Los Angeles Times: House Lawsuit Against Obama Is Turning Into A Real Problem For The President
An unprecedented House lawsuit against President Obama that was once derided as a certain loser looks stronger now and may soon deliver an early legal round to Republican lawmakers complaining of executive branch overreach. A federal judge is expected to decide shortly whether to dismiss the suit, but thanks to an amended complaint and a recent Supreme Court ruling, the Republican-backed case has a much better chance of proceeding, attorneys agree. At issue is whether the House may sue in court to defend its constitutionally granted "power of the purse" if the president spends money that was not appropriated by Congress. The lawsuit alleges that Obama's top aides quietly claimed the power to spend $178 billion over the next decade to reimburse health insurers for covering the cost of co-payments for low-income people who buy subsidized insurance under the Affordable Care Act. (Savage, 8/20)

CQ Healthbeat: Health Law Mandate Repeal Not A Shoo-In Under Reconciliation
Republican efforts to use reconciliation to repeal parts of the health care law may be limited by requirements built into the budgetary maneuver that could block scrapping such high-profile targets as the law’s requirement that most individuals buy health coverage or pay a penalty. The so-called Byrd rule – named for the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va. – will largely determine whether or not a health law provision can be repealed through reconciliation with a simple majority. If any senator raises a point of order that a provision violates its complex requirements, it would take 60 votes to overcome the objection. (Attias, 8/19)

At the same time, the health law's Cadillac tax is an issue in the auto workers' contract negotiations and a health research agency is in Congress' crosshairs -

USA Today/Detroit Free Press: Health-Care 'Cadillac' Tax Could Be Hurdle In Auto Talks
One part of the president's Affordable Care Act could become a key point of debate during UAW negotiations. Beginning in 2018, any individual health insurance plan costing more than $10,200 annually or any family plan costing more than $27,500, will be subject to a 40% tax on the amount over those thresholds. (Gardner, 8/19)

JAMA: The Future Of AHRQ’s Health Services Research
Within days after draft congressional spending bills for 2016 proposed eliminating funding for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), dozens of health care organizations raced to the agency’s defense. ... Critics, however, say the agency duplicates work by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), which carries out comparative effectiveness research. ... AHRQ Director Richard Kronick, PhD, sat down with JAMA to talk about the agency’s work and its relationship with other federal health research entities. (Berkwits, 8/19)

The New York Times: Arkansas Governor Wants To Keep Medicaid Expansion, But With Changes
Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas on Wednesday told an advisory group weighing the future of the state’s alternative Medicaid expansion that he favored keeping it — but only if the federal government allowed changes that seemed intended to appeal to conservative legislators who continue to oppose the program. Mr. Hutchinson, a Republican who took office in January, created the advisory group to recommend whether to change or replace the state’s “private option” version of Medicaid expansion. The program’s fate will ultimately be decided by the Republican-controlled legislature, which is likely to meet in a special session this year to vote on it. (Goodnough, 8/19)

Politico Pro: Arkansas Governor Outlines Reforms To Medicaid ‘Private Option’
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Wednesday outlined recommendations for reforms to the state’s Medicaid program similar to what other red states have obtained through Medicaid expansion waivers. And surprisingly, the Republican questioned whether the state needs to run its own Obamacare exchange to implement those changes, raising the possibility that Arkansas could abandon plans to have a state-run marketplace in 2017. (Pradhan, 8/19)

Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser: State Health Officer: Expand Medicaid, Improve Health
Dr. Don Williamson was direct when asked how to improve Alabama's health. “I would expand Medicaid,” Williamson, the State Health Officer, said at a meeting of the Alabama Health Improvement Task Force Wednesday afternoon. “It’s that simple.” But Williamson, a 20-year veteran of Alabama state government leaving in November to head the Alabama Hospital Association, pointed out after the meeting that the state’s health care politics aren’t simple. ... the comments represented the first time a high-ranking state official, one who worked with Gov. Robert Bentley on changes to Medicaid delivery, openly discussed advantages of opting into the Affordable Care Act’s expansion option. (Lyman, 8/19)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Pennsylvania’s Medicaid Expansion Simplifies Enrollment
Low-income families who might have waited months for medical assistance last winter are enrolling within weeks under Pennsylvania’s Medicaid expansion, sailing through simplified applications that help them see doctors faster. “People are able to get the care and treatment they need much sooner. Folks are able to get preventive care much sooner,” said Antoinette Kraus, state director at the nonprofit Pennsylvania Health Access Network, which urged policymakers to broaden traditional Medicaid. Still, critics remain cautious whether the expanded program could overburden the state budget. (Smeltz, 8/20)

