Rick

IMPACT: A week after ProPublica reported how organized crime is stealing food stamp benefits — aided by the government’s refusal to update benefit-card technology — the Department of Agriculture announced plans to adopt more secure cards with microchips.

#Breaking: Detailed data confirm Moderna and Merck cancer vaccine met key endpoints in melanoma trial https://www.statnews.com/2026/10/22/esmo-moderna-merck-cancer-vaccine-intismeran-data-released/

Worker premiums for family health insurance are up 9%. The total average premium is $28,303. The average deductible is $1,955. It's no wonder people are worried about health care costs. www.kff.org/private-insu...

At #AACRpan26, Fellow of the AACR Academy Kevan Shokat, PhD, received the Stephenson Global Prize from the Stephenson Global Pancreatic Cancer Research Institute for his groundbreaking work targeting the once undruggable KRAS. Learn more on the #AACRBlog: buff.ly/eeohZxt #AACRFellows

U.S. health spending is on pace to cost almost $16,500 per person this year. And the biggest portion of an employer's health spending — even for the largest corporations in the country — has remained the same since the 1980s: https://bit.ly/4edjsFi

Medicare Advantage plans allowed private insurers into a lucrative market but brought with them most the problems of private insurance into the Medicare space.

Substantial Increase In Cancer Survival Rate, But Research Disruptions Pose Risks www.forbes.com/sites/joshua...

Look at those fever charts of, well, fever-causing childhood infections. Look at the preciptious drop in each one. I wonder what happened to make infections drop so suddenly?

Dems worried last year that this delayed implementation of the deep Medicaid cuts in the 'One Big Beautiful Bill' would defang their attacks on the campaign trail, leaving voters unmoved by the message that a health care apocalypse was just around the corner. But for many, it has already arrived.

Disruption of global research at NIH is endangering people in the United States and around the world. 27unihted.substack.com/p/disruption... Foreign collaborations have been interrupted and discouraged and foreign scientists in the United States are working in an increasingly hostile environment.

Don't enroll yourself or your parents in Medicare Advantage and this is why

A Phase 1 CRISPR trial in 15 patients cut "bad" cholesterol (LDL) by 52.5% and triglycerides by 47.8% for a year after one dose. For families like mine, who've seen how hard it is to manage these conditions, how might this change the future of heart health?

As I wrote this week in @msnowreports.bsky.social this betrays a misunderstanding of the fact that insurance protects against risk and the system depends on there being these low utilizers. Plus, the admin has pushed folks to virtually unusable high-deductible plans. www.ms.now/opinion/vanc...

A couple quick observations here, which should be obvious. 1) insurance “risk pools” work by requiring younger/healthier people who make few or no claims to sign up and pay premiums alongside older/less healthy people who do, essentially covering their costs.

RFK Jr's HHS is essentially withholding Covid vaccines from children from poorer backgrounds, amid a Covid wave. Important story from @melodyschreiber.com www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

It will be interesting to understand the selection criteria here and how much of this could be characterized as fraud or not or something else altogether.

I wish more people knew about this: The FDA approved the first mRNA flu vaccine for ages 50+. In trials, it cut flu risk by ~27% & severe illness needing hospitalization by ~48% compared to regular flu shots. A big step for better flu protection!

Efforts continue to insert Executive Branch into research funding decisions.

The current vaccine schedule has been optimized for safety and effectiveness based on decades of research.

The biggest accomplishment of Congress is the passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Act, H.R.1 It cut Medicaid by $1 trillion; to provide a tax cut for the rich, and raised the deficit Yet hardly any GOP incumbent is campaigning on this. Why? It's very unpopular www.kff.org/medicaid/kff...

How Did a Heart Drug With So Much Promise Fall So Flat? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/s...

This respiratory virus season, we have the evidence. We have vaccine recommendations from medical societies. We need to listen, encourage vaccination supported by evidence & have answers about the diseases we're trying to prevent & the vaccines that help prevent them bit.ly/4ywBees @medpagetoday.com

The $50B Rural Health Transformation Program lacks transparency, which could make it difficult to protect against fraud, identify successful projects+ensure the program delivers on its promise to transform the system. Groups are calling for CMS to post more info. kffhealthnews.org/rural-health...

