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To receive Medicaid health coverage, some adults will soon have to show they are working, volunteering or taking classes. But to gather that proof, many states first will have to spend millions of dollars improving their computer systems. Across the nation, states face an immense task and high costs to prepare for the Jan. 1 kickoff of new Medicaid eligibility mandates affecting millions of lower-income adults in the government-funded health care program. (Lieb, 3/1)

More about Medicaid —

For the fourth time, federal auditors have turned up improper or potentially improper Medicaid payments in every sample of autism therapy records they audited. This report, focused on Colorado, yielded the highest improper payment amount yet. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General uncovered $285.2 million in improper and potentially improper payments in 2022 and 2023 to clinicians who provide a popular form of autism therapy called applied behavior analysis, or ABA. The payments, administered under Colorado’s Medicaid program, come from the state and federal governments. (Bannow, 3/2)

Ohio Department of Health Director Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff laid out plans for a $202 million federal award aimed at rural health, following drastic Trump/Republican Medicaid cuts that will hit Ohio to the tune of $33 billion over 10 years. During overall budget testimony in the Ohio House Health Committee, Vanderhoff spelled out different priorities for the money awarded to the state through the Rural Health Transformation Program, which the Trump administration has presented as an attempt to offset cuts in other areas, such as Medicaid funding cut. (Tebben, 3/1)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Families Defend Disability Services Amid Medicaid Cuts
Families of Idahoans with disabilities say their lives could be upended as lawmakers in the state’s Republican-dominated legislature mull sweeping cuts. Services at risk include the 24/7 care that allows a 39-year-old with cerebral palsy to live independently; the in-home caregiving that lets a 26-year-old with brain damage from a hemorrhage at birth stay in his family home; and private duty nursing for a 19-year-old with cerebral palsy who has qualified for hospice care for complications including pulmonary decline from a spinal cord injury. (Sable-Smith, 3/2)

Stephanie Walters doesn’t know what she will do if Idaho stops funding home care for her daughter. Until recently, this option would have been unthinkable. But because of steep cuts to Medicaid from Donald Trump’s signature policy measure, state officials are considering the unthinkable. Last month, Republican Gov. Brad Little released a budget plan that would potentially dissolve the state’s home care services. The possibility has people with disabilities and their families scrambling. A number of programs are on the chopping block, including dental services, occupational and physical therapy for children and adults, and home care for people with disabilities. That’s exactly the type of service Walters, 56, and her daughter rely on. (Luterman, 3/2)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Medicaid Is Paying For More Dental Care. GOP Cuts Threaten To Reverse The Trend
Star Quinn moved to Kingsport, Tennessee, in 2023, the same year the state began covering dental costs for about 600,000 low-income adults enrolled in Medicaid. But when Quinn chipped a tooth and it became infected, she could not find a dentist near her home who would accept her government health coverage and was taking new patients. She went to an emergency room, receiving painkillers and antibiotics, but she remained in agonizing pain weeks later and paid a dentist $200 to extract the tooth. (Galewitz, 3/2)

Centene is asking the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to empower insurers to take matters of potential fraud into their own hands. The Medicaid market leader suggested seven possible reforms to CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz in a Wednesday letter, advocating for the agency to ease a “complex web of regulations.” (Tong, 2/27)

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Vice President Vance began his new role leading the Trump administration’s war on fraud with a bang this week by announcing a nearly $260 million moratorium on Medicaid funding for Minnesota. Strategists on both sides of the political spectrum say the campaign carries risks for the administration as it seeks to move on from the deadly immigration campaign in the state earlier this year. Maddie Twomey, communications director for the Democratic-aligned health advocacy group Protect Our Care, said attacking health care is rarely a politically sound move. (Choi, 3/1)

Dr. Oz has a show again. But instead of promoting health supplements and weight loss tips, he’s explaining the myriad ways the Trump administration is fighting waste, fraud and abuse in health care. And while the topic may have changed — and the videos air on social media, not cable television — the Trump administration hopes the effect is just the same: a rapt audience eager to believe, and enthralled with the simple way he explains complex topics. (Haslett and King, 2/27)

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced two new members of his handpicked panel of vaccine advisers on Friday, ahead of a meeting rescheduled for March. Kennedy said in a statement that Sean G. Downing, a primary care doctor licensed in Florida, and Angelina Farella, a pediatrician in Texas, would join the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a group that advises the federal government on which vaccines to recommend to the public. (Cirruzzo, 2/27)

