The New York Times has a smart piece that highlights two points about providing comprehensive health care to undocumented migrants: the United States would be an international outlier if it did so, and the idea is so new that there's no defined roadmap for how to do it.
Why it matters: Most of the Democratic presidential candidates have endorsed the idea, which shows how much the party's political views have changed since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. People in the country illegally can get emergency medical care, but not regular coverage, and the Times reports that experts haven't estimated how much an expansion of coverage would cost.
Medicare is considering paying for acupuncture, which would be a controversial move, the Washington Post reports.
What's happening: The change would be part of a push to provide alternative, non-pharmacologic ways to address chronic pain amid the opioid crisis. Coverage would be only for chronic low-back pain.
It's too soon to throw in the towel on biosimilars, especially because there's evidence that they're lowering the net costs of biologics, Alex Brill and Benedic Ippolito of the American Enterprise Institute argue in a Health Affairs blog.
Many specialties would still take a pay cut even under versions of "Medicare for All" that aren't as full-throated as what Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed, according to recent analysis in JAMA by Harvard's Zirui Song.
The big picture: This is a feature, not a bug, of Medicare for All. Part of the point is to spend less on health care — through steep cuts in how much many doctors and hospitals get paid.
