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The Trump administration is preparing a plan that would make it harder for older Americans to qualify for Social Security disability payments, part of an overhaul of the federal safety net for poor, older and disabled people that could result in hundreds of thousands of people losing benefits, according to people familiar with the plans. The Social Security Administration evaluates disability claims by considering age, work experience and education to determine if a person can adjust to other types of work. Older applicants, typically over 50, have a better chance of qualifying because age is treated as a limitation in adapting to many jobs. (Kornfield and Rein, 10/5)

Military veterans are swamping the U.S. government with dubious disability claims — including cases of brazen fraud totaling tens of millions of dollars — that are exploiting the country’s sacred commitment to compensate those harmed in the line of duty, according to a Washington Post investigation. Taxpayers will spend roughly $193 billion this year for the Department of Veterans Affairs to compensate about 6.9 million disabled veterans on the presumption that their ability to work is impaired. VA officials say most veterans’ disability claims are legitimate. (Whitlock, Rein and Gilbert, 10/6)

On autism —

Researchers at Cornell University have received a $5.1 million grant from the Autism Data Science Initiative, as part of the Trump administration's increased scrutiny on the disorder and controversial plans to track direct sources for the complex and widely misunderstood condition. The National Institutes of Health announced plans for the $50 million grant project this summer to "identify how existing treatments/interventions are used and better understand their outcomes to inform the design of future clinical studies." (Wise, 10/6)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s belief that vaccines or Tylenol cause autism is resonating with a slice of voters who feel abandoned by the medical establishment. The Trump administration's allies in Kennedy's "Make America Healthy Again" movement think Kennedy's autism agenda will help rally MAHA voters to turn out in the midterm elections and vote for Republican candidates. (Reed, 10/3)

JJ Hanley can still remember the pediatrician’s words. It was the early ’90s, and the mother of two in suburban Chicago had begun to worry that her toddler-age son, Tim, was showing language delays and other behaviors that didn’t align with his older brother’s development. Hanley turned to her son’s doctor, who declared: “There’s nothing wrong with him. What’s wrong with him is you.” (Luterman and Rodriguez, 10/3)

On vaccines —

About 90 seconds into his presentation on Covid-19 vaccine safety at a closely watched meeting of advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last month, Dr. Bruce Carleton made a startling revelation: The government grant supporting his research had been abruptly terminated. (Tirrell, 10/4)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Inside The High-Stakes Battle Over Vaccine Injury Compensation, Autism, And Public Trust
Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has floated a seismic idea: adding autism to the list of conditions covered by the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The program, known as VICP, provides a system for families to file claims against vaccine providers in cases in which they experience severe side effects. Kennedy has also suggested broadening the definitions of two serious brain conditions — encephalopathy and encephalitis — so that autism cases could qualify. (Gounder, 10/6)

At 30 years old, Lacie Madison just assumed she was fully vaccinated her entire life. But when she got a job at a hospital and was required to check her immunity, the doctor called with shocking news: It appeared she was barely vaccinated as a child, if at all. “I just said, ‘Are you kidding me?’” recalled Madison, now 39. (Thadani, 10/5)

More health news from the Trump administration —

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s making animal welfare a component of his Make America Healthy Again mission. The health secretary has asked his agencies to refine high-tech methods of testing chemicals and drugs that don’t involve killing animals. He thinks phasing out animal testing and using the new methods will help figure out what’s causing chronic disease. It’s also got an ancillary benefit for Republicans: Animal-rights advocates like what they’re hearing. (Schumaker, 10/5)

Alarmed by the first MAHA commission report, the agriculture industry mobilized to shape the next installment. Those efforts seemingly paid off. (Ajasa and Roubein, 10/6)

During a speech earlier this week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the implementation of new fitness standards for the military. ... .Speaking to hundreds of high-ranking military officials in Quantico, Virginia, Hegseth said it was important that certain combat positions return "to the highest male standard," acknowledging that it may lead to fewer women serving in combat roles. The current training is not different for male and female servicemembers. (Kekatos, 10/4)

