What You Should Check Before Renewing Health Coverage

Several stories offer tips on renewing insurance policies for next year, including comparing your current policy to alternatives, which might offer better coverage at lower cost, and updating information about family size and income. The additional issues posed by language barriers are also explored.

The New York Times: U.S. Says Consumers Must Renew Health Insurance Policies
The Obama administration began notifying consumers on Wednesday that they should return to the federal health insurance marketplace to renew coverage for next year. In addition, the officials said, consumers should update information on their income and family size and should compare their current insurance with alternatives, which could offer better coverage at a lower cost (Pear, 10/15).

The Associated Press: 4 Questions To Ask Before Renewing Health Coverage
The health care overhaul makes renewing insurance so easy you don’t have to do a thing. However, there are many reasons to resist this temptation. More than 7 million people signed up for coverage through the overhaul’s public insurance exchanges after the first annual open enrollment window started last fall. Open enrollment returns starting Nov. 15, and experts say it brings with it the perfect chance to take stock in your insurance coverage, even if you like the plan you have this year. That coverage — or the cost of it — may change for 2015. Plus, new and better options also could be available in your market (10/15).

Kaiser Health News: Even With Insurance, Language Barriers Could Undermine Asian Americans’ Access To Care
Efforts to enroll Asian Americans in the health law’s marketplace plans have generally been touted as a success, but because coverage details are provided primarily in English or Spanish, those who depend on their native languages have encountered roadblocks as they try to use this new insurance (Luthra, 10/16).

D.C. Exchange And Favoritism To Congress; Sticker Shock For PreferredOne Customers

The conservative group, Judicial Watch, files a taxpayer lawsuit challenging what it describes as the District of Columbia's special treatment of more than 12,000 members of Congress, staffers and families, who buy policies in the district's small business exchange. Meanwhile, PreferredOne, the top seller on the MNsure exchange, announces average premium increases of 63 percent for next year.

CQ Healthbeat: D.C. Health Exchange Accused Of Giving Special Treatment To Congress
This time it’s not a lawmaker, but an outside conservative group that plans to file suit over alleged “special treatment” for members of Congress enrolled in gold-level coverage plans through DC Health Link. Judicial Watch, the group that continues to dog the Department of Health and Human Services for more transparency about implementation of the 2010 health care law, shared details Wednesday of a “taxpayer lawsuit challenging the District of Columbia’s special treatment of Congress concerning Obamacare.” Congress accounts for more than a quarter of the 50,520 people enrolled in the D.C. health exchange, and the subsidy members and staff receive to cover premiums has been taking heat from all sides (Hess, 10/15).

Minneapolis Star Tribune: Big Jump For PreferredOne Premiums
Sticker shock awaits thousands of people with health coverage through PreferredOne, the top seller on the MNsure exchange during its first year. The Golden Valley-based insurer said Wednesday that its individual market subscribers will see an average premium increase next year of 63 percent due to high claims costs (Snowbeck, 10/16).

The Fiscal Times: Will Obamacare’s State Exchanges Be Ready For Round 2?
With just one month to go until the start of Obamacare’s second open enrollment period, state and federal officials are being cautiously optimistic about their health exchange websites—assuring the public that there won’t be a repeat of last year’s technological nightmare. Speaking to health reporters last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell touted the newly revamped Healthcare.gov as a vast improvement over last year’s website—which was plagued with technical glitches. But when asked about how some of state exchanges that had trouble last year are shaping up, Burwell hesitated and said HHS is monitoring them on a state-by-state basis (Ehley, 10/15).

Watchdog.org: California Senator Investigates Millions In Obamacare Exchange Contracts
California’s beleaguered ObamaCare exchange is once again in the crosshairs of a state senator who is demanding answers following reports that millions in contracts never went out to bid and instead were awarded to friends of the agency’s director. Sen. Ted Gaines, who is also the GOP candidate for state insurance commissioner on the November ballot, fired off a letter to Covered California Director Peter Lee, asking how the agency “fulfills the public trust when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars” (Richards, 10/15).

Kentucky's Health Exchange Plays Big In Senate Race

The state's online insurance marketplace has proven popular, creating difficulties for the Republican incumbent, Sen. Mitch McConnell, who has vowed to repeal Obamacare , and giving a boost to Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes.

