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President Donald Trump rode to reelection last fall on voter concerns about prices. But as his administration pares back federal rules and programs designed to protect patients from the high cost of health care, Trump risks pushing more Americans into debt, further straining family budgets already stressed by medical bills.

Millions of people are expected to lose health insurance in the coming years as a result of the tax cut legislation Trump signed this month, leaving them with fewer protections from large bills if they get sick or suffer an accident.

At the same time, significant increases in health plan premiums on state insurance marketplaces next year will likely push more Americans to either drop coverage or switch to higher-deductible plans that will require them to pay more out-of-pocket before their insurance kicks in.

Smaller changes to federal rules are poised to bump up patients’ bills, as well. New federal guidelines for COVID-19 vaccines, for example, will allow health insurers to stop covering the shots for millions, so if patients want the protection, some may have to pay out-of-pocket.

The new tax cut legislation will also raise the cost of certain doctor visits, requiring copays of up to $35 for some Medicaid enrollees.

And for those who do end up in debt, there will be fewer protections. This month, the Trump administration secured permission from a federal court to roll back regulations that would have removed medical debt from consumer credit reports.

That puts Americans who cannot pay their medical bills at risk of lower credit scores, hindering their ability to get a loan or forcing them to pay higher interest rates.

“For tens of millions of Americans, balancing the budget is like walking a tightrope,” said Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. “The Trump administration is just throwing them off.”

White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not respond to questions about how the administration’s health care policies will affect Americans’ medical bills.

The president and his Republican congressional allies have brushed off the health care cuts, including hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid retrenchment in the mammoth tax law. “You won’t even notice it,” Trump said at the White House after the bill signing July 4. “Just waste, fraud, and abuse.”

But consumer and patient advocates around the country warn that the erosion of federal health care protections since Trump took office in January threatens to significantly undermine Americans’ financial security.

“These changes will hit our communities hard,” said Arika Sánchez, who oversees health care policy at the nonprofit New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.

Sánchez predicted many more people the center works with will end up with medical debt. “When families get stuck with medical debt, it hurts their credit scores, makes it harder to get a car, a home, or even a job,” she said. “Medical debt wrecks people’s lives.”

For Americans with serious illnesses such as cancer, weakened federal protections from medical debt pose yet one more risk, said Elizabeth Darnall, senior director of federal advocacy at the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network. “People will not seek out the treatment they need,” she said.

Trump promised a rosier future while campaigning last year, pledging to “make America affordable again” and “expand access to new Affordable Healthcare.”

Polls suggest voters were looking for relief.

About 6 in 10 adults — Democrats and Republicans — say they are worried about being able to afford health care, according to one recent survey, outpacing concerns about the cost of food or housing. And medical debt remains a widespread problem: As many as 100 million adults in the U.S. are burdened by some kind of health care debt.

Despite this, key tools that have helped prevent even more Americans from sinking into debt are now on the chopping block.

Medicaid and other government health insurance programs, in particular, have proved to be a powerful economic backstop for low-income patients and their families, said Kyle Caswell, an economist at the Urban Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Caswell and other researchers found, for example, that Medicaid expansion made possible by the 2010 Affordable Care Act led to measurable declines in medical debt and improvements in consumers’ credit scores in states that implemented the expansion.

“We’ve seen that these programs have a meaningful impact on people’s financial well-being,” Caswell said.

Trump’s tax law — which will slash more than $1 trillion in federal health spending over the next decade, mostly through Medicaid cuts — is expected to leave 10 million more people without health coverage by 2034, according to the latest estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The tax cuts, which primarily benefit wealthy Americans, will add $3.4 trillion to U.S. deficits over a decade, the office calculated.

The number of uninsured could spike further if Trump and his congressional allies don’t renew additional federal subsidies for low- and moderate-income Americans who buy health coverage on state insurance marketplaces.

