The Wall Street Journal: Anthem: Getting Past Cigna Merger Blues
Anthem hasn’t given up on its merger with Cigna just yet. But second-quarter results suggest the backup plan isn’t a bad alternative. Anthem, the second-largest U.S. health insurer by membership, reported sales of $19.9 billion and adjusted earnings of $3.33 a share on Wednesday morning. That topped analyst estimates, but the stock traded lower. Higher-than-expected medical expenses were to blame. Those amounted to 84.2% of premium revenues, more than 2 percentage points higher than a year ago. Anthem blamed the squeeze in part on margin pressure in its Medicaid business, which is Anthem’s fastest-growing membership segment. (Grant, 7/27)

The Associated Press: Anthem Prepping For Hardball Fight With Feds Over Cigna Deal
Anthem has no intention of backing away quietly from its plan to buy rival Cigna in the face of federal opposition, and the company looks ready to play hardball. The health insurer told analysts Wednesday that it is preparing to fight the government's move to block its deal, and the company said its participation in the government's health insurance exchanges — a sore subject for the Obama administration that is trying to stop the acquisition — may be at stake. (Murphy, 7/27)

Reuters: Anthem To Fight For Cigna Deal, Sees Obamacare Losses
Anthem has argued that its planned $45-billion purchase of Cigna will give it greater leverage to negotiate better prices from healthcare providers and pass on those savings to consumers, including those signing up for "Obamacare" plans on public insurance exchanges. "To be clear, our board and executive leadership team at Anthem is fully committed to challenging the (U.S. Department of Justice's) decision in court," Chief Executive Joseph Swedish told analysts on a conference call. (Berkrot and Penumudi, 7/27)

Bloomberg: Anthem Tells Judge Cigna Deal Helps Health Insurance Markets
Anthem Inc. said its proposed $48 billion merger with rival health insurer Cigna Corp. will lower consumer costs and extend coverage to more people, in response to a U.S. lawsuit seeking to block the deal. The Indianapolis-based company also said the combined carrier would fortify the online insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act at a time when other insurers are withdrawing from them, according to papers filed late Tuesday in federal court in Washington. (Harris, 7/27)

Modern Healthcare: In Answer To DOJ Lawsuit, Anthem Argues Cigna Deal Would Boost ACA Exchanges
Anthem threw punches back at the U.S. Justice Department's attempt to block the insurer's acquisition of Cigna Corp. The response signals Anthem will indeed litigate the case to the end even though many analysts and policy experts say the company is unlikely to win. In a newly filed legal response, Anthem's lawyers argued the deal to buy Cigna is “procompetitive” and specifically would allow Anthem to expand its presence on the Affordable Care Act's insurance exchanges. (Herman, 7/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Anthem Projecting Losses On Affordable Care Act Plans This Year
Anthem Inc. said it is now projecting losses on its Affordable Care Act plans this year, a turnaround for a major insurer that had maintained a relatively optimistic tone about that business. Anthem said it now believed it would see a “mid-single-digit” operating margin loss on its ACA plans in 2016, due to higher-than-expected medical costs. It expects better results next year, because it is seeking substantial premium increases. (Wilde Mathews, 7/27)

The Wall Street Journal: Alere Faces Criminal Probe Over Medicare, Medicaid Billing
Federal investigators are seeking information about government-billing practices at Alere Inc., adding to a litany of woes at the diagnostic-testing company as it seeks to complete a deal to sell itself. The Justice Department’s criminal-fraud section sent Alere a subpoena recently seeking patient-billing records, according to people familiar with the matter. It asked for information about Alere’s efforts to collect copayments from patients, as well as forms submitted on their behalf to government programs such as Medicare, the people said. (Hoffman, Viswanatha and Rockoff, 7/27)