The Associated Press: Survey Shows Drop In Ohio's Uninsured Rate After Health Law
A new survey shows that Ohio's uninsured rates for children and adults have each dropped by about half since 2012. According to the 2015 Ohio Medicaid Assessment Survey, the state's uninsured rate for adults fell to 8.7 percent in 2015, while the rate of uninsured children was 2 percent. The survey was released Wednesday by the Ohio Colleges of Medicine Government Resource Center, in partnership with the state's Medicaid department. It examines access to health care along with characteristics of the state's Medicaid and non-Medicaid populations. (8/20)

Kaiser Health News: Survey Confirms Significant Drop In California’s Uninsured
The number of uninsured California adults under the age of 65 dropped by more than 15 percent between 2013 and 2014 because of the Affordable Care Act, including California’s Medi-Cal expansion, according to data released Tuesday. (Feder Ostrov, 8/20)

The Associated Press: Illinois To Award $5M For Health Insurance Outreach
Illinois plans to award $5 million in federal grant money to community groups for consumer outreach during the third annual health insurance enrollment period. Far fewer positions will be funded than before. The state's Get Covered Illinois campaign has been paid for with federal grants under the Affordable Care Act. Grants are running out and there is no new money for states. Up to 150 enrollment counselor positions will be funded under an extension that allows Illinois to use unspent money. Last year, about 400 similar positions were paid for with federal grants of $28.7 million. (8/20)

The Fiscal Times: Replace Obamacare With What? GOP Candidates Start Slinging Proposals
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) have started what could turn out to be an avalanche of proposals by GOP presidential candidates to repeal and replace Obamacare, but the repeal part seems to be the only thing the hopefuls can agree on. (Matishak, 8/19)

The Washington Post: Bush And Trump Face Off In N.H. — And The Donald Is Winning
Then Bush went on the attack. He fired his toughest shots to date at Trump, saying the businessman “doesn’t have a proven conservative record” because he is a former Democrat who once supported tax increases and a single-payer health-care system. ... At an Elk’s Lodge in Salem, N.H., Wednesday, Kasich talked about his record of pragmatism in Congress and as governor as well as his compassion for the poor, the drug addicted and the mentally ill. (Rucker and DelReal, 8/19)

The Associated Press: Feeling Sense Of 'Urgency,' Walker Says He'll Get Aggressive
Walker faced criticism for lacking passion in his first GOP debate performance earlier this month. But he's begun to show more spark on the trail in Iowa and New Hampshire this week, confronting protesters at the Iowa State Fair and criticizing Republicans in Congress for failing to repeal the president's health care law as he rolled out his own replacement plan. At multiple events in New Hampshire on Wednesday he reminded crowds of his fights with Wisconsin's unions and his survival of a 2012 recall election. (8/19)

On the Democratic campaign trail, former Md. Gov. Martin O'Malley picks a notable speech venue -

The Washington Post: While In Vegas, O’Malley Makes An Appearance In Front Of Trump’s Hotel
Yvanna Cancela, the political director of the culinary union, said [Democrat Martin] O'Malley on Wednesday "gave one of the best speeches of the convention." She said she was pleased in particular by his pledge to address one of the union's top priorities: repealing the so-called "Cadillac tax" in the Affordable Care Act. At issue is a 40 percent tax on expensive insurance plans, scheduled to take effect in 2018, that’s meant to slow the growth in health-care spending while raising revenue. (Wagner and Rucker, 8/19)

Politico: Drug Costs Dislodge Obamacare As GOP Voters' Top Health Care Concern
Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and others are competing for the best plan to replace Obamacare, a unified theme among Republican presidential contenders. But there is growing evidence that even GOP voters are more concerned about curbing drug prices than dislodging the president’s signature health program. In April, the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation was surprised by a poll showing more Republicans view drug prices as the No. 1 health care priority than repealing Obamacare. So the foundation looked further, asking Americans what steps they would back to reduce drug costs. (Norman, 8/20)

