The Hill: HHS Report: Dire Warnings Of ObamaCare Price Spikes Wrong
A new report from the Obama administration finds that ObamaCare premiums rose 8 percent last year, pushing back on warnings of larger price hikes. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) report released Tuesday finds that ObamaCare premiums rose 8 percent on average — from $356 a month to $386 a month — from 2015 to 2016. (Sullivan, 4/12)

CQ Healthbeat: HHS Report Shows Lower Premium Increase Than Expected
The Obama administration is hoping to stave off a repeat of last year's furor over rising insurance premiums on the public exchanges with a new report that highlights a 4 percent average premium increase for people getting tax credits under the new health law. (Mershon, 4/12)

(KUAR) Arkansas Public Radio: Governor Hutchinson: Highway Plan Dead Without Medicaid Expansion
Failure to pass his Arkansas Works program could lead to the cancellation of a planned special session for highways, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Tuesday. Hutchinson spoke the day before the Legislature enters its even-numbered-year fiscal session, where the signature issue will be Arkansas Works, his plan to continue the private option. That’s the government program where the state uses federal Medicaid dollars to purchase private health insurance for adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Created in 2013, the private option expires at the end of this year. (Brawner, 4/12)

Arkansas Times Record: Hutchinson: No Highways Session If Arkansas Medicaid Plan Not Funded
In a news conference at the state Capitol where he was joined by members of the Arkansas Highway Commission and several state legislators, Hutchinson said that if the Legislature does not approve funding for Arkansas Works, which would continue and modify the program now known as the private option, then his plan to boost highway funding will be impossible. ... Since its creation in 2013, the private option has used federal Medicaid money to subsidize private health insurance for more than 267,000 low-income Arkansans and has reduced uncompensated care costs at hospitals across the state. The plan received approval in a special session last week, but the votes it received fell short of three-fourths majorities that will be needed in both chambers to fund the program. (Lyon, 4/12)

The Associated Press: Hutchinson: Highway Plan Dead Without Medicaid Expansion
In January, Hutchinson unveiled his highway plan, which he said would boost funding to match federal highway dollars — a move that would generate about $750 million over a 10-year period, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette previously reported. Hutchinson said that without approval of his Medicaid plan, his highway funding proposal to use $40 million from accumulated and unallocated surplus for one-time use would be impossible given a budget gap of more than $100 million. (4/12)

Arkansas Online: Governor: Road Plan At Risk If Medicaid Plan Fails
But a leading opponent of the Medicaid expansion, Sen. Bart Hester, R-Cave Springs, said it would be hard to find many Arkansans who think the highways aren't adequately funded with several million dollars a day in state and federal funding. "It is not a credible threat," he said in a telephone interview after Hutchinson's news conference. "We are adequately funded for highways. "We could always use more, and there is always a desire for more highways. But I think [the funding level] is fine," he said. (Wickline, 4/13)

Maine Public Radio: Maine Senate Narrowly Passes Medicaid Expansion
In a 18-17 vote, the Maine Senate has supported a measure sponsored by Republican Sen. Tom Saviello of Wilton that would provide health insurance to nearly 80,000 Mainers. The measure would use Medicaid funds from the federal government to buy private health insurance for poor Mainers. ... It’s estimated the proposal would bring in more than $2 billion in federal funds over the next five years and create 3,000 jobs. Opponents argued that the cost of the program increases in future years and questioned whether the state should rely on a federal government that continues to build up its debt. (Leary, 4/12)

Portland Press Democrat: Maine Senate Passes Medicaid Expansion By One-Vote Margin
A bill to expand Medicaid eligibility to more low-income Mainers won initial support in the Republican-controlled Senate by a single vote Tuesday. The measure is likely to pass in the Democratic-controlled House, but faces an all-but-guaranteed veto from Gov. Paul LePage, who has rebuffed past attempts to expand Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act. (Miller, 4/12)

Rapid City (S.D.) Journal: No Decision Yet, But State Prepping For Medicaid Expansion
Although nothing is certain yet about South Dakota's proposed expansion of Medicaid coverage, a member of Gov. Dennis Daugaard's cabinet on Monday said preparations for adding 50,000 Medicaid recipients are moving "full speed ahead." Daugaard would call a special session of the Legislature on expanding Medicaid eligibility, and a decision on whether to do that probably will come by summer. But Social Services Secretary Lynne Valenti said five teams of tribal, state and federal government officials are working with health care providers on the operational plans. She provided an update to members of the state Board of Social Services. (Mercer, 4/12)

