3 Things To Watch on Mental Health in Trump’s Early Budget Proposals
By Aneri Pattani
President Donald Trump’s budget office says he’ll continue to fund the new 988 suicide prevention hotline, but documents sent to Congress offer clues — amid some mixed messages — about the administration’s approach to two pressing public health issues: mental health and addiction.
Trump Won’t Force Medicaid To Cover GLP-1s for Obesity. A Few States Are Doing It Anyway.
By Lauren Sausser
Late last year, South Carolina Medicaid approved a class of medications known as GLP-1s to treat obesity, placing it among the few state programs covering these effective but expensive drugs. But access remains limited, even for patients covered by Medicaid, because of stringent prerequisites that must be satisfied before starting the drug.
Daily Edition for Tuesday, May 20, 2025
Psychiatric Hospital Abused Patients For Years, State Finds: The state’s watchdog agency for people with disabilities has found that College Hospital in Cerritos (Los Angeles County), a for-profit psychiatric hospital, abused patients for years by excessively and improperly strapping them down and drugging them in violation of federal and state regulations. Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle.
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.
How Trump Aims To Slash Federal Support for Research, Public Health, and Medicaid
By Elisabeth Rosenthal
One thing experts agree on: The damage from the funding cuts will be varied and immense.
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.