The Associated Press: Poll: Majority Of US Wants Gov't To Curb Prescription Costs
Regardless of political affiliation, Americans strongly support government action to control prescription drug costs, according to a poll released Thursday. While the 2016 presidential candidates continue to debate President Barack Obama's 5-year-old law expanding coverage for the uninsured, the latest Kaiser Family Foundation survey suggests the public is shifting to other health care issues. (8/20)

Kaiser Health News: Poll: Americans Favor Government Action On Drug Prices
Just over half of Americans (54 percent) are currently taking a prescription drug. While most say their drugs are easy to afford, consumers in general (72 percent) believe drug costs are unreasonable, according to the poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent part of the foundation.) More people (51 percent) think competition would do a better job of controlling prices than federal regulation (40 percent). But large majorities said they would favor allowing Medicare to negotiate with companies on prices and allowing people to buy medicines imported from Canada. (8/20)

Modern Healthcare: Aetna Hires Lobbyists To Ensure Humana Deal
Aetna is determined to nab government approval of its $37 billion acquisition of Humana. And the health insurance titan has bulked up its roster of hired guns to meet that goal. Last week, Aetna hired four Washington-based lobbying firms, according to a Politico news brief. The not-for-profit Sunlight Foundation shows that Aetna brought on Bloom Strategic Counsel, CGCN Group, The Gibson Group and West Front Strategies. Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna now has six lobbying firms working on its behalf this year (the other two are Capitol Hill Consulting Group and Sidley Austin). (Herman, 8/19)

Reuters: Wal-Mart's Drug Problem: Pharmacy Business Drags On Profit
The world's largest retailer has a drug problem. Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Tuesday that lower margins in its pharmacy business had emerged as a drag on profits, as it gets paid less by drug plan managers and as fewer customers pay in cash, since Obamacare has increased the ranks of insured Americans. The company warned that the margin squeeze would continue for at least the remainder of the year, although a spokesman told Reuters the pharmacy business is profitable and that Wal-Mart has no plans to sell it or find a partner to share the risk. (Layne, 8/19)

The Washington Post's Wonkblog: How Health Care Reform Adds To Wal-Mart’s Pharmacy Woes
A footnote in Wal-Mart's second quarter earnings release this week highlighted one of the many effects of more people gaining health insurance under the Affordable Care Act: its pharmacies are no longer as profitable. The retail giant blamed weak quarterly earnings that underperformed expectations partly on challenges facing its U.S. pharmacy business. (Johnson, 8/20)

The Wall Street Journal: Samsung Makes First Foray Into U.S. Stock Market With Biotech Listing
Samsung will make its first entry into U.S. stock markets with an anticipated $1 billion listing of its biotechnology affiliate, according to people familiar with the matter, marking a major step in the South Korean conglomerate’s foray into a new industry outside its better-known electronics business. The listing of Samsung Bioepis Co. on the Nasdaq Stock Market will allow the company to raise money as it pours billions of dollars into research and development and production facilities to tap into the nascent and fast-growing field of biosimilars. Biosimilars are biotechnology drugs analogous to generic drugs. (Cheng and Lee, 8/20)

CNN Money: Cleveland Clinic Boots McDonald's From Its Food Court
The McDonald's (MCD) restaurant located at the main hospital center is shutting down next month after hospital officials discontinued its lease, according to the Cleveland Clinic, one of the top health care institutions in the country. (Alesci and Smith, 8/19)

NPR: So Long, Big Mac: Cleveland Clinic Ousts McDonald's From Cafeteria
One of the most prestigious names in health care is taking a stand on food. This week, Cleveland Clinic announced it would sever ties with McDonald's. As of Sept. 18, the McDonald's branch located in the Cleveland Clinic cafeteria will turn off its fryers and close its doors for good. Its lease will not be renewed. (Aubrey, 8/19)

NPR: Price Rises For Ticket To A Quicker Drug Review By FDA
A deal struck between drugmakers AbbVie and United Therapeutics Wednesday set a record price for a voucher that can be redeemed for a fast-track review of a new medicine by the Food and Drug Administration. (Hensley, 8/19)

PBS NewsHour: Why Some Doctors Are Wary Of The New Female Libido Pill
Addyi, a new female libido pill, will hit the market this fall, but the prescription drug was twice rejected by the FDA in the past. For a closer look at the uses and risks, Judy Woodruff speaks to Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman of the Georgetown University Medical Center and Dr. Mary Jane Minkin of Yale Medical Group. (8/19)

