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Category: Medicare

  • Aging Life Care Managers Can Be a ‘Godsend’ for Families

    Aging Life Care Managers Can Be a ‘Godsend’ for Families

    Kristin Martinelli began her workday at 7:30 a.m. on a recent Monday, completing an online Medicaid recertification form for a client in a nursing home in Austin, Texas.

    Next, she drove to meet an 85-year-old and her daughter, who had come in from out of town. The older woman had “pretty advanced dementia” and was scheduled to move into the secure memory care unit of a senior living facility that day, said Martinelli, who works as an aging life care manager with Mir Care Consultants in Central Texas. The three of them had a 9 a.m. meeting with the primary care doctor who would complete the paperwork for the move.

    At the meeting, Martinelli explained the situation, and the doctor said he’d fill in the patient’s forms that afternoon. But later in the day, she got a call from a colleague saying that the doctor wouldn’t be able to complete the forms that day after all. That created a scramble because the woman wasn’t safe alone in her house. Martinelli ended up calling a home care agency she trusted. “I begged them to provide me with a caregiver in the next four hours,” she said.

    If a combination of appointments, bureaucracy, vigilance, and worry about a vulnerable older person — often interspersed with medical emergencies — sounds familiar, it might help to know about a service its providers ruefully call the best-kept secret in eldercare.

    Independent certified professionals like Martinelli used to be known as geriatric care managers. That’s what I called the people who helped my 88-year-old father make the 125-mile move from his apartment to a continuing care community near me, and later helped my disabled sister transition from her home to an assisted living facility.

    I also used words like “godsend” and “indispensable.” After the moves, the care managers kept tabs on both my father and sister monthly and eased my fears that something urgent might strike the moment I left on a vacation or a work trip.

    About a decade ago, these experts rebranded themselves as aging life care managers. It usually takes a couple of years to become one. Most enter the profession as nurses or social workers; some are physical or occupational therapists or gerontologists. They must attain a required combination of advanced education and supervised experience before they can take the certification exam.

    The Aging Life Care Association, the nonprofit that represents these professionals, was founded in the 1980s and has grown to more than 2,000 members, but care managers still have a persistent public awareness problem.

    “When we talk to someone, they say, ‘I wish I could have called you six months ago, but I didn’t know you existed,’” said Susy Elder Murphy, who owns Aging Well Eldercare, a large practice serving Washington, D.C., and its Maryland suburbs.

    The caller is typically an adult child, the Aging Life Care Association has reported. Martinelli described a common scenario: “Mom is in the hospital, or the children went to visit and hadn’t realized she was so sick. They’re in a crisis.”

    Enter the aging life care manager. What distinguishes her (it is usually a woman) from people with confusingly similar names — senior care advisers, patient advocates, care navigators — is her independence.

    Aging life care managers work for the client and the family paying them, not for hospitals or insurance companies. Moreover, the association’s extensive code of ethics specifically prohibits “accepting or giving referral fees, fee splitting, kickbacks or other similar arrangements in exchange for client referrals.”

    Contrast that with companies that promise free advice on senior living, like A Place for Mom. Care facilities pay A Place for Mom fees for steering new residents their way, as the organization discloses on its website. Advisers for companies that receive fees may be unlikely to recommend places that don’t pay, or to recommend home care, unless the company also contracts with local agencies.

    “They’re really marketers, salespeople,” Julie Wagner, chief executive of the Aging Life Care Association, said about the referral companies. Some companies are more transparent than others about these financial incentives.

    “If you want to buy a car and you go to the Ford dealer, they will not say, ‘I really see you in a Subaru,’” Murphy said. “You should be talking to someone who’s objective, neutral, and experienced.”

    Care managers don’t come cheap. Wagner said association members’ hourly rates range from $150 to $350, with big geographic variations. In Texas, Mir’s standard rate is $185 an hour, billed in 15-minute increments. In Washington, Murphy’s practice charges $210 an hour. Sometimes families share the cost, as my sister and I did. And in some cities, social service agencies provide these specialists on a sliding scale.

    Aging life care managers serve as coordinators, not hands-on caregivers, and the range of services they provide is quite broad.

    They can, for example: Arrange and oversee a move to or within a senior living facility. Deal with insurers, including Medicare and Medicaid. Drive a client to the dentist. Recommend not only local residential communities and home care agencies but elder law lawyers, medical specialists, therapists, senior move managers, and hospice organizations. Visit weekly or monthly to see that everything is going smoothly. Alert family members if it isn’t.

    “A part of our job is mediating between family members, acting as a sounding board,” Martinelli said.

    In fact, care managers like Murphy find their clients often seem more willing to listen to them than to their adult children — even if the advice is the same. “Your mom didn’t change our diapers or teach us to talk,” she said. “It’s a different relationship.”

    In a 2025 survey of clients and families commissioned by the Aging Life Care Association, “the responses were overwhelmingly positive,” said Jullie Gray, a co-author of the study who teaches at the University of Washington School of Social Work.

    The nearly 200 respondents did not constitute a representative national sample, Gray said. But 93% said the benefits of hiring an aging life care manager outweighed the costs, and 99% said they would recommend such a manager to someone else. The survey’s findings were presented at the 2025 meeting of the Gerontological Society of America.

    Jeffrey Bernstein, an engineer in Middleton, Massachusetts, has for years relied on Aging Well Eldercare for help with his parents, two older siblings, and an aunt, all in Maryland. Like many people who eventually learn about care managers, “I had no idea such a person existed,” he said, until his wife read about them in a magazine.

    Bernstein, 65, was unable to relocate to care for his family directly. But with care managers, “when something came up, they were there, they stepped up,” he said. “More importantly, they knew what to do when I wouldn’t have. It was tremendously helpful for my peace of mind.”

    The same was true with Martinelli’s 85-year-old client in Austin. She spent the night with temporary caregivers and moved into her new home in the memory care unit that Tuesday, after her doctor finally produced the necessary documentation. “She went in just before noon,” Martinelli reported. “She had lunch.”

    How was the new resident adjusting? “It’s been OK,” Martinelli said, sounding relieved. “So far, so good.”

    The New Old Age is produced through a partnership with The New York Times.

  • Medicare Policy Shouldn’t Be Made in the Shadows

    Medicare Policy Shouldn’t Be Made in the Shadows

    As a rheumatologist, I treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and other complex autoimmune diseases. If you have or happen to develop one of these diseases, I am thankful that science has delivered amazingly effective targeted therapeutics and biologics in recent decades. While highly effective, these treatments come with a high economic cost, so I have grown accustomed to daily battles with commercial insurance plans to get working-age patients the treatments they need. While horror stories abound regarding commercial insurers, Medicare has traditionally been a more predictable partner for my older patients. Medicare reimbursement is low — an issue worthy of a separate commentary piece — but comes on time, typically without the hassle and administrative delays of prior authorizations, assuming we use our therapeutics within FDA-approved dosing and indications.

    On top of these existing challenges here in the Midwest, providers recently won a battle we did not expect to have to fight with a Medicare administrative contractor (MAC). The story deserves scrutiny from legislators and regulators nationwide. 

    Medicare beneficiaries rightly assume, as have I, that policy spells out the services they are entitled to receive. Lawmakers in Congress establish patients’ benefits in law, while the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) develops the national rules and policies to implement them. MACs fit into this process by administering those rules regionally (with some discretion), but they are not supposed to privately create new substantive conditions of payment.

    Recently, the MAC overseeing Kentucky and Ohio began auditing and denying claims for intravenous Orencia, a biologic drug used to treat RA, citing a “lack of medical necessity.” The policy affected more than a hundred patients who had mostly been on Orencia for a decade or more. These patients were forced to stop or delay treatment or switch therapies, which resulted in serious RA flares. MAC administrators had decided that most patients on intravenous Orencia, covered under Medicare Part B, should instead receive subcutaneous Orencia, covered under Medicare Part D and often at substantially higher out-of-pocket cost. 

    The decision was made without a formal notice-and-comment process. In fact, this requirement does not even appear in the Medicare guidance cited for this decision. Worst of all, it effectively forced dozens of patients off a life-changing therapy.

    Thanks to outreach from clinicians, national advocacy organizations, angry patients, and congressional representatives, this policy was walked back. Or at least, we think so. There was no announcement of a reversal. Instead, the MAC covering Kentucky and Ohio quietly revised a fact sheet on its website, removing language that preferred subcutaneous over intravenous dosing. 

    This whiplash has been devastating to my own small clinic, however, as the MAC continues to withhold the equivalent of roughly three payrolls’ worth of payments for treatments we rendered in good faith during this period. They have also not answered repeated inquiries about whether denials issued under the now-removed standard will be reversed. 

    This situation exposed several problems that need to be addressed before this happens to other MACs, Medicare beneficiaries and clinicians:

    1. The current system allowed one medical director’s opinion to acquire the force of Medicare policy without an effective check. This violates the Supreme Court’s decision in Azar v. Allina, which limits the government’s ability to create substantive Medicare payment standards through informal guidance. Yet it still took months of work, worry, and countless hours distracted from providing clinical care to get the issue elevated to a level where the policy was reconsidered. 

    2. There is inadequate accountability and little transparency within MAC operations. After an initial call with the MAC medical director to raise this issue, we went for weeks with response and no clue as to where our appeal stood. Providers didn’t know how to “correctly” care for our affected patients. When the disputed language did quietly disappear from the fact sheet, there was no public explanation, formal announcement, or directive regarding claims already denied. 

    3. There is no clearly identified chain of command to move a critical issue of patient harm from a regional MAC to CMS. As an experienced advocate, I leveraged my relationship with my congressional representative and the American College of Rheumatology to elevate this issue to CMS, but what if I hadn’t had those relationships? Our system should not require physicians to become experts in Medicare law and policy just to ensure the Medicare system follows its own rules.

    Medicare beneficiaries deserve better. While in this case we’ve been able to protect access to intravenous Orencia, this experience exposed flaws that extend far beyond one drug or one MAC contractor. We should all be concerned that MACs are increasingly making unilateral decisions that negatively impact patient access. Medicare policy should be transparent and include appropriate notice and stakeholder input. And when a contractor gets it wrong, there should be a clear and rapid way to stop the harm to patients, their relationship with their doctor and the doctor’s practice. A patient’s access to Medicare-covered care should never depend on whether their physician can find someone in Washington willing to intervene. Something must change.

    Author bio:

    Dr. Chris Phillips is an American College of Rheumatology leading rheumatologist and owner of Paducah Rheumatology.

    Photo: Stas_V, Getty Images

  • AI, Tech Leaders Are Lobbying Trump Health Officials in a Government-Run Chat Room

    AI, Tech Leaders Are Lobbying Trump Health Officials in a Government-Run Chat Room

    A cadre of elite techies, financiers, and high-level Trump administration officials have spent a year quietly charting an extraordinary and rapid campaign to persuade Americans to use apps and other artificial intelligence-powered tools to manage their healthcare and medical records.

    As that campaign has unfolded, administration officials have granted tech companies an unusual opportunity to nudge the nation’s health department toward a loosely regulated future for AI health apps in which the government reimburses them for services as it does medical professionals.

    In February, federal health officials invited those businesses — including tech giants Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, Apple, and Google — to a listening session on conversational AI products for patients, such as chatbots. Representatives from at least 35 industry organizations attended the meeting held by the Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for regulating health apps as medical devices. Companies were prompted in advance to explain their AI products and how they access patients’ sensitive medical information.

    But the meeting did not appear on the FDA’s public calendar or regulatory notices, nor was the public invited. Rather, the invitation for a select group to help shape federal policy governing AI in healthcare was extended in a chat room on the messaging service Slack.

    “This is a great opportunity to support HHS’ goals and share your state-of-the-art understanding of safe Conversational AI development and monitoring to help FDA shape future guidance,” CMS senior policy adviser Morgan Taylor wrote in the Slack workspace.

    The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has not formally announced the chat room through federal regulatory channels, though CMS officials have talked about it at industry conferences. Legal experts said the chat room resembles a federal advisory panel, which would be required to operate in public view.

    KFF Health News reviewed thousands of Slack messages, meeting transcripts, and video recordings that reveal how the Trump administration has granted the industry a direct line to top government officials — including former head of the Department of Government Efficiency Amy Gleason.

    The conversation took place behind the scenes as federal health officials publicly worked to integrate AI and other technology into nearly every aspect of healthcare, a plan they’ve branded the “Health Technology Ecosystem.”

