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President Trump on Thursday released a hodgepodge of health care policies that would create new price-control power over pharmaceutical companies, but that otherwise wouldn’t fundamentally overhaul America’s existing system, as he faces mounting pressure to address the cost of insurance and care. The proposal, which Trump dubbed “The Great Healthcare Plan,” would not reshape the structure of Medicare, Medicaid, or the health insurance plans people get through their jobs. Hospitals and doctors would not cede pricing power.  (Payne, Herman and Wilkerson, 1/15)

The plan does not include a remedy for people who buy their health insurance on HealthCare.gov, some of whom are facing sky-high premium hikes this month. (Simmons-Duffin and Gringlas, 1/15)

Critics of Trump’s proposal say the framework is incomplete and does not account for people with preexisting conditions, a caveat White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed Thursday. “The president’s plan that he outlined today will have no impact on individuals in this country with preexisting conditions. Obviously, that’s a continued conversation that the White House will have with Congress, but that’s not the president’s intention with the ‘Great Healthcare Plan,'” Leavitt told reporters. (Nieves, 1/16)

“This plan is more about increasing the number of uninsured, on top of the 10 million who will already lose coverage under HR1, the budget reconciliation law from last summer," said Edwin Park, a research professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. ... Miranda Yaver, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh who teaches courses on health policy and health politics, said in a statement that “it isn’t clear that the plans the Trump administration wants to help people to purchase would be ACA-compliant, which would mean that while healthy patients may enjoy cost savings, there won’t be remotely sufficient protection for the millions of Americans with pre-existing medical conditions.” (Luscombe and Schreiber, 1/15)

Trump’s plan, notably, does not include free-market ideas in a bill House Republicans passed in December. That bill, for example, would have allowed small businesses to band together to drive harder bargains with insurers. Trump’s plan “would be a massive redefinition of the relationship between the United States government and the health care system and the American people,” said Ryan Ellis, a Republican lobbyist and president of the Center for a Free Economy. “Today was about resetting the vision and resetting the conversation so Republicans can talk on offense.” (Chu, Lim, King and Hooper, 1/15)

Read the official White House description of —

In related news about rural health care —

An invitation obtained by The Washington Post said that the president would deliver remarks Friday at the White House on “the great, historic investment in rural health.” (Diamond, 1/16)

Abortion restrictions may be the top sticking point in negotiations between Democrats and Republicans over a bill that would give enhanced Obamacare premium subsidies – which expired Dec. 31 – new life this year. But there’s another obstacle close behind: no-premium plans that make coverage more affordable for the lowest-income customers. (King, 1/15)

Cynthia Cox, a vice president at KFF, a nonpartisan health care research organization, said the longer Congress waits the more complicated and difficult a resolution will be. “The farther away you get from open enrollment, the harder it is to get people to come back and shop again,” she said. While several lawmakers have said Jan. 15 wasn't a firm deadline for coverage decisions, it will only become more difficult to enroll those who opted to forego insurance. (Reilly, 1/15)

More on the ACA —

Stacy Cox has always prioritized having access to health insurance. For the 48-year-old self-employed photographer in southern Utah, it’s necessary “so that I can help to calm my anxiety and know that if I need care, I can get care.” Still, Cox and her husband, John, have decided this month to go uninsured after the cost of their health plan under the Affordable Care Act skyrocketed. (Rodriguez, 1/15)

���ϳԹ��� News: As Insurance Prices Rise, Families Puzzle Over Options 
New York-based performer Cynthia Freeman, 61, has been trying to figure out how to keep the Affordable Care Act health plan that she and her husband depend on. “If we didn’t have health issues, I’d just go back to where I was in my 40s and not have health insurance,” she said, “but we’re not in that position now.” Freeman and her husband, Brad Lawrence, are freelancers who work in storytelling and podcasting. In October, Lawrence, 52, got very sick, very fast. (Arditi, 1/16)