Chicago Tribune: Abbott Has More Reason To Walk Away From Alere Deal
There's more evidence that Abbott Laboratories' pursuit of Alere, a health care diagnostics company, may have been a bad idea. Alere faces a federal criminal investigation over its Medicare and Medicaid billing practices, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. News of the inquiry sent Alere's shares plunging nearly 29 percent Wednesday to $31.47 on the New York Stock Exchange. (Sachdev, 7/27)

The Baltimore Sun: CareFirst Revises Request, Seeks Higher Rate Increase
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield said Wednesday that rate increases it requested from the Maryland Insurance Commission earlier this year are not enough to cover costs for its exchange-based plans and that it needs even larger ones. The state's largest insurer asked the commission in May to allow it to increase rates by 12 percent for the HMO plans it sells on the state's online marketplace and by 30 percent for PPO plans. The rate proposals are for individual plans with coverage beginning Jan. 1. The insurer refiled its request Tuesday and is now asking for a 27.8 percent increase on its HMO plans and a 36.6 percent increase on its PPO plans. (McDaniels, 7/27)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Health Insurers Making Cases For Pa. Rate Hikes
Saying their own costs have risen, health insurance companies made their cases to state regulators Wednesday for double-digit rate increases next year for individual policies in Pennsylvania. The requests before the Insurance Department include proposed average rate increases of 17.2 percent for Aetna Health Inc., 25.4 percent to 48.1 percent for Highmark companies, 0.9 percent to 16.2 percent for UPMC companies, and 19.9 percent to 22.5 percent for Independence Blue Cross companies, according to the department. (Langley, 7/28)

The Hill: In Philly, Clinton Allies Say Healthcare Costs Are Next Big Battle
After six years of rock-solid defense, top healthcare advocates in the Democratic Party are now willing to acknowledge that the Affordable Care Act has fallen flat on affordability. At the Democratic National Convention this week, some of Hillary Clinton’s closest allies on healthcare are setting her up for a major battle to lower the cost of care, an issue they said needs to top her agenda as president. (Ferris, 7/27)

Los Angeles Times: A Woman At The DNC Just Discussed Her Abortion. Here's Where The Battle Over Abortion Rights Is Being Fought.
Abortion continues to be an important issue in the 2016 presidential election and has been referenced several times at the DNC so far, including today, when Ilyse Hogue, the president of a national pro-choice organization, discussed her own abortion in front of the convention. The next president’s Supreme Court nominee could tip the scales when it comes to decisions similar to the one made in June striking down Texas restrictions on doctors and clinics who perform abortions. (Rañoa, 7/27)

The Washington Post: A New Formula For Exercise? Study Suggests 1 Hour Of Activity Per 8 Hours Of Sitting
If you fear you're doing irreparable damage to your body because your white-collar job keeps you sitting at your desk from 9 to 5, or you regularly spend entire weekends sprawled out on your couch binge-watching Netflix, there's some good news just out from sports medicine researchers. According to a study published in The Lancet, all is not lost. You may be able to "make up" for your increased risk of death due to a sedentary lifestyle by engaging in enough physical activity. So just how much is enough? (Cha, 7/28)

Stat: Attention Desk Jockeys: Those Who Sit At Work Need An Hour Of Exercise A Day
If you want to offset the health hazards of sitting at your desk all day, you’ll need to dedicate yourself to an hour of moderate exercise a day, according to a new analysis. Previous studies had already shown that lack of physical activity, and spending lots of time sitting, both have negative health effects — including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, and early death. But nobody had done a systematic review looking at the two combined. (Swetlitz, 7/27)

The New York Times: The ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’ Helped Scientists Discover A New Gene Tied To A.L.S.
It turns out those much-mocked Ice Bucket Challenge videos helped do a lot of good. Two summers ago, the challenge, designed to raise money for research into amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, took the internet by storm. Supporters ended up raising over $115 million for the A.L.S. Association. Over two years, money from the challenge has helped fund the research and development of treatment drugs and has been used as prize money to entice people to design technology for people living with the disease, which causes a rapid breakdown in a person’s ability to control muscle movement. (Roger, 7/27)

