Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
First Edition: Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2026
KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES
KFF Health News: Hospital Beds For The Nation’s Sickest Kids Are Disappearing
Hospital units dedicated to treating the nation’s sickest kids are disappearing nationwide. In the past year alone, hospitals have closed pediatric intensive care units for critically ill kids in Montana, Oregon, and Missouri. Overnight hospital wings for kids have also shuttered in Illinois and California. Depending on the hospital, pediatric units — which are separate from neonatal intensive care units — can serve patients ranging from a few weeks old to well into their teens or early adulthood. As hospitals look to cut costs, many are converting those beds into more services for newborns or adults. As a result, pediatric intensive care has become centralized in medical hubs, requiring critically ill children to travel farther for lifesaving care. (Houghton, 10/28)
KFF Health News: In California And Other States, Dads Are Now Even With Moms In Paid Leave Claims
Karlo Campana is usually outnumbered these days. He has three young kids under age 4. On a recent Saturday, he played a mini game of basketball with his two older kids in their Southern California home, shooting a ball into a hoop on the door, while his baby boy watched from his bouncy chair. Campana took paid time off in May after the birth of his son — just as he did for his daughters. (Yu, 10/28)
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
The Washington Post: RFK Jr. Falsely Says Arab Muslims Don’t Produce Prizeworthy Science, Literature
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claimed that modern Arab Muslims don’t produce science and literature as they have in the past or win prestigious prizes — remarks that have stirred a political backlash. At a Monday event campaigning for former congressman Mike Rogers in Michigan, Kennedy spent a portion of his remarks lambasting the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist movement founded in Egypt in 1928 that has various offshoots. He asserted that it launched a new ideology that destroyed Islam’s contributions to art and literature and science and engineering. (Roubein and Wu, 10/27)
ABC News: Drug-Resistant Germs Are 'Growing Threat' To US, Causing More Than 50,000 Deaths Annually: CDC
Antibiotics have long been used to treat common bacterial infections from strep throat to pneumonia. But some germs develop the ability to survive the medications designed to kill them, and they're an increasing risk to public health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned. In a report published Tuesday, the federal health agency said drug-resistant germs are a "growing threat to Americans." (Tsapatsaris and Howard, 10/27)
The New York Times: Alex Pretti’s Parents Say Federal Government Is Silent On Investigation
The family of Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis nurse fatally shot by immigration agents in January, accused the federal government on Tuesday of keeping them in the dark about the investigation into their son’s killing. “At every turn, they have ignored us, misled us and shielded Alex’s killers,” Mr. Pretti’s father, Michael, said at a news conference in Minneapolis, alongside his wife, Susan. It was the first time Mr. Pretti’s parents have spoken in such a public forum. (Londoño and Healy, 10/27)
The 19th: How Will Trump Improve Women's Health If 'Gender' Is A Banned Word In Federal Research Grants?
When Suzanne Bell saw President Donald Trump’s announcement this month about improving the future of women’s health research, she felt deep skepticism. Bell, a demographer at Johns Hopkins University, is part of a class-action lawsuit filed in September by a group of researchers accusing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal government entities of unconstitutionally censoring their research. (Rodriguez, 10/26)
The Hill: Experts Urge Caution On Testosterone Levels As RFK Jr., Pete Hegseth Speak Of Crisis
American men are facing a crisis in plummeting testosterone levels — at least according to several top Trump administration officials. But experts say there is key context that is being left out of the conversation, and the push towards hormone replacement therapy probably isn’t the panacea that officials believe it to be. Members of President Trump’s cabinet, like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have raised the issue of low testosterone among men repeatedly since they’ve assumed office. (Choi, 10/27)
ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH
AP: Trump Says He's Ending Restrictions On Methane Emissions From Oil Drilling