���ϳԹ��� News: ���ϳԹ��� News’ ‘What The Health?’: Culture Wars Take Center Stage
Millions of Americans are facing dramatically higher health insurance premium payments due to the Jan. 1 expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. But much of Washington appears more interested at the moment in culture war issues, including abortion and gender-affirming care. Meanwhile, at the Department of Health and Human Services, personnel continue to be fired and rehired, and grants terminated and reinstated, leaving everyone who touches the agency uncertain about what comes next. (Rovner, 1/15)

Democrats in both chambers are escalating their push to overhaul U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following the fatal shooting of an unarmed woman by an ICE officer in Minneapolis. They’re doing so by vowing to oppose legislation funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) unless it includes tougher rules governing the conduct of ICE officers. (Lillis, 1/16)

More on the immigration crisis —

The Department of Homeland Security has issued a subpoena to Minneapolis-based Hennepin Healthcare for employee I-9 forms, the health system confirmed to Becker’s. The subpoena, issued Jan. 8, authorizes federal officials to inspect I-9 forms, which are documents used to verify employees’ identities and work eligibility. The forms contain sensitive personal information, including names, birth dates, addresses, Social Security numbers and copies of identification such as passports or driver’s licenses. (Condon, 1/15)

The recertification push by the USDA was in response to allegations of widespread fraud within the program, though the federal agency hasn’t provided any evidence to support the accusation. Immigration advocates also worried about the data collection that could be used to target immigrants for deportation. (Yang, 1/15)

A mother shoved to the ground in front of her children in the hallways of a immigration courthouse in New York. A young woman pulled from her car and handcuffed on a busy street in Key Largo, Florida. A child care worker dragged out of her workplace in Chicago, in front of parents and children. A pregnant woman yanked by one arm through the snowy streets of Minneapolis. (Norwood, 1/15)

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the Jan. 3 death of detainee Geraldo Lunas Campos at a Texas detention camp, the agency said “staff observed him in distress,” and it gave no cause of death. An employee of El Paso County’s Office of the Medical Examiner told Lunas Campos’s daughter this week that, subject to results of a toxicology report, the office is likely to classify the death as a homicide, according to a recording of the conversation. (MacMillan, 1/15)

Also —

The Trump administration is directing employees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to investigate foreign scientists who collaborate with the agency on research papers for evidence of “subversive or criminal activity.” The new directive, part of a broader effort to increase scrutiny of research done with foreign partners, asks workers in the agency’s research arm to use Google to check the backgrounds of all foreign nationals collaborating with its scientists. (Song and Lerner, 1/16)

The Food and Drug Administration quietly removed webpages saying cellphones aren’t dangerous as the Department of Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launches a study on cellphone radiation. Kennedy and some of his allies have long pointed to cellphones as a potential source of illnesses including cancer. Many mainstream scientific institutions, including the FDA, previously concluded that there isn’t adequate proof to link health problems to cellphones or other wireless devices. A vocal group of scientists have said there is reason to worry and to take more precautions, and Kennedy has echoed their concerns. (Essley Whyte and Haggin, 1/15)

On nutrition —

Democrats pounced on Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins after she suggested Americans could save money by eating a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla and “one other thing” to afford a nutritious dinner. In a NewsNation interview, Rollins addressed concerns that the White House’s newly revamped dietary guidelines — which prioritize protein and healthy fats over ultra-processed foods and sugars — would be costly for the average American already facing financial constraints. (Fortinsky, 1/15)

The release of a new food pyramid has been met with mixed reactions by school food advocates, who say changes to the cafeteria menu will need financial backing. While there is skepticism regarding the science behind the new guidelines, which were unveiled last week by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., schools are more concerned about any infrastructure and training to implement them. (Lonas Cochran, 1/15)