    “We wanted to give industry a chance to play in the sandbox of government-supported healthcare,” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz said in September at the public launch of an initiative that allows health apps to bill Medicare for AI services such as wearable device tracking. Last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered an enthusiastic endorsement of AI in healthcare, claiming it is “much better informed than any doctor in the country.”

    Meanwhile, HHS staff even promised that a recently launched Medicare App Library would serve as a lucrative pipeline for those businesses to get new users. The library’s webpage currently promotes only two dozen commercial apps to millions of American seniors and those with disabilities.

    As Trump officials sell it, Americans will get easier access to their medical records so apps can swiftly provide health or wellness advice. In practice, however, so will the tech companies.

    Doctors, meanwhile, are increasingly worried about how patients use and share their medical records with the nascent technology.

    “Some of these tools just aren’t ready for primetime,” said John Whyte, CEO of the American Medical Association. “We don’t have enough data about them. We don’t understand how they work, how they’re using the information. There’s no liability if these tools get things wrong.”

    CMS officials declined to answer several questions about the Slack workspace, including about its legality.

    “CMS is focused on giving Medicare beneficiaries greater access to their health information and useful digital tools while promoting an open, interoperable healthcare system,” Gleason, now chief product officer for the newly created Office of Health Technology and Products at CMS, wrote in an emailed statement. “The Health Technology Ecosystem is an open, voluntary technical collaboration. CMS will continue working with patients, providers, payers, technology organizations, and other stakeholders to make health information more accessible and useful to the Americans it serves.”

    The FDA did not respond to a request for comment.

    The Conversation Begins

    The behind-the-scenes effort to funnel more Americans to AI-powered health apps began in August 2025 in the Slack workspace.

    “Welcome all!” Gleason wrote. “Please be sure to read the Code of Conduct and see the Channel list as well to help you find channels that are relevant to you.”

    Gleason is best known for serving as the acting administrator of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, as it gained access to millions of Americans’ sensitive personal and financial data, including at the Social Security Administration.

    As her work with DOGE wound down last year, Gleason welcomed a variety of tech leaders, investors, and entrepreneurs to the chat room.

    Documents have been reproduced from the CMS Health Tech Ecosystem Slack and highlighted by KFF Health News.

    The Slack workspace’s participants include representatives from major digital wellness companies like Oura Health, AI companies like Palantir, and investment outfits like 8VC, a venture capital firm associated with Kennedy’s son Finn. While the Slack’s member count has ballooned to 1,700 over the past year, only a handful of patient advocates, doctors, and hospital representatives are in it.

    The code of conduct Gleason shared on Slack in August 2025 documented that CMS had quietly established a technology working group.

    The document also set ground rules for the Slack workspace, noting that the group does not constitute an “advisory committee,” nor would it be used “to obtain advice or recommendations for HHS, CMS, or any HHS/CMS officials.” The code also advises that federal employees “are prohibited from endorsing any product, service, or enterprise.”

    Joseph Daval, a former FDA lawyer who is now a research specialist at Harvard Medical School, reviewed messages from the Slack workspace at the request of KFF Health News. He said the chat room in some ways resembles a federal advisory committee — an independent panel that can be formally stood up by an agency head, Congress, or the president to ensure agencies act in the best interest of the public rather than industry.

    The law on advisory committees “was passed in part out of a concern about interest group capture, about anticompetitive capture of agency policymaking, about corruption,” he said.

    Daval said the chat group looks like a committee, with members interacting with one another and building consensus on preferred courses of action.

    If it were a formal advisory committee, though, Daval said, it would be subject to certain “membership requirements having to do with independence and fair balance.”

    A ‘Sales Engine’

    Over a series of video calls, CMS officials promised tech leaders participating in the Slack workspace that the agency would promote their health apps.

    Jacob Shiff, the chief AI and technology officer at CMS’ Innovation Center, told industry representatives in a Zoom meeting in February that he hoped the agency’s work would be a “sales engine” for the health apps.

    “We’re going to have a directory of all the organizations,” Shiff said in a video recording reviewed by KFF Health News. “The people on this call who hopefully will have amazing solutions that work will be the winners, and you have every incentive to obviously drive down your costs so you can be extremely profitable and scale. So hopefully we’re selling — or enabling you guys to thrive.”

    This video recording was captured and excerpted by KFF Health News before it was removed from public view. 

    A recording of the call had been publicly available through a Google Drive link but was made private the day after KFF Health News asked about comments made during the meeting.

    CMS did not respond to queries about how the agency has decided which AI-powered health apps appear in the Medicare App Library or why federal employees have promised to promote the products.

    Days before publicly launching the Medicare App Library, CMS officials promised AI tech leaders during an informal meeting that the new webpage would become an important distribution channel for health apps because Medicare enrollees would place trust in products listed on the CMS website.

    “If medicare.gov is promoting it, for lack of a better word, then yeah, it would be an app that I would trust and explore,” CMS’ Taylor said during the April 7 meeting, channeling enrollees, according to a transcript of the call.

    The Medicare App Library’s webpage encourages older and disabled Americans to manage health conditions such as obesity, cancer, or diabetes using two dozen AI-driven apps developed by some of the world’s largest corporations, including Microsoft and Google. Many of the apps promise in their product descriptions to give insight, perform analyses, or develop plans that will help patients lose weight or manage diabetes.

    CMS officials have suggested to tech representatives during at least two meetings this year that those apps will be prioritized for a new agency program that reimburses companies for AI chatbot advice or wearable device tracking, according to video recordings.

    CMS has not publicly divulged all the criteria it uses to decide which apps are listed in its library, but the webpage promotes apps still in their infancy.

    Among them is Slothwise, a health app launched this year from a San Francisco apartment by a young, self-described biotech entrepreneur and triple citizen of Russia, Israel, and the U.S. The app says it “knows your whole health” by analyzing medical records and tracking health data for $9.99 a month. It has been reviewed on the Apple and Google app stores only a handful of times.

    “I trusted slothwise with my health info because it was endorsed by medicare,” one reviewer wrote in a Google review in August. “Connecting info was smooth and I learned a lot about my health.”

    In a statement, Slothwise CEO Sofia Sigal-Passeck did not answer questions about the size and medical expertise of her current team, nor about the availability of a doctor to consult with patients who use the app. The app, she said, is only “informational” at this time.

    “I’ve spent years building at the intersection of AI and complex biological data,” Sigal-Passeck wrote in an email. “A small team is not the same thing as an inexperienced team. Slothwise is built by physicians, PhD researchers and engineers.”

    ‘No Regulation, No Rulemaking’

    What’s often less clear — and buried deep in lengthy privacy policies — is that these apps are tapping into the intimate details of patients’ medical records to fuel their AI-driven analyses.

    Tech vendors have lobbied the government to treat these apps, once they are vetted and authorized by a third-party organization, like a patient requesting records. That position gives apps sweeping access to pull sensitive health data from the national network through which providers electronically exchange medical records, called the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA.

    A small but influential group of those tech company executives directly made the case to federal health officials during a formal meeting in May, arguing that when health apps request medical records they should be treated as if they are standing “in the shoes” of a patient.

    On Slack, tech vendors have lobbied for a “frictionless pathway” for verified users, after they’ve consented once, that allows the app to gain limitless access to patients’ medical records from the TEFCA network.

    Ryan Howells, a healthcare management consultant who lobbies for a Washington, D.C.-based digital health tech organization called the CARIN Alliance, has spearheaded an effort for patients — vis-à-vis apps — to more easily access medical records. He has regularly noted in Slack that health apps accessing TEFCA must be vetted by a third-party organization — one of which he sits on the board of — and agree to a code of conduct, developed by the alliance he lobbies for.

    “What more can you do to have trust in these apps?” he wrote in a March Slack message, responding to concerns about how much patient consent is needed for apps to access medical records on the network.

    Kristen Valdes, the CEO of b.well, a company that also connects apps to the TEFCA network, made a similar argument.

    “My opinion is that we need to stop protecting patients from themselves,” she wrote in the same message thread. “Full stop.”

    Howells did not respond to an emailed list of questions from KFF Health News. In an interview, Valdes told KFF Health News that her comment reflected her frustration at the “paternalism” of the healthcare system, which she said has historically made it difficult for patients to access their records. Although, she said, “there are going to be good and bad apps.”

    Other tech leaders worried in Slack about the approach.

    One startup founder cautioned the group to think about the pitfalls of giving health apps broad leeway to pull medical records.

    “We might all be good, honest actors here but security & privacy systems have to be designed around the presence of malicious actors – especially if we want this system to scale up to thousands of apps,” wrote Jason Kulatunga, who runs Fasten Health, a medical records management platform.

    Gleason, the CMS official, has publicly championed the vision shared by Howells and Valdes. In her speeches, she frequently urges doctors to accept patient medical records directly from apps and calls on them to “Kill the Clipboard,” also the title of a 2025 white paper co-authored by Howells that urges doctors’ offices to abandon paper records.

    Last month, Gleason spoke to a crowd gathered at a swanky hotel in Washington for an event hosted by the MAHA Institute, a think tank that supports Secretary Kennedy’s agenda. She laid out her work with tech companies over the past year as she discussed the Trump administration’s efforts to make medical records more digitally accessible.

    As she told it, more Americans can now download an app and access their medical records.

    “Once you’ve verified your identity you can just click a simple button and say, I’d like my medical records into whatever app I choose,” Gleason said.

    She continued: “That was all done just — no regulation, no rulemaking — just by challenging industry to work together.”

  • Medicare penalizes more hospitals for readmissions

    Medicare penalizes more hospitals for readmissions

    About 80% of hospitals are having their Medicare payments shaved down over high readmission rates this fiscal year, compared with 78% the year prior, according to new CMS data. It continues a worrying trend.

  • Medicare Is More Broken Than We Thought

    Medicare Is More Broken Than We Thought

    Note: “An Arm and a Leg” uses speech-recognition software to generate transcripts, which may contain errors. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.

    Please note that this transcript may include errors.

    Dan: Hey there. In the first week of October last year, 2025 — a whole bunch of senior citizens in Minnesota got a letter with some bad news. 

    Amy Hockert: A lot of changes coming in 2026. We know that at minimum 160,000 of you, absolutely have to pay attention to this,

    Dan: Their health insurance through Medicare Advantage was going away. 

    Erin: I was so mad. I was like, “No. Now what do I do?” And I look at my husband and said, “Now what?” “

    Dan: Folks like Erin– who lives in small-town Cambridge,Minnesota–  were going to have to find a new plan by the end of Medicare’s annual open enrollment period, which would start in a couple weeks.

    Up until now, Erin had been on a plan from a local nonprofit insurance outfit called U Care.

    UCare offered some of the most generous and affordable plans in Medicare Advantage — the version of Medicare operated by private health insurance companies. 

    But U Care was going belly up.

    FOX 9: The collapse of UCare after 40 years in Minnesota has been swift and stunning.

    Dan: Callers jammed the phonelines at Minnesota’s Aging Pathways hotline — thats the state agency that helps people with Medicare. Kelli Jo Greiner runs it.

    Kelli Jo Greiner: I don’t know any other way to describe it other than total chaos. Our phones were ringing off the hook.

    Dan: Meanwhile, in the Twin Cities suburb of Maple Grove, an insurance broker named Alison Ebert had been getting ready for her busy season, making appointments with her usual clients.

    Alison Ebert: October 1st through October 14th, I always set my appointments with my clients. I always joke I get paid in cookies and coffee because I go to their homes, we sit down. I know their families, I know their kids, their grandkids

    Dan: The day open enrollment started, she got 47 calls — from people she’d never met. People whose coffee and cookies she’d never tasted.  That was new. 

    And more would call. Because more letters were starting to go out.

    Not just from U Care. Other health insurance carriers were dropping out of the area. UnitedHealthcare, BlueCross, Aetna, Humana — all canceled Medicare Advantage plans in counties all over the state. Three counties were left with no Medicare Advantage plans at all. 

    And… this wasn’t just something that was just happening in Minnesota. Almost 3 million seniors across the country had plans in 2025 that would stop being offered to them in 2026.

    And that’s because at their headquarters, insurance companies had done their calculations, assessed their risks, and decided that offering plans to those people would no longer be profitable enough. So, seniors from Maine to California saw the number of available Medicare Advantage plans shrink by the dozen — leaving a lot of them confused, and with fewer, often worse and more costly health insurance options. 

