Only a day after the World Health Organization announced that an end was in sight for the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, scientists had less uplifting news: The virus may be mutating. "The response to the EVD (Ebola virus disease) epidemic has now moved to a second phase, as the focus shifts from slowing transmission to ending the epidemic," the WHO said in its latest report on the disease yesterday. There were 99 confirmed new cases last week, the lowest number since June. But researchers at the Institut Pasteur, the French medical-research organization that first identified the outbreak in Guinea last March, said that they're trying to determine whether the Ebola virus is becoming more contagious.
President Barack Obama's plan to put the United States at the forefront of individually tailored medical treatment should give a much-needed boost to research in the field but experts say it won't work without reforms to healthcare, including drug testing and insurance. The administration is expected to give the first details this week on the "precision medicine" initiative that Obama announced in his Jan. 20 State of the Union address. Obama said he wanted the United States to "lead a new era of medicine, one that delivers the right treatment at the right time."
A new poll finds that most people think Congress or states should act to restore health insurance subsidies if the Supreme Court decides later this year they are not permitted in states where the federal government is running the marketplace. The court in March is set to hear King v. Burwell, a lawsuit arguing that the wording of the Affordable Care Act means that financial assistance with premiums is available only in the 13 states that created and are running their own online insurance exchanges. If the court sides with those challenging the law, millions of people in the 37 states that use the federal Healthcare.gov site would lose the help they have been getting.
As many as 6 million people will have to pay a penalty under ObamaCare for going without health insurance in 2014, federal officials suggested in projections released Wednesday. That means between 2 percent and 4 percent of all taxpayers lacked medical coverage for all or part of the year and do not qualify for an exemption under the individual mandate, according to the Treasury Department. Another 10 to 20 percent of taxpayers — or 15 million to 30 million people — were uninsured but will qualify for an exemption from the mandate, shielding them from paying $95 or 1 percent of household income when they file their taxes.
The country's second-largest health insurance company said Wednesday that it far outpaced its enrollment expectations last year, with most of that growth coming from the expansion of Medicaid in dozens of states. Insurance giant Anthem enrolled 1.8 million new customers in 2014, with nearly half of the new plans coming from Medicaid programs, its chief executive told reporters Wednesday. A total of 28 states have expanded their Medicaid programs in the last two years. The expansion of the low-income program is a major part of driving down the country's uninsured rate under the Affordable Care Act.
Well, that was quick. Maura Healey has been on the job less than a week, but we don't have to wonder where she stands on the biggest health care conflict in Massachusetts. The new state attorney general made it clear Monday that she doesn't like the proposed merger of the giant Partners HealthCare System with South Shore Hospital in Weymouth and two other community hospitals north of Boston. The deal was explicitly endorsed by her predecessor, Martha Coakley, with lots of strings attached. Critics of the arrangement — including the state Health Policy Commission and Partners' rivals — say it will allow the giant to become even bigger, making medical care more expensive for everyone in Eastern Massachusetts.