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House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is blasting Republican colleagues over Medicaid as he issues extended remarks ahead of the final GOP megabill vote. Jeffries is utilizing his so-called magic minute to read off letters sent in by individuals in each state who rely on benefits that potentially hang in the balance as a result of the megabill’s provisions. (Razor, 7/3)

Republicans deferred some of their most painful spending cuts until after the midterm elections. (Romm, Duehren, Sanger-Katz, Plumer and Wood, 7/2)

Proposed funding cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the fiscal year 2026 federal budget will lead to significant negative health impacts for millions of Americans, a coalition of former federal health officials said. These proposed funding cuts are not related to the "big, beautiful bill" that is making its way through Congress. (Benadjaoud and Davis, 7/3)

Though patients don’t rush through the doors of this emergency room anymore, an empty hospital in Williamston, North Carolina, offers an evocative illustration of why Republican Sen. Thom Tillis would buck his party leaders to vote down President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy package. Martin General is one of a dozen hospitals that have closed in North Carolina over the last two decades. This is a problem that hospital systems and health experts warn may only worsen if the legislation passes with its $1 trillion cuts to the Medicaid program and new restrictions on enrollment in the coverage. (Seitz, 7/2)

Flanked by her friends as lawmakers debated the future of a 60-year-old health care plan, Latoya Maddox raised her voice, shouting, “No cuts to Medicaid! No cuts to Medicaid!” The chanting, during a meeting of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on May 13, quickly earned her and her fellow disabled activists in the room a rough escort out by Capitol Police. (Broderick, 7/2)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: To Keep Medicaid, Mom Caring For Disabled Adult Son Faces Prospect Of Proving She Works

Four years before Kimberly Gallagher enrolled in Medicaid herself, the public health insurance program’s rules prompted her to make an excruciating choice — to give up guardianship of her son so she could work as his caregiver. Now, another proposed twist in the rules could mean that, even though Missouri pays her to do that work, she might still have to prove to the state that she’s not unemployed. (Sable-Smith, 7/3)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: GOP Governors Mum As Congress Prepares To Slash Medicaid Spending For Their States

The last time a Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald Trump moved to slash Medicaid spending, in 2017, a key political force stood in their way: GOP governors. Now, as Congress steamrolls toward passing historic Medicaid cuts of about $1 trillion over 10 years through Trump’s tax and spending legislation, red-state governors are saying little publicly about what it does to health care — even as they face reductions that will punch multibillion-dollar holes in their states’ budgets. (Galewitz, 7/3)

Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter will step down as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health, he announced Wednesday. Carter, a Georgia Republican who is challenging presumptive Democratic nominee Sen. Jon Ossoff for Senate in 2026, made the announcement via a press release Wednesday as House Republicans prepared to take up the Senate-passed budget reconciliation bill. (Wehrman, 7/2)

For years, the United States labor market has been undergoing a structural transformation. As jobs in manufacturing have receded, slowly but steadily, the health care industry has more than replaced them. The change has been particularly visible over the past year, during which health care has been responsible for about a third of all employment growth, while other categories, like retail and manufacturing, have stayed essentially flat. (DePillis and Zhang, 7/3)

Planned Parenthood stands to lose roughly $700m in federal funding if the US House passes Republicans’ massive spending-and-tax bill, the organization’s CEO said on Wednesday, amounting to what abortion rights supporters and opponents alike have called a “backdoor abortion ban." “We are facing down the reality that nearly 200 health centers are at risk of closure. We’re facing a reality of the impact on shutting down almost half of abortion-providing health centers,” Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood Federation of America's CEO, said in an interview Wednesday morning. The provision attacking Planned Parenthood would primarily target clinics in blue states that have protected abortion rights since the overturning of Roe v Wade three years ago, because those blue states have larger numbers of people on Medicaid. (Sherman, 7/2)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the state’s 176-year-old abortion ban in a 4-3 ruling, saying that it was superseded by a more recent state law criminalizing abortions only in cases when a fetus is viable outside the womb. The decision by the liberal-leaning majority of the court marks the end of a three-year battle over abortion in the state after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, nullifying federal abortion protections and kick-starting a fight over whether the Supreme Court decision effectively reactivated the state’s 1849 ban. (Ruhiyyih Ewing, 7/2)

Signature gathering has started for Idaho's abortion rights ballot initiative, which could end the state's strict abortion ban laws. (Pfannenstiel, 7/3)

The ACLU of Missouri on Wednesday sued to block a proposed abortion ban from reaching the statewide ballot next year, marking the first major legal challenge intended to halt a Republican-led attempt to ban abortions again in Missouri. (Bayless, 7/2)

