Iran Keeps Hormuz Shut Pending U.S. Concessions/Trump Orders Cuts to Childhood Vaccine Schedule

 

Iran Keeps Hormuz Shut Pending U.S. Concessions

Iranian officials said Monday Tehran would not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until Washington agrees to lift its blockade of Iranian ports, end economic sanctions, release Iran’s frozen assets, and pay compensation for damage caused by the war. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei claimed that Iran’s talks with Oman were focused on finding a safe shipping route, but that this was separate from reopening the strait. Only six vessels transited the strait on Monday, down from a 10-day average of about 11 and far below the 130 to 140 ships that passed through daily before the war, according to Kpler data.

President Donald Trump responded to Iran’s new demands for reparations by saying he wants compensation for the Americans Iran has killed and wounded, as well as for “the damages and death caused to the people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and Gaza.” In the post, Trump claimed he wants compensation from Iran for the October 2000 bombing of the guided-missile destroyer USS Cole at a Yemeni port. The FBI attributes the attack, which killed 17 sailors, to al-Qaeda, though a federal judge ruled in 2015 that Iran was liable for helping build the network behind the attack. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s crude oil stockpile fell below 300 million barrels last week, the lowest level since 1983.

Trump Orders Cuts to Childhood Vaccine Schedule

Trump signed an executive order Monday that would—if found legal—cut the number of diseases American children are recommended to be vaccinated against from 18 to 11 and call for the combined measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to be split into three separate shots. No single-disease measles, mumps, or rubella vaccines are licensed in the U.S. The 11 universally recommended immunizations cover measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, Hib, pneumococcal disease, HPV, and chickenpox, while vaccines for hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, the flu, and COVID-19 shift to case-by-case “shared clinical decision-making” between doctors and parents. Other immunizations, including RSV antibodies and the dengue vaccine, are now recommended only for high-risk groups. The order gives a Department of Health and Human Services task force 90 days to present plans for making single-disease measles, mumps, and rubella shots available. A White House official said the downgraded shots remain recommendations that the administration assumes insurers will continue to cover.

The order revives a reduction in the vaccine schedule that HHS attempted to put in place in January but a federal judge blocked in March, and its legal force is unclear: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issues vaccine recommendations on the advice of its expert panel, and states set school-entry requirements. The CDC says no published evidence shows any benefit to splitting the combined vaccine, in use since 1971, and that doing so would mean six injections instead of two. Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump tied vaccines to rising autism diagnoses and said—without evidence—that the combined MMR shot could be “quite lethal.” The CDC largely attributes the rise in autism diagnoses to broader diagnostic criteria and screening, and dozens of studies have failed to find a link between vaccines and autism.   -The Morning Dispatch

 

Why we don’t know what food is spreading the parasite sickening thousand

There’s a lag between when people consume the parasite and when symptoms appear, making it tough for those infected to remember what they ate to pinpoint the problem.

More than 2,000 Americans have been sickened this summer by a microscopic parasite that contaminates fresh produce and can cause days of diarrhea, creating an unusually large outbreak that, paradoxically, may give investigators their best chance to identify its source, public health officials said.

Cyclospora is one of the hardest foodborne pathogens to trace to its source. There’s a lag between when people consume the parasite that causes the illness and when symptoms appear, making it tough for those infected to remember what they ate to pinpoint the problem. Health officials are alarmed by the rapidly growing number of cases, which they say are likely undercounted because some people recover without medical care and are not tested.

Authorities have not yet identified a specific produce grower, supplier, or type of produce responsible for the latest outbreak. But this season’s unusually high number of illnesses, now reported in at least 21 states, means more information and more patients to help identify.

 

Healthcare Fraud

 

Federal prosecutors charged 455 people, including 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals, in a nationwide crackdown on schemes that allegedly billed Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs for more than $6.5 billion in false claims. 

The 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown stretched across dozens of federal districts and targeted a range of fraud types, from amniotic wound allograft billing to pill-mill operations and sham mental-health services. The sheer scale of the alleged losses, and the direct involvement of credentialed providers, raises hard questions about how deeply fraud networks have penetrated the health care system.

Why $6.5 billion in alleged fraud demands attention right now: The dollar figures in this takedown are not spread thin across hundreds of small cases. They are concentrated in a handful of districts where prosecutors allege that specific procedure types, particularly amniotic wound allografts, drove enormous billing volumes. 

In Arizona alone, charges involved over $1.2 billion in false or fraudulent claims, with allegations of kickbacks, bribes, and sham invoicing designed to inflate reimbursements for products applied to elderly and hospice patients. In the Southern District of Texas, nine defendants faced charges tied to an alleged $906 million allograft scheme in which a nurse practitioner and clinic managers allegedly created fake patient records to justify billing.

That pattern suggests a clear enforcement signal. The districts that filed the largest individual loss amounts also show the highest concentration of allograft-related charges. Arizona and Southern Texas together account for more than $2 billion of the $6.5 billion total, and both center on allograft fraud. If procedure type is functioning as a leading indicator for enforcement targeting, providers billing heavily for wound allografts in other states should expect increased scrutiny from federal investigators and CMS program-integrity teams in the months ahead.

Licensed professionals at the center of the alleged schemes: The Justice Department announced that 90 of the 455 defendants held medical licenses, a figure that includes doctors, nurse practitioners, and other credentialed professionals. 

