Axios

A D.C. federal judge upheld Friday the Trump administration's expansion of insurance plans that don't comply with the Affordable Care Act — a key part of its health care agenda.

The big picture: The Department of Health and Human Services last year allowed consumers to keep barebones, lightly regulated "short-term" health insurance for up to three years — longer than than the Obama administration had allowed. HHS does have the legal authority to change those limits as it sees fit, Judge Richard Leon ruled today.

UnitedHealth Group's stock fell 2.3% yesterday even though the company continues to print money and raised its profit projections for the rest of the year.

The big picture: Wall Street is quibbling over the "quality" of UnitedHealth's earnings beat, but that doesn't really matter. UnitedHealth remains the most financially powerful private entity in the U.S. health care system, and any reforms would be up against its growing empire.

The spread of ticks in the U.S. — and a rise in cases of the diseases they carry — is putting the tiny tick in the sights of Congress and spurring calls for better tools to track and control them.

Why it matters: Ticks spread bacteria that cause Lyme disease and more than a dozen other pathogens. Nearly 43,000 confirmed and probable cases of Lyme disease were reported in the U.S. in 2017 — triple the number in the late 1990s — but the CDC suspects the actual number of cases each year could be about 300,000.

The World Health Organization Wednesday issued a global health warning on the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although they added that the risk of the deadly virus spreading outside the region remains low.

Why it matters: The official intensification of the warning — caused partly by geographical expansion of cases including at least one in the large, international city of Goma, plus renewed violence against health care workers that killed 2 recently — is expected to spur WHO's 196 members to offer more resources and better organize an international response to this outbreak.

UnitedHealth Group's second-quarter profit increased by 13% year over year to $3.3 billion, and revenue in the quarter rose to almost $61 billion as the health care giant restrained how much it paid for medical and pharmacy claims and sold more of its technology and consulting services.

The bottom line: UnitedHealth, on its own, now represents more than 6% of the entire health care economy. The company's footprint and control of the premium dollar will only grow as it acquires more doctors.

There may only be one source of bipartisan agreement when it comes to the Affordable Care Act — opposition to its revenues and cost-control measures. Nothing checks both of those boxes quite as effectively as the law's "Cadillac tax" — which is now on its way out.

Driving the news: In an overwhelming 419-6 vote, the House signed off yesterday on repealing the tax on high-value health plans. Repealing the tax will cost the federal government almost $200 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Live from Washington, D.C., Axios health care editor Sam Baker hosts conversations on the opioid crisis and the future of pain management with Rep. David McKinley (R-West Va.), Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Dr. Marian Sherman and HHS Assistant Secretary Admiral Brett Giroir.

The IRS rolled out new rules Wednesday to help people who have chronic diseases, but are also on the hook for thousands of dollars of their medical bills.

How it works: The new rules allow insurers to cover treatment for chronic conditions, like diabetes and high blood pressure, before patients have met their deductibles.

Fewer Americans died from drug overdoses last year than the year before. It's the first time that number has gone down in almost 30 years.

Yes, but: This progress is both fragile and modest. Overdose deaths fell by about 5% last year, according to provisional data from the federal government. But overdose deaths rose by roughly 316% between 1999 and 2017. There's still a long way to go, and more than 68,000 Americans still died of overdoses last year.