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The federal budget deficits caused by President Donald Trump’s tax and spending law could trigger automatic cuts to Medicare if Congress does not act, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported Friday. The CBO estimates that Medicare, the federal health insurance program for Americans over age 65, could potentially see as much as $491 billion in cuts from 2027 to 2034 if Congress does not act to mitigate a 2010 law that forces across-the-board cuts to many federal programs once legislation increases the federal deficit. (Groves, 8/16)

Roughly 650,000 people here have signed up for Medicaid since the legislature expanded it 18 months ago — the culmination of a years-long effort in this politically split state. But now they are in danger of losing it under provisions in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In signing that law, Trump approved more than $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade. Those cuts are colliding with state budget challenges, imperiling the future of Medicaid in states such as North Carolina. (Winfield Cunningham, 8/17)

During his first term, President Donald Trump frequently turned to the issue of mental health, framing it as a national crisis that demanded action. He linked it to opioid addiction, mass shootings and a surge in veteran suicides — and he later used it to argue against COVID-19 lockdowns and school closures. At times, he backed up his rhetoric with action. His administration issued tens of millions of dollars in grants to expand community mental health services and continued funding contracts to help federal regulators enforce the parity law, which requires insurers to treat mental and physical health care equally. (Miller and Kohler, 8/18)

Jennifer Sontag cracked her skull and couldn’t afford emergency brain surgery. Her doctors suggested she start a GoFundMe. “Their advice was, ‘You’ve got to get the surgery. You’ll work it out later,’” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? Your advice to someone in a medical crisis is to beg for money?’” Sontag, 52, was teaching business management in China in 2019 when she fell while exiting a bus and hit her head so hard that it caused a leak of cerebral fluid in her brain. She spent five days in a hospital in Shanghai before her worried family persuaded her to get the necessary surgery close to them in St. Louis. (Kasulis Cho, 8/17)

A patient who died in February after calling for help in a Mission Hospital emergency department bathroom went 29 minutes with no response as multiple staff members passed by the door with a call light flashing above, according to documents obtained by Asheville Watchdog. By the time an employee entered the bathroom, the 54-year-old patient was slumped in a wheelchair, unresponsive, his heart no longer beating. (Jones, 8/17)

Just days before Christmas 2024, a group of female teen patients broke into the nurse’s station and medication room at a psychiatric hospital in Raleigh, where they tore down parts of the ceiling, hurled objects at staff, damaged equipment and used syringes as weapons. Several police officers responded to the disturbance at Holly Hill Hospital, and emergency responders took seven patients to the emergency room for monitoring due to possible medication ingestion. (Knopf, 8/18)

Black patients were more likely than white patients to have notes from their clinicians questioning their sincerity or competence, a study found. In a cross-sectional analysis of more than 13 million notes in electronic health records, Black patients had higher odds of having credibility-undermining terms in their documentation compared with white patients (adjusted OR 1.29, 95% CI 1.27-1.32), as well as lower odds of credibility-supporting language (aOR 0.82, 95% CI 0.79-0.85), reported Mary Catherine Beach, MD, MPH, of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, and colleagues in PLoS One. (McCreary, 8/15)