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his administration is “terminating” a Biden-era rule that aimed to cut planet-warming emissions of methane from oil and gas drilling. Trump said during a campaign rally in Texas that the change would save companies and consumers billions of dollars and unlock 210 million barrels of oil. That’s equivalent to about 10 days of U.S. petroleum consumption. ... Methane is responsible for about a third of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, scientists estimate. (Brown and Gruver, 10/28)
AP: EPA Response To East Palestine, Ohio, Derailment Under Investigation
The Environmental Protection Agency’s response to the disastrous 2023 East Palestine train derailment will be investigated after local residents of the small town on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border and Vice President JD Vance pressed for the review. The Inspector General of the EPA announced the investigation Tuesday to assess the agency’s response to the worst rail disaster in more than a decade and the subsequent health and environmental concerns that have developed despite the EPA’s assurances to the public that no toxic levels of chemicals lingered in the community weeks and months later. (Funk, 10/27)
Bloomberg: Health Damages From Climate Change Are Increasing Faster
The negative health impacts of climate change are not only increasing but doing so at a faster pace than a decade ago, according to a major global assessment released Wednesday. The 10th annual Lancet Countdown report — by an international collaboration of scientists that tracks the relationship between global warming and human health — compares the decade since the signing of the Paris climate agreement with the decade before. It finds that several major health threats, including deadly heat and drought, increased more rapidly after the accord, even as countries ramped up investments in clean energy and protecting people from climate hazards. (Kaufman, 10/28)
CAPITOL WATCH
Becker's Hospital Review: Senators Probe 10 Insurers Over Role In Terminating ACA Coverage For 760,000 People
Thirteen Senate Democrats are demanding answers from the largest ACA marketplace insurers about their involvement in recent coverage terminations that cut more than 760,000 people from their health plans. The Oct. 26 letters, led by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., accuse the insurers of “quietly colluding” with the Trump administration on what the lawmakers said was an improper process to terminate qualified enrollees without sufficient notice or compliance with consumer protections. (Emerson, 10/27)
MedPage Today: Congress Mulls Ways To Fix The Surprise Billing Law
Although most observers agree that the No Surprises Act did fix one problem -- nixing unexpected bills for out-of-network care -- lawmakers are still trying to fix other problems caused by the law. The act, passed at the end of 2020, was designed to protect patients who received bills for out-of-network care -- often emergency care -- even though the care was delivered at an in-network facility. This can happen, for example, if the in-network hospital contracts with out-of-network providers for emergency or specialty care. (Frieden, 10/27)
OUTBREAKS AND HEALTH THREATS
ABC News: 1st Person Inoculated In Trial For Ebola Vaccine To Protect Against Strain Behind DRC Outbreak
The first person has been inoculated in a clinical trial for a vaccine that could help protect against the viral strain behind the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). Bundibugyo ebolavirus (BDBV), a rare variant of Ebola, is behind the DRC outbreak that has led to more than 10,000 cases and nearly 5,000 deaths, the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa posted Tuesday. There are no currently no vaccines or treatments available to treat Bundibugyo virus. (Kekatos, 10/27)
CIDRAP: Policy Brief Suggests Speedier, Fairer COVID Vaccine Rollout Could Have Averted Millions Of Deaths By 2022
Had lower-income and lower middle–income countries rolled out the COVID-19 vaccine at the same rate as their wealthy counterparts, they might have prevented up to half of deaths related to the virus by fall 2021, according to a model-based policy brief from Canada’s United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) and international partners. And rolling out the vaccine 100 days after the virus was sequenced could have saved more than 8 million lives around the world by 2022, mostly in poorer countries, the authors said. (Van Beusekom, 10/27)
CIDRAP: Study Suggests Gut Microbiome Determines Vaccine Reaction
