Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) “signed legislation adopting a limited expansion of the state’s Medicaid program, defying voters who in November approved the full Obamacare program through the ballot,” Politico reports.

“Under the new GOP-written plan, Utah will ask the Trump administration for permission to implement unprecedented restrictions on the health coverage program for the poor, while insuring about 60,000 fewer people than the Obamacare expansion would have and initially costing the state tens of millions of dollars more.”

Fox News host Pete Hegseth confessed on air that he has not washed his hands for 10 years because “germs are not a real thing,” the BBC reports.

“Speaking on Fox and Friends, Hegseth said the infectious micro-organisms did not exist because they could not be seen with the naked eye.”

Politico: “GOP lawmakers, fresh off an electoral shellacking fueled in large part by health care concerns, are now trolling Democrats with demands for hearings on the sweeping single-payer bill set to be introduced this month. They’re confident that revelations about its potential cost andelimination of most private insurance will give them potent lines of attack heading into 2020 — an election that President Trump is already framing as a debate about ‘socialism.'”

New Gallup data finds the number of Americans without health insurance has increased by 7 million since President Trump took office.

Sarah Kliff: “The country’s uninsured rate has steadily ticked upward since 2016, rising from a low of 10.9 percent in late 2016 to 13.7 percent — a four-year high.”https://politicalwire.com/2019/01/23/1061944/

“The uninsured rate is still well below where it was in 2013, before the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of health insurance coverage began. But under the Trump administration, a trend of Americans gaining coverage through the private marketplaces and the Medicaid expansion appears to be reversing.”

“Americans spend more than twice as much on health care per person as their peers in developed nations, according to a new analysis from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,” CNN reports.

“It’s not because people in the US use more medical services. Instead, it’s because drugs cost more, doctors and nurses are paid better, hospital administration is more expensive and many medical services have higher price tags, the study found.”

A congressional source tells Mike Allen that a key provision tucked in House Dems’ 14-page opening-day rules package focuses on the federal judge in Texas who struck down the ACA (which remains in effect during appeals).

” The provision authorizes the House counsel to intervene in the lawsuit on behalf of the House of Representatives, to try to protect people with pre-existing conditions, a popular and consequential feature of the ACA.”

“Next week, Democrats will hold an additional vote on a stand-alone resolution on intervening to defend protections for people with pre-existing conditions.”

“Mississippi’s Republican governor is considering Medicaid expansion, the first sign that long-held GOP opposition could be wilting in the Deep South after an election that was a big winner for the Obamacare program,” Politico reports.

“Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, entering his final year in office, has been engaged in quiet talks about adopting expansion after resisting for years.”

Now that a Texas judge has ruled that the entire Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional — all because of its individual mandate — a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll suggests Republicans “may find themselves wishing for a different outcome.”

“There is little hope of a deal with Democrats on health reform in a divided Congress if the decision is upheld. Democrats will now use the 2020 campaign to paint Republicans as threatening a host of popular provisions in the ACA. And here’s the kicker: protections for pre-existing conditions, the provision that played such a big role in the midterms, is not even the most popular one.”

Here are some of the more popular provisions that would be eliminated — in order of their popularity:

• Young adults can remain on their parents’ health insurance policies until age 26: 82% of the public supports this, including 66% of Republicans.
• Subsidies for lower and moderate income people: 81% support this, including 63% of Republicans.
• Closing the “donut hole” so there’s no gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage: 81% like this, as do 80% of Republicans.
• Eliminating costs for many preventive services: 79% support this, as do 68% of Republicans.
• Medicaid expansion: 77% like it, as do 55% of Republicans.

Politico: “Friday night’s ruling raises a number of decisions for the White House: Will the government appeal, how quickly and will its agencies continue to enforce the law in the meantime? It’s not clear what the Trump administration will choose to do, given its legal strategy to date.”

“Career Justice Department lawyers this summer were told to drop their defense of the law — a near-unprecedented decision that led three lawyers to remove their names from the government’s brief and prompted the senior attorney, Joel McElvain, to resign.”

David Nather: “The Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature achievement, may be headed back to the Supreme Court after a conservative federal judge in Texas struck down the individual mandate as unconstitutional last evening.”

“This could be a nightmare for Republicans in suburbs and swing states.”

“The midterms proved that the ACA has gotten more popular since the GOP started trying to repeal it — especially the protections for pre-existing conditions.
If the law goes away, that goes with it. This is not the fight Republicans want to have.”

“A federal judge in Texas said on Friday that the Affordable Care Act’s individual coverage mandate is unconstitutional and that the rest of the law must also fall,” CNN reports.

“Legal experts say the law will remain in effect for now, but the invalidation of the landmark health care law throws into doubt the future of health coverage for millions of Americans on the Obamacare exchanges and in Medicaid expansion. More than 4 million people have already signed up for 2019 coverage on the exchanges, and millions more are expected to pick plans before open enrollment ends Saturday.”

Washington Post: “Since the suit was filed in January, many health-law specialists have viewed its logic as weak but nevertheless have regarded the case as the greatest looming legal threat to the 2010 law, which has been a GOP whipping post ever since and assailed repeatedly in the courts.”

Rep.-elect Mark Green (R-TN) — who is also a medical doctor — told constituents “he believed vaccines may be causing autism, denying data from the Centers for Disease Control and other institutions disproving such a theory,” the Tennessean reports.

Not only did Green express hesitation about the CDC’s stance on vaccines, Green said he believed the federal health agency has “fraudulently managed” the data.

“For the first time in nearly a decade, the number of uninsured children in America has grown,” CNN reports.

“The reversal is unprecedented, particularly given a strong economy in which more people are landing jobs and gaining access to employer health coverage. It also comes at a time when the nation’s overall uninsured rate remained flat.”

“Roughly 276,000 more children were uninsured in 2017 than the year before, bringing the total to more than 3.9 million.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called for “working on a bipartisan basis to address shortcomings in the Affordable Care Act as Democrats prepare to take control of the House,” the Washington Post reports.

“His comments marked a sharp departure from Republican efforts during the past two years to repeal former president Barack Obama’s signature health-care law while the party controlled both chambers of Congress and held the presidency.”