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�鶹Ů�� HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES

�鶹Ů�� Health News: How To Make A High-Deductible Health Plan Work For You
An elementary school teacher chose a low-price health insurance plan but soon realized she wasn’t clear about what it would mean for her family’s finances. When enhanced federal subsidies expired at the end of 2025, a lot of people buying their own health insurance on the state and federal exchanges saw their expected monthly rates jump. To keep costs down, many switched to a high-deductible health plan. These plans offer lower monthly payments, but in exchange patients can face steep out-of-pocket costs when they need care. (Fortiér, 4/13)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Pennsylvania Town Faces Fallout From Trump’s Environmental Rule Rollback
North America’s largest coke plant hugs the west bank of Pennsylvania’s Monongahela River, belching out emissions from turning superheated coal into a carbon-rich fuel. Researchers say the children at Clairton Elementary School about a mile away pay the price. They discovered the students there and at other elementary schools near major pollution sites in Pennsylvania had higher asthma rates than other children in the state. (Armour and Rosenfeld, 4/13)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Rovner Recaps Medicaid Cuts' Impact On Hospitals And Fields Caller Questions On Affordability
�鶹Ů�� Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner discussed Medicaid cuts on WAMU’s 1A on April 7. She also discussed health care affordability on The Middle With Jeremy Hobson on April 3. (4/11)

THE LATEST FROM CMS

Health insurance companies and states would have to resolve prior authorization requests for drugs more quickly and publicly disclose their denial rates under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published Friday. The regulation would require Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program insurers, along with state Medicaid and CHIP administrators, to respond to non-urgent prior authorization requests for prescription drugs within 24 hours after receiving a request. (Tepper, 4/10)

Medicare payments for inpatient hospital services would rise 2.4% in fiscal 2027 under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued Friday. CMS also proposed reviving and scaling up its Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement payment model across the nation beginning in 2027. The revived CJR model, which CMS has dubbed CJR-X, would be the first nationwide mandatory episode-based payment model in fee-for-service Medicare, according to an agency news release. (Early, 4/10)

Medicare enrollees will soon be able to export their medical records to their doctor or hospital under a program launched Thursday by CMS. "Right now, our health information still feels stuck in the past," Amy Gleason, acting administrator of the Department of Government Efficiency and a senior advisor at HHS, said in a press conference with reporters. (Frieden, 4/10)

MORE ON THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

The Honduran family of an 8-year-old girl with a heart condition who died in U.S. custody after crossing the border in 2023 sued the federal government on Friday. Anadith Danay Reyes Alvarez, who had chronic heart problems and sickle cell anemia, got sick with flu-like symptoms and died after being detained for eight days in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in Donna, then later Harlingen, Texas. (Gonzalez, 4/10)

Highly trained service members have been put on paid leave for nearly a year as they wait for the military to decide their fate. (Phillipps, 4/13)

White House budget director Russ Vought isn’t done trying to cut the National Institutes of Health’s funding, but Congress isn’t taking him seriously anymore. Vought released a proposal last week to slash the 2027 budget for the world’s largest funder of health research by 10 percent, down from 40 percent last year. It’s unlikely Congress or the agency’s head will listen to him. Lawmakers rejected Vought’s first big cut in the spending bill they passed in February and already promised to reject the smaller one this year. (Hooper, 4/11)

'MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN'

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tends to favor health choices he sees as natural — whether that means eating “real food” like meat and vegetables instead of ultra-processed food or suggesting, falsely, that nutrition and vitamins are a good alternative for fighting off measles instead of vaccines. But there’s at least one area where the health secretary breaks with his own tradition. (Todd, 4/6)

In the early 2020s, interest in GLP-1 weight loss drugs exploded. Now, as we move deeper into the decade, a new buzzword is taking over: peptides. And the demand for peptides continues to surge. “The GLP-1s put it on the map, and then people were like, ‘Well, what’s next?’” said Evan Miller, founder and CEO of Gameday Men’s Health, a concierge men’s health network that provides peptides and other care. (Howard, 4/13)

Mark McAfee, chief executive of Raw Farm, the country’s largest raw-milk producer, got an unexpected text last year from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proposing a conversation about raw milk once FDA Commissioner Marty Makary was confirmed. The meeting never happened. In the months that followed, McAfee said, his outreach to the health secretary went unanswered. Kennedy, who once took shots of raw milk at the White House alongside a wellness influencer, stopped publicly championing the product. (Siddiqui, 4/11)

Protein-hungry shoppers are buying more meat with their health top of mind. Health experts, however, wish they’d think beyond the butcher counter. More than three-quarters of U.S. consumers saw meat and poultry as “part of a healthy, balanced diet” last year, up from 64% in 2020, according to an annual survey from food industry groups FMI and the Meat Institute, released last month. Forty-five percent are “actively trying to prepare more meals containing meat or poultry,” while another 31% are “doing so off and on,” the survey found. (Bellis, 4/11)

The party of business is now chock-full of voters who distrust food and pharmaceutical companies and want to regulate them. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is one of them and the health secretary’s drive to spread that message in Washington is proving costly for industry. (Chu, 4/11)

