing unexpected medical bills that in some cases greatly exceed the law’s caps on out-of-pocket expenses. The law’s limits don’t apply to charges from out-of-network providers, and many insurance plans sold on ACA exchanges have limited networks—amplifying the risk of surprise bills. (Armour, 6/11)

Politico Pro: States Look To Stop Surprise Medical Bills
State lawmakers across the country are grappling with how to blunt a side effect of new Obamacare health plans — surprise medical bills for patients who unwittingly receive care from out-of-network providers. (Demko, 6/11)

Kaiser Health News: Too Soon To Deride High Obamacare Rate Hikes
Some health insurance companies are asking for big price increases next year and that has again riled critics of the federal health care law. The numbers released last week came out of an Affordable Care Act requirement that insurance companies tell government regulators by June 1 if they’re requesting price hikes of more than 10 percent. But not all of the story is yet reported. Take, for example, Montana. (Whitney, 6/12)

Politico: Ted Cruz Fights GOP Approach On Obamacare Subsidies
Ted Cruz is planning to battle his party over Obamacare again — this time, if Senate Republicans seek to extend subsidies that could be killed by the Supreme Court as soon as this month. In an interview with POLITICO, the 2016 presidential candidate weighed in on the high-stakes Supreme Court case that could end subsidies for millions of people who receive their health insurance through the federal exchange. ... “I think the best legislative option is to allow states to opt out,” Cruz said in the Capitol. “I am cautiously optimistic that the Supreme Court will conclude in King vs. Burwell that the Obama IRS disregarded the plain language of the statute and acted lawlessly. And when that occurs, it will be a real opportunity for Congress to lead.” He added: “In a perfect world, we would take that opportunity to repeal Obamacare. At a minimum, we should allow states to opt out.” (Raju, 6/11)

Kaiser Health News: Is The Uninsured Rate The Lowest Ever?
Almost no one disputes that the implementation of the federal health law has helped Americans who were previously uninsured gain coverage. But exactly how much has the uninsured rate dropped? A whole lot, says President Barack Obama. ... But is the uninsured rate really the lowest ever? Maybe, say experts. But you can’t really tell. (Rovner, 6/12)

CNN: Obama Talks Obamacare On Celebrity News Show
President Barack Obama has been doing an awful lot of talking about his signature domestic policy -- facing its second high-profile Supreme Court test. His latest defense of the Affordable Care Act came in an interview that will air on "Extra" on Thursday night. (Holmes, 6/11)

And the IRS faces questions about how it reconciles taxpayer income status with what subsidies they get --

The Fiscal Times: IRS Flunks First Test Of Enforcing Obamacare
Although Obamacare’s initial rollout problems have been resolved, the administration is still running into problems implementing the law. But this time it’s not the website, it’s the IRS. ... This was the first year that the IRS began calculating subsidies and penalties, and according to federal watchdogs, the process didn’t go very smoothly. A new report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed that the IRS wasn’t able to verify if everyone who qualified for subsidies actually got them because it’s still lacking a tool to cross-check taxpayers’ status. (Ehley, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Ad Campaign Starting For Expanded Healthy Indiana Plan
A state agency is about to launch an advertising campaign to encourage enrollment in Indiana's expanded health care program for low-income residents. The $2 million campaign for the new Healthy Indiana Plan starts Monday with television, radio, online, newspaper and billboard ads. Its focus will include highlighting health services such as cancer screenings or preventive dental care that people without health insurance often don't receive. ... Indiana's expanded program uses federal Medicaid funding under President Barack Obama's health care law to cover those in household with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level, or an annual income of just less than $33,000 for a family of four. (6/11)

Georgia Health News: Reese: 'Waiver' Doesn't Need New Legislative OK
The head of a state health agency reiterated his position Thursday that Georgia already has the authority now to pursue a Medicaid “waiver” plan to cover uninsured people. That statement by Clyde Reese, commissioner of the Department of Community Health, runs counter to arguments made in a recent letter from Rep. Jason Spencer and other state legislators. ... Spencer, a Woodbine Republican, has raised questions about a plan proposed by Grady Health System that would request a special 1115 waiver, an experimental plan that the feds approve to give states flexibility to improve their Medicaid programs by using a new approach. (Miller, 6/11)