The Washington Post: Why The Debate Over Kentucky’s ‘Healthcare.Gov’ Site Matters
Kentucky's Republican senior senator, Mitch McConnell, is taking a bit of heat over a Web site. As part of his closely-watched race against Democrat Alison Grimes for that Senate seat, the Senate minority leader said Monday night that while he'd like to see Obamacare scrubbed from the face of the Earth, he's fine with the continued existence of Kynect, Kentucky's unfortunately named but nonetheless popular health insurance exchange site (Scola,10/15).

The Associated Press: Hillary Clinton Talks Health Care At Grimes Event
Hillary Rodham Clinton urged Kentucky voters to send Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes to the Senate to protect the state's 521,000 Kentuckians who have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. Incumbent Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell has vowed to repeal the law, which expanded the Medicaid program and provides discounted insurance plans for people with lower incomes. Clinton never mentioned McConnell by name, but said Grimes would work to "build it (the law), make it better and fix what's wrong with it" (Beam, 10/15).  

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker: Mitch McConnell’s Puzzling Claims On Insurance In Kentucky, Post-Obamacare
Many readers requested a fact check of McConnell’s Obamacare statements in his debate with the Democratic challenger, Alison Lundergan Grimes. It’s a very interesting set of statements, and we have puzzled over them till our puzzler was sore. McConnell has some difficulty with the Obamacare issue because the Kentucky version, known as Kynect, has been a huge success. About half a million Kentuckians signed up for health insurance, many receiving it for the first time. Fewer than 100,000 joined private insurance plans; that means the bulk of the population joined Medicaid, which was greatly expanded under the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare (Kessler, 10/16).

UnitedHealth Group, HCA Raise Outlook

Both the health insurance company and the hospital operator raised their 2014 outlooks after posting results in the third quarter that beat expectations.

The Wall Street Journal: UnitedHealth’s Profit Boosted by Lower Medical Costs
UnitedHealth Group Inc. raised its outlook for the year as it posted strong results in the most recent quarter, driven by lower medical costs. Earnings topped analysts’ expectations. The company said it now expects to post earnings of $5.60 to $5.65 a share for the year, up from its previous call of $5.50 to $5.60 a share. It had previously raised the bottom end of its guidance range because of strong results and improving trends (Calia, 10/16).

The Wall Street Journal: HCA Raises 2014 Outlook, Buoyed By Better Quarterly Estimates
HCA Holdings Inc. raised its 2014 outlook as the hospital operator also projected third-quarter results that topped analysts’ estimates. Shares rose 5% to $68.10 in recent after-hours trading. For the year, the company raised its per-share earnings estimate to between $4.40 and $4.60 with revenue at $36.5 billion to $37 billion, from its previous estimate for per-share profit of $4 to $4.25 and revenue of $36 billion to $36.5 billion. For the current quarter, the company forecast per-share earnings of $1.16, including asset-sale losses of two cents a share, and revenue of $9.22 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected per-share profit of 97 cents and revenue of $9.04 billion (Stynes, 10/15).

Ebola Worries Focus Attention On Public Health Leaders; Administration Bolsters Its Response

With questions emerging about the handling of Ebola patients, a House subcommittee is holding a hearing that will feature testimony from CDC Director Tom Frieden and Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer and senior executive vice president at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Meanwhile, scrutiny continues regarding hospitals' infection control capabilities, national containment plans and quarantine issues.  

The New York Times: C.D.C. Director Becomes Face Of Nation’s Worry And Flawed Response
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the nation’s top public health official, has always overcome obstacles. He stopped outbreaks of tuberculosis in New York City and made headway against the disease in India. He banned public smoking in New York when he was the city’s health commissioner. And at 49, he ascended to his dream job — director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. … Now, Dr. Frieden, 53, has been pitched into the biggest test of his career. He has become the face of the Obama administration's flawed response to Ebola in the United States, and on Thursday he is likely to face withering questions about his record during a congressional hearing. On his watch, two health workers in Dallas who were caring for a Liberian man with Ebola have become infected with the disease. And on Wednesday, health officials said the second worker had taken a flight shortly before she tested positive for Ebola, leaving officials scrambling to identify dozens of passengers (Tavernise, 10/15).