COVID

The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 may spread through the lungs by turning previously resistant cells into targets for infection, a finding that helps explain the widespread inflammation and organ damage seen in severe cases and points to a potential new treatment. (Gale, 4/13)

A diagnosis of long COVID is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, particularly cardiac arrhythmias, heart failure, and coronary artery disease, even among patients who were not hospitalized for COVID-19, according to a new prospective cohort study published in eClinicalMedicine. (Bergeson, 4/10)

MEASLES AND FLU

The US measles case count grew by 43 cases this past week, reaching 1,714, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly update. The increase is much smaller than the 96-case jump last week, and more than half of the new cases are in Utah. (Wappes, 4/10)

Measles is best known for causing a full-body rash with red spots. But those spots aren’t the only symptom. Early measles symptoms can resemble the flu, and infected people are contagious for four days before the tell-tale rash appears, experts say. People with measles are also contagious for four days after the rash begins. (Szabo, 4/10)

Even as the US respiratory illness season continues to ebb, it remains deadly, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) documenting 12 more pediatric deaths in its FluView update today. So far this season, 139 children have died from the virus, and about 85% with a known vaccination status were unvaccinated. While the CDC has classified this flu season as moderate for adults, it’s been high-severity for children. (Van Beusekom, 4/10)

HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY

Every day, more than 40 million people ask ChatGPT about health care, according to OpenAI. They’re asking questions about diet, exercise, insurance — and in some cases, serious symptoms that would typically get discussed on a 911 call or in a doctor’s office. (Palmer, 4/13)

Marketing executive Mathew Evins lived with chronic back pain for eight agonizing years. He described it as "excruciating." By 2024, he had trouble just walking. He had exhausted non-invasive treatment, and his doctors agreed he needed surgery. His insurance company had other ideas: "They went back to my surgeon and said, 'Your patient needs another six weeks of physical therapy,'" Evins said. (Spencer, 4/12)

When Dr. Jennifer Casaletto’s kids started watching The Pitt last year, her 14-year-old son had a question: Which one are you? “I’m Doctor Robby,” she told him, referencing the attending physician played by Noah Wyle who oversees the chaotic emergency room in the hit HBO TV drama. She said his jaw dropped: “That’s what you do??” (Crouch, 4/13)

Edna Foa, an Israeli American psychologist who pressed her field — and her patients — to more directly confront fear and anxiety, revolutionizing the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, died on March 24 at a hospital in Philadelphia. She was 88. Her death, from complications of pneumonia, was confirmed by her daughter Yael Foa. (Barry, 4/12)

PHARMACEUTICALS

A negative study in low-grade serous ovarian cancer might have uncovered a pathway toward more effective treatment for a large subgroup of patients, according to the NRG-GY019 trial. (Bankhead, 4/12)

A Cook County jury on Friday decided that Abbott Laboratories should pay $17 million in punitive damages — on top of $53 million in compensatory damages awarded a day earlier — in four cases in which mothers alleged the company’s formula for premature infants caused their babies to become severely ill. (Schencker, 4/10)

STATE WATCH

State of Minnesota officials said they are making progress in their effort to revalidate nearly 5,600 medical care providers across the state amid federal accusations of widespread fraud in the program that provides health insurance coverage to low income residents. (Ratanpal, 4/10)

A resolution urging the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) to incorporate content standards that include prenatal development into statewide school curriculum is scheduled for debate in the Louisiana House of Representatives on Monday (April 13). Critics say that the resolution mirrors efforts in other Republican-led states to introduce anti-abortion material into public school curriculum. (Syed, 4/10)

Surveillance data first detected the sedative medetomidine in New York state in mid-2024, and through 2025 it was identified in 25.1% of opioid samples analyzed, with a monthly peak of 44.1% in May 2025, according to a Public Health Alerts report published today. (Wappes, 4/10)

LIFESTYLE AND HEALTH

Contrary to stereotypes, many older adults improve in cognitive and physical abilities in later life — and having a positive mindset about aging may play a key role, according to a recent study by Yale researchers. The findings, published last month in the journal Geriatrics, reject the common narrative that physical and cognitive declines are inevitable with aging. It found that about 45% of U.S. adults 65 and older showed improvement in cognition or walking speed, or both, in the 12-year study period. (Ho, 4/11)

When George Lacomb moved two years ago to a new high school in Orlando, Florida, he quickly noticed safety precautions that the football team at his previous, less affluent school never had. There was a designated recovery room, staffed by a full-time athletic trainer, giant ice baths to cool overheated athletes, and indoor facilities to practice if outside got too hot. At his old school in another part of Orlando, the football team relied on one makeshift ice bath and a cafeteria table to rest on when injured. (Morton, 4/13)

Jack Alston had been playing football for most of his life — but he had never shaken the bad habit of leading with his head. During a practice in August 2024, he was hit hard, but never exhibited typical concussion symptoms like vomiting or losing consciousness. The incident left him with a mild headache. He had a history of migraines, so at first, the pain didn't bother him much. But then it "didn't really go away," Jack, then in eighth grade, said. Still, football was "his life." He avoided mentioning the pain to his parents so he wouldn't miss practices or games. (Breen, 4/11)