President Donald Trump’s second term had already brought misery to the nation’s 2.1 million civilian federal workers: unprecedented mass layoffs, strict return-to-office requirements and more red tape regulating everything from travel to printer paper. Now, with the government shut down, 750,000 federal staffers have been furloughed and many others are working without pay, even as Trump and his top lieutenants vow to put more federal jobs on the chopping block. “When did we become the enemy?” said one National Institutes of Health employee who, like other workers interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Her husband, who retired from the NIH this year, could not answer. (Natanson, George and Kornfield, 10/4)

Native Americans watched the shuttered government on Friday and braced for damage to health care, education, infrastructure and other services funded by Washington under treaties struck more than a century ago. Tribal nations with casinos, oil and gas leases and other independent revenue sources said they expect to sustain operations for several months. Tribes more dependent on government money were already furloughing workers. (Lee Brewer, 10/3)

The latest on the federal shutdown —

The Senate returns Monday with no signs of progress toward ending the partial government shutdown that began on Oct. 1, with President Donald Trump blaming potential layoffs on Democrats. Federal executive branch employees — including those on furlough status and working without pay — could generally receive paychecks on Friday through electronic funds transfer that should be close to normal, even for departments and agencies that lacked funds to pay them past Sept. 30, as the pay covers the pay cycle that ended on Saturday. (Lesniewski, 10/6)

Most of President Donald Trump’s supporters back keeping enhanced subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans, the central obstacle in ending the government shutdown, according to a new poll from the nonpartisan health policy research group �鶹Ů��. It was conducted Sept. 23 through Sept. 29, just days before Congress failed to pass a funding measure to keep the government open. More than 22 million people receive the subsidies, which are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress extends them. (Lovelace Jr., 10/3)

Democrats’ defiant approach to the current government shutdown reflects a party mood that has shifted dramatically as a growing number of Democrats inside and outside Washington are embracing all-out confrontation with President Donald Trump. Only a few months ago, some leading voices in the party, stunned by Trump’s broad election win, were counseling against picking unnecessary fights or appearing to reject the voters’ will. But in this shutdown battle — and a growing number of political fights around the country — it is harder to find Democrats arguing against forceful resistance. (Bendavid and Abutaleb, 10/4)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: GOP Falsely Ties Shutdown To Democrats’ Alleged Drive To Give All Immigrants Health Care
As the U.S. headed for a government shutdown, Republicans repeatedly accused Democrats of forcing the closure because they want to give health care access to immigrants in the U.S. illegally. “Democrats are threatening to shut down the entire government because they want to give hundreds of billions of dollars of health care benefits to illegal aliens,” Vice President JD Vance said Sept. 28 on “Fox News Sunday.” (Ramirez Uribe, 10/6)

In related news about telehealth access —

Health care providers across the country are canceling telehealth visits with Medicare beneficiaries or warning patients they will have to pay out of pocket for appointments because Congress let coverage lapse. When government funding expired Sept. 30, so did several health care policies mostly involving payments, and among them are provisions that allowed Medicare to cover telehealth services for millions of people who are 65 and older or have disabilities. (Hellmann, 10/3)

The cacti started sprouting up in subway stations. On the walls of New York City’s MTA stations and street corners in San Francisco, ads for the telehealth company Hims displayed a menagerie of spiky succulents. One had a familiar bulbous tip and a slight Tower of Pisa lean. Another drooped sadly over its terracotta pot, sharing a message: “Hard, made easy.” (Palmer, 10/6)

The 2025 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to a trio of scientists – two of them American and one Japanese – for discovering how the immune system protects us from thousands of different microbes trying to invade our bodies. Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi will share the prize “for their fundamental discoveries relating to peripheral immune tolerance,” the Nobel Committee announced Monday at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden. (Edwards and Hunt, 10/6)

