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KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES

���ϳԹ��� News: What The Air You Breathe May Be Doing To Your Brain 
For years, the two patients had come to the Penn Memory Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where doctors and researchers follow people with cognitive impairment as they age, as well as a group with normal cognition. Both patients, a man and a woman, had agreed to donate their brains after they died for further research. “An amazing gift,” said Edward Lee, the neuropathologist who directs the brain bank at the university’s Perelman School of Medicine. “They were both very dedicated to helping us understand Alzheimer’s disease.” (Span, 11/12)

���ϳԹ��� News: A Few Good Things From 2025 (Really)
Massive cuts to medical research and Medicaid. Waves of layoffs across the Department of Health and Human Services. Ongoing uncertainty around federal subsidies to buy health insurance on Affordable Care Act marketplaces. 2025 has been a rough year for federal health programs. But meanwhile, in the states, there were some wins for health care access. “An Arm and a Leg” host Dan Weissmann examines how lawmakers from across the political spectrum accomplished meaningful reforms. This episode takes listeners to Nebraska, which instituted aggressive new restrictions on prior authorization, and Virginia, where lawmakers banned wage garnishment and capped interest rates for certain medical debts. (11/12)

���ϳԹ��� News: Health Care Costs Jump To The Fore As Candidates Jockey To Be California Governor
California’s gubernatorial election is a year away, and the field of primary candidates is still taking shape. But one persistent issue has already emerged as a leading concern: the cost of health care. At a forum Nov. 7 in the Inland Empire, four Democratic candidates vying to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom vowed to push back against Republican cuts to health care programs and to improve people’s access to medical care, including mental health services. But while some floated taxes, candidates were light on details about how they would bring down health care costs. (Boyd-Barrett, 11/10)

���ϳԹ��� News: Readers Take Congress To Task And Offer Their Own Health Policy Fixes 
���ϳԹ��� News gives readers a chance to comment on a recent batch of stories. (11/12)

The House will be in session on Wednesday for the first time in 54 days, with all eyes on a vote to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. The House will hold first votes as early as 4 p.m. ET on Senate-passed legislation to reopen the government, according to a notice from House Republican Whip Tom Emmer. Wednesday marks the 43rd day of the shutdown, shattering the previous 35-day record. (Peller and Hutzler, 11/12)

As House Republican leaders move to hold a vote on legislation to reopen the US government, top Democrats vowed on Tuesday to oppose the bill for not addressing their demand for more healthcare funding. Democrats have for weeks insisted that any measure to fund the government include an extension of tax credits for Affordable Care Act health plans, which were created under Joe Biden and due to expire at the end of the year, sending premiums for enrollees higher. (Stein, 11/11)

Democrats have already laid the groundwork to not only rebound from their failure to win Affordable Care Act concessions in the government shutdown but hammer Republicans on health care costs far beyond the ACA markets. (Owens and Sullivan, 11/12)

As a record-breaking government shutdown likely nears its end, executives at for-profit hospital chain Community Health Systems are downplaying the detrimental impact expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies and other policy headwinds will have on their business. Speaking Tuesday morning at the 2025 UBS Global Healthcare Conference, President and Interim CEO Kevin Hammons made a point to note that ACA exchanges represent less than 5% of the company’s net revenue. (Muoio, 11/11)

The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is coming to an end, but the central issue that caused it — the staggering cost of health care — isn’t going away anytime soon. It will continue to bedevil President Trump, especially as the midterm elections draw closer. The burden is now on Mr. Trump and Republicans to bring down costs or risk peril in the those elections, after a splinter group of Democrats agreed to end the shutdown by dropping their party’s demand to extend certain health insurance subsidies. Despite repeated promises to offer an alternative to Obamacare, Mr. Trump has nothing much to show on the issue, beyond a vague plan to send money directly to policyholders. (Sanger-Katz and McCreesh, 11/11)

Republicans say giving health care subsidies as cash to consumers would give Americans more control over their coverage. Critics say it could severely undermine the ACA marketplaces. (Hooper and King, 11/11)