The Charlotte Observer: Is NC Ready For This Month's ACA Ruling? Report Says No
Even with almost half a million residents’ health coverage at stake, North Carolina has done little to prepare for the possibility that the Supreme Court could end Affordable Care Act subsidies this month, a report from Health Affairs Blog says. “As late as March 2015, many legislators were unaware that subsidies were at risk. Awareness of the issue has percolated within the legislature following oral arguments in King, but legislators have not publicly discussed contingency plans,” five authors wrote this week. “As Governor McCrory recently said, ‘There’s no B plan by either the federal government or the states.’" (Helms, 6/11)

The Associated Press: GOP Sen. Graham Offers Abortion Bill
A Republican senator seeking his party's 2016 presidential nomination introduced a bill Thursday banning most late-term abortions and is predicting the Senate will vote on the highly polarizing issue this year. That's a vote that could put some GOP senators seeking re-election next year in closely divided states in a tough spot. But the measure's sponsor, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., offered little sympathy for candidates who would rather avoid the issue. (Fram, 6/11)

The Washington Post: Scott Walker Hardens Abortion Stance Ahead Of His Likely White House Bid
It came out of nowhere: an open letter from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker declaring his support for a ban on abortions once pregnancies reach 20 weeks. The missive delighted antiabortion activists in the state — and set off a scramble in the State Capitol here because no such legislation had actually been introduced. The restrictions, approved this week by the state Senate and likely to be passed by the Republican-dominated state Assembly, underscore the extent to which Walker — who has not yet announced his candidacy — is positioning himself to be the most fervent antiabortion candidate in the Republican field of presidential hopefuls. (Johnson, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Groups Sue Over Florida’s 24-Hour Wait Period For Abortions
Two groups sued the state of Florida on Thursday seeking to stop a 24-hour waiting period for abortions from taking effect, arguing that it imposes an unnecessary burden on women seeking to end their pregnancies. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed the suit one day after Republican Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill into law. They argue that the law, which is to take effect July 1, violates the right to privacy guaranteed in the state constitution by interfering with their right to undergo the procedure. (Farrington, 6/11)

In other reproductive health news, Oregon becomes the first state to allow a woman to get a year's supply of birth control with a single prescription -

The Associated Press: Oregon 1st To Cover 12 Months Of Birth Control At A Time
It’s a like ritual for women across the nation: frequent treks to the pharmacist to refill birth control prescriptions. It’s a hassle for busy students, a headache for rural women with long drives and a cause for panic for travelers on the road when their packs run out. Soon, however, women in Oregon will be able to avoid such problems, since the state has enacted a first-of-its-kind insurance law that will allow them to obtain a year’s worth of birth control at a time, instead of the 30- or 90- day supply available now. (Kumar, 6/12)

USA Today: Oregon Women First To Get Yearlong Birth Control
With Gov. Kate Brown's signature Thursday, Oregon women will be the first in the nation who can get a year's supply of birth control with one prescription. When the change takes effect Jan. 1, women will no longer have to renew their prescriptions every 30 to 90 days. After an initial three-month supply, refills of the same prescription can be obtained for one year. (Winter, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: Prisoners Sue Massachusetts For Withholding Hepatitis C Drugs
In the latest example of how the high price tags for hepatitis C drugs are limiting use in some of the most infected populations, two inmates in Massachusetts state prisons have filed a lawsuit accusing the state prison system of failing to provide the drugs to most infected prisoners. More than 1,500 inmates in Massachusetts state prisons have hepatitis C, but only three are being treated for it, the lawsuit states, even though Gilead Sciences and AbbVie introduced drugs since late 2013 that have higher cure rates and shorter treatment durations than older hepatitis C regimens. (Loftus, 6/11)

WBUR: Mass. Prisoners Sue For Better Hepatitis Care
The lawsuit says new drugs that can cure Hep C are now standard care, especially for patients at risk of death from the disease. It’s not clear how many of the 1,500 state prisoners with Hep C are in an advanced stage that would warrant use of the $80,000-90,000 treatment. (Bebinger, 6/11)

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Prescription Drug Price Battles Show No Sign Of Letting Up
The decision this week by experts at the Food and Drug Administration to endorse a pair of medicines aimed at combating heart disease brought on the latest round of hand-wringing over prescription drug costs. The drugs, which work to reduce cholesterol, are projected to cost anywhere from $7,000 to $12,000 annually once on the market. Patients will bear some of that cost, but the bulk will be paid by private insurance companies or the government through Medicare and Medicaid. (Shapiro, 6/11)

