Trump Exaggerates Speed and Certainty of Prescription Drug Price Reductions
By Louis Jacobson, PolitiFact
According to the timeline in the May 12 executive order, prescription drug price reductions would not happen “almost immediately,” but rather could take months or years. And extending the savings to Americans outside federal health insurance programs such as Medicare would likely require congressional action.
This News Might Ruin Your Appetite — And Summer
By David Hilzenrath
Fresh studies expose a gap in the FDA’s assessments of foods: Widely used additives could damage the mix of bacteria in your gut, causing health problems.
Daily Edition for Monday, May 19, 2025
Suspected Fertility Clinic Bomber May Be Linked To Manifesto With Fringe Views: The car bombing outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic appears to have been driven by anti-natalist ideology, or the belief that no one should have children, according to two senior law enforcement officials briefed on the incident. Investigators are focusing on social media posts made by the suspect, Guy Edward Bartkus, including a 30-minute audio recording. The posts and recording are still being verified. Read more from NBC News.
Trump’s DOJ Accuses Medicare Advantage Insurers of Paying ‘Kickbacks’ for Primo Customers
By Julie Appleby
The Department of Justice alleges that several major health insurers paid brokerages “hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks” to get agents to steer consumers into their Medicare Advantage plans, allegations the insurers strongly dispute.
Rural Patients Face Tough Choices When Their Hospitals Stop Delivering Babies
By Arielle Zionts
More than 100 rural hospitals have stopped delivering babies since 2021, including a South Dakota hospital that serves small towns, farming communities, and a Native American reservation. Patients there now travel at least an hour to give birth.
Housing, Nutrition in Peril as Trump Pulls Back Medicaid Social Services
By Angela Hart
About half of states have broadened Medicaid, the state-federal low-income health care program, to pay for social services such as housing and nutritional support. The Trump administration, however, views these experiments as distractions from the core mission to provide health care.
Trump retira servicios sociales de Medicaid, y pone en peligro la nutrición y la alimentación
By Angela Hart
Sin hogar ni alimentos saludables, las personas corren el riesgo de enfermarse más, quedarse sin hogar y experimentar aún más dificultades para controlar afecciones crónicas como la diabetes y las enfermedades cardíacas.
Los hospitales que atienden partos en zonas rurales están cada vez más lejos de las embarazadas
By Arielle Zionts
Más de un centenar de hospitales rurales han dejado de atender partos desde 2021, según el Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. El cierre de los servicios de obstetricia se suele achacar a la falta de personal y la falta de presupuesto.
Daily Edition for Friday, May 16, 2025
Group Asks State To Pay For Post-Fire Soil Testing: Environmental researchers are calling on the Newsom administration to pay for soil testing at thousands of homes destroyed in the Eaton and Palisades wildfires. They are imploring officials not to abandon the state’s wildfire-recovery protocols, namely the policy to conduct soil sampling. Federal disaster agencies have refused to do that work. Read more from the Los Angeles Times.
In Bustling NYC Federal Building, HHS Offices Are Eerily Quiet
By Michelle Andrews and Eliza Fawcett, Healthbeat
Public health experts and advocates say that Health and Human Services regional offices, like the one in New York City, form the connective tissue between the federal government and locally based services.