This aid — enacted under former President Joe Biden — lowers insurance premiums and reduces medical bills enrollees face when they go to the doctor or the hospital. But unless congressional Republicans act, those subsidies will expire later this year, leaving many with bigger bills.

Federal debt regulations developed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Biden administration would have protected these people and others if they couldn’t pay their medical bills.

The agency issued rules in January that would have removed medical debts from consumer credit reports. That would have helped an estimated 15 million people.

But the Trump administration chose not to defend the new regulations when they were challenged in court by debt collectors and the credit bureaus, who argued the federal agency had exceeded its authority in issuing the rules. A federal judge in Texas appointed by Trump ruled that the regulation should be scrapped.

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CLIMATEWIRE | The sweeping budget bill signed by President Donald Trump will lead to higher electricity bills, fewer renewable installations, and more planet-warming pollution, according to modeling released Friday by the Rhodium Group.

The economic consulting firm’s results are among the bevy of energy models put out in the wake of the law’s passage earlier this month.

Rhodium predicts average household energy expenditures will increase between $78-$192 by 2035, largely due to fewer electric vehicles on the road and consumers paying more for gasoline. Installations of new clean electricity projects, such as wind and solar, are expected to fall 57-62 percent over the next decade. The result is an increase in the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

When Rhodium estimated America’s emissions trajectory last year, it predicted the U.S. was on track to cut emissions between 38-56 percent by 2035 compared to 2005 levels. Now, it thinks the U.S. is on pace to reduce emissions 27-44 percent below 2005 levels. For context, U.S. emissions were 20 percent below 2005 levels last year. The broad ranges reflect scenarios that assume differences in economic factors, such as the price of natural gas, renewables or electricity demand growth.

“This has a meaningful slowing effect on the deployment of of clean technology across the economy,” said Ben King, a director in Rhodium’s Climate and Energy practice.

Rhodium’s modeling is one of a series of analyses that have come out in the aftermath of the law’s passage.

FTI, a consulting group, reckons new gas plant construction in the Eastern Interconnection will surge as a result of the measure, prompting an 8 percent increase in natural gas demand for power compared to the group’s reference case scenario. The Eastern Interconnection is the power grid covering two-thirds of the country.

FTI also thinks renewable installations will plunge, leading to renewables’ share of total electricity generation to fall in the 2030s. The group’s initial modeling results did not report changes in costs or emissions.

“The accelerated phase out of clean energy tax credits results in slower growth in wind and solar capacity and leads to gas capacity picking up a greater share, with the majority of new gas builds projected to come online in the 2030’s,” Dan Goodwin, a senior director at FTI, wrote in an email.

The Repeat Project, an academic group led by Princeton University professor Jesse Jenkins, echoed many of Rhodium’s findings.

It estimates the law will increase household energy bills by $280 annually through 2035.

Repeat had expected solar installations to average 44 gigawatts annually through 2035, but that figure falls to 23 GW following the law’s passage. Wind falls from 25 GW annually to 9 GW.

As a result of such changes, it expects greenhouse gas emissions will be 7 percent higher in 2035.

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Magic Johnson is dedicated to his annual yacht trips in Europe, which typically begin with friends and conclude with family. This year is no different—the former point guard is currently vacationing with his wife Cookie, kids, and grandkids.

“Today we enjoyed lunch at the famous beach club Juan y Andrea on the island Formentera in Spain – just outside of Ibiza! I want everyone to see how beautiful the turquoise water is in Formentera😍,” Johnson wrote in the caption.

In the pictures shared, Johnson, 65, and his family enjoyed lunch on a beach, and it appears fresh lobster was on the menu.

In one of the images, the former NBA star’s daughter, Elisa, 30, posed next to him in a black dress. Johnson’s grandson, Avery, sat next to Elisa. EJ, 33, was also present and posed next to his mom, Cookie.

Additionally, Johnson’s son, Andre, 44, and his wife, Lisa, in addition to their daughter, Gigi were on the trip too.

