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Medicare is removing flexibilities that have allowed medical devices designated as “breakthroughs” by the Food and Drug Administration to leapfrog qualifications for extra payments. (Palmer, 8/3)

The White House will meet Aug. 4 with representatives from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Meta to discuss a new framework for government review of frontier AI models before public release, CNN reported. The meeting follows President Donald Trump’s June 2 executive order, which set up a voluntary system letting the government access advanced AI models up to 30 days before launch. (Diaz, 8/3)

���ϳԹ��� News: AI Is Being Used To Boost Medicaid Enrollment, But Not Without Concerns

Vanessa Barahona received a call this past spring from Angelica at Kern Family Health Care in Bakersfield, California, telling her it was time to renew her coverage under Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid. Angelica helped Barahona, 41, schedule an appointment to complete her paperwork in person at Kern Family’s offices before she submitted it to Kern County officials for approval. When Barahona had a conflict with her office-cleaning job, Angelica rescheduled the appointment. Barahona finished the process a little later than she’d planned but early enough to avoid an interruption in her coverage. (Kreidler, 8/4)

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was talking about healthy eating on a farm in Michigan, as part of a national tour he’s taking to promote his Make America Healthy Again agenda, when two hecklers demanded to know why the Trump administration was cutting Medicaid. We aren’t cutting Medicaid, he responded. That’s just a “myth people believe,” he said. (Cirruzzo, 8/4)

In a letter to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and acting attorney general Todd Blanche, the chairman of the Special Olympics — who is also Kennedy’s cousin — called on the administration to reverse course on a Justice Department memorandum that could narrow federal protections for disability care. (Wu, 8/3)

As his confirmation to lead the Justice Department hung by a thread last week, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told faith leaders on a private call that he was preparing to take action to roll back abortion access nationwide. On a recording of the call posted online Thursday by the religious group Intercessors for America and hosted by the White House Faith Office, Blanche lamented that the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict abortion are “taking longer than we want” but said the Justice Department was “working hand in hand” with federal health agencies and the White House “so that the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state.” (Ollstein and Gerstein, 8/3)

President Donald Trump’s administration is planning a dramatic overhaul of Head Start that would gut its quality standards, upending the hallmarks of the early education program for impoverished children, two people familiar with the deliberations said. Head Start, established in the 1960s to help fight poverty, has long been considered by experts to be a gold standard early learning program. Its regulations, which stretch more than 100 pages, outline requirements on everything from child-to-teacher ratios and child health screenings to family engagement. (Balingit, 8/4)

In the last three decades, as involuntary outpatient treatment for people with serious mental health conditions like schizophrenia have expanded to almost every state, the evidence for these programs’ efficacy has remained murky. (Broderick, 8/4)

A proposed rule from the Office of Management and Budget to revise the federal grantmaking process is drawing widespread opposition from across multiple industries. Members of the medical research community warn the additional red tape will only serve to impede U.S. biomedical research. The Office of Management and Budget published a proposed rule in May that would, among several actions, instate a pre-issuance review on federal grants and give the awarding offices greater authority in terminating grants. (Choi, 8/3)

Five federal employees are suing U.S. Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor over alleged sex discrimination due to the rollback of coverage for gender-affirming care. Plaintiffs, backed by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, filed the lawsuit Aug. 3 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The potential class action focuses on OPM’s coverage policy following a January 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump. The order said “sexes are not changeable,” and the country recognizes only male and female sexes. (Casolo, 8/3)

A few hours after Dr. Anthony S. Fauci invoked his Fifth Amendment right in refusing to answer questions from Senate Republicans last week, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took to social media to plug a book he published about Dr. Fauci in 2021, declaring it “the #1 non-fiction hardcover best-seller.” Later that day, Mr. Kennedy went on television to say much the same thing. “I wrote a book about Anthony Fauci in 2021,” he told the Fox News host Sean Hannity. “It was the biggest selling book of 2021. It sold 1.4 million copies.” (Stolberg, 8/3)