NPR: Top Dallas Hospital Official To Tell Lawmakers 'We Made Mistakes'
A top official from the hospital in Dallas where the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S. was treated and two nurses who cared for him have become infected, will testify before the House today, where he's expected to acknowledge mistakes in the facility's handling of the situation. "We made mistakes," says Dr. Daniel Varga, the chief clinical officer with Texas Health Resources, which runs Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, in prepared testimony obtained by member station KERA (Neuman and McCallister, 10/16).

The Wall Street Journal: Federal Health Agency Reviews Nurses’ Allegations Of Mishandled Ebola Case
A federal health-care agency said Wednesday it was reviewing allegations raised by a nurses union that the Dallas hospital grappling with Ebola mishandled its first case, putting patients and health-care workers at risk. David Wright, deputy regional administrator for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Dallas, said it was "closely evaluating and reviewing" the allegations made by National Nurses United on behalf of what it said were an unnamed number of nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas (Frosch, 10/15).

The New York Times: Downfall For Hospital Where The Virus Spread
Some nurses donned layer after layer of protective garb but unknowingly raised their risk of exposure to the Ebola virus when taking the gear off. Some wore gowns that left their necks uncovered and haphazardly applied surgical tape to the bare spots. And it was two days after the Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan was admitted before personnel began wearing biohazard suits (Sack, 10/15).

USA Today: Ebola Raises Concerns Over Hospitals' Infection Controls
As public health authorities race to assess the U.S. medical system's ability to contain Ebola, the track record of the nation's hospitals in controlling other infections suggests a lot of them aren't prepared. From small, rural hospitals to sprawling urban medical centers, infection control has been a persistent and vexing problem in U.S. health care for decades (Eisler and Hoyer, 10/16).

WBUR: For Hospitals And Clinics: Insurance To Protect Against Losses From Ebola
A Boston-based insurance broker is rolling out a new policy for Ebola-related losses at hospitals and clinics across the country. How much money might hospitals lose during an Ebola-related quarantine? And will patients use hospitals that treat the virus? Phil Edmundson at William Gallagher Associates developed Ebola insurance to address these risks (Bebinger, 10/16).

Los Angeles Times: Obama Tells CDC He Wants Ebola 'SWAT Team' Ready To Go Anywhere
President Obama said Wednesday evening that he directed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create a "SWAT team" to be ready to deploy anywhere in the country to help local healthcare systems respond to any Ebola cases. … At the same time, Obama assured Americans once again that the risk of a widespread Ebola outbreak in the U.S. remains very low and that the best way to prevent its spread is to control the outbreak in West Africa (Hennessey and Levey, 10/15).

Los Angeles Times: As Second Nurse Is Infected With Ebola, Her Air Travel Heightens Fears
After weeks of assertions that U.S. hospitals were well-prepared for Ebola, the latest developments illuminated lapses on several fronts: at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where two nurses contracted Ebola while treating Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian who died of the disease; at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which says it could have reacted more aggressively to Duncan's case; and with a public health system that has no way of preventing potentially contagious people from boarding public transportation, even if they know they may have been exposed to Ebola (Hennessy-Fiske, Mohan and Susman, 10/15).

The Washington Post: Health-Care Worker With Ebola Was Allowed To Fly Despite Slight Fever
The experts had warned that fighting Ebola is hard, and Wednesday’s drumbeat of bad news proved them correct. The day began with a bulletin about another health-care worker stricken with the deadly disease, and the news got worse with the revelation that she had flown with a slightly elevated temperature from Cleveland to Dallas on a crowded airliner barely 24 hours before her diagnosis (Berman, Sun and Achenbach, 10/15).

The Wall Street Journal: In Ebola Cases, New Focus On Power To Control Travel
The revelation that a second Texas health-care worker diagnosed with the Ebola virus flew from Dallas to Cleveland and back has raised a looming question: Why wasn’t she quarantined before boarding a plane? The answer lies in a layered health-care system that relies on close coordination between state, local and federal authorities to be effective in stopping disease, health-law experts said (Palazzolo, 10/15).

