Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
First Edition: Thursday, April 9, 2026
KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES
KFF Health News: States Face Another Challenge With Medicaid Work Rules: Staffing Shortages
Katie Crouch says calling her state’s Medicaid agency to get information about her benefits can feel like a series of dead ends. “The first time, it’ll ring interminably. Next time, it’ll go to a voice mail that just hangs up on you,” said the 48-year-old, who lives in Delaware. “Sometimes you’ll get a person who says they’re not the right one. They transfer you, and it hangs up. Sometimes, it picks up and there’s just nobody on the line.” (Whitehead, 4/9)
KFF Health News: Farm Bureau Plans Are A Less Pricey Alternative To ACA Coverage — With Trade-Offs
Robin Carlton pays about $650 a month for a plan on the Missouri health insurance exchange that covers him and his two teenage kids. That monthly total is $200 higher than what he paid last year, due in part to the expiration in December of covid pandemic-era premium tax credits. But the self-employed St. Louis property manager isn’t in any hurry to investigate a new type of coverage that might be cheaper than his marketplace plan: farm bureau health plans. “Although I’m not a fan of rising costs, I’m not going to sacrifice coverage for my kids to save a buck,” Carlton said. (Andrews, 4/9)
THE LATEST FROM HHS
Stat: Trump Administration Drops Court Fight To Cap NIH Payments For Research Overhead Costs
The Trump administration will not be asking the Supreme Court to take up its fight to slash federal support for funding that the nation’s science enterprise relies on for basic operating costs. The deadline to do so came and went this week without a petition from Trump’s Department of Justice, effectively ending the 14-month standoff over a controversial policy to drastically reduce the rate of reimbursement for “indirect costs” on federal grants. The legal battle between the administration and the research community started last February, when the National Institutes of Health abruptly announced it would cap payments for research overhead at 15%. Three lawsuits opposing the caps were immediately filed by state attorneys general and organizations representing private and public universities, hospitals, and academic medical centers. (Molteni, 4/8)
AP: RFK Jr. Is Launching His Own Health Podcast
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching a new podcast that he says will begin “a new era of radical transparency in government,” according to a teaser video first obtained by The Associated Press. The show, titled “The Secretary Kennedy Podcast,” will launch next week and feature Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine crusader who has reshaped the country’s health policy, in conversation with doctors, scientists and agency staff, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials told the AP ahead of the launch. (Swenson, 4/8)
The Washington Post: CDC Delays Report Showing Covid Vaccine Benefits, Scientists Say
The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has delayed publication of a CDC report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half, according to two scientists familiar with the decision. The scientists spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The move has raised concerns among current and former officials that information about the vaccine’s benefits are being downplayed because they conflict with the views of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been an outspoken critic of the shots. (Sun, 4/9)
HEALTHCARE COSTS AND COVERAGE
Stat: Trump Promised To Clamp Down On Health Insurers. His Policies Are Enriching Them
Almost every major decision Trump officials have made since reclaiming the White House has benefitted insurers and their bottom lines. The most recent action — finalizing higher payments to Medicare Advantage plans in 2027 — will funnel an extra $13 billion toward the industry while abandoning a reform that would have led to more accurate, and lower, payments. (Herman, 4/9)
Stat: Influential Democratic Think Tank Pushes Plan For Government To Lower Health Care Costs
The latest blueprint comes from the Center for American Progress, first reported by The Bulwark. The CAP report, which the group is calling a “Patients’ Bill of Rights,” focuses on what it considers the main drivers of rising insurance costs. It calls for limiting insurance premiums increases, banning prior authorization by insurers, and capping hospitals’ charges. (Wilkerson, 4/8)
The New York Times: Patients Are Using Chatbots To Fight Medical Bills, With Mixed Results
