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About 3 million fewer people in the United States had Affordable Care Act health insurance plans in February compared with the same time last year, according to new federal data. In the report released Friday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggested the 13% drop in enrollment from 22.1 million people in 2025 to 19.2 million this year could be attributed to a federal crackdown on fraudulent or “phantom” enrollment. But health analysts said it was more likely related to the Jan. 1 expiration of federal subsidies, which caused a surge in plan costs that resulted in many people being unable to pay their premiums. (Swenson, 6/27)

Robert Behounek walked into the Albuquerque emergency room last fall with telltale signs of a heart attack. For weeks, he’d been having trouble breathing and terrible swelling all over his body. What began as searing pain in one of his arms was now a relentless ache in his chest. The receptionist at Albuquerque ER & Hospital asked for his health insurance card, but he didn’t have insurance. She told Behounek that his visit could cost upward of $1,600. (Bannow, 6/29)

Noah Weikert can be shy when he meets new people — sometimes hiding behind his dad and grabbing his hand. But at Beans & Dreams, where he’s been working for three years, he looks people in the eye and smiles. The coffee shop, located near Frederick, employs people with developmental disabilities and has helped Weikert develop social and daily-life skills. Weikert’s sister is paid by the state to serve as a job coach as he wipes down tables and works the store register. (Conrad, 6/27)

Connecticut’s Medicaid spending per enrollee jumped 14% between 2023 and 2024, nearly doubling the per-person cost growth of health expenses in the state overall, according to an April 2026 report by the state Office of Health Strategy. Despite the increase, Medicaid, known as HUSKY in Connecticut, still managed to maintain the lowest costs per enrollee of any market — even when compared to commercial insurance. (Golvala, 6/26)

Millions of older Americans in Medicare are about to gain access to obesity drugs for the first time — but that landmark shift may be flying under the radar for many of them. (Constantino, 6/28)

As consumers worry about medication costs, states are trying to lower drug prices by reining in big companies that oversee prescription coverage for health insurers. Some of those companies, called pharmacy benefit managers, also own pharmacies, and one of them, CVS, has spent millions of dollars fighting the regulations. Affordability is a key issue ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Legislators in at least a dozen states passed laws this year to limit compensation to the companies, set minimum payments from the companies to pharmacists and require the companies to disclose more information to their clients, states and the public. (Hanna, 6/27)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: She Struggled To Get A Lifesaving Drug Even After Insurers Vowed To Help

Over four consecutive days in January, Margaret Hvatum ran a 5K, a 10K, a half-marathon, and a full marathon. The 70-year-old covered a combined distance that’s nearly equivalent to running the length of Manhattan four times. By the end of the month, she was in a hospital bed. Hvatum, a part-time computer science professor, has a weakened immune system due to a rare condition known as primary immunodeficiency, which makes it difficult for her body to fight infections. Prior to her 2005 diagnosis, she had four bouts of shingles, a painful rash caused by a virus. (Liss, 6/29)

In a blow to the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda, a federal appeals court on Friday rejected the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempt to roll back soot pollution standards set in 2024. The decision upholds the tightened National Ambient Air Quality Standards for small particulates, called PM2.5, set by former President Joe Biden’s administration. (Hirji, 6/26)

New Mexico’s attorney general on Friday opened a criminal investigation to determine whether U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents broke state law by allowing hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to reach the streets of Albuquerque. The extraordinary inquiry comes less than a week after The Associated Press reported that DEA agents repeatedly monitored — but did not seize — shipments of the synthetic opioid in a bid to build bigger criminal cases between 2023 and 2025. (Mustian, 6/26)

Family planning and health organizations that serve tens of thousands of people across Pennsylvania could see federal funding delayed or denied by a new Trump administration policy, a new lawsuit alleges. The suit, which includes the Cumberland County-based Family Health Council of Central Pennsylvania as a plaintiff, takes aim at a step added this year by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to applications for Title X grants, which provide local agencies with funds to aid low-income and uninsured patients with family planning and related health services. (White, 6/26)

The Trump administration wants to formalize the process for recording whether Medicare patients want to be kept alive if they become incapacitated. (Goldman, 6/29)

White House aide Heidi Overton, oncologist Jeffrey Vacirca and senior Pentagon health official Stephen Ferrara are all in the running to be the next FDA commissioner, sources tell Axios. (Owens, 6/26)

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is continuing his battle to remake federal vaccine policy, this time by rewriting the charter of a federal committee that wields enormous influence over childhood immunizations to shift its focus beyond vaccines. During his confirmation hearing, Kennedy promised senators that he would not alter the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which makes vaccine recommendations to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including which vaccines should be available for free to needy children and which ones should be covered without a copay by private insurance. (Szabo, 6/26)

