Even the Trump administration is testing AI’s usefulness in managing the prior authorization process for the Medicare program, as well as seeking to override AI regulation by states.

But class action lawsuits have accused insurers of using AI to wrongfully withhold treatment. And outlines the risks of training AI on a current system rife with wrongful denials.

“There is a world in which using AI could make that worse, or at least replicate a bad human system, because the data that it would be training on is from that bad human system,” said Michelle Mello, a co-author of the study.

Although, Mello said, the research team found “real positives alongside the risks.”

In this video produced by 麻豆女优 Health News’ Hannah Norman, Darius Tahir, a correspondent covering health technology, explains.

You can read Tahir’s recent coverage of AI’s use by health insurers below:

• “Red and Blue States Alike Want To Limit AI in Insurance. Trump Wants To Limit the States,” by Darius Tahir and Lauren Sausser.
• “AI Will Soon Have a Say in Approving or Denying Medicare Treatments,” by Lauren Sausser and Darius Tahir.

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As the midterm elections approach, the cost of health care is the public’s , Altman said. Although past reforms have significantly increased the number of people with health insurance, they have not successfully addressed affordability, he said.

Altman said the U.S. health system poses two major problems: Americans’ concerns about how to pay for their own medical care, and the significant share of national spending it consumes.

Rovner and Altman also discuss the downstream effects of change, including the impact of the Trump administration’s cost-cutting on states, employers, and individuals, and lessons learned from past attempts at government reform.

This is the first in a new interview series, “How Would You Fix It?” In the months to come, Rovner will interview experts and decision-makers from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, asking each how they would repair the health care system.

An abbreviated version of this interview aired March 19 on Episode 438 of What the Health? From 麻豆女优 Health News: “RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Schedule Changes Blocked 鈥� For Now.”

Altman’s “Beyond the Data” columns 鈥� including the column discussed in this interview, “” 鈥� can be read .

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist who rails against Big Pharma and ultraprocessed food, is the leader of the movement. And Americans’ .

Plus, polls show about reducing health care costs than MAHA priorities such as ending vaccine mandates and promoting raw milk.

Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies expired at the end of 2025, fueling a nationwide affordability debate. Roughly 24 million people buy coverage on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, and many are now facing premium payments more than double what they faced last year.

After taking a political back seat in recent years, health care may dominate the 2026 election races.

Credits

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Then, in 2024, she got an unexpected medical bill: $377 for a checkup for one of her children the previous fall. Reed-McCullough said she called the doctor’s billing department and learned the insurance company had dropped the children’s coverage.

The drop turned out to be a mistake. But Reed-McCullough said she was forced to act as the go-between for her late husband’s human resources department and their insurer 鈥� all while worried about her daughters’ being uninsured.

In this installment of InvestigateTV and 麻豆女优 Health News’ “Costly Care” series, Caresse Jackman, InvestigateTV’s national consumer investigative reporter, explores how administrative errors can leave patients on the hook for medical bills they shouldn’t owe, sometimes with few options to correct a problem they didn’t create.

Jackman interviewed Elisabeth Rosenthal, senior contributing editor at 麻豆女优 Health News, who said accidental coverage drops are “a common problem” in need of attention from state regulators.

“People make mistakes, systems make mistakes, and they should be held responsible for them, not the patient,” Rosenthal said.

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For those in or near Columbia Memorial, the city’s only hospital, there will soon be a different plan: Shelter in place. The hospital is building a new facility next door with an on-site tsunami shelter 鈥� an elevated refuge atop columns deeply anchored in the ground, where nearly 2,000 people can safely wait out a flood.

Oregon needs more shelters like the one that Columbia Memorial is building, emergency managers say. Hospitals in the region are likely to incur serious damage, if not ruin, and could take more than three years to fully recover in the event of a major earthquake and tsunami, according to .

Columbia Memorial’s current facility is a single-story building, a half-century ago, that would likely collapse and sink into the ground or be swallowed by a landslide after a major earthquake or a tsunami, said Erik Thorsen, the hospital’s chief executive.

“It is just not built to survive either one of those natural disaster events,” Thorsen said.

At least 10 other hospitals along the Oregon coast are in danger as well. So Columbia Memorial leaders proposed building a hospital capable of withstanding an earthquake and landslide, with a tsunami shelter, instead of relocating the facility to higher ground. Residents and state officials supported the plans, and the federal government awarded a $14 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help pay for the tsunami shelter.

The project broke ground in October 2024. Within six months, the Trump administration had , known as Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, calling it “yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program 鈥� more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”

Molly Wing, director of the expansion project, said losing the BRIC grant felt like “a punch to the gut.”

“We really didn’t see that coming,” she said.

This summer, Oregon and 19 other states sued to restore the FEMA grants. On Dec. 11, a that the Trump administration had unlawfully ended the program without congressional approval.

The administration did not immediately indicate it would appeal the decision, but Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said by email: “DHS has not terminated BRIC. Any suggestion to the contrary is a lie. The Biden Administration abandoned true mitigation and used BRIC as a green new deal slush fund. It’s unfortunate that an activist judge either didn’t understand that or didn’t care.” FEMA is a subdivision of DHS.

Columbia Memorial was one of the few hospitals slated to receive grants from the BRIC program, which had announced more than $4.5 billion for nearly 2,000 building projects since 2022.