Magic shares EJ and Elisa with Cookie and has Andre with ex-girlfriend Melissa Mitchell.

In addition to having a bite on the beach, the Johnson family also had a fun disco night, and of course, costumes were involved.

“Welcome to Club 32 disco night on the yacht with the Johnson family! Instead of the famous Studio 54 in NY, this is Club 32 in the med 😂” the former athlete wrote. 

Johnson shared an image from the disco party, showing all family members dressed in sparkly, 70s-inspired disco outfits and Afro wigs.

In 2024, the longtime couple also had their kids join them on their yacht trip, which primarily happened on their chartered boat, the Phoenix II, in mid-July. Some of the best memories are made during family vacations, and we hope to see this lavish family tradition continue!

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Even Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) — who has consistently remained one of President Donald Trump’s biggest supporters in Congress — isn’t a fan of his latest policy.

In a lengthy Thursday night post to her congressional account on X, Greene came out swinging against Trump’s latest executive order (EO) on artificial intelligence (AI). The Georgia Republican said she had “many concerns” about both the danger AI poses to the environment as well as Trump’s position against states regulating it.

My deep concerns are that the EO demands rapid AI expansion with little to no guardrails and breaks,” she wrote. “It also contains the threat of withholding federal funds from states who regulate AI, which is an absolute threat to federalism and why I strongly opposed the AI state moratorium originally in the BBB [Big Beautiful Bill].”Rushed AI expansion and data centers being built all over the country from state to state with no plan in regards to environmental and critical water supply impact has massive future implications and problems,” Greene continued. “… When you build something that requires a HIGH water demand, it will always take water away from others – that means people, cities, businesses, and surrounding counties and states.”

Greene’s assessment of AI’s impact on local water supplies is accurate, with Bloomberg reporting in May that AI data centers “consume immense amounts of water” in order to meet demand. According to Bloomberg, many of those data centers are in areas where freshwater resources are quickly drying up, like southern Arizona and central Texas. The outlet further reported that local communities may soon have to “compete with data center operators to access clean water.”

“Data centers are like a black holes when it comes to water requirements. They consume massive amounts of water for cooling, literally millions of gallons per day,” Greene tweeted. “… Just wait and see how bad lawsuits will become when counties are competing for data centers, in order to get rid of county property taxes, and the unintended results is new data centers that steal the water from surrounding homes and neighboring counties and states.”

As the Georgia congresswoman mentioned, the original version of the BBB imposed a 10-year moratorium on states regulating AI (Greene admitted she made a mistake in voting for the original bill that included the provision). That language was later stripped out after 17 Republican governors sent Trump a letter railing against the moratorium.

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Keith Krehbiel lived with Parkinson’s disease for nearly 25 years before agreeing to try a brain implant that might alleviate his symptoms. He had long been reluctant to submit to the surgery. “It was a big move,” he says. But by 2020, his symptoms had become so severe that he grudgingly agreed to go ahead.

Deep-brain stimulation involves inserting thin wires through two small holes in the skull into a region of the brain associated with movement. The hope is that by delivering electrical pulses to the region, the implant can normalize aberrant brain activity and reduce symptoms. Since the devices were first approved almost three decades ago, some 200,000 people have had them fitted to help calm the tremors and rigidity caused by Parkinson’s disease. But about 40,000 of those who received devices made after 2020 got them with a special feature that has largely not yet been turned on. The devices can read brain waves and then adapt and tailor the rhythm of their output, in much the same way as a pacemaker monitors and corrects the heart’s electrical rhythms, says Helen Bronte-Stewart, a neurologist at Stanford University in California.

Bronte-Stewart received approval to start a clinical trial of this new technology, known as adaptive deep-brain stimulation (aDBS), the same week that Krehbiel was preparing for surgery. He recalls the phone call in which she asked him if he wanted to be her first participant: “I said, ‘Boy, do I!’”