Stat: In Patients Under Hypnosis, Scientists Find Distinctive Patterns In The Brain
Psychiatrists have been using hypnosis on patients for decades — to help them reduce their pain or kick a smoking habit, among other reasons. But what, exactly, is happening to the patients’ brains when they are in a hypnotic state? To tackle that question, David Spiegel, a psychiatrist at Stanford University School of Medicine, and his colleagues recently decided to scan patients’ brains and see if hypnosis left a mark. It did. (ZImmer, 7/28)

The Washington Post: E-Cig Vapor Releases Two Cancerous Chemicals, New Study Says
Vapor from electronic cigarettes contains two previously undiscovered cancer-causing chemicals, according to a new study. Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found propylene glycol, an eye and respiratory irritant, and glycerin, a skin, eye and respiratory irritant, among 29 other chemicals released in e-cigarette vapor. Both are considered “probable carcinogens” by federal health officials. They’re used in e-cigarettes to create artificial smoke. (Bogage, 7/28)

KQED: Could ‘Brain Training’ Games Actually Work? New Study Surprises Scientists
We’ve seen — and done — some negative coverage of the so-called brain training industry, in which companies provide computerized games that ostensibly improve memory, attention, and other mental capabilities while — so some of the ads suggested — warding off cognitive decline. In January, one of the leading brands in this space, Lumosity made a deal with the Federal Trade Commission to cough up $2 million for partial refunds as compensation for deceptive advertising. (Brooks, 7/27)

Stat: New Zika Cases Suggest Florida May Be Seeing Viral Outbreak
Mosquitoes in the continental United States may now be spreading the Zika virus. Health officials in Florida said Wednesday they were investigating two Zika cases that could have been spread by local mosquitoes, in addition to the two similar cases they announced last week. None of the infected individuals has been confirmed to have acquired the virus from mosquitoes, but it seems increasingly likely that a local outbreak is occurring. (Joseph, 7/27)

Health News Florida: 2 More Possible Non-Travel-Related Cases Of Zika Investigated In South Florida
Two more possible non-travel-related cases of Zika virus are being investigated in South Florida, the Florida Department of Health confirmed Wednesday. The new cases are in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, the same areas where health officials began investigating two similar cases last week. The health department began going door-to-door in the area where the cases were found to determine if anyone else is infected. Officials are also collecting mosquitoes in the area for testing. (Ochoa, 7/27)

The Washington Post: Scientists Find New Antibiotic In The Human Nose
Scientists have discovered a bacterium living inside the human nose that produces an antibiotic capable of killing one of the most hard-to-treat pathogens — a pathogen that causes serious, even deadly skin and wound infections, bloodstream infections and pneumonia. German researchers found that this antibacterial substance was effective in treating skin infections in mice caused by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, according to a study published Wednesday in Nature. The scientists said the substance, which they named lugdunin, has potent antimicrobial effects against a wide range of bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant strains such as methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus bacteria. (Sun, 7/27)

NPR: 'Nose-y' Bacteria Could Yield A New Way To Fight Infection
The scientists already knew that S. aureus lives in the noses of about 30 percent of humans, usually without causing harm — most people never know they are carriers of the bacterium. But if the body becomes compromised (whether by surgery, physical trauma, an underlying illness or suppressed immune system) the little cache of S. aureus in the nose can suddenly launch an attack against its human host. And if the strain of bacteria is MRSA, that infection can be lethal. (Beans, 7/27)

Stat: This Smells Promising: Nasal Bacteria Pump Out A New Antibiotic That Kills MRSA
“Our study can help to understand what we can do to eradicate these pathogens from the microbiota of healthy people,” said Andreas Peschel, lead author of the study, published Wednesday in Nature. (Vlasits, 7/27)