Their alleged roles went beyond passive participation. In Texas, prosecutors described clinic managers and a nurse practitioner who allegedly generated fabricated records to support Medicaid mental-health billing and pill-mill prescriptions alongside the allograft scheme. Separate charging documents in the Southern District of Texas outlined how defendants allegedly used shell entities and falsified documentation to conceal the scope of their billing activity.

The single largest case by alleged loss amount landed in the Eastern District of New York. Dubbed “Operation Gold Rush,” the indictment charged 11 defendants in a multi-billion-dollar fraud and money laundering scheme affecting Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers. Prosecutors called it the largest case by loss amount ever charged by the Department of Justice. The case included an international dimension, with apprehensions reported in Estonia, illustrating how fraud networks can operate across borders while exploiting American health programs.

The fraud was not limited to massive schemes. In Minnesota, 15 defendants faced charges for over $90 million in alleged Medicaid provider fraud. Across the Southern District of Florida, prosecutors highlighted transnational activity and laundering tied to durable medical equipment, home health services, and telemedicine orders. Smaller districts reported cases involving allegedly unnecessary genetic tests, forged prior authorizations, and billing for counseling sessions that never occurred. Taken together, the filings show how both large and mid-sized operations can drain public health programs when internal controls and external oversight fail.

What the takedown reveals about enforcement priorities: The 2026 operation underscores several enforcement priorities that health care organizations should not ignore. 

First, investigators are clearly focused on high-reimbursement niche products such as amniotic wound allografts, where complex coding rules and limited clinical familiarity can mask abusive billing. 

Second, prosecutors are increasingly framing cases around alleged kickback and referral arrangements, not just false claims, signaling a broader view of corrupt financial relationships as a gateway to fraud.

Third, the prominence of licensed professionals in the charging documents shows that credentials are no shield. When physicians or nurse practitioners allegedly lend their names to sham clinics, sign off on medically unnecessary procedures, or delegate prescribing authority to non-qualified staff, they become central to the government’s narrative of intentional fraud. That emphasis is likely to reverberate through state licensing boards, malpractice insurers, and hospital credentialing committees, which may respond with tighter oversight of practice patterns and ownership interests.

Implications for health systems and policymakers

For hospitals, group practices, and ancillary providers, the takedown is a warning to reassess internal compliance programs. High-volume billing in specialized product lines, especially where third-party marketing companies or distributors are involved, will attract attention. Robust pre-billing review, independent medical-necessity audits, and clear documentation standards are now essential risk controls rather than optional best practices.

For policymakers, the cases highlight structural vulnerabilities in federal and state health programs. Complex reimbursement formulas, fragmented data systems, and uneven state-level enforcement create openings that sophisticated actors can exploit. Strengthening real-time claims analytics, harmonizing state and federal data sharing, and investing in specialized fraud units focused on emerging therapies and devices may be necessary to keep pace with evolving schemes.

The 2026 National Health Care Fraud Takedown is not just a snapshot of alleged wrongdoing; it is a roadmap of where enforcement is headed. Providers whose business models rely on aggressive use of high-margin products, loosely supervised telehealth arrangements, or volume-based mental-health billing should assume their claims data will be scrutinized. As these cases move through the courts, they are likely to shape future regulations, compliance expectations, and, ultimately, how trust is rebuilt between health care professionals, patients, and the public programs that fund so much of American care.

The post How did 455 people allegedly drain $6.5 billion from Medicare and Medicaid? Federal prosecutors say doctors and nurses were in on the schemes appeared first on The Financial Wire.

 

Farting All the Time? Here's What It Really Says About Your Health. 98% Seriously!

People tend to pass gas more than two dozen times a day, usually without even realizing it. But you might notice it when you’re farting a lot more than usual, and it may make you wonder if something is going on with your health.         

While being gassy can be embarrassing, it’s actually a normal part of digestion, says Dr. Pornchai Leelasinjaroen, MD, a gastroenterologist at Gastro Health in Kennewick, Washington, who goes by Dr. Lee. “Everyone passes gas.” Think of your digestive system as a long, winding pipe, Dr. Lee explains. “Food and liquids go in, and waste comes out as urine, stool and gas.”

Gas forms when bacteria in your gut break down and ferment food, particularly fiber, in the colon, he says. Farting, or flatulence, is how you get that gas out of your body. “Releasing that gas is simply the body’s way of relieving pressure,” Dr. Lee says. “If gas didn’t escape, it would build up in the digestive tract and cause uncomfortable bloating and pressure.”

There isn’t a specific normal number of times someone farts each day, he adds. However, a recent study found that healthy adults may pass gas an average of 32 times a day. What’s most important is to know what’s normal for you, as everyone has a gassy baseline. Dr. Lee says, “Many people pass small amounts of gas throughout the day without noticing it, and some gas may pass during bowel movements.” But if you seem to be farting all the time, here’s what it could signal about your health.

What Causes Gas?

Gas is actually a sign of a healthy gastrointestinal tract, demonstrating that your gut bacteria, or microbiome, are working as they should, says Dr. Brintha Vasagar, MD, a family physician based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

When you pass gas, it’s a combination of air that you swallow while eating or talking, and gas produced by the fermentation of carbohydrates by the bacteria in your colon, says Dr. Itishree Trivedi, a gastroenterologist and associate professor at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Fiber-rich foods, beans or dairy may be more likely to cause gas, Dr. Lee adds. How quickly or slowly food moves through your digestive tract can also affect how much gas you produce—gas is a natural byproduct of the digestive process. “This intestinal gas can be passed by belching or farting,” Dr. Trivedi says. “It can cause bloating and abdominal discomfort in some of us, even when it is in normal amounts.”