Politico: Ebola Gaffes Fuel Quarantine Questions
The startling news Wednesday that an Ebola-infected nurse flew from Cleveland to Dallas earlier this week unleashed a new round of fears about the virus’s spread in the U.S. and whether the government’s legal authority to contain the illness by limiting travel is up to the task. For nearly a decade, officials have been warning that the country’s quarantine regulations are woefully outdated and badly need revising. The George W. Bush administration proposed "critical updates" to enhance the government’s authority to detain passengers, but never pushed the changes through before the effort was abandoned under the Obama administration (Gerstein, 10/16).

Politico: Obama, Ebola And Optics
Optics, which Obama and his staff dismiss as never being much on their minds, always means a lot to this White House. Aides in the past have pointed out that any abrupt changes to Obama’s schedule have the potential to convey more of a crisis than may exist. But facing the risk of embarrassing juxtapositions of dying health care workers while Obama was out campaigning, that’s exactly what they did (Dovere, 10/15).

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker: The Absurd Claim That Only Republicans Are To Blame For Cuts To Ebola Research
This ad is simply a more extreme version of a new Democratic talking point — that GOP budget cuts have harmed the nation’s ability to handle the Ebola outbreak. It mixes statistics — the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) "cut" $585 million (the ad offers no date range) — with disturbing images of the outbreak and various Republican leaders saying variations of the word "cut." A slightly more nuanced version of this theme was launched by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which in online advertising began to equate a congressional budget vote in 2011 with a vote for the House GOP budget in 2014 that supposedly protected special interests (Kessler, 10/15).

California Agency Issues 'Report Cards' On Insurers, Medical Groups

The California Office of the Patient Advocate Wednesday released the report cards, which are based on 2013 claims data and patient surveys, a month ahead of Covered California's 2015 open enrollment period.

Los Angeles Times: Kaiser Leads HMOs In Providing Recommended Care In State
Kaiser Permanente was the only HMO to earn a top four-star rating for providing recommended care, according to California's latest report card on insurers and medical groups. The scores issued Wednesday focus on California's 10 largest HMOs, the six biggest preferred-provider organization plans and more than 200 physician groups covering 16 million consumers. Anthem Blue Cross, the state's largest for-profit insurer, and Cigna Corp. led the way among PPO plans with three-star ratings. The data is drawn from claims data and patient surveys in 2013 (Terhune, 10/15).

Kaiser Health News: Capsules: Calif. ‘Report Cards’ Are Out In Time For Open Enrollment
The California Office of the Patient Advocate Wednesday released “report cards” that rate major health plans on selected clinical care services, including cancer treatment, mental health, chronic disease management and patient satisfaction. The assessments, which also include data on selected medical groups, are available online in multiple languages. The state timed the release of this year’s report cards to coincide with the second round of open enrollment in Covered California, the state’s online health exchange, which kicks off Nov. 15. Several plans included in the report cards are offered on the exchange (Hernandez , 10/16).

Meanwhile, in other news -

The California Health Report: State Refuses To Identify Hospitals It Says Have Harmed Patients
California has been withholding money from 66 hospitals it holds culpable for medical errors, but state officials refuse to describe the mistakes or publicly identify the hospitals, all of which have allegedly harmed patients. California Department of Health Care Services spokesman Norman Williams said the agency is withholding disciplinary records to protect patients’ private medical information, but patient advocates are criticizing the lack of transparency (Richard, 10/15).

A Day After The High Court Blocked A Texas Law Restricting Abortions, Shuttered Clinics Prepared To Reopen

Some Texas abortion clinics resumed scheduling patients for abortions after the Supreme Court's intervention. However, they did so knowing the legal challenges are not over.  

The New York Times: Texas Abortion Clinics To Reopen Despite A Future In Legal Limbo
A day after the Supreme Court blocked a Texas law that had forced abortion clinics to close, some of the shuttered facilities prepared to reopen, pleased at the reprieve but mindful that the legal fight was far from over (Eckholm, 10/15).

Houston Chronicle: ‘Shocked’ Abortion Clinics Start To Reopen In Texas
At least four women's health centers across Texas resumed scheduling patients for abortions Wednesday morning, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked parts of a law that had forced more than a dozen facilities to stop providing the procedure. "We're all shocked, to be honest," said Ginny Braun, director of the Routh Street Women's Clinic in Dallas, which already had scheduled four patients for initial procedures by 8:30 a.m.  "But I'm delighted that there has finally been some justice dealt this state and we will go forward from today." Routh Street was one of two clinics in Dallas to close when a federal appeals court ruled Oct. 2 to at least temporarily allow enforcement of a requirement that abortion facilities meet the standards of hospital-style surgical centers. A voicemail message at the other clinic, Abortion Advantage, reported it still was closed (Rosenthal, 10/15).

