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First Edition: September 2, 2014

Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including an analysis of care at small military hospitals and a look at the $8 billion in health law taxes that come due Sept. 30.

2 Sep 2014

State highlights: States seek health care autonomy; L.A. nursing home audit; promoting overdose-reversal drug

Kansas, Missouri and seven other states have signed on to a movement that would wrest regulation of most of the nation's health care insurance systems from the federal government.

30 Aug 2014

Judge rules against strict Texas abortion law

A federal judge Friday struck down a major provision of Texas's strict abortion law that would have forced all but a handful of clinics to close next week. The law, passed last year by the Republican legislature, required abortion facilities to meet state standards for ambulatory surgical centers. But U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled the requirements violated a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy (Winter, 8/29).

30 Aug 2014

First Edition: August 29, 2014

Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including reports about the Obama administration and Pennsylvania reaching an agreement to expand Medicaid in that state.

29 Aug 2014

Longer looks: A new kind of abortion war; foster kids and psychotropic drugs

While pro-life activists fight to rescue IVF embryos from the freezer, pregnant women in their third trimester with catastrophic fetal anomalies have nowhere to turn. ... Perhaps there is no other issue that touches on so many core dimensions of American society-;legal, medical, scientific, theological, political, philosophical, biological, ethical, and ecological. What some on one side of the debate call reproductive justice, others call taking a life. What some call a person, others call a cluster of cells.

28 Aug 2014

Viewpoints: Check out those nursing home stars; Rove a 'bleeding heart liberal' on Medicare?

Medicare has devised a rating system for nursing homes that portrays many of them as much better than they really are.

27 Aug 2014

California requires insurers to provide abortion coverage

Spurred by faculty and staff outrage over the refusal by two Catholic universities to pay for elective abortions, Gov. Jerry Brown's administration on Friday announced that health insurance companies in the state can no longer deny coverage for these procedures. California's Department of Managed Health Care, which oversees HMOs, issued letters to seven insurance companies saying refusing to pay for any abortion, whether medically necessary or not, violates the state constitution and a 1975 state law (Seipel, 8/22).

26 Aug 2014

First Edition: August 25, 2014

Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations include reports on Medicare ratings of nursing homes, the growing demand for home-health aides and accounts of the Obama administration's new contraception coverage rules.

25 Aug 2014

Viewpoints: 'Raw judicial politics' on health law; Texas abortion trial; suicide and gender

The Affordable Care Act -- Obamacare -- has endured so many near-death experiences that digging into the details of still another effort to demolish it is admittedly not an inviting prospect. (My own reaction, I confess, to hearing some months back about the latest legal challenge -- this one aimed at the supposed effect of a single word in the 900-page statute -- was something along the lines of "wake me when it's over.") But stay with me, because this latest round, catapulted onto the Supreme Court's docket earlier this month by the same forces that brought us the failed Commerce Clause attack two years ago, opens a window on raw judicial politics so extreme that the saga so far would be funny if the potential consequences weren't so serious (Linda Greenhouse, 8/20).

22 Aug 2014

Longer looks: Falling teen birth rate; the right to pain relief; limiting access to Sovaldi

An infectious disease doctor at Tulane University, [MarkAlain] Dery treats people living with HIV in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, the two largest cities in the southern state of Louisiana, which itself has the fourth-highest rate of HIV in the United States, just behind New York, Florida and Maryland.

22 Aug 2014

Handicapping how 'Obamacare,' other health issues play into campaigns

The New York Times examines how the outcome of midterm elections and subsequent efforts to replace parts of the health law could factor into the presidential campaign landscape.

22 Aug 2014

GOP candidates make late-term abortions campaign trail issue

Republicans who see potential on the Senate political map are turning to this issue as a counter-attack to Democrats' messaging on birth control and personhood.

21 Aug 2014

Iowa telemedicine abortion ban stands after ruling

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland had claimed the ban was meant to limit abortions for women who live in rural areas.

21 Aug 2014

First Edition: August 20, 2014

Today's headlines include a report from California that Anthem Blue Cross is being sued again regarding its narrow-network health plans as well as a prediction from Maryland officials regarding the state's online insurance marketplace.

20 Aug 2014

GOP ad strategy on health law shifts in Senate races

Some Republican strategists say the health overhaul is losing its punch, Bloomberg reports. In other political news, the American Hospital Association reports that it gave $3.3 million to state affiliates to lobby local officials on Medicaid expansion.

20 Aug 2014

New study highlights the need for evidence-based sexual and reproductive health education

A new national survey reveals that the political divide among red-versus-blue states does not support the hypothesis that knowledge about abortion and health is shaped by the state in which one lives.

19 Aug 2014

First Edition: August 19, 2014

Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations, including stories about a how a hospital system's data was hacked, involving as many as 4.5 million patients' records.

19 Aug 2014

Viewpoints: Va. GOP's 'Medicaid charade'; Paul Ryan's health Rx for poverty; giving the sick unapproved drugs

Virginia lawmakers will convene in a special session next month to address the question of expanding Medicaid and, more broadly, the fact that hundreds of thousands of poor and disabled people in the state have no health insurance coverage. Democrats and some moderate Republicans have advanced a variety of ideas to tackle that problem. Conservative Republicans, who control the legislature in Richmond, have rejected those solutions while proposing no alternative. Does the GOP intend for the special session to be anything more than a charade at taxpayers' expense? (8/15).

19 Aug 2014

GOP Senate candidate seeks wider birth control access and end to charges of war on women

Rep. Cory Gardner is the first Republican candidate to talk up a new Republican idea of making birth control available over the counter.

19 Aug 2014

Fox News poll finds slim majority continues to oppose the health law

According to Fox News, opposition among voters has been above 50 percent for more than a year. Meanwhile, Politico Pro takes a look at the congressional district of the new House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., where constituents who appear to be benefiting from new health law coverage are still supporting politicians like McCarthy, who want to repeal it.

16 Aug 2014