| Sweeping changes to Medicaid and the ACA are combining with rising health costs to make 2026 a high-stakes year for hospital operators.
Why it matters: While major health systems like HCA are likely to weather the worst, some safety net providers and facilities on tight margins could close or scale back services as uncompensated care costs mount and uncertainty around future policies swirls.
- “We took a big hit in 2025,” said Beth Feldpush, senior vice president of policy and advocacy at America’s Essential Hospitals.
- “I don’t think that the field can absorb any further hits without us really seeing a crisis.”
State of play: Last year’s GOP tax-and-spending law will decrease federal Medicaid funding by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade, translating into millions more uninsured, lower reimbursements and higher costs for hospitals.
- The Trump administration is also considering big changes to the way Medicare pays for outpatient services that could reduce spending by nearly $11 billion over the next decade, including less for chemotherapy.
Hospitals have the rest of this year to boost their balance sheets, invest in technology including AI, and even consider merger plans before the biggest changes take effect in 2027, Fitch Ratings wrote in its annual outlook for nonprofit facilities. The financial outlook remains stable for the sector overall next year, the report predicts.
Threat level: Hospitals in some instances have started closing unprofitable services like maternity care and behavioral health care in the face of financial pressures.
- More than 300 rural hospitals are at immediate risk of closing their operations entirely, the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform said last month.
- Safety net providers also are going to court to fight an administration effort to make them pay full price for medicines they currently get at a steep discount and reimburse them later.
- “Those hospitals that have been underperforming … they are going to continue to struggle,” said Erik Swanson, managing director at consulting firm Kaufman Hall.
Read more
from Politico:
|
|
A bipartisan House funding bill doesn’t align with the administration’s plan to make deep cuts to foreign aid. | Michel Lunanga/Getty Images |
| A GLOBAL HEALTH FIX — Congress is expected to vote this week to reject global health funding cuts requested by President Donald Trump, POLITICO’s Carmen Paun reports.
Trump put foreign-aid cuts at the top of his agenda when he took office, leading to shuttered clinics, fired health workers and reduced access to care in some of the world’s poorest countries. Now appropriators in Congress want to undo most of the cuts.
Appropriators included $9.4 billion for global health in a bipartisan bill funding the State Department for fiscal 2026 released Sunday night. That’s more than double the $3.8 billion the State Department requested but half a billion less than Congress allotted in fiscal 2025. The House is expected to vote on it Wednesday.
Why it matters: Bipartisan lawmakers are rejecting Trump’s plan to eliminate funding for family planning and reproductive health; neglected tropical diseases; and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which provides shots to low-income countries.
Instead, the bill appropriates nearly $524 million for family planning and reproductive health, almost $109 million for neglected tropical diseases and $300 million for Gavi.
Gavi, an international alliance of governments and foundations, fell short of a goal to secure nearly $12 billion last summer after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the U.S. would provide no funding. Kennedy accused the group of neglecting vaccine safety, but Gavi said that’s not true.
The House funding bill also allocates $32.5 million to the United Nations Population Fund — known as UNFPA — an organization from which Trump withdrew the U.S. by executive order last week.
It appropriates $4.6 billion for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which seeks to combat HIV and AIDS in the developing world. That’s just under the $4.8 billion enacted in the 2025 fiscal year, but well above the $2.9 billion the State Department had requested.
Even so: The funding bill aligns with the Trump administration’s budget request by no longer providing funding for the U.N.’s World Health Organization, which Trump is withdrawing from next week. It also doesn’t call for the resurrection of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Trump’s former billionaire adviser and campaign contributor Elon Musk shuttered abruptly last year without congressional input.
What’s next: Congress faces a Jan. 30 deadline to fund government agencies. If the House passes the bill, it will go to the Senate and then to Trump’s desk for his signature. |
from The Medical Futurist:
The CEO of the company, Alon Metrikin-Gold, just shared that the FDA has granted “Skincubator” a so-called Breakthrough Device Designation (BDD)! They have developed a wearable device designed to enable immediate, prolonged, skin-to-skin care for the tiniest preterm infants in their first days of life.
“It enables complete skin-to-skin care, while addressing key clinical, technical and behavioral challenges in the Neonatal ICU.”
|
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
They have already had two clinical trials, with 20 and 9 preterm neonates, respectively. Their story and how they worked with the FDA should be an example to follow for other companies working on novel technologies.
|
|
|
|
|
DIGITAL HEALTH ANNOUNCEMENTS AT CES 2026
1) Derma Reader 2.0: AI-powered skin analysis to bring dermatologist-level diagnostics into retail settings.
2) myWaves: a sleep-tech startup using EEG to record a person’s delta brainwaves and then transforms those unique patterns into personalized soundscapes intended to help users fall asleep faster and sleep better.
3) Coro (on the picture): a smart breastfeeding monitor in the form of a silicone nipple shield with an integrated flow sensor that measures, almost in real time, how much breast milk a baby receives during feedings, including volume, duration, and left/right balance, sending this data to a smartphone app to give mothers precise insights into feeding patterns.
4) Headphones that can read your brainwaves: Neurable unveiled a headset designed to help users optimize focus by tracking brain activity in real time, while Naox is bringing its in-ear EEG technology to consumer-oriented earbuds.
5) A toothbrush to sniff out health issues: Y-Brush introduced SmartNose, a gas sensor integrated into a sonic toothbrush that analyzes breath biomarkers and claims to detect over 300 health conditions, including early-stage diabetes and liver disorders.
6) Food allergen detectors: French startup Allergen Alert is entering the market with portable devices aimed at detecting allergens in food.
7) AI-powered wellness home: Ceragem showcased its latest vision for home health care, which turns the home itself into “an integrated health management platform.”
|
|
|