The New York Times: A Chinese Ebola Drug Raises Hopes, And Rancor
After a nurse who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone was discharged Wednesday from a Rome hospital, a doctor there described the experimental treatments the patient had received as “absolutely miraculous.” They included MIL77, a product from China that was also given to a British Army nurse who recovered from Ebola at a London hospital in March. It is a near copy of what many believed was the most promising Ebola therapy: a cocktail of antibodies known as ZMapp, the result of a collaboration between the United States and Canada. While a limited supply of ZMapp was quickly exhausted, a small private Chinese company, Beijing Mabworks, raced ahead last fall, helping to produce about 100 doses of MIL77. That means more potentially lifesaving treatments for desperate patients. But it has also led to patent infringement concerns by American officials, and to disagreements over when experimental Ebola therapies should be offered to patients only in carefully controlled studies and when they should be made more available for compassionate reasons. (Fink, 6/11)

News outlets also reported on several drug safety issues.

Kaiser Health News: Medicare Drug Plans Favor Generic Opioids Over Those Designed To Avoid Abuse, Study Finds
The abuse of prescription painkillers is a growing problem for seniors, as it is for other age groups. But Medicare drug plans are cutting back on coverage for a specially designated type of painkiller that deters abuse in favor of cheaper generics that don’t have the same deterrent qualities, a new study found. (Andrews, 6/12)

The Houston Chronicle: Some Acid-Reflux Drugs' Safety Questioned
An analysis of millions of electronic health records raises new questions about the safety of certain acid-reflux medications taken by millions of Americans, suggesting they increase the risk of heart attacks. Researchers from Houston Methodist and Stanford University used computer algorithms to scour some 16 million records from nearly 3 million patients to find which of them had taken medications for gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, and how many of them had heart attacks. (Hawryluk, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: FDA Mistakenly Widened The Market For A Rare Sleep Disorder Drug: Petition
Early last year, the FDA approved a drug called Hetlioz to treat non-24 sleep-wake disorder, a rare condition that throws off the internal body clock and causes sleeping problems. But a consumer advocacy group says the agency goofed and may have inadvertently widened the market for the drug by omitting language from the label indicating it was intended only for patients who are also blind. (Silverman, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Health Officials Tell US Doctors To Watch For MERS
Health officials are advising U.S. doctors to be on the lookout for people sickened by Middle East respiratory syndrome, also called MERS, following an outbreak in South Korea. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday reminded doctors to ask patients with severe respiratory illness if they recently traveled. (Stobbe, 6/11)

NPR: Should Tanning Bed Warnings Take A Cue From Graphic Cigarette Labels?
Young white women like indoor tanning a lot. Nearly a quarter of them hit a tanning bed in the past year. (The beds are even found on many college campuses.) That habit is particularly concerning to public health officials because melanoma rates in young women are on the rise owing to UV exposure from the sun and from tanning beds. The Food and Drug Administration requires indoor tanning machines to bear a label saying that these aren't intended for people under 18, and it requires that consumers get other cautionary messages, too. But they're not particularly attention-grabbing. (Hobson, 6/11)

USA Today: High-Tech Monitors, Cool Gadgets Help Spark A Health Care Revolution
As the world becomes more digitized, the health care industry is racing to keep up, sparking an explosion of new digital technology geared to improving patient care. Most visible to patients is the move to electronic medical records, or EHRs, by doctors and hospitals in an effort to streamline record-keeping and meet federal guidelines. But that's only one of dozens of new tech advances that are designed to make life better for the ill, elderly and disabled. (Thadani, 6/11)

USA Today: VA Research Uncovers Way To Find Veterans At Risk Of Suicide
The Department of Veterans Affairs has developed computer formulas that allow doctors to predict which veterans are most likely to commit suicide, according to a study published Thursday. "I think this is a game changer in terms of suicide prevention overall and not just for the VA population," said Caitlin Thompson, deputy director of the VA suicide prevention program. "I think other large medical systems are going to be able to really learn from what we're doing." (Zoroya, 6/11)

CNN: Veteran's Family Calls Report Exonerating VA A 'Whitewash'
The family of veteran Richard Miles, who killed himself after visiting a Veterans Affairs hospital in February, tells CNN that an Office of Inspector General report exonerating the VA of any poor judgments in his case a "whitewash." (Tapper, 6/11)