AL.com: Gov. Robert Bentley To Call Special Session For Alabama Lottery
Gov. Robert Bentley announced he will call a special session of the Legislature to consider a proposal for a lottery to help fix the state's persistent problem with funding state services. ... The most pressing issue, for now, is the Alabama Medicaid Agency, the largest consumer of dollars from the state General Fund and a program that serves about one million Alabamians. Earlier this year, lawmakers overrode Bentley's veto and approved a budget that appropriated $700 million from the General Fund for Medicaid for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1. Bentley said Medicaid needs $785 million to maintain services and to sustain a plan to changed Medicaid to a managed care program run through regional care organizations, or RCOs. (Cason, 7/27)

Detroit News: Michigan’s Medicaid HMOs Earn Highest Profits In Decade
The state’s Medicaid HMOs defied predictions they’d lose money on the Healthy Michigan Plan, Michigan’s expanded Medicaid program, earning its highest profits in more than a decade last year, according to a new report. Michigan HMOs’ combined net income totaled $331 million in 2015, according to the Michigan Health Market Review, released Wednesday. The industry’s 2014 net income was $170 million. The decade’s previous high water mark was 2012 when net income for HMOs totaled $311 million. (Bouffard, 7/27)

The Associated Press: Hospital Network Paying $2.5M To Settle Overbilling Claims
The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center has paid $2.5 million to settle some claims in a federal whistleblower lawsuit accusing the hospital network of overbilling government insurance programs for neurosurgery. UPMC, Pennsylvania's largest private employer with 60,000 workers, didn't acknowledge wrongdoing in the settlement announced Wednesday by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Pittsburgh. The nonprofit reported $12 billion in revenue last year. (7/27)

The Boston Globe: Beth Israel Affiliation Plan Moves Forward
A state watchdog agency on Wednesday signaled its support for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s plan for closer ties with two hospitals, part of the health system’s effort to compete more aggressively against Partners HealthCare and other providers. Beth Israel Deaconess is seeking a clinical affiliation with MetroWest Medical Center, which would allow it to expand specialty medical services at MetroWest while gaining a new source of patient referrals from the Framingham-based hospital. It also wants to add MetroWest and New England Baptist Hospital to its affiliated network of health care providers that negotiates contracts with insurers. (McCluskey, 7/27)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Riddle Hospital Getting $16M Gift
Riddle Hospital, part of Main Line Health, said it will receive a $16 million gift, the largest since the Delaware County hospital opened in 1963 and the largest gift in the Main Line system in the last 10 years. The money is from a trust created by John Bancker Gribbel who died in 1947 after being a long-time patient of Charles H. Schoff, who founded Riddle's predecessor, Media Hospital, in 1909, Main Line said Wednesday. (Brubaker, 7/27)

Health News Florida: Malpractice Case Against St. Pete Hospital Questions 'Business Of Medicine'
Most of Steve Kenan was laid to rest in St. Petersburg after his unexpected death in 2013. But not his heart. That organ, preserved in formaldehyde, has traveled more than 1,000 miles to be studied by pathologists in three states. So far, they can’t agree on what killed him; was it his chronic heart condition or a medical mistake? It’s an important question to St. Anthony’s Hospital, where Kenan died three hours after undergoing a non-emergency procedure that drained liquid from his chest. (Gentry, 7/28)

Boston Globe: Legislation Highlights Divisions On Lyme Disease
Health insurers would have to cover long-term antibiotic treatment for Lyme disease under a measure approved by the Massachusetts Legislature — a vote that places Governor Charlie Baker in the crossfire between mainstream medicine and patient activists. Baker has until midnight Thursday to sign or veto the legislation or to let it become law without his signature. The governor, a former health insurance executive, has reservations about the bill. In a letter to lawmakers, he wrote that “long-term antibiotic therapy is not clinically recognized as an appropriate form of treatment.” (Freyer, 7/28)

