Late last year, South Carolina Medicaid approved a class of medications known as GLP-1s to treat obesity, placing it among the few state programs covering these effective but expensive drugs. But access remains limited, even for patients covered by Medicaid, because of stringent prerequisites that must be satisfied before starting the drug.
One thing experts agree on: The damage from the funding cuts will be varied and immense.
According to the timeline in the May 12 executive order, prescription drug price reductions would not happen “almost immediately,” but rather could take months or years. And extending the savings to Americans outside federal health insurance programs such as Medicare would likely require congressional action.
Fresh studies expose a gap in the FDA’s assessments of foods: Widely used additives could damage the mix of bacteria in your gut, causing health problems.
About half of states have broadened Medicaid, the state-federal low-income health care program, to pay for social services such as housing and nutritional support. The Trump administration, however, views these experiments as distractions from the core mission to provide health care.
More than 100 rural hospitals have stopped delivering babies since 2021, including a South Dakota hospital that serves small towns, farming communities, and a Native American reservation. Patients there now travel at least an hour to give birth.
Bay Area senior Carol Crooks doesn’t know where congressional Republicans will land on Medicaid cuts as they look to fund a tax bill, but her health has already deteriorated as she worries about losing the help she needs to remain in her Oakland apartment — and out of a nursing home.
Some clinics that provide abortions are closing, even in states where voters have passed some of the nation’s broadest abortion protections. It’s happening in places like New York, Illinois, and Michigan, as reproductive health care faces new financial pressures.
While Big Pharma seems ready to weather the tariff storm, independent pharmacists and makers of generic drugs — which account for 90% of U.S. prescriptions — see trouble ahead for patients.
GOP-controlled House committees approved parts of President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” this week, including more than $700 billion in cuts to health programs over the next decade — mostly from Medicaid, which covers people with low incomes or disabilities. Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before Congress for the first time since taking office and told lawmakers that Americans shouldn’t take medical advice from him. Julie Appleby of KFF Health News, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico Magazine join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more.