The New York Times: Facebook And Napster Pioneer To Start Cancer Immunotherapy Effort
Sean Parker was a pioneer in music sharing when he co-founded Napster and in social media as the early president of Facebook. Now he wants to pioneer in a field that is already jumping with activity: cancer immunotherapy. Mr. Parker is announcing Wednesday that he is donating $250 million to a new effort that will bring together six leading academic centers to develop ways to unleash patients’ own immune systems to fight cancer. (Pollack, 4/13)

Reuters: Sean Parker Sets Up $250 Million Cancer Immunotherapy Collaboration
"Any breakthrough made at one center is immediately available to another center without any kind of IP (intellectual property) entanglements or bureaucracy," Parker, the co-founder of music-sharing website Napster and the first president of Facebook, told Reuters in an interview. The institute will focus on the emerging field of cancer immunotherapy, which harnesses the body's immune system to fight cancer cells. (Beasley, 4/13)

USA Today: Billionaire Announces $250 Million In Cancer Immunotherapy Funding
Parker's enormous cash infusion is the largest ever for cancer immunotherapy — and one of the largest ever for cancer research — and comes three months after President Obama called for a $1 billion federal cancer research program that he dubbed a “moonshot." The estate of the billionaire shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig donated $540 million to six cancer centers in 2014 and Nike co-founder Phil Knight pledged $500 million to cancer researchers at Oregon Health & Science University in 2013. (O'Donnell, 4/13)

The Associated Press: Collaborative Institute Aims To Speed Cancer Drug Creation
“Everybody knows that we need to move forward and change the model” for cancer research, Jeffrey Bluestone, an immunology researcher and the institute’s CEO, told The Associated Press Tuesday. “The goal here is to rapidly move our discoveries to patients.” For decades, fiercely competitive and secretive drugmakers protected their money-making discoveries with patents and lawsuits. Academic researchers likewise often guarded their work closely until it was published because their promotions, awards and sometimes revenue from licensing patents depended on individual achievement. That often slowed progress. (Johnson, 4/13)

The Washington Post: $250 Million, 300 Scientists And 40 Labs: Sean Parker’s Revolutionary Project To ‘Solve’ Cancer
“Cancer immunotherapy is such an incredibly complex field, and for every answer it seems to pose 10 more questions. I’m an entrepreneur so I wish some of these questions had been answered yesterday,” Parker said. He describes the effort as a way to remove obstacles related to bureaucracy and personality that will allow scientists to borrow from each other’s labs unencumbered. The researchers will continue to be based at their home institutions but will receive additional funding and access to other resources, including specialized data scientists and genetic engineering equipment set to become part of the nonprofit Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy in San Francisco. (Cha, 4/13)

Los Angeles Times: Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Launches Initiative To Advance Cancer Immunotherapies
Specifically, Parker said his institute will place its initial bets on three broad areas of research: developing a new generation of T-cell therapies; investigating new uses for, and effective new combinations of, the kinds of "checkpoint inhibitor" drugs that have already proved effective for skin, lung and kidney cancers; and improving the effectiveness and potential uses for vaccines and cellular therapies in fighting a wider array of cancers. (Healy, 4/12)

The Wall Street Journal: Sean Parker Turns To Cancer Research
Bold cancer campaigns have proved disappointing in the past, and big advances aren’t likely overnight. Researchers are learning that tumor cells and immune-system cells are enormously complex, complicating efforts to understand how their interactions promote or inhibit disease. In addition, the high costs of immunotherapy drugs that reach the market are prompting concerns about the affordability of potentially life-saving treatments. The new efforts are fueled in part by the initial success of drugs called checkpoint inhibitors from Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Merck & Co. as well as still-experimental ways to engineer immune-system cells to attack tumors. Many patients with advanced melanoma, lung cancer and leukemia have survived for years after being given only weeks or months to live. (Winslow, 4/13)

The San Francisco Chronicle: Entrepreneur Sean Parker Creates Cancer Immunotherapy Effort
Billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sean Parker has donated $250 million to launch an effort, based in San Francisco, that combines the forces of six top cancer research centers nationwide to develop treatments in the growing field of cancer immunotherapy, which uses the power of the body’s immune system to fight disease. (Colliver, 4/13)