Some of the experts who advised on the development of the most recent national dietary guidelines told MedPage Today that their work wasn't considered, and that the final guidance is riddled with errors. Christopher Gardner, PhD, an expert in diabetes and nutrition at Stanford University in California, and Fatima Cody Stanford, MD, MPH, MPA, an obesity medicine physician at Harvard University in Boston, both worked on the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) report. It was more than 400 pages long with a 1,000-page supplement, and was submitted just before President Donald Trump started his second term. (Robertson, 1/15)

How easy is it to make a healthy dinner for $3? When the new U.S. dietary guidelines came out last week, food economist William Masters emailed a few colleagues with a fun exercise — or at least what passes for fun among economists. (It was, after all, a spreadsheet.) The challenge: Design your own diet to figure out how affordable, and healthy, following the new guidelines would actually be. (Todd, 1/16)

On federal funding cuts —

The State Department is negotiating agreements with countries across the developing world to provide billions of dollars in health aid, an effort intended to replace the system of global health assistance that had for decades been offered through the now-dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development. Over the past month the U.S. has signed agreements with 16 African countries to provide more than $11 billion in health aid over the next five years, and is negotiating dozens more deals with governments in Asia and Latin America as well as Africa. (Nolen, 1/15)

Crops and livestock that are essential for feeding the world’s population are constantly threatened by depleted soil, evolving pathogens and erratic weather spurred by a changing climate. So in laboratories and farms around the world, scientists labor to protect them, breeding more resilient varieties and developing farming practices to stabilize harvests against the swings and shocks of the environment. But lately, the United States, not nature, has created the biggest uncertainty for global agriculture. (Alcorn, 1/15)

On vaccines and mistrust —

A controversial study on hepatitis B vaccination in Guinea-Bissau that was funded in part by the U.S. CDC has been halted. Yap Boum, PhD, MPH, a senior official at the Africa CDC, said the study was "cancelled" during a press briefing on Thursday morning. He noted, however, that conversations between officials in Guinea-Bissau and the U.S. are ongoing, since research on hepatitis B in that country is needed. However, if the study is to move forward, he said, it will need to meet ethical criteria. The Guardian first reported the news. (Fiore, 1/15)

St. Louis County Department of Public Health officials said they do not agree with updated federal childhood vaccine guidelines and made their own recommendations, part of a growing trend of jurisdictions breaking with federal immunization guidance. (Fentem, 1/15)

Even in this starkly divided country, Americans can agree on one thing: They want the U.S. to be a global leader in the sciences. But while Democrats fear the country’s position at the scientific fore is slipping, Republicans remain largely unworried. (Oza, 1/15)

New York City hospitals are paying as much as $9,000 a week to nurses willing to cross picket lines, creating an expense for medical centers that further strains their struggling budgets. The $9,006 a week that Continuum Health Center is offering to pay travel nurses for pulling five 12-hour shifts is nearly three times the average salary that data from Indeed shows hospitals typically offer in the Big Apple. The pay, which is on the higher end of what temporary nurses typically get, is a large slice of the millions of dollars major hospitals are spending because of the strike. (Thornton, 1/15)

Five days into the New York City nurses’ strike, only one of the three hospital systems affected by the walkout had returned to the negotiating table as both sides appeared to dig in for a protracted battle. Representatives from NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia Hospital and the nurses’ union resumed talks Thursday evening and met for several hours. But they left far from a resolution. (Latson, 1/16)

In health news from California —

California health care advocates, labor unions and progressive lawmakers are urging the governor and the Legislature to find new money to fund medical care and other social services for millions of low-income and disabled Californians. Their coalition, known as “Fight for Our Health,” demanded Wednesday on the Capitol steps that the Legislature and soon-to-be lame duck Gov. Gavin Newsom take action to backfill funding cuts that President Donald Trump and Republicans approved last year. (Miller and Kuang)

Sutter Health is seeking to grow its footprint outside of California for the first time. The system said in a news release Thursday it had hired Scott Nordlund to oversee potential mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and other strategic collaborations outside the state as the health system’s first executive vice president of corporate development and partnerships. Sutter has no facilities or other business outside of California, a spokesperson said. (DeSilva, 1/15)

