Axios

A federal judge ruled late Friday in favor of Molina Healthcare, declaring the health insurer is owed $52.4 million under the Affordable Care Act's risk corridor program, which was created to help insurance companies manage their unpredictable costs in the law's early years. Molina, which has been crushed by the ACA so far this year, filed suit in January after congressional Republicans blocked the payments, calling them a "bailout" for the industry.

The court opinion said the federal government was "liable for its breach of a statutory and contractual obligation" to make the payments to participating insurers.

Why it matters: Molina is now the second health insurer to win a risk corridor lawsuit, following Moda Health from earlier this year. But as legal expert Nicholas Bagley has pointed out, even with the court wins, health insurers may not be able to collect their risk corridor money until Congress appropriates funds — the same Congress that neutered the risk corridor payments.

Deaths resulting from violence in the Middle East grew 850% between 1990 and 2015, according to reports published this week in the International Journal of Public Health. They also found this coincided with a dramatic increase in chronic diseases, per Nature:

• The death rate from diabetes grew 216% over the study period, an increase of 179% compared to the 1990 level.
• The leading cause of death in the region is cardiovascular disease, weighing in at 34% of all deaths in the region. That same figure was 30% in 1990.
• There was an increase by 1,027% in deaths from war, terrorism, and state punishment for crimes.
• Homicide and death from physical and sexual assault increased in the region to 5.7 people per 100,000 (2015). For context, not that's lower than figures in the Americas or Africa.

Why it's happening: Stresses on mental health have a strong link to diabetes and cardiovascular disease, Ali Mokdad, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, told Nature.

A retired Virginia Beach attorney is so angry that Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act that he's suing the GOP for raising millions of dollars campaigning on a pledge that they knew they wouldn't be able to fulfill, per The Virginian-Pilot. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court Thursday by 70-year-old Bob Heghmann.

• It claims that the GOP "has been engaged in a pattern of Racketeering which involves massive fraud perpetrated on Republican voters and contributors as well as some Independents and Democrats."
• Heghmann said he wants Republicans to either give campaign donors their money back or ramp up pressure on lawmakers to repeal the law.
• Why it matters: Not every Republican donor is going to sue for their money back, of course. But the lawsuit speaks to a real danger for Republicans: Other donors may stop giving money.