WRAL: House, Senate Negotiators Say They Will Pursue 'Hybrid' Medicaid Model
Negotiators for the House and the Senate say a deal on Medicaid is within reach now that House Republicans have tentatively agreed to adopt a "hybrid" insurance model similar to one the Senate put forward earlier this month. ... Through more than three years of negotiations and two legislative sessions, one of the biggest sticking points in the Medicaid discussion has been who would provide insurance for 1.8 million poor and disabled North Carolinians – roughly 18 percent of the state's population. Senate leaders had advocated for large managed care companies, or MCOs, in a bid to control costs as tightly as possible; House members had backed provider-led entities, or PLEs, created by local hospitals or physician groups. Under what negotiators for both chambers say is a tentative agreement reached this week, both managed care companies and provider-led organizations will play a role. (Binker, 8/19)

The Associated Press: Negotiations Next Step For NC Medicaid, Incentives Bills
The North Carolina House is formally rejecting the Senate versions of two key measures that legislative leaders want finalized before adjourning this year. The House voted unanimously Wednesday against the Senate's proposed state Medicaid system overhaul. The chamber followed later with near-unanimous rejection of an economic incentives bill that also contains a retooled formula to distribute more local sales taxes to rural counties. (8/19)

Raleigh News & Observer: House Rejects Senate Medicaid Plan
As expected, the state House isn’t going to sign off on the Senate’s version of Medicaid reform rather than its own version. And it’s going to be difficult reaching a compromise this year. The House unanimously voted Wednesday not to concur with the Senate rewrite. That sends the issue to a conference committee to attempt to hash out differences. But there are big differences, and only a few weeks left in the session, so far. (Jarvis, 8/19)

Winston-Salem Journal: House Declines To Accept Senate Changes To Medicaid Reform Bill
The proposed Medicaid Department would be overseen by a Cabinet secretary appointed by the governor and confirmed by the General Assembly. Senators initially wanted to create an independent Medicaid Benefits Authority to oversee the department. ... John Dinan, a political science professor at Wake Forest University, said the General Assembly finally may have arrived at the point “where the actual bargaining takes place on Medicaid reform and on other issues.” “It’s tough to predict the outcome of the negotiations, but there are reasons to believe, based on recent legislative actions and legislator statements, that a compromise could be reached this year.” (Craver, 8/19)

The Wall Street journal: State Lawmakers Target Fetal-Tissue Research
The release of videos about Planned Parenthood is spurring state legislative efforts to ban or restrict use of fetal tissue for medical studies and treatments. Republicans in Arizona, California, Ohio, New Jersey and Wisconsin have introduced bills or taken action to restrict or oversee fetal tissue—pitting antiabortion advocates who say the practice of using it in research is immoral against scientists who say it is vital for breakthroughs that save lives. (Armour, 8/19)

The Hill: Planned Parenthood To Resume Some Abortions Amid Florida Dispute
Planned Parenthood says it will resume performing abortions in the last two weeks of a woman’s first trimester of pregnancy after receiving new guidance from the Florida government. Florida Planned Parenthood clinics had filed for an injunction and stopped performing abortions for such pregnancies after the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) found violations at three clinics earlier this month. (Sullivan, 8/29)

Politico: New Planned Parenthood Video Released
The seventh in the string of videos from the Center for Medical Progress released Wednesday again features a tissue procurement technician, this time explaining how she obtained a brain from an aborted fetus. (Haberkorn, 8/19)

Reuters: Americans Back Federal Funds For Planned Parenthood Health Services
Americans broadly support providing federal funding for free women's health exams, screenings and contraception services, a Reuters/Ipsos poll has found, suggesting risks for Republicans criticizing Planned Parenthood as part of the 2016 campaigns. Support for federal funding of Planned Parenthood itself to provide those services was even stronger, according to the Reuters/Ipsos released on Wednesday. The non-profit's image has taken a hit, the poll found, after an anti-abortion group earlier this year began releasing videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials negotiating prices for aborted fetal tissue. (Stephenson, 8/19)

In other news -

The Associated Press: El Paso Abortion Clinic Will Be First To Reopen In Texas
An El Paso clinic shuttered by Texas’ tough abortion laws is set to become the first to reopen since the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked enforcement of key restrictions nearly two months ago. The reopening of the Reproductive Services facility would mean the country’s second most-populous state has 20 abortion clinics — down from 41 in 2012. (Weissert, 8/19)