It’s the time of year when leading scientists might not want to let any calls go to voicemail. Prizes in chemistry, physics, and physiology or medicine, established by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel more than a century ago, will be announced this week, along with prizes in peace and literature. The awards are a pinnacle of scientific achievement. But predicting who will win is largely guesswork. There is, however, no shortage of worthy scientific advances from which the Nobel Prize committees can pick. Here are five life-changing breakthroughs and discoveries that experts think are Nobel-worthy. (Hunt, 10/6)

In place of the Nobels, a trove of prestigious awards has emerged to honor work in other fields. Here are some of the prizes that scientists and mathematicians can aspire to win, along with their most recent recipients. (Robles-Gil, 10/5)

More science and tech news —

Neuralink Corp., Elon Musk’s brain implant company, has submitted a scientific paper to a journal describing the results from some of its patients, which would be its first peer-reviewed publication with human data. The paper was sent to the New England Journal of Medicine and describes the first three patients who were implanted with the Neuralink device, including safety data, according to Michael Lawton, chief executive officer and president of the Barrow Neurological Institute, a Neuralink clinical trial site. (Swetlitz, 10/5)

Researchers used lasers to record and stimulate the activity of neurons in mice to learn how the brain processes and interprets optical illusions. (Johnson, 10/5)

Health systems’ love affair with artificial intelligence is stretching beyond obvious use cases. There is no shortage of digital health companies offering AI and tech tools to help clinicians document in the electronic health record and get providers paid faster. While health system executives praise the reduction of pajama time and an easier time with prior authorization, they’re also looking solutions to address the barriers in rural care and clinician shortages. (Perna, 10/3)

Facial recognition technology is increasingly used in airports, police investigations and sports venues. Now Amazon’s Ring says it’s putting facial recognition for the first time into its home security doorbells and video cameras. It’s intended to identify your sister, a neighbor or other people you know. While the feature will be optional for Ring device owners, privacy advocates say it’s unfair that wherever the technology is in use, anyone within sight will have their faces scanned to determine who’s a friend or stranger. (Ovide, 10/3)

Pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk announced Friday that Costco will begin selling monthly supplies of Ozempic and Wegovy for $499 to uninsured members. The discounted price comes as more Americans have become aware of GLP-1 weight loss drugs, which have become increasingly popular as people have touted body transformations and health benefits. (Venkat, 10/3)

More on the high cost of pharmaceuticals —

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) is raising concerns over the lack of details given about President Trump’s “most favored nation” (MFN) pricing deal he announced with Pfizer this week, calling on the company’s CEO to explain how it plans to execute the agreement. In a letter to Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, provided to The Hill, Gallego asked for clarity in his agreement with the Trump administration. (Choi, 10/3)

Colorado regulators have approved a dramatic price cap on one of the nation’s best-selling drugs, cutting its price to less than one-third of its previous level, in a novel attempt by a state to respond to widespread anger over the rising cost of prescriptions. Maryland, Minnesota and Washington also have passed legislation in recent years that enables state officials to set price caps on specific drugs deemed unaffordable, and they are now expected to follow Colorado’s path. (Whoriskey, 10/4)

After years of work, European officials are nearing the finish line on the biggest shakeup to European pharmaceutical policy in decades, with major impacts on everything from how quickly new medicines are rolled out across the continent to how willing drugmakers are to invest in the E.U. (Joseph, 10/6)

When the Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk wanted to test whether the main ingredient in Ozempic, its wildly popular weight-loss and diabetes drug, could also treat liver disease, it first needed approval from an ethics panel to ensure the safety of trial volunteers in the United States. ... Yet Novo didn’t have to venture far to hire an ethics panel for its liver-disease trial in May 2024: It chose WCG Clinical, a review board partly owned by its own corporate parent, The New York Times found. (Bogdanich, Kessler and Singer-Vine, 10/4)

