Health

Axios -  There's a good chance your health insurance premiums are going up next year, regardless of where you get coverage.The spike in what millions of Affordable Care Act plan enrollees pay will be acute, but workplace insurance is getting more expensive, too — and all at a time when affordability is prominently on Americans' minds.

ACA premiums have dominated the political discourse in Congress for weeks, but there's no real sign that any relief is coming from Washington.

• Even extending the Biden-era enhanced ACA subsidies — which most Republicans don't want to do — would do nothing to address what's driving the surging cost of care or employer insurance affordability issues.
• And all signs point to Democrats hammering Republicans for high costs in all forms of health insurance leading up to next year's midterm elections.

Health insurance gets more expensive almost every year, keeping up with increases in the costs of procedures, tests, drugs and more. But some years see bigger jumps than others, and 2026 is looking like one of those years.

• That means tough choices for families, employers and workers all faced with shouldering higher premiums or out-of-pocket spending. Some will conclude it's prohibitively expensive and go uninsured.
• Another thing that's different about this year is that the white-hot political rancor around ACA premiums is putting health insurance back centerstage politically.

By the numbers: ACA insurers themselves are raising premiums by an estimated 26%, in part due to rising hospital costs, higher demand for pricey GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, and the threat of tariffs.

• But add in the loss of federal subsidies, and the increase is 114% — or more than double what they currently pay, according to KFF. 22 million out of 24 million marketplace enrollees now receive subsidies.
• Premiums in the small group employer market will go up by a median of 11%, also per KFF, due to some of the same reasons insurers cite in ACA markets.  Read more

NPR - Lawmakers will likely leave Washington without extending Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies. The enhanced subsidies for ACA marketplace plans will expire at the end of the year. Millions of Americans can expect a spike in their premiums, and some may see the price of their plans double or triple in the new year.  

The Guardian - Last Tuesday afternoon, Dean Andrea Baccarelli at the Harvard School of Public Health sent out a brief message announcing that one of the country’s most experienced and accomplished public health leaders, Dr Mary T Bassett, would “step down” as director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. The email struck a polite, bureaucratic tone, thanking her for her service and offering an upbeat rationale for a new “focus on children’s health”.

It omitted the fact that, according to a Harvard Crimson source, Bassett had been asked to resign just two hours earlier and instructed to vacate her office by the end of the year. The decision was not a routine administrative transition. It was the culmination of a year of escalating pressure on the Center for Health and Human Rights for its work on the health and human rights of Palestinians. Powerful figures inside and outside Harvard, including the former Harvard president and now thoroughly disgraced economist Larry Summers, condemned this work and claimed it “foments antisemitism”. A leading public health scholar whose career has been defined by work on racial justice, poverty, HIV, and global inequality appears to have been removed not because her commitments shifted, but because the political costs of applying those commitments to Palestinians became too great for Harvard to tolerate.

NBC News - House Speaker Mike Johnson said he won't call a vote to extend enhanced subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, effectively guaranteeing they will expire at the end of this month.

That means higher insurance premiums will go into effect for millions of Americans who get coverage through Obamacare next year. The speaker made the announcement after a closed-door Republican caucus meeting, saying that leadership failed to reach a deal with centrist members to bring up an ACA amendment on a health care bill set for a vote today. Read the full story.

NBC News - Instead of recommending the hepatitis B vaccine for all newborns, the CDC now officially advises women who test negative for the virus to consult health care providers about whether their babies should get their first doses within 24 hours of birth.