GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. — Two state transportation workers were replacing a sign on the shoulder of U.S. Highway 6 in western Colorado one morning when a Jeep Grand Cherokee swerved off the road and struck them.

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James Mu had braced for the call that came in late January.

A patient from his rural Northern California county had measles, a disease so rare there that many physicians have never treated a case.

While California has some of the strictest vaccine laws in the country, conservative Shasta County’s approach during the covid pandemic stood in stark contrast with the state’s guidance. Its local leaders opposed masking and vaccine mandates, and they ousted the county public health officer, who had sought to enforce those state policies and other safety measures.

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Highlights

A hantavirus outbreak linked to a Dutch cruise ship in early May was followed by false health claims that mirror patterns documented in previous outbreaks, including unsupported claims that ivermectin is an effective treatment, that the outbreak was planned in advance, and that it was caused by COVID-19 vaccines.

The Monitor also examines a new analysis of Americans’ relationship with health and wellness influencers, finding that most who get health information and advice from them express skepticism about what they hear.

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The 2025 reconciliation law requires states to condition Medicaid eligibility for adults in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion group and enrollees in partial expansion waiver programs (Georgia and Wisconsin) on meeting work requirements starting January 1, 2027 or sooner at state option. The law specifies mandatory exemptions, including individuals who are “medically frail.” To ease the burden on individuals, the law directs states to use available information “where possible” to verify compliance with Medicaid work activities or exemption status, without requiring additional documentation from individuals. Given the abbreviated implementation timeline, states are moving forward with key decisions over how to implement the medical frailty exemption even as they wait for formal guidance from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), which is required to issue an interim final rule by June 1, 2026. This brief describes early state plans to operationalize the medical frailty exemption and identifies key issues that they are facing and may be answered in the forthcoming guidance.

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Congress' decision not to extend enhanced marketplace tax credits has boosted the appeal of alternative health coverage with lower monthly premiums.

When Melanie Miller saw that her health insurance premium payment was set to nearly triple to $914 a month this year, she stopped shopping on the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

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About this Episode

Episode 5, AI Series: How is AI applied to clinical care and hospital operations across a real health system at full scale? Chip Kahn talks to Dr. Michael Schlosser, Senior Vice President and Chief Transformation Officer at HCA Healthcare, about how AI is developed for everyday use, starting with careful testing and customization, with clinicians and nurses engaged from the very beginning as end users. 

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WILLIAMSTON, N.C. — Two years after her brother’s death, Debra Pierce still wonders whether the 50-year-old would have survived his heart attack if her local hospital hadn’t closed.

“The sad thing is we’ll never know if he could have been saved that night or not, because we don’t have a higher level of care in this county,” Pierce said as she stood outside the mobile home where she last hugged her brother.

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As of 2024, there were 24 million noncitizen immigrants, including lawfully present and undocumented immigrants, living in the U.S. Noncitizen immigrants, particularly those who are undocumented, face significant barriers to accessing health coverage and care and are significantly more likely than citizens to be uninsured. These higher uninsured rates reflect more limited access to private coverage and eligibility restrictions for federally funded coverage options. Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for federally funded coverage options and lawfully present immigrants face eligibility restrictions for coverage. Under the 2025 reconciliation law there will be increased eligibility restrictions for many lawfully present immigrants for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), subsidized Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace coverage, and Medicare coverage.

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About this Episode

Episode 4, AI Series: What does AI mean for patients in bed and doctors at the bedside? Host Chip Kahn and guest Dr. Robert Wachter, Chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, discuss whether AI will produce a different kind of doctor in the future — a “clinician curator rather than a clinician-diagnostician.” The answer could define the future of medicine and the doctor-patient relationship.

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Across the country, the practice of allowing children to remain hospitalized “beyond medical necessity” has become a costly problem, and states have struggled to address the issue.

Overwhelmed by the demands of caregiving, Quette dialed 911 when she found her teenage son downstairs in their kitchen struggling to breathe.

He had rolled his wheelchair to the oven to keep himself warm as he tried to regulate his temperature, she recalled, and was drenched in sweat from an apparent infection.

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