What It Can Mean if You’re Farting More Than Usual

“As long as it isn’t causing pain, severe bloating or interfering with daily life, [farting more than usual] isn't typically something to worry about,” Dr. Lee says. However, if you notice extreme changes in the frequency or smell of your gas or if it’s causing discomfort, it could mean something in your digestive system has shifted, he says. For instance, maybe you’re eating more fiber, swallowing more air while eating or experiencing gut microbiome changes, slower digestion or food intolerances.

When you have extra gas and haven’t changed your diet, it may be a sign of lactose intolerance, irritable bowel syndrome or celiac disease, Dr. Vasagar says. Constipation can increase gas, and acid reflux and even anxiety disorder can also predispose someone to swallow large amounts of air, Dr. Trivedi adds.

“More than ‘how much’ gas is abnormal, the question to ask is what problems intestinal gas can create,” Dr. Trivedi says. “Intestinal gas, even in normal amounts, can cause bloating and even visible abdominal distention in some of us.”

When To Worry About How Much You’re Farting

If you notice changes from your "normal," talk to your doctor, Dr. Vasagar says. You should especially see your doctor if you also have new or worsening gut pain, bloating, changes in bowel habits, blood in your stool or weight loss, Dr. Trivedi adds.

“Gas that significantly interferes with daily life or comfort should also be evaluated by a healthcare professional,” Dr. Lee warns. Your doctor will do a physical exam and discuss your symptoms, and then possibly do a blood or stool test, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

How To Treat Excess Gas

Treating excess flatulence depends on the cause, according to Dr. Trivedi. It may involve diet or lifestyle changes, antibiotics or even gut-directed psychotherapy to change air-swallowing behaviors.

You might need to identify and adjust foods that trigger gas, manage constipation, improve gut motility, eat more slowly or address food intolerances, Dr. Lee says. Over-the-counter products such as simethicone (Gas-X), charcoal tablets and alpha-d-galactosidase (Beano) may be helpful for some, but not everyone, Dr. Trivedi says.

How To Minimize Gas

-When your doctor has ruled out a medical problem, there are several ways to reduce gas, including:

-Eating slowly and avoiding swallowing excess air

-Cutting back on carbonated beverages, gum, or foods and drinks with artificial sweeteners

-Staying physically active helps move gas through the digestive tract

-Drinking plenty of water

-Avoiding foods and drinks that trigger excess gas for you

While fiber-rich foods, like beans, fruits, vegetables and whole grains, may cause gas, it’s important to keep them in your diet to keep your digestive system healthy, Dr. Vasagar says. The bottom line, according to Dr. Lee? “Gas itself isn’t necessarily a problem. In fact, it can mean your gut bacteria are actively fermenting fiber, which is part of a healthy digestive process.”

-Erica Sweeney

Sources:

Pornchai Leelasinjaroen, MD, a gastroenterologist at Gastro Health in Kennewick, Washington, who goes by Dr. Lee

Dr. Brintha Vasagar, MD, a family physician based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Itishree Trivedi, MD, a gastroenterologist and associate professor at the University of Illinois Chicago

Smart underwear: A novel wearable for long-term monitoring of gut microbial gas production via flatus, Biosensors and Bioelectronics: X

Flatulence (Farting), Cleveland Clinic

Your laugh for the day:

Trump Administration’s New Healthcare Plans Could Slap Families With $31,000 Deductibles

The Trump administration is proposing new regulations for healthcare plans purchased through Affordable Care Act exchanges that, on the surface, could offer patients lower monthly premiums. 

However, the New York Times reported on Thursday that these plans would make up for the lower premiums by charging deductibles as high as $15,000 for individuals and $31,000 for families, meaning that people on these plans would have to pay significant up-front costs should they get sick before getting any benefit from having insurance.

For perspective, the Times noted that these deductibles would be “eight times the average for someone with job-based insurance.” Health experts who spoke with the Times were blunt about these plans’ prospects for success. “Nobody wants that product,” Harvard health economist Amitabh Chandra said. “It’s going to be a really cheap product that nobody wants.”

Dr. Joseph Betancourt, president of the Commonwealth Fund, told the Times that the plans being mulled by the administration would push greater assumption of risk onto patients and away from insurers. “There’s no doubt that we have an affordability crisis,” he said. “As we move forward to shifting more of the burden to patients, there’s a chance to really exacerbate the crisis.”

Katherine Hempstead, senior policy adviser for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, told the Times that the cheaper Trump plans are “normalizing hardship, and... normalizing catastrophe” by creating a form of health insurance that offers even less coverage than the cheapest plans available on the exchanges.

The high-deductible plans are being pushed by Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Mehmet Oz, who made headlines earlier this year by saying the goal of the Trump administration’s healthcare policy was to have Americans be healthy enough so they could stay at work for at least an extra year before retiring.

“If we can get the average person... to work one more year in their whole lifetime, just stay in your workplace for one more year,” Oz said during an interview on Fox Business, “that is worth about $3 trillion to the US GDP.”

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is widely expected to seek the presidency in 2028, pounced on the report about the high-deductible plans. “[Trump’s] economic agenda is simple,” Newsom wrote in a social media post, “force hard working families to pay more and give billionaires a tax break.”