Five years on, the results of this 68-person trial, called ADAPT-PD, are under review for publication. Although the exact details are still under wraps, they were convincing enough to earn approval for the technology earlier this year from both US and European regulators.

The results of this study could be a boon for the estimated one million people in the United States and 1.2 million people in Europe who now live with Parkinson’s disease — and for Medtronic, the health-care technology company based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that manufactures the implants. The seeming success also clears a path for other companies around the world that are racing for approval on advanced devices, says Martijn Beudel, a neurologist at Amsterdam University Medical Center who worked on the trial.

The approaching wave of therapies promises to level up DBS for Parkinson’s and other motor conditions. The technology might even help to treat neurological disorders such as Tourette’s syndrome and psychiatric conditions, including obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and depression. Several clinicians suggest that the new technology could have even more profound health implications — that is, if funding for US brain-implant research isn’t cut.

Deep trade-offs

Since DBS was first approved in Europe and the United States in the late-1990s, the vast majority of devices have been given to people with Parkinson’s disease. Parkinson’s is a progressive disorder, typified by the death of neurons that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is key to controlling movements.

Existing drugs that aim to increase dopamine levels can only manage the symptoms. They can’t match the constant dopamine production of a healthy brain. “No matter how clever we are with it, we have never been able to exactly mimic the way the brain supplies it,” says Bronte-Stewart. This means that symptoms vary throughout the day — from the unwanted involuntary movements induced by the morning flood of dopamine-mimicking drugs to increased rigidity later in the day as the drugs wear off. The medication also comes with other side effects that vary from person to person. For Krehbiel, it was nausea so severe he had to lie down multiple times a day.

When these become overwhelming, a neurologist might recommend DBS. Implants typically dispense pulses of electrical energy deep into the brain 24 hours a day to regulate aberrant brain signals associated with uncontrollable body movements. Before this year, this always-on approach was the only commercially available form of the therapy.

But continuous DBS can sometimes amplify the drugs’ effects — or generate new symptoms. Some of these are harmless: one man with OCD developed a passion for the music of Johnny Cash when his stimulator was turned on, but was uninterested in the artist when it was off. Other symptoms are cause for more concern, including sudden-onset gambling disorders and other temporary changes in impulse control. More frequently, the addition of stimulation can induce speech impairments, such as slurring, raise the risk of falling, and cause some involuntary movements.

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Ada Zielińska

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Poor sleeper? Sleep expert and hypnotherapist Malminder Gill was the same until she managed to turn it all around. Here, she shares the four changes that made a difference. 

It seems like everyone has some sort of sleep-related problem these days, whether it takes you hours to get to sleep or you wake up in the night and feel groggy the next day. And sleep expert Malminder Gill was no different.

Gill, 43, who’s also a clinical hypnotherapist, was once like many of us, tossing and turning at night. Insomnia disrupted her life during a transitional period around 20 years ago while she was studying for exams at university, and it took a series of changes for her to get a handle on it.

“I was under a lot of pressure, not only worrying about performing well but what the future held for me,” Gill says. “I was totally unaware of how to care for myself and my mental health.” 

She wanted to perform well, but without sufficient sleep, it was difficult. “One anxiety led to another, which led to insomnia, which disrupted my day-to-day life,” she says. Many of us will know stress loops like this all too well. There’s the wanting to get to sleep, then feeling stressed because you know you need to go to sleep, but the stress is preventing you from getting to sleep. And thus, the cycle continues.

It wasn’t until Gill took a trip to India that everything changed, and she was able to completely reset. She was off on a long holiday, looking for an adventure, but it was getting out of her routine that solved everything for her. Around the same time, she uncovered triggers that were stopping her from sleeping and learned new, healthier habits.

Since then, Gill has not only become a much better sleeper but has also made a career out of it, working as a sleep expert and hypnotherapist on Harley Street. Below, she shares the four simple changes that helped her to get the sleep she craved. 