As chatbots become a fixture in everyday medical care, patients are using them not only to make lists of questions for doctors’ visits or decipher test results, but increasingly to pick apart the financial paperwork that follows, including challenging medical bills. When Jackie Davalos, 34, received a notice from a collections agency that she owed $22,604 to a hospital for an emergency room visit after she fell down some stairs two years earlier, her partner, Walter Kerr, used the chatbot Claude to help challenge the hospital’s charges. (Kwon, 4/8)
Modern Healthcare: Why Health Insurers Are Shifting Venture Capital Arm Strategies
Venture capital funds associated with insurers are switching up their investment formulas as priorities shift and budgets tighten. Health insurance conglomerates — forced to rethink core operations across business lines amid increased regulatory scrutiny, rising costs and Wall Street disapproval — are investing more deliberately and prioritizing different types of startups and emerging companies. (Tong, 4/8)
REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
The New York Times: U.S. Fertility Rates Drop To Another Record Low
The U.S. fertility rate fell slightly in 2025, to another record low, extending two decades of declines, according to federal data released on Thursday. The fertility rate — the number of births per 1,000 women of childbearing age — dropped to 53.1, from 53.8 in 2024, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. The number of births dropped too, falling by 1 percent from the previous year, to 3,606,400. (Tavernise, 4/9)
OUTBREAKS AND HEALTH THREATS
CIDRAP: South Carolina Sees No New Measles Activity As Utah Becomes Epicenter Of US Outbreaks
Yesterday the South Carolina Department of Public Health once again reported no new measles cases, as the state marches toward an official end of the largest US measles outbreak in recent history with 997 cases. (Soucheray, 4/8)
Modern Healthcare: Epic Systems Launches Health Alerts To Track Conditions
Epic Systems’ research division has launched a monitoring system to track health conditions by county across the U.S. Health Alerts will publish website and email alerts when a higher-than-usual rate of an illness is diagnosed in a county, the electronic health record vendor team said Wednesday. (DeSilva, 4/8)
The Hill: Respiratory Viruses Lingering Longer Than Usual This Year
While spring has officially begun, concerns about respiratory viruses are lingering longer than usual, with cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cropping up later than expected and a new COVID-19 variant spreading across much of the country. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in a recent update that RSV had started later than expected throughout most of the U.S. (Choi, 4/8)
MORE ON VACCINES
MedPage Today: Next-Gen Yellow Fever Vaccine Hits The Mark In Mid-Stage Trial
An investigational yellow fever vaccine (vYF) that could help avoid shortages matched the immunogenicity and safety profile of the FDA-approved shot (YF-VAX), according to a phase II trial. (Rudd, 4/8)
CIDRAP: Watch Out, Hookworms: An Effective Vaccine Might Be On The Horizon
Promising results from an experimental hookworm vaccine trial offer hope for the more than 400 million who contract the parasitic infection every year. (Boden, 4/8)
SUBSTANCE ABUSE
The New York Times: ‘Ketamine Queen’ Sentenced To 15 Years In Matthew Perry’s Overdose Death
A Los Angeles woman who illegally sold the ketamine that killed the actor Matthew Perry was sentenced Wednesday to 15 years in prison, by far the stiffest sentence yet handed to a person charged in the star’s death. The woman, Jasveen Sangha, pleaded guilty last year to five federal charges connected with Mr. Perry’s overdose: three counts of distribution of ketamine; one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death or serious bodily injury; and one count of “maintaining a drug-involved premises.” (Morgan and Stevens, 4/8)
The New York Times: The Fast-Changing Chemistry Of New, Dangerous Drugs
Illicit labs are creating new synthetic drugs at breakneck speed. Dangerous, untested compounds are reaching users long before health agencies know they exist. Older drugs are regularly modified to create novel threats. Ecstasy is a prime example. The party drug MDMA has been illegal since 1985. ... But what if you could add one atom to this molecule to change both the experience of taking the drug and its legal status? You can. A single oxygen atom changes the molecule to methylone, which provides an Ecstasy-like euphoria. The discovery of what this simple change could do has had a profound consequence. (Corum and Richtel, 4/8)
The New York Times: Inside A One-Man Workshop For Ultrapotent Drugs