Hospital leaders have decided to keep building 鈥� with uncertain funding 鈥� because they say waiting is too dangerous. With the Trump administration reversing course on BRIC, fewer communities will receive help from FEMA to reduce their disaster risk, even places where catastrophes are likely.

More than three centuries have passed since a major earthquake caused the Pacific Northwest’s coastline to drop several feet and unleashed a tsunami that crashed onto the land in January 1700, according to scientists who study the evolution of the Oregon coast.

The greatest danger is an underwater fault line known as the , which lies 70 to 100 miles off the coast, from Northern California to British Columbia.

The Cascadia zone can produce a megathrust earthquake, with a magnitude of 9 or higher 鈥� the type capable of triggering a catastrophic tsunami 鈥� , according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists predict a 10% to 15% chance of such an earthquake along the fault zone in the next 50 years.

“We can’t wait any longer,” Thorsen said. “The risk is high.”

Building for the Future

The BRIC program started in 2020, during the first Trump administration, to provide communities and institutions with funding and technical assistance to fortify their structures against natural disasters.

Joel Scata, a senior attorney with the environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, said the program helped communities better prepare so they could reduce the cost of rebuilding after a flood, tornado, wildfire, or extreme weather event.

To qualify for a grant, a hospital had to show that the project’s benefits were greater than the future danger and cost. In some cases, that benefit might not be readily apparent.

“It prevents bad disasters from happening, and so you don’t necessarily see it in action,” Scata said.

Scata noted that the Trump administration has also stopped awarding grants through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which predates BRIC.

“There really is no money going out the door from the federal government to help communities reduce their disaster risk,” he said.

A recent 麻豆女优 Health News investigation using proprietary data from Fathom, a global leader in flood modeling, found that at least 170 U.S. hospitals are at risk of significant and potentially dangerous flooding from more intense and frequent storms. That count did not include Columbia Memorial, as Fathom’s data did not account for tsunamis. It models flooding from rivers, sea level rise, and extreme rainfall.

In recent days, an atmospheric river 鈥� a narrow storm band carrying significant amounts of moisture 鈥� dumped more than 15 inches of rain on parts of Oregon and Washington, causing catastrophic flooding along rivers and the coast. In the Washington town of Sedro-Woolley, which sits along the Skagit River, the PeaceHealth evacuated nonemergency patients.

High winds battered Astoria, leaving the city with some minor landslides, according to news reports. But flooding on the road to the nearby beach town of Seaside made the drive nearly impassable.

The Trump administration is leaning on states to take greater responsibility for recovering from natural disasters, Scata said, but most states are not financially prepared to do so.

“The disasters are just going to keep on piling up,” he said, “and the federal government’s going to have to keep stepping in.”

A Hospital at Risk

Columbia Memorial is blocks from the southern shore of the Columbia River, near the Washington border, where the include earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, and floods. A critical access hospital with 25 beds, it opened in 1977 鈥� before state building codes addressed tsunami protections.

Thorsen said the new facility and shelter would be a “model design” for other hospitals. Design plans show a five-level hospital built atop a foundation anchored to the bedrock and surrounded by concrete columns to shield it from tsunami debris.

The shelter will be on the roof of the second floor, above the projected maximum tsunami inundation. It will be accessible via an outdoor staircase and interior staircases and elevators, with enough room for up to 1,900 people, plus food, water, tents, and other supplies to sustain them for five days.

With most patient care provided on the second and third levels, generators on the fourth level, and utility lines underground, the hospital is expected to remain operational after a natural disaster.

Thorsen said an earthquake and tsunami threaten not only vast flooding , in which the ground loosens and causes structures above it to collapse. Deep foundations, thick slabs, and other structural supports are expected to protect the new hospital and tsunami structure against such failure.

Through the years, hospital administrators and civic leaders in Astoria have sought other locations for Columbia Memorial. But relocation wasn’t economical. Columbia Memorial committed to invest in a new hospital and tsunami shelter to protect not only patients and staff but also nearby residents.

“Your community should count on your hospital to be a safe haven in a natural disaster,” Thorsen said.

Fighting To Restore Funds

The estimated construction budget for Columbia Memorial’s expansion is $300 million, mostly financed through new debt from the hospital. The tsunami shelter is budgeted at about $20 million, for which FEMA’s BRIC program , with a $6 million matching grant from the state, which has maintained its support.

The shelter and the building’s structural protections 鈥� featuring reinforced steel, deeper foundations, and thicker slabs 鈥� are integral to the design and cannot be removed without compromising the rest of the structure, said Michelle Checkis, the project architect.

“We can’t pull the TVERS [tsunami vertical evacuation refuge structure] out without pulling the hospital back apart again,” she said. “It’s kind of like, if I was going to stack it up with Legos, I would have to take all those Legos apart and stack it up completely differently.”

Columbia Memorial has sought help from Oregon’s congressional delegation. In to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former FEMA acting administrator David Richardson, the lawmakers demanded that the agencies restore the hospital’s grant.

The hospital’s leadership is seeking other grants and philanthropic donations to make up for the loss. As a last resort, Thorsen said, the board will consider removing “nonessential features” from the building, though he added that there is little fat to trim from the project.

in July alleged that FEMA lacks the authority to cancel the BRIC program or redirect its funding for other purposes.

The states argued that canceling the program and undermined projects underway., according to state estimates.