    It’s part of a big new trend — these disappearing acts  have been increasing in recent years, and insurance companies have already signaled that more are coming. Major insurers have already announced intentions to dump plans that currently cover more than two million seniors. 

    We’ve spoken with folks in a dozen states — in rural places like Vermont and North Dakota, and in states with rural and urban centers like Maryland and Minnesota — about how it all went down last year — and what we can take away for this year.

    My colleague Emily Pisacreta and our awesome summer intern Lynn Barbera made those calls. And Emily, you called that experience “eye opening.” 

    Emily: Uh, yeah. We already knew from previous reporting that people had problems with Medicare Advantage. At first this story sort of seemed like one more thing people on Medicare Advantage had to worry about. But it turns out to be more than that. What happened last year — and is about to happen again this fall — showed us big problems, problems that affect everyone who’s on Medicare — or hopes to be one day. There are layers to this. 

    Dan: And we’re gonna peel them back. Get ready for a big dose of Medicare.

    This is An Arm and a Leg, a show about why health care costs so freaking much and what we can maybe do about it. I’m Dan Weissmann, I’m a reporter and I like a challenge. So our job on this show is to take one of the most enraging, terrifying, depressing parts of American life and to bring you a show that’s entertaining, empowering and useful.

    Emily, a while back, we looked at problems with Medicare Advantage. How about we do a little recap?

    Emily: Yeah. 

    Dan: We were taking our first deep look at Medicare itself, and as we said then, it kind of blew our minds. 

    Emily: Before we did that story, I was under the impression that you wake up on your 65th birthday and never have to pay a medical bill again, never have to deal with health insurance companies again. In fact, that’s the dream of Medicare For All. 

    Dan: But it’s not the reality of Medicare as it exists. For one thing, signing up means making a dizzying number of choices. 

    And you basically never escape private insurance companies. No way. Turns out, they run a lot of Medicare — so you could see dozens of different plans offered by different companies. 

    But here’s the most important part: You have to choose between what’s now called Traditional Medicare — run by the U.S. Government — and Medicare Advantage plans, run by private insurance companies. 

    And they both have downsides. 

    Traditional medicare doesn’t cover everything. For outpatient medical care — for doctor visits, outpatient procedures, infusions, physical therapy, X-rays and MRIs, you name it — Medicare only pays 80 percent of the bill.  

    And those other things can get so expensive — the remaining 20 percent can run to thousands of dollars that most seniors don’t have. 

    If you want that covered — and, I mean, you do — you actually have to buy a “supplemental” policy — people call them “Medigap” plans. They’re offered by private insurance companies. And you pay a premium. 

    Oh, and did I mention that you’re already paying a premium to the feds for your Medicare? Yep. Exactly how much depends on your financial situation, but most people pay just over 200 bucks a month.

    Medigap premiums – to the private companies – are on top of that. They vary a lot — by what plan you pick, and by where you live — but the average is another two-hundred and some every month. And that number goes up every year. 

    So you’re paying all that but then you’ve still got another gap. Vision, dental, and hearing. Traditional Medicare doesn’t cover them at all. So Medigap plans generally don’t cover them either. 

    The dark joke is that eyes, ears and teeth are “luxury organs”

    Because who needs to see or hear or chew? 

    So those are some BIG gaps.

    A lot of Medicare Advantage plans offer to fill those gaps:

    MA Ad 2: This card I’m holding in my hand, it’s an example of an all-in-one Medicare Advantage membership card.

    Dan: Lots of them include what’s missing  

    Woman in Ad2: That card helps me with my vision costs, my dental costs.

    Dan: Some of them even subsidize the premium you’d be paying to the feds, even bringing it down to zero. You can see how appealing that is.

    … and insurance companies hammer that appeal home with floods of TV ads

    Plus direct mail, phone calls, and facebook ads out the wazoo. None of which mention the downsides to Medicare Advantage… 

     which are basically: All the downsides we’re all familiar with from dealing with insurance companies. 

    Their network might not include your doctors and providers. It might not include very many providers near you at all. 

    And once you find an in-network provider, the insurance company can make you jump through hoops like pre-authorization. Or deny a claim. And then you get to fight through an appeals process. 

    I talked with a guy in Texas, Robert Wolpa. He’s got HIV, a pacemaker, other stuff. He said he felt like he was spending half his days on hold, waiting to talk with badly-paid, badly-trained people.

    Robert Wolpa: I’m 71. I just turned 71 in November and I’ve got, I’ve got a little of the HIV cognizant crap. Like, my short term memory is gone. And I think to myself, what have I gotten myself into?

    Dan: This is the thing: You can be 65 years old, in totally decent shape, playing pickleball or whatever, never seeing a doctor. 

    But when you pick Medicare Advantage, most of the time you’re also choosing for an older, sicker version of yourself. Who may need to see specialists, and who may not have as much capacity to fight with insurance companies. 

    I mean, most relatively young and healthy people have a hard enough time. 

    This is where Traditional Medicare starts to look much more appealing. Practically every provider takes it, and denials are almost unheard of.

    But for most people, if you’ve chosen Medicare Advantage, it’s a no-backsies situation. 

    You can still sign up for Traditional Medicare, but you may not be able to get a Medigap policy. 

    For one thing, it may not be in your budget. Robert Wolpa got a quote: Almost 500 bucks a month. Like a third of his social security check.

    Robert Wolpa: And I said, okay. Next option.

    Dan: And lots of people don’t have the option at all. In most states, if you don’t sign up at age 65, Medigap plans are allowed to reject you if you have… pre-existing conditions. 

    Sarah Jane Tribble: It’s sort of shocking, actually, right? Like, the Affordable Care Act passes and makes it so that everybody with pre existing conditions can get insurance no matter what, but it leaves out the people who might need that the most, who are 65 and older. 

    Dan: That’s the person who had introduced us to Robert Wolpa, and helped us understand this whole issue. Sarah Jane Tribble,a reporter with our pals at KFF Health News had just published her own story about the pitfalls of Medicare Advantage.

    This comes as a big surprise to a LOT of folks — as Sarah Jane found out while she was reporting her story, and talking about it with friends.

    With all of these… advantage — all the marketing, and all the gaps it fills– Medicare Advantage has grown by leaps and bounds in its 20-some years. 

    At this point, the majority of seniors are on Medicare Advantage.

    So, OK: Long recap, but. That’s what we KNEW a couple of years ago. 

    And it turns out — based on what happened last fall, and what’s about to happen this year — the problems are way worse than we knew. 

    Which brings us back to our friends in Minnesota. In early October 2025.

    News anchor 1: In 90 days, thousands of Minnesotans will lose their Medicare Advantage coverage.

    News anchor 2: Many major health care providers are dropping their Medicare Advantage plans in 2026. 

    Dan: So, Emily. What the heck happened?

    Emily: So that local nonprofit insurance company – UCare– they went broke, and all their Medicare Advantage plans got pulled from the market. Pretty quickly after that, UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, and others sent break up letters of their own to thousands of their beneficiaries.

    Lots of people turned to insurance brokers for help. 

    But many brokers weren’t calling them back. Because things had started going haywire for them too. Insurance broker Alison Ebert told us she was used to getting paid in cookies and coffee – and this time around, she would mean that literally — because in the days leading up to open enrollment she got an unusual call from her contact at UnitedHealthcare.

    Alison Ebert: She said, “I just wanna let you know before you get the email, we’re not paying commissions this year.”

    Emily No commissions. No payment from the insurance company for anyone she would enroll in their Medicare Advantage plans. Which is for health insurance brokers — the whole business model. 

    Alison Ebert: And my heart just sunk. That was the first phone call, and one by one thereafter, all the major carriers except for Allina Health Aetna, followed suit.

    Emily: Other brokers in Minnesota told me the same thing. I asked Alison: why do you think they cut commissions? She says a rep for one of the big companies told her the ugly truth. 

    Alison Ebert: With UCare exiting the market,” she said, “Let’s face it, we don’t want everybody that sunk UCare on our plan. And so this is how we’re gonna c- curb enrollments.” 

    Emily:  Alison got the message: These insurance companies wanted to curb enrollments. They specifically didn’t want to insure people who they tho  ught “sunk UCare” — meaning, people who used health care. Who filed claims. Who cost money.If brokers didn’t get commissions for selling plans to these folks, a lot fewer of them would sign up.  

    Alison Ebert: Because they’ve always told us about 80% of the sales comes through brokers like us.

    Emily: Now, a few weeks later, it was October 15, open enrollment was starting, and her phone was ringing off the hook. 47 people on day one. And more every day after that. Plus all her regular clients — the ones whose grandkids she knew by name.

     Alison had to decide what to do  — could she afford to help all those people for free? 

    Alison Ebert: I have kids. I mean, I deserve to get paid. I need to put gas in my tank to go to these people’s homes.  

    Emily: But Alison didn’t think it was right to leave people hanging.

    Alison Ebert: I left a message on my answering machine saying, “You know, due to the fact that we’re not getting paid this season, a lot of brokers left the market and I’m just returning calls as they come. But just be aware that it might take me a couple weeks to get back to you.”

    Emily: Instead of going to everyone’s house, she set up office hours at a coffee shop to be able to see as many people as possible.

    Meanwhile… Kelli Jo Greiner and her colleagues at the state’s Medicare hotline were scrambling too.

    Kelli Jo Greiner: We had wait times of two hours. Nobody wants to wait for even 10 minutes, let alone two hours

    Emily: She and her team had to improvise.

    Kelli Jo Greiner: We have staff that don’t usually do Medicare counseling. They help with, like, long-term care and other areas, and we even put those folks on the phones to help

    Emily: And she wrangled a weekly spot on FOX 9 in the Twin Cities to answer big questions.

    Amy Hockert: Medicare Monday is what we’re calling it. A lot of changes coming in 2026. Kelli Jo, thanks for joining us.

    Kelli Jo Greiner: Well, thank you. I’m glad to be here again. 

    Amy Hockert: All right. Well, let’s roll through it here.

    Emily: Kelli Jo told viewers: The most important thing is to be proactive. If you don’t do anything, the system will put you into traditional Medicare — but without a Medigap plan. Oh, and by the way, she told them: Your drug plan will probably disappear too, unless you sign up for a new one.

    So — she said, the good news, as far as it goes is: Right now you have a choice. And it’s just like the one you had when you were 65. You get to basically start over if you want, and get a Medigap plan even if you have a pre-existing condition. This is a special situation, they can’t reject you. 

    And once you’re on they can’t tell you which doctors to see. Almost every doctor in the country takes traditional Medicare.   

    Kelli Jo Greiner: And for many people that is a huge advantage,’cause we have a lot of snowbirds here that go south for the winter.

    Emily: But she says most people she talked with decided they just couldn’t afford those Medigap premiums. They were stuck with Medicare Advantage. Only now they had fewer and crummier Medicare Advantage plans to choose from. 

    Also, they were more expensive than these folks were used to. 

    Kelli Jo says a lot of people had been on plans with no monthly premium — but now all those plans were gone.  

    Kelli Jo Greiner: and so they ended up having to switch to a plan with a premium

    Emily: And in a lot of cases, without some extra benefits that Kelli Jo says are a big draw. Like discounts on groceries — or free gym memberships, a feature called Silver Sneakers.

    Kelli Jo Greiner: and I cannot even tell you how many people called us about Silver Sneakers. They were so upset about that change.

    Emily: So people ended up paying more than they were used to —  and getting less. 

    Dan: OK. So to recap: some Medicare Advantage plans disappeared.

    Emily: Yes.

    Dan: The remaining plans weren’t great.

    Emily: Right.

    Dan: And most people chose them anyway, because they couldn’t afford Medigap.

    Emily: Correct. And we can expect more of the same this year– and for who knows how many years ahead.

    Dan: So Medicare Advantage is getting shakier– even while it keeps growing. 

    Coming right up: how the dynamics behind all of this add up to trouble for all of Medicare. And what we can maybe do about it.   .

    This season of An Arm and a Leg is a co-production of Public Road Productions and KFF Health News — that’s a non-profit newsroom covering health issues in America. Their reporters are amazing — you’re about to hear from another of them. We’re honored to be their colleagues.

    Dan: Kelli Jo Greiner told us many folks who lost their Medicare Advantage plans  just couldn’t afford Medigap supplements. 

    Which, as we’ve been learning, has been one of the big dynamics behind the growth of Medicare Advantage in the first place. 