Las Vegas Review-Journal: Sandoval Signs Law The Opens Door To Privatizing Some Medicaid Services
Gov. Brian Sandoval on Thursday signed a bill into law that includes provisions to privatize Medicaid services for the elderly, the blind and the disabled in Nevada. Section 37 of Senate Bill 514 enables the state to consider the possibility of providing long-term services and support to the blind, elderly and disabled through a managed care model. The governor would have to make a recommendation, which would then have to be approved by the state’s Interim Finance Committee. (Amaro, 6/11)

The Associated Press: NC Says $9.7M Could Be Owed On Delayed Medicaid Payments
North Carolina government owes up to nearly $10 million to Medicaid service providers whose payments were delayed — some dating back nearly two years to the start of a new computer billing system. The Department of Health and Human Services disclosed Wednesday night underpayments to about 2,500 providers could reach up to $9.7 million in state funds. (6/11)

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Minnesota Owes $3.1 Million In Medicaid Collections To Feds
Minnesota will pay $3.1 million to the federal government after an audit found accounting errors in how the state Department of Human Services reported collections from overpayments in the Medicaid program. Medicaid is a health insurance and social service program that’s jointly funded by the state and federal governments. The program recovers overpayments in cases where Medicaid determines another third-party payer is responsible for costs initially covered by the program. (Snowbeck, 6/12)

Los Angeles Times: Cal-OSHA Settles Farmworker Suits Over Heat-Related Deaths
The state's worker safety agency has agreed to refocus its enforcement of heat-related regulations covering farmworkers, audit those activities, and make complaints more accessible to the public as part of a settlement of two lawsuits. The agreement, announced Wednesday, settles suits brought on behalf of five farmworkers and the United Farm Workers union. They accused the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, Cal-OSHA, of systematically neglecting its duty to enforce a 2005 law protecting outdoor workers from exposure to heat. (Mohan, 6/11)

USA Today: National Pilot Program To Train Doctors In Transgender Health
As Caitlyn Jenner's transition to a woman brings transgender issues to the public forefront, a national pilot program is launching [in Louisville, Ky.] to address this population's private struggles in the medical world. Beginning in August, the University of Louisville School of Medicine will be the pilot site for a new curriculum by the Association of American Medical Colleges that trains future doctors on the unique health care concerns of people who are transgender, gay, lesbian, bisexual, gender non-conforming or born with differences of sex development. (Ungar, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Kansas House Soundly Rejects Plan To Avert Steep Budget Cuts
Kansas faced the prospect of deep cuts to schools, prisons and other programs Thursday after the Republican-controlled House soundly rejected a proposal supported by Gov. Sam Brownback that would hike sales and cigarette taxes to close a budget deficit. In past years, legislators backed the GOP governor by slashing personal income taxes in an effort to stimulate the economy, but those policies contributed to a deficit that ballooned this year. ... [Brownback] said he and legislative allies have resisted spending cuts because the state must bolster its public pension system, cover rising Medicaid costs and meet court mandates on public school funding. (Hanna and Clayton, 6/11)

The Associated Press: Spike In Heroin Overdoses Takes Toll On Ohio Town's Psyche
The usual handwringing over the heroin problem turned into panic in this small city in May when a supercharged blue-tinted batch from Chicago sent more than 30 overdose victims to the hospital and two to the morgue in a 12-day stretch. Like many places in America, Marion — an hour’s drive north of the capital, Columbus — has gotten used to heroin. Emergency crews in the city of 37,000 have become accustomed to treating an overdose patient about once a day for the past year or so. But they were stunned when the unprecedented onslaught began on May 20. (Stacy, 6/11)

The Tennessean: Donelson Nursing Home Said To Have Endangered Residents
A Donelson nursing home has been barred from taking new patients, fined $3,000 and put under a special monitor after a series of quality care failures — some of which put residents in immediate jeopardy. Donelson Place Care and Rehabilitation Center at 2733 McCampbell Ave. failed to pass a revisit survey last month, which resulted in the June 4 punitive actions. However, the series of problems began as early as December, according to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The nursing home is operated by Louisville-based Signature HealthCARE. (6/10)

