TOLEDO, Ohio — The little boy, dressed in a Toy Story sweatshirt, wrapped himself around the nation’s health secretary. “What do you guys want to be when you grow up?” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked a carpet full of preschoolers. “A dinosaur!” the boy replied, squeezing tighter. Just weeks ago,…
Paul Boyer, a psychotherapist for Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, is experiencing the AI revolution firsthand. He’s a little underwhelmed. The health giant has rolled out a new suite of note-taking software, made by healthcare AI pioneer Abridge, intended to summarize a patient’s visit at supersonic speed. For many clinicians, the technology soothes one of…
That is the question Luis Garicano asks in his recent post. He relies on projections from the 2025 IMF World Economic Outlook. On the positive side, Eastern European countries’ economies are likely to converge with the US. While we have spent a decade complaining about Europe’s stagnation, a real positive convergence story has been unfolding…
This is one of those “Coming Soon” announcements. I spent the weekend with the wonderful gang from what I affectionately call Camp Claudia Cult, a group of mostly Californian policy wonks led by Claudia Williams, who these days is at the UC Berkeley School of public health. As you may have noticed I’ve been spending…
If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.” As a teenager, Rei Scott spent several weeks living out of a car with four family members and their dog. Each day, Scott worried about where they would spend the…
From Charlie Bilello: Healthcare and Social Assistance have added nearly 1.8 million private-sector jobs in the US since the end of 2023 while all of other industries combined have lost 127,800 jobs.
Health insurance in the U.S. is notoriously confusing. So we’re covering the basics to make navigating your plan a little easier. We explain the difference between a deductible and an out-of-pocket limit, define copay and coinsurance, and point out where surprise bills can get you in trouble, from out-of-network providers to prior authorizations. Read more…
ST. CLOUD, Minn. — Cori Roberts was living in a rented basement four years ago when she was diagnosed with early-stage cervical cancer. Recently divorced, the former stay-at-home mother had started working again in her mid-40s, taking a human resources job that paid $41,000 a year. Then, despite having insurance, she was hit with more…
Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed the cruise ship hantavirus outbreak on PBS NewsHour, Fox’s LiveNow From Fox, and CBS News’ CBS Mornings on May 5. She also discussed the hantavirus outbreak on NPR’s Morning Edition on May 6. Click here to watch Gounder on PBS NewsHour. Click here to watch Gounder…
From a Topaz et al. (2026) paper in The Lancet reviewing citations across 2.5 peer-reviewed papers in PubMed: Among 97·1 million verified references, we identified 4046 fabricated references across 2810 papers (illustrative examples are shown in the appendix p 5–6). In 2023, approximately one in 2828 papers contained at least one fabricated reference. By 2025,…