Behavioral health provider Acadia Healthcare has fired CEO and board chairman Joey Jacobs and replaced him with Debbie Osteen, who works at competitor Universal Health Services. Acadia and Reeve Waud, a private equity executive who is now Acadia's board chairman, declined to comment beyond the press release.
Background: Three weeks ago, we covered how Acadia's business, under the watch of Jacobs and Waud, has been filled with red flags. Over the past few years, Acadia saddled itself with huge amounts of debt, and top executive insiders sold off stock in droves.
Now that federal Judge Reed O'Connor has ruled the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional — since Congress zeroed out the penalty tied to the mandate to buy health insurance — the health care law once again has to show it has an extra life in its back pocket.
The big picture: If O'Connor's ruling stands — or takes effect before an appeal — it would kick millions of people off of private insurance and millions more off of Medicaid, and would eliminate protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
"Twice as many high school students used nicotine-tinged electronic cigarettes this year compared with last year, an unprecedented jump in a large annual survey of teen smoking, drinking and drug use," AP's Mike Stobbe reports.
Why it matters: The federally funded University of Michigan survey of 45,000 students in grades 8, 10 and 12 "found 1 in 5 high school seniors reported having vaped nicotine in the previous month. ... It was the largest single-year increase in the survey's 44-year history, far surpassing a mid-1970s surge in marijuana smoking."
Pre-existing conditions are in the news again, now that a federal judge's ruling could wipe out the Affordable Care Act. But there's been a similar issue all along that's drawn less attention: Seniors with pre-existing conditions can be denied coverage in many cases when they apply for Medicare supplemental insurance policies, or Medigap.
The big picture: The Affordable Care Act prohibits most private health plans from denying coverage to individuals based on their medical history. Medicare and Medicaid also cover all eligible individuals regardless of their medical history. But Medigap doesn’t have this protection, at least not fully. The problem could be addressed, but with the expected side effect: premiums would go up.
Mastercard’s main business is providing payments card technology, but it turns out that the same tech can be used for much higher purposes: saving lives in some of the poorest countries in the world.
The big picture: Thanks to a partnership between Mastercard and Gavi, the global vaccination alliance, children will be given a "digital birth certificate" that looks a lot like a standard credit card. That card can then be taken into any clinic, which will be able to see exactly which vaccinations the child has received and which shots are still needed.
Republicans and Democrats took to the Sunday morning talk shows to react to Friday's decision by a federal judge in Texas to throw out key provisions of the Affordable Care Act — a ruling that could make its way to the Supreme Court and ultimately impact millions of Americans.
What they're saying: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer slammed the conservative judge's decision as "an awful, awful ruling" on NBC's "Meet the Press," claiming that in addition to eliminating protections for pre-existing conditions, it would have far-reaching impacts on funding for opioid treatment, drug prices and women's health issues. Schumer said Democrats would fight the ruling "tooth and nail," and that they would put a vote on the floor "urging an intervention in the case."
"An explosive court ruling to wipe out Obamacare has revived the acrimonious health care battle in Washington and tossed a political bomb in President Trump’s lap as he gears up to run for re-election," Bloomberg's Sahil Kapur writes.
The big picture: "The casemay not be resolved in the courts before 2020, legal experts said, which could make ita defining issue in the race for the White House and Congress...Democrats immediately jumped on the Friday night ruling to warn that health care coverage for millions of Americans was at stake."
Beto O'Rourke ran a decidedly progressive Senate campaign in 2018, especially for a Democrat running in deep-red Texas. But now activists on the left are questioning his ideology and if he's progressive enough to represent their party in 2020.
Why it matters: The left is where the energy is in today's Democratic Party. Nearly half of Democratic voters describe themselves as liberal, up 17 percentage points from a decade ago, according to Pew Research Center. After Bernie Sanders didn't get the nomination in 2016, expect the activist base that organized behind him to be even more demanding of all 2020 candidates.