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One of the world's leading medical journals has issued a scathing rebuke of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to mark his first year leading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The editorial — titled "Robert F. Kennedy Jr: 1 year of failure" — appears in the latest issue of the Lancet. (Stone, 2/28)

More news about vaccines —

Last fall, Washington and other Western states issued their own vaccine recommendations in a sharp rejection of federal policy that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has upended. And on Thursday, the Washington Legislature passed legislation to change state law so that vaccine coverage is tied to recommendations from the state, not a federal panel filled with Kennedy appointees. It requires insurers to follow the state’s guidelines instead of the ones from the feds that Democrats say can no longer be trusted. (Goldstein-Street, 2/26)

As the Trump administration shakes up recommendations for childhood vaccines, a growing number of states are moving quickly to ensure vaccines remain free and health care workers are protected from lawsuits. “States are stepping in to protect their communities proactively,” said Dr. David Higgins, a practicing pediatrician in Aurora, Colorado, and vice president of the Colorado chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. (Sullivan, 2/28)

Stanley Plotkin, who literally wrote the book on vaccination science, says we should fear the diseases, not the vaccines that prevent them. (Branswell, 3/2)

The World Health Organization (WHO) today recommended that vaccine manufacturers completely change the three viral strains included in the vaccines for the Northern Hemisphere’s next influenza season. As expected, the WHO recommended that vaccines for the next flu season includes a new variant of the influenza virus that started to increase last fall—too late for it to be included in this winter’s flu vaccines. Using current vaccine manufacturing technology, companies need at least six months’ prep time to produce flu shots in time for immunization campaigns beginning in the late summer or early fall. (Szabo, 2/27)

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) today said it’s recommending marketing authorization for mCombriax, Moderna’s combined mRNA vaccine for protecting older adults against COVID-19 and flu. The recommendation was made by the EMA’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use, which looked at data from a phase 3 trial involving 8,000 participants aged 50 and older. (Dall, 2/27)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Friday suggested people eat liver or “cheap cuts” in response to the high cost of beef. “This is true all over the country. There’s a lot of good food in grocery stores that goes away. Most of the cheap cuts of meat are very inexpensive,” Kennedy said at an event hosted by MAHA Action, a political action committee dedicated to supporting the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. “If you buy, you know, a porterhouse steak, it’s going to, it is going to take you back. You can buy liver or the cheaper cuts of steak that are very, very affordable,” he added. (Choi, 2/27)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in an interview that aired Friday that President Trump’s order bolstering the controversial herbicide glyphosate was “not something that I was particularly happy with.” Kennedy’s remarks to podcaster Joe Rogan departed somewhat from his previous defense of Trump’s move — though the Health secretary also expressed sympathy for the president’s position. (Frazin, 2/27)

On MAHA and the surgeon general nominee —

President Trump’s choice to serve as surgeon general has not cobbled together enough votes to win confirmation as a pair of centrist Senate Republicans have yet to give her their support. Casey Means, the nominee for the position, is facing an uphill climb to make it through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee after an at-times contentious confirmation hearing Wednesday. (Weaver, 2/27)

More on the Trump administration —

Facing continued upheaval at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Jay Bhattacharya, the new acting director, arrived at its Atlanta headquarters last week to steady the ship. Bhattacharya, who is also the head of the National Institutes of Health, might not be there long: The administration intends to nominate a new CDC director in the coming weeks, people familiar with the matter said, marking its first effort to permanently fill the role since last summer and a string of leadership changes at the nation’s top health agency. (Siddiqui, Calfas and Essley Whyte, 3/1)

A month after ICE agents sent the young Ecuadorian mother and her 7-year-old daughter to a sprawling detention center 1,300 miles from their Minnesota home, they were finally free. But when the bus pulled up to a migrant shelter in the border city of Laredo, dropping off a half-dozen families lugging bags stuffed with belongings, the stress of recent weeks tracked mother and daughter like the long shadows on that mid-February afternoon. (Burke, Geller and Gonzalez, 2/28)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News’ ‘On Air’: ICE, ALS, Addiction Medicine, And Robotic Ultrasounds: Journalists Sound Off On All That And More
�鶹Ů�� Health News Southern California correspondent Claudia Boyd-Barrett discussed how family members and lawyers of those in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody are struggling to find them in California hospitals on CapRadio’s Insight With Vicki Gonzalez on Feb. 25. (2/28)

