First Edition: Thursday, May 29, 2025

KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES

KFF Health News: A Medicaid Patient Had A Heart Attack While Traveling. He Owed Almost $78,000
On Christmas Day at the WaTiki indoor water park, Hans Wirt was getting winded from following his son up the stairs to the waterslides. Wirt’s breathing became more labored once they returned to the nearby hotel where they and Wirt’s girlfriend were staying while visiting family in Rapid City, South Dakota. (Zionts, 5/29)

KFF Health News: Feds Chop Enforcement Staff And Halt Rules Meant To Curb Black Lung In Coal Miners
In early April, President Donald Trump gathered dozens of hard-hat-clad coal miners around him in the White House East Room. He joked about arm-wrestling them and announced he was signing executive orders to boost coal production, “bringing back an industry that was abandoned,” and to “put the miners back to work.” Trump said he calls it “beautiful, clean” coal. “I tell my people never use the word ‘coal’ unless you put ‘beautiful, clean’ before it.” (Sisk, 5/29)

KFF Health News: Language Service Cutbacks Raise Fear Of Medical Errors, Misdiagnoses, Deaths
Health nonprofits and medical interpreters warn that federal cuts have eliminated dozens of positions in California for community workers who help non-English speakers sign up for insurance coverage and navigate the health care system. At the same time, people with limited English proficiency have scaled back their requests for language services, which health care advocates attribute in part to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and his executive order declaring English as the national language. (Sánchez and Orozco Rodriguez, 5/29)

LGBTQ+ HEALTH CARE

The Hill: CMS Demands Hospital Data About Gender-Affirming Care For Minors
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) sent letters Wednesday to hospitals that provide transgender care services to children, demanding data on their quality standards and finances. CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz sent letters to “select hospitals,” giving them 30 days to provide specific information on “medical interventions for gender dysphoria in children.” (Choi, 5/28)

AP: Utah Republicans Face Pressure To Reconsider Gender-Affirming Care Ban In Light Of New Report 
When Utah Republicans passed a ban on gender-affirming health care for children and teens in 2023, they argued it was needed to protect vulnerable kids from treatments that could cause long-term harm. Years later, the results of a study commissioned under the same law contradict that claim, and the Republican-led Legislature is facing pressure to reconsider the restrictions. (Schoenbaum, 5/29)

The 19th: Where Anti-Trans State Bills Stand In 2025
Since 2020, every new year has brought a new record of state bills attempting to roll back transgender rights. Most of that legislation has not become law. Even as the sheer volume of bills continues to grow, LGBTQ+ advocates continue to defeat the majority of them. But each year, Republicans introduce more and more bills. And each year, those bills become broader and more extreme, as politicians look for new ways to enforce a binary definition of gender — and that escalation is turning up in the bills that do pass. (Rummler, 5/28)

MENTAL HEALTH

The Hill: Even Low Levels Of Lead Exposure May Worsen Academic Performance: Study
Academic achievement among adolescents may be affected by early childhood lead exposure at much lower levels than previously assumed, according to a new study. Just a small climb in blood concentrations of this toxic metal — still within the range currently deemed acceptable by public health agencies — was associated with worse performance on standardized tests, scientists found in the study, published Wednesday in Environmental Health. “Children’s exposure to lead has long been recognized as harmful to their health and neurodevelopment,” wrote the University of Iowa research team. (Udasin, 5/28)

Health News Florida: Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater Mayors Team Up To Fight Loneliness Across The Region 
One in five people are lonely every day, according to a Gallup poll. In the Tampa Bay area, that number is higher, with roughly 29% of people experiencing loneliness, said Tampa Bay Thrives CEO Carrie Zeisse. While she couldn't say why more people are suffering in the region, she hopes a new initiative will help. The campaign is called Tampa Bay Connections and brings together leaders in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater to increase social connections to help with loneliness and improve the health of residents. (Belcher, 5/29)