Reuters: Congress Sends Obama Bill On Zika Drug Development
U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday approved a bill to provide financial incentives to companies developing treatments for the Zika virus, and the White House said President Barack Obama was expected to sign the legislation although it is insufficient to meet the challenge. The measure allows the Food and Drug Administration to include Zika drug developers in the agency's priority review voucher program. The program encourages manufacturers to study treatments for diseases that might not be profitable by expediting the regulatory review of a more lucrative drug in their research pipeline. (Clarke and Morgan, 4/12)

Reuters: Obama Expected To Sign Bill On Zika Drug Development: White House
U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to sign a bill to provide financial incentives to companies developing treatments for the Zika virus, a White House spokeswoman said, but the bill passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday is insufficient to meet the challenge. "We hope that this legislation encourages private sector partners to address the challenge of Zika, but it contains no funding and is ultimately insufficient on its own, since it doesn't provide the $1.9 billion in funding that our public health experts have said is needed right now to prepare Americans for the imminent local transmission of Zika in this country," spokeswoman Katie Hill said. (Gardner, 4/12)

Meanwhile, in Washington, patients are waiting weeks for their Zika test results —

The Seattle Times: Zika Test Backlog Leaves Scores Of Washington Residents Anxious For Answers
When Stephanie Billmayer flew back to Seattle from Brazil on March 1, the first thing she did was schedule a test for the Zika virus. Eight weeks pregnant, the English teacher wanted only to know her unborn baby was safe from the devastating epidemic exploding across Latin America and the Caribbean. But it was more than a month before she got any answers. Her blood test was among dozens from Washington state and thousands across the U.S. backlogged at a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lab in Fort Collins, Colo. (Aleccia, 4/13)

The Associated Press: Painkiller Critics Take Aim At Hospital Surveys, Procedures
Critics of how prescription painkillers are administered in the U.S. are calling on health officials to phase out hospital procedures and questionnaires used to manage pain. They say the current system inadvertently encourages the overprescribing of addictive drugs like Vicodin and OxyContin, fueling an epidemic of overdoses tied to the opioid medications. Deaths linked to misuse and abuse of prescription opioids increased to nearly 19,000 in 2014, the highest figure on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Perrone, 4/13)

Elsewhere, doctors in Virginia have received new guidance on prescribing opioids, and, in Ohio, pain pill prescriptions will be limited to 90 days —

The Richmond Times-Dispatch: New Opioid Prescription Guidelines Offered To Va. ER Docs
As prescription painkillers and heroin take more lives through overdose than any other type of accident, doctors and government officials around the country are scrambling for solutions. On Tuesday, hospital emergency departments across Virginia received new guidelines aimed at curbing opioid misuse and addiction. The 14-point guidelines, which encourage doctors to avoid prescribing painkillers and to give patients no more than a three-day supply in extreme cases, were endorsed by the Virginia Hospital & Health Care Association along with the Virginia College of Emergency Physicians. (Ramsey, 4/12)

The Columbus Dispatch: Kasich Seeks Tighter Controls On Prescription Drugs In Ohio
Ohio will reinforce the drug war by limiting prescriptions of narcotic pain pills to 90 days, improving access to medication-assisted drug treatment, and tightening pharmacy licensing requirements. (Johnson, 4/13)

The Wall Street Journal: Religious Groups, Obama Administration Respond To Supreme Court Request For Contraception Compromise
New briefs from the Obama administration and Christian-affiliated nonprofits could shift the Supreme Court’s handling of a standoff over the federal health law’s contraceptive coverage requirements. The court, operating with eight members following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, in March took the unusual step of asking each side to send additional briefs after it heard oral argument in the case. The request asked both sides to address whether there was some fresh compromise whereby health plans could offer birth control coverage for workers at religiously affiliated institutions whose teachings oppose it, without involvement from the employer sponsoring the plan. (Radnofsky and Kendall, 4/12)

The Washington Post: Contraception Compromise Acceptable If It Ends Legal Challenges, Administration Says
The Obama administration said a compromise floated by the Supreme Court to resolve objections from religious organizations to providing their employees with contraceptives would work only if it was clear that the women would receive the coverage through other means, and if it ended the controversy. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. told the court that requiring a modification to the accommodation already offered to the religiously affiliated colleges, charities and hospitals was unnecessary. He said a modification would be acceptable only if the court ruled that it would satisfy the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and if it halted lawsuits from groups that say providing contraceptive coverage would make them complicit in sin. (Barnes, 4/12)