Johanna Maska, a former aide to President Barack Obama, expressed disbelief that this was Republicans’ long-promised replacement plan for the ACA. “A $31,000 deductible is unacceptable,” she wrote. “This is the Republican long awaited plan? This is not healthcare that helps Americans.”

-Brad Reed, Common Dreams

Even a Little Alcohol Can Harm Your Health!

Recent research makes it clear that any amount of drinking can be detrimental. Here’s why you may want to cut down on your consumption.

Sorry to be a buzzkill, but that nightly glass or two of wine is not improving your health. After decades of confusing and sometimes contradictory research (too much alcohol is bad for you, but a little bit is good; some types of alcohol are better for you than others; just kidding, it’s all bad), the picture is becoming clearer: Even small amounts of alcohol can have health consequences.

Research published in November revealed that between 2015 and 2019, excessive alcohol use resulted in roughly 140,000 deaths per year in the United States. About 40 percent of those deaths had acute causes, like car crashes, poisonings and homicides. 

But the majority were caused by chronic conditions attributed to alcohol, such as liver disease, cancer and heart disease.

When experts talk about the dire health consequences linked to excessive alcohol use, people often assume that it’s directed at individuals who have an alcohol use disorder. But the health risks from drinking can come from moderate consumption as well.

“Risk starts to go up well below levels where people would think, ‘Oh, that person has an alcohol problem,’” said Dr. Tim Naimi, director of the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research. “Alcohol is harmful to the health starting at very low levels.” If you’re wondering whether you should cut back on your drinking, here’s what to know about when and how alcohol impacts your health.

How do I know if I’m drinking too much?

“Excessive alcohol use” technically means anything above the U.S. Dietary Guidelines’ recommended daily limits. That’s more than two drinks a day for men and more than one drink a day for women.
There is also emerging evidence “that there are risks even within these levels, especially for certain types of cancer and some forms of cardiovascular disease,” said Marissa Esser, who leads the alcohol program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The recommended daily limits are not meant to be averaged over a week, either. In other words, if you abstain Monday through Thursday and have two or three drinks a night on the weekend, those weekend drinks count as excessive consumption. It’s both the cumulative drinks over time and the amount of alcohol in your system on any one occasion that can cause damage.

Why is alcohol so harmful?

Scientists think that the main way alcohol causes health problems is by damaging DNA. When you drink alcohol, your body metabolizes it into acetaldehyde, a chemical that is toxic to cells. Acetaldehyde both “damages your DNA and prevents your body from repairing the damage,” Dr. Esser explained. “Once your DNA is damaged, then a cell can grow out of control and create a cancer tumor.”

Alcohol also creates oxidative stress, another form of DNA damage that can be particularly harmful to the cells that line blood vessels. Oxidative stress can lead to stiffened arteries, resulting in higher blood pressure and coronary artery disease. “It fundamentally affects DNA, and that’s why it affects so many organ systems,” Dr. Naimi said. Over the course of a lifetime, chronic consumption “damages tissues over time.”

Isn’t alcohol supposed to be good for your heart?

Alcohol’s effect on the heart is confusing because some studies have claimed that small amounts of alcohol, particularly red wine, can be beneficial. Past research suggested that alcohol raises HDL, the “good” cholesterol, and that resveratrol, an antioxidant found in grapes (and red wine), has heart-protective properties.

However, said Mariann Piano, a professor of nursing at Vanderbilt University, “There’s been a lot of recent evidence that has really challenged the notion of any kind of what we call a cardio-protective or healthy effect of alcohol.” The idea that a low dose of alcohol was heart healthy likely arose from the fact that people who drink small amounts tend to have other healthy habits, such as exercising, eating plenty of fruits and vegetables and not smoking. In observational studies, the heart benefits of those behaviors might have been erroneously attributed to alcohol, Dr. Piano said.

More recent research has found that even low levels of drinking slightly increase the risk of high blood pressure and heart disease, and the risk goes up dramatically for people who drink excessively. The good news is that when people stop drinking or just cut back, their blood pressure goes down. Alcohol is also linked to an abnormal heart rhythm, known as atrial fibrillation, which raises the risk of blood clots and stroke.

What types of cancer does alcohol increase the risk for?

Almost everyone knows about the link between cigarette smoking and cancer, but few people realize that alcohol is also a potent carcinogen. According to research by the American Cancer Society, alcohol contributes to more than 75,000 cases of cancer per year and nearly 19,000 cancer deaths.

Alcohol is known to be a direct cause of seven different cancers: head and neck cancers (oral cavity, pharynx and larynx), esophageal cancer, liver cancer, breast cancer and colorectal cancer. Research suggests there may be a link between alcohol and other cancers as well, including prostate and pancreatic cancer, although the evidence is less clear-cut.

For some cancers, such as liver and colorectal, the risk starts only when people drink excessively. But for breast and esophageal cancer, the risk increases, albeit slightly, with any alcohol consumption. The risks go up the more a person drinks. “If somebody drinks less, they are at a lower risk compared to that person who is a heavy drinker,” said Dr. Farhad Islami, a senior scientific director at the American Cancer Society. “Even two drinks per day, one drink per day, may be associated with a small risk of cancer compared to non-drinkers.”

Which condition poses the greatest risk?

The most common individual cause of alcohol-related death in the United States is alcoholic liver disease, killing about 22,000 people a year. While the risk rises as people age and alcohol exposure accumulates, more than 5,000 Americans in their 20s, 30s and 40s die from alcoholic liver disease annually.