California Healthline: Medi-Cal Autism Care May Be Lacking
Children with autism spectrum disorder who are in Medi-Cal managed care plans are not getting the care they need, according to children's health advocates. A specific autism therapy -- applied behavior analysis, known as ABA therapy -- became a Medi-Cal benefit in September 2014. But according to figures released last month by the Department of Health Care Services, as of May 5, fewer than 1,123 children have received behavioral health treatment services, which include ABA therapy. (Gorn, 6/11)

The Associated Press: State Says Many Vaccination Records At Schools Not Current
The Washington state Department of Health says that nearly 11 percent of the state’s kindergarteners don’t have up-to-date immunization information on file with their school. The agency said Thursday that the rate of missing immunization information has increased from past years. (6/11)

The Dallas Morning News: Medicare Fraud Is Often Cloaked As ‘Free’ Services For Seniors
A podiatrist and nail salon crew sweep through senior homes offering free pedicures while billing Medicare for diabetic foot surgeries. Physicians casually sign medical necessity forms for thousands of patients to get free home health care. Equipment suppliers hand out free knee braces while billing Medicare for more elaborate and expensive ones. These are just a few examples of how fraud, waste and abuse seep through America’s medical bills .... Many of these schemes offer consumers something that will not cost them anything, because their insurance will pay for it. Insurers, meanwhile, have to pay the claims within 30 days, which sometimes means a careful scrutiny won’t happen until the money is already out the door. (Landers, 6/11)

Health Affairs: Understanding Pay Differentials Among Health Professionals, Nonprofessionals, And Their Counterparts In Other Sectors
We examined how the wages paid to health-sector employees compared to those paid to workers with similar qualifications in other sectors. Overall, we found that health care workers are paid only slightly more than workers elsewhere ... but the patterns are starkly different for nonprofessional and professional employees. Nonprofessional health care workers earn slightly less than their counterparts elsewhere .... By contrast, the average nurse earns about 40 percent more than the median comparable worker in a different sector. The average physician earns about 50 percent more ... and this differential has increased sharply since 1993. (Glied, Ma and Pearlstein, 6/8)

Health Affairs: Concentration In Orthopedic Markets Was Associated With A 7 Percent Increase In Physician Fees For Total Knee Replacements
Physician groups are growing larger in size and fewer in number. ... We examined the association between market concentration and physician fees in the case of total knee arthroplasty by calculating market concentration for orthopedic groups practicing in a given market and by analyzing administrative claims data from Marketscan. In the period 2001–10 the average professional fee for total knee arthroplasty was $2,537. During this time, in markets that moved from the bottom quartile of concentration to the top quartile, physician fees paid by private payers increased by $168 per procedure. The increase nearly offset the $261 decline in fees that we observed, absent changes in market concentration. (Sun and Baker, 6/8)

Health Affairs: Prevention Program Lowered The Risk Of Falls And Decreased Claims For Long-Term Services Among Elder Participants
The LIFT (Living Independently and Falls-free Together) Wellness Program is a multifactorial fall-prevention intervention developed for community-dwelling elders. Its effectiveness was tested in a randomized controlled trial of consenting people who were ages seventy-five and older and who held long-term care insurance policies with one of three major insurers. The study was conducted during 2008–12. In the first year following the intervention, participants in the intervention group had an 11 percent reduction in risk of falling and an 18 percent reduction in risk of injurious falls, compared to participants in the active control group. In the three years after the intervention, participants in the intervention group had a significantly (33 percent) lower incidence of claims for long-term services. (Cohen et al., 6/8)

The New England Journal of Medicine: Early Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation In Out-Of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is a major public health concern, given that there are approximately 420,000 cases in the United States and 275,000 cases in Europe annually. ... in recent years, the value of bystander CPR has been debated in the medical community. ... our primary aim was to assess whether CPR initiated before the arrival of emergency medical services (EMS) was associated with an increase in the 30-day survival rate .... The 30-day survival rate was 10.5% among patients who underwent CPR before EMS arrival, as compared with 4.0% among those who did not .... We also found that if bystander CPR was started before the arrival of EMS, the emergency call was initiated more rapidly, which suggests that bystanders with CPR training are better than bystanders without such training at recognizing that a cardiac arrest is occurring and taking action. (Hasselqvist-Ax et al., 6/11)

