Health Headlines for Monday, September 24

AP review: Drug prices keep going up despite Trump pressure

ABC News

President Donald Trump made reducing drug prices a key promise during his election campaign, repeatedly accusing drugmakers of “getting away with murder.”

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Republicans cast opioid bill as their health care achievement

Politico

Endangered Republicans are running ads defending their achievements on health care — but it’s opioids they are boasting about, not the toxic fight about Obamacare and pre-existing conditions.

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Surprise medical bills could be a powerful campaign issue

AXIOS

There is growing interest in the problem of surprise medical bills in the media and on Capitol Hill, with a bipartisan group of senators drafting legislation to crack down on the problem. But the issue has not been prominent in midterm campaigns and is not showing up in campaign ads.

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Why there’s an overdose epidemic — in two graphs

STAT

The “overdose epidemic” that so many Americans are talking about isn’t really a single epidemic. It’s actually several of them, something we began exploring when we graphed the yearly counts of overdose deaths for the last 40 years.

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Inevitable or unthinkable? Employers debate single-payer health care (Video)

Albany Business Review

Tony Hynes believes it is only a matter of time until the United States moves to a single-payer health care system.

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U.S. health care’s biggest problem: a doctor shortage

Salon

America’s medical system is facing a full-blown primary care crisis. To meet our nation’s current needs would require almost 15,000 additional primary care doctors.

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