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In the early hours of Sunday morning, as a bar in a busy nightlife district of Austin, Texas, prepared to close for the night, patrons and staff were startled by the sound of gunshots. Armed with a pistol and a rifle, a man opened fire from outside the venue on the city’s bustling Sixth Street, killing two people and wounding 14 others, according to the Austin Police Department and the FBI’s San Antonio Division. It’s among at least 56 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. (Mujsa and Park, 3/2)

Inside an exam room at this bustling Planned Parenthood center, a clinician prepared six syringes. “I don’t want to look frozen,” said patient Nasim Adeli, a 34-year-old program manager. The aesthetics program director told Adeli to smile big before pressing a needle of Botox into the skin around her outer eye. “Now, relax.” Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, the largest affiliate of the national abortion provider, is overhauling its business model with a slate of new services. (Calfas, 3/1)

More health industry news —

In northeast Georgia, a hospital closed its maternity ward. In rural New Hampshire, a community health center shuttered. And in Iowa, a Des Moines hospital system laid off dozens of employees and closed a clinic. All these providers cited President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy agenda package, which slashed more than $1 trillion in federal support for health care, as a factor in their decisions. (Wright and Luhby, 3/2)

Federal prosecutors said Friday they won’t appeal a judge’s ruling that bars them from seeking the death penalty against Luigi Mangione in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. In a letter, Deputy U.S. Attorney Sean Buckley told Judge Margaret Garnett that the government will not ask the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse her decision, clearing the way for a trial beginning in September. His state murder trial is set to start in June. (Sisak, 2/27)

BrightSpring Health Services said Friday it had completed a $238.5 million deal to acquire 107 home health and hospice locations from UnitedHealth Group. BrightSpring closed the acquisition in December but disclosed the purchase this week in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company provides home health, hospice, in-home pharmacy and infusion services across 50 states. (Eastabrook, 2/27)

UnitedHealth Group Inc. limited employees’ raises this year to between 0% and 2%, based on performance, according to a person familiar with the matter. The meager compensation increase comes as the company recently told an unspecified number of workers they were being laid off, the person said, asking for anonymity because the matter is private. A UnitedHealth representative declined to comment. (Tozzi, 2/27)

On the Epstein files —

The Mount Sinai Health System has formed a committee to review its yearslong ties to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the institution before his death. The group will be convened as an ad hoc committee of the board of trustees, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named discussing non-public information. (Gordon, 2/27)

A plastic surgeon from Mount Sinai closed a young woman’s head wound with 35 stitches on Jeffrey Epstein’s dining room table. An internist in West Palm Beach ordered a blood test for another woman, then reported the abnormal results back to Mr. Epstein. A dentist at Columbia University asked Mr. Epstein how much work he wanted done on a “girl” with severe tooth decay. (Fahrenthold, Ghorayshi and Astor, 2/28)

An emergency rule from the Florida Department of Health went into effect on Sunday that could restrict tens of thousands of people from accessing HIV medication. The state issued cuts to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), a federal-state partnership that provides free FDA-approved HIV medication for low-income, uninsured or underinsured people. Under the emergency rule, eligibility for ADAP was lowered to include those at or below 130% of the federal poverty level, which equals about $20,345 per year for a one-person household, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (Kekatos, 3/1)

An estimated one in 12 U.S. adolescents with early syphilis also have HIV in a national surveillance sample, but the burden of co-occurring syphilis and HIV in teens is decreasing, according to a study. (Haelle, 3/1)

The World Health Organization (WHO) has certified Denmark for the elimination of mother-to-child transmission (EMTCT) of HIV and syphilis, recognizing the country's sustained commitment to ensuring every child is born free of these infections. “The elimination of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis marks a major public health achievement for Denmark,” said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. (2/26)

In a clinic in Cape Town earlier this year, a woman rolled up her sleeve and became the first person enrolled in what is one of the most consequential HIV treatment trials ever attempted on African soil. The researchers watching had spent the better part of a year wondering if this moment would ever come. Fourteen months earlier, the programme – known as BRILLIANT 011 and is the flagship of an Africa-led consortium of scientists researching a potential HIV vaccine – had been days from launch when a stop-work order arrived from Washington. (Hagan, 3/2)