The Kaiser Family Foundation: Medicaid Balancing Incentive Program: A Survey Of Participating States
Eighteen states are currently participating in the Medicaid Balancing Incentive Program (BIP) to increase access to home and community-based services (HCBS) as an alternative to institutional care. Established by the Affordable Care Act, BIP authorizes $3 billion in enhanced federal funding from October 2011 through September 2015. As a condition of participation in BIP, states must implement certain structural changes and reach specific financial benchmarks by September 2015 .... States report that BIP is helping them achieve their goal of rebalancing LTSS [long-term support services] in favor of HCBS. Medicaid LTSS spending on HCBS increased in all 18 BIP states, with 14 states reporting spending growth of 25 percent or more between 2009 and 2014. (O'Malley Watts, Reaves and Musumeci, 6/5)

The Kaiser Family Foundation: Behavioral Health Parity And Medicaid
Behavioral health parity refers to requirements for health insurers to cover mental health and substance use disorder services on terms that are equal to those offered for medical and surgical services. This issue brief explains how behavioral health parity applies in the Medicaid program, including the major provisions of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) April 10, 2015 proposed regulations, and identifies key policy issues at the intersection of behavioral health parity and Medicaid. (Musumeci, 6/2)

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

Reuters: More Poor Babies Get Checkups When Parents Get Extra Help
Low-income parents may be more likely to get their infants routine checkups and vaccinations when clinics offer extra support navigating healthcare issues and addressing basic needs like food and housing, a U.S. study suggests. Many parents, regardless of income, can face challenges getting babies to the pediatrician, particularly when they struggle to take time off work or arrange care for other children. But poverty can make these obstacles more pronounced. (Rapaport, 6/3)

The New York Times: With New Study, New Mothers Seeking IUDs Are No Longer Urged To Wait
After childbirth, some new mothers wishing to avoid another pregnancy ask their doctors to provide reversible contraception, like an intrauterine device. But normally, new mothers are told to return for contraception six weeks after giving birth — after fully half of them have already resumed sexual relations. A study, published on Monday in Obstetrics and Gynecology, suggests that this practice should change. (Saint Louis, 6/8)

The Boston Globe: End-Of-Life Counsel From Doctors Seen As Lacking
Americans routinely tell researchers they don’t want to spend their final days tethered to machines in a hospital, preferring to die at home with less invasive treatments. But that rarely happens. Now, a study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital suggests the biggest reason for that disconnect appears to be the doctors who treat those patients. The physicians, the study suggests, have outsized influence in shaping how patients spend their final days. (Lazar, 6/9)

Reuters: Tanning Beds Often Available In College Apartment Buildings
Up to half of the apartment housing in close range of two Texas Universities offers free on-site indoor tanning, according to a new survey. Most of the apartment employees interviewed for the survey also reported that minors are allowed to use the tanning facilities, which is outlawed under Texas Administrative Code, the researchers report in JAMA Dermatology. Researchers used google.com, apartmentguide.com, collegestudentapartments.com and daftlogic.com to find apartments within a five-mile radius of The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) and Texas A&M University (TAMU) campuses. (Doyle, 6/10)

MinnPost: Melanoma Rates Will Double (Again) Without Widespread Preventive Efforts, Says CDC
The incidence of melanoma — the deadliest form of skin cancer — has doubled over the past three decades in the United States, and it will continue to increase unless we change our sun-worshipping ways. That’s the sober news from a new Vital Signs study published earlier this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Perry, 6/4)

Medscape: ADA Moves To Improve Referrals For Diabetes Self-Management
A group of US societies has issued new guidance to doctors on when they should refer patients for diabetes self-management education. "There is confusion as to why diabetes education is needed, when diabetes education should occur, what is needed in diabetes education, and how it should be provided.…This confusion leads to patients not receiving the needed services of diabetes education and support," said lead author of the joint position statement Margaret Powers, PhD, research scientist at the International Diabetes Center at Park Nicollett, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and American Diabetes Association (ADA) healthcare and education president-elect. "Our goal with this paper was to reduce this confusion and provide clear guidelines and expectations for clinicians and for patients," said Dr. Powers. (Tucker, 6/6)

Medscape: 'Food Insecurity' In Low-Income Latinos Thwarts Diabetes Control
In low-income Latino patients with type 2 diabetes who took part in a diabetes education program that was specifically designed for them, those with "food insecurity" — a belief that they could not access adequate food to feed their families — reported eating fewer healthy vegetables at their main meal and had worse initial glycemic control than their peers. (Busko, 6/10)