The same year Nebraskans voted to cement an abortion ban beyond the first trimester into the state constitution, the number of abortions performed in Nebraska rose about 7.6%. According to data from the state Department of Health and Human Services, at least 2,501 abortions were performed in Nebraska in 2024. That’s 176 higher than 2023’s total of 2,325 abortions in one year. Since 2020, Nebraska’s abortion rate has remained relatively level between about 2,300 to 2,500 procedures per year. All the while, the state’s abortion policy has fluctuated more wildly. (Bamer, 7/2)

The Trump administration appears to be expanding RSV vaccinations to some adults starting at age 50, down from 60, following the advice of a recently fired panel of government vaccine advisers. The decision appears on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage but as of Wednesday wasn’t on the agency’s official adult immunization schedule. In April, the CDC’s influential Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended expanding RSV vaccination to high-risk adults as young as 50, too. But the CDC lacks a director to decide whether to adopt that recommendation and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. didn’t immediately act. (Neergaard, 7/2)

A memo that purports to summarize a meeting held by members of a leading biotech trade group suggests deep concern about health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s stance on vaccines, and describes him as a “direct threat to public health.” (DeAngelis and Chen, 7/2)

Non–COVID-19 vaccination dropped in the first 2 years of the pandemic, raising concerns about potential outbreaks of avoidable diseases, the resurgence of previously controlled diseases, and widening health disparities for people with weakened immune systems, according to a study published in PLOS One. (Van Beusekom, 7/2)

The government’s top vaccine official working under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently restricted the approval of two COVID-19 vaccines, disregarding recommendations from government scientists, according to federal documents released Wednesday. The new memos from the Food and Drug Administration show how the agency’s vaccine chief, Dr. Vinay Prasad, personally intervened to place restrictions on COVID shots from vaccine makers Novavax and Moderna. Both vaccines were approved by the FDA in May after months of analysis by rank-and-file FDA reviewers. (Perrone, 7/3)

In its weekly update today, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 40 more measles cases today, boosting the number of infections this year to 1,267, which is just 8 shy of passing the total in 2019, which was the highest since the disease was eliminated in the country in 2000. Though the large outbreak in West Texas has slowed substantially, the number of smaller outbreaks and travel-related cases continues to grow. (Schnirring, 7/2)

The Trump administration plans to breed and sterilize billions of flies to airdrop over Mexico and southern Texas in an effort to stamp out the New World screwworm (NWS). (Falconer, 7/2)

Doctors and other naturalized citizens who commit Medicare or Medicaid fraud could be stripped of their citizenship, according to a new memo from the Department of Justice (DOJ). "The Department of Justice may institute civil proceedings to revoke a person's United States citizenship if an individual either 'illegally procured' naturalization or procured naturalization by 'concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation,'" the memo reads. (Frieden, 7/2)

The first group of immigrants were scheduled to arrive Wednesday night at a new detention center deep in the Florida Everglades that officials have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” the state’s attorney general said. “Alligator Alcatraz will be checking in hundreds of criminal illegal aliens tonight,” Florida Republican Attorney General James Uthmeier said on the social platform X. “Next stop: back to where they came from.” (Anderson and Lavandier, 7/2)

At a federal immigration building in downtown Los Angeles guarded by U.S. Marines, daughters, sons, aunts, nieces and others make their way to an underground garage and line up at a door with a buzzer at the end of a dirty, dark stairwell. It’s here where families, some with lawyers, come to find their loved ones after they’ve been arrested by federal immigration agents. On a recent day, dozens of people arrived with medication, clothing and hope of seeing their loved one, if only briefly. After hours of waiting, many were turned away with no news, not even confirmation that their relative was inside. Some relayed reports of horrific conditions inside, including inmates who are so thirsty that they have been drinking from the toilets. ICE did not respond to emailed requests for comment. (Ding, 7/2)

Masked, unidentified agents have been “systematically” cornering brown-skinned people in a show of force across Southern California, tackling those who attempt to leave, arresting them without probable cause and then placing them in “dungeon-like” conditions without access to lawyers, a federal lawsuit alleges. The lawsuit filed Wednesday by immigrant rights groups against the Trump administration describes the region as “under siege” by agents, some dressed in military-style clothing and carrying out “indiscriminate immigration raids flooding street corners, bus stops, parking lots, agricultural sites, day laborer corners.” (Uranga, Mejia and Buchanan, 7/2)

