The Week in Brief: July 18, 2025
Even Grave Errors at Rehab Hospitals Go Unpenalized and Undisclosed
Jordan Rau and Irena Hwang, The New York Times
For-profit hospitals provide most inpatient physical therapy but tend to have worse readmission rates to general hospitals. Medicare doesn’t tell consumers about troubling inspections.
How To Find the Right Medical Rehab Services
Jordan Rau
Specialized hospitals, nursing homes, clinics, and home health agencies provide rehab therapy. Insurers may limit the services you can get.
Vested Interests. Influence Muscle. At RFK Jr.’s HHS, It’s Not Pharma. It’s Wellness.
Stephanie Armour
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lambasted federal agencies he accused of being overly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry. But he and other “Make America Healthy Again” notables have their own financial ties to the vast and largely unregulated $6.3 trillion global wellness industry that ethicists say raise red flags.
A Million Veterans Gave DNA To Aid Health Research. Scientists Worry the Data Will Be Wasted.
Darius Tahir
Retired service members donated genetic material to help answer health questions for not only others in the military but all Americans, creating one of the largest repositories of health data in the world. The Trump administration is dragging its heels on agreements to analyze it with supercomputers.
Lost in Translation: Interpreter Cutbacks Could Put Patient Lives on the Line
Vanessa G. Sánchez
Recent federal reductions in funding for language assistance and President Donald Trump’s executive order designating English as the official language of the United States have some health advocates worried that millions of people with limited English proficiency will be left without adequate support and more likely to experience medical errors.
In Rush To Satisfy Trump, GOP Delivers Blow to Health Industry
Phil Galewitz and Stephanie Armour
The health industry couldn’t persuade GOP lawmakers to oppose big Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill for many reasons. A big one: Congressional Republicans were more worried about angering Trump than a backlash from hospitals and low-income constituents back home.
The Senate Saves PEPFAR Funding — For Now
The Senate narrowly approved the Trump administration’s request to claw back about $9 billion for foreign aid and public broadcasting but refused to cut funding for the international AIDS/HIV program PEPFAR. Meanwhile, a federal appeals court ruled that West Virginia can ban the abortion pill mifepristone, which could allow states to block other FDA-approved drugs. Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico Magazine, Shefali Luthra of The 19th, and Sandhya Raman of CQ Roll Call join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more.
Surprise Medical Bills Were Supposed To Be a Thing of the Past. Surprise — They’re Not.
Elisabeth Rosenthal
The No Surprises Act, which was signed in 2020 and took effect in 2022, was heralded as a landmark piece of legislation that would protect people who had health insurance from receiving surprise medical bills. And yet bills that take patients by surprise keep coming.
Insurers and Customers Brace for Double Whammy to Obamacare Premiums
Julie Appleby
Consumers face both rising premiums and falling subsidies next year in Obamacare plans, with insurers seeking increases to cover not only rising costs but also some policy changes advanced by President Donald Trump and the GOP.
Maybe It’s Not Just Aging. Maybe It’s Anemia.
Paula Span
Significant numbers of older people have the condition. Many find relief with an effective treatment that is being more widely prescribed.
Los Angeles Weighs a Disaster Registry. Disability Advocates Warn Against False Assurances.
Miranda Green
Amid increasingly frequent natural disasters, several states have turned to registries to prioritize help for vulnerable residents. But while some politicians see these registries as a potential solution to a public health problem, many disability advocates say they endanger residents with mobility problems by giving a false sense of security.
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Journalists Tally State and Local Health Care Implications of GOP Megabill
KFF Health News journalists made the rounds on national and local media recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.