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The Trump Administration continues its focus on rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse in federal programs, including Medicaid. In March 2026, President Trump issued an Executive Order establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, chaired by Vice President J.D. Vance. In May 2026, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced a six-month nationwide moratoria (or pause) on the enrollment of new Medicare hospice and home health agency providers. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has also taken nationwide and state-specific action in the Medicaid program, including: CMS state-specific financial action and inquiries: In early 2026, CMS used multiple procedures…
If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.” Nearly every Tuesday for a decade, Steve Siple attended a bar trivia night with friends in Birmingham, Alabama. After moving to North Carolina, he developed a new ritual — joining other Charlotte locals on Saturdays to pick up trash along the city’s light rail. These are more than fun outings to Siple. They help keep him alive. Siple has battled suicidal thoughts in the past. He lost his father to suicide, and one of his…
HealthQ’s Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer share know-how for parents navigating the decision to seek out mental healthcare for a child. (Candice Evers for WPLN and KFF Health News) Divorce rocked the lives of Marcela Cabay and her daughter, who was a preschooler at the time. But counseling didn’t come until years later, when Cabay noticed her daughter was tensing up every time a storm rolled through or whenever they were preparing to be apart. “She was experiencing just a lot of anxiety, really starting to think worst-case scenarios all the time, just really struggling in her daily life,” said…
How do we know if AI use in health care actually makes patients better? Chip talks with Dr. David Bates — a veteran physician leader at Mass General Brigham and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Co-director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics Learning Systems — about measuring patient outcomes reliably and in real time to create a strong foundation for everything else in health care administration — clinical deployment, payment reform, consumer transparency, and accountability. David has spent his career at the center of this challenge and his research helped inform To Err Is Human: Building a…
A young boy with type 1 diabetes gets his blood glucose level tested. Such new tests aren’t readily available in many countries. The Global Diabetes Compact aims to improve diagnosis, care, and access to life-saving medications for those with diabetes. Already, countries in high-burden regions have improved along these key metrics. But as the number of people living with diabetes is projected to increase nearly 50% globally by 2050, much more needs to be accomplished. In a Toronto hospital 105 years ago, scientists racing against the clock injected a 14-year-old boy dying from diabetes with insulin. Leonard Thompson’s dangerously high…
The ‘Kick Big Soda Out’ movement wants FIFA to drop Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the Football World Cup. Ahead of the kick-off of the World Cup football tournament on Thursday, global health advocates are demanding that FIFA, the international football federation, ends its partnership with Coca-Cola by 2030. Coca-Cola has sponsored the FIFA World Cup, the world’s most-watched sporting tournament, since 1978. Its sponsorship agreement, which makes up about 2% of FIFA’s income, is up for review in 2030. The “Kick Big Soda Out” movement has written to FIFA president Giovanni Infantino, demanding that the federation publicly commits to ending its sponsorship agreement…
DNDi, GARDP and MMV have signed a cooperation agreement to maximise efforts to develop low-cost medicines for neglected diseases. Three non-profit organisations involved in the research and development (R&D) of “effective, affordable, and life-saving medicines” are pooling resources to address the growing unmet needs of the world’s most vulnerable patients. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), GARDP Foundation, and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) announced a cooperation agreement on Monday to “explore how they can further pool their expertise and resources to strengthen the efficiency and coordination of their activities”. The cooperation focuses particularly on R&D, as well as…
Editorial Note: This brief expands and updates a prior KFF analysis on the impact of Title X and Medicaid funding on Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood clinics comprise a substantial portion of the nation’s reproductive health safety net. In recent years, actions across multiple branches of government—including federal agencies, Congress, the courts, and state governments—have placed considerable financial pressure on the organization, with implications for patient access to care. This pressure has primarily focused on the two main sources of public funding for these clinics: the federal Title X family planning program and Medicaid. This brief focuses on the status of these efforts as they…
Elizabeth Bonker is a silent woman with a loud mission. She wants government agencies to cover the costs of training people with autism in a form of communication called assisted spelling. One problem: Leading professional organizations don’t believe it works. “All nonspeakers above the age of 5 should be given the opportunity,” typed Bonker, who is 28 and cannot talk. Her mother, Virginia Breen, held a wireless keyboard for her. They sat on a hotel patio before an April 27 meeting with a senior aide to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “We are misunderstood and underestimated,”…
Jules Netherland traveled from her home in the Bronx to the New York state Capitol in Albany several times in the past few years, hoping to persuade the legislature to pass a medical aid in dying bill, allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives with a lethal prescription. She spoke at rallies. With other members of the advocacy organization Compassion & Choices, she visited legislators’ offices. In 2024, as the state Assembly was debating the aid in dying bill, she helped unfurl a banner in the chamber gallery that read, “Stop the Suffering.” Her activism was becoming difficult. Netherland,…
More than half a million NHS staff are being given access to new artificial intelligence (AI) tools that could free up an average of 2 days every month from admin duties, freeing up more time for the duties that matter most for patients and staff. NHS England announced today that it is significantly accelerating AI adoption across healthcare services by providing 505,000 clinicians and support staff with access to Microsoft 365 Copilot. The AI personal assistant helps clinicians to draft documents and analyse data more efficiently to focus more time on patient care. The agreement follows the largest AI trial…
New malaria medicines are on the way. But drug resistance is spreading across Africa, funding is collapsing, and the parasite that causes malaria is once again outrunning the tools built to kill it. GENEVA – Malaria has adapted and evolved for at least 30 million years. The oldest identified samples of the parasite were found in mosquitoes preserved in amber, from a family of insects ancient enough to have shared the planet with the dinosaurs. How many millions of people it has killed across the roughly 300,000 years our species has existed is uncountable. What we do know is how…
Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed a recent study that suggests ultraprocessed foods are linked to increased dementia risk on CBS News 24/7’s The Daily Report on June 3. Gounder also discussed the Ebola outbreak in central Africa and the impact of U.S. health funding cuts on CBS News’ CBS Mornings on June 3. On June 2, Gounder joined CBS News’ CBS Mornings to discuss a study that found women taking GLP-1 drugs had a lower rate of breast cancer diagnoses. She also discussed President Donald Trump’s new medical report and creatine supplements on CBS News…
As the current federal administration rounded up an increasing number of immigrants, with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding more than 75,000 in mid-January alone, we heard scattered, localized complaints from detainees alleging medical neglect. We wondered about the extent of the problems and whether the agency and its contractors were keeping pace with detainees’ medical needs nationwide. But no central repository exists, so we had to get creative — and dive into a trove of court records. Detainees are filing record numbers of habeas corpus petitions in federal court, arguing they’re being held illegally. Sometimes those cases mention medical…
Africa CDC Director General Dr Jean Kaseya and WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus addressing a joint media briefing on Friday. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention launched a joint continental preparedness response plan to address the current Ebola outbreak on Friday, based on 11 pillars and a $518 million budget. Earlier this week, the two groups reduced their Ebola case projections substantially after testing the backlog of suspected cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak, explained Dr Jean Kaseya, Africa CDC Director…
People with Medicare have the option of receiving their Medicare benefits through the traditional Medicare program administered by the federal government or through a private Medicare Advantage plan, such as an HMO or PPO. In Medicare Advantage, the federal government contracts with private insurers to provide Medicare benefits to enrollees. Medicare pays insurers a set amount per enrollee per month, which varies depending on the county in which the plan is located, the health status of the plan’s enrollees, the plan’s quality star rating, and the plan’s estimated costs of covering Medicare Part A and Part B services. The plans…