Many of Oregon’s seaside communities are near high-enough ground to seek safety from a tsunami in a relatively short time, Allan said. But he estimated that, to save lives, Oregon would need about a dozen vertical tsunami evacuation shelters along the coast, including in seaside towns that attract tourists and where the nearest high ground is a mile or more away.

Willis Van Dusen’s family has lived in Astoria since the mid-19th century. A former mayor of Astoria, Van Dusen stressed that tsunamis are not a hypothetical danger. He recalled seeing one in Seaside in 1964. The wave was only about 18 inches high, he said, but it flooded a road and destroyed a bridge and some homes. The memory has stayed with him.

“It’s not like 鈥� 鈥極h, that’ll never happen,’” he said. “We have to be prepared for it.”

麻豆女优 Health News correspondent Brett Kelman contributed to this report.

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Roy, a co-founder and the chair of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, said health care affordability has become a more salient issue for the GOP under President Donald Trump, with more people from working-class backgrounds voting Republican.

Before Trump, he said, the party’s support was more concentrated among those covered by employer-sponsored insurance or Medicare, the public program for those who are 65 or older or have disabilities 鈥� voters less likely to be concerned about affording medical care.

An abbreviated version of this interview aired on What the Health? Episode 423: “The GOP Circles the Wagons on ACA.”

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Seitz noted that the plan 鈥� which has not been formally unveiled 鈥� could extend the expiring, more generous subsidies that help many Americans pay their share of Affordable Care Act premiums. But that extension would likely impose limitations sought by Republicans, including changes to eligibility for the enhanced assistance, she said.

She recently explored the expiration of the enhanced ACA premium tax credits in her articles “Farmers, Barbers, and GOP Lawmakers Grapple With the Fate of ACA Tax Credits” and, with 麻豆女优 Health News’ Julie Appleby, “A Ticking Clock: How States Are Preparing for a Last-Minute Obamacare Deal.”

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The outbreaks are fueled by falling vaccination rates, fading immunity, and delays in public health tracking systems, according to interviews with state and federal health officials. Babies too young to be fully vaccinated are most at risk.

“Pertussis cases increase in a cyclical fashion driven by waning immunity, but the size of the outbreak and the potential for severe outcomes in children who cannot be vaccinated can be mitigated by high coverage and good communication to folks at risk,” said Demetre Daskalakis, a former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s immunization program, who resigned in August.

Before the first pertussis vaccine became available in the , whooping cough was one of the most common childhood diseases and a in the United States. Today, children get a series of DTaP shots (full-dose version) starting at 2 months old, and teens and adults receive a Tdap booster (lower-dose version) every 10 years. (Both vaccines target diphtheria and tetanus in addition to pertussis.)

Until recently, had received four doses of the DTaP vaccine by age 2, and case rates were controlled. But vaccine coverage has declined since the covid pandemic and increases in state nonmedical exemptions have widened immunity gaps, which is when the proportion of individuals who are immune falls below the level needed to contain spread.

Texas logged in 2024. By October 2025, the state had . National numbers are just as stark: In the first three months of 2025, the U.S. tallied 鈥� four times last year’s pace and 25 times 2023’s. Several states are posting their highest case totals in a decade, and outbreaks from Louisiana to South Dakota to Idaho make clear this surge isn’t regional. It’s everywhere.

Key Factors Behind These Numbers

Texas lawmakers recently passed a law that for parents to claim nonmedical exemptions from school vaccine requirements by allowing them to download exemption forms online. These forms now go straight to schools, not health departments, making the exemptions harder to track.

Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Phil Huang said the full impact of the new exemption rule is not yet known because it began this school year, but he expects it will make school-level vaccination rates fall even more.

He’s already noted a dramatic drop in vaccinations. Normally, during back-to-school season, “our whole front downstairs area is packed,” he said. “We did not see that this year.”

Huang believes fear of immigration enforcement may be keeping at least some families, especially Hispanic families, from getting vaccinated. Dallas County is about 40% Hispanic. “We think that a lot of them are deterred by the ICE activity,” he said, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

More complications: These vaccines protect against severe disease, but protection against infection fades over time, as is the case with the covid and influenza vaccines.

The U.S. switched in the 1990s from whole-cell pertussis vaccines to “acellular” ones, which cause fewer side effects but do not last as long. Because more adults today than in the past received the acellular vaccine as children, many have lost immunity over time and may unknowingly pass the infection to babies.

Babies Face the Greatest Risk

Whooping cough is especially dangerous for infants under a year old. Some stop breathing during coughing fits. Many need hospital care, about of whom develop pneumonia, and about 1% of whom die.

Because of this high risk, the CDC urges pregnant women to get a . This allows the mother’s antibodies to pass to the baby before birth.

Health officials once promoted “cocooning,” vaccinating all family members and caregivers around the baby, but that strategy was hard to carry out in real life and is . Vaccination of pregnant women and babies at 2 months of age remains the strongest protection.

Better Testing Finds More Cases

Modern is also than in the past. Many clinics now routinely use this lab-based technology to test for several respiratory infections at once, including pertussis. Ten years ago, these panels were uncommon.

CDC experts say this explains part of the rise in case counts. But the large number of infant hospitalizations and the size of state outbreaks show that true transmission has also increased.

