Policymakers are often as sensitive to overall health care spending as they are to increases in Medicare spending, and the latest report on both brought some good news and some bad news. The good news is that overall health care spending was essentially flat as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2018, but the bad news is that Medicare spending jumped 6.4%, thus renewing the troublesome historical trend of outpacing typical GDP growth.

In a historic first, all prisoners and people covered through Medicaid in Louisiana got access last week to Asegua Therapeutics LLC's hepatitis C drug, even if they were in the early stages of the disease, thanks to a modified subscription program that's likely to serve as a model for other states in the U.S. looking for ways to pay for pricey cures and treatments emerging from the pipeline.