    Emily: Our colleague Julie Appleby found recently, that dynamic is getting starker.

    Julie’s a senior correspondent with our pals at KFF Health News.  

    Julie Appleby: I cover all things health insurance pretty much, uh, from the Affordable Care Act to Medicare, other kinds of health insurance programs, uh, that kind of thing. 

    Emily: Earlier this year, Julie got a call from a broker in Illinois.

    Julie Appleby: And he was telling me that more than, like, 80 of his customers were enrolled in a Medicare supplement,

    Emily: A specific plan. One that usually had low premiums. 

    Julie Appleby: But they suddenly raised their rates by 45%. And he said, “In my 49 years of doing business as a broker, I’ve never seen a premium increase be effective immediately on everyone. So I thought, “Hey, I’m gonna start looking into this.”

    Emily:  She found some good data from a company called Telos Actuarial — which showed: this price hike was part of a trend.

    Julie Appleby: There were increases going on kind of throughout the industry.

    Emily:. On average, the data showed premiums on Medigap went up almost 17% from the previous year.

    Not as high as that one plan with 45 percent increase, but still nothing to sneeze at. Brokers and other experts told her: That kind of increase used to be almost unheard of. But for the last bunch of years, it’s become a new normal. 

    Julie sees a connection with the growth of Medicare Advantage. 

    To understand it — and why everything about Medicare could be getting shakier and shakier — Julie’s gonna introduce us to a key term: Risk Pool. It’s a big part of how insurance prices get set.

    Julie Appleby: Insurance is a giant pool, right? We all are in the pool, and everybody kinda shares the cost. The insurance company has to sit down and try to figure out, “Well, gee, I’ve got this pool of people. How sick are they? How, how often are they gonna go to the doctor? How often are they gonna be hospitalized?” And then calculate out, “Okay, so what might that cost me?”

    Emily: So a lot depends on: Who’s in the risk pool for any given plan? If Medigap plans are more expensive than Medicare Advantage — but provide better coverage — then, who’s gonna choose the Medigap? People who think they’re gonna *need* that better coverage. Sicker people.

    And with millions of people getting the chance at do-overs — because their Medicare Advantage plans got nuked — these Medigap insurers have a bunch of new customers, who — it seems reasonable to think — may be sicker.  

    Julie Appleby: So these carriers are, then having to think, “Wow, I’m taking all these people on in this region, so I’m gonna have to raise my premiums to cover what might be those expected costs.” 

    Emily : And as premiums grow and grow, what we could see is a kind of vicious cycle. Because as new people turn 65, they’re looking at Medigap premiums that are harder and harder to afford.

    So more and more people are attracted to Medicare Advantage. I spoke with a researcher named Laura Skopec – she studies Medicare at the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy think tank. Here’s how she put it: If this trend continues — with Medigap prices driving more people to Medicare Advantage

    Laura Skopec: We’re gonna see a traditional Medicare that is sicker and wealthier, which is sort of a weird combination, but it’s gonna be sort of the sickest people that really need good access to specialists, wanna be able to go to the cancer center, you know, any sort of doctor they wanna go to, and the people that can afford Medigap

    Emily: Like, the sicker you are, the more you need this, and the more people who need it, the more expensive the supplements will be.

    Laura Skopec: The risk pool just keeps on worsening.

    Emily: So, expect Medicare Advantage to keep growing. And — as Laura points out — getting more expensive.

    Laura Skopec: The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission says we spend about fourteen percent more for everyone who chooses Medicare Advantage over traditional Medicare, and that was really not the point of the Medicare Advantage program, right? It was supposed to use sort of private sector processes to lower costs in Medicare, and it has not done that. 

    Emily: In fact, insurance companies are under increasing scrutiny for overcharging the government for Medicare Advantage. 

    The feds have been trying to impose some rules to cut down on those extra profits – all very technical stuff which we could devote a whole episode to.     

    Dan: Maybe we should

    Emily: Yeah and crackdown may have played a role in insurance companies pulling some of these plans off the market. And they say they’re gonna keep yanking more plans off the market unless they get MORE federal dollars. 

    Laura: They’re saying that their costs are going up for paying claims, which is probably true, and they point to market exits and other issues as, like, we need a pay bump here to stay in the market.

    Emily: All of this — pulling plans off the market, reducing benefits, trying to control who enrolls in their plans — all of this stuff is likely to keep happening. 

    So we should talk about what that looks like on the ground, and how seniors can navigate all these changes. 

    Remember Erin in Cambridge, Minnesota? 

    What happened to her really exemplifies how this kind of thing can play out. And how we can support each other.

    So Erin had gotten kicked off her plan when the whole enterprise behind it, UCare, collapsed.

    Erin had been really happy with UCare for the four years she was on one of their Advantage plans.

    Erin: You call their customer service and they are very helpful. I loved it.

    Emily:  she had access to specialists. 

    Erin: A thoracic, a neurologist, a urologist, a nephrology. An ENT specialist. 

    Emily: Erin had suffered four heart attacks in her late fifties. Because she couldn’t work, she started getting social security and Medicare early — when she was 58. She doesn’t really remember how she ended up picking Medicare Advantage over traditional Medicare.

    But it was working for her. Until they pulled the rug out from underneath her.

    Erin: I did not want them to go anywhere. I heard that, I was just in tears.

    I was so mad. I was like, “No. Now what do I do?” And I look at my husband and said, “Now what?” “

    Emily: And she says her husband had the answer immediately.

    Erin:Well, we’ll just call Desi.”

    Emily: We’ll just call Desi.

    Dan: Wait a minute–  Who is Desi?

    Emily: You gotta meet Desi. 

    Desi Panek: I’m Desi Panek, and I work at the Seven County Senior Federation here in Mora, Minnesota.

    Emily: That’s a member-led organization of seniors in eastern and central Minnesota who came together to advocate for themselves, and to help each other with transportation and other stuff seniors need. Including: signing up for — and dealing with — Medicare. 

    I met Desi and her boss Lisa Krahn, the Federation’s director, as they were gearing up for this year’s annual enrollment period. 

    Lisa: It can’t be as bad as it was last year 

    Emily: Yeah yeah. 

    Desi: We’ll find out soon. 

    Lisa: Oh, God 

    Emily: Yep, hold onto your hat. 

    Emily: Yep, they’re still dealing with the fallout from last year. This is Lisa:

    Lisa Krahn: Still quite a few people who show up, who are calling now, who don’t realize that they haven’t had a plan all year saying, “I just don’t have anything because my old plan left. Well, I wasn’t really paying attention to the mail they were sending me,” kind of a thing.

    Emily: Some of those people only found out when they got a bill in the mail. Or when they tried to pick up a prescription, and had to pay out of pocket cuz they didn’t have a drug plan anymore. 

    Luckily, Erin got the news before it was too late. She and her husband called Desi, and Desi helped them enroll in a new Medicare Advantage plan. Which Erin says, isn’t as good. 

    Erin: Right now I’ve got $1,700 out of pocket going to a pair of hearing aids

    Emily: She’s not a fan of the customer service. And she says she had to stop taking one of her preventative medications because her drug plan changed.

    Desi and Lisa are operating very much at ground level helping people like Erin, but they definitely have thoughts about the big picture –especially the stark choice between Medicare Advantage and traditional Medicare.

    Lisa Krahn: original Medicare is that thing you’ve been waiting your whole life to get. It’s good everywhere. And once you’re in, you’re in. 

    Emily: But it’s become too expensive for most people. Meanwhile, Medicare Advantage can really limit people’s access to care.

    Lisa Krahn: So, looking for a middle ground between those, it’s, it’s… There, there should be better choices, frankly, instead of such extreme ones.

    Desi Panek: Extreme is a really good word for that. I agree. 

    Emily: Extreme meaning there’s a big hole in one and there’s too many…

    Lisa Krahn: Restrictions on the other. But all the millions we’re dumping into advertising and these private companies, that could have filled the holes on original Medicare a long time ago. And that’s just antithetical to the function and the existence of the insurance industry, which, like the monarchy, maybe we can stop believing in. I’m revealing myself as a single-payer Medicare for All advocate, but we need better Medicare, frankly, you know? It always been shortchanged.

    Emily: Dan, speaking of Medicare For All.

    Dan: Yeah we really shouldn’t do an episode like this without mentioning it. Especially because it’s been coming up so much in this year’s election season. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary, and Medicare for All was his number-one pitch.

    Abdul El Sayed: Yes, we really can guarantee healthcare in this country. Yes, we really can do it while spending a lot less and getting a lot more if our healthcare doesn’t still fund tens of millions of dollars in healthcare CEO, uh, salaries on top of it.

    Emily: People like Lisa — and Abdul El-Sayed — think of Medicare for All as a way to also plug the holes in existing Medicare. 

    Dan: Well, huh. OK, I mean, one thing I’m really tuning into is that all these big gaps in Medicare are all driven by the fact that ALL of Medicare — our big public benefit — is actually set up so it requires insurance companies to make a profit in order for it to function. Whether they’re selling Medicare Advantage plans, or Medigap policies.

    But then, how do Medicare for All advocates say that spreading Medicare to everybody makes the math actually work better?

    Emily: It’s all about that term Julie Appleby introduced us to:  Risk pool. How “risky” the people you’re insuring — the pool — are as a whole. Meaning, how much health care they need on average. The calculations change a lot when the pool is everyone, including people who are 25 as well as 65 and 95 — and when tax money funds health care directly instead of filtering it through private health insurance companies to administer and also take a profit.

    In fact, a recent study out of Yale estimates that Medicare For All — that is a Medicare that is completely void of private insurance companies — would reduce annual health expenditures by 1 trillion dollars every year.

    Dan: But that’s not just taking insurance companies out of Medicare — it’s taking them out of the whole U.S. health care system.

    Emily: Right. In the meantime, some politicians in Washington are talking about tweaks — big and small — to just Medicare itself. 

    Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders–

    Dan: the original Mr. Medicare For All 

    Emily: Yeah – in the meantime, he says we should extend traditional Medicare to cover vision, hearing, and dental. He’s introduced a bill in the Senate to do just that. 

    And Oregon Senator Ron Wyden recently introduced a bill that would put an out-of-pocket max on traditional Medicare. That way, people wouldn’t need supplements as much, and Medicare Advantage wouldn’t look as tempting.

    Both of those ideas would mean putting more federal money toward traditional Medicare.

    Dan: Which doesn’t SEEM like something Congress is likely to do. But what this whole story shows is: it seems like it’s gonna cost us either way. Either we put more public dollars into traditional Medicare, or we keep paying higher prices, collectively and individually,

    As for the here and now. If you have Medicare Advantage, but you don’t have a Desi or a Lisa to call, Emily, they gave you a breakdown of what you need to know.

    Emily:Yep. Their first piece of advice: open every piece of mail from your insurance company. That’s where you’re going to find out whether your plan is being cancelled. Or where you might find out they’re trying to auto-enroll you into a new plan, which might not be the best one for you.

    Desi Panek: The past couple of years we’ve had plans that end a specific plan, but will auto-enroll the e- the enrollee into another plan in the same company.

    Lisa Krahn: Crosswalking

    Desi Panek: Yes, so that’s a big deal. Pay attention to your mail. Um, you’re gonna get stuck with huge premiums if you just let it roll.

    Emily: And find someone to talk to.

    Remember Kelli Jo who runs the Medicare hotline for Minnesota? Every single state has one of those agencies. They’re called SHIP — S H I P — state health insurance assistance program. Google your state, SHIP, and Medicare

    If you can’t get through, there’s always insurance brokers. Desi has some advice on measuring up whether a broker is trustworthy.

    Desi Panek: Ask them if they sell every product available to you in your area. That’s one of the biggest things. I think that a lot of people just assume they’re gonna go to a broker or an agent and they’re gonna get the full scope, and that’s not necessarily true.

    Emily: You might want someone who sells Medigap supplements as well as Advantage plans. Someone who does that may be less inclined to push you into whatever’s paying them the highest commissions.

    Desi Panek: Word of mouth is a big deal for a lot of people, so asking your friends, your neighbors, uh, “Who did you work with? Are you happy? Are you unhappy? What was the experience like?”

    Dan: Talking to your friends and neighbors. It’s like, we gotta rely on each other.

    Emily: Which is why I’m kind of obsessed with this Senior Federation thing. People banding together to share information and resources to navigate this ongoing mess.

