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I was just petting an orange tabby cat in my Falls Church, Va., neighborhood, a cat I’d never met before. He was very cute. And he was purring and butting his head against my hand. Until he wasn’t.

He sunk his teeth into my wrist, hissed at me and ran off. So began my personal episode of Law & Order: Feline Victims Unit, complete with cat mug shots and weekly check-ins from local animal control and public health officials. And rabies shots. Multiple rabies shots in the emergency room. And more than $26,000 in health care costs, an alarming amount considering I was perfectly healthy throughout the whole ordeal.

The politics of health care are changing. And one of the most controversial parts of the Affordable Care Act — the so-called Cadillac tax — may be about to change with it.

The Cadillac tax is a 40% tax on the most generous employer-provided health insurance plans — those that cost more than $11,200 for an individual policy or $30,150 for family coverage. It was supposed to take effect in 2018, but Congress has delayed it twice. And the House recently voted overwhelmingly — 419-6 — to repeal it entirely. A Senate companion bill has 61 co-sponsors — more than enough to ensure passage.

Five years after Congress passed a law to reduce unnecessary MRIs, CT scans and other expensive diagnostic imaging tests that could harm patients and waste money, federal officials have yet to implement it.

The law requires that doctors consult clinical guidelines set by the medical industry before Medicare will pay for many common exams for enrollees. Health care providers who go way beyond clinical guidelines in ordering these scans (the 5% who order the most tests that are inappropriate) will, under the law, be required after that to get prior approval from Medicare for their diagnostic imaging.

A summer camp for children with disabilities in Nashville does things a little differently. Rather than accommodate the campers’ physical challenges, therapists make life a bit tougher, in hopes of ultimately strengthening the kids’ ability to navigate the world.

Priceless Garinger’s left arm is wrapped from shoulder to fingertips in a neon-pink cast on the day I visit. The left one is the 12-year-old’s strong hand. It’s her other arm and hand that have been the problem since she was born with cerebral palsy. She can move her right arm but has difficulty grasping anything.

Medicare paid for Betty Gordon’s knee replacement surgery in March, but the 72-year-old former high school teacher needed a nursing home stay and care at home to recover.

Yet Medicare wouldn’t pay for that. So Gordon is stuck with a $7,000 bill she can’t afford — and, as if that were not bad enough, she can’t appeal.

The reasons Medicare won’t pay have frustrated the Rhode Island woman and many others trapped in the maze of regulations surrounding something called “observation care.”

Dr. Steven Curry has treated patients with snakebites since the 1980s — long enough to remember when the treatment represented its own form of misery.

The first medication he used sometimes caused an immune reaction called “serum sickness” — patients broke out in a severe, itchy rash. About 20 years ago, the drug CroFab entered the market and dramatically reduced the adverse reactions associated with treatment, said Curry, who works at a Phoenix hospital. He is a medical toxicologist, a specialist in treating patients harmed by poison or venom.

Chances are, you or someone you know has gotten a surprise medical bill. One in six Americans have received these unexpected and often high charges after getting medical care from a doctor or hospital that isn’t in their insurance network.