Texas hospitals received nearly 80,000 visits from undocumented patients from December through February at a cost of $329 million, according to data released by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission on Wednesday. That’s about 2% of all patient visits during that three-month period. (Langford, 7/2)

Doctors for America, the Main Street Alliance and three cities have sued the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) over a recent Affordable Care Act (ACA) final rule the agency said will help counter improper enrollments. The plaintiff cities named in the lawsuit are Baltimore, Chicago and Columbus. (Tong, 7/2)

After the first grant termination rolled into Professor Cheri Levinson’s inbox, her university told her it wasn’t worth taking the time to appeal the decision; the odds of success were too low. Ultimately, she had three National Institutes of Health grants terminated that were meant to support trainees from diverse backgrounds in her lab studying eating disorders at the University of Louisville. (Oza, 7/3)

Lung cancer appears to mutate more in patients living in areas with higher levels of fine-particulate air pollution, such as that released by vehicles and air pollution. This is the conclusion of a study from the National Institutes of Health and the University of California, San Diego, which studied tumors in nearly 900 lung cancer patients who had never smoked. (Randall, 7/2)

Websites that displayed legally mandated U.S. national climate assessments seem to have disappeared, making it harder for state and local governments and the public to learn what to expect in their backyards from a warming world. Scientists said the peer-reviewed authoritative reports save money and lives. Websites for the national assessments and the U.S. Global Change Research Program were down Monday and Tuesday with no links, notes or referrals elsewhere. (Borenstein, 7/2)

Ticks have been flourishing recently in the United States. This year, as compared to recent years, there has been an increase in the reported number of blacklegged ticks, the number of such ticks that carry Lyme disease and visits to the emergency room because of bites from the tiny parasitic arachnid, according to data from universities and the US federal government. (Berger, 7/2)

A popular beach in Bridgeport has been closed down to the public after officials found multiple tick species, officials said. Pleasure Beach will remain closed to the public for the 2025 summer season, according to city officials. In a Facebook post, the city said the decision comes after “extensive consultation” with state environmental experts following the discovery of multiple tick species on the island — including the invasive Asian longhorned tick. (Underwood, 7/2)

High levels of bacteria are prompting beach closures and public health advisories across the U.S. ahead of the Fourth of July weekend. Public health officials are warning holiday goers to avoid swimming in bodies of water containing high levels of the bacteria Vibrio and E. coli, which can cause illness. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vibrio is a bacterium found predominantly in coastal waters. When it is consumed or comes in contact with an open wound, it can cause a human illness called vibriosis, which can become life-threatening. (Hilling, 7/2)

The nonprofit that operates Shriners Children’s hospitals across North America will locate a $153 million medical research facility in Atlanta, the group announced Wednesday. Shriners Children’s Research Institute intends to conduct research into cell and gene therapies, other biotechnology therapies, robotics, artificial intelligence, medical devices and the study of data. (Amy, 7/2)

Centene is reckoning with multiple threats to its business, potentially leaving it with fewer and less-healthy enrollees signed up to its health-insurance plans. The end of certain pandemic-era health-insurance benefits over the past year is prompting more Americans to drop out of coverage plans, which Centene said could hollow out its earnings. On top of that, the proposed Medicaid cuts in President Trump’s budget bill would limit the number of people enrolled in Centene’s largest business, Jefferies’s David Windley said. (Hamilton, 7/2)

As the GOP-led Congress and President Donald Trump put their stamp on the health insurance market, insurers are forced to prepare for four scenarios in 2026 — some of which will mean big premium hikes. This uncertainty stems from two major policy issues in the health insurance exchanges. Enhanced premium tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress and Trump extend them. Republicans also seek to restore the cost-sharing payments to marketplace carriers, which Trump rescinded in 2017, and put an end to “Silver loading” marketplace premium increases. (Tepper, 7/2)

Value-based care platform Astrana Health acquired some of Prospect Health’s assets Tuesday for $708 million. The deal includes Prospect Health Plan, Prospect Medical Groups, management services organization Prospect Medical Systems, pharmacy RightRx and Foothill Regional Medical Center in Tustin, California. Astrana announced in November it would acquire Prospect Health’s assets for $745 million. (Hudson, 7/2)

Healthcare services company Pennant Group has expanded its footprint in California with the acquisition of home healthcare provider GrandCare Health Services. The company said in a Tuesday news release that locations in six Southern California counties will operate as GrandCare Home Health. The Eagle, Idaho-based company did not disclose financial terms of the deal. (Eastabrook, 7/2)