A Growing Worry: Antibiotic Resistance

Doctors normally treat pertussis with , such as erythromycin, azithromycin, and clarithromycin. These drugs work best early in the illness and help stop spread. Another drug, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole, is an option for some older infants and adults.

But has become common abroad, especially in China, and recent reports show resistance rising in Peru. In the U.S., resistant cases have been rare.

CDC officials warn that resistant strains could spread more easily through international travel. Because treatment options are limited, especially for very young infants, health workers are watching this closely.

Huang said macrolide resistance has not been seen yet in Dallas County. But he is aware of the national concern.

What Happens Now

The resurgence of whooping cough has no single cause. Instead, several problems are occurring at once: falling vaccine coverage, only of pregnant women receiving Tdap, waning immunity, improved testing, and early signs of antibiotic resistance.

Health experts say solutions must match the problem’s complexity.

Across the nation, clinicians are being told to have a higher suspicion for pertussis when they see patients, especially children or caregivers of newborns with a persistent cough or coughing fits followed by vomiting. Babies who stop breathing or turn blue need immediate care.

Obstetricians are encouraged to discuss Tdap during every pregnancy. Pediatricians and family doctors are urged to check booster status for teens and adults.

Several states have issued health advisories over the past two years, including , which has in both 2024 and 2025 urging clinicians to stay vigilant.

Huang said Dallas County is trying to rebuild public health outreach programs that were cut when covid funding ended. But staffing is still limited. “There’s just a lot of different things that are making it more difficult,” he said.

He also noted that Dallas County now receives immunization registry data only once a month, rather than daily, making it harder to track vaccine coverage. “We don’t have that yet. 鈥� It’s not real time,” he said.

Protecting the Youngest

As the holiday season approaches, experts urge families with newborns to take extra care:

• Ensure infants and children are up to date with their childhood vaccines and that everyone in the family is up to date with their vaccines for influenza, covid, and RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus.
• Keep sick visitors away.
• Seek care quickly if an infant has a cough or pauses breathing.

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At this decades-old psychiatric hospital on the edge of the Tennessee River, an intense storm could submerge the building in 11 feet of water, cutting off all roads around the facility, according to a sophisticated computer simulation of flood risk.

Aurora, a young woman who was committed to Peninsula as a teenager, said the hospital sits so close to the river that it felt like a moat keeping her and dozens of other patients inside. 麻豆女优 Health News agreed not to publish her full name because she shared private medical history.

“My first feeling is doom,” Aurora said as she watched the simulation of the river rising around the hospital. “These are probably some of the most vulnerable people.”

Covenant Health, which runs Peninsula Hospital, said in a statement it has a “proactive and thorough approach to emergency planning” but declined to provide details or answer questions.

Peninsula is one of about 170 American hospitals, totaling nearly 30,000 patient beds from coast to coast, that face the greatest risk of significant or dangerous flooding, according to a months-long 麻豆女优 Health News investigation based on data provided by Fathom, a company considered a leader in flood simulation. At many of these hospitals, flooding from heavy storms has the potential to jeopardize patient care, block access to emergency rooms, and force evacuations. Sometimes there is no other hospital nearby.

Much of this risk to hospitals is not captured by flood maps issued by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which have served as the nation’s de facto tool for flood estimation for half a century, despite being incomplete and sometimes decades out of date. As FEMA’s maps have become divorced from the reality of a changing climate, private companies like Fathom have filled the gap with simulations of future floods. But many of their predictions are behind a paywall, leaving the public mostly reliant on free, significantly limited government maps.

“This is highly concerning,” said Caleb Dresser, who studies climate change and is both an emergency room doctor and a Harvard University assistant professor. “If you don’t have the information to know you’re at risk, then how can you triage that problem?”

The deadliest hospital flooding in modern American history occurred 20 years ago during Hurricane Katrina, when the bodies of 45 people were recovered from New Orleans’ Memorial Medical Center, including some patients whom investigators . More flooding deaths were narrowly avoided one year ago when helicopters rescued dozens of people as Hurricane Helene engulfed Unicoi County Hospital in Erwin, Tennessee.

Rebecca Harrison, a paramedic, called her children from the Unicoi roof to say goodbye.

“I was scared to death, thinking, 鈥楾his is it,’” Harrison told CBS News, which interviewed Unicoi survivors as part of 麻豆女优 Health News’ investigation. “Alarms were going off. People were screaming. It was chaos.”

The investigation 鈥� among the first to analyze nationwide hospital flood risk in an era of warming climate and worsening storms 鈥� comes as the administration of President Donald Trump has slashed and and also dismantled FEMA programs designed to protect hospitals and other important buildings from floods.

When asked to comment, FEMA said flooding is a common, costly, and “under appreciated” disaster but made no statement specific to hospitals. Spokesperson Daniel Llargués defended the administration’s changes to FEMA by reissuing an August statement that dismissed criticism as coming from “bureaucrats who presided over decades of inefficiency.”

Alice Hill, an Obama administration climate risk expert, said the Trump administration’s dismissal of climate change and worsening floods would waste billions of dollars and endanger lives.

In 2015, Hill led the creation of the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, which required that hospitals and other essential structures be elevated or incorporate extra flood protections to qualify for federal funding.

贵贰惭础听聽the standard in March.

“People will die as a result of some of the choices being made today,” Hill said. “We will be less prepared than we are now. And we already were, in my estimation, poorly prepared.”