COVID VACCINES

Becker's Hospital Review: COVID-19 Shot Guidance Change Draws Industry Scrutiny
The CDC’s decision to remove COVID-19 vaccines from its recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women has sparked significant concern from healthcare industry groups. While some groups, like the American Hospital Association, took a more neutral stance, others scrutinized the move for bypassing the CDC’s expert advisory group and potentially threatening vaccine access and public health. (Bean, 5/28)

The Washington Post: CDC Blindsided As RFK Jr. Changes Vaccine Recommendations
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are scrambling to understand Kennedy’s decision, announced in a 58-second video on X on Tuesday morning, which took agency staff by surprise. Five hours later, CDC officials received a one-page “secretarial directive,” dated May 19 and signed by Kennedy, that contradicts some of what he said in his video, according to two current and one former health officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. (Sun, 5/28)

CBS News: Health Experts Fear Potential Public Health Impacts From RFK Jr. Halting COVID Vaccine Recommendations For Kids, Pregnant Women
Health experts are raising concerns about the potential public health impacts after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy announced the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is rolling back COVID-19 vaccination recommendations for kids and pregnant women. ... Kennedy called the latest move "common sense and good science", but some health experts said the restrictions could have some significant public health impacts. Chicago-area doctors call this change unscientific and "incorrect." (Price and Rezaei, 5/28)

NBC News: FDA Chief Says Pregnant Women Should Decide On Covid Vaccine With Doctors
The Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, said Wednesday that the decision of whether a pregnant woman should get a Covid vaccine should come down to a conversation with her doctor — not a recommendation by the federal government. Makary took part in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s announcement Tuesday revoking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that Covid shots should be offered to pregnant women and healthy children. (Lovelace Jr., Tsirkin and Sonnier, 5/28)

CAPITOL WATCH

The Hill: Josh Hawley Stakes Ground As Chief GOP Defender Of Medicaid
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is staking out his spot as a populist defender of Medicaid in opposition to the steep cuts contained in the House-passed megabill to fund President Trump’s domestic agenda. The senior senator from Missouri — who as the state’s attorney general once signed on to a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act — has made his position clear: He will not support a bill that cuts Medicaid benefits. Hawley has long warned his party against Medicaid cuts; the $800 billion question is whether other senators will join him. (Weixel, 5/28)

Politico: A Psychedelics Hire At HHS
A well-known drug-policy lawyer is joining the Department of Health and Human Services to work on psychedelics policy, according to two sources with knowledge of the move who requested anonymity because it hasn’t been announced yet, POLITICO’s Natalie Fertig reports. Matt Zorn ... has been involved in numerous cannabis and psychedelics cases over the years, including representing one of the parties selected to participate in the DEA’s administrative law hearings regarding the ongoing effort to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act. (Schumaker, 5/28)

MedPage Today: Germany Plans Global Alternative To PubMed
On March 1, the world's largest database for biomedical literature -- PubMed -- went down, immediately causing a global panic that the nation's essential publishing resource was yet another casualty of the new administration's many budget cuts and executive orders. ... Though the outage was apparently just a glitch and PubMed was back up the next day, the pause in the ability to access published research prompted the fear that PubMed could disappear, and soon. ... Now that fear has spurred some to action, but not in the U.S. (Clark, 5/28)

PUBLIC HEALTH

The Colorado Sun: Wastewater System Failure In La Plata County Raises E. Coli Levels
Some La Plata County residents are looking for alternate sources of drinking water after a wastewater treatment system malfunctioned, sending E. coli into the local waterways. (Mullane, 5/29)

CIDRAP: People's Gut Infections Often Traced To Poultry, Cattle, Turtles
A surveillance study published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report suggests that a lack of disease-prevention knowledge among owners of animals such as backyard poultry contributes to intestinal-disease outbreaks in the United States. "An estimated 450,000 enteric illnesses, 5,000 hospitalizations, and 76 deaths associated with animal contact occur each year in the United States," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)–led research team wrote. (Van Beusekom, 5/28)

NBC News: Humanity's 'First True Urban Pest' Has Been Biting For 60,000 Years, Study Shows
As the old saying goes, “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” But according to a new study, the bugs have been nipping humans since they emerged from caves around 60,000 years ago, making them possibly the “first true urban pest.” Evidence of our symbiotic relationship with the blood-sucking parasites could now inform predictive models for the spread of pests and diseases as cities explode in population, researchers said in the study published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters. (Aggarwal, 5/28)