Bloomberg: U.S. High Court's Birth-Control Compromise Gets Mixed Reaction
The U.S. Supreme Court got a mixed reaction from the Obama administration and religious groups to its unusual proposal to resolve a clash over employee insurance coverage for contraceptives. (Stohr, 4/12)

In other news about the Supreme Court —

CQ Healthbeat: Health Insurers Stop Providing Cost Data To States
Some employer-sponsored insurance plan officials are refusing to give states information about health care costs, after a Supreme Court decision last month struck the states' power to compel those insurers to participate. (Mershon, 4/12)

The Washington Post: More Than 50 Health, Religious And Labor Groups Urge Congress To Reject TPP Trade Deal
More than 50 public health, religious and labor groups — including Doctors Without Borders, the Catholic lobby group Network and the Communications Workers of America — are urging Congress to reject the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the 12-nation free trade agreement between the United States and Pacific Rim nations. In a letter sent to Congress on Tuesday, the groups argue that the intellectual property and pharmaceutical provisions in the pact would make it more difficult for people in TPP countries to access affordable medicine. (Ho, 4/12)

Meanwhile, the gun control fight threatens to bring down a bipartisan mental health bill and a House Appropriations Committee report warns of financial hurdles when it comes to the VA health program —

The Hill: Gun Provisions Snag Mental Health Reform Bill
The fight over gun control is threatening to scuttle a bipartisan mental health reform effort in the Senate as lawmakers rush to get the issue to the floor. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is in talks with leaders of the Senate health committee to combine his mental health bill with one that passed the committee last month. (Sullivan, 4/12)

Morning Consult: Time Is Running Out For Mental Health Measure
The Senate is steamrolling into the annual appropriations process without yet addressing mental health, one of the year’s most popular legislative efforts. That’s partly because behind the scenes, there is still widespread disagreement over whether a mental health bill should be Democrats’ big opportunity to force votes on gun control. (Owens, 4/12)

CQ Healthbeat: House Appropriators See Financial Ills For VA Health Program
A House Appropriations Committee report on the fiscal 2017 Military Construction-VA spending bill released Tuesday shed new light on problems with veterans' health care facing the Department of Veterans Affairs. The report suggests that provision of health care outside agency facilities could present a financial hurdle in the years ahead. (Mejdrich, 4/13)

The Wall Street Journal: FDA Panel Opposes Approval Of Clovis Lung-Cancer Treatment
Clovis Oncology Inc. said a U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted to recommend against early approval for the biopharmaceutical company’s experimental lung-cancer treatment. Shares fell 5.4% on Tuesday during the regular session and declined a further 3% to $13.81 in recent after-hours trading. It is the latest setback for Clovis whose lung-cancer treatment—called rociletinib—faces competition from a rival drug from AstraZeneca PLC called Tagrisso, which received U.S. regulatory approval earlier in November. (Stynes, 4/12)

CQ Healthbeat: FDA Still Working On Guidelines For Copycat Biotech Drugs
The director in charge of FDA’s biotechnology products office said Tuesday the agency continues to work on a long-awaited guidance to inform manufacturers of copycat biotech medicines how to prove similarity to the brand-name drug. (Williams, 4/12)

Reuters: Amid Clinic Closures, Young Doctors Seek Abortion Training
Even as scores of U.S. abortion clinics have shut down, the number of doctors trained to provide the procedure has surged – but only in some parts of the country. Two little-known training programs say they have expanded rapidly in recent years, fueled by robust private funding and strong demand. Launched nearly a quarter century ago amid protest and violence, the programs now train more than 1,000 doctors and medical students annually in reproductive services, from contraception to all types of abortion, according to interviews with Reuters. But their impact is limited. Most of the doctors end up working near where they train, not in several Southern and Midwestern states that have imposed waiting periods, mandated counseling and enacted other controls. (Mincer, 4/11)

In news from the states —

The Associated Press: Kansas Supreme Court To Consider Right To Abortion
The Kansas Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether the conservative state's constitution guarantees the right to an abortion as part of an appeal of a groundbreaking appeals court ruling. The appeal comes after the Kansas Court of Appeals refused to implement the state's first-in-the-nation ban on a common second-trimester abortion method. In a split decision, the court said the Kansas Constitution protects abortion rights independently from the U.S. Constitution. If upheld, the ruling would allow state courts to protect a woman's right to end her pregnancy beyond federal court rulings. (4/12)