In related news on costs and coverage —

To prevent pneumonia, Carrie Lazoen says her 2-year-old daughter, Emmalyn, needs a “shaky vest.” Emmy, as her family calls her, has a rare genetic condition called Aicardi syndrome. The disease — which can shorten life expectancy — affects her brain, causing seizures, vision problems and significant developmental delays. As a result, Emmy can’t walk independently. Everyday activities require careful monitoring. She can’t sit on her own or hold her head up for long. (Edwards, Vespa and Herzberg, 10/4)

Most times, the price you see is the price you pay. But sometimes, all it takes is a phone call to get a better deal. While some people have honed the art of negotiation, eager to bargain down the cost of a new car or streaming service, others are mortified at the very thought. But many consumers simply don’t realize that rent, medical visits and other bills are not as fixed as they might appear. (Zauzmer Weil, 10/4)

Rite Aid, once one of America’s biggest pharmacy chains, shuttered its remaining 89 stores this week after filing for bankruptcy in May for the second time in less than two years. “All Rite Aid stores have now closed. We thank our loyal customers for their many years of support,” the company said in a statement on its website. (Bacon, 10/4)

On transgender care —

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in Chiles v. Salazar, which challenges a Colorado law banning licensed mental health practitioners from trying to change a young person’s sexual or gender identity — a practice widely known as conversion therapy. (Gaffney, 10/6)

More health news from across the U.S. —

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a package of bills Friday aimed at shoring up food assistance, rural health care and public broadcasting in response to recently enacted federal cuts. The new legislation responds to President Donald Trump’s big bill as well as fear that health insurance rates will rise with the expiration of COVID-era subsidies to the Affordable Care Act exchange in New Mexico. (Lee, 10/4)

Out of the 30 hospitals in Wyoming, only five are generating a profit. Multiple actions taken at the state and federal levels are hurting the already fragile financial system of these health care providers. This includes what has been at the heart of the federal government shutdown: the healthcare Marketplace's enhanced premium tax credits. (Kudelska, 10/3)

When Brenna Poppe moved into the Civic Hotel off the damp streets of Seattle in late 2022, she cried with joy. During her next year at the city-sponsored homeless shelter, she’d meet other guests who felt the same way — overwhelmed by the sudden realization that tonight, they would not sleep outside. The Civic got quieter last year, however. Rooms around her, their doors still painted bright yellow from when the hotel was a boutique property, started to empty out. A “deafening silence” crept in, she recalled. The 53-room hotel was converted to a shelter in the early days of the pandemic, and the city of Seattle kept it going. (Hiruko, 10/6)

Jonas Richards became homeless several years ago after losing his job as a truck driver. Despite suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes, seeing a doctor hasn’t been a major priority since then. “When you’re homeless, it’s not easy,” Richards said. “You find yourself hustling, trying to keep a little money in your pocket, trying to find something to eat.” But Richards recently had his first visit with doctors from Miami Street Medicine while sitting on a curb outside a homeless shelter. (Fischer, 10/5)

The room was small and she shared a bed with her granddaughter, but after two decades of financial hardship, Jackie Lewis was grateful just to have a roof over her head. She had drained her retirement funds and sold her home trying to save her son, Shaun, from opioid addiction, pouring money into rehab and lawyers and slipping him $20 here and there to pay off debts to dealers. When he died of a fentanyl overdose in 2022, his funeral cost $14,000. Lewis charged it to a credit card. (Lati, 10/4)

Early data show opioid overdose deaths are continuing to decline across Maryland this year, including in Baltimore. But the crisis is still entrenched in the city, which endured one of its largest mass overdose events on record in July, when more than two dozen people were sent to the hospital after ingesting a tainted batch of drugs in the Penn North neighborhood. (Ibrahim, 10/4)

Globally, sepsis infection is the leading cause of death in children, taking more than 3.4 million lives per year, according to the Sepsis Alliance — and 85% of these deaths occur before age 5. Sepsis among children is a very difficult and elusive problem for physicians to diagnose and treat, with almost 10% of cases being missed in the emergency room. (Siegel and Rudy, 10/5)

