Axios

Opioid-related deaths in the United States have increased across the board between 1999-2015, according to data from the Centers for Disease control. This chart shows how the number of deaths per 100,000 has ballooned across all age and sex groups.

Federal officials Thursday indicted John Kapoor, the 74-year-old billionaire founder and majority owner of drug company Insys Therapeutics. They alleged Kapoor and other Insys executives bribed doctors to prescribe the company's powerful fentanyl spray, called Subsys, to a wide array of patients — even though the medication is only intended for cancer patients.

Why it matters: CEOs and other top executives almost never get arrested for alleged misdeeds.

President Trump will deliver a speech at 2 p.m. in the East Room of the White House on combatting drug demand and the opioid crisis. "Trump will order his health secretary to declare the opioid crisis a public health emergency [today] — but will stop short of declaring a more sweeping state of national emergency," USA Today reports.

Trump to Lou Dobbs of Fox Business, yesterday: "Next week, I'm going to declaring an emergency, national emergency on drugs. The opioid is a tremendous emergency, what's going on there. The drugs pouring into the country have gotten -- and I tell you what, we've made a big impact. But still, we need the wall. You know, part of the reason we need the wall is for drugs."

Health care mergers and acquisitions slowed a bit over the summer, but the industry still has kept bankers and consultants busy since the Affordable Care Act went into effect. The health care industry has initiated more than 200 deals per quarter for 12 straight quarters, including 211 in the third quarter of 2017, according to a report from PwC.

Anthem's membership in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces will decline by 70% in 2018, executives told investors Wednesday on the insurer's third-quarter earnings call. About 1.4 million people had ACA-compliant plans with Anthem as of Sept. 30, 900,000 of whom bought coverage on the exchanges.

Between the lines: Anthem, which posted a $747 million third-quarter profit, has announced its ACA exit strategy in many states throughout the year. A 70% drop in ACA customers is steep, and means a lot of people will have to pick a new plan. Anthem is mostly staying in regions where it is the monopoly ACA insurer, which is more likely to ensure profitability.

Now the Senate has two competing plans to fund the Affordable Care Act's cost-sharing subsidies — which could mean it won't be able to pass either one. Senate Finance chair Orrin Hatch and House Ways and Means chair Kevin Brady outlined a new proposal yesterday as an alternative to the bipartisan ACA bill led by Sens. Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray.

The details: It's hard to call these competing ACA stabilization bills. Although they'd both fund cost-sharing subsidies for two years, Hatch-Brady would also waive the law's individual mandate for five years — effectively replacing one source of rising premiums with another.