The Associated Press: Trinity Health Wins Decision In Abortion Lawsuit
A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against a Roman Catholic hospital group, which was challenged over its anti-abortion policy. Detroit federal Judge Gershwin Drain says the American Civil Liberties Union and its members have no standing to sue Trinity Health Corp. In a 13-page decision Monday, he said the ACLU failed to explain what medical conditions would place their members at risk or if they are currently at risk. (4/12)

Minnesota Public Radio: Planned Parenthood Decries Defunding Bill
Planned Parenthood officials say they would lose more than $4 million a year in government reimbursements under a bill moving through the Minnesota House. (Pugmire, 4/12)

Modern Healthcare: Blues Plan, Northwestern Side With FTC Against Big Chicago Hospital Merger
A merger between Advocate Health Care and NorthShore University HealthSystem would give the Chicago-area systems leverage to raise prices, a Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois executive testified in federal court Tuesday. Brass with Northwestern Memorial HealthCare in downtown Chicago also testified that they do not consider NorthShore or Advocate to be major competitors. (Schencker, 4/12)

The Associated Press: Hospital Chain Ends Long-Running Tax Dispute With Florida
A major hospital chain is settling a long-running tax dispute with the state of Florida. Records show HCA Holdings, the parent company of the Nashville-based HCA, signed an agreement with Florida officials in late March to drop three lawsuits. The lawsuits relate to disputes over how much in corporate income taxes HCA paid to the state. (4/13)

The Miami Herald: Miami Hospitals Report Among Nation’s Highest Rates Of C-Sections
A first-time mother with a low-risk pregnancy is more likely to deliver her baby by cesarean section in Miami than if she were to give birth almost anywhere else in the nation, according to a study released today by Consumer Reports. The Consumer Reports analysis of more than 1,200 hospitals across the country — all of which self-reported C-sections for mothers considered least likely to need the surgery — found that Florida had one of the nation’s highest rates in 2014 and that Miami-Dade is home to the top outlier, Hialeah Hospital. (Chang, 4/12)

The Associated Press: Pine Ridge Leader Thankful For Hospital Inspections
The top leader on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation told tribal members Tuesday that he is thankful for federal inspections that have uncovered serious quality-of care-deficiencies at a government-run hospital serving the community. (Cano, 4/12)

The Powell (Wyo.) Tribune: Powell, Cody And Lovell Hospitals Work Together
This is a tough time for rural hospitals. Doug McMillan, chief executive officer at West Park Hospital in Cody, said more than 100 rural hospitals have closed in the past 10 years. McMillan said it’s important for both West Park and Powell Valley Hospital to remain strong. If one were to fail, “it would jeopardize the other hospital’s ability to maintain its hospital’s critical access status, and that’s very important,” he said. (Olson, 4/13)

The Associated Press: Flint’s Latest Conundrum? People Aren’t Using Enough Water
Flint residents who’ve grown accustomed to using bottled water and avoiding the faucet are getting new instructions: Turn on the taps. The conundrum, expert Marc Edwards said Tuesday, is that residents afraid of using the water aren’t running enough of it to rid the system of toxic lead. People aren’t showering as much, are leery of drinking or cooking with tap water even with faucet filters, and don’t want to pay higher bills for water they’re not using, despite the state helping to offset rates. (Eggert, 4/12)

The Detroit Free Press: Task Force Blasts State Leaders, EM Law For Flint Water Crisis
A task force appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder to investigate the Flint water crisis told lawmakers Tuesday that the situation in Flint was a failure of leadership in the state, a clear case of environmental injustice and a reason to change the state’s emergency manager law. There is no single piece of legislative action or a bill that could have prevented the crisis in Flint, Ken Sikkema, co-chairman of the task force and a former state senator told the legislative panel. (Gray, 4/12)

Elsewhere, Des Moines Public Schools will be testing drinking water in all of their buildings, and a California official is ordering lead contamination tests for an area surrounding a closed gun range —

The Des Moines Register: Des Moines Schools Test Water For Lead
With recent national attention on lead in drinking water, Des Moines Public Schools is testing the water in all of its school buildings. Communities across the U.S. have been examining lead levels in their water supplies in the wake of the Flint, Mich., water crisis, which caused officials to declare a state of emergency there earlier this year as excessive lead in the water had sickened many of Flint's residents. (Haley, 4/12)