鈥楩lood Risk Is Everywhere’

The 麻豆女优 Health News investigation identified more than 170 hospitals facing a flood risk by comparing the locations of more than 7,000 facilities to , a United Kingdom company that simulates flooding in spaces as small as 10 meters using laser-precision elevation measurements from the .

Hospitals were determined to have a significant risk if Fathom’s 100-year flood data predicted that a foot or more of water could reach a considerable portion of their buildings, excluding parking garages, or cut off road access to the hospital. A 100-year flood is an intense weather event that has roughly a 1% chance of occurring in any given year but can happen more often.

The investigation found heightened flood risks at large trauma centers, small rural hospitals, children’s hospitals, and long-term care facilities that serve older and disabled patients. At least 21 are critical access hospitals, with the next-closest hospital 25 miles away, on average.

Flooding threatens dozens of hospitals in coastal areas, including in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and New York. Farther inland, flooding of rivers or creeks could envelop other hospitals, particularly in Appalachia and the Midwest. Even in the sun-soaked cities and arid expanses of the American West, storms have the potential to surround some hospitals with several feet of pooling water, according to Fathom’s data.

These findings are likely an undercount of hospitals at risk because the investigation overlooked pockets of potential flooding at some hospitals. It excluded facilities like stand-alone ERs, outpatient clinics, and nursing homes.

“The reality is that flood risk is everywhere. It is the most pervasive of perils,” said Oliver Wing, the chief scientific officer at Fathom, who reviewed the findings. “Just because you’ve never experienced an extreme doesn’t mean you never will.”

Dresser, the ER doctor, said even a small amount of flooding can shut down an unprepared hospital, often by interrupting its power supply, which is needed for life-sustaining equipment like ventilators and heart monitors. He said the most vulnerable hospitals would likely be in rural areas.

“A lot of rural hospitals are now closing their pediatric units, closing their psychiatry units,” Dresser said. “In a financially stressed situation, it can be hard to prioritize long-term threats, even if they are, for some institutions, potentially existential.”

Urban hospitals can face dangerous flooding, too. Fathom’s data predicts 5 to 15 feet of water around neighboring hospitals 鈥� Kadlec Regional Medical Center and Lourdes Behavioral Health 鈥� that straddle a tiny creek in Richland, Washington.

By Fathom’s estimate, a 100-year flood could cause the nearby Columbia River to spill over a levee that protects Richland, then loosely follow the creek to the hospitals. Some of the deepest flooding is estimated around Lourdes, which was built on land the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers set aside in 1961 as a “ponding and drainage easement.”

At the time, this land was supposed to be capable of storing enough water to fill at least 40 Olympic-size swimming pools, according to obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. A mental health facility has occupied this spot since the 1970s.

Both Kadlec and Lourdes said in statements that they have disaster plans but did not answer questions about flooding. Tina Baumgardner, a Lourdes spokesperson, said government flood maps show the hospital is not in a 100-year flood plain.

This is not uncommon. Of the more than 170 hospitals with significant flood risk identified by 麻豆女优 Health News, one-third are located in areas that FEMA has not designated as flood hazard zones.

Sometimes the difference is stark. For example, at Ochsner Choctaw General in Alabama 鈥� the only hospital for 30 miles in any direction 鈥� FEMA maps suggest a 100-year flood would overflow a nearby creek but spare the hospital. Fathom’s data predicts the same event would flood most of the hospital with 1 to 2 feet of water, including the ER and the helicopter pad.

Ochsner Health did not answer questions about flooding preparations at Choctaw General.

FEMA flood maps were launched in the ’60s as part of the National Flood Insurance Program to determine where insurance is required and building codes should include flood-proofing. According to a FEMA statement, the maps show only a “snapshot in time” and are not intended to predict where flooding will or won’t happen.

FEMA spokesperson Geoff Harbaugh said the agency intends to modernize its maps through the Future of Flood Risk Data initiative, which will enable the agency to “better project flood risk” and give Americans “the information they need to protect their lives and property.”

The program was launched by the first Trump administration in 2019 but has since received sparse public updates. Harbaugh declined to provide a detailed update or timeline for the program.

Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, said it is unknown whether FEMA is still trying to upgrade its maps under Trump, as the agency has cut off communications with outside flooding experts.

“There has been not a single bit of loosening of what I’m calling the FEMA cone of silence,” Berginnis said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Floods are expected to worsen as a warming climate fuels stronger storms, drenching areas that are already flood-prone and bringing a new level of flooding to areas once considered lower risk.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said that 2024 was the warmest year on record 鈥� more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 20th-century average. Scientists across the globe that each degree of global warming correlates to a 4% increase in the intensity of extreme rainfall.

“Warmer air can hold more moisture, so this leads us to experience heavier downpours,” said Kelly Van Baalen, a sea level rise expert at the nonprofit . “A 100-year flood today could be a 10-year flood tomorrow.”

Intensifying storms raise concerns about Peninsula Hospital, which has operated for decades mere feet from the Tennessee River but has no known history of flooding.

Peninsula spokesperson Josh Cox said the river is overseen by the Tennessee Valley Authority, which uses dams to manage water levels and generate electricity. Estimates provided by the TVA suggest the dams could keep Peninsula dry even in a 500-year flood.