Alcoholic liver disease has three stages: alcoholic fatty liver, when fat accumulates in the organ; alcoholic hepatitis, when inflammation starts to occur; and alcoholic cirrhosis or scarring of the tissue. The first two stages are reversible if you stop drinking entirely; the third stage is not.

Symptoms of alcoholic liver disease include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and jaundice — a yellow tinge to the eyes or skin. However, symptoms rarely emerge until the liver has been severely damaged.
The risk of developing alcoholic liver disease is greatest in heavy drinkers, but one report stated that five years of drinking just two alcoholic beverages a day can damage the liver. Ninety percent of people who have four drinks a day show signs of alcoholic fatty liver.

How do I gauge my personal risk for alcohol-related health issues?

Not everyone who drinks will develop these conditions. Lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise and smoking all combine to raise or lower your risk. Also, some of these conditions, such as esophageal cancer, are pretty rare, so increasing your risk slightly won’t have a huge impact.

“Every risk factor matters,” Dr. Esser said. “We know in public health that the number of risk factors that one has would go together into an increased risk for a condition.” A pre-existing condition could also interact with alcohol to affect your health. For example, “people who have hypertension probably should not drink or definitely drink at very, very low levels,” Dr. Piano said.

Genes play a role, too. For instance, two genetic variants, both of which are more common in people of Asian descent, affect how alcohol and acetaldehyde are metabolized. One gene variant causes alcohol to break down into acetaldehyde faster, flooding the body with the toxin. The other variant slows down acetaldehyde metabolism, meaning the chemical hangs around in the body longer, prolonging the damage.

So, should I cut back — or stop drinking altogether?

You don’t need to go cold turkey to help your health. Even reducing a little bit can be beneficial, especially if you currently drink over the recommended limits. The risk “really accelerates once you’re over a couple of drinks a day,” Dr. Naimi said. “So, people who are drinking five or six drinks a day, if they can cut back to three or four, they’re going to do themselves a lot of good.”

Light daily drinkers would likely benefit by cutting back a bit, too. Try going a few nights without alcohol: “If you feel better, your body is trying to tell you something,” said George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Notably, none of the experts we spoke to called for abstaining completely, unless you have an alcohol use disorder or are pregnant. “I’m not going to advocate that people completely stop drinking,” Dr. Koob said. “We did prohibition, it didn’t work.” Generally, though, their advice is, “Drink less, live longer,” Dr. Naimi said. “That’s basically what it boils down to.”

-Dana G. Smith
NY Times, January 13, 2023
 

Vaccines Are Helping Older People More Than We Knew

Many shots seem to have “off target” benefits, such as lowering the risk of dementia, studies have found. Let’s be clear. The primary reason to be vaccinated against shingles is that two shots provide 90 percent protection against a painful, blistering disease that a third of Americans will suffer in their lifetimes, one that can cause lingering nerve pain and other nasty long-term consequences.

The most important reason for older adults to be vaccinated against the respiratory infection R.S.V. is that their risk of being hospitalized with it declines by almost 70 percent in the year they get the shot, and by nearly 60 percent over two years.      

And the main reason to roll up a sleeve for an annual flu shot is that when people do get infected, it also reliably reduces the severity of illness, though its effectiveness varies by how well scientists have predicted which strain of influenza shows up.

But other reasons for older people to be vaccinated are also emerging. They are known, in doctor-speak, as off-target benefits, meaning that the shots do good things beyond preventing the diseases they were designed to avert.

The list of off-target benefits is lengthening as “the research has accumulated and accelerated over the last 10 years,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Some of these protections have been established by years of data; others are the subjects of more recent research, and the payoff is not yet as clear. The R.S.V. vaccine, for example, became available only in 2023.

Still, the findings “are really very consistent,” said Dr. Stefania Maggi, a geriatrician and senior fellow at the Institute of Neuroscience at the National Research Council in Padua, Italy.

She is the lead author of a recent meta-analysis, published in the British journal Age and Ageing, that found reduced risks of dementia after vaccination for an array of diseases. Given those “downstream effects,” she said, vaccines “are key tools to promote healthy aging and prevent physical and cognitive decline.”

Yet too many older adults, whose weakening immune systems and high rates of chronic illness put them at higher risk of infectious disease, have not taken advantage of vaccination.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in mid-December that about 37 percent of older adults had not yet received a flu shot. Only 42 percent have ever been vaccinated against R.S.V., and fewer than a third received the most recent Covid vaccine.

The C.D.C. recommends the one-and-done pneumococcal vaccine for adults 50 and older. An analysis in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, however, estimated that from 2022, when new guidelines were issued, through 2024, only about 12 percent of those 67 to 74 received it, and about 8 percent of those over 75.

The strongest evidence for off-target benefits, dating back 25 years, shows reduced cardiovascular risk following flu shots.

Healthy older adults vaccinated against flu have substantially lower risks of hospitalization for heart failure, as well as for pneumonia and other respiratory infections. Vaccination against influenza has also been associated with lower risks of heart attack and stroke.

Moreover, many of these studies predate the more potent flu vaccines now recommended for older adults….

-Paula Span, NY Times

Vaccines Are Helping Older People More Than We Knew - The New York Times

 

A $1.2 Trillion ‘Rip Off’: Report Spotlights Massive Scale of Medicare Advantage Fraud

 

“These private insurer-run plans are more expensive AND lead to worse outcomes for patients,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal. “It’s time to rein in Medicare DisAdvantage and protect traditional Medicare.”