A new study shows a person’s gut microbiome, specifically levels of inflammation in the intestine, may be behind post-vaccination fevers. The study was published earlier this month in Science. Fever is a common reaction to a number of vaccines but can be a factor in vaccine hesitancy, the authors wrote, especially for vaccines against seasonal influenza and COVID-19. The study was based on 171 healthy adults whose fecal microbiomes, body temperature, and blood-based immune markers were measured before and after receiving mRNA COVID-19 vaccination. (Soucheray, 10/27)
CIDRAP: Post-Exposure Rabies Vaccine Saves Lives, And Community Pharmacies Can Help
Community pharmacies may be key to preventing people exposed to the rabies virus from developing the fatal neurologic disease. Spread through the bites and scratches of mammals, rabies is preventable if people get the post-exposure vaccine before clinical symptoms appear. (Boden, 10/27)
CIDRAP: Global Pertussis Burden Remains High Despite Decades Of Progress
An estimated 18.9 million people worldwide developed pertussis (whooping cough), and 115,000 died from the disease in 2023, with infants and people in sub-Saharan Africa bearing a disproportionate burden, according to a study published last week in Nature Medicine. “This burden remains profoundly inequitable and inversely correlated with the sociodemographic index,” write the researchers, who were led by a team at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle. (Bergeson, 10/27)
NURSING HOMES AND ELDER CARE
STLPR: Northview Village Nursing Home Workers Awarded $365,000 Settlement
Former workers at Northview Village, the nursing home in north St. Louis that shut down unexpectedly overnight in late 2023, have reached a settlement in a suit they filed against the facility’s owners. (Fentem, 10/27)
Cardinal News: Virginia Nursing Homes Rank Near The Bottom Nationally For Staffing, Study Finds
Virginia ranks 42nd in the nation for total nursing home staffing and 50th in certified nursing assistant staffing, according to a report presented to lawmakers last week. The state ranks 38th for staffing of registered nurses, who have the most significant impact on the quality of care in nursing homes. (Schabacker, 10/28)
HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY
NPR: Doctors Can Now Talk With Families About Organ Donation Sooner
The U.S. organ transplant system is making a controversial change to a long-standing rule that was designed to protect potential donors. The revision aims to boost donations and reduce errors. But critics worry that the move may endanger patient care. Under the change, the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, which runs the transplant system, will relax a strict firewall between the doctors and nurses trying to save patients in the hospital and the transplantation team standing by to procure patients' organs. (Stein, 10/28)
MedPage Today: ADA Says Protest 'Threat' Heightened Security Concerns At Meeting
In a reversal of its original findings, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) said members who were kicked out of its annual meeting in June did not violate its code of conduct. Instead, the final report of its governance committee, which the ADA shared publicly, said one of the members threatened in an email to "disrupt and protest" a keynote address, raising security concerns. (Fiore, 10/27)
North Carolina Health News and Charlotte Ledger: Atrium, State Health Plan Strike A Deal After Public Fight
After months of public sparring, Atrium Health and the State Health Plan have reached a deal that allows state employees, retirees and their family members to see Atrium doctors next year at roughly the same out-of-pocket costs they pay now. (Crouch and Hoban, 10/27)
Bloomberg: Quorum Health Plans $1.3 Billion Muni Bond Sale For Nonprofit Conversion
Quorum Health, a troubled for-profit chain of rural hospitals backed by private equity firm GoldenTree Asset Management, plans to finance its conversion to a nonprofit with a $1.3 billion bond sale next month. The network moved one step closer to proceeding with the debt issuance by obtaining the final state approval necessary for the transaction. Quorum operates 11 hospitals in nine states including New Mexico, California and Oregon. (Querolo and Braun, 10/27)
Chicago Tribune: Northwestern Launches New Transplant Institute
Northwestern Medicine has consolidated its robust transplant program into a new Transplant Institute, with a focus on tech and innovation. Spearheaded by transplant surgeon Dr. Satish Nadig, the announcement of the Northwestern Medicine Transplant Institute comes just a month after the hospital’s 3,000th liver transplant, according to a spokesperson for Northwestern Medicine. (Miller, 10/27)
Post-Tribune: HealthLinc, Opportunity Enterprises Building Unique, Accessible Clinic
HealthLinc and Opportunity Enterprises broke ground Monday for a new community clinic that will be one of just a few in the nation to be accessible to people of all abilities. (Ross, 10/27)
