Kaiser Health News

Dr. Otis Brawley, the chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, is on the record with a quick post on Angelina Jolie’s startling announcement in a New York Times op-ed that she has had a prophylactic double mastectomy to cut her inherited risk of breast cancer. Jolie’s mother died of the disease at age 56, and the actress found through genetic testing that she carries the BRCA1 gene.

Brawley, who has been an outspoken critic of overtesting, answers many important questions that Jolie’s decision raises.

Three western states which had gotten tentative go-aheads to run their own online health insurance websites — Utah, Idaho and New Mexico — are running out of time to be ready for an Oct. 1 launch and experts doubt they will get green lights from the federal government.

Physicians have long been prickly about Web sites that assign them points or letter grades or even smiley and frowning faces based on patient reviews of their experiences. Picking a physician is more complicated than buying a toaster, they say, and doctors can’t be accurately evaluated solely on the basis of whether they’re good communicators, for example, or keep appointments punctually.

Now Consumer Reports, a leading publisher of, among other things, buyers’ guides for toasters and other appliances, has ventured into physician rating territory in Massachusetts. The ratings, published as an insert in the July issue for the magazine’s Massachusetts subscribers and available online as well, put 487 primary-care and pediatric practices through their paces, assigning scores from 1 to 4 in each of five categories related to patient experience.

DENVER -- In a grim coincidence, just days after the mass killing in Newtown, Conn., Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper is proposing an $18.5 million plan to strengthen the state’s mental health system. The proposal is the result of five months of work by a group of advisors convened by Hickenlooper in the wake of a mass shooting in July at an Aurora, Colo., movie theater that left 12 dead.

Should doctors be able to ask their patients or patients’ parents whether they own a gun? What about health insurers, employers or health-care officials implementing the Affordable Care Act?

President Barack Obama’s re-election ensures the survival of his landmark health care law, but predominantly Republican state officials will get a big say in how it is carried out.

State lawmakers will control whether millions of uninsured people get coverage through Medicaid beginning in 2014, as the law envisions. They’ll also decide whether to set up online markets where individuals can shop for coverage and seek federal subsidies to lower their costs.

The consulting firm headed by the man planning Mitt Romney’s White House transition -should there be one - says most states eventually will expand Medicaid under the health law, if President Barack Obama is re-elected.