Reuters: As Weight Loss Surgery Booms, So Do Surgeries For Hanging Skin
In recent years, as weight loss surgeries have been on the rise, so have procedures like tummy tucks, breast lifts, thigh lifts and upper arm lifts, which are usually associated with significant weight loss, according to new data from the American Society of Plastic Surgery (ASPS). In the 2014 report, they estimate that overall, 1.7 million cosmetic surgical procedures were performed, a slight increase from 2013 but an overall decrease from 2000. Breast augmentation has been the top procedure since 2006. (Doyle, 6/8)

MedPage Today: 'Sleeping In' Doesn't Make Up For Lost Sleep In Teens
Laboratory experiments indicate that adolescents who are deprived of sleep function poorly on school days, and their recovery on the weekend is not enough to make up for burning the midnight oil during the week, researchers said here. Lapses in psychomotor vigilance tests increased ... and subjective scores on the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale increased ... after the adolescents had undergone sleep deprivation -- 5 hours of sleep instead of 10, reported Alex Agostini, a PhD candidate and research assistant at the University of South Australia Centre for Sleep, Adelaide. ... Agostini said that while the young participants said they felt refreshed after having 10 hours of sleep -- and their subjective sleepiness scores returned to baseline, their psychomotor test scores did not recover to baseline levels. (Susman, 6/8)

The New York Times' Room for Debate: Has The Affordable Care Act Proved Its Worth?
As the Supreme Court prepares a ruling that could knock out one of the pillars of the Affordable Care Act — subsidies for federal insurance exchanges — President Obama said that three years of experience have shown that the law works, and helps people. But given what we know now about its implementation, should it be supported? Or would a ruling that jeopardizes existence be for the best? (6/11)

The Washington Post: States Have ‘No B Plan’ If The Supreme Court Scraps Health-Care Subsidies
Any day now, the Supreme Court will announce its decision in King v. Burwell, the latest high-stakes fight over the Affordable Care Act. If the government loses, more than 6 million residents of the 34 states that declined to establish their own health-care exchanges could lose subsidies that help them purchase insurance. ... Given the potential need for swift action, do the states have contingency plans in place? Could they move quickly in the wake of an adverse decision? To investigate these questions, we undertook, with financial support from the Commonwealth Fund, a study of five states that could lose tax credits: Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Utah. (David K. Jones and Nicholas Bagley, 6/11)

The Washington Post: The Supreme Court Would Help Democrats By Killing Obamacare
Maybe the pending King v. Burwell decision will finally put Obamacare out of its misery. No matter what President Obama or Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Burwell say, the truth is Obamacare is just limping along as another misguided, over-priced and underperforming government program. In practice, it’s not doing anything like what was promised. ... So if Obamacare is brought down in the Supreme Court, it could actually help Obama and the Democrats save face. And it would keep Hillary Clinton from being distracted in 2016 by having to defend Obamacare as premiums continue to rise, overall healthcare costs keep going up and the program stagnates. (Ed Rogers, 6/11)

The New York Times: On Health Care Reform, Nothing To Fear But The Scaremongers
A linchpin of the Affordable Care Act is that mid-sized and large employers must either provide health coverage for employees who work at least 30 hours a week, or pay a penalty. As with every other part of the law, Republican opponents concocted a scare story around that provision, saying that employers would cut workers’ hours in order to avoid the law’s requirements. As with other health-care scare stories, facts have trumped the scaremongering. (Teresa Tritch, 6/11)

Los Angeles Times: Obama Isn't Bullying The Supreme Court On Healthcare
The Hill newspaper reports that “President Obama’s impassioned defense of the Affordable Care Act is riling opponents of the law and drawing accusations he’s trying to bully the Supreme Court.” It’s a bum rap. ... presidential lobbying of the court is no big deal. The justices are all big boys and girls. Like all federal judges, they have lifetime appointments and ought to be able to withstand pressure from the president, the press or the demonstrators who often congregate near the court building. (Michael McGough, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: CBO Dynamic Scoring: How Obamacare’s ‘Poverty Trap’ Impedes Economic Growth
Congressional Budget Office Director Keith Hall testified before the House Budget Committee last week about how dynamic scoring–considering macroeconomic effects of legislative proposals–affects the agency’s work. It could have a major effect on entitlement spending proposals. ... Dr. Hall’s testimony highlighted ... the way that means-tested government programs lower economic growth by effectively raising marginal tax rates. ... CBO has conducted two analyses related to Obamacare that showed that the health law would exacerbate this—discouraging work and reducing the size of the labor force. The first analysis, released in August 2010, found that the law would reduce the U.S. work force by about half of one percentage point–the equivalent of approximately 800,000 workers by 2021. The second, released in February 2014, roughly tripled that estimate to 1.5% to 2% of the labor force, or about 2.3 million workers in 2021. (Chris Jacobs, 6/11)