President Donald Trump proposed that federal healthcare funding be directed to individuals rather than through insurers in a Nov. 8 post on Truth Social. “I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over. (Casolo and Emerson, 11/11)

FOOD AID AND SNAP

The Supreme Court extended on Tuesday a temporary ruling that allowed the Trump administration to withhold full food stamp benefits while Congress worked to advance a measure to end the government shutdown. The new order will expire just before midnight on Thursday, giving lawmakers and President Trump two more days to approve and sign a government funding bill. The House is expected to vote as early as Wednesday on a measure passed by the Senate. (VanSickle, 11/11)

The Capital Area Food Bank in Washington D.C., says it's allotted an extra 1 million meals for November, given the uncertainties about whether and when SNAP recipients will get their full benefits. (Archie, 11/12)

Maia Jackson should have been cranking out a research paper for her communications class. Instead, she found herself queuing up at a food pantry to secure groceries for her household amid the nation’s longest government shutdown. (Nittle, 11/10)

Some Texans started receiving SNAP benefits on Monday after food assistance payments for November were delayed for more than a week as a result of the federal government shutdown. (Byman, 11/10)

FDA

The Trump administration has named Richard Pazdur, a longtime oncology expert at the Food and Drug Administration, as the nation’s top drug regulator. Pazdur will lead the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which regulates over-the-counter medicines and most prescription drugs. He replaces George Tidmarsh, who federal officials say resigned over a week ago after being placed on leave over allegations that he misused his authority, in a tumultuous period for the FDA. (Diamond and Roubein, 11/11)

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he does not want to take vaccines away from Americans. But at a closed-door meeting of Food and Drug Administration vaccine scientists in September, a top official suggested doing just that. (Lawrence, 11/12)

WOMEN'S HEALTH

Hormone therapies for menopause will no longer carry a black box warning about serious risks such as breast cancer, heart attack and stroke, the Food and Drug Administration announced Monday. In the announcement and an accompanying editorial in the medical journal JAMA, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and other agency officials said the warnings are based on outdated science and have discouraged women from taking hormone therapy. (Bendix and Edwards, 11/10)

FDA commissioner Marty Makary listed “divorce” alongside well-documented symptoms like mood swings and hot flashes. For Adrian Sandra Dobs, a professor of Medicine and Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, this claim was “pretty ridiculous.” (Butler and McShane, 11/10)

The science around hormone therapy to treat menopause has changed a lot since the FDA issued warning labels 20 years ago. Now the labels are being removed, here are 6 things to consider. (Aubrey, 11/11)

ABORTION

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and its affiliated super PAC plan to pour $80 million into electing anti-abortion candidates in 2026 in at least four battleground states, according to plans shared first with POLITICO. It’s an attempt by the anti-abortion movement to reassert its influence even after a string of post-Roe defeats at the ballot box. It also suggests a desire to elevate social conservatives’ cachet, which has waned within President Donald Trump’s new MAGA-infused, populist GOP. The promised investments comes as Republicans train their focus on the 2026 map, particularly after Democrats’ strong showings last week in New Jersey, California and New York City. (Messerly, 11/12)

AUTISM

An umbrella review of nine systematic reviews published today in BMJ shows no link between maternal acetaminophen (Tylenol) use during pregnancy and autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children. The study, led by University of Liverpool researchers, involved a review of research published within the past 10 years, up to September 30, 2025, to evaluate the quality and validity of the evidence and the strength of any association between the use of acetaminophen (sold as paracetamol in many countries) during pregnancy and the risks of autism and ADHD. (Van Beusekom, 11/10)

HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY

President Donald Trump has pardoned Tennessee Republican Rep. Diana Harshbarger’s husband, who pleaded guilty more than a decade ago to health care fraud and other crimes and served time in federal prison. Robert Harshbarger Jr. was a licensed pharmacist in 2013 when he admitted substituting a cheaper drug imported from China that was not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the iron sucrose that the FDA had approved for kidney dialysis patients to use. He was sentenced to and served four years in prison. Trump signed the pardon document on Friday. (Superville, 11/11)