The New Orleans Times-Picayune: Judge Decries 'Pettiness,' Blocks Jefferson Clinics' Eviction
A federal judge has stopped the Jefferson Parish Council from evicting the non-profit Jefferson Community Health Care Centers from government-owned clinics in Marrero and River Ridge -- at least temporarily. The ruling requires the Parish Council to let the non-profit continue operating at the two locations until another medical provider is found. (Bacon-Blood, 7/27)

The Tennessean: Healthways To Sell Division, Brand To Sharecare In Major Corporate Shake-Up
Healthways has reached an agreement to sell a key division — as well as its name and brand — to Atlanta-based digital health company Sharecare. Under the deal, Sharecare is getting a variety of Healthways' signature programs, including its Blue Zones Project, Dr. Ornish's heart disease reversal program, Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, Healthways' stake in a joint venture in Brazil and a weight-loss collaboration with Johns Hopkins Medicine. (Fletcher, 7/27)

Stateline: Decades After Ban, Lead Paint Lingers
In the wake of the Flint water crisis, states are rushing to test for high levels of lead in drinking water. But many are failing to come to grips with a more insidious problem: lingering lead paint in homes and schools. Paint, rather than drinking water, remains the main source of lead poisoning of young children in the U.S. (Wiltz, 7/27)

Boston Globe: Marijuana Candy Sends Two Teens To Hospital
Hingham police are warning teenagers and parents about the dangers of marijuana-laced candy after a teenager last week called 911 to report that his friend was having an allergic reaction to food. Under questioning from a dispatcher, the 18-year-old boy said that the girl, who is 17, was “reacting to marijuana-laced candy,” according to a statement issued Wednesday by the police. (Quintana, 7/27)

The Baltimore Sun: NCAA, State Reach Settlement In Case Of Frostburg Football Player Who Died After Head Injury
The National Collegiate Athletic Association and the state of Maryland have reached settlements with the family of a Frostburg State University football player who died from concussion-related injuries in a case that could have nationwide implications for college sports...The [Board of Public Works] voted in favor of the proposed $50,000 payout to the family of Derek Sheely, who died in 2011 after he collapsed on the practice field from a traumatic brain injury. (Dresser, 7/27)

Bloomberg: Anthem's Good, Bad And Ugly News
Anthem had some good headlines on Wednesday. The insurer reported second-quarter earnings and revenue that topped estimates, with the latter jumping 7.2 percent from a year earlier. It expects to insure more people than it initially forecast this year, after surprisingly robust growth in its Medicaid business. But beneath the good, there was also bad and ugly. (Max Nisen 7/27)

news@JAMA: JAMA Forum: The Partisan Divide On Health Care
Now that the party platforms for the 2016 campaign are written and posted online, we can see that Republicans and Democrats are as far apart on health care as they have been for quite some time. Platforms are never implemented as written, and not all candidates endorse every plank in them. However, they signal which issues are important to the parties and, broadly speaking, what candidates aim to do about them. (Larry Levitt, 7/27)

Modern Healthcare: Democratic Policy Experts Warn The ACA Is In Big Jeopardy If Trump Wins
Many healthcare industry leaders believe the Affordable Care Act is too deeply entrenched to be repealed, as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his party promise to do. But in the Democratic National Convention's only public discussion on healthcare policy, architects of the Affordable Care Act Wednesday warned he and congressional Republican leaders could indeed abolish key elements and roll back the insurance expansions and consumer protections. (Harris Meyer, 7/27)

San Francisco Chronicle: Depersonalization Of Health Care Not Discussed By Candidates
Gone are the days when most patients were discharged with clear diagnoses and in a stable condition. Not only was this good for patients but it served young doctors in training as well. For they saw a patient who had pneumonia or who had an appendectomy go through the full gamut of symptoms and treatment and on to recovery. This gave them confidence in their diagnostic and treatment skills. Now they are deprived of that. (Edward Volpintesta, 7/27)

