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On June 1, 2026, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a long-anticipated interim final rule that will guide state implementation of Medicaid work requirements. The 2025 reconciliation law requires 44 states to condition Medicaid eligibility for adults in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion group and enrollees in certain waiver programs, including in non-expansion states (Georgia, Tennessee, 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.” Given the abbreviated implementation timeline, states had tentatively moved forward with key decisions…
Ghana has combined the malaria vaccine with other proven tools, including using trusted voices to counter misinformation. For decades, malaria has been one of Africa’s most persistent health challenges. In Ghana, it was once the leading cause of death for children under five. Bed nets and antimalarial drugs reduced deaths substantially, but by the mid-2010s, the pace of improvement had declined. Climate change was altering the length and intensity of transmission seasons. Resistance to the insecticides used on bed nets and to the drugs used to treat infection was spreading. The tools that had driven earlier progress were becoming less…
Cara Anthony tries to convince her HealthQ co-host Blake Farmer that there are benefits to embracing the caregiver identity when helping an aging parent. (Candice Evers for WPLN and KFF Health News) When his father was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer in 2025, William Morrison immediately went into caregiving mode. “We were in the hospital every day,” he said. “I was really playing the intermediary between the medical staff and our family and kind of helping have those conversations and push for those answers.” One in 10 Americans say they are a caregiver for a parent 65 or older, according to…
Bill Curry, 65, raises cattle on the same land in rural Oklahoma once owned by his father and generations before him. Each quarter, for several years, he has made the 2½-hour drive to Oklahoma City for an epidural in his spine to treat his back pain. But this year, because of a new Medicare program, Curry has traveled a little more often. In February, during one trip, he was told unexpectedly that he needed preapproval for the procedure. Then he went again a month or so later to get the injection, for a total of 10 hours on the road.…
UNAIDS executive director Winnie Byanyima addressing a largely empty assembly hall at the opening of the UN High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS. Despite remarkable advances against HIV over the past two decades, “let us not confuse progress with success”, warned UNAIDS head Winnie Byanyima at the start of the United Nations High-Level Meeting (HLM) on HIV in New York on Monday. Over 40 million people are living with HIV, yet “almost nine million people are still not on treatment, and last year 1.2 million people were newly infected,” said Byanyima, her address delivered to a sea of empty chairs – symptomatic…
Tired of watching its employers struggle to afford the cost of healthcare, Republican-controlled Indiana is trying a traditionally liberal tactic to control costs: setting government price controls on hospitals. Under a law enacted last year, five of Indiana’s largest nonprofit hospital systems cannot charge patients covered by job-based health plans more than an established price cap. Hospitals that fail to keep prices below the threshold by 2029 risk losing their tax-exempt status — which would mean owing millions of dollars in state taxes. Even before that penalty kicks in, the law requires these hospitals, which control nearly half the state’s…
President Surangel S Whipps (centre) and officials at the formal signing of the notification The island country in the western Pacific Ocean has initiated a World Health Organization (WHO) review of nicotine in terms of the United Nations (UN) Convention on Psychotropic Substances In 2023, I stood in a room among other Palauan mothers, school principals, teachers, and students who had come to witness the signing of Palau’s comprehensive prohibition on e-cigarettes, including their importation, distribution, sale, possession, and use. I told them I believed that if we let this industry continue unchecked, we would raise an entire generation damaged…
The latest NHS England management data has shown the real life and immediate impact of the Medical Training Prioritisation Act. The Act came into force in March responding to concerns about increasing competition faced by UK-trained doctors for postgraduate medical training posts. It has delivered what it promised despite being urgent legislation coming into effect during a live recruitment meaning we could only deliver prioritisation at offer stage rather than application stage as we will in the future. Competition ratios have halved, prioritised doctors have filled 98% of roles, and in some specialties, like General Practice, all posts have been…