    Desi and Lisa’s group has been operating since 1975. There used to be a robust network of similar groups across the state. Theirs is the last one, but Desi says they’re going strong.

    Desi Panek: We’ve got our beautiful community and our thrift stores that keep our doors open and allow us to give that good information out, um, whether it’s what people wanna hear or not.

    Dan: And it went by kinda fast but I think I heard her say thrift stores?

    Emily: Yep! They have a side hustle. 

    Lisa Krahn: We run two thrift stores, the One More Time stores, which give us financial independence. So we’re not dependent on just memberships and just counseling fees or service fees. 

    Emily: That’s awesome, yeah, I’m dying to go to those thrift stores. I saw it on the website and I was like…

    Desi Panek: Did you see that we won Minnesota’s best thrift store?

    Emily: Stop it.

    Desi Panek: I mean it.  

    Emily: That’s so cool. Oh my God. 

    Lisa Krahn: By the Minnesota Star Tribune, yes. It was a popularity contest.

    Emily: Amazing. Wow.

    Dan: Wow for sure. Emily, thank you so much for all of this reporting.

    So here’s where we landed: Medicare is way more broken than we knew!  And we already knew it was kind of a confusing mess with a lot of holes. 

    Fixing it will require a huge lift.  The kind of thing that hasn’t seemed like a political possibility. And everybody will have BIG differences of opinion about how a fix should work. There are people who think the government shouldn’t be involved in health care at all. 

    Meanwhile, we’ve got what we’ve got.  We’ve got each other. 

    And… you just never know what might be possible.

    Next time on An Arm and a Leg, we’ll hear about what might be the most radical health care experiment since Medicare itself. 

    And the two guys — a Democrat and a Republican — who made it happen.

    Till then, take care of yourself. 

    This episode of An Arm and a Leg was produced by Emily Pisacreta, with help from our summer intern Lynn Barbera and me, Dan Weissmann— and edited by Ellen Weiss. Izabella Kulkarni provided additional production help.

    Reporting for this story was supported in part by Arnold Ventures. Listeners like you are our biggest source of support, and we need you more than ever. If you like what you’re hearing and want it to continue, head to arm and a leg show dot com, slash, support.  

    Adam Raymonda is our audio wizard.

    Our music is by Dave Weiner and Blue Dot Sessions. 

    Amanda Boyd is our Operations Manager. Bea Bosco is our consulting director of operations. 

    An Arm and a Leg is produced in partnership with KFF Health News. That’s a national newsroom producing in-depth journalism about health issues in America and a core program at KFF, an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism.

    Zach Dyer is senior audio producer at KFF Health News. He’s editorial liaison to this show.

    An Arm and a Leg is distributed by KUOW, Seattle’s NPR news station.

    And thanks to the Institute for Nonprofit News for serving as our fiscal sponsor.

    They allow us to accept tax-exempt donations. You can learn more about INN at INN.org.

    Finally, thank you to everybody who supports this show financially. Listeners like you are our biggest source of funding.

    You can join in any time at arm and a leg show, dot com, slash: support.

    Thanks! And thanks for listening

  • Patient Dies by Suicide After ‘Insurance Issue’ Delayed Medicine for Lung Disease Flare-Ups

    Patient Dies by Suicide After ‘Insurance Issue’ Delayed Medicine for Lung Disease Flare-Ups

    If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental health crisis, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.”

    KYLE, Texas — Kenney Blewett was diagnosed with lung disease more than a decade ago but started experiencing flare-ups this year that made him feel like he couldn’t breathe.

    Blewett described those flare-ups as “the scariest thing in the world,” said his wife, Cindy, adding that while the episodes typically lasted no more than a few minutes, they had become more frequent.

    On top of that, simple tasks, like taking out the trash, left Blewett winded. He rarely left the house and had recently lost 45 pounds. “That sounds like cancer,” Cindy remembered one of his doctors said. It was clear, she said, that her husband’s poor health, tied to decades of smoking, was getting worse.

    That’s why, on June 2, Blewett’s pulmonologist wrote him a prescription for a new medication to improve the terrifying breathing issues caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. But the prescription wasn’t immediately filled. Two days after that doctor appointment, Blewett received an email from Walgreens explaining that, “due to an insurance issue that we’re working to resolve,” the medication was delayed.

    “He was hopeful that it would work,” Cindy said of the drug, two months after her husband’s death. “I wish we had the chance to find out.”

    Insurance delays and denials have become an infamous feature of the American healthcare system, with nearly 7 in 10 adults calling them “a major problem,” in a January KFF Health Tracking Poll.

    In June 2025, six months after UnitedHealthcare’s CEO was shot in New York, the Trump administration announced a highly publicized industry pledge, signed by dozens of major health insurers, to remove some of the barriers that block or delay patients from accessing doctor-recommended care. And yet that pledge was voluntary, and it carries no penalties if companies fail to comply. Indeed, a report published by KFF Health News in July found that some insurers that signed the pledge would not implement all the promised initiatives as originally outlined.

    Insurers Hedge on Trump-Backed Pledge To Improve Denials Process

    Last year, the Trump administration announced a voluntary pledge by dozens of insurers to improve prior authorization, which often requires patients to seek approval before treatments. But prior authorization remains commonplace, and there’s no evidence the government is trying to hold insurers to account.

    In recent years, lawmakers in most states, including Texas, have attempted to address delays and denials by regulating the insurance industry in the absence of substantial federal reform. But most health insurance plans, including traditional Medicare policies and employer-sponsored offerings, which together cover more than half of all Americans, typically aren’t under state jurisdiction.

    Even some medical office staff and pharmacy employees find the patchwork of state and federal insurance rules and regulations confusing, a problem that is poised to become more complicated as artificial intelligence plays a larger role in approving and processing claims.

    “It’s just gotten completely out of hand,” said Matt Toresco, CEO of Archō, a patient advocacy and consulting company. He argued that patients need more assistance facing insurance hurdles.

    The Blewetts’ story illustrates how navigating these complexities remains a herculean task for patients and their caregivers.

    Cindy has sought answers from Medicare; Kenney’s private Part D drug plan; his pulmonologist’s office; and Walgreens. She still has questions about who was responsible for the medication delay and how the holdup could have been prevented.

    If the COPD flare-up Blewett experienced on the afternoon of Sunday, June 7, could have been avoided, she wondered, would he still have chosen to die by suicide that night?

    A photo of a man standing in the woods seen on a laptop.
    Kenney Blewett, who was diagnosed with lung disease more than a decade ago, died by suicide in June. The Blewetts celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary earlier this year. (Callie Richmond for KFF Health News)

    ‘Complex and Convoluted’

    During that first week of June, Cindy said her husband repeatedly asked if his prescription — a liquid medication meant to be inhaled through the nebulizer machine Kenney owned — was ready to be picked up from Walgreens.

    Cindy said she wasn’t initially surprised or worried by the delay. Since its acquisition by a private equity firm last year, Walgreens has cut thousands of jobs across the country, according to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project. Cindy said in August that their Walgreens pharmacy in Kyle seemed to her to have been understaffed for months, and that prescriptions were being filled more slowly.

    When Cindy called the pharmacy a few days after Kenney’s appointment to find out more about the insurance delay, she said, a Walgreens employee told her the prescription required prior authorization. Also called preapproval or precertification, prior authorization is a practice widely used by health insurers that requires medical providers to seek permission before their patients may receive covered treatment.

    But Cindy didn’t know which of Kenney’s insurers required prior authorization for this medication.

    For years, she had helped manage multiple policies on behalf of her husband. Kenney was insured by Medicare parts A and B, the federal health insurance program for people 65 and older or with disabilities. But he also had a private Part D plan to cover drug costs through Wellcare Value Script, as well as a Medicare supplement plan through Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas — also called a “Medigap” plan — that paid for other out-of-pocket costs.

    Initially, Cindy assumed that Kenney’s Part D plan had invoked prior authorization for his new medication. But because it was a liquid that is inhaled through a nebulizer machine, this drug was one of relatively few covered by Medicare Part B’s durable medical equipment benefit, not Part D.

    The federal government had no record showing that this prescription had been billed to Kenney’s Part B policy, the Medicare agency told Cindy over the phone, she said.

    Sarah Tanner and Myriea Amaya, spokespeople for Centene, Wellcare Value Script’s parent company, would not answer questions for this article.

    After Kenney’s death, when Blewett sought clarification at the Walgreens pharmacy, she said the employee “kept saying different things.” She recalled his explaining that the prescription was submitted to Medicare Part B but without a necessary diagnostic code that the doctor should have included.

    Carmen Lopez, a spokesperson for Walgreens, told KFF Health News in late September that the company “cannot comment on matters involving specific individuals.”

    Subsequently, Cindy said, a district pharmacy supervisor for Walgreens reached out by phone, and told her the pharmacy tried to process the prescription through Part B on June 2, the same day as the pulmonologist appointment, but that the prescription was missing a diagnostic code from the physician. The supervisor said Walgreens sent a request for that code to the pulmonologist’s office later that day, Cindy recalled.

    Kenney’s pulmonologist — Rajesh Shetty of LungDocs — did not respond to phone or email messages from KFF Health News. But Cindy said an employee at the practice told her they did not see a fax from Walgreens asking for a diagnostic code for the prescription.

    Meanwhile, it couldn’t have been an issue with Kenney’s Medigap plan, since those policies don’t require prior authorization.

    “Short of getting attorneys involved,” Cindy said, “I’m not sure how to find out what really happened.”

    Cindy Blewett stands on her porch in front of her home. Foliage and plants from her garden on seen to the left.
    Cindy Blewett tried to figure out which of her husband’s insurers required prior authorization for his medication. (Callie Richmond for KFF Health News)

    More Red Tape Ahead

    Confusion surrounding these Part B and Part D distinctions is common, said Mike Hess, senior director of advocacy and regulatory affairs at the nonprofit COPD Foundation. “Medicare has gotten to be so complex and convoluted over the years,” he said, that even medical office staff and pharmacy employees often misunderstand the nuances.

    And with the introduction of AI to the preapproval process, navigating insurance hurdles will likely get more complex for Medicare beneficiaries, doctors say.

    Historically, traditional Medicare, unlike Medicare Advantage, used prior authorization sparingly. But in January, Medicare launched a pilot program in six states — Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington — testing the use of AI to preapprove some healthcare services.

    It is intended to “root out waste in Original Medicare,” CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz has said, but physicians and patients say the program is creating more red tape for Medicare beneficiaries and leading to inappropriate denials. The pilot program does not currently impose prior authorization requirements on COPD medications, but industry experts expect the scope of the initiative will grow to include more services and states.

    On the night of June 7, hours after her husband’s last COPD flare-up, Cindy Blewett was sitting on their back porch when she heard a loud noise. She assumed a picture had fallen off the wall in the living room. In fact, it was a gunshot. She discovered Kenney’s body in their bedroom.

    “I can’t tell you how horrible it was,” Cindy said.

    She said her husband had struggled with his mental health for a long time and had attempted suicide once before, years ago. His deteriorating health only made things worse, she said.

    Kenney confirmed that much in a note he left. He told Cindy that she was a wonderful wife, mother, and grandmother but that his health was too poor to continue living.

    A photo of a dark blue urn on a black table. A glass goblet is seen behind the urn.
    Cindy Blewett keeps an urn of her husband’s ashes. (Callie Richmond for KFF Health News)

    A second COPD medication, which his pulmonologist ordered directly from the drug manufacturer during the June 2 appointment, arrived several weeks after Kenney’s suicide, she said.

    “Perhaps, just perhaps,” Cindy said, “if he had received both medications in a timely manner, he would be here today, and we would have had many more years together.”

    Do you have an experience with prior authorization you’d like to share? Click here to tell KFF Health News your story.

    [Correction: This article was revised at 11 a.m. ET on Oct. 2, 2026, to correct the description of Mike Hess’ role at the COPD Foundation.]

  • The MAHA Metamorphosis

    The MAHA Metamorphosis

    [Editor’s note: This transcript was generated using transcription software. It has been edited for style and clarity.] 

    Julie Rovner: Hello, from KFF Health News and WAMU Public Radio in Washington, D.C. Welcome to What the Health? I’m Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for KFF Health News. And, as always, I’m joined by some of the best and smartest health reporters covering Washington. We’re taping this week on Thursday, Oct. 1, at 10 a.m. As always, news happens fast, and things might have changed by the time you hear this. So, here we go. 

