Shefali Luthra | Kaiser Health News

Health care costs were rising. People couldn’t afford coverage. So, in Connecticut, state lawmakers took action.

President Donald Trump offered a preview of what his 2020 health agenda might look like in a speech last week — blasting Democratic proposals for reform and saying he would tackle issues such as prescription drug prices and affordability.

Democrats with 2020 presidential aspirations are courting the party’s increasingly influential progressive wing and staking out ambitious policy platforms. Front and center are three words: Medicare. For. All. That simple phrase is loaded with political baggage, and often accompanied by vague promises and complex jargon. Different candidates use it to target different voter blocs, leading to sometimes divergent, even contradictory ideas.

This week, Vermont passed a first-in-the-nation law that would facilitate the state’s importation of prescription drugs wholesale from Canada. It represents the state’s effort to tackle head-on the issue of constantly climbing drug prices.

In the absence of new federal policies to tame break-the-bank drug prices, Massachusetts’ state Medicaid program hopes to road-test an idea both radical and market-driven. It wants the power to negotiate discounts for the drugs it purchases and to exclude drugs with limited treatment value. Connecticut is watching.

As Dr. Ruth Berggren digests the calamity affecting her new home state of Texas, she admits to some PTSD. She knows firsthand the trauma suffered by the medical personnel trying to keep people healthy under devastating circumstances.

A provision of the 2010 federal health law linking hospital payments to patient satisfaction surveys may be complicating national efforts to curb the use of opioids and address the epidemic of painkiller abuse.

As hospitals chase better patient ratings and health outcomes, an increasing number are rethinking how they function at night so more patients can sleep relatively uninterrupted.