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October 06, 2026
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No commentsOctober 06, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsOctober 06, 2026RoseHealth News, KFF Health NewsNo commentsOn Sept. 30, I was one of the seven media witnesses who observed Tennessee fail to execute convicted murderer Christa Pike, the first woman to face the death penalty in the state in almost 200 years.
From our previous reporting, each of us had an inkling that the lethal injection process might not go according to plan. Pike’s attorneys had asked the Tennessee Supreme Court to allow her to be hanged instead, citing concerns that a platelet disorder and small veins would make the actual injection not only painful but ineffective.
And Tennessee had already botched an execution attempt in May, when healthcare workers failed to establish complete IV access into Tony Carruthers, who was sentenced to death after being convicted for his involvement in the kidnapping and murders of three people in 1994.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee said after the failed execution of Carruthers, who has maintained he is innocent, that the state wouldn’t try again to kill him for at least a year. After Pike left the execution chamber in an ambulance on Sept. 30, Lee announced he would suspend lethal injections for the rest of the year.
The morning of Pike’s scheduled execution, I and the other media witnesses arrived at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville by 8:30 a.m. and waited to be ushered into the prison with nothing but our driver’s licenses in hand. The plan was to wait inside until Pike began her journey to the death chamber at 10 a.m.
But we didn’t make it that far.
Before the Department of Correction’s staffers began moving us away from the outdoor media tent and our belongings, the reporters’ phones all went off. A federal circuit court had stayed the execution. This was my fifth stint as a media witness to an execution, and I’d never seen a stay issued. We didn’t know what that would mean.
It turned out to mean waiting for nine hours at the prison, barred from leaving the grounds. We spent most of it in the boardroom where parole hearings take place.
Hours of Waiting. Then, ‘It’s a Go.’
Throughout the wait, the victim’s family often came up in conversation. In 1995, Pike, then 18 years old, killed Colleen Slemmer, who was 19. Slemmer’s family in Florida traveled to Tennessee for the execution with money raised through crowdfunding. It’s unclear where they waited while the last-minute legal wrangling played out.
Sometime around 6 p.m., the prison system’s communications director, Dorinda Carter, told us: “It’s a go.”
Tennessee had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the stay, and it did. Carter read the ruling aloud to us.
For unknown reasons, it took another hour or so for the security team to usher us into the witness bay, an all-white cinder block room with black pleather chairs in two rows and a big window overlooking the death chamber. A loudspeaker pipes sound into the room from the chamber when the microphones are on.
A black curtain hangs in front of the window inside the death chamber. Department of Correction workers open it once IV lines are inserted into the condemned prisoner.
The curtain is there to obscure the workers who place the IVs, in order to shield their identities as required by state law. That process is enshrined in the “Lethal Injection Execution Protocol,” which is the guidebook the Department of Correction writes for itself. There is no other regulation over executions in the state.
My employer, the Nashville public radio station WPLN, is a party in a lawsuit challenging the state’s concealment of the IV insertion. When executions are botched, it’s often due to something going wrong while IVs are placed — or with the subsequent step if IVs fail, placing a central line in a deeper vein through the chest, neck, or groin.
A lower court ruled in favor of WPLN and other media plaintiffs in January, but the state appealed the order, and it has been halted while higher courts consider the case.
The Death Chamber
The American Medical Association officially bars doctors from participating in executions, and many other health professionals also consider assisting an execution to be unethical.
Outside of prison staffers and the execution team, only the prisoner’s spiritual adviser and attorney are allowed in the room with the prisoner while the IVs are inserted. So generally, attorneys’ descriptions are the only account of the procedure.
Under normal circumstances, witnesses sit in the bay for 10 or 15 minutes with the curtain closed. That’s how long it tends to take for the IV team to place a line and start running saline, to prepare for the 5 grams of the sedative pentobarbital that will be pumped in to kill the prisoner.
Once the lines are set, the execution team enters an adjacent, concealed room. The IV lines run through the wall into that hidden chamber, from which the drugs are administered.
But at Pike’s execution, we sat in the bay for 45 minutes with the curtain closed and the microphone turned off.
Until Carruthers’ failed execution, the Department of Correction kept the lights off in the witness bay during the wait. Witnesses at his execution said they sat in a dark room for an hour and a half as the execution team tried and failed to place an IV line. This time, the prison kept the lights on.
The clock we use to give a minute-by-minute account is in the death chamber, so we can’t see it with the curtain closed. John North, a reporter with the television station WBIR in Knoxville, was the only witness wearing a watch. The rest of us asked him over and over what time it was.
After half an hour, it was clear the IV team must have been struggling.
We wondered whether Pike’s execution would unfold similarly to Carruthers’. That time, the governor called and ordered the execution halted before the curtain ever opened.
But at 7:27 p.m., we heard the curtain being drawn away.
We saw Pike in profile, lying on the gurney, facing the window for the other bay, where the victim’s family and prosecutors sit.
We saw Pike’s spiritual adviser, Mikey Noechel, who wore a wine-red sash over his suit. Together, they sang and talked about Buddhist teachings.
Under the state’s protocol, the spiritual adviser is allowed in the death chamber as the pentobarbital flow begins, though the attorneys are not.
There is no signal when the lethal drugs start flowing, but it’s assumed to begin after the prisoner delivers her final words. It’s typical for the spiritual adviser to offer prayers and other support, and for there to be a back-and-forth between the two.
Pike spoke.
“I just want to say that I’m going to leave this world the way I’ve spent most of my life, and that is with love,” she said.
She said that she had love for those who hate her, and that she was at peace with her death.
Moments later, Pike told Noechel her arm was burning. She said it was in one specific spot and asked corrections staff in the room whether that was normal.
Pentobarbital is alkaline, so it burns like drain cleaner if it touches skin. If the IV is administered correctly, that is unlikely to happen.
But Pike and Noechel chatted for what seemed a shocking amount of time. Prisoners tend to show signs of being sedated a few minutes in. Pike didn’t.
Something Is Wrong
The Tennessee Department of Correction uses an odd practice to announce the drugs have been fully administered. There’s a small, hinged door built into the wall between the concealed drug management room and the death chamber, with a platform beneath it. Once the drugs have completely flowed through the IV, the door is opened and a rock is placed on