    Today we are joined via videoconference by Rachel Roubein of The Washington Post. 

    Rachel Roubein: Hey, everybody. 

    Rovner: Shefali Luthra of The 19th. 

    Shefali Luthra: Hello. 

    Rovner: And my KFF Health News colleague Rachana Pradhan. 

    Rachana Pradhan: Hi, Julie. 

    Rovner: Later in this episode, we’ll have my interview with Dr. Aaron Carroll of AcademyHealth about the undoing of the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, AHRQ, where most of the staff has been laid off or retired, and hundreds of grants have been canceled midcycle. But first, this week’s news. 

    So we haven’t talked about the Make America Healthy Again movement in a while. It was a big week for MAHA here in Washington, D.C., with a gigantic summit at what used to be the Trump [International] Hotel, down the street from the White House. But it was hardly the event you’d expect if you still think of MAHA as moms who want their kids to have access to healthier food grown with fewer pesticides. Rather, this event featured representatives from health companies with business before the federal government, paying sponsorships of up to $300,000 each to sit on panels with officials from said government to talk about everything from the use of psychedelic drugs to fraud-fighting to wearables and AI [artificial intelligence]. The panel featuring Medicare and Medicaid chief Dr. [Mehmet] Oz was somewhat bizarrely moderated by comedian Russell Brand, who’s awaiting trial on sexual misconduct charges back in England. What was this event supposed to accomplish? 

    Roubein: I think you kind of hit the nail on the head in terms of just thinking about the MAHA movement and sort of where it’s going next, because you had some people, more sort of MAHA activists, who were upset that it didn’t talk about some of the core issues of the MAHA base, like vaccines, like pesticides. There have been some influential MAHA activists who’ve been upset at the administration and disillusioned that it hasn’t done more to crack down on pesticide use, etc., have been upset at the Trump administration, and have been saying just weeks before the midterm elections that Republicans may lose some of these votes, and some so-called MAHA moms might sit out the elections. And I don’t think this summit did anything to persuade them to go and vote Republican in the midterms. 

    Rovner: Yeah, it did seem, it seemed a great get-together if you wanted to sort of commune with the people who regulate your products, on a public stage. But both the president and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have felt free of late to talk about vaccines, although obviously not at this summit. But it seems that the issue that had united most of MAHA that we were just talking about, pesticides and ultraprocessed food, have been back-burnered by the White House. Rachel, you wrote a story about this. What happened to the food agenda? 

    Roubein: Pretty notably, one of the big potential parts of the food agenda is this petition that was filed by David Kessler. He’s the former head of the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] under both Republican and Democratic administrations. And his petition, essentially — I talked to food safety experts about it — could have launched a process that could have forced the industry to reformulate some ultraprocessed foods eventually. So that could have been a big deal. The status of it: It was filed August 2025, and Kennedy earlier this year had done a response to it, where he wanted to have food companies produce any detailed safety studies showing that certain ingredients common in ultraprocessed foods are generally safe. And what I had heard from talking to people is that that potential push had been slow-walked at the White House. I obtained a March draft of the letter that Kennedy sent to the White House for review. Now, HHS pushed back on the assertion that it was slow-walked, but this isn’t the first time that administration officials had wanted to and planned to announce something. They had been working on a definition of ultraprocessed foods that they wanted to release back in August, and that was delayed at the last minute, them just putting out more information about this draft definition. 

    Rovner: I feel like there’s this tension between the MAHA movement, which started as a grassroots movement to crack down on corporate power, and the White House is sort of wanting to deregulate everything. Those two things seem to be kind of at loggerheads, and it looks for now like the corporations are winning. We saw this with the pesticides earlier in the year, with glyphosate, that the agricultural community fought back and said, You can’t make us stop using it, because we need it to produce food. And now it seems that the food producers are saying: You have a deregulatory agenda. Why are you talking about regulating us more? Is that, am I reading this right that the corporate power is winning, at least so far? 

    Pradhan: It’s still a Republican administration, right? Regardless of Secretary Kennedy’s sort of mandate and passions, he’s still working with and for people who do not like to use government to restrict or regulate or ban things. Even, if you think about, we’ve come a long way since this point. But when former first lady Michelle Obama tried to put healthier foods in schools, she was roundly criticized for embodying a nanny state and all these things. And now, the political winds have shifted. But I still think to go up against the party’s kind of traditional views on regulating business and corporate interests, it’s a swamp. What are you going to do? They’re not going to want to regulate a lot. And like you said, Julie, there are ample actions to date that show that there isn’t necessarily a desire to impose more regulations. It’s also an election year. They may not want to antagonize corporate interests when you’re trying to not see huge losses, especially in potentially the House and maybe even the Senate. 

    Rovner: Yeah, they have enough people who are mad at them. They don’t want to add to it. 

    Pradhan: Exactly. 

    Rovner: Well, of course, with every political split comes a new political opportunity. In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, who’s a prominent supporter of “Medicare for All,” is now trying to grab back some of those Democrats who gravitated to MAHA by unveiling something he’s calling the “Building a Healthier America” agenda, focusing on fewer pesticides, cleaner water, and healthier food. Rachel, you wrote about this. Might it work? Might Democrats be able to sort of reclaim some of these people who drifted to the Republicans along with RFK Jr.? 

    Roubein: I think it’s something that particularly some progressive Democrats are looking to, and they might look to do if they win back the House. In the Farm Bill, you saw Republicans and — some Republicans — and Democrats push back against giving pesticide makers immunity liability shields. But I think it remains an open question. And I think it also depends on the different groups, in terms of MAHA. Tony Lyons at MAHA Action has said that they want there to be an alliance with Republicans. But you also see this with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez trying to court some MAHA activists her way. So I think it’s an open question in terms of how this movement unfolds and whether there are any deviations towards the left. But it is a hard sell in some ways. Vaccines are a big part of a lot of people in the MAHA base. And when I asked El-Sayed about this, he said they’re, like, We’re going to agree to disagree on vaccines. 

    Rovner: Yeah, he’s trained as a doctor and he does believe in vaccines. And he was the head of public health at the city of Detroit. He’s definitely not with the anti-vaccine types. But it’s important to remember that the original anti-vax movement was a combination of people from the far right and from the far left. So there have always been a lot of Democrats in the anti-vax movement, and this has been a group that’s been kind of up for grabs. And we will, I guess we’ll see how it will all shake out. 

    Roubein: And some of the things on food Sen. Bernie Sanders has said for a long time, too. So there has always sort of been some of that intersection on certain issues. 

    Rovner: Yeah. Well, originally RFK Jr. was running as a Democrat before he took up with the Trump team. All right. Moving on. Today is Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year. Happy FY 2027, everyone. The Trump administration marked the day a little early, informing Congress last Friday that it was declining to spend more than $800 billion, in what’s called a pocket rescission. That’s when an administration declines to spend money appropriated by Congress so close to the end of the fiscal year that it basically can’t be spent at all and Congress doesn’t have time to disapprove it. The majority of this funding is from HHS, largely for programs to help noncitizens and for what the administration calls, quote, “overfunded and unaligned” HHS research programs. That includes many related to minority health. Congressional spending leaders, including Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins of Maine, complained that pocket rescissions are illegal under a law called the Impoundment Control Act, and the Government Accountability Office issued an opinion this week backing that claim up. But, as we know, this administration likes to dare courts to stop it from doing things that just about everybody else acknowledges is illegal. And I guess that’s where we are here? 

    Luthra: No, I was just thinking, right? It’s October. Everything that happens now, we also think about in the context of an election, and I think a dynamic that we have talked about a lot is this effort by the administration to just sort of do what it would like to do with funding, even when many people might say that is not how the laws and separation of powers are supposed to work. And I think something really interesting for us to consider is whether those dynamics do, in fact, change in the new year. Given what Rachana mentioned earlier, there is a very good chance that Democrats control both chambers of Congress, not just one. And [does] that possibility of conflict with another branch in Washington change what behavior we see from the White House? I think that’s a really interesting question and something that we should be thinking about as the election gets closer, and then again depending on what the results end up being. 

    Rovner: Yeah, one of the really weedy issues here is who gets to sue the administration to say that, Hey, you’re not allowed to not spend money that we’ve appropriated. It was important that they came out and said that this was illegal, because the GAO, under the law, has standing to sue. But they don’t have a confirmed leader at this point, and Susan Collins was asked about this and said they may be a little bit wary to kind of get out in front of Congress. But I think it’s probably fair to say that if Democrats take back the House and Senate, that they would be more likely to want to either — I think that the Congress itself can sue the administration, can go to court and say, Hey, you can’t do this, which obviously the Republican Congress hasn’t wanted to do. But a Democratic Congress might. 

    Pradhan: What — has GAO ever been known to sue? 

    Rovner: That’s a good question. I can’t remember. We’ve had fights about rescissions before. 

    Pradhan: Yeah. 

    Rovner: But it’s — Russell Vought, the head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, says publicly that he thinks that the Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional and therefore they don’t have to obey it. That’s clearly something for a court to determine. That’s clearly something for the Supreme Court to determine. We haven’t gotten there yet, but most of the time, I think, we’ve had lower courts that have warned the administration: Um, hey, there’s this law that says you can’t do that. You have to spend money the way Congress says you should spend money. The last time we had a pocket rescission, I looked it up, was last year when this administration did the same thing. That was the USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development] money. So before that, I’m not sure when. I may go back and have a look. Shefali, to your point, that was my next question anyway. It’s like, I would think that the one thing that is likely to change if the Democrats take Congress — obviously, we have two more years of the Trump administration — but I would think they would be a lot more zealous in guarding their spending power than this Congress has been. 

    Luthra: One would imagine. It seems hard to abdicate the power that one might want. That’s how separation of powers, in theory, is supposed to work. 

    Rovner: And it is kind of written into the Constitution. 

    Pradhan: I do wonder, though, if they think that, if they wouldn’t get a good, friendly decision from a court … 

    Rovner: The Supreme Court. Yeah. 

    Pradhan: Yeah. That could be far more damaging in the long term, right? 

    Rovner: Yes. There is the concern that the Supreme Court would agree with Russell Vought that the Impoundment Control Act … 

    Pradhan: Right. 

    Rovner: … is unconstitutional. That is a risk that they would run. 

    Pradhan: Right. 

    Rovner: Well, that will happen. We will see what happens with that. All right. So, obviously these latest cuts aren’t the only ones to HHS that have been made since [President Donald] Trump returned to office in 2025. We will talk more about what’s happened at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in this week’s interview, but I want to talk a little bit right now about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose workforce we now know is down by almost a third, according to The New York Times. Quote: “The changes have hindered the C.D.C.’s ability to respond to outbreaks as measles spreads at home and Ebola abroad,” while, quote, “entire divisions have been shuttered, including teams that worked on smoking, sexual violence, child abuse and falls among older adults.” Separately, but not really separately, the CDC’s advisory committee on vaccine practices has ground to a halt after a judge struck down Kennedy’s replacement members as unqualified. Medical societies have stepped in with their own vaccine recommendations for this fall, but the official CDC guidance is already out of date because there’s no ACIP [Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices] to make recommendations. This is all going to come home to roost the next time we have a bad flu season, I imagine. 

    Pradhan: Yeah, I think that the Times, the New York Times, story, what I thought was really, kind of what they led with, was that even though last year you had these widespread firings across HHS and different agencies, including the CDC — the CDC at that time we know lost about 1 in 5 workers — but really the true scale of the losses is much higher. It’s about 30% fewer employees. But the CDC has really had a rough go of it. I think it probably was the — it was the poster child for everything that went wrong during the pandemic, in Republicans’ view. And so they’ve been very keen on dismantling a lot of that agency, more so than the FDA and more so than the NIH [National Institutes of Health], for example, even though they’ve also seen a lot of staff reductions. But CDC, I think, has been so crippled for so long, both because of the staff reductions and just the awful morale at the agency because of everything that the current political leadership has done since. Yeah. 

    Rovner: I would say, and the politicization of its leadership, things that were long run by career scientists in Democratic and Republican administrations that are now being run by political appointees, who are rather pointedly not scientists … 

    Pradhan: Yeah. 

    Rovner: … running this very scientifically driven agency. And of course we’ve had a fifth measles death in Pennsylvania now, that apparently the CDC is still not acknowledging the measles deaths in Pennsylvania. So there are still a lot of questions. The CDC does have, unlike several of the other HHS agencies, does have a Senate-confirmed leader. But so far, we haven’t heard very much from her. I guess we are all still sort of waiting to see what happens, but in the meantime, I can just imagine if we have a bad flu season or some other respiratory ailment that could have been prevented if CDC had been up to date with its vaccine recommendations, things could get rather loud and nasty later this winter. 