���ϳԹ��� News: Kaiser Permanente To Pay $556 Million In Record Medicare Advantage Fraud Settlement
In the largest Medicare Advantage fraud settlement to date, Kaiser Permanente has agreed to pay $556 million to settle Justice Department allegations that it billed the government for medical conditions patients didn’t have. The settlement, announced Jan. 14, resolves whistleblower lawsuits that accused the giant health insurer of mounting a years-long scheme in which it overstated how sick patients were to illegally boost revenues. (Schulte, 1/15)

More health news from across the U.S. —

In 2015, the Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia reached out to every OBGYN in Missouri with a request. Would any of the doctors be willing to help provide abortion services? The responses were similar, said Emily Wales, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which operates the Columbia location. “Could this affect my practice?” the physicians asked. “Could this put me at risk?” (Spoerre and Hardy, 1/15)

An East Baton Rouge Parish judge on Thursday (Jan. 15) denied the state of Louisiana’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit that five transgender teenagers and their parents brought against the state challenging a 2023 law banning medical professionals from providing trans health care to minors. The two-year-old case was filed days after the law, Act 466, went into effect in 2024, by the trans teens and their parents, who filed under pseudonyms to protect their privacy. They claimed that the state’s ban interferes with parents’ ability to make health decisions for their children and unlawfully denies trans kids access to necessary medical care on the basis of their sex, violating the rights of privacy and equal protection under the law that are guaranteed in the Louisiana State Constitution. (Costley, 1/15)

���ϳԹ��� News: How Is Your County Spending Opioid Settlement Cash? Our Tracking Tool Follows The Money
More than $50 billion in opioid settlement funds — meant to help curb the nation’s addiction crisis — is going to local and state governments. But because of lax reporting rules and little guidance on what’s appropriate, the money is generally being spent with next to no accountability. Survivors of the overdose epidemic and families who lost loved ones to it are calling for stricter rules to govern how the payout can be used. (Pattani, 1/16)

Likely due to staffing shortages, US nursing-home capacity has declined—by 15% or more in some cases—since the COVID-19 pandemic began, potentially narrowing access to long-term care and complicating hospital releases, a team led by University of Rochester, New York, researchers writes in JAMA Internal Medicine. (Van Beusekom, 1/15)

Lori Gonzalez never trained to be a nurse. But at 75, she is her husband’s full-time caregiver — helping him bathe, dress and move about their Phoenix home. She makes sure he eats, and she knows not to argue when he’s agitated or confused. And she hasn’t left him home alone in three years. Gonzalez knows that his dementia will only worsen and that she’ll be tending to him as her own health challenges mount, including the severe stenosis that leaves her back stiff and in pain. (Najmabadi, 1/15)

A sweeping new study of psychiatric and genetic records has the potential to change treatment for millions of psychiatric patients. (Johnson, 1/16)

Study links long covid to a family history of cancer —

A new study suggests that US adults with a family history of cancer may face a higher risk of developing long COVID, even if they have never had cancer themselves. (Bergeson, 1/15)

In other public health news —

As a resident of heavily industrial Ascension Parish, Kheri Monks is no stranger to living near petrochemical facilities. Monks has been living in Gonzales for more than a decade. In that time, she had three children. All of them have asthma and were born prematurely. Monks thinks that exposure to pollutants might have led to their health concerns. “I just can’t help but think, ‘Should I have not given birth here in Louisiana? You know, with all of the environmental concerns that we have?”’ Monks said. “I can’t believe I’m living, like literally living in Cancer Alley.” (Syed and Tesfaye, 1/15)

Lyme disease (LD) carries a substantial financial burden for both patients and the health care system, suggests a new retrospective cohort study, with costs driven largely by cases that progress beyond early-stage infection. (Bergeson, 1/15)