The Baltimore Sun: Hospital Consolidation Troubling, Hopkins Docs Say
A group of Johns Hopkins doctors and professors have called on the Federal Trade Commission to act with more caution when considering hospital mergers. The consolidation of hospitals into large chains makes the market less competive, gives patients fewer choices and could result in higher medical expenses, the researchers said in a commentary published in the Aug. 13 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The authors of the article want the FTC to pay particular attention to mergers that could result in one dominant hospital system in a region. (McDaniels, 8/20)

MLive: Michigan Hospices Test Medicare Model Allowing Patients To Get 'Curative' Care
Medicare patients will be able to receive hospice care while also pursuing "curative" treatments under a program that will be tested by 10 Michigan hospice programs. The new Medicare Care Choices Model marks a departure from the traditional approach to hospice care - Medicare rules do not allow a patient to receive curative and hospice care at the same time. The program, being rolled out at 141 hospices nationwide, is aimed at bringing the quality-of-life care provided by a hospice to more Medicare patients. (Thoms, 8/20)

Politico New York: Nonprofit Insurers Lose On Medicare Under New Obamacare Rules
New York State has in many ways been a showcase for things that have gone right with Obamacare. ... But there have also been some surprising wrinkles here. One is that the Affordable Care Act seems to be having a negative impact on the bottom lines of nearly all of New York’s nonprofit regional health plans, many of which offer coverage in underserved parts of western and upstate New York. The most pronounced underwriting losses stem from the Medicare Advantage line of business, which allows private health plans to administer the government insurance program for Americans over the age of 65. ... The large national for-profit insurers aren’t seeing these financial losses when it comes to Medicare Advantage. (Jennings, 8/19)

The New York Times: Louis Stokes, Congressman From Ohio And Champion Of The Poor, Dies At 90
Inadequate health care for minorities was a major concern of his, and he was an early advocate of federal intervention in the AIDS crisis, which was ravaging black communities in the 1990s. Interviewed for this obituary in 2011, Mr. Stokes said he was particularly proud of sponsoring legislation that established the Office of Minority Health as a permanent federal agency. “That started the real work of that office,” he said. (Hevesi, 8/19)

Modern Healthcare: New York Health Loses Another IT Official Following Probe Into EHR Implementation
The New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. has lost its second health IT leader amid an investigation into a multiyear, multimillion dollar installation of an electronic health-record system. In 2013, Epic Systems Corp. of Verona, Wis., won a 15-year, $302 million contract to replace HHC's decades-old EHR system. With 11 hospitals, HHC is the largest municipal health network in the nation. The total cost of the health information technology upgrade is estimated at $1.4 billion. (Conn, 8/19)

Reuters: Appellate Court Says Employees Have Right To Fix Faulty Leave Requests
A fired healthcare worker can sue her Pennsylvania-based employer under the Family Medical Leave Act after she was denied leave and terminated for absences without the chance to fix the problems in her request for time off, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district judge and found that employers have to give workers a chance to amend faulty leave requests, just like they have to tell workers of their FMLA rights. (Iafolla, 8/19)

The San Jose Mercury News: Money Stripped From Bill To Provide Nurse Oversight Of Foster Youth Medication
Facing opposition from budget hawks, a Bay Area lawmaker on Wednesday deeply cut his bill to bolster monitoring of California's 63,000 foster children, who critics say are too often prescribed powerful psychiatric drugs with little follow-up or coordinated care. (Richman, 8/19)

Reuters: 14-Year Sentence Upheld In Health Fraud That Led To Teen's Death
A federal appeals court has affirmed a 14-year prison sentence for a Philadelphia social worker involved in a healthcare fraud linked to the death of a 14-year-old girl with cerebral palsy. Judge D. Brooks Smith, writing for a unanimous panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said that Solomon Manamela failed to prove that he should not be subject to healthcare fraud laws, even though he was not a healthcare provider. (Pierson, 8/20)

Health News Colorado: Guns, Poor Mental Health System Lead To Record Suicide Toll
Colorado lost the largest number of people to suicide in state history last year —1,058 — and the state once again ranks among the worst in the U.S. for high suicide rates. Suicide kills more Coloradans each year than homicide, car crashes, diabetes, breast cancer, flu or pneumonia, according to state health officials. (Kerwin McCrimmon, 8/19)