    Roubein: Some of the vaccine recommendations, some of this is very much tied into the lawsuit, just like the high-level ACIP not putting more vaccine recommendations out. And this part has had somewhat of a snowball effect, like the Vaccines for Children Program, giving out free vaccines to uninsured, underinsured kids, that was held up for about a month. That is now going through, but they had to kind of work through: What are the recommendations going to be? And they ended up going with prior recommendations because there is not an ACIP to meet. So some of this has been tied up in legal limbo. And yeah, on the measles deaths, CDC is now acknowledging two out of the five that Pennsylvania has reported. 

    Rovner: There we go. We’re finally hearing something. All right, we’re going to take a quick break. We will be right back. 

    Turning to reproductive health, the Hyde Amendment — that’s the annual appropriations rider that bars federal funding for abortion in most cases — turns 50 this week, which, as one abortion rights group pointed out, means that the ban itself has now been in effect longer than Roe v. Wade was in force. Shefali, what’s been the impact of the Hyde Amendment on the ground? What does it actually mean for people who are seeking reproductive care? 

    Luthra: It’s a bit more complicated than I think people might initially realize. The Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortion — functionally, Medicaid. And so Medicaid programs are jointly funded by state governments and federal governments. If you are in a state where the state government does not want to put money into paying for Medicaid coverage of abortion, your abortion will not be covered, especially if you are low-income. Most people who get abortions are people who cannot afford another child. They are parents already. They are largely people who are low-income and rely on something like Medicaid. However, there are states, the Californias, etc., of the world, that have made a point of putting state funds into their Medicaid programs. So in some states, you can get Medicaid to cover your abortion. That’s really helpful. It makes this procedure much more affordable. It can cost hundreds of dollars, sometimes a lot more, depending on where you are in your pregnancy, to get an abortion. But, of course, the fact that this has existed for so long has absolutely made it harder for people, often those who are most financially vulnerable, to get abortions. What you often hear from those patients, though, when I speak to them, is, like, This is something I really can’t afford right now, but I will pay for it anyway because I really can’t afford another child. I think the Hyde Amendment is really striking in that it makes this thing much harder to get. But for a lot of people, it doesn’t necessarily stop them from getting it, because it is just so important to them. 

    Rovner: It’s ironic that something that has to, literally Congress has to pass every year — it is a rider on a spending bill. Democrats have tried various ways to get rid of it, always failed. Even when we had a Congress that supported abortion rights, they could not get this out. It is just sort of part of the landscape now, isn’t it? 

    Luthra: And part of it is, I think, demonstrative of one of the more effective anti-abortion lines a lot of Republicans have. Abortion public opinion is very complicated. And people support abortion rights in the abstract, but when you get into more specifics, their views become more complicated. And one framing a lot of the GOP has really found success with is saying, We don’t support taxpayer funding of abortion. And that really works because people will hear that and they say: Oh, well, that sounds very extreme. I support this for other people, but, like, my tax dollars, they can’t fund that. And that is the line that has been used to keep Medicaid from paying for abortions, to keep the Hyde Amendment intact, and to keep other federal programs as well from making this more available. And I think it’s perhaps more politically complicated than first blush at abortion polling data might suggest to undo something like this, 

    Rovner: I absolutely agree. Well, still, anti-abortion forces remain intent on cutting off the main remaining source of access to abortion, the abortion pill mifepristone. This week, the attorneys general of Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas filed suit in federal district court — not at the Supreme Court, which the group’s press release says — to strike down the shield laws in New York, Massachusetts, and California. Those are the laws that enable doctors in those states to provide telehealth appointments to people in ban states seeking to terminate their pregnancies. Shefali, there’s already a lawsuit on mifepristone making its way through the courts, and it’s from Louisiana. How is this one different? 

    Luthra: This one is different because it specifically goes after shield laws and it challenges their constitutionality. That is a different argument. It is more sweeping. It could be the thing that finally gets the Supreme Court to weigh in on this issue. Right? It’s a very, very big legal question, something that constitutional scholars have believed, since the enactment of shield laws will ultimately be settled by the Supreme Court. However, I think it’s really important for us to take this suit with context. As you mentioned, there are so many cases making their way through the courts right now around how people get abortions, the provision of mifepristone, shield laws, etc., etc. We don’t know which one will end up at the Supreme Court. We don’t know how courts will rule. This is just one more quiver in the bow that abortion opponents are trying to use to stop this telehealth model that has found quite a bit of success. We will see which one lands. It very well could be this one, but, at this point, we just don’t know. 

    Rovner: Yeah, and I should point out that the other Louisiana case is about FDA and its approval of mifepristone to be prescribed via telehealth. So, and of course, we’re also waiting for the administration to do, to finish its FDA safety review, which we expect to see sometime after the election. Speaking of which, abortion is not quite the high-profile electoral issue this year that it was in 2024, but there’s still several abortion-related ballot initiatives to be voted on this year. Shefali, any that you’re watching particularly closely? Or any of the others of you? 

    Luthra: I am personally very interested in the Idaho measure and the Missouri one. I spent a bit of time in both of those states learning about what’s happening there over the past month. I think it’s really fascinating. In Missouri, it’s a very strange case. Two years ago, voters amended their constitution and said, We will protect abortion rights. Abortion is now legal in Missouri, a state run by very, very anti-abortion lawmakers. Those same lawmakers were horrified by this finding, and so they have put forth a new ballot measure that would overturn the 2024 result, and it would amend the state constitution to ban abortion. And if that passes, Missouri’s constitution would be the only state constitution to explicitly ban abortion. That’s a really big deal. If this passes, it could set an example to other states where voters have said, We support abortion rights and lawmakers have felt very frustrated by that. Polling right now is a very even split. There is a lot of money. We will see what happens. But I think this is a really interesting case for us to be following. 

    Rovner: And it’s super confusing because they just voted on this. 

    Luthra: It’s so confusing. And it’s called Amendment 3. If you look at two years ago, the abortion rights measure was also called Amendment 3, and so you might be like: Well, I just voted on Amendment 3. I voted for it. I should vote for it again. And in fact, that would be the opposite. And I’ve spoken to people … 

    Pradhan: That’s very confusing. That’s very confusing. How are people supposed to keep up with all this? I can barely keep up with it. 

    Luthra: How are they supposed to keep up with all of it? That’s such a good question. 

    Pradhan: It’s a lot. 

    Luthra: But no, and I’ve spoken to people who work in politics in the area, and they had no idea this was even on the ballot. And I was like, That’s also really striking that abortion has faded from a lot of the political consciousness. But actually there’s this measure that could have really sweeping consequences and really inspire similar action in other states. And the Idaho measure, I think, also very interesting. That would actually not amend the constitution. It would just pass a law that would overturn Idaho’s very, very strict abortion ban, which has sparked all these headlines — women being airlifted to Utah for medical emergencies, doctors leaving, labor and delivery wards shutting down because the law is so strict there. It’s really an open question, but there is some polling that suggests that this could pass. They have gotten a lot of support from Democrats, but also independents, also Republicans. A lot of people in Idaho who were never really politically engaged very deeply are, because this abortion ban has been so sweeping, affected so many of them so personally. If it passes, the legislature could vote to overturn it, and we’ve seen that happen in states around the country. But I think we don’t know, A) if it will pass and, B) if it did how lawmakers might react. There’s a real chance — right? — that they are just so surprised that this happens that maybe you do reconsider the politics of instituting an abortion ban when voters rejected one. But absolutely worth following and seeing what happens in this case, for political reasons but also because a lot of people’s lives could be really, really fundamentally changed as a result of it. 

    Roubein: Missouri sounds like such an interesting test case, because I remember back in 2022, after the Supreme Court decision, abortion rights groups were really grasping for a strategy, so they were throwing a bunch of different things at the wall, lawsuits, and then they tried the ballot measures, and it just seemed to work and take off steam. So that’s pretty interesting. 

    Rovner: Yeah, and of course, as you pointed out, Missouri has some of the most strident anti-abortion lawmakers in Congress. Josh Hawley, the senator whose wife is one of the lawyers for the anti-abortion, for the main anti-abortion legal group. So Missouri is one of those states that’s got all of the poles represented, and we will have to see how that all comes out. 

    Pradhan: Can I make one last addendum on the abortion thing, which is because I’m a Virginia resident? Actually, I was talking to my husband the other day. I said, “Oh, this is how you know that Democrats are in charge,” or we have a relatively new Democratic governor. So now there’s a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot to amend the state constitution to codify abortion being legal until 28 weeks, so basically through the first two trimesters. Which, you know, Virginia is interesting. I’m biased because I live here, but it’s, of course, trended blue with many prior elections, like leading up to now. But parts of the state are very, very conservative. 

    Rovner: Yeah, Virginia is still the South in a lot of ways. 

    Pradhan: Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it doesn’t take you long to figure that out once you leave the D.C. area, and there’s a lot of religious-based opposition to abortion. So I’m not sure how it’ll do, whether people will support it or not. 

    Rovner: I’m curious whether — if we really are looking at a blue wave, and we certainly see a lot of Democrats in unlikely states who seem to have at least a chance of getting elected because of the frustration, mostly with the economy — whether that will bring along some of these other issues in a way that it might not have. Because, as we say all the time, midterms are about turnout, and it looks like the motivated voters this time are bluer than redder. But I guess that’s another thing that we will have to wait and see. 

    All right, that is this week’s news. Now we’ll play my interview with Aaron Carroll of AcademyHealth, and then we will come back and do our extra credits.  

    I am pleased to welcome back to the podcast Dr. Aaron Carroll, president and CEO of AcademyHealth, which supports the health services research community. Aaron Carroll, thank you so much for being here. 

    Aaron Carroll: Always a pleasure. 

    Rovner: So I’ve asked you here to talk about the Trump administration’s effective dismantling of the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, which even many of our very nerdy listeners might not have heard of. But first, tell us what health services research is and how it differs from the biomedical research that most people are more familiar with. 

    Carroll: I think everybody really gets what we might call discovery research, which is about learning new things at a cellular, molecular, you know, body level — the creation of drugs, the creation of new procedures. You know, everybody sort of understands why we need to do that. But that’s only part of the problem. The bigger problem is how do we actually get that to where people are? So health services research focuses on: How do we improve the access, the quality, and the cost of a healthcare system? Another way I like to think about it is that everything that people hate about healthcare is what health services research focuses on. It costs too much? Yeah, that’s health services research. You can’t get in to see the clinician you want? Wait times are too long? That’s health services research. You feel like you’re not getting the quality that you should, or you’re worried that you know chronic diseases on …? That’s health services research. We spend very little time and very little money, unfortunately, on that type of research. But it’s just as important as discovery research, and I think that one of the reasons why we continue to be so dissatisfied with the healthcare system is because we’re not committed to studying and improving those things in the same way we are discovery. 

    Rovner: So how does AHRQ facilitate that, or how has AHRQ facilitated that? 

    Carroll: Sure. So, I mean, some of it is by creating and maintaining some of the big databases that people use to study the healthcare system, things like MEPS or other related databases. 

    Rovner: MEPS is the Medical Expenditures … 

    Carroll: Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. Yes, but I think the bigger way is that they give out independent investigator grants the same way that the NIH does. It just focuses more on health services research, and sometimes they have, you know, different areas that they choose to focus on, depending on the administration, because every administration should get to set priorities or, you know, decide what they think are most important. But they usually give out lots of grants, and I’ve had some over my career, that allow you to do all kinds of research to try to examine how you might improve the way that people receive care or pay for care or get care. 

    Rovner: And some of that research has actually created improvements in the healthcare system, is that fair to say?  

    Carroll: Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, the reason that, like, we landed on, say, $35 for insulin is because of health services research. It’s because of research that was done that found that that was sort of the inflection point. That when out-of-pocket costs got above that amount, people stopped taking their insulin as they should. And I understand the need for some copays — and obviously, we have a healthcare system. … But it’s, like, finding that kind of stuff out is health services research. And, you know, even some of the grants that were canceled this year would make sense to any, everyday Americans. Like, how do we improve the way that hospitals use antibiotics so we get less resistance, or how do we improve care using telehealth so that kids can get better asthma care or autism diagnoses? These are not discoveries in the sense of new medications, but they are things that we need to learn how to do to make the healthcare system work for everyone. 