A report released earlier this month to little fanfare estimated that federal overpayments to privately run Medicare Advantage plans could total $76 billion this year—or potentially a staggering $1.2 trillion over the next decade if current trends persist.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent congressional agency that advises lawmakers on Medicare, calculates overpayments by comparing spending on Medicare Advantage (MA) plans to what the federal government would have spent if MA enrollees were on traditional fee-for-service Medicare.   

In a report published earlier this month, MedPAC showed that overpayments to MA plans this year are projected to be around $76 billion. Roughly $22 billion of that total is due to coding practices by MA providers, which are notorious for making patients appear sicker than they are to receive larger payments from the federal government. MA plans are paid lump sums to cover expected future healthcare services for patients based on their risk scores.

Another factor driving overpayments to MA plans—which now cover 55% of eligible Medicare beneficiaries—is a phenomenon known as favorable selection. MA enrollees tend to be healthier on average than recipients of traditional Medicare, resulting in higher payments to Medicare Advantage plans than are necessary based on patients’ healthcare needs.

According to MedPAC, favorable selection will account for $57 billion of the expected overpayments to MA plans this year. The Trump administration gave Medicare Advantage plans a more than $25 billion boost in federal payments for 2026, even amid mounting bipartisan concerns about fraud in the program.

The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare (NCPSSM) said the MedPAC analysis “confirms that these private plans are bleeding taxpayers for billions of dollars more than traditional Medicare would cost for comparable enrollees.”

US Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) wrote in response to the MedPAC findings that “Medicare DisAdvantage will rip off American taxpayers to the tune of $76 billion in 2026.”

“These private insurer-run plans are more expensive AND lead to worse outcomes for patients,” Jayapal, a leading supporter of Medicare for All legislation in the House, wrote in a social media post. “It’s time to rein in Medicare DisAdvantage and protect traditional Medicare.”

The MedPAC analysis was released days after Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee published a report revealing how UnitedHealth Group, the largest provider of MA plans in the US, “has turned risk adjustment into a major profit-centered strategy,” reaping massive payments from the federal government through upcoding.

NCPSSM noted that “while UnitedHealth... has emerged as the worst offender, it’s abundantly clear that many MA insurers are engaged in these shady practices.”

“Look no further than insurers’ reliance on prior authorizations for procedures and treatments that normally would be automatically covered in traditional Medicare,” the group said. “This includes denying skilled nursing care that jeopardizes older patients who have nowhere else to turn.”

-Jake Johnson, Common Dreams

Why Democrats Didn't Cave on Healthcare Tax Credits

 

The House Democrats' calculator is a useful tool to show just how urgent a tax credit fix is to American families.

 

Here is a handy tool from congressional Democrats to calculate how much Trump’s attack on healthcare coverage would cost you:

A typical family of four making $125,000 would see their health care costs increase

by $7,700 on average.

A 60-year-old couple making $80,000 would see their health care costs increase by

$17,500 on average.

A family of four making $64,000 would see their health care costs increase by

$2,600 on average.

Health insurance companies are setting rates now for open enrollment that will begin within week for coverage for 2026, so getting the tax credit extended is urgent.

More explicit samples from the calculator include:

In Texas, a 60-year-old couple earning $82,800 a year would see premiums rise by $18,454, or 275%.

In Maine, a family of four earning $64,000 a year would see premiums rise by $2,571, or 187%.

In Iowa, a family of four earning $129,800 would see premiums rise by $6,208, or 57%.

In North Carolina, a 60-year-old couple earning $82,800 a year would see premiums rise by $22,447, or 339%.

In Ohio, a family of four earning $129,800 would see premiums rise by $6,278, or 58%.

This is unacceptable. If they go through with this, livelihoods will be overhauled and lives will be lost. These are the type of reckless changes that motivate us to protest.

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Trump's Administration Is Slashing Healthcare

Why would a government defund cancer research, dismantle vaccine programs, and hollow out public health infrastructure? These are not peripheral services. They are the scaffolding that allows people to survive longer, live better, and remain part of civic life.

Yet under Trump’s administration, funding for NIH cancer trials has been slashed, CDC vaccine development undermined, and chronic disease surveillance quietly defunded. These are not budgetary accidents. They reflect a governing logic in which care is rationed, and survival is triaged according to economic utility.

At 80, I live simply. I walk desert trails with my dog, write, and play guitar in the evening. My wife is amazing—at 85, she still rock climbs. We’re in relatively good health, but I’m under no illusion: without healthcare insurance, that could change quickly.

A fall, a diagnosis, a sudden hospitalization—and the cost of survival becomes a negotiation. Under current policy, that negotiation is growing more brutal. Premiums are rising, benefits shrinking, and for many aging Americans, coverage is slipping out of reach. What was once a safety net is now a sieve.

This goes beyond austerity. It is necro-politics—the use of policy to decide who lives and who is left to manage their own decline. Medicaid is being restructured to include work requirements and eligibility audits designed to disqualify.

Medicare’s hospital trust fund faces automatic reimbursement cuts that will force providers to drop patients. Cancer research has been targeted not because it fails, but because it extends lives of populations deemed fiscally inconvenient. The logic is explicit: longevity is expensive, and aging is a problem to be contained.

