We're probably in for a second straight year of declining enrollment through HealthCare.gov. The pace of sign-ups this year continues to lag noticeably behind last year's, and last year marked a modest decline from the year before that.
By the numbers: Just shy of 3.2 million people have picked plans through the federally run exchanges so far. That's about 12% lower than the 3.6 million who had signed up at the same time last year.
Public health officials have the tools to fight the deadly Ebola outbreak that continues to rampage through the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Health workers are tracking down contacts, implementing vaccination and quarantine regimes, educating the community, treating patients, and watching for new signs of infection. But the fight's not going well.
The problem: A "perfect storm" of deadly disease combined with civil unrest, violence against health care workers, other diseases like malaria, and cultural norms that encourage the use of local clinics and traditional funeral practices, have led this to become the world's second-worst Ebola outbreak on record, according to World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic. It will take dogged persistence to contain this one, he said.
The U.S. spent almost $3.5 trillion on hospitals, doctors, prescription drugs, medical devices and other health care services and items in 2017, according to new federal data.
The bottom line: That total was 3.9% higher than the country's health care tab from 2016 — lower than originally expected. But it still amounts to a pricey system with poor outcomes that has frustrated patients and eaten more of everyone's paychecks.
The next wave of state actions against the opioid crisis may focus on taxing them — depending on the outcome of an industry lawsuit against New York, the first state to try it.
Between the lines: Most of the bills that have been proposed would tax opioid painkillers and use the money for addiction treatment and prevention. But the health care industry argues that they're bad policy and, at least in the New York law's case, illegal. That case will be tested when oral arguments in the lawsuit begin Monday.