Fathom, however, said its flood simulation accounts for the dams and stressed that a large enough storm could drop more rain than even the TVA could control. These predictions are echoed by another flood modeling firm, , which also says an intense storm could cause more than 10 feet of flooding in the area around Peninsula.

“It’s a hospital right on the banks of a major American river,” said Wing, the Fathom scientist. “It just isn’t conceivable that such a location is risk-free.”

Jack Goodwin, 75, a retired TVA employee who has lived next to Peninsula for three decades, said he was confident the dams could protect the area. But after reviewing Fathom’s predictions, Goodwin began to research flood insurance.

“Water can rise quickly and suddenly, and the destruction is tremendous,” he said. “Just because we’ve never seen it here doesn’t mean we won’t see it.”

鈥楢ll the Elements of a Real Disaster’

One year ago, as Hurricane Helene carved a deadly path across Southern Appalachia, Angel Mitchell was visiting her ailing mother at Unicoi County Hospital in the tiny town of Erwin, Tennessee.

Swollen by Helene, the nearby Nolichucky River spilled over its banks and around the hospital, which was built in a flood plain. Staff tried to bar the doors, Mitchell said, but the water got in, trapping her and others inside. The lights went out. People fled to the roof, where the roar of rushing water nearly drowned out the approach of rescue helicopters, Mitchell said.

Ultimately, 70 people from the hospital, including Mitchell and her mother, were airlifted to safety on Sept. 27, 2024. The hospital remains closed, and the company that owns it, Ballad Health, has said its .

“Why allow something 鈥� especially a hospital 鈥� to be built in an area like that?” Mitchell told CBS News. “People have to rely on these areas to get medical help, and they’re dangerous.”

Beyond Unicoi, 麻豆女优 Health News identified 39 inland hospitals 鈥� including 16 in Appalachia 鈥� that Fathom predicts could flood when nearby rivers, creeks, or drainage canals overspill their banks, even in storms far less intense than Helene.

For example, in the Cumberland Mountains of southwestern Virginia, a 100-year flood is projected to cause Slate Creek to engulf Buchanan General Hospital in more than 5 feet of water.

Near the Great Lakes in Erie, Pennsylvania, LECOM Medical Center and Behavioral Health Pavilion could become flooded by a small drainage creek that is less than 50 feet from the front door of the ER.

Neither Buchanan nor LECOM responded to questions about flooding or preparations.

And in West Virginia’s capital of Charleston, where about 50,000 people live at the junction of two rivers in a wide and flat valley, a single storm could potentially flood five of the city’s six hospitals at once, along with schools, churches, fire departments, and other facilities.

“I hate to say it,” said Behrang Bidadian, a flood plain manager at the , “but it has all the elements of a real disaster.”

At the largest hospital in Charleston, CAMC Memorial Hospital, Fathom predicts that the Kanawha River could bring as much as 5 feet of flooding to the ER. Across town, the Elk River could surround CAMC Women and Children’s Hospital, cutting off all exits.

And in the center of the city, where the overflowing rivers are predicted to merge, Thomas Orthopedic Hospital could be besieged by more than 10 feet of water on three sides.

WVU Medicine, which owns Thomas Orthopedic Hospital, did not respond to requests for comment.

CAMC spokesperson Dale Witte said the hospital system is aware of its flood risk and has prepared by elevating electrical infrastructure and acquiring flood-proofing equipment, like a deployable floodwall. CAMC also regularly revises and drills its disaster plans, Witte said, although he added that hospitals there have never been tested by a real flood.

Shanen Wright, 48, a lifelong Charleston resident who lives near CAMC Memorial, said many in the city have little worry about flooding in the face of more immediate problems, like the opioid epidemic and the decline of manufacturing and mining.

Tugboats and coal barges sail past his neighborhood as if they were cars on his street.

“It’s not to say it’s not a possibility,” he said. “I’m sure the people in Asheville and the people in Texas, where the floods took so many lives, they probably didn’t see it coming either.”

鈥楾he Water Is Coming’

Despite wide scientific consensus that climate change fuels more dangerous weather, the Trump administration has that concerns about global warming are overblown. In a speech to the United Nations in September, Trump called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

The Trump administration has made deep staff and funding cuts to FEMA, NOAA, and the National Weather Service. At FEMA, the cuts prompted 191 current and former employees to in August warning that the agency is being dismantled from within.

Daniel Swain, a University of California climate scientist, said the administration’s rejection of climate change has left the nation less prepared for extreme weather, now and in the future.

“It’s akin to enforcing malpractice scientifically,” Swain said. “Imagine making a medical decision where you are not allowed to look at 20% of the patient’s vital signs or test results.”

Under Trump, FEMA has also taken actions critics say will leave the nation more vulnerable to flooding, specifically:

• FEMA disbanded the Technical Mapping Advisory Council, which had to modernize its flood maps to estimate future risk and account for the impacts of climate change.
• FEMA canceled its program, which provided grants to help communities and vital buildings, including hospitals, protect themselves from floods and other natural disasters.
• And after stopping enforcement early this year, FEMA the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, which was designed to harden buildings against future floods and save tax dollars in the long run.

Berginnis, of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, said the administration’s unwillingness to prepare for climate change and worsening storms would result in a dangerous and costly cycle of flooding, rebuilding, and flooding again.