Healthcare becomes the sorting mechanism. High-deductible plans function as debt traps. Algorithmic triage systems ration care by zip code, employment status, and credit history. Those who can pay, survive. Those who can’t, wait—or disappear. This isn’t a malfunction; it is a deliberate architecture designed to offload risk and privatize consequence.

Debt itself has become a gatekeeper of survival. In the U.S., medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy, and credit scores increasingly determine whether patients gain access to care or are turned away. Illness is transformed into leverage: the ability to pay becomes indistinguishable from the right to live.

We are witnessing a shift from public health to actuarial governance. The question is no longer what people need, but what they cost. Preventive care, chronic disease management, and long-term treatment are increasingly reserved for those who remain economically legible. The rest are managed through delay, denial, and disappearance.

This burden does not fall evenly. Life expectancy is already stratified by race, class, and geography, with Black, Indigenous, and poor Americans facing shortened lives not because of biology but because of accumulated neglect. In this system, inequality is not incidental; it is the mechanism through which necro-politics is enacted.

This logic extends beyond insurance. Hospitals are consolidating, rural clinics are closing, and elder care facilities are underfunded or shuttered. The infrastructure that once sustained aging populations is being dismantled, not because it failed, but because it no longer aligns with the priorities of a system that rewards short-term margins over long-term survival.

The language used to justify these shifts is familiar: personal responsibility, innovation, market discipline. But the outcomes are unmistakable. Those deemed unproductive—the elderly, the chronically ill, the disabled, and the poor—are increasingly portrayed as burdensome, politically obsolete, or economically inert. The narrative of demographic crisis is used to rationalize austerity, while the language of fairness is weaponized to pit generations and classes against each other.

This is not a cultural misunderstanding. It is a deliberate reframing of aging as pathology. In this worldview, to live longer is to become a liability. The more care one requires, the more one is seen as a threat to fiscal stability. In practice, survival itself is tolerated only when it is silent, self-funded, and non-disruptive.

The consequences are not abstract. They are visible in the lives of those who skip medications, delay screenings, or avoid hospitals altogether. They are felt in the quiet calculations families make when deciding whether to seek care or absorb the cost.

This is not a failure of governance. It is a redefinition of it. The state is not retreating—it is reallocating. It is shifting responsibility from public institutions to private markets, from collective obligation to individual risk. And in doing so, it is redrawing the boundaries of who counts, and under what conditions.

But survival could be treated differently. It could be recognized as a civic achievement—a sign that public health, infrastructure, and social cohesion have done their job. Lives extended by care are not liabilities but anchors of continuity, resilience, and possibility. That would require a different kind of politics—one that values survival not as a private accomplishment, but as a public good.

We needn’t be passive witnesses to this logic, or silent casualties of it. If we choose, we can be its undoers. The triage we see does not flow from scarcity; it is a political decision, made in boardrooms and budget committees, reinforced by policy and narrative. To challenge it requires more than critique. It demands refusal and the rebuilding of care as infrastructure—the kind that asks not what a life is worth, but whether it is protected. That is the work ahead. And it will not wait.

-James Greenberg

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BHfMV9Yp9/

 

 

How RFK Jr.’s misguided science on mRNA vaccines is shaping policy − a vaccine expert examines the false claims

 

On Sept. 4, 2025, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is scheduled to testify before the Senate Finance Committee, where he is expected to face questions about his vaccine policies.

A few days prior, on Sept. 1, 2025, President Donald Trump demanded pharmaceutical companies to prove that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines work, saying that the CDC was “being ripped apart over this question.” It was his first public acknowledgment of the chaos roiling the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention amid the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez and subsequent resignations of four high-level agency officials.

Meanwhile, public health experts and HHS staffers are calling for Kennedy to be fired.

The turmoil comes about a month after HHS announced US$500 million in funding cuts for 22 research contracts on mRNA vaccine technology. The agency said it will instead pour these funds into research on a traditional approach to designing vaccines that was first used more than 200 years ago. With such vaccines, called whole-virus vaccines, a person’s immune system is presented with the whole virus, often in weakened or inactivated form. This switcheroo has puzzled many scientists.

As a vaccinologist who has studied and developed vaccines for over 35 years, I see that the science behind mRNA vaccine technology is being widely misstated. This incorrect information is shaping long-term health policy in the U.S. – which makes it urgent to correct the record.

Are mRNA vaccines less safe than whole-virus vaccines?

HHS defended its cancellation of mRNA vaccine research based, in part, on a nonpeer-reviewed compilation of selected publications called the COVID-19 mRNA “vaccine” harms research collection. This document lists about 750 articles claimed to describe harms caused by mRNA vaccines against COVID-19. However, the vast majority of these articles aren’t about vaccines but about the harms of getting infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. And notably absent from it is the huge body of data showing mRNA vaccines actually prevent these harms.

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Spike proteins on SARS-COV-2 can cause tissue damage – and although mRNA vaccines produce them in small amounts, they prevent the virus from replicating to produce them in large amounts. https://www.scientificanimations.com/wiki-images/, CC BY-SA

For example, the document being used to justify RFK Jr.’s claims about mRNA vaccines highlights 375 studies reporting that the virus’s spike protein alone, which is produced when the virus replicates, can cause excessive inflammation and tissue damage. This is true. But the document marshals this evidence to support the claim that mRNA vaccines, which are designed to produce spike proteins, cause the same harm – which is not accurate.