Less than 24 hours after NBC News reported on members of the military and retirees facing roadblocks in getting coverage for critical therapies for children with autism, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., issued a letter Friday to Pentagon leadership calling for changes. Gillibrand and Schmitt are members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which oversees the Defense Health Agency and TRICARE. (Kane, McLaughlin and Dunn, 6/26)

Outgoing Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said Sunday he is “working” on gaining consensus for his proposed reforms to Social Security, which he warns is growing closer to insolvency. “Right now, we’re working on Social Security. Social Security is … going to [be] insolvent, and when that happens, there’ll be a cut of 22 percent to 25 percent in someone’s benefits if we follow the current law,” Cassidy, who was defeated by a President Trump-backed opponent in a primary earlier this year, told host Margaret Brennan on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” (Rego, 6/28)

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) on Sunday knocked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after an outbreak of influenza infected several service members at an Air Force base in Texas. Cassidy, a licensed gastroenterologist and the first physician to chair the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” that “we do see the consequences, though, of ignoring the benefits that things like vaccines bring for public health.” “And if you will, I think what you’re going after is that this administration, parts of it, have tried to downplay the importance of immunization,” he said. (Mancini, 6/28)

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) in a Sunday interview sought to explain his controversial vote to confirm Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as he said Kennedy is dug in on his views toward vaccinations despite public opinion. Cassidy, the first physician to serve as the chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” that Kennedy “has not restored trust in public health.” (Mancini, 6/28)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is raising its Ebola response to the highest level, agency officials said Friday, as the outbreak continues to spread uncontrolled across Congo and Uganda. “Elevating the response level reflects the urgency, scale, and complexity of the outbreak, and allows CDC to bring additional resources to support the coordination and operational needs of our response,” Satish Pillai, the CDC’s Ebola response incidence manager, told reporters. (Weixel, 6/26)  

Thirty federal health service workers gathered last month at Joint Base Andrews in suburban Maryland to prepare for a trip to Africa, the first wave set to care for Americans exposed to a deadly Ebola outbreak ravaging communities across the continent. But participants quickly grew alarmed by what they described as a shambolic and hurried effort under intense pressure from Washington. (Nix, 6/26)

The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) convened a three-day meeting Friday of African countries in hopes of strengthening regional preparedness for the growing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has now claimed more than 300 lives. The meeting was set to include officials from the DRC, neighboring Uganda, and 11 other high-risk African Union member states, along with the members of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other key technical partners. (Dall, 6/26)

The whereabouts of almost 300 people who have tested positive for Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is unknown, according to Africa’s top public health official. ... Modeling suggested the outbreak had a 70% chance of spreading to neighbouring South Sudan in the coming weeks. (Lay, 6/26)

It was no surprise that the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo quickly jumped across the border into Uganda. Citizens of both countries routinely cross over to do business and visit relatives. The surprising part is that Uganda’s aggressive control methods appear to have stymied the spread of the deadly virus, in part by prohibiting people from hugging or even shaking hands. (Bariyo, 6/26)

The lack of health, water, electricity and education services means that people in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo have not only experienced Ebola, but also mpox and cholera in recent years, the head of delegation for the International Committee of the Red Cross in the country said. (Ferris, 6/27)

NPR often relies on reporters going into dangerous places to get the story. It can mean covering a war, natural catastrophes, or highly contagious, deadly diseases — like the current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that has killed hundreds of people so far. For this week’s Reporter’s Notebook, we hear from Emmet Livingstone about how he balances the risk of reporting in an area where Ebola is spreading. (Sánchez, Raney and Livingstone, 6/27)

Millions of Americans across the eastern half of the US are facing a prolonged stretch of dangerous and potentially record-breaking heat as Americans get set to head outdoors to celebrate the country’s 250th Independence Day. (Waxman, 6/29)

Every few minutes, the mortuary owner’s phone rings. Since a record-smashing heat wave started taking lives and storage space for bodies in Paris and beyond, the funeral directors and mourning families calling him mostly have the same question: Do you have room for one more? With all 32 places in his cold room taken, Zouhaeir Hertelli reluctantly has to gently say “Non,” over and over and over again. “We’re facing a really catastrophic situation,” he said. “I’m getting hundreds of calls.” (Leicester and Schaeffer, 6/29)

Mosquitoes collected in the Twin Cities metro area have tested positive for West Nile virus for the first time this year, and experts say more infected mosquitos are likely active in other parts of the state as well. (Bloch, 6/27)