Diana Coleman died of a stroke last year. But up until her last breath, the 73-year-old Townsend woman was battling Genesis HealthCare, a massive nursing home company, over the death of Coleman’s mother, Viola Whittemore, who died in 2020 after falling in one of Genesis’ Massachusetts nursing homes. Now, Coleman’s 43-year-old daughter, Jillian Allen, is carrying the family’s lawsuit forward. But it will be more challenging than Allen had ever imagined. (Lazar, 11/11)

For Sarah Reilly, the letter she received from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts was alarming: she could lose access to her doctors by Jan. 1 because of a contract dispute between her health insurer and the UMass Memorial Health system. Reilly, 32, of Whitinsville, had come to rely on those UMass-affiliated physicians, for navigating everything from her life-threatening complications during pregnancy to her daughter’s heart condition. (Bartlett, 11/11)

More rural hospitals have closed or are planning to close their labor and delivery units in 2025 than in 2024, bringing the total number of closures since the end of 2020 to 116, according to the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform (CHQPR). In a November report, the policy center outlined 27 completed or planned closures this year. That’s beyond the 21 of 2024 and the second-highest single-year total within the past five years behind 2023’s 34 closures. (Muoio, 11/11)

As part of a class called “Winter is Coming” at the children’s hospital, nurses put on oxygen masks for five minutes as respiratory therapists adjusted the fit and pressure. Some called the experience claustrophobic. The exercise encouraged staff to empathize with their young patients who may need to wear them to provide enough oxygen to lungs suffering from flu or COVID-19 this winter, said Tina Humbel, nurse manager of the Pediatric Critical Care Unit at the University of Maryland Golisano Children’s Hospital. (Hille, 11/11)

PHARMACEUTICALS

The Trump administration appears poised to extend a temporary, Covid-era rule allowing health providers to prescribe certain controlled substances, like ADHD medications and treatments for opioid addiction, via telemedicine. (Facher, 11/11)

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., is pushing to tighten protections for health information gathered by wearable devices and mobile health apps, citing growing privacy concerns as the technology becomes more common, Politico reported Nov. 11. Here are five things to know: Mr. Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, introduced the Health Information Privacy Reform Act to address what he called a gap in federal law. (Diaz, 11/11)

STATE WATCH

More than 3,500 cases of pertussis, or whooping cough, cases have been reported in Texas so far this year, already reaching a 11-year high even though two more highly infectious months are left in the year, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. (Simpson, 11/11)

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California on Tuesday cast himself as the “stable and reliable” American partner to the world, called a reported White House proposal to open offshore drilling in the waters off California “disgraceful” and urged his fellow Democrats to recast climate change as a “cost of living issue.” (Sengupta, 11/11)

Officials in Tiburon, California, have moved to prohibit the sale of all tobacco. On Wednesday, the town council unanimously passed an ordinance that would ban the sale of cigarettes, cigars, vapes, e-cigarettes and all other nicotine products. Tiburon Mayor Holli Thier told Fox News Digital in a statement that she is "pleased to have sponsored" and "voted to save lives and save our environment." (DiMella, 11/11)

PUBLIC HEALTH

ByHeart, a maker of organic baby formula, expanded a voluntary recall on Tuesday to include all of its products sold nationwide after federal health regulators found botulism infections in two additional infants, bringing the number of reported cases to 15. The expanded recall was announced days after the Food and Drug Administration told caregivers to stop using two batches of ByHeart’s powdered Whole Nutrition Infant Formula after health agencies found an increase in the number of botulism infections in infants who had consumed it. (Kirk, 11/11)

Infection with the mpox virus (MPXV) confers strong immunity against future infection for up to two years, compared with vaccine-conferred protection, which wanes with time and requires boosting, researchers in Belgium and the Netherlands reported late last week in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. (Van Beusekom, 11/11)

On April 9, 2020, after Shirley Scarborough made her daily call to a prayer line, she went to work and got another call: from the police department in Richmond, Virginia. Her youngest daughter, Francesca Harris-Scarborough, had been killed the night before. (Christensen, 11/10)

What do people ask the popular chatbot? We analyzed thousands of chats to identify common topics discussed by users and patterns in ChatGPT’s responses. (De Vynck and Merrill, 11/12)

GLOBAL WATCH