The corporatization of healthcare will take some heat as the subject of a new essay series from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The series will define and untangle elements of healthcare corporatization in the U.S. and explore how the system can better move forward. Some elements of corporatization include increasing "corporate ownership of healthcare organizations, market consolidation and concentration, and emphasis on the bottom line" that benefit corporations and shareholders over doctors and patients, wrote NEJM editors led by Debra Malina, PhD, in an introduction to the new series. (Robertson, 7/2)

MyChart use was associated with 21 million fewer appointment no-shows in 2024, Epic found. Patients with an active patient portal account had a no-show rate of 6.2%, compared to 7.9% for patients without, according to the study published July 1. Epic researchers analyzed over 1.6 billion in-person outpatient visits in 2024. (Bruce, 7/2)

Major medtech companies are expanding their U.S. manufacturing presence, investing millions — and in one case, billions — of dollars to boost capacity by adding facilities and expanding existing ones. Companies say they have seen increased demand for their products. Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, along with the threat of tougher tariffs tied to a July 9 deadline, also may be a factor, although none of the companies have said so. Expanding domestic production also could offset any product shortages. (Dubinsky, 7/2)

Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has won Food and Drug Administration accelerated approval of its Lynozyfic treatment for certain patients with the blood cancer multiple myeloma. Regeneron on Wednesday said the FDA green light covers Lynozyfic in adults with relapsed or refractory multiple myeloma who have received at least four prior lines of therapy, including a proteasome inhibitor, an immunomodulatory agent and an anti-CD38 monoclonal antibody. (Kellaher, 7/2)

The FDA has issued an alert about a potentially high-risk issue involving Abiomed’s Automated Impella Controller, which is used with the company’s blood pump systems. Abiomed, now part of Johnson & Johnson Medtech, notified customers June 23 with updated instructions for use and urgent recommendations, including having a backup AIC console on hand in the event of a device failure, according to a July 1 news release from the agency. (Murphy, 7/2)

A nerve-illuminating agent to minimize surgical risk passed an early test by achieving sustained fluorescence of the obturator nerve without safety concerns in patients undergoing robotic-assisted prostatectomy. (Bankhead, 7/2)

Last summer, Alexander McKinnon was always feeling tired. “I would lie on the couch at 2 in the afternoon and fall asleep,” he says. ... By September his doctor had run a blood test and found his “super fatigue” was tied to low levels of testosterone. McKinnon was prescribed steroids to boost his energy. The trade-off was that the injections would severely reduce his sperm count. McKinnon, 32, and his wife weren’t ready to start a family, but they didn’t want to risk their ability to do so in the future. “That’s when I froze my sperm,” he says. (Popescu, 7/2)

Scientists know it is happening, even if they don’t do it themselves. Some of their peers are using chatbots, like ChatGPT, to write all or part of their papers. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, Dmitry Kobak of the University of Tübingen and his colleagues report that they found a way to track how often researchers are using artificial intelligence chatbots to write the abstracts of their papers. The A.I. tools, they say, tend to use certain words — like “delves,” “crucial,” “potential,” “significant” and “important” — far more often than human authors do. (Kolata, 7/2)

Iowa officials launched the state's new behavioral health system this week. It is a significant overhaul of the previous system and is aimed at better connecting Iowans with mental health and disability services. (Krebs, 7/2)

Florida Blue customers are out of network with Broward Health after the two sides failed to reach a new insurer-hospital agreement by a Tuesday deadline. The previous contract expired without a resolution after months of negotiations, leaving patients facing higher costs for care. Florida Blue said more than 17,000 customers have been notified of the change. (Mayer, 7/2)

California bars and nightclubs already are required to post conspicuous signs letting customers know that drug-testing kits are available. Now they have to keep a stack of lids handy — one more method for protecting patrons from drinks that have been drugged. A new Assembly bill that went into effect Tuesday requires any establishment in the state where alcohol is sold for on-site consumption to have lids at the ready upon customer request. (Buchanan, 7/2)

A new law in Texas will require many popular products to have a label warning consumers that it contains ingredients “not recommended for human consumption.” It targets M&Ms, Doritos, Mountain Dew, and probably at least one of your grocery store guilty pleasures. The law, which was officially signed by Gov. Greg Abbott, requires any food containing one of more than 40 additives to include the label on its packaging by 2027. (Uda, 7/1)