While viral replication results in uncontrolled production of a large amounts of the protein, the way it’s produced by the mRNA vaccine is very different. The vaccine produces a small, controlled amount of spike protein inside a few cells – just enough to induce an immune response without causing damage. And by blocking the virus’s replication, it reduces the amount of spike protein in circulation, actually having the opposite effect.

What about side effects like myocarditis?

Early reports flagged a type of heart swelling called myocarditis as a rare side effect of the mRNA vaccine, particularly for young men ages 18 to 25 after a booster dose. A 2024 review identified about 20 cases out of 1 million people who received the vaccine. However, that same study found that unvaccinated people had an elevenfold higher risk of getting myocarditis after a COVID-19 infection than vaccinated people.

What’s more, another 2024 study showed that people who developed myocarditis after vaccination had fewer complications than those who developed the condition after getting infected with COVID-19.

Do mRNA vaccines make the SARS-CoV-2 virus resistant?

Another claim from the compilation of supposed mRNA vaccine harms that was cited as a reason for cutting funding for mRNA technology is that mRNA vaccines cause mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 virus that make them resistant or less susceptible to the vaccine.

When a virus replicates in its host, it produces millions of copies of its genetic material. Mutations are copying errors that occur naturally during the replication process. These acquired mutations produce new variants, which is why both the COVID-19 mRNA and the whole-virus flu vaccine get updated annually – to keep up with natural changes in the virus.

Slowing down viral replication decreases the rate at which a virus can acquire new mutations. Since both mRNA and whole-virus vaccines stop or slow the virus from replicating, both types of vaccines help reduce the emergence of resistant viruses.

Viruses can mutate to escape from antibodies, but the mRNA vaccines are not causing the emergence of more virulent strains, likely for at least two reasons. First, mRNA vaccines induce immune responses that can attack the virus at multiple spots, so it would have to come up with many mutations at once to escape the vaccine’s defenses. Second, even if the virus could acquire all these mutations, they would likely weaken it, making it unable to cause or even transmit disease.

mRNA vaccines versus new SARS-CoV-2 variants

Kennedy, in announcing cuts to mRNA vaccine research on Aug. 5, 2025, claimed that mRNA vaccines don’t work against respiratory viruses and that HHS was moving toward “safer, broader vaccine platforms that remain effective even as viruses mutate.”

Both whole-virus vaccines and mRNA vaccines protected against COVID-19 and prevented hospitalization and death for millions of people worldwide between 2020 and 2024, but there’s clear evidence that the mRNA-based vaccines provided significantly better protection than whole-virus vaccines. And for COVID-19, mRNA vaccines are more effective against new variants, which emerge as viruses mutate, than whole-virus vaccines.

mRNA vaccines’ superpower is that they can be updated and manufactured very quickly, unlike traditional whole-virus vaccines.

The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines started with exceptionally high efficacy, exceeding 94%. When the SARS-CoV-2 delta and omicron variants emerged in the spring and fall of 2021, mRNA vaccines became less effective in preventing infections. However, they remained highly effective in preventing severe illness, whereas in unvaccinated people the rates of severe illness and hospitalization remained high.

This is because mRNA vaccines induce the immune system to make both antibodies and specialized immune cells called T cells. These elements can recognize multiple parts of the virus, including ones that don’t change, enabling significant protection against new variants.

What’s more, the mRNA vaccines have a superpower that no other type of vaccine can currently match: They can be quickly updated and manufactured within two to three months. To develop a whole-virus vaccine, researchers must first spend months isolating and propagating the virus. Conversely, making an mRNA vaccine requires just sequencing the virus’s genetic code – a process that today takes just hours.

If a new pandemic began today, mRNA vaccines are currently the only type of vaccine that could be developed quickly enough to disrupt its spread.

The future of mRNA vaccine technologies

Thirty years ago, when scientists first started developing mRNA vaccine technology, they recognized its potential to overcome major limitations of whole-virus vaccines – namely, slow production time and more limited ability to protect from new viral variants. Today, mRNA vaccines are also being developed to prevent or treat diseases including HIV and cancer, as well as autoimmune and genetic diseases.

Of course, this technology can be further improved. New mRNA vaccine technologies are aimed, among other things, at making mRNA vaccines easier to store to allow for faster distribution and reduce their short-term side effects, eliminate the rare risk of myocarditis and more quickly block a respiratory infection.

The National Institutes of Health is funneling money away from new mRNA technologies toward a single project developing universal vaccines based on traditional whole-virus vaccine technology. Universal vaccines are urgently needed to provide broader protection against ever-changing respiratory viruses, such as influenza, that are major pandemic threats.

A 2022 study in mice and ferrets showed that a universal flu vaccine NIH plans to support has promise. However, multiple studies of potential universal flu vaccines based on mRNA technology show even more potential. Such vaccines could induce broader immunity than whole-virus vaccines by eliciting antibody and T-cell responses that target an even wider range of flu viruses.

It’s hard to square those benefits with the fact that HHS and NIH have named the planned new universal vaccine platform “Generation Gold Standard,” insisting that it represents a new standard in science and transparency. The effort seems more akin to eliminating all e-bike technology and telling everyone who seeks one to get by with a single brand of a 10-speed bike: Getting to the intended destination may still be possible, but it will be slower and harder.

And in the case of abandoning mRNA vaccine research, it may lead to lives needlessly lost, whether due to potential medicines untapped or to pandemic unpreparedness.

-The Conversation

Deborah Fuller, Professor of Microbiology, School of Medicine, University of Washington