Food safety really is becoming a salient issue!

Vote Blue in November. The future of your health depends on it. Eventhough the cuts aren’t supposed to go into effect until next year, half of the provisions of the Big Beautiful Bill already have taken effect. 🧪 www.commondreams.org/news/healthc...

“A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it would replace, according to a new preprint study led by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health.” ysph.yale.edu/news-article...

Annenberg: Public confidence in one’s own healthcare provider remains high Confidence in CDC, FDA, and NIH significantly lower than during the Biden administration bit.ly/4gLR9ys @appc.upenn.edu

Flu in kids used to feel like a "wait and see" game for parents. But a study of 1,492 children shows antivirals within 48 hrs of symptoms lowered hospitalization risk by 81%. That's a major difference for vulnerable little ones.

Dolly Parton's $1M seed $ via the Dolly Parton research fund spurned 37 research papers on the mRNA Covid vaccine. This is one of them. That $1M provided the pivotal support for developing the vaccine & assessing the antibody response. My kind of philanthropy. 🧪 www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Preventing dementia often meant focusing on complex factors. Now, hopeful new data: shingles vaccine linked to 24% lower dementia risk in older adults. For every 17 vaccinated, 1 dementia case prevented. Simple steps, big potential.

The University of Maryland, College Park may lose 30% of its newly admitted graduate students this fall. That’s according to a declaration submitted by the state’s flagship in support of a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s visa restrictions. www.thebanner.com/education/hi...

mRNA continues to show great promise despite HHS Secretary undermining research and making unfounded claims about the technoligy

Universal Health Coverage Could Save $1 Trillion and 114,000 Lives Every Year, Yale Study Projects ysph.yale.edu/news-article... #MedicareForAll #UniversalCoverage #insurance #health #elections #Blues

Republicans Are Trying to Hide These Health Care Cuts www.nytimes.com/2026/08/15/o... #ACA #Medicaid #affordability #economy #elections #Blues

Trump administration to kill Medicare Part D prescription subsidy program Millions of subscribers could see their prescription costs and premiums go up in 2027 without the program, experts say. wisconsinindependent.com/health-care/...

Among U.S. patients diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, renal cell carcinoma, and metastatic melanoma alone, in a single year, mRNA immunotherapies avert over 49,000 deaths. 🧪 The corresponding economic value is $75.6 billion. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

I left early for a media hit that got cancelled (hearing ran too long), but you get the idea. The Democrats spelled it out clearly: this was a show trial designed to villainize civil service & science, revise history, & erode our Constitutional rights. rasmussenretorts.substack.com/p/live-cover...

No longer content with pillaging intellectual work and dismembering our environment (already critically weakened), AI companies are now hellbent on destroying books galore including rare editions. Shut down these nefarious enterprises already.

Nearly half of Medicare Part D plan enrollees will likely see increases “largely in the $11 to $20 range a month.” It's kind of amazing how little he cares about his base and how they just keep supporting him anyway.

My new blog: Short summary I like this bill. ccf.georgetown.edu/2026/07/28/s...

Why is Donald Trump trying to kill my parents

ACA enrollment has dropped in every state, except New Mexico. What's special about New Mexico? They are the only state to fully replace the extra federal premium subsidies that ended this year. www.kff.org/affordable-c...

Congressman Raja Krishnamoorti: China wants our talent. Ardem Patapoutian won the Nobel Prize in 2021 on how humans sense touch. Trump canceled his grant on pain killers. China offered him what scientists would want- A position anywhere in China, with funding for 20 years. Ardem stayed here.

A tiny federal agency that tracks consumer product safety wants patient records from emergency room visits, including details about injuries that have nothing to do with consumer products, documents reveal. Amanda Seitz, Maia Rosenfeld & @dariustahir.bsky.social report ⤵️