Keene Sentinel: Humana, Dartmouth Health Look To Hash Out Medicare Advantage Agreement
Cheshire County's only hospital is out of network for the county's sole Medicare Advantage plan in 2027, but that may change. Humana, the only Medicare Advantage insurer in Cheshire County, has one plan that as of Friday afternoon did not include Cheshire Medical Center in Keene or Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon in its network, according to the federal Medicare.gov, which compares coverage options for Medicare. (Engel, 10/27)
MPR News: EMS Workers At North Memorial Organize For Better Support
When Grace Gutlovics was 21 and newly employed as a paramedic, she experienced a “mental health crisis” that led her to spend 35 days at a treatment center for first responders. At the time, Gutlovics had been working in emergency medical services for about three years, and needed help coping with the trauma associated with her job and deciding whether she could continue working in the field. (Zurek, 10/28)
Modern Healthcare: Health Systems Turn To Enfra Energy Contracts To Cut Costs
More health systems are contracting with energy companies to upgrade power infrastructure, cut capital costs and focus on their core business. Health systems are outsourcing management and upkeep of the power systems that keep their facilities running. So-called energy-as-a-service agreements help fund infrastructure improvements and aim to reduce energy usage, which can allow providers to focus more resources on patient care while decreasing expenses without taking on debt. (Kacik, 10/27)
Modern Healthcare: Aetna Sues CMS Over $2B Medicare Advantage Star Ratings Loss
CVS Health is the latest company to challenge the 2027 Medicare Advantage star ratings in court. The Aetna parent company sued the Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia on Monday, alleging the government violated the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 when calculating its 2027 quality scores. Aetna estimates its lower star ratings will cost it $2 billion in bonus payments in 2028. This marks the fifth lawsuit to date over the 2027 star ratings since CMS announced the scores on Oct. 8. (Tepper, 10/27)
Modern Healthcare: HCA Healthcare Earnings: ACA Exchange Losses Near $1B
HCA Healthcare took another $400 million hit to pretax earnings in the third quarter as uninsured volumes rise. Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA said the impact primarily stemmed from patients dropping coverage under Affordable Care Act exchange plans and becoming uninsured. Exchange volumes dropped a higher-than-expected 19% in the quarter, Chief Financial Officer Mike Marks said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call Tuesday. (Hudson, 10/27)
Modern Healthcare: Centene Q3 Earnings: Medicare Advantage Recovery Ahead Of Schedule
Centene’s Medicare Advantage recovery is a year ahead of schedule, CEO Sarah London said Tuesday. The health insurance company plans to break even in Medicare Advantage in 2026 after medical costs came in lower than expected, London told investor analysts during the company’s third-quarter earnings call. The insurer has been working to restore Medicare Advantage margins for two years and previously targeted break-even in 2027. “We feel good that we have constructed a strategy to get to a footprint that will allow us to not just be profitable in 2027, but in 2028 as well and beyond,” London said. (Tepper, 10/27)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Bloomberg: S&P 500 Healthcare Index Rises 23% As Traders Seek Safety From AI Volatility
With investor confidence in the artificial intelligence trade under pressure, traders are turning to healthcare stocks for refuge. Since the end of April, the S&P 500 Healthcare Index has risen about 23% through Monday’s close — outperforming the broader market and every other sector. That includes high-flying technology names and surging energy stocks that have benefited from the ongoing Iran War. Healthcare’s rally has been led by Eli Lilly & Co., AbbVie Inc. and Johnson & Johnson. (Leon and Adegbesan, 10/27)
Modern Healthcare: Health Systems Face Growing AI Legal Liability Risks
Legal liability should be a growing concern for providers as health systems deepen their investments in artificial intelligence, experts say. Legal experts haven’t seen an onslaught of AI-related healthcare cases yet, but potentially costly lawsuits could be coming down the pike. Health systems may need to prepare for patients suing for clinical errors that stem from reliance on an AI tool, like a clinical decision support product. (Famakinwa, 10/27)
The New York Times: ChatGPT’s Advice To Cut Her Seizure Drug Led To Devastating Consequences