The Arizona Republic: Doctor Pays $208,000 To Settle Medicare Billing Probe
An Arizona doctor has agreed to repay the federal government $207,988 to settle claims that he billed Medicare for “green light” prostatectomies that often were too short to provide therapeutic benefit to patients. (Alltucker, 8/19)

The Seattle Times: Doctor's State License, Military Contracts Suspended Over Misconduct Allegations
The Washington State Medical Commission has suspended the license of Dr. John Hagmann, a Gig Harbor doctor who garnered millions of dollars in federal contracts to teach emergency medicine, for professional misconduct. The alleged violations include authorizing students to inject each other with controlled substances, allowing them to perform invasive procedures on one another and exploiting course participants for sexual gratification. (Bernton, 8/19)

The Des Moines Register: Ex-DHS Consultant Helped Company Win State Medicaid Job
The same month she helped a Florida-based company land a lucrative state contract, an Iowa Department of Human Services consultant terminated her work with the state to join that company. The timing of former state Rep. Renee Schulte’s move to WellCare of Iowa raised questions this week about whether any ethics were violated. Schulte’s consulting firm was paid almost $100,000 a year to assist DHS’s mental health division since January 2013, but terminated its contract Feb. 20, four days after Gov. Terry Branstad announced the state was seeking competitive bids to contract with private companies to manage Iowa’s Medicaid program. (Clayworth, 8/19)

The Associated Press: Iowa Medicaid To Cut Ties With 20-Year Mental Health Manager
The Iowa Medicaid program plans to cut ties with the company that has managed mental health and substance abuse benefits for its members for two decades, a spokeswoman said Tuesday. Magellan Health Inc. emerged as a major loser in Gov. Terry Branstad’s plan to turn over administration of the $4.2 billion Medicaid program to four national companies beginning Jan. 1. Magellan was one of six bidders passed over by the Iowa Department of Human Services for the work, a decision that surprised many Iowa providers and sent the company’s shares tumbling Monday afternoon. (Foley, 8/19)

The Baltimore Sun: Zoning Clampdown Unneeded For Medical Marijuana
To quote the Grateful Dead, "What a long strange trip it's been." Over the decades, medical marijuana has made the journey from preposterous hippie myth to accepted medical practice in Maryland and several other states. Now, the legalization process for dispensing cannabis to the sick faces a more prosaic hurdle — zoning law. Around the state, some legislators want that hurdle to be unnecessarily burdensome. Medical marijuana is now an issue on the county level in Maryland. That's why county officials a few weeks ago packed an information session at the Maryland Association of Counties' annual convention seeking guidance now that entrepreneurs are scouting locations to grow and dispense medical marijuana to those with prescriptions to use it. (8/19)

The Wall Street Journal: The Dangers Of The Street Drug K2
A synthetic form of marijuana is getting noticed by New York officials after a rash of users have ended up in the emergency room and often behaved violently in public. But cracking down on the drug, most commonly known as K2, poses a different set of challenges from trying to get older drugs off the streets of New York City, according to local, state and federal officials. (Francescani, 8/19)

Los Angeles Times: South Pasadena Nursing Home Gets A New Start With Ownership Change
For eight years, South Pasadena police had a nursing home on their radar, as officers responded to 1,100 calls for service, some involving violent crimes. ... During a 2012 meeting with police, nursing home operators promised to do what they could to keep the rate of calls down. And they did — by rerouting 911 calls back to the facility's nursing station, according to police.On Wednesday, on the steps of the facility formerly known as the South Pasadena Convalescent Hospital, Miller joined city officials in touting a change in ownership. Miller said he hopes to see a turnaround at the nursing home, which the new owners renamed South Pasadena Care Center. (Mejia, 8/19)

The Associated Press: Shannen Doherty's Lawsuit Reveals Actress Has Breast Cancer
The former "Beverly Hills, 90210" star claims that her former business managers and accountants mismanaged her money and allowed her health insurance to lapse last year. Because of that, she said she didn't go to the doctor until she had insurance and there was a delay in diagnosing her cancer, which will likely require more drastic treatments, including a possible mastectomy and chemotherapy. (8/19)

The Texas Tribune: Prosecutor: State Cancer Official Deceived Agency
A Travis County prosecutor on Tuesday asked a jury to convict a former high-ranking official with the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas of securing an $11 million grant for a biotechnology firm “by fraud.” Jerry Cobbs, the former chief commercialization officer of the state agency known as CPRIT, misled his colleagues to get the grant approved, Assistant District Attorney Rob Drummond said during opening arguments before a 12-member jury in Austin. (Walters, 8/19)