The Sacramento Bee: Sacramento Councilman Wants Homes Near Gun Range Tested For Lead
Sacramento Councilman Jay Schenirer asked the city manager Monday to order tests of residential yards for lead contamination near a closed city gun range in Mangan Park where test records show the toxic substance leaked outside at high levels. Schenirer also requested that the city pursue soil tests around Mangan Park on 34th Avenue, where the gun range has stood for decades. The park, which is in Schenirer’s district, includes a playground, swimming pool and athletic fields used by families and soccer leagues. (Lillis, 4/12)

The Texas Tribune: Budget Cuts For Therapy Won't Harm Kids, Judge Told
Hefty cuts to a state Medicaid program that pays for poor and disabled Texans to receive in-home therapy won't endanger patient lives or destroy livelihoods, a state district judge was told Tuesday. Coming from a major health insurer that covers foster care youth and children with disabilities, that assertion has added another layer to an already contentious eight-month legal fight over whether Texas has been overpaying companies to provide services like speech, occupational and physical therapy. (Walters, 4/12)

Winston-Salem Journal: DHHS Claims Medicaid Provider Overpayments Is Not Chronic Concern
State health officials dispute a state audit report that claims the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services allowed an estimated $835 million in Medicaid overpayments to doctors and hospitals in 2015. The State Auditor’s Office report, released April 4, cited 14 categories of oversight concerns. It was discussed before the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee for Medicaid and N.C. Health Services on Tuesday. ... The hearing represented the first public back-and-forth between state Auditor Beth Wood and state Health Secretary Rick Brajer. (Craver, 4/13)

The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Medicaid Provider Owes State More Than $2 Million
A Columbus home health-care provider which employed aides with no first-aid certification owes Ohio's Medicaid program more than $2 million in overpayments, according to a state audit released today. (Candisky, 4/12)

Nashville (Tenn.) Public Radio (WPLN): Amid Calls To Expand Medicaid, House Speaker Beth Harwell Announces Plan To Take Smaller Steps
House Speaker Beth Harwell is putting together a task force that will study ways to improve Medicaid in Tennessee, more than a year after lawmakers rejected Gov. Bill Haslam's plan to expand the program. Harwell announced the task force of four Republican lawmakers Tuesday. They're to report back in June with some ideas to improve Medicaid, known in the state as TennCare. (Sisk, 4/12)

The Connecticut Mirror: State Worker Layoffs Continue At Three Agencies
The administration served a total of 165 notices Monday to workers in the Department of Children and Families — including those at Connecticut Juvenile Training School — and at the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. One of state government’s largest departments, Social Services has been criticized by legislators, union leaders and social services advocates for years for being understaffed. (Phaneuf and Levin Becker, 4/12)

KQED: Bill Requiring Disciplined Physicians To Notify Patients Advances In Sacramento
Doctors who are on probation after being disciplined by state regulators would have to share that information with patients before providing care under a bill making its way through the state Senate. (Fine, 4/12)

The Boston Globe: Pay Raise Sought For Nursing Home Workers
The employees who do much of the backbreaking work in Massachusetts nursing homes are lucky if they make $13 an hour — many make considerably less. Nearly half of those who bathe, feed, and care for residents need food stamps or other government assistance to survive. (Lazar, 4/13)

The Connecticut Mirror: Malloy, House Democrats Clash Over New Budget Plan
In a plan drafted in response to an unbalanced proposal recently adopted by the Appropriations Committee, [Gov. Dannel P.] Malloy also proposed more than $100 million in further reductions aimed largely at social services and education to compensate for shrinking income tax receipts. (Phaneuf, Rabe Thomas, Levin Becker and Pazniokas, 4/12)

North Carolina Health News: McCrory Budget Emphasizes Dollars For Mental Health, Substance Abuse Treatment
Flanked by lawmakers and law enforcement officers on the steps of the gubernatorial mansion, Gov. Pat McCrory rolled out his priorities for this year’s health and human services budget, which includes at least $48 million in money for priorities ranging from expanding drug and mental health courts to adding several hundred more children to the NC Pre-K program. (Hoban, 4/12)