1. Getting out of a routine 

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Hmmmm… Hamburger Lovers Delight!

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As for their namesake burger, the original Balboa burger, expect “lettuce, tomato, onion, American cheese, homemade zesty aioli for $11.85.” Further, “add to any burger or sandwich salt and pepper fries for $3.00, garlic fries $4.00.”

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Trump is shafting his base economically in three ways most Trump voters don’t see or know. It’s important that they do.

The Consumer Price Index has risen 2.7 percent from a year earlier. That’s the fastest pace since February. The trend is worrying, especially for working-class consumers who have to sacrifice a larger portion of their paychecks to buy what they bought before.

So-called “core” inflation — which strips out volatile food and energy prices and is therefore a more reliable measure for underlying price pressures — is rising even faster: up 2.9 percent from the same time last year.

Trump’s tariffs are the major culprit. Prices rose noticeably on appliances, clothing, and furniture — all products heavily exposed to Trump’s import taxes from Canada, China, and other major trading partners.

Prices will almost certainly rise further over the course of the summer, as new so-called reciprocal levies go into effect, including a 50 percent import tax on Brazil and an eye-popping 50 percent import tax on copper, all set to take effect August 1.

The Yale Budget Lab has estimated that consumers will face an overall effective import tax rate of 20.6 percent. That’s the highest in 115 years, the equivalent of a $2,800 hit in yearly household income.

$2,800 is a far bigger deal for lower-income consumers than higher-income. Much of Trump’s working-class base will be hurt.

Trump wants Fed Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates in order to stimulate spending. But there’s no way Powell is going to do that with core inflation picking up.

Trump doesn’t have the power to fire Powell, but Trump is trying to pressure him with a White House investigation of an expensive renovation of the Fed’s headquarters, which Trump may try to use as a pretext for firing him. Earlier today, Trump again tore into Powell over both interest rates and the cost of the renovations to the Fed’s headquarters.

Trump’s pressure on Powell is worrying investors that Trump won’t allow Powell or his replacement to control inflation.

This worry is raising inflationary expectations — already causing lenders to raise longer-term interest rates. The worry is also eroding confidence in the safety and stability of the U.S. dollar, which is plunging in value.

Lower-income American consumers will be hit with three big cost increases:

(1) Import taxes (Trump’s tariffs), which will rise further on August 1. These import taxes will take a bigger bite out of the wallets of lower-income Americans than higher-income.

(2) On top of the import taxes, the declining dollar makes everything imported from the rest of the world even more expensive. Again, lower-income Americans will be hit harder than higher-income.

(3) Trump’s Big Ugly bill will cut Medicaid and food stamps, which will raise the costs of health care and food for lower-income Americans, including much of Trump’s base.

Income inequality is wider than it’s been since the first Gilded Age. Trump’s policies — import taxes (tariffs), pressure on the Fed that’s driving down the dollar, and Big Ugly cuts in Medicaid and food stamps in order to help finance a tax cut mainly for the rich — will further widen it.

Many of the working-class people who voted for Trump will be harmed the most.

They need to know.

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(REUTERS)

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A person in Arizona recently died of pneumonic plague—a rare and severe form of the disease. An expert explains how the bacteria that spurred the Black Death centuries ago continues to claim lives

Plague is often associated with Medieval history and the centuries-old Black Death epidemic, but a recent death in northern Arizona is a troublesome reminder of the flea-borne disease’s lingering hold in parts of the world, including the U.S. Local health officials in Arizona’s Coconino County, which includes the city of Flagstaff, confirmed late last week that a person there had died of pneumonic plague—a severe lung infection caused by Yersinia pestis, the bacterium behind the illness.

Human infections and fatalities from plague are relatively rare in the U.S.; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, seven human cases are reported annually on average. Prior to the Arizona case, the most recent death was reported in 2021. Y. pestis arrived in port cities in the U.S. around 1900 and has since become endemic to rats and other rodents in western U.S. states, including New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Nevada.