Visits to the hay fever advice on the NHS website have more than doubled in the past week as temperatures rise this weekend. There have been 12,990 visits to the hay fever page on nhs.uk in the past four days (14-17 June), compared to 5,632 in the same period the week before, a rise of 131 per cent. Monday (15 June, 3,684 visits) and Sunday (14 June, 3,612 visits) were the second and third biggest days for NHS web visits this year. Duncan Burton, Chief Nursing Officer for England, said: “While I’m sure most people are delighted to be enjoying the…
EU lawmakers failed to agree on tobacco tax regulations in Strasbourg this week. The European Parliament on Wednesday defeated a proposal to freeze cigarette excise taxes at a 60% rate of retail value – throwing a final decision on tobacco and nicotine policies into the court of the European Council of Ministers. But the politically-divided EU Council is unlikely to raises taxes anywhere near the bar set by the WHO’s latest recommendations for taxes on cigarettes as well as novel nicotine and tobacco products that are surging in popularity. A European Commission initiative, now set to go before the Council…
Dr Faustin Ntirenganya (left) and surgeon trainee Dr Victoire Mukamitari. Where a person is born should not determine whether they survive, whether they live with dignity, or whether they are forced to endure years of preventable suffering while waiting for surgical care that may never come. Yet, across large parts of Africa, this remains the reality. At this year’s 79th World Health Assembly (WHA79) in Geneva, world leaders gathered to discuss the future of global health, healthcare equity and international responsibility. Despite the scale of these conversations, one essential component of healthcare continues to receive far too little global attention:…
Africa CDC epidemiologist Dr Wessam Mankoula The current Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak is three times larger than any other Ebola outbreak was four weeks after being declared a public health emergency, Africa CDC revealed at a media briefing on Thursday. This Ebola outbreak was declared a public health emergency on 17 May, and there are currently 875 cases and 202 deaths, Africa CDC epidemiologist Dr Wessam Mankoula told the briefing. The biggest Ebola outbreak in history, which affected West Africa and infected an estimated 28,600 people, had only registered 242 cases in four weeks – but that outbreak took almost three…
COP31 co-Presidents Türkiye and Australia used the Bonn climate talks to launch three flagship goals for November’s summit in Antalya. The targets chart a path to cut emissions from energy, buildings and waste, but steer clear of the fossil fuels — and the finance fights — that sank the last two COPs. The stepping-stone meetings on the road to COP31 in Antalya unfolding in Bonn this week brought the first real clarity on what the incoming presidency wants the next UN climate summit to deliver on: electrification, reducing waste, and the energy efficiency of buildings and construction. The three headline…
Introduction The Trump administration has made policy changes to restrict immigration into the U.S., including efforts to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designations for many countries, pauses and restrictions on the issuance of new visas, and significantly increased immigration enforcement. These actions could have negative implications for the U.S. workforce, which includes significant shares of immigrant workers, particularly in certain industries including health care. Immigrant workers include naturalized citizens as well as noncitizens, including lawfully present and undocumented immigrants. This issue brief provides data on immigrants’ role in the U.S. workforce, including in health care and other key industries, based…
Governments need to prioritise funding and support for midwifery to save the lives of women and babies A return on investment of 16:1 should be irresistible. So why does midwifery keep losing the budget fight, and what would make funders and finance ministers finally move? When a young mother in Mtendere, Lusaka, began bleeding heavily hours after delivering her baby, her life was in grave danger. Three midwives assessed her immediately, recognised she was experiencing postpartum haemorrhage and got her to specialist care in time. She survived. But the outcome was not luck. Postpartum haemorrhage kills tens of thousands of…
Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names. Don’t Let Hospital Billing Ruin American Lives Your recent piece “Baffling. Frustrating. Frightening. What It’s Like To Be Sued Over Medical Debt” (June 1) adds to a growing breadth of firsthand patient experiences caused by undue medical debt. These patients understand they need to pay for their care but instead are strapped with baffling medical bills and no direct way to get assistance. That’s exactly what these hospital and insurer billing practices do: make it difficult…