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Congress set to battle over food stamps work requirement. Lawmakers are poised this month to wage a major battle over the House version of the Farm Bill, which will call for work requirements in the federal food stamp program that serves the poor. The heated partisan fight has stalled the legislation before it has even been introduced. The normally routine sign-off on the bill by House Agriculture Committee Chairman Mike Conaway, R-Texas, and ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., hasn’t happened because Democrats are staunchly opposed to Conaway’s plan to add a 20-hour work or job training requirement for some able-bodied recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the formal name for food stamps. “Our side is not going to go for it,” Peterson told a group of reporters recently, describing Democratic opposition to what would essentially amount to welfare reform. The Farm Bill includes tens of billions of dollars in spending on crop insurance, conservation programs, and commodity price and income support programs for the agriculture industry. But the vast majority of spending is on food stamps. In the 2014 legislation, SNAP’s 10-year cost was $756 billion, or 80 percent of the entire $956 billion bill.

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Opioid legislation looks to be next major healthcare push. Congress isn’t expected to pass much major legislation before the November elections, but it is likely to move a slew of bipartisan bills tackling the opioid crisis. The House Energy and Commerce Committee is expected to finish up its work on more than 40 bills that tackle the crisis. The bills aim to introduce reforms centered at drug enforcement, Medicare, Medicaid, treatment access and other issues. Committee leaders want the bills to move through the House by the Memorial Day recess. Meanwhile, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee is expected to move on its own raft of legislation. The bills are likely to gain bipartisan support.

Medicaid patients have better access to care than uninsured: Study. Medicaid enrollees have better access to medical care than people who are uninsured, according to a new insurance industry study that refutes critics who say patients are better off without the government program for the poor. “The story is pretty simple: Medicaid is a very important component to our ecosystem,” said Craig Burns, vice president of policy and research at America’s Health Insurance Plans, the nation’s largest health insurer lobby. “It provides services and access to a very vulnerable portion of the population.”  The study from AHIP found that adult Medicaid enrollees were almost five times more likely, and children four times more likely, to have a consistent place where they receive healthcare than those who are uninsured. Adults also were more than four times more likely, and children were two to three times more likely, to get preventive care compared with people who are uninsured. Critics have raised concerns about people with Medicaid having inadequate access to medical care, pointing to studies that show roughly a third of doctors do not accept patients on the program.

VA pick Ronny Jackson: ‘I’ve got what it takes.’ The man picked by President Trump to take over as head of the Department of Veterans Affairs says he’s “got what it takes” to lead the troubled agency. “I think I’ve got what it takes, and you know, I don’t buy into that argument [that I lack experience] at all,” Dr. Ronny Jackson said in a profile of him published in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal Sunday.  “And I’ve been able to rise to the level of an admiral, a flag officer in the Navy. I didn’t just stumble into that. So I’ve gotten a lot of leadership background, I’ve got a lot of leadership experience as a Navy officer, and I’ve got a lot of day-to-day leadership experience,” Jackson told the newspaper.

New study challenges Pentagon’s conclusions about transgender troops. A new study by Cornell University says research over the past 25 years points to a wide consensus that transgender medical treatment is effective, despite a Pentagon determination that the science remains uncertain. The university looked at 56 peer-reviewed studies on how hormone treatment or surgery can help transgender people and 93 percent reported the treatment improved their well-being, according to a summary provided by Cornell. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is seeking to bar anybody who has had hormone therapy or surgery treatment from enlisting in the military, and to deny treatment to those who are currently serving.

HHS picks new director for Medicare and Medicaid center. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Friday appointed Adam Boehler to be director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. The center was created under Obamacare to develop new models for payments and services provided under Medicare and Medicaid. The program’s proposed experiments have rankled congressional Republicans who have complained about mandatory experiments on new payment models as overstepping its authority. Boehler is the former CEO of Landmark Health, which provides home-based medical care. He was also an operating partner at Francisco Partners, which is a private equity firm focused on healthcare technology.

Obamacare among leading drivers of protesters in Trump era. A new poll found that one in five adults in the U.S. participated in a political rally or protest since the beginning of 2016. Among the most common causes bringing people out of their homes was Obamacare, with 28 percent of protesters saying they went to a rally or protest to express their thoughts on the healthcare law, according to a poll from the Washington Post and Kaiser Family Foundation. Women’s rights were the top issue with 46 percent, the environment came in second at 32 percent and immigration at 30 percent.

Susan Collins goes on defense over failed Obamacare stabilization bill. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the collapse of her effort to craft bipartisan legislation to stabilize Obamacare’s exchanges fell due to “hyperpartisanship.” Collins defended herself in an op-ed Sunday in the Portland, Maine, Press Herald. Collins said she did not think that Obamacare’s individual mandate, which requires everyone to get insurance, should have been repealed in tax reform, which she voted for, “because without additional fixes to the [Affordable Care Act], repeal of the mandate would shrink the size of the insurance market, spreading risk among fewer people.” The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the repeal of the mandate would lead to 10 percent premium increases annually on Obamacare’s exchanges. Collins and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., tried to get an Obamacare stabilization package into the omnibus spending deal two weeks ago. However, bipartisan support collapsed over a disagreement over abortion language. She said the proposal was the “last clear opportunity” to prevent the rate hikes linked to the tax reform bill.

Collins: McConnell ‘kept his promise to me.’ Appearing on CNN “State of the Union” Sunday, Collins said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “kept his promise to me” about considering the bill intended to stabilize the Obamacare exchanges. “Much to my surprise, it was blocked actually by senators on the other side of the aisle,” she said. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised Collins a vote on the Obamacare stabilization package in exchange for her vote on tax reform, in addition to including other amendments from the senator. But that Obamacare vote hasn’t happened. Collins said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that she doesn’t believe McConnell lied to her to get her vote.

RUNDOWN

Reuters In key Kentucky House race, healthcare anxieties loom large

NPR Bill of the month: A tale of two CT scanners: one rich and one poor

Wall Street Journal Antitrust ruling deals blow to Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurers

Axios Healthcare is still a reliable jobs creator

New York Times The disappearing doctor: How mega-mergers are changing the business of medical care

Associated Press Drug overdose deaths decline after years of steady increases

STAT News Mass. governor defends Vertex drug pricing, says ‘innovation is expensive’

Bloomberg Novartis CEO spurs rare-disease shift with $8.7 billion deal