More than 31 million Americans borrowed money last year to pay for health care, a new survey found. Those Americans borrowed about $74 billion, despite most of them have some form of health insurance, the West Health-Gallup survey found. Most of the borrowers were ages 18-29, 30-39 and 40-49. Just 2% of Americans who borrowed were over 65 years old.
The VA is planning a reorganization that includes cutting over 80,000 jobs from the sprawling agency that provides healthcare and other services for millions of veterans. The VA's chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, told top-level officials at the agency Tuesday that it had an objective to cut enough employees to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. That would require terminating tens of thousands of employees after the VA expanded during the Biden administration, as well as to cover veterans impacted by burn pits under the 2022 PACT Act.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya promised to cut wasted research dollars and focus on funding studies to find the root causes of chronic diseases during his confirmation hearing to direct the $48 billion National Institutes of Health this morning. "Every dollar wasted on a frivolous study, every dollar wasted on administrative costs that are not needed, is a dollar not spent on research," Bhattacharya told the Senate HELP Committee.
Amazon has formed a new group within AWS dedicated to creating AI agents, systems that help people automate parts of their lives, Reuters reported on Tuesday.
Jeff Grant, the former deputy director for operations of the CMS division that oversees Obamacare and other programs, left Friday after a 41-year career in the federal government. He described an agency in wreckage after Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency swept through HHS and fired thousands of workers it deemed unfit for the agency's needs or inadequate to perform their job's duties.