Faced with one of its worst outbreaks of dengue in years, Sri Lanka is using military drones to scan rooftops and find mosquito breeding grounds to eliminate. The island nation is at war with the insect that carries the dengue virus and has infected more than 46,000 people so far this year, nearly double the number for the same period last year, and killed 29. Hospitals are stretched to capacity with more than 500 cases a day. (Waravita, 6/28)

Cases of Powassan virus have hit the news in recent months because of the potentially life-altering, sometimes fatal, symptoms. (Sloan, 6/28)

You’ve likely heard it since childhood: Don’t scratch that bug bite or rash, you’ll make it worse. But why would something that feels so good be bad? A lot of things can cause itchiness, sometimes serious diseases. Whatever the cause, doctors have long warned that scratching too much can damage the skin. Now researchers better understand why even a mildly annoying itch could put you on an itch-and-scratch cycle if you give in. How did they find out? In part by putting tiny “cones of shame” onto mice to uncover what happens on a cellular level when an itch gets scratched — or left alone. (Neergaard, 6/27)

Twenty-five Metro Detroit communities exceeded Michigan’s lead action level for drinking water since 2018, according to state compliance data analyzed by a drinking water engineer and reviewed by Planet Detroit. The communities all receive water treated by the Great Lakes Water Authority, or GLWA. Despite repeated exceedances, regulators have not required the distribution of water filters, something experts say is warranted. (Allnutt, 6/26)

A deal to bring Colorado River water to Native American communities in northern Arizona, where a third of homes lack running water, is being blocked by neighboring states, caught up in a broader battle over how to divide the dwindling river. The largest tribal water rights settlement in U.S. history — the product of decades of negotiations to secure water for the Navajo Nation, Hopi Tribe and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe — was on the verge of being realized before Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming stepped in to oppose it being codified by Congress. (Olalde and Hager, 6/29)

Earthquake victims are overwhelming healthcare centers in Venezuela’s coastal state of La Guaira and beyond, pushing an already fragile health system past its limits. Two powerful 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes struck within a minute of each other on Wednesday evening, toppling buildings and severely damaging the country’s main international airport. By Saturday afternoon, authorities reported nearly 3,240 injured people and a death toll approaching 1,430 nationwide. More than 430 aftershocks had occurred by Saturday, head of the National Assembly said in a report. (Itriago and Dahl, 6/27)

The shingles vaccine may significantly help protect older adults against dementia, a growing body of evidence shows. Exactly how is unclear. The nervous system, however, likely holds clues. Shingles, a condition triggered by the reactivation of the varicella-zoster virus in the body, can cause a “war zone” of inflammation in the brain, said Dr. Jennifer Pauldurai, the medical director of the Inova Brain Health and Memory Disorders Program in Northern Virginia. (Leake, 6/28)

Patients taking the oral GLP-1 drug aleniglipron saw up to a 12 percent reduction in body weight after 36 weeks, according to researchers. The study, conducted at Northwestern University, found the drug stimulates insulin secretion, suppresses appetite and increases satiety to promote weight loss. “The difference with aleniglipron is it’s a small molecule, meaning it’s chemically made and can be taken with or without food,” said Dr. Robert Kushner, a co-author of the study and a professor at Northwestern. (Taub, 6/28)

Use of GLP-1 receptor agonists was associated with a higher risk of smell and taste disturbances among adults with type 2 diabetes, an analysis of electronic health record (EHR) data suggested. (Monaco, 6/26)

People who feel extra rotten in the days leading up to their period say they're finding relief from a new TikTok trend. It's a combination of two over-the-counter drugs: An allergy pill, like Claritin or Zyrtec, along with Pepcid AC, the heartburn medication. It might sound unbelievable, but after dealing with years of unexplained symptoms, Terese Hansen of Omaha, Nebraska was willing to try almost anything. (Boden, 6/29)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Reporters Talk Through FDA Sunscreen Move And Closure Of Rural Dialysis Clinics

�������ýҕ�l Health News freelance contributor Michael Scaturro discussed the FDA’s new approval of a sunscreen chemical on Science Friday on June 19. (6/27)

As rural areas across Minnesota grapple with the loss of key medical services and increasing hospital consolidation, one community is fighting back. The city of Fosston in northwestern Minnesota, about 45 miles northwest of Bemidji, wants to hold Essentia Health, the hospital system that took over operations of its local hospital nearly 20 years ago accountable, alleging it has failed to meet the community’s health care needs in violation of its affiliation agreement. (Work, 6/29)