The Sacramento Bee: California Soda Tax Bill Pulled Without A Vote
Elections come and go, legislative leaders rise and fall, but one constant remains in Sacramento: Soda taxes can’t get traction. A bill to impose a two-cents-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages was pulled by its author ahead of its scheduled first committee vote on Tuesday, with Assemblyman Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, concluding he lacked the votes. Assembly Bill 2782 is likely done for the year, the latest setback for a protracted but largely unsuccessful public health campaign. (White, 4/12)

The Chicago Tribune: Nonprofits Serving People With Disabilities Report Staffing Crisis
Organizations that provide care to people with disabilities are reporting crisis-level shortages of employees needed to feed, bathe and perform other essential tasks for residents in Illinois, a situation that has prompted the closure of some group homes and kept hundreds of families on waiting lists for services. (Healy, 4/13)

The Associated Press: Former Oklahoma Dentist Charged With Money Laundering
A former Oklahoma oral surgeon whose filthy clinics led to thousands of patients being tested for HIV and hepatitis faces a federal charge of money laundering, prosecutors announced Tuesday. (Juozapavicius, 4/12)

Reuters: Judge Will Not Reconsider Dismissal Of DePuy Whistleblower Case
A Boston federal judge on Monday refused to reconsider his dismissal of a whistleblower lawsuit against Johnson & Johnson unit DePuy Orthopaedics Inc over alleged false claims submitted to government healthcare programs for its hip implants. (Pierson, 4/12)

The Huffington Post: Here’s What’s Really Going On With Obamacare Premiums
If you follow the news or listen to the Republican presidential candidates, then you’ve probably heard that premiums for some Affordable Care Act plans went way up last year. But now the Obama administration is saying that, for the vast majority of people buying coverage through healthcare.gov, premiums are only 4 percent higher than they were last year. Can both things be true? (Jonathan Cohn, 4/12)

Fortune: Obamacare Helped Me Grow My Business – And I’m Sick About It
Republicans say the Affordable Care Act kills jobs. I had a different experience. As a small-business owner, I used Obamacare to hire more people — but for reasons that make me a little bit nauseous. Two years ago I raised a few hundred thousand dollars, mostly from angel investors, and started LifePosts, a web platform that helps people tell their life stories. Despite being “pre-revenue,” I wanted to hire a couple of employees to build the site. (Steven Waldman, 4/12)

The Wall Street Journal: The Drawbacks Of Rate-Your-Doctor Medical Transparency
Vanderbilt University Medical Center recently announced a big change that most marketers would probably applaud. Vanderbilt plans to publicly share the results of patient surveys—including reviews and ratings of individual physicians and practices—on its website. This initiative follows similar efforts at the University of Utah Health Care, Piedmont Healthcare, Wake Forest Baptist Health and many others. (Mathew S. Isaac, 4/12)

The Wall Street Journal: It’s Time To Fix How Hospitals Are Rewarded
After the Affordable Care Act was passed six years ago, hospitals were pioneers, becoming the first to be subject to pay-for-quality programs under Medicare. Under this system, payment depends on not just the number and complexity of services, but also the quality of care. This intricate web of policies includes penalties for excess readmissions, hospital-acquired conditions, and the continued use of inefficient paper health records, for example. Admittedly, these programs have improved the transparency of provider performance and incentivized a stronger focus on quality. But they were structured in a hodgepodge fashion, with substantial overlap and contradictory methodologies for calculating performance across payers. (Susan Devore, 4/12)

CBS News: Donald Trump's Fuzzy Deficit-Cutting Math
Perhaps it's a mistake to take presidential candidates' economic proposals as serious policy rather than signals of tribal affiliation, opening bids in post-election negotiations or pandering for votes by telling various groups what they want to hear, even if the parts don't add up to a feasible whole. Nevertheless, I'm taking [Donald] Trump's proposals for taxes, the government debt, Medicare and Social Security as though they are genuine. (Mark Thoma, 4/12)

Modern Healthcare: Ted Cruz's Tax Plan Could Make Medicare Funding Discretionary
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz released a tax overhaul plan last fall that drew sharply split reviews for its radical proposal to establish a 10% flat tax on individual income and replace the corporate income tax with a 16% value-added tax. But what almost no one has discussed is the fundamental change Cruz's plan would make in Medicare financing. The Texas senator's proposal would abolish the payroll taxes that fund the Part A hospital trust fund as well as Social Security. The 2.9% payroll tax for Medicare Part A, the 0.9% additional Medicare tax on higher-income workers that helps fund the Affordable Care Act, and the 12.4% tax for Social Security would be history if a President Cruz got his way. (Harris Meyer, 4/12)