Last fall, a man who calls himself Chemical Analyst allowed the two of us – New York Times reporters writing about the illegal drug trade – to watch on a secure video call as he packaged ultrapotent synthetic drugs for distribution. These chemicals now flood the modern drug market. Many have psychoactive effects that are much more intense than those of traditional drugs. One newly emerging drug, cychlorphine, can be 250 to 500 times as strong as heroin and 10 times as strong as fentanyl. (Richtel and Corum, 4/8)
MedPage Today: As Opioid Use Declines, Gabapentinoid Co-Prescribing Rises
The number of U.S. patients prescribed long-term opioid therapy declined from 2015 to 2023, but co-prescribing of opioids with gabapentinoids increased, prescription data showed. (George, 4/8)
PHARMACEUTICALS
Politico: Top Drug Lobbyist To Depart PhRMA At Year End
Stephen Ubl, chief executive of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the trade group for branded drugmakers, is stepping down at the end of the year after a decade at the organization. Ubl’s announcement leaves a leadership vacuum at one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, just as the Trump administration is overhauling the industry’s pricing practices and questioning the safety of its products. (Chu, Lim and Gardner, 4/8)
FiercePharma: Pfizer Closes Down 'Underutilized' Office Space In California
Pfizer is making more changes to its layout in California by stepping away from a South San Francisco office site that used to host the headquarters for its 2022-acquired Global Blood Therapeutics. The 164,150-square-foot office building on Oyster Point Blvd is closing its doors as the office space is “currently underutilized,” a Pfizer spokesperson told Fierce Pharma in an emailed statement. (Becker, 4/8)
Stat: Biotech VCs Face Disruption With Rise Of AI And Chinese Drugmakers
Venture capitalists are pulling themselves out of one of its worst downturns in recent history — and facing new challenges at the same time. (DeAngelis, 4/9)
The Washington Post: If You Aren’t Losing Weight With GLP-1s, This May Be One Reason Why
The GLP-1 weight loss drugs revolutionizing the treatment of obesity, diabetes and a slew of other diseases come with a major caveat: They don’t work for everyone. Some people experience profound weight loss; others barely see the scale budge. Some tolerate the drugs, but others experience nausea and vomiting so unpleasant that they stop taking them. In clinical trials, around 10 to 15 percent of the people who take the drugs are considered “non-responders” because they did not lose at least 5 percent of their body weight. A new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature finds that part of the reason people’s responses to the drugs vary so widely may be in their DNA. (Johnson, 4/8)
HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY
AP: 3 Ex-Employees Of DC Psychiatric Hospital Charged In Patient's Death
Three former employees of a privately operated psychiatric hospital in the nation’s capital have been charged with criminal negligence in the death of a patient, the city’s top federal prosecutor said Wednesday. The three former employees of the Psychiatric Institute of Washington failed to provide adequate medical care to the patient before he died nearly six years ago, their indictment alleges. (Kunzelman, 4/8)
Modern Healthcare: Health Systems Expand Behavioral Health Services To Meet Demand
Health systems struggling to fill gaps in mental healthcare are hiring staff and redeploying capital to try to keep pace with rising demand. Systems including Hartford Healthcare, Sentara Health and Northern Light Health are expanding their mental health networks and ramping up care coordination teams. Still, health system leaders fear they will not be able to move quickly enough to patch an eroding safety net for mental health patients. (Kacik, 4/8)
Fierce Healthcare: Nurses' Job Satisfaction Stumbles After Post-COVID Gains: Survey
A new annual survey report brings warnings of sharp drops among nurses’ views of their jobs and careers during the past year. Released this week, it found a year-to-year drop in reported job satisfaction among nearly 2,100 nurses from 55% to 47%. It’s the first time since 2022’s 28% low that the measure hasn’t improved from the prior year, according to nurse.org, which conducted the survey. (Muoio, 4/8)
STATE WATCH
The Washington Post: Maryland Utility Reduces Fluoride In Water, Citing The Middle East Conflict
The water utility for Maryland’s two largest counties has temporarily reduced the level of fluoride added to drinking water, citing nationwide supply chain challenges partly brought about by the war in Iran. (Scott and Hedgpeth, 4/9)
San Francisco Chronicle: California Officials Investigate Right-Wing Influencer's Fraud Claims