More health and wellness news —

The vast majority of organ donations once came from people who were brain-dead. Now they’re increasingly coming from people who died when their heart stopped beating, a major shift that can boost transplants but also raises public confusion, researchers reported Thursday. What’s called donation after circulatory death, or DCD, jumped dramatically in a short period: It accounted for 49% of all deceased donors in the U.S. last year, up from 2% in 2000. (Neergaard, 2/26)

With springlike warmth returning to the Bay Area, people may be stocking up on sunscreen — and new research suggests cheaper may actually be better. A year’s worth of sunscreen can cost as little as $40 or as much as $1,400, according to a new study from UCSF dermatologists that encourages consumers to get inexpensive sunscreen — which may prompt people to use more of it. (Ho, 2/28)

The Supreme Court hears arguments Monday in an important gun case that has united an array of strange bedfellows, from conservative gun rights groups to liberal civil liberties groups. At issue is a federal law making it a crime for drug users to possess a firearm. It's the same law that was used to prosecute then-President Joe Biden's son for illegal gun possession — only this case involves marijuana use and gun ownership. The briefs in the case present diametrically different versions of the facts. On one side, the Trump administration portrays Ali Danial Hemani as a drug dealer and someone with terrorist ties and a marijuana habit. Importantly, he is not being prosecuted for any of those offenses, however. Rather, the government has charged Hemani with violating a federal gun law that bars drug addicts from possession of firearms, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. (Totenberg, 3/2)

More and more states have legalized marijuana in some form in recent years. The federal government also appears poised to reschedule marijuana following a December executive order from President Trump. Meanwhile, health care providers across the country have reported spikes in cases of a painful, sometimes debilitating condition linked to chronic, long-term marijuana use: cannabinoid (or cannabis) hyperemesis syndrome, or CHS. (Bink, 2/28)

More pharmaceutical news —

Minnesota hospitals and clinics participating in a controversial U.S. drug discount program reaped at least $1.34 billion in revenue in 2024, and the largest institutions were the biggest beneficiaries, according to a report from the state Department of Health. Specifically, hospitals and clinics received $3.045 billion in discounted medicines under the 340B Drug Pricing Program, but paid $1.53 billion plus another $165 million to various parties for administration fees. Meanwhile, the largest hospitals received more than $1 billion, representing 80% of the total revenue collected. (Silverman, 2/27)

Chronic migraine patients who used GLP-1 receptor agonists to treat conditions like obesity or diabetes had fewer emergency department (ED) visits than those on topiramate (Topamax), a real-world data analysis showed. (George, 3/1)

European drug regulators on Friday endorsed a new and simpler treatment for sleeping sickness, in what could be a giant boost to efforts to eliminate the disease. A European Medicines Agency committee gave its nod to acoziborole, made by Sanofi. The decision is seen as a crucial step to making the medicine available in Congo, the country with the most sleeping sickness cases, and paving the way for its use in other African countries. The product’s proponents say three of the pills, taken together as a one-time dose, are an easier and far more accessible treatment than current regimens, which can require arduous trips to hospitals. (Stobbe, 2/27)

On Wednesday, Lilly leaders, including Rau and Chief AI Officer Thomas Fuchs, Ph.D., cut the ribbon on a new Nvidia supercomputer, named LillyPod, that the Big Pharma believes to be the most powerful in the industry. After first announcing the supercomputer in October, Lilly and Nvidia followed up with a $1 billion commitment for a new Bay Area AI co-innovation lab, announced at the January J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. (Incorvaia, 2/27)

Agency leaders say the right things, but their actions tell a different story. (2/28)

Punitive policies around marijuana use while pregnant often result in worse outcomes for babies, experts write. (Lauren Micalizzi and Elizabeth Tobin-Tyler, 3/2)

Ketamine telehealth patients end up crowdsourcing their dosing protocols based on Reddit upvotes and anecdotal experiences. (Michael Alvear, 3/2)

RFK Jr. has done what President Trump promised to let him do during the campaign—that is, “go wild on health.” (Tom Rogers, 2/27)

Dying at home isn’t easy, even with hospice care. The hospice system, we learned, requires family involvement in the dying process to a degree that even we, as a family of doctors, weren’t comfortable with. We were responsible for bathing my father and helping him use the toilet, changing his clothes and, most daunting, administering morphine and other sedatives to treat his pain and anxiety. A nurse was scheduled to come to the house only for about an hour twice a week. Getting an aide to help with basic activities of daily living was nearly impossible. (Sandeep Jauhar, 3/2)