“The president is saying we are closed for business when it comes to hazard mitigation,” Berginnis said. “It bugs me to no end that we have to have reminders 鈥� like people dying 鈥� to show us why it’s important to make these investments.”

FEMA did not answer specific questions about these decisions. In the statement to 麻豆女优 Health News, spokesperson Llargués touted the administration’s response to flooding in Texas and New Mexico and said FEMA had provided billions of dollars to help people and communities recover and rebuild. He did not mention any FEMA funding for protecting against future floods.

Few hospitals understand this threat more than the former Coney Island Hospital in New York City, which has suffered catastrophic flooding before and has prepared for it to come again.

Superstorm Sandy in 2012 forced the hospital to evacuate hundreds of patients. When the water receded, fish and a sea turtle were found in the building.

Eleven years later, the facility reopened as Ruth Bader Ginsburg Hospital, transformed by a FEMA-funded $923 million reconstruction project that added a 4-foot floodwall and elevated patient care areas and utility infrastructure above the first floor.

It is now likely one of the most flood-proofed hospitals in the nation.

But, so far, no storm has tested the facility.

Svetlana Lipyanskaya, CEO of NYC Health+Hospitals/South Brooklyn Health, which includes the rebuilt hospital, said the question of flooding is “not an if but a when.”

“I hope it doesn’t happen in my lifetime,” she said, “but frankly, I’d be surprised. The water is coming.”

Methodology

After Hurricane Helene made landfall a year ago, a raging river flooded a rural hospital in eastern Tennessee. Patients and employees were rescued from the rooftop. Floods have hit hospitals from New York to Nebraska to Texas in recent years. We wanted to determine how many other U.S. hospitals face similar peril. Ultimately, we found more than 170 hospitals at risk.

For this analysis, we used data from , a United Kingdom-based company that specializes in flood-risk modeling across the globe. To assess the United States’ vulnerability, Fathom uses sophisticated computer simulations and detailed terrain data covering the country. It accounts for environmental factors such as climate change, soil conditions, and many rivers and creeks not mapped by other sources. Fathom’s modeling has been and , the World Bank, the Nature Conservancy, and government agencies in Florida, Texas, and elsewhere. The Iowa Flood Center has .

Through a data use agreement, Fathom shared its U.S. mapping data that predicts areas with at least a 1% chance of flooding in any given year. Fathom’s data estimates the effects of of flooding: coastal, fluvial (from overflowing rivers, lakes, or streams), and pluvial (rainfall that the ground can’t absorb). The data also accounts for dams, reservoirs, and other structures that defend against floods.

To identify at-risk hospitals, we used a publicly available Department of Homeland Security database containing the GPS coordinates of more than 7,000 short-term acute, critical access, rehab, and psychiatric hospitals 鈥� basically any hospital with inpatient services. (DHS under the Trump administration has discontinued public access to the database, so data for hospitals and other infrastructure is no longer widely available.)

Using GPS coordinates as the centerpoint, we created a circle with a 150-yard radius around each hospital, which in most cases captured the building plus nearby grounds and access roads. We then mapped Fathom’s flood-risk data to see where it overlapped with these circles. We started by looking for hospitals where at least 20% of the circle’s area had a predicted flood depth of at least 1 foot. That gave us an initial list of more than 320 hospitals across the U.S.

From there, we visually inspected those hospitals using mapping software and Google Maps, both satellite and street view. We trimmed our list to only the hospitals where a considerable portion of the building or all access roads were predicted to have at least a foot of flooding.

If two hospitals were mapped to the same building 鈥� for instance, a small rehab facility within a large hospital 鈥� we counted only one hospital. We also excluded hospitals recently converted to nursing homes or for other uses.

We ended up with a list of 171 hospitals across the U.S. That is most likely an undercount. Some hospitals could still face significant impact from flooding that is not deep enough or widespread enough to fit our methodology. Our analysis also does not account for how flooding farther from a hospital could affect employees or patients. And it does not assess what steps hospitals may have already taken to prepare for severe weather events.

We also ran a spatial analysis comparing Fathom’s data with flood hazard maps from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which in many cases are incomplete or haven’t been updated in years. We found that about a third of hospitals identified as flood risks by Fathom’s data did not overlap at all with FEMA’s 100- or 500-year hazard areas.

Fathom provided guidance and feedback as we developed our analysis.

CBS News correspondent David Schechter, photojournalist Chance Horner, and producer Aparna Zalani contributed to this report.

麻豆女优 Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at 麻豆女优鈥攁n independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about .

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The Connors went on a mission, searching for anything that would help.

“We just started researching on our own. And that’s when my husband Joe came across Dr. Frye in a research study he was doing,” Caroline said.

Richard Frye, a pediatric neurologist, is one of many doctors searching for treatments that can help . He’s studying leucovorin, an inexpensive, generic drug derived from folic acid, also known as folate or vitamin B9. Leucovorin is currently prescribed to ease the side effects of cancer chemotherapy. Pregnant women are prescribed multivitamins with folic acid to prevent neural tube defects. The neural tube develops into the brain and spinal cord.

Leucovorin isn’t a cure for autism, but “it could really have a substantial impact on a very good percentage of children with autism,” Frye said.

This week, the FDA began the process of approving leucovorin as a treatment for autism, despite a lack of any large, phase 3 clinical trials.