Measles, once considered eliminated in the U.S., is back in a big way. Driven by declining vaccine rates and growing vaccine hesitancy, the United States experienced its largest number of measles cases in decades in 2025, with 2,242 cases reported across the country and outbreaks in Texas, New Mexico, Utah and South Carolina. (Crouch, 1/16)

Wastewater testing can alert public health officials to measles infections days to months before cases are confirmed by doctors, researchers said in two studies published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Colorado health officials were able to get ahead of the highly contagious virus by tracking its presence in sewer systems, researchers wrote. And Oregon researchers found wastewater could have warned them of an outbreak more than two months before the first person tested positive. (Shastri, 1/15)

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) this week noted several commercial poultry outbreaks of avian flu, including an event in Kent County, Delaware, involving 147,900 birds that were part of a commercial broiler operation. Walker County, Georgia had the second-largest detection this week, affecting 71,300 birds at a commercial broiler breeder facility. (Soucheray, 1/15)

In the billion-dollar race to commercialize psychedelic medicine, psilocybin, a naturally occurring hallucinogen better known as magic mushrooms, or “shrooms,” has decisively pulled ahead of the pack. The Food and Drug Administration in November said it would move up its review of a psilocybin treatment for severe depression by nine to 12 months, according to the applicant, Compass Pathways. It hopes to receive the agency’s approval for the therapy before the end of the year. The news is among the first concrete signs that the Trump administration is recognizing psychedelic medicine as a potential therapy tool. (Jacobs, 1/13)

The gym is constantly on Dashiell Frederickson's mind. The 16-year-old works out religiously every day, sometimes for up to three hours a day. "The gym is all I can think about during the day," Frederickson said. "I wake up, I'm thinking about the gym. I'm brushing my teeth, I'm thinking about the gym … and once I'm finally at the gym, I'm kind of set and I'm happy." (Ruprecht, 1/14)

“I was constantly told, when you hit puberty, you’re gonna gain a bunch of weight, and we want to do everything we possibly can to combat that,” Levi Jung-Ruivivar said of what she had heard from coaches growing up. “It’s gonna affect your gymnastics.” What began as tracking meals on MyFitnessPal escalated into restrictive diets: no-carb, paleo, pescatarian. (Ingemi, 1/15)

In his room, 19-year-old Cody Nester toggles between Grindr profiles on his phone. As he senses chemistry with a match, he knows he has to flag something that could be a deal breaker. “Did you see on my profile that I’m HIV positive?” he writes. (Donndelinger, 1/13)

Five-year-old Mikko’s eyes lit up with glee when she noticed something familiar about her Barbie: The doll held a fidget spinner and wore oversize headphones, just like hers. (Howard, 1/12)

In consulting rooms across America, physicians face a challenge that no medical school prepared them for. A parent arrives with a list of concerns gathered from social media, podcasts, and well-meaning friends. The questions sound scientific. The language borrows from immunology. The citations reference real studies. And yet the conclusions are wrong. These parents are not ignorant. Many are educated, thoughtful, and deeply invested in their children’s health. ... The problem is not that these parents are asking questions. The problem is that they are receiving false answers. (Jake Scott, 1/15)

OpenAI and Anthropic have both announced big plans to enter healthcare, with a consumer-focused tool called ChatGPT Health and a version of the chatbot Claude that can help clinicians figure out a diagnosis and write medical notes. (Parmy Olson, 1/15)

As a physician, I recommend lifestyle modifications to patients every day: as a first approach for optimizing cholesterol levels, or to control blood pressure. Yet in a rushed office visit, that advice often feels too abstract, encouraging patients to follow the American Heart Association’s physical activity guidelines, or handing out a flyer on the DASH diet. (Vishal Khetpal, 1/16)

Let’s tell the truth. Elder abuse and neglect in nursing homes is not a mystery, not a surprise, and not an accident. It is the predictable, inevitable outcome of a system that allows the squeezing of profit from the bodies of the elderly while far too often delivering poor care in return. And just when the crisis reached a breaking point, our federal government made it worse. (Michael A. D'Amico, 1/15)