The New York Times' Upshot: The Undeniable Convenience And Reliability Of Retail Health Clinics
My wife and I both work. When one of our children wakes up complaining of a sore throat, we could begin a ritual stare-down to determine which of us is going to have to wait for the doctor’s office to open, make the phone call, wait on hold, schedule an appointment (which will inevitably be in the middle of the day), take off work, pick up the child from school, sit in the waiting room (surrounded by other sick children), get the rapid strep test, find out if the child is infected and then go to the pharmacy or back to school, before returning to work. Or, one of us could just take the child to a retail clinic on the way to work and be done in 30 minutes. (Aaron E. Carroll, 4/12)

Los Angeles Times: Utah Abortion Bill Is Reckless Meddling Into Women's Health
A new Utah law requiring abortion providers to administer anesthesia to a woman if she is having an abortion at or after 20 weeks of pregnancy is the first of its kind in the nation and it is a reckless intrusion of a state legislature into the practice of medicine. In order to assure the best possible care for patients, decisions about what type of pain medication or anesthesia to administer should be made by medical professionals, not by state legislators. (4/12)

Los Angeles Times: A Better Family Leave Benefit For Californians
Days after San Francisco mandated a dramatic expansion of family leave benefits in the private sector, Gov. Jerry Brown approved a comparatively modest upgrade in California's pioneering family-leave program that won't take effect until 2018. Yet the statewide measure, AB 908, is still a win for workers, particularly lower-wage workers who can't afford to take advantage of the family leave benefit at its current level. (4/13)

Kansas City Star: New Effort Puts Needed Focus On Trauma
Resilient KC is more than a catchy new phrase. It is a communitywide effort to identify the trauma that children and adults face and the mental and physical problems that trauma causes and address the concerns with better intervention. Trauma includes abuse, neglect, domestic violence, gun violence, witnessing violence, sexual violence, divorce and having a parent incarcerated. Trauma is cumulative and is particularly troubling for children. Teachers see it in students’ behavioral problems and their inability to learn in school. Research shows that adults who have four or more “adverse childhood experiences” are more likely to smoke, abuse alcohol, be obese, suffer depression and attempt suicide. (4/12)

Lexington Herald Leader: Unpaid Lawyers Helping Conn’s Disabled Victims Recover Benefit
Social Security based its decision to redetermine all these cases on an inspector general’s report, never made public, that concludes that the benefits were awarded as a result of a fraudulent scheme for which Conn, along with an administrative law judge and a psychologist, have now been indicted by the federal government. These people would need lawyers to represent them at the hearings. There were no provisions for attorney fees so the representation would need to be pro bono. Clearly the staff of the legal services agency serving Eastern Kentucky, the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund of Ky. Inc. (Appalred), could only handle a small number of these clients in addition to its other work. (John Rosenberg, 4/12)

The Boston Globe: In Medical Research, Financial Conflicts Of Interest Do Matter
A front-page story by Charles Ornstein in the Globe reports increasing concern about editorial decisions at The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), one of which is to defend the practice of medical researchers having personal financial ties to drug companies whose products they are testing. The NEJM’s national correspondent referred to critics of such conflicts of interest as “pharmascolds.” (Marcia Angell, 4/12)

The Washington Post: I’m Documenting My Own Alzheimer’s Disease While I Still Can
On a recent flight from San Francisco back to Boston, I found myself seated between my 28-year-old daughter Colleen and the emergency hatch. When the attendant had asked if I could perform the duties, I shrugged and simply said I was afraid of heights. I forgot about the confusion part. I forgot why doctors don’t let me travel alone any more. Alzheimer’s will do that. Somewhere over Chicago, I had to go to the bathroom. My mind told me the bathroom door was immediately to my right — all I had to do was to pull on the lever — so I grabbed for it. It took Colleen screaming for me to realize my hand was on the emergency exit door. The crew later told me never to sit in an exit row again. (Greg O'Brien, 4/13)

STAT: How One Colombian Family Could Solve Some Of Alzheimer’s Mysteries
For more than 25 years, I have worked with Dr. Francisco Lopera of Medellín’s University of Antioquia in studying the largest known family with inherited Alzheimer’s disease. Its family tree goes back 300 hundred years. Hundreds of individuals in this family are fated to get the disease. (Kenneth S. Kosik, 4/12)