    Rovner: So I actually covered the creation of not just AHRQ, but of its predecessor agency, the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, way back in 1989, when I was a baby healthcare reporter. It was not just a bipartisan agency. Its creation was spearheaded by Republicans who wanted to know, basically, which medical interventions worked and whether the U.S. was getting its money’s worth on medical procedures. The reinvention of the agency 10 years later was led by Sen. Bill Frist, a Republican former transplant surgeon who later served as the Senate’s majority leader. So, how did the Trump administration come to view this agency as so “woke” that it basically needed to be disassembled? 

    Carroll: I don’t know. And again, if you don’t like the research priorities, it is perfectly reasonable for an administration to say, Let’s change them. And if they decided they wanted to focus on cost, OK. If they decided they wanted to focus on access, OK. There’s so many different ways to do this, but what they’ve done instead is apparently cancel a ton of grants that were already ongoing — and I’d be happy to talk about more specifics about that — but also they just are not spending the money. In fiscal year 2025, there was a significant amount of money that wasn’t spent. Many believe that’s an illegal impoundment, and there’s a case working its way through the courts right now, led by the Society for General Internal Medicine and Public Citizen, and they actually folded in some of the cancellation grants. But in fiscal year 2026, almost no money has been given out for new grants. Today, as we’re taping this, it is the last day of the fiscal year. I have no idea how possibly they’re going to spend the $345 million that was appropriated in 2026. A lot of that is not going to go out the door. In answer to that, they have said that 97% is being on track to be spent. I don’t know how that’s possible. And it’s very, very likely, again, we’re going to see a ton of money unspent, and I imagine lawsuits and more yelling will follow. 

    Rovner: So, Congress appropriated this money. The president signed the appropriations bill. What can Congress do, and why isn’t Congress doing something? 

    Carroll: So I ask those same questions every day. I don’t understand how Congress is not out of its mind. I mean, this is not something, again, from the “woke” Biden administration. This is this Congress, this House, this Senate passed a budget in a bipartisan manner, that was then signed by the president of the United States — this president — into law. The money’s been appropriated. … In fact, there was specific language in the budget that required HHS to staff up to make sure that they could spend this money. They have not staffed up. They have not spent the money. I don’t know how Congress is not losing their minds. It is an absolute ignoring the law. It is absolutely ignoring Congress’ will. I know there’s a GAO investigation. I know questions have been asked, and I don’t think answers have been given. It makes no sense whatsoever. I don’t know, again, why Congress isn’t screaming and yelling and taking action. Now, what action should they take? Hearings, oversight, make sure that all of this happens. Haul people in to session and find out why are they not following the law, and force the executive branch, as the legislative branch should do, as an equal part of our government, to follow the law. 

    Rovner: And it’s not just the grants. I mean, most of the staff has now been basically terminated. 

    Carroll: Yeah. Well, that’s what I mean. And there are now minimum staffing requirements in the law, and those are not being followed. I mean, depending upon whose estimates you believe, somewhere between 75% and 90% of AHRQ staff have either been let go or have left the organization. We can’t get exact numbers because they won’t release them. But there aren’t enough people even to process or put the money out the door. Even if they decided today we’ve got to get all the money, it’s not possible. There just aren’t people there to fill out the forms, check the budgets, do all the due diligence, administer the grants, oversee it. There’s no one there, and it’s an absolute abdication of their responsibility to enact the budget and the law as Congress has appropriated and put forth. 

    Rovner: Last question: What would it mean — I mean, what would the loss, basically, of what AHRQ has been doing for these last 26 years mean — to the healthcare system and how it runs? 

    Carroll: I mean, we spend $40-some billion a year on the NIH — I think about $47 billion. AHRQ, again, is $345 million. So we have been massively underspending on sort of what I would call “delivery” research on how the healthcare system works. And it’s one of the reasons why Americans are getting angrier and angrier every year because they’re, like, Why won’t things get better? Well, we’re not funding it enough. We’re not doing enough. And then, what little we were doing, they canceled in July and refused to spend now. So, what’ll happen? We will remain just as angry, if not angrier, about how much we’re paying for healthcare. We will remain just as angry, if not angrier, about how we can’t get what we need, and we’ll remain just as angry, if not angrier, about the fact that we can spend all this money that we do, $5 trillion-plus, and still feel like we’re not getting the quality, and continue to complain about how unhealthy we all are. AHRQ is the solution to a lot of these problems, and, for some reason, we just won’t use it. 

    Rovner: Aaron Carroll, we will stay on top of this. We will revisit it. I promise. 

    Carroll: I’m glad to hear that. 

    Rovner: Thank you. 

    Carroll: Thank you. 

    Rovner: OK, we’re back. Now it’s time for our extra-credit segment. That’s where we each recognize a story we read this week we think you should read, too. Don’t worry if you miss it. We will post the links in our show notes on your phone or other mobile device. Rachel, why don’t you go first this week? 

    Roubein: My extra credit is headlined “Once Described as Obesity Medicines for ‘Patients,’ GLP-1s Are Increasingly Lifestyle Drugs for ‘Customers.’” It was in Stat by Elaine Chen. I thought it was a really fascinating story because we’ve all seen the cultural shift toward GLP-1s, and we’ve all heard the drugs praised as a way to address obesity as a medical issue. But Elaine reports that the drugs are now being increasingly marketed as a way to look and feel better. I thought there were some notable examples. The story explored how Novo Nordisk, which is one of the drugs’ makers, has particularly leaned into the shift. For instance, the company had advertisements this summer with slogans that include “live lighter” and “a summer glow-up.” And instead of labeling the drug as a drug for weight management, it sometimes is referring to it as a weight loss drug. And Elaine talked to some doctors and patient advocates that think the drug’s being talked about more as a retail product, run against the industry’s sort of initial goals of trying to convince the greater public that obesity is a disease and that the drug should be covered by insurance. For Novo Nordisk’s part, a spokeswoman told Elaine that how people expect to access and experience care has changed in recent years, and the company recognizes that healthcare needs to become more responsive, relevant, and easier to fit into everyday life. 

    Rovner: I would just note, and it’s a very good story, that if the drugmakers lowered the price of the drugs, it would be easier to get it covered by insurance. But that’s just an aside. Shefali. 

    Luthra: My story is from The Atlantic by Caitlin Dickerson. The headline is “The Babies Left Behind in America.” It’s a great story. It is about when parents are deported without their children, what happens to those children? This is the kind of reporting that is really hard to do because you have to spend time with children who have lost their parents. But I think it’s really important, especially as we see this uptick in detaining and deporting, in particular, people with children. I’ve spoken to a lot of mothers who have been deported when they had children here, and the consequences will last probably people’s whole lives. There are health consequences, especially when you have young children. There is PTSD, and I think Caitlin Dickerson has done some of the best reporting on immigration in the past decade, maybe longer. And this is absolutely an essential addition to that canon. 

    Rovner: It is indeed. Rachana. 

    Pradhan: My story is a trifecta from my colleagues Phil Galewitz, Andrew Jones, and Claudia Boyd-Barrett, who wrote a story about, as of today, hundreds of thousands likely of immigrants who are lawfully present in the United States but who have low incomes are now no longer eligible for Medicaid. This is part of President Trump’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will enact greater coverage reductions next year, starting in 2027. But this group of people is now no longer eligible for Medicaid. It includes refugees, some people who have been granted asylum, and also, you know, victims of domestic violence and/or human trafficking. So the story gets into how we have our beloved Congressional Budget Office here in Washington that sort of estimates the impacts of tons of legislation. And they estimated previously that about 100,000 immigrants would be uninsured by 2034 because of this provision. But based on figures that my three colleagues got from state governments or state Medicaid agencies, the figure is likely to be higher of the numbers of immigrants with legal status who are going to now not be able to receive Medicaid. So yeah. So it’s a great read, and I know Julie will put the link in the podcast and in the comments. 

    Rovner: I will indeed. Yes, there’s the continuing, you know, “immigration is a health issue, too” theme that we have this week. All right, my extra credit is actually an update to an extra credit from last month. Like last month’s story, it’s from The New York Times, and it’s called “U. of Michigan Halts New Grading Plan After Backlash From Critics,” by Madaleine Rubin. And it seems that my alma mater — also, full disclosure, the alma mater of my editor and several of our panelists — has rethought the idea of letting incoming freshmen complete their first semester without letter grades to ease them into college life. According to a statement from interim university president Domenico Grasso, there was concern that students would be, quote, “unfairly portrayed as coddled or unprepared for the demands of a rigorous Michigan education.” Yeah, I would add that a lot of the backlash came from my fellow alums, and that even though I attended Michigan well back in the 20th century, even in the olden days, we had the option to take classes pass/fail if we wanted to. Although I would note that under the original proposal here, the students wouldn’t have failed, but they would either have gotten a pass or a “no credit.” Good job rethinking this, guys, and Go Blue. 

    OK, that is this week’s show. Thanks to our editor, Emmarie Huetteman, and our producer-engineer, Francis Ying. A reminder: What the Health? is now available on WAMU platforms, the NPR app, and wherever you get your podcasts — as well as, of course, kffhealthnews.org. Also, as always, you can email us your comments or questions. We’re at whatthehealth@kff.org. Or you can still find me on X @jrovner, or on Bluesky @julierovner. Where are you guys hanging about these days? Shefali. 

    Luthra: I guess I’m on Bluesky @shefali, but you can also email me. 

    Rovner: There you go. Rachana. 

    Pradhan: @rachanadpradhan, both on Bluesky and on X, and you can always email me at RachanaP@kff.org. 

    Rovner: Rachel. 

    Roubein: Yes. X: @rachel_roubein; Bluesky: @rachelroubein; and Signal is always good too: RachelRoubein.28. 

    Rovner: Great. Thank you all. We will be back in your feed next week. Until then, be healthy. 

  • STAT+: The last ‘breakthrough’ devices to get special treatment from Medicare

    STAT+: The last ‘breakthrough’ devices to get special treatment from Medicare

    Katie covers the impact of health technology on patients, clinicians, and businesses. Her stories explore the price tag of clinical AI, digital health at the FDA, and the boom in direct-to-consumer telehealth. Confidential tips can be sent on Signal at palmer.01.

    In the last month, manufacturers have announced “breakthrough” status from the Food and Drug Administration for a menagerie of devices: triage algorithms for abdominal CT scans, diagnostic panels for urinary tract infections, and thrombectomy robots, to name a few.

    They’re coming in just under the wire: As of October, new breakthrough-designated devices will no longer be eligible for special treatment when it comes to qualifying for extra Medicare payments. These devices, and more than a dozen others, are included in the latest update of STAT’s Breakthrough Device Tracker, which since 2022 has captured nearly 800 devices reported to have FDA breakthrough status. 

    In August, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized the removal of pathways that have made it easier for breakthrough devices to qualify for supplementary Medicare payments for both inpatient and outpatient use. Since 2020, devices that received the designation from the FDA have been able to qualify for new technology add-on payments and transitional pass-through payments without proving they provide a substantial clinical improvement over alternatives, or that they are new. 

    STAT+ Exclusive Story

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  • STAT+: UnitedHealth, CVS push back on Medicare plan to curb remote patient monitoring

    STAT+: UnitedHealth, CVS push back on Medicare plan to curb remote patient monitoring

    Mario covers technology in health care, including FDA regulation of artificial intelligence; how Medicare pays for health tech; the use of AI in clinical care; mental health chatbots; and consumer wearables. He’s also the co-author of the free, twice weekly STAT Health Tech newsletter. You can reach Mario on Signal at mariojoze.13.

    Major insurers are pushing back on a Medicare proposal that would significantly disrupt how many doctors bill for tracking the health of patients using devices like connected blood pressure cuffs, scales, and blood glucose meters. These remote monitoring services help patients manage a range of medical conditions, including hypertension, diabetes, and heart failure.

    UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health, and Kaiser Permanente all wrote letters to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services opposing a proposal that would require that remote patient monitoring care be delivered by direct employees of the practice that is billing for them — effectively banning providers from using contractors for the care. All of these groups operate both insurers and care organizations.

    The opposition from UnitedHealth Group is notable in particular because the company’s insurance subsidiary, UnitedHealthcare, recently attempted to stop paying for most remote patient monitoring “due to insufficient evidence of efficacy.”

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