SCIENCE AND INNOVATIONS

MedPage Today: Wait Times For Physician Appointments Surged In Recent Years
The average wait time for a physician appointment has dramatically increased in recent years, according to a new survey. Across six medical specialties in 15 large U.S. metropolitan areas, the average wait time for an appointment was 31 days, up 19% since the last survey in 2022 and up 48% since the first survey in 2004, according to AMN Healthcare's 2025 Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times and Medicare and Medicaid Acceptance Rates. (Henderson, 5/28)

MedPage Today: New Blood Test For HPV+ Head And Neck Cancer Tops Existing Tests, Tissue Biopsy
An investigational blood test for human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive oropharyngeal cancer significantly outperformed current testing methods in a direct comparison involving patient blood samples. ... The overarching goal of the research is to develop a test with sufficient sensitivity to use across multiple clinical settings and scenarios. Currently, available testing technology works well in clinical situations involving larger tumor burden, such as initial diagnosis or diagnosis of clinical relapse, but not as well in low-tumor-burden settings. (Bankhead, 5/28)

MedPage Today: Novel Non-Opioid Analgesic Shows Promise In Refractory Cancer Pain
Use of the investigational non-opioid analgesic resiniferatoxin appeared to improve pain control in patients with advanced cancer who had intractable pain, though all patients experienced adverse events (AEs), according to an interim analysis of a first-in-human phase I trial. (Bassett, 5/28)

The Washington Post: New Tools Could Target Brain Cells To Treat Neurodegenerative Diseases
Scores of researchers have produced new tools that can deliver genes and selectively activate them in hundreds of different cell types in the brain and spinal cord, a breakthrough that scientists hope advances them toward developing targeted therapies to treat neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. The discoveries, made through the National Institutes of Health’s BRAIN initiative, show with unprecedented clarity and precision how neural cells work together, but also how diseases disrupt their tight choreography. The insight offers the promise that doctors may one day treat diseases by manipulating dysfunctional cells. (Johnson, 5/28)

CIDRAP: Long-COVID Symptoms In Young Kids Can Vary By Age
Babies and toddlers 2 years and under experienced different long-COVID symptoms than preschoolers ages 3 to 5 years, according to a study yesterday in JAMA Pediatrics. The study is the latest body of research to come out of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) initiative, and was conducted by researchers at NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City, Mass General Brigham in Boston, and elsewhere in the United States. (Soucheray, 5/28)

HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY

Modern Healthcare: ChristianaCare To Run Operations At 5 Crozer Health Facilities
ChristianaCare plans to assume operations of five Crozer Health outpatient facilities in Pennsylvania after submitting the highest bid of $50.3 million. The auction was held as Prospect Medical Holdings, Crozer's parent company, seeks to sell the system's assets after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January. The sale to Wilmington, Delaware-based ChristianaCare is subject to court approval, according to a Wednesday news release. (DeSilva, 5/28)

Modern Healthcare: Cleveland Clinic Updates Outpatient Copay Policy After Backlash
Cleveland Clinic is revamping an outpatient copay policy before it was scheduled to take effect, following concerns about disrupting care. Cleveland Clinic said earlier this month it would require copays for nonemergency outpatient services at or before appointment times starting June 1. If patients couldn't pay, their appointments would be canceled or rescheduled. However, the health system is backing away from that tactic and instead offering to set up 0% interest payment plans for patients to keep their appointments. (Hudson, 5/28)

CIDRAP: Home Healthcare Agencies Report Post-Pandemic Infection-Control Progress, Deficiencies
A survey of Medicare-certified home healthcare (HHC) agencies reveals minor improvements and problematic declines in infection prevention and control (IPC) staff training, less frequent IPC policy reviews, and fewer agencies with intensive policies for antibiotic stewardship, intravenous (IV) and central catheter infections, and pneumonia since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Van Beusekom, 5/28)