The Wall Street Journal: Getting The Bogus Studies Out Of Science
The 21st Century Cures Act passed the House of Representatives on July 10 with strong bipartisan support and is now pending in the Senate. The House bill would increase funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) by $9.3 billion over five years to stimulate research .... The deeper problem with the bill is that it overlooks what may be the largest single impediment to the breakthroughs in the basic science that will lead to future treatments and cures: faulty research that nobody notices until more time and money has been wasted pursuing what in effect are false leads. (Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, 8/19)

The Huffington Post: Obamacare Haters Are Getting Harder To Find
Obamacare isn’t popular. But it may be getting less unpopular. On Thursday morning, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation released a new survey showing that 44 percent of the public has a favorable view of the Affordable Care Act, while 41 percent has an unfavorable view. The numbers are nearly identical to what they were in Kaiser’s most recent survey, back in late June, and statistically unchanged since March. ... You can't say this latest survey or the previous ones constitute a strong endorsement of the law .... Still, the averages also reveal a trend underway, with the public less skeptical of the law than it was in 2014. (Jonathan Cohn, 8/20)

The Washington Post: Europe’s Sinister Expansion Of Euthanasia
Between October 2007 and December 2011, 100 people went to a clinic in Belgium’s Dutch-speaking region with depression, or schizophrenia, or, in several cases, Asperger’s syndrome, seeking euthanasia. The doctors, satisfied that 48 of the patients were in earnest, and that their conditions were “untreatable” and “unbearable,” offered them lethal injection; 35 went through with it. ... If you find this sinister, I agree. (Charles Lane, 8/19)

The Baltimore Sun: Cardin Bill Would Reform Long-Term Health Care Financing For Seniors
Americans are living longer than ever before thanks to medical advancements and healthy lifestyle habits. But questions remain as to where will these older Americans will live and how they will afford their health care as they age. The answers may be found in new bipartisan legislation co-sponsored by Sens. Ben Cardin and Chuck Grassley. Their bill, which recently unanimously passed the Senate Finance Committee, would establish a new Community-Based Institutional Special Needs Plan demonstration program designed to provide home- and community-based services for low-income Medicare-only beneficiaries who need assistance with basic activities of daily living. (Chris Wing, 8/19)

The Charlotte Observer: Why N.C. Should Preserve Its CON Laws
The move to eliminate North Carolina’s Certificate of Need (CON) laws has gained some traction with the legislature based primarily on a belief that unfettered health care competition will increase the supply of providers, choice and access, thereby lowering health care costs. That might seem reasonable, but only if health care could operate in a free-market system where creating winners and losers among patients was an acceptable outcome. It is important to understand why the state’s CON laws exist in the first place. The principles of certificate of need are to ensure that N.C. residents receive safe and efficient health care services that warrant public trust; that there is equitable access to timely, clinically appropriate, and high-quality health care; and that health care value is maximized for all citizens. (Pete Brunnick, 8/19)

The New England Journal of Medicine: New DTCA Guidance — Enough To Empower Consumers?
As one of only two countries that permit direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of pharmaceuticals, the United States tasks the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with regulating that advertising to ensure that it doesn't mislead consumers. When a drug maker publishes or broadcasts a claim that its drug has benefits in a particular disease, the FDA requires it to include information on the product's risks as well. ... But research shows that most patients who attempt to read these disclosures find them difficult to understand, and many don't even try to make sense of them. Now, the FDA is in the process of adjusting its DTCA rules, aiming to provide greater assurance that patients receive due warning of the most significant risks — but its tweaks probably don't go far enough to really empower consumers to make smart decisions about the drugs they put into their bodies. (Christopher T. Robertson, 8/19)

The New England Journal of Medicine: The Vernacular Of Risk — Rethinking Direct-To-Consumer Advertising Of Pharmaceuticals
For all its capacity to encourage overdiagnosis and overmedication, DTCA's virtue is that it treats consumers as people who deserve to know something about the compounds they take into their bodies. After 30 years of DTCA, it's not clear that advertising is the best medium for communicating risk information, but marketers should at least be required to try to communicate risk information as effectively as they do their promotional messages. (Jeremy A. Greene and Elizabeth S. Watkins, 8/19)