State officials conducted a sweep of a three-story Los Angeles office building Tuesday as part of its continued efforts to push back against claims by right-wing influencers and President Donald Trump’s administration that fraud is rampant in the state, particularly among hospice businesses. California agents said most of the businesses housed at the site can’t access state Medicaid funds, and argued that most potential fraud is happening at the federal level, which is under Trump’s purview. (DiNatale, 4/8)
The New York Times: Trump Administration Investigating L.A. Schools’ Gender Disclosure Policies
The Trump administration has opened an investigation into the sex discrimination policies of the Los Angeles public school district, scrutinizing a measure that gives schools discretion in deciding whether to disclose students’ gender identities to their parents. The policy has been challenged by parents who sued the district, the second-largest in the country, saying the measure contributed to the isolation of their child, who later died by suicide. The Justice Department’s investigation was sparked by the lawsuit, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. (Bender, 4/8)
Alaska Public Media: Anchorage Opens New Homeless Program That Pairs Tiny Homes With Addiction Treatment
Homeless numbers have remained roughly the same in Anchorage for the last few years and city officials say many people who have been homeless for a long time need addiction treatment or behavioral health care. Now a new muni-owned treatment center is getting some people that care, while housing them in their own individual microunits. The transitional living program is a new municipal approach to solving long-term homelessness in the city. (Flor, 4/8)
The Texas Tribune: Texas Cannabis Businesses Sue State To Block Smokeable Hemp Ban
Texas hemp industry leaders and advocacy groups have sued the state to block new regulations that eliminate natural smokeable hemp products and increase licensing fees. The Texas Hemp Business Council, Hemp Industry & Farmers of America, and several Texas-based dispensaries and manufacturers filed for a temporary restraining order in state district court in Travis County against the Texas Department of State Health Services and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission on Tuesday. They argue that the agencies have overstepped their constitutional authority by rewriting the statutory definitions of hemp established by lawmakers in 2019. (Simpson, 4/8)
LIFESTYLE AND HEALTH
The Hill: Tuymec Hair, TecFloc Growth Serum Products Recalled For Poisoning Risk: CSPC
Two hair growth serum products were recalled last week after their packaging was found to pose a poisoning risk. The products, Tuymec’s Minoxidil Hair Growth Spray and TecFlox Hair and Beard Growth Serum, contain minoxidil, which is required by the Poison Prevention Packaging Act to be in child-resistant packaging. About 6,200 have been recalled. “The hair serum’s packaging is not child-resistant, posing a risk of serious injury or death from poisoning if the contents are swallowed by young children,” the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said of the products. (Taub, 4/8)
The Washington Post: This Detox May Erase 10 Years Of Social Media Brain Damage, Researchers Say
Studies show that taking even short breaks could reverse measures of cognitive decline. (Cha, 4/9)
MedPage Today: Is Kissing For Celiacs Gluten-Free? Study Weighs In
While people with celiac disease have a number of challenges in leading a gluten-free life, it appears kissing is not one of them. In a prospective study of couples in which one partner had celiac disease, it was possible to transfer gluten through kissing, but it usually involved small amounts considered safe, reported Anne R. Lee, EdD, RDN, of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University in New York City, and colleagues in Gastroenterology. (Bassett, 4/8)
NBC News: These Simple Lifestyle Changes Could Decrease Dementia Risk By 25%
Are you sitting right now? If you want to protect your brain, you should take a walk and be sure to go to bed early. Regular exercise and about seven hours of sleep a night could protect brain health in the long term, a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One found. Long bouts of sedentary behavior may increase dementia risk. (Sullivan, 4/8)
GLOBAL WATCH
Bloomberg: Malaysian Glove Maker WRP To Shut Down Over Iran War Shocks
Malaysian rubber glove maker WRP Asia Pacific Sdn. will begin winding down its business operations this month, citing “severe disruptions across global energy and petrochemical supply chains” caused by the Middle East conflict. ... The announcement comes as the US- and Israel-led war creates the largest oil supply shock in decades, stoking inflation, rattling financial markets and pushing up costs for everything from food to fuel. It has also put industries such as glove manufacturers at risk, as they rely on imports of nitrile latex — a synthetic rubber — whose prices are linked to energy markets. (Melin and Raghu, 4/8)