Qun Wan was in the middle of a heated call with his daughter, Bowen Wan, when the phone suddenly went silent. The conversation, in early February, had started like most of their regular check-ins, a ritual that had kept them connected after Bowen moved from their small village in China to the United States. But the mood soured when she admitted she had been cutting back on a seizure medication that kept her severe epilepsy under control. She told him she had been slicing her tablets into pieces with a pill cutter, allowing her to reduce her dose by one-fourth, Qun recalled. (Rosenbluth, 10/27)
PHARMACEUTICALS
Stat: FDA Releases Draft Guidance On Individualized Gene Therapy Approvals
The Food and Drug Administration published draft guidance on Tuesday that would streamline approvals of some individualized gene therapies, a win for rare disease advocates who have criticized the agency’s approach to these treatments. (Manto, 10/27)
Stat: Missouri AG Pushes Back On Lilly's 340B Data Demands
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway (R) has warned Eli Lilly to discontinue its practice of requiring hospitals to provide claims data to receive discounted medicines under a federal program, a sign that more states are pushing back against such moves by drugmakers. (Silverman, 10/27)
Stat: Artiva Therapeutics Shutting Down After 2 Clinical Trial Deaths
Artiva Biotherapeutics said Tuesday that it’s winding down after two patients died in a trial testing its cell therapy for autoimmune diseases, the latest in a series of safety events that have emerged in a promising research field. (Chen, 10/27)
MedPage Today: Lyme Disease Vaccine Candidate Just Misses Its Mark In Late-Stage Trial
An investigational Lyme disease vaccine covering six serotypes across four Borrelia species had a vaccine efficacy (VE) rate of over 70%, but it just missed a preset noninferiority threshold, a placebo-controlled phase III trial showed. (Rudd, 10/27)
STATE WATCH
Stateline: Over 900 Women Charged For Criminal Conduct During Pregnancies
In the first three years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to an abortion in June 2022, more than 900 women faced criminal charges for conduct related to their pregnancies, according to a new report. (Resnick, 10/27)
The Baltimore Sun: Baltimore Gun Safety Bill To Be Held Until New Safety Agency Is Established
Baltimore City lawmakers advanced a proposal Tuesday to require gun sellers to provide suicide-prevention and safe-storage information. Still, questions remain about how many businesses would be affected in a city with few traditional gun stores. (Pryce, 10/28)
AP: Toxins Taint Soil At St. Paul Homeless Camp
Randolph Avenue meets Shepard Road in St. Paul near the banks of the Mississippi River, hemmed in by railroad tracks still serving the industrial corridor. Beyond the intersection, nearing the river, a winding network of dirt paths and pitched tents have become a makeshift neighborhood – St. Paul’s largest encampment – for hundreds of people without permanent shelter. Posted around the site are Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) “no trespassing” signs, many of them defaced by graffiti, warning of a stew of toxins in the soil, including lead, arsenic and mercury. The levels are so high, the signs say, that the area is listed as one of Minnesota’s permanent environmental priority sites. (Robinson and Scanlan, 10/27)
North Carolina Health News: Addiction Recovery Program To Open Apartments For Mothers, Kids
Twice, Lela Brantley did everything she was supposed to do and still ended up homeless. She stopped using substances. She moved into a recovery center with her small children. She secured a Section 8 affordable housing voucher and got on the waitlist for multiple apartments. Each time the voucher expired before an apartment was available. (Knopf, 10/28)
PUBLIC HEALTH
CIDRAP: Colorectal Cancer Climbed A Bit In 2023, New Public Health Alerts Report Shows
Though the rate of colorectal cancer in US adults dropped substantially from 2000 to 2022, it ticked up in 2023, according to an assessment of nationwide data published today in a Public Health Alerts report. The increase is probably not due to post–COVID pandemic catch-up in diagnosis, write the authors, who hail from four universities across the country and the Veteran Affairs Healthcare System. (Wappes, 10/27)
The Hill: Cannabis Legalization Tied To Increase In Heart Hospitalizations: Study
The legalization of marijuana is linked to a rise in heart-related hospitalizations in the United States, a new study finds. The research, published in BMJ Open, examined hospitalization rates following ballot measures legalizing cannabis in Western states. An analysis of more than 50 million hospital discharge records found that hospitalizations for serious heart conditions rose faster after legalization. The research examined hospital discharge diagnosis data from 2012 to 2018. (Azem, 10/27)