“We do have some good preliminary evidence that leucovorin helps,” Frye said. “But normally, the FDA would want to see at least a couple of large phase 3, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trials. Right now, we only have phase 2B studies, and more research is needed to answer key questions, like how to dose it correctly, when to start, and which children will benefit most.”

The theory behind the drug’s use for autism postulates that some children have a blockage in the transport of folic acid into the brain that potentially contributes to some of the neurological problems associated with the disorder. Leucovorin bypasses that blockage and can help some autistic kids improve their ability to speak. Three randomized controlled trials of leucovorin to treat autism have shown positive effects on speech.

Frye cited five blinded controlled studies to date, all positive, although at different doses and in different populations. Still, he said, “the evidence isn’t yet where it would normally be for a drug.”

Frye said he was “disappointed” that his group had not received funding from the National Institutes of Health’s new and that he was not consulted on the design of upcoming leucovorin trials. “It’s strange, because I’ve been leading this work for decades,” he noted.

The Science of Cerebral Folate Deficiency

Cerebral folate deficiency, or a deficiency of folate in the brain, was . Ramaekers found that some kids with neurodevelopmental disorders had normal levels of folic acid in the blood, but low levels in their spinal fluid. He then teamed up with researcher Edward Quadros, who had been studying how an autoimmune disorder might lead to a blockage of folic acid transport into the brain. Ramaekers and Quadros found that autoantibodies against the folate receptor alpha (FR鈲�), which transports folic acid from the blood into the brain and the placenta, might cause abnormal fetal brain development and some autism spectrum disorders.

One study found that over 75% of children with autism spectrum disorder , compared with 10%-15% of healthy kids. There is evidence of a for developing FR鈲� autoantibodies. While environmental and immune system dysregulation may also play a role, there’s no evidence to suggest that vaccines cause the development of FR鈲� autoantibodies.

The brain has a backup system to the FR鈲� known as the reduced folate carrier, or RFC. The RFC isn’t as efficient a transporter as the FR鈲�, but it can transport leucovorin, also known as folinic acid, into the brain. Enzymes in the brain convert leucovorin into the active form of folate.

Treatment with leucovorin in kids with cerebral folate deficiency, or CFD. In one study led by Frye, one-third of such kids in their speech and other behavior when treated with leucovorin. Two randomized trials conducted in France and India showed similar results. A is available to help may most likely respond to leucovorin treatment.

Frye’s team has also identified new potential biomarkers, such as the soluble folate receptor protein, that could predict which children require higher doses.

Frye noted that there are many nuances to treating CFD with leucovorin, including the addition of adjunctive treatments to optimize mitochondrial function.

The side effects associated with leucovorin are mild. Some children experience hyperactivity during the first few weeks of treatment, but that typically subsides within a month or two. A similar pattern is seen with other B vitamins.

Mason’s 鈥楲ittle Bottle of Hope’

Mason Connor’s first words came just three days after he started taking leucovorin at age 3, his parents say.

Doctors can currently prescribe the drug only for autism off-label, which means repurposing a drug approved for one condition to treat another.

“We’ve done the science, and the next step is that we want to get more funding so we can actually get it FDA-approved,” Frye said.

He welcomed the but cautioned that it “may have been a little premature,” given the gaps in knowledge and the need for physician education on how to prescribe leucovorin correctly in autism.

There’s one big problem. “Leucovorin’s an old drug, and you can get it for a very low price. So nobody is going to make a lot of money on it. So there’s no reason for them to invest,” Frye said.

Compounding the challenge: supply and quality vary. “Leucovorin is a generic, and different manufacturers use different additives,” Frye explained. “Some formulations children with autism don’t tolerate well.”

Frye used to recommend that patients use the generic form of leucovorin manufactured by West-Ward Pharmaceuticals, a U.S. subsidiary of Hikma, but, he said, “it ran out early this year. Right now, the only reliable source is through a high-quality compounding pharmacy that knows how to make it for kids with autism.” Frye is in the process of establishing a for-profit company to manufacture the right form of leucovorin for kids with autism.

An estimated 20%-30% of all prescriptions in the U.S. are off-label, according to the nonprofit . This is often done as there are more than 14,000 known human diseases with no FDA-approved drugs to treat them. Drugs like leucovorin are frequently used off-label because doctors believe that the benefits outweigh the risks. However, there is often limited awareness about these treatments, so they may go unused.

, Every Cure’s co-founder and president, said he’s “literally alive today from a repurposed drug” after he was diagnosed with a rare cancer-like disease that almost killed him. His research into his disease led to a drug meant for another condition.

“It’s heartbreaking to think about drugs being on the pharmacy shelf while someone suffers from a disease,” Fajgenbaum said.

Every Cure uses AI to scour available medical data on diseases and treatments to uncover potential matches. the work of Frye, Ramaekers, Quadros, and others on leucovorin in the treatment of autism.

“I think our system is just flawed and there’s this major gap where drug companies are great at developing new drugs for new diseases, and we as a system are really lousy at looking for new diseases for old drugs. That’s why we started Every Cure 鈥� to unlock these hidden cures,” Fajgenbaum said.

Mason is now 5, and the plan is for him to start mainstream kindergarten this fall 鈥� helped toward a new path by an old medicine.

麻豆女优 Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at 麻豆女优鈥攁n independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about .

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This story can be republished for free (details).