The New York Times: In A Hospital, Health Care Until The Clock Runs Out
Once hospitals were where you found a doctor when you suddenly needed one; now doctors are all over the place, from big-box stores to storefront clinics. Hospitals were where you were headed if you were very sick; now you can heed your insurer’s pleas and choose a cheaper emergency center instead. Hospitals were where you stayed when you were too sick to survive at home; now you go home anyway, cobbling together your own nursing services from friends, relatives and drop-in professionals. (Abigail Zuger, 7/25)

The New England Journal Of Medicine: Caring For High-Need, High-Cost Patients — An Urgent Priority
Improving the performance of America’s health system will require improving care for the patients who use it most: people with multiple chronic conditions that are often complicated by patients’ limited ability to care for themselves independently and by their complex social needs. Focusing on this population makes sense for humanitarian, demographic, and financial reasons. From a humanitarian standpoint, high-need, high-cost (HNHC) patients deserve heightened attention both because they have major health care problems and because they are more likely than other patients to be affected by preventable health care quality and safety problems, given their frequent contact with the system. Demographically, the aging of our population ensures that HNHC patients, many of whom are older adults, will account for an increasing proportion of users of our health care system. And financially, the care of HNHC patients is costly. One frequently cited statistic is that they compose the 5% of our population that accounts for 50% of the country’s annual health care spending. (David Blumenthal, Bruce Chernof, Terry Fulmer, John Lumpkin, and Jeffrey Selberg, 7/27)

Stat: I’m An Immigrant And A Muslim. And I’M Here To Cure Cancer
It’s a long way from where I grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, to the dining room in Vice President Joe Biden’s home at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. Yet that’s where I found myself one day last December, along with a handful of other cancer specialists. We had been invited to offer our perspectives on the current cancer landscape, which contributed to shaping the “cancer moonshot.” I’m convinced that my perspective on medicine as an immigrant is what ultimately got me to the table. (Azra Raza, 7/28)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Cleveland Matters For Vice President Biden's Cancer Moonshot
Vice President Joe Biden's Cancer Moonshot has galvanized the country in a nonpartisan way as few recent events have. And it should. Virtually every family is, has been, or will be affected by cancer. We all have a stake in seeing the project succeed. (Stanton L. Gerson, 7/27)

The New York Times: Fraud And Other Threats To Medicare
Last week, when the Department of Justice charged three people in Miami with fraud and other crimes in a $1 billion scheme to bilk Medicare, it was the single largest criminal case in the nine-year history of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, a coalition of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. A month earlier, a crackdown by the strike force led to civil and criminal charges against 301 people in dozens of schemes totaling $900 million in allegedly false billings. Clearly, health care fraud is vast. Less obvious is that prevention, detection and punishment of fraud have improved in recent years, though that would be threatened if the Affordable Care Act of 2010 were weakened, as Republicans have long demanded. (7/28)

The New York Times' Upshot: Stem Cell Therapies Are Still Mostly Theory, Yet Clinics Are Flourishing
Health regulators in the United States are talked about as the best in the world, but a new study on the spread of stem cell clinics shows what can happen when regulations fall behind. Out of nowhere, over the past two to three years, the clinics have sprung up — 570 in the United States, according to a recent paper — offering untested stem cell treatments for just about every medical use imaginable. (Gina Kolata, 7/28)

Stat: Trying To Find Adequate Elder Care Is A Bureaucratic And Personal Nightmare
At age 83, my mom became steadily incapacitated by Parkinson’s disease and a gradual loss of vision. Finding care for her was a challenge, especially from 1,200 miles away. I quickly learned that my research had vastly underestimated the complications of long-distance caregiving. Problems emerge often, whether you are readily available or not, and they tend to demand immediate attention. Nor had I fully comprehended the extent of the vigilance required to protect against insufficient, low-quality services, whether by home health agencies, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, or hospitals. (Laura Katz Olson, 7/27)