When Martin General Hospital closed its doors in 2023 after 73 years of service, residents of Martin County in eastern North Carolina were left without a local emergency department. At the time the hope was to get the facility reopened quickly with new management. Three years later, residents still have to travel across county lines to access life-saving care. (Baxley, 6/29)

Baltimore’s Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital will remain operational during a nurses’ union’s planned one-day strike next month, the hospital announced Saturday. (Bazos, 6/27)

Radford University is finalizing plans to build its new health sciences facility on Roanoke’s Jefferson Street, using a site not far from its current location, a university spokesperson confirmed. (Verrelli, 6/29)

Dr. Michael Wagner, president and CEO of Care New England Health System, will step down early next year. Care New England’s board of directors has launched a national search for Wagner’s successor. After a new leader is selected and in place, Wagner will retire from full-time work and transition to board chair, replacing Gary Furtado, the system said Friday. (DeSilva, 6/26)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Florida Hospitals Act Fast To Discharge Gun Victims — Especially If They’re Not Insured

Alea Bates wasn’t ready to leave Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare’s main hospital four days after a stranger shot her seven times at close range. Miraculously, hospital records show, none of the bullets damaged her internal organs. But after surgery, Bates said, she couldn’t get out of bed or walk to the bathroom without help. She complained of intense pain radiating down her left leg, weakness in her knee, and a numbing sensation below it, according to hospital records. Bates, who worked as an Uber Eats driver, didn’t have the strength to drive a car. Still, Bates said, the hospital told her it was time to go. (Chang, Clasen-Kelly and Pierce, 6/29)

Throughout his 2023 mayoral campaign, Brandon Johnson championed a progressive vision of sending teams of mental health clinicians instead of police officers to help people suffering from psychiatric emergencies. But since he took office and started phasing cops out of the city’s Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement program, those teams of mental health workers have struggled to respond to 911 calls. (Yin, 6/28)

Ericca Voelker bounced from emergency rooms to psychiatric wards for years as she dealt with substance abuse and mood disorders. But after a bout of mania landed her back in the hospital in 2024, a new approach changed her trajectory. Rather than stay in the chaotic ER, she was diverted to a specialized unit designed to give people in mental distress swift treatment in a calmer setting. Voelker stayed for three days, left with a recovery plan and has been stable since. (Inampudi, 6/27)

In a recent study, researchers conducted a first-ever patient-level privacy audit to see how easily individual patients could be identified from the underlying data used to train medical AI models. At first glance, an AI model may appear to protect everyone's privacy equally well, but a closer look reveals a different story. Researchers found that attackers can identify certain individual patients with near-perfect accuracy, exposing a hidden unfairness in privacy. People from underrepresented groups—such as racial minorities, Medicaid recipients or patients with rare medical conditions—are significantly more vulnerable to privacy leaks than the majority population. (Mondal, 6/26)

UnitedHealth Group, one of healthcare’s biggest artificial intelligence believers, wants the whole sector to buy into the technology — and to buy its products. Insurers and providers aim to reduce costs and boost margins by embracing AI for internal processes including claims adjudication, call center automation, workforce training, chatbots, clinical programs and ambient scribes. UnitedHealthcare parent company UnitedHealth Group is at the forefront, investing $1.5 billion in AI this year. Not far behind, Elevance Health is spending more than $1 billion and CVS Health is launching a new technology subsidiary. (Tong, 6/26)

Can artificial intelligence-powered care solve medical problems at national scale? A modest-sized European country is about to find out. (Aguilar, 6/29)

When the Supreme Court handed Monsanto a major win in Roundup litigation on Thursday, the headlines sounded like a scientific event: a case about whether Roundup causes cancer. But Monsanto v. Durnell did not settle that question. The court held that federal pesticide law preempts a state failure-to-warn claim when the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a cancer warning on the product label. (Alex Smolak, 6/27)

The real cure for bad science is better clinical trials, not lawsuits. (Megan McArdle, 6/28)

I am a plastic surgeon who rebuilds faces after car accidents, helps cancer patients breathe, and restores infants’ ability to eat and smile. Yet what draws the most notice is my work transforming masculine features into feminine ones, and vice versa. (Kavitha Ranganathan, 6/29)

Shawn Kelly is a pediatrician in Ottawa who specializes in adolescent addiction medicine. Because he’s one of the few doing this work in his part of Canada, teenagers come to him with a host of problem behaviors, from opioid abuse to compulsive video gaming. (Jessica Grose, 6/27)

The decline in obesity rates is a medical triumph. But millions remain locked out by high costs, uneven insurance coverage, and bureaucratic barriers. (Ashish K. Jha, 6/29)