Some benefits are essential.

The House of Representatives last week postponed voting to gut Obamacare after new provisions weakening the essential benefits guarantee failed to win support from right-wing Republicans, who oppose almost any form of subsidized health insurance.

'This shift to accountability and value is going to come up in any reform proposal'.

On May 15, Mike Slubowski, currently CEO of the $2.7 billion SCL Health with a dozen hospitals in Colorado, Kansas and Montana, becomes chief operating officer of Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health, a system about six times larger. He will be serving CEO Dr. Richard Gilfillan, who has pledged to turn the nation's second-largest Catholic- sponsored health system into a proving ground for the value-based care models he helped shape while leading the CMS' Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. Editor Merrill Goozner spoke with Slubowski last week about the major challenges in his new role and the special challenges faced by exurban hospitals such as the ones he ran at SCL during 61/2 years there. The following is an edited transcript.

A bold proposal for Trumpcare 2.0.

It was notable that so many conservative activists and pundits rushed to abandon the Republican Party's promise to "repeal and replace" Obamacare in the wake of Trumpcare's humiliating defeat in the House of Representatives.

A false start in the fight against opioid addiction.

As with so much else, the Trump administration has stumbled in its initial efforts to combat opioid addiction. Given the magnitude of the crisis, healthcare professionals have an obligation to speak out against ill-considered policies.

The phony war on high drug prices.

Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum. Witness how the pharnaceutical industry has succeeded in taking advantage of President Donald Trump's failure to do something-anything-about high drug prices.

Playing with fire on cost-sharing subsidies.

It's time to check in with the governing party to see how its plan to replace Obamacare is progressing.

It's now or never to fix next year's exchange rates.

As the ad hoc committee of 13 Republican senators rethinks the increasingly unpopular American Health Care Act, Congress and the administration face a more pressing question. Will they stabilize the individual insurance market for 2018?

Curing the sickness at the heart of healthcare.

Who's responsible for making the U.S. healthcare system the most expensive in the world? If you are a top hospital or insurance executive, a well-paid physician or a drug company official or stockholder, the answer lies in the mirror.

AHCA is an extremist attack on public health.

Anyone who knows anything about healthcare didn't need a Congressional Budget Officer scorecard to understand the disastrous consequences of the American Health Care Act.

Want to fight chronic disease? Stop subsidizing drug companies.

Healthcare systems have made great strides in recent years in learning how to use their medical records and claims data to identify patients at high risk of contracting chronic diseases such as diabetes. Unfortunately, under fee-for-service medicine, doing something with that information is rarely a smart move financially.

Wrong-to-try.

The Trump administration has thrown its weight behind giving patients the "right-to-try" experimental drugs outside clinical trials. While such laws purport to offer hope for the dying, they will actually slow medical progress.

'We don't need more patients in our hospitals. We need healthier people in our communities'.

Last July's merger of Providence Health & Services of Renton, Wash., and St. Joseph Health of Irvine, Calif., gave the combined 50-hospital chain a greater presence in the highly competitive Los Angeles market. Modern Healthcare Editor Merrill Goozner last week spoke with Dr. Richard Afable, CEO of St. Joseph Hoag Health, part of St. Joseph Health, about the merger's implication for competition in the L.A. basin.

Give Verma a chance.

Seema Verna, the Indiana consultant who injected personal responsibility requirements and health savings accounts into that state's Medicaid program, deserves a shot at working with other states that want to redesign their programs.

'Interoperability continues to be the big issue'.

Paul Black took over the reins of electronic health record vendor Allscripts Healthcare Solutions in 2012 after 13 years with rival Cerner Corp., where he rose to chief operating officer. In between, he spent five years with a private equity firm, which served him well in the past year as AlIscripts acquired firms with software offerings that go well beyond its mainstay physician office business. Editor Merrill Goozner recently spoke with Black, 59, about his strategy for Allscripts and the future direction of the EHR business. The following is an edited transcript.

The medical imperative for data-sharing.

Bryan Olson, a 47-year-old prostate cancer survivor with short spiky hair, dark glasses and the pallor of someone who has spent too many hours staring at computer screens, has become an evangelist for unlocking medical records through data-sharing and interoperability.

Blame Congress for the coming 'death spiral'.

Despite repeated warnings from conservative realists, the Senate and House last week put in motion an Obamacare "repeal and delay" strategy that would destabilize the individual health insurance markets that provide coverage for over 11 million Americans.

It's not that complicated To: President Donald Trump From: HHS Secretary Tom Price Re: It's complicated.

Dear Mr. President, You face some difficult choices in helping Congress come up with a replacement for the disastrous Obamacare. This memo is designed to alert you to the complications in the approaches you've now endorsed.

Dr. Price's conflicts of interest.

Democratic senators, several of whom are themselves avid traders in healthcare stocks, were right to roast HHS secretary designee Dr. Tom Price for his unseemly plunges into individual healthcare equities.