Modern Healthcare: HarmonyCares' Matt Chance Bets On CMS' In-Home Primary Care Push
HarmonyCares CEO Matt Chance said companies moving primary care into the home are in the right place at the right time as the Trump administration looks to rein in healthcare costs. The Troy, Michigan-based company delivers home-based primary care to people with complex conditions through value-based care arrangements with Medicare Advantage plans and accountable care organizations. Chance said that strategy aligns with a plan the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation recently laid out calling for new delivery models that help save money and offer healthcare where people want it, including their homes. (Eastabrook, 5/28)

Modern Healthcare: Blue Cross Blue Shield Plans Reverse Course On GLP-1 Coverage
A handful of nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurers dipped their toes into expanding coverage for blockbuster weight-loss drugs. Then they quickly pulled them back out. It’s still early days of the glucagon-like peptide-1 agonist, or GLP-1, drug phenomenon with no definitive clinical or cost-savings evidence and no blueprint for how to control spending. What is clear is the immediate consequences these costly medications have had for health insurance company bottom lines. (Berryman, 5/28)

Modern Healthcare: Elevance Sues Providers, HaloMD Over No Surprises Act Allegations
An Elevance Health subsidiary is suing the billing dispute consulting company HaloMD and two hospital-based Georgia providers, alleging they conspired to exploit the No Surprises Act. Blue Cross Blue Shield Healthcare Plan of Georgia, which operates under Elevance Health's Anthem brand, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia on Tuesday. The company alleges HaloMD and its out-of-network clients inappropriately won higher reimbursements through the No Surprises Act's independent dispute resolution, or IDR, system. (DeSilva, 5/28)

Modern Healthcare: Devoted Health Layoffs Affect 5% Of Workforce
Medicare Advantage insurance startup Devoted Health cut approximately 5% of its workforce earlier this month. The company, which also operates a medical group, confirmed that it laid off 120 people across various departments. It has 2,460 employees. (Tepper, 5/28)

STATE WATCH

Politico: States Take The Reins On Insurance Reform
Congressional lawmakers have tried and failed several times to push through a bipartisan, health-industry-backed bill that would speed up health insurers’ prior authorization processes for certain prescription drugs and medical services. Congress will launch another attempt this year, but a growing number of blue and red states have taken the matter into their own hands. In 2024, at least 10 states passed laws to reform the prior authorization process, according to a report from the American Medical Association. Insurers use prior authorization to control costs. The state action continues to increase in 2025. (Hooper and Cirruzzo, 5/28)

CBS News: Philadelphia Protesters Urge Sen. McCormick To Vote Against Medicaid Cutting Legislation
A rally in Philadelphia Wednesday drew dozens of people to fight against proposed cuts to Medicaid. It's legislation that Republicans say will only go after wasteful spending and fraud. That legislation is now headed for the Senate. Wednesday's message was focused on the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, Dave McCormick, urging him to vote against legislation passed by the House that would cut an estimated $800 billion from Medicaid, which provides health care coverage for low-income Americans. The reductions would come from work requirements and other provisions. (Stahl and Nau, 5/28)

Central Florida Public Media: Pediatric Flu Deaths Remain High In Florida As Child Vaccination Rates Fall 
The latest influenza season is over in Florida, with state data showing a high number of pediatric deaths and leaving some public health experts concerned for future seasons as vaccination rates fall. For the past two years, Florida's pediatric deaths have been high relative to recent years, with the 2023-24 and the 2024-25 seasons both seeing a total of 20 deaths, according to the state Department of Health. This season, Florida's total made up 9% of the national pediatric deaths observed. (Pedersen, 5/28)

The Hill: GOP-Led House Committee Votes Against Fluoride Ban
Republicans in the Louisiana House stifled a proposal Wednesday that would have banned the addition of fluoride in public water systems — rejecting a burgeoning movement backed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Louisiana House Health and Welfare Committee shot down the measure in a 4-11 vote, with six Republicans joining five Democrats to defeat the measure. All four members who voted in favor are Republicans. (Crisp, 5/28)