More health and wellness news —

In an outbreak notice today, the World Health Organization (WHO) said several countries have reported a resurgence of chikungunya, with spikes in some countries, declines in others compared to recent years, and various factors in place for significant further spread of the mosquito-borne virus. The Americas region has reported the highest numbers of cases this year, followed by the European region, most of which involved illnesses reported from French overseas departments in the Indian Ocean. (Schnirring, 10/3)

Another child has died from measles in Canada, this time a premature infant from Alberta, which has been experiencing a steep rise in cases since the spring, Canada-based Global News reported yesterday. The child was born prematurely after the mother contracted measles, the news outlet said, citing provincial health officials. Alberta has recorded 1,914 measles cases since March, of which 1,706 involved unvaccinated children. (Schnirring, 10/3)

A trio of Midwestern states—Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin—reported new H5N1 avian flu outbreaks in poultry on commercial farms, according to notifications from state agencies. The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (IDALS) said it and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) have detected H5N1 on a commercial turkey farm in Calhoun County in the west central part of the state. (Schnirring, 10/3)

You may have seen wellness influencers touting the benefits of NAD on Instagram — or seen Kendall Jenner and Hailey Bieber getting IV infusions of the compound in an episode of “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.” Some swear NAD supplements give them extra energy. Researchers say NAD supplementation shows promise in animal studies, but urge caution because there have yet to be large clinical trials completed in humans that show proven benefits. (Ho, 10/5)

When it comes to longevity, women are much more likely to outlive men. In the U.S. the gap widened to 5.8 years in 2021. On average, men can expect to live just shy of 76 years, compared to 81 for women. A new study from researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany shows this gap is true across different species. And the findings — published in the journal Science Advances — suggest there may be ways human males can narrow the gap. (Aubrey, 10/6)

In recalls —

Two types of pasta salad bowls sold at Kroger and other stores across the U.S. have been recalled due to possible listeria contamination, the Food & Drug Administration announced Saturday. The Kroger Company voluntarily recalled "Basil Pesto Bowtie Salad" and "Smoked Mozzarella Penne Salad" following another FDA recall announcement last week involving products with pasta ingredients sold at Albertsons. (Intarasuwan, 10/5)

Chicken product maker Foster Poultry Farms is recalling more than 3.8 million pounds of chicken corn dog products after wood was found in the batter, resulting in injuries. According to a notice posted Saturday on the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service site, the company, based in Livingston, California, received numerous complaints about finding wood in the batter of the products, including reports of at least five injuries. (10/5)

Premiums are set to skyrocket, roughly doubling on average, for the 24 million people enrolled in plans under the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces. That is, unless Democrats get their way in the fight over the government shutdown, which hinges on health care access and affordability. (Natalie Foster, 10/5)

About a half-century ago, the United States launched a massive public health experiment: The federal government joined nutrition experts in asserting that a low-fat diet would prevent obesity, diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer. (David S. Ludwig, 10/6)

Democrats picked this fight because they see health care as a winning issue. A Post poll, conducted on the first day of the shutdown, found that 71 percent of Americans say federal insurance subsidies should be extended while 29 percent say they should end as scheduled. Just as significantly, the question divides Republicans: 38 percent support extending the subsidies, and 62 percent want them to end. (10/5)

On July 11, I received a letter from the National Institutes of Health ordering me to stop my research on Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, because the work was deemed too “dangerous.” Surely this must be a mistake, I thought, since my lab has been operating safely for more than a decade. (Sarah Stanley, 10/6)

Half of all pregnant women take acetaminophen — better known as Tylenol or paracetamol — to relieve pain or reduce fever. The drug has been around for decades, is available without a prescription, and is often one of the few options doctors consider safe during pregnancy. However, on September 23, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it would require new warning labels, citing a “possible association” between prenatal use and autism in children. (Henry I. Miller, 10/5)