The Wall Street Journal: New Evidence Health Spending Is Growing Faster Again
Like Californians waiting for the record drought to lift, health cost watchers like me have been waiting for health spending to begin to grow more rapidly again as the economy strengthens. It looks like that may now be beginning to occur. The U.S. Census Bureau has published new estimates of health spending based on their somewhat obscure but important Quarterly Services Survey. Analysis of the survey data shows that health spending was 7.3% higher in the first quarter of 2015 than in the first quarter of last year. Hospital spending increased 9.2%. Greater use of health services as well as more people covered by the ACA appear to be responsible for most of the increase. (Drew Altman, 6/11)

Politico: Why Health Care IT Is Still On Life Support
With the best of intentions, the Obama administration six years ago launched the HITECH Act, a $30 billion program to put electronic health records (EHR) in every hospital and doctors’ office. It offered incentives for docs who bought and “meaningfully used” the technology, and penalties—which start to kick in this year—for those who failed to adopt the new technology quickly enough. The goal was to get doctors to store patient data and share it electronically with the patients, other physicians, public health agencies, laboratories and other players in the vast health care enterprise that accounts for one-fifth of our economy. There was just one problem: Medicine may have been in dire need of a high-tech revolution, but the Obama administration did not think hard enough about whether the technology was ready for medicine. (Arthur Allen, 6/11)

The New York Times: A Pill To Boost Female Libido
A federal advisory panel has recommended that the Food and Drug Administration approve the first drug to treat a lack of sexual desire in otherwise healthy women. Some women’s groups are hailing this as a breakthrough in gender equality, a start to closing the gap between men, who have numerous drugs to treat sexual dysfunction, and women, who have none. But the panel’s recommendation was laced with so many caveats that it seems clear that this particular drug — flibanserin — is only marginally effective and carries some risk of serious adverse effects. (6/12)

The Washington Post: A Texas-Size Injustice On Abortion
If a federal appeals court ruling issued Tuesday stands, states will be able to all but deny access to abortion on a phony pretext of concern for women’s health. The impact on poor women will be particularly severe. The Supreme Court cannot allow this to be the last word on a constitutional guarantee. (6/11)

news@JAMA: Back To The Future: Volume As A Quality Metric
Recently, a group of leading academic institutions asked all hospitals to pledge to minimize the number of patients who undergo certain surgeries performed by surgeons and hospitals who seldom do those procedures. The “Take the Volume Pledge” campaign, initiated by 2 of the most respected experts on quality and safety in the nation, John Birkmeyer, MD, of Dartmouth-Hitchcock health system, and Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins Medicine, makes a lot of clinical sense. We know that when patients receive these surgeries at low-volume institutions or in the hands of low-volume surgeons, they tend to fare worse. (Ashish K. Jha, 6/11)

JAMA: Evaluation Of Wellness Determinants And Interventions By Citizen Scientists
Most medical research focuses on disease rather than health. Yet people are interested predominantly in health and wellness. Wellness refers to diverse and interconnected dimensions of physical, mental, and social well-being that extend beyond the traditional definition of health. It includes choices and activities aimed at achieving physical vitality, mental alacrity, social satisfaction, a sense of accomplishment, and personal fulfillment. ... Disease is incompatible with health, but not with wellness. For example, a dying patient who has led a rewarding life and is surrounded by a loving family and friends may still enjoy high wellness. ... For too long, the research enterprise has not adequately reflected the preferences and values of people, widening the gap between the interests of researchers and study participants. Encouraging motivated people participating in high-quality cohorts to contribute to the design and conduct of simple trials could align the interests of investigators and citizen scientists interested in wellness. (Huseyin Naci and John P. A. Ioannidis, 6/11)