Kaiser Health News: Despite Supreme Court Ruling, Some Texas Abortion Clinics Remain Closed
But even with this ruling, the ongoing fight in Texas has permanently changed the landscape for abortion providers, and not all the clinics will re-open. Miller’s clinic in Austin no longer has a lease or a state license. One Houston doctor got frustrated, closed his clinic at the end of September, and retired. Miller once had a clinic in Beaumont, but she closed it in March when doctors there can’t obtain admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, another requirement in the state law (Feibel, 10/16).

State Highlights: Merck To Pay $31 Million To Settle States' Medicaid Fraud Claims

A selection of health policy stories from California, Arkansas, Illinois and Colorado. 

Reuters: Merck Unit To Pay $31M To Settle Fraud Claims By U.S. States
A subsidiary of Merck & Co has agreed to pay U.S. states $31 million to settle claims that it overcharged their Medicaid programs for an antidepressant it had sold at a discount to pharmacy companies, attorney generals from three states said on Wednesday. The officials from Idaho, New York and Florida said Organon USA Inc offered the drug, Remeron, to nursing home pharmacies at a discount to encourage its use over competitors. At the same time, the company reported the full cost of the drug when seeking reimbursements from state Medicaid programs, the states claimed. New Jersey-based Organon, which did not admit any wrongdoing, also was accused of improperly promoting use of the drug by children and teens (Wiessner, 10/15).

Kaiser Health News: Capsules: Spike in ER, Hospitalization Use Short-Lived After Medicaid Expansion
While the Medicaid expansion may lead to a dramatic rise in emergency room use and hospitalizations for previously uninsured people, that increase is largely temporary and should not lead to a dramatic impact on state budgets, according to an analysis from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research released Wednesday (Aliferis, 10/15). 

California Healthline: UCLA Study Shows Why One Of The Biggest Obamacare Fears May Not Come To Pass
Something like 10 million Americans -- give or take a few million -- have gained health coverage thanks to the Affordable Care Act. And here's one way to put that in perspective: In just six months between late 2013 and early 2014, the nation's persistently high uninsured rate fell by a staggering 25%. So does this mean that the nation's already busy emergency departments are about to bust at the seams, as some Obamacare critics suggest? That states still nixing the Medicaid expansion are right to worry it would overcrowd their hospitals? Not necessarily, says UCLA's Gerald Kominski (Diamond, 10/15).

The California Health Report: State Refuses To Identify Hospitals It Says Have Harmed Patients
California has been withholding money from 66 hospitals it holds culpable for medical errors, but state officials refuse to describe the mistakes or publicly identify the hospitals, all of which have allegedly harmed patients. California Department of Health Care Services spokesman Norman Williams said the agency is withholding disciplinary records to protect patients’ private medical information, but patient advocates are criticizing the lack of transparency (Richard, 10/15).

Los Angeles Times: Mission Hospital Halts Elective Surgeries After Patient Infections
One of Orange County's largest hospitals has halted all elective surgeries after its accreditation came under review following an outbreak of surgical infections. Mission Hospital performs about 7,000 surgeries a year, of which nearly 70% are elective (Jennings, 10/15).

The Wall Street Journal: Panel Backs Requiring Arkansas To Provide Drug
An advisory board recommended Wednesday that Arkansas’s Medicaid program eliminate restrictions on the use of an expensive cystic fibrosis drug made by Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc. that are the subject of a legal battle in federal court. Members of the state’s Drug Utilization Review Board, which is made up of Arkansas doctors and pharmacists, recommended that the state adopt a revised set of criteria for prescribing the drug, called Kalydeco, that wouldn’t require that patients seeking the drug first prove their health worsened after taking two older, less-costly treatments (Walker, 10/15).