“From a public health standpoint in the U.S., it’s a scary thing that it’s plague, and it’s tragic that that this was a fatal case, but people need to remember that it’s extremely rare,” says David Wagner, executive director of the Pathogen and Microbiome Institute at Northern Arizona University, who has studied plague for more than 25 years. “Not to be flippant, but it’s more important that you put your seat belt on going to the grocery store than it is to worry about plague in the western U.S.”

Scientific American spoke with Wagner about plague’s signs and symptoms, and its persistence across time.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

How do people get sick with plague?

Plague is caused by the bacterium Y. pestis and is really a disease of rodents and their fleas. You have an infected rodent; a flea feeds on the blood of that rodent, and it picks up some Y. pestis. Then, when the flea feeds on another rodent, it can pass along the Y. pestis. It’s constantly cycling back and forth between rodents and fleas in nature; that’s how it’s been maintained for thousands of years in the environment around the world.

What’s the difference between bubonic and pneumonic plague?

People call it the Black Death; they call it bubonic plague; they call it pneumonic plague—it’s all the same disease, just different clinical manifestations. What stands apart [with the recent case is] that it’s pneumonic plague. That’s kind of rare, especially in the U.S.

Pretty much all human cases, with a few exceptions, are acquired from the environment—from the bite of an infected flea. If there isn’t a rodent host for that flea to feed on, it will look for other mammals to feed on. And if humans happen to be in proximity, it will feed on humans and can transmit Y. pestis.

If the immune system doesn’t stop Y. pestis at the source of the flea bite, it will migrate through your lymphatic system to your closest major lymph node. So let’s say I was bit on my wrist; then the bacteria would go to that lymph node in my underarm and start to reproduce there. And that mass swelling, that swollen lymph node, is called a bubo—that’s why it’s called bubonic plague. These days, it’s a dead end because there’s not flea-borne transmission from one human to another. It just stops there with the treatment or death of that individual.

What people might not know is that plague has been endemic throughout the western U.S. in rodent populations for more than 100 years.

Left untreated, though, bubonic plague can get down into your lungs via the bloodstream. That’s called secondary pneumonic plague. Those individuals, then, via cough or direct contact, can spread plague person-to-person, and that’s called primary pneumonic plague.

Someone could also get pneumonic plague from an animal—for example, if they were handling an infected animal and that animal coughed. Sometimes hunters in Central Asia will kill [infected] ground squirrels, and when they’re skinning them can inhale particles. People also talk about septicemic plague, and that means it’s gotten into your bloodstream, and that typically also arises from bubonic plague. You could also get [septicemic plague] directly if you had cuts on your hands and were handling rodents without gloves.

Can pets get infected or transmit plague to humans?

Pets, especially free-roaming ones, may come into contact with dead rodents that have died of plague. Fleas can hop onto pets, which then bring them into the home. This is pretty rare because there are so few [human] cases in the U.S., but that is something we think about.

Flea and tick collars are a good idea. If animals do get sick, most of the evidence shows that dogs fight off the infection and can create antibodies against Y. pestis. Cats are more susceptible and can quickly become sick and actually can progress to pneumonic plague. It’s super, super rare, but that’s a possible way for humans to be exposed to pneumonic plague.

What are the symptoms and treatment?

With bubonic plague, typically people develop a fever, headache, chills and fatigue, and then they’ll get those swollen lymph nodes called buboes. It typically takes a few days to manifest because it sort of starts off in stealthy mode inside the body to try and avoid the immune system.

Plague is easily treated with many different types of antibiotics, as long as it’s caught in time. If untreated, bubonic plague mortality rates may be somewhere between 30 to 60 percent, depending on the situation. Pneumonic plague, left untreated, is almost always fatal. So diagnostics become really important. The challenge is that many physicians in the U.S. have never seen plague. The symptoms are a bit common to other things, so rapid testing in the lab can help.

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