Nearly 368,000 pounds of Oscar Mayer turkey bacon products are being recalled over possible contamination with listeria bacteria that can cause food poisoning, federal health officials said Wednesday. No illnesses have been confirmed to date, U.S. agriculture department officials said. Kraft Heinz Food Company of Newberry, South Carolina, announced the recall of the fully cooked turkey bacon that was produced from April 24 to June 11. The problem was discovered when the company’s laboratory testing indicated potential listeria contamination. (Aleccia, 7/3)

A new blood test could predict preeclampsia as early as the first trimester. In a new study, researchers successfully predicted the early-onset subtype of the prenatal condition up to five months before clinical diagnosis. The findings are being presented Monday during the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, in Paris. (Paulus, 6/30)

Cambridge scientists have spotted gut bacteria that greedily soak up PFAS “forever chemicals,” then ferry them safely out of the body in animal tests, removing up to three-quarters of the toxins within minutes. Their findings hint at probiotic pills that could shield people from PFAS-linked cancers, fertility issues, and heart disease while lawmakers scramble to rein in 4,700 widespread compounds. (University of Cambridge, 7/2)

Older US adults who receive the AS01-adjuvanted shingles or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccines may be at lower risk for dementia in the next 18 months, University of Oxford researchers write in npj Vaccines. (Van Beusekom, 7/2)

Researchers reviewing nearly 300 top-tier ADHD drug trials found that half skipped the rigorous, expert-led evaluations needed to rule out other conditions like depression or schizophrenia. With diagnoses often made by unqualified staff—or even by computer—many participants may not have actually had ADHD, casting doubt on study outcomes that shape treatment guidelines. (University of Copenhagen, 7/1)

The days leading up to the Saturday night event were hot and humid but that didn’t stop the community from decorating miles of houses for Kasey Zachmann, who has terminal brain cancer. (Lang and Barrie, 6/29)

Rory De Vries, an associate professor of virology in the Netherlands, was lifting weights at the gym when he noticed a WhatsApp message from his research partners at Columbia University, telling him his research funding had been cancelled. De Vries was disappointed, though not surprised — his team knew this might happen under the new Trump administration. His projects focused on immune responses and a new antiviral treatment for respiratory viruses like Covid-19. (Klotz, 6/30)

The agency has delayed enforcement of its standards, slashed its staff and terminated over $15 million in PFAS research grants. (Clark, 7/2)

An experiment in Lahaina, Maui, is providing prefabricated homes to those affected by the wildfires almost two years ago. (Siegel, 6/28)

A new analysis of data gathered from a small Indigenous population in the Bolivian Amazon suggests some of our basic assumptions about the biological process of aging might be wrong. New data raises the question of whether inflammation is directly linked to aging at all, or if it’s linked to a person’s lifestyle or environment instead. (Ravindranath, 6/30)

For the first time, scientists have sequenced a complete DNA set from an ancient Egyptian man, the oldest studied sequence, dating to when the pyramids were first constructed. (Patel, 7/2)

Slim-Fast roared into the weight-loss market in the 1970s, and Mr. Abraham used his fortune to back Democratic candidates and push for Mideast peace. (Murphy, 7/2)

The federal Medicaid law requires states to ensure that Medicaid patients are entitled to care from “any qualified provider” willing to offer it. Invoking that guarantee, a woman who was receiving birth control and other medical services at a Planned Parenthood clinic joined the organization in suing the state. (Linda Greenhouse, 7/2)

Kennedy’s decision to end support to one of America’s few remaining positive interventions in the Global South is both immoral and dangerous. It will cause resentment about inequities in worldwide healthcare access to spread and further damage US standing abroad when compared to countries like China. (Mihir Sharma, 6/2)

Guns don’t kill, people kill, goes the popular old trope against rational gun-safety laws. Setting aside that it’s not strictly true (what about accidental discharges of found firearms, which kill hundreds of kids a year?), the trope is always colliding with inconvenient data. (7/2)

Bogged down in the courts, President Trump’s tariffs, designed to punish trading partners for the traffic in illegally manufactured fentanyl, have been roundly criticized as a threat to U.S. economic power. Yet, amid intense political debate, few critics cite their most damning flaw: As a tool to cajole other governments in desirable directions, fentanyl tariffs are also manifestly ineffective. (Kathleen J. Frydl, 7/3)

In Connecticut, food insecurity is estimated to affect between 10.4% and 17% of the population, which equates to at least 362,500 individuals who may lack sufficient access to safe and nutritious food. Studies have shown that food insecurity disproportionately affects Black/African American, Hispanic/Latinx, and refugee families. Within these communities, certain groups, such as individuals with food allergies, face even more complex challenges. (Idalis Cardona Ortiz, 7/2)