Chicago Post-Tribune: $4.2M Self-insurance Savings Projected For Lake County
The first year of a new network for the county’s health and workers compensation self-insurance pool has resulted in a savings of $3 million through the end of September. That figure is on pace to climb to $4.2 million by the end of the year, David Baker, president of Professional Claims Management Inc., the county’s insurance administrator. Plans are also in the works to see if a clinic for county employees can be built to promote wellness and better care and further reduce claims. Lake County commissioners on Wednesday said they were pleased with what they have seen so far this year and approved the contract with PCM for 2015. Baker said health insurance costs are continually on the rise. Both East Chicago and Hammond, two of PCM’s clients, are seeing slight increases this year. Health insurance medical claims costs are down 16 percent, prescription drug costs are down 15 percent and workman’s compensation costs are down 5 percent. Baker said while the health care costs are declined, employee claims rose slightly, 5 percent, this year. The savings is due to the switch by PCM to Cigna. Because Cigna is a larger network than previously used by the county, the amount it now pays for services is discounted more than it was under the smaller networks used in the past (Napoleon, 10/15).

The Associated Press: Arkansas Medicaid Vendor Wants Status Reinstated
The owner of two mental health companies wants an Arkansas agency to change its mind about the facilities' status as Medicaid providers. The state's Department of Human Services suspended Trinity Behavioral Health Care and Maxus Inc. a day after it identified owner Ted Suhl and accused him of giving bribes to an ex-deputy department director. The agency sent letters to the facilities Oct. 8, saying that they would no longer receive Medicaid payments for any new claims, citing a "credible allegation of fraud." It said Medicaid claims by the firms' existing patients would still be paid for up to 30 days to give them time to find new providers, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported (10/15).

Denver Post: Homeless Housing Nonprofit Branches Into Health Care
Aurora Warms the Night has provided motel vouchers to hundreds of homeless men, women and children on nights when the temperature drops below 20 degrees since 2006. Now, the award-winning nonprofit is gearing up for its first winter in a bigger building at 1544 Elmira St. The new location just around the corner brings the total amount of space to just under 2,000 square feet. Thanks to the extra room, the organization has expanded many of its in-house services to help get clients off the streets. Most notable are an onsite health clinic provided once a week, HIV/AIDS testing, vocational coaching through Aurora Mental Health and guidance for enrolling in food stamp and Medicaid programs (Mitchell, 10/16).

Viewpoints: 'Blunders' On Ebola; McConnell's Strange Logic On Obamacare; Temporary Victory For Texas Women

USA Today: Hospital's Ebola Blunders Feed Fear: Our View
The point of this is not to flog Presbyterian, though a few lashes might help snap [Daniel] Varga and other administrators back to reality. Rather, it is to probe whether the hospital's dismal performance exposes more widespread weaknesses that could turn a few inevitable, isolated cases of Ebola into something much worse. From the earliest days of the crisis, CDC Director Tom Frieden has been relentlessly reassuring. He has insisted, among other things, that the nation's hospitals could identify and isolate Ebola patients — the indispensable first line of defense against an outbreak. The Dallas experience raises doubts (10/15). 

USA Today: Why Ebola Drug Seems So Elusive: Column
The emergence of a third case of Ebola in Dallas shows us that the deadly infection, while less transmissible than viruses such as the flu, is still highly contagious. Though the U.S. health care system will prevent Ebola from becoming epidemic here, we could still face large outbreaks. At some point, the only thing that will reverse the global tide could be a vaccine or a drug that can treat infected patients (Scott Gottlieb, 10/15).

The Washington Post’s Post Partisan: A Little Ebola Panic Might Be Helpful
Now, now, let’s not panic. Yes, we have a second health-care worker infected with Ebola after treating the Liberian man who apparently concealed his exposure to this often-fatal disease, but this is no reason to panic. "It’s bad news that another person is sick," Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said Wednesday to MSNBC anchor Jose Diaz-Balart. Indeed (Kathleen Parker, 10/15). 

The Wall Street Journal: The Ebola Twilight Of Public Institutions: The WHO And CDC Are Failing In Their Core Health Mission 
On Wednesday the World Health Organization warned of the threat of a global plague, which can cause "vomiting, marked hypocalcemia, metabolic acidosis, convulsions and, in rare cases, even death." Ebola? No, the WHO culprit is the overconsumption of energy drinks. The Ebola catastrophe in West Africa has now claimed more than 4,500 lives and the disease continues to spread geometrically, while an outbreak in a major European or North American city would lead to more severe economic dislocation. But the tragedy is also ruthlessly exposing the decay of the once-eminent public institutions that were established to contain such transnational contagions—organizations both international and domestic (10/15).

The New York Times: Mitch McConnell And Alison Lundergan Grimes Take On The White House
Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Steve Beshear, got behind the Affordable Care Act, expanded Medicaid and set up a state health insurance exchange known as Kynect, which now benefits an estimated 500,000 Kentuckians. It’s working so well that even Mr. McConnell, who says he would "pull out" the health care law "root and branch," pretends that Kynect could survive even if the law were repealed. Such deception deserves an aggressive response. Unfortunately, Ms. Grimes does not provide one. Instead of explaining that Kynect depends on federal subsidies, she’s content to call Mr. McConnell's plan a "fantasy" and then pledge to fix the health care law. Her favorite improvement — allowing people to keep their old insurance plans even if those plans do not comply with the federal law’s standards — is a fantasy, too. Ms. Grimes is so loath to wade into the health care debate that she does not mention the law on her website (Juliet Lapidos, 10/15). 

Los Angeles Times: An Expert's Heroic Fact-Checking Of Mitch McConnell On Obamacare
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is facing a stiff reelection challenge this year, has stuck to his stated determination to repeal the Affordable Care Act if his party takes control of the Senate in the next election. This is a curious and delicate position for McConnell to hold, because his home state is one of the shining beacons of the ACA's rollout. The Kentucky health insurance exchange, Kynect, is enormously popular among Kentuckians. Some 527,000 residents have signed up for qualified health plans or Medicaid, which the state expanded (Michael Hiltzik, 10/15).

The New York Times: Resurrecting Smallpox? Easier Than You Think
On Oct. 16, 1975, 3-year-old Rahima Banu of Bangladesh became the last human infected with naturally occurring smallpox (variola major). When her immune system killed the last smallpox virus in her body, it also killed the last such smallpox virus in humans. In what is arguably mankind’s greatest achievement, smallpox was eradicated. ... the war is not over; the smallpox virus has now found a second host. It is not the pig. In fact, it is not even what we think of as a living thing. It is the computer (Leonard Adleman, 10/15). 

The New York Times: The Supreme Court Acts For Texas Women
With a brief unsigned order on Tuesday, the Supreme Court acted to prevent Texas from enforcing two key parts of the state’s 2013 package of extreme new abortion restrictions. While the legal battle over the provisions continues, and is very likely to land back at the court before long, the order was a significant victory for women in Texas. The important result is that it will allow more clinics offering safe and legal abortion care to continue operating pending a final court resolution (10/15). 

Bloomberg: The Vanishing U.S. Abortion Clinic
Abortion clinics are closing in the U.S. at a record pace. In four states — Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming — just one remains. American women were having fewer abortions before clinic closings accelerated in the last couple of years. So no one can be sure how much the push to restrict clinics in Republican-dominated states is connected to falling abortion rates. But the new strategy adopted by abortion opponents, and the court battles it has set off, may define how far abortion rights can be limited without being overturned (Esmé E. Deprez, 10/15).

Los Angeles Times: Insurers' Spending Against Prop. 45 Tips Scale In Its Favor
Proposition 45, which would allow California's insurance commissioner to regulate rates for certain medical plans, is a close call for this voter. On the one hand, the commissioner would be touching on — although not exactly duplicating — work already performed by the state entity created to administer Obamacare. That could slow down the work of Covered California in managing an exchange in which people can obtain health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. But on the other hand, the insurance industry is pouring barrels of money — $43 million the last time I looked — into the campaign to defeat Prop. 45. That tells me the insurers fear losing profits. And it indicates that policy buyers could gain in their pocketbooks (George Skelton, 10/15). 

The Wall Street Journal: Shifting Views On Same-Sex Marriage, Marijuana And End-of-Life Issues
On the third issue, physician-assisted euthanasia, there has been a gradual increase in agreement with the proposition that "doctors should be allowed to end a person’s life by some painless means if a patient or his or her family request it." Gallup reports that support has climbed from less than 40% in the late 1940s, to 65% in 1990, to about 70% today. Support is lower when the issue is referred to as "physician-assisted suicide," but there is still majority support. ... Change in opinion is, of course, not always sufficient to change policy (Drew Altman, 10/15).