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Good morning. I admit that I didn’t finish rereading “The Odyssey” before I saw the movie last weekend, but it’s never too late. For now, scroll down to read a related First Opinion essay and to sign up for office hours with Bob Herman, STAT’s own Homeric chronicler of the business of health care.
Researchers supported by AHRQ have funds cut off
Last week, dozens of researchers supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality received a letter confirming what they already suspected, and in many cases were already enduring: They would not receive future funding installments for their ongoing research grants.
“This is the culmination of a slow-moving disaster that has been building for well over a year now,” health economist Eric Roberts, who received a letter of “non-award,” told STAT’s Anil Oza. Many researchers had been waiting months for renewed funding and had struggled to get any explanation of the delay from the agency. Read more from Anil on how much money we’re talking about and how the agency justified the move.
When you hate your job but love health insurance
Almost a quarter of all U.S. workers are staying in jobs they want to leave because they don’t want to give up their health benefits, new Gallup survey data shows. That’s up from 16% in 2021, the last time the group measured this phenomenon charmingly known as “job lock.”
STAT’s Bob Herman has more details on the findings. The data reinforces the major takeaway from his ongoing series, Out of Pocket, Out of Reach, that the cost of employer-based health insurance is crushing workers and businesses.
If you have questions or concerns about this pressing challenge, you’re in luck: Bob is doing a virtual office-hours event today at 1 p.m. EDT. Sign up here to talk with one of the smartest reporters on earth about this complicated, frustrating issue.
What would Odysseus’ testosterone screening show?
As a urologist, Elizabeth Dray knows the value of testosterone replacement therapy, especially for people with clinically low levels of the sex hormone. It can improve sexual function, strengthen bone density, treat anemia, and increase lean body mass. But when defense secretary Pete Hegseth announced that servicemembers would undergo regular testosterone screening, he was buying into a mythology that isn’t based in truth, Dray argues in a new First Opinion essay. Hormone therapy will not transform modern men into legendary war heroes like those in “The Odyssey.”
“Both of these men, the classical hero and the optimized modern soldier, are fantasies,” Dray writes. “But I’m worried Hegseth’s vision is a tragedy in the making.” Read more in Dray’s insightful essay on what lessons can be applied to our supposed crisis of masculinity from one of the oldest stories in existence.
In the wake of Maui fires, a new rural health model
Three years ago, one of the deadliest wildfires in American history spread across the Hawaiian island of Maui, killing more than 100 people and burning thousands of acres, including more than 2,000 buildings. Now, researchers are hoping to learn from the tragedy by conducting one of the largest studies on the long-term health effects of wild and urban fire exposure.
The research, which involves monthly screenings for participants, has become one of the few reliable sources of information about the community’s health recovery, STAT’s Angus Chen reports. “This program saved my life,” said Amy Jackson, who was nearly trapped amid the fires while delivering food for Uber Eats. Only when she joined the study did clinicians identify life-threatening test results that she believes are directly related to the trauma.
It’s an encouraging example of the way research can also offer a community service, but the effort isn’t without obstacles. The state’s health director has publicly downplayed the potential health impacts of the wildfire and privately criticized the study’s methods and conclusions. Read the story.
4.5 million
That’s how many people across the country were disenrolled from SNAP, the federal nutrition program, between the passing of President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill last July and April 2026, according to analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. This includes about 1.5 million children, per the group.
The analysis concluded that, based on nationwide and state unemployment rates, it’s “very unlikely” that the decline is being driven by reduced need. Meanwhile, the USDA, which runs the program, has focused on what it categorizes as fraud and “significant waste” within the program.
‘A cochlear implant for vision’
European regulators have approved the commercial sale of a retinal implant that improves eyesight for patients with age-related macular degeneration (the most common cause of vision loss for older adults). Science Corporation, which makes the device, says that it improves vision enough for people to read books and road signs more clearly.
STAT’s O. Rose Broderick has more on the device, and when people in the U.S. may be able to get it.
What we’re reading
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Trump’s CDC is detaining Americans in response to Ebola: A ‘wild misuse’ of power, Rolling Stone
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Why epidemics breed rage at health workers, New York Times
- I’m a cardiologist. I’m not sure the new cholesterol drug enlicitide is a game-changer, STAT
- A Deloitte-run system denied Medicaid benefits for Michigan’s disabled. Now Trump’s law piles on, KFF Health News
- Advocates say federal funding is being cut from groups fighting HIV, STAT