Taking a page from the private insurance industry’s playbook, the Trump administration will launch a program next year to find out how much money an artificial intelligence algorithm could save the federal government by denying care to Medicare patients. The pilot program, designed to weed out wasteful, “low-value” services, amounts to a federal expansion of…
With the Trump administration scaling back federal efforts to protect Americans from medical bills they can’t pay, advocates for patients and consumers have shifted their work to contain the nation’s medical debt problem to state Capitols. Despite progress in some mostly blue states this year, however, recent setbacks in more conservative legislatures underscore the persistent…
Quinn Cochran-Zipp went to the emergency room three times with severe abdominal pain before doctors figured out she had early-stage cancer in the germ cells of her right ovary. After emergency surgery four years ago, the Greeley, Colorado, lab technician is cancer-free. The two hospitals that treated Cochran-Zipp at the time determined that she qualified…
When the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices met last week, confusion filled the room. Members admitted they didn’t know what they were voting on, first rejecting a combined measles-mumps-rubella-chickenpox vaccine for young toddlers, then voting to keep it funded minutes later. The next day, they reversed themselves on the funding. Now Jim O’Neill, the…
“There’s no downside” to avoiding Tylenol or acetaminophen use while pregnant. President Donald Trump on Sept. 22, 2025, in a press conference Obstetricians have long advised their pregnant patients that Tylenol is the safest option to reduce fever or pain. President Donald Trump stood before a national audience on Sept. 22 and contradicted that. “Don’t…
As soon as she fell, Deborah Buttgereit knew she couldn’t avoid going to the hospital. “I could hear the bones moving around in my elbow,” said Buttgereit, who was 60 when she slipped on a patch of ice in December outside her apartment in Bozeman, Montana. Emergency room scans showed she had fractured her left…
By KIM BELLARD Science buffs will recognize the title as the (possibly apocryphal) quote Galileo muttered after he was forced by the Catholic Church to recant his assertion that the earth moved around the sun, contrary to church dogma. We’re in an era where it is the Trump Administration, not the church, forcing people and…
Should health technology assessment (HTA) processes consider using distributional cost effectiveness analysis (DCEA) to incorporate technology impacts on inequality? Some say ‘yes’ and some say ‘no’. Let’s take a look at both sides. No In a Letter to the Editor in Value in Health, Sreeram Ramagopalan noted that NICE currently has a number of concerns…
The Northeast Valley Health Corp. in Los Angeles County could be a poster child for the benefits of sharing health data electronically. Through a data network connecting its records system with other providers, the health center receives not just X-ray and lab results but real-time alerts when hospitals on the network admit or discharge its…
by EMMA PAYNE Grief is expensive. In addition to the significant human impacts, research shows that bereavement leads to a 20%-30% increase in health care utilization. Grief is also common. While we may not like to talk about it, 37% of Americans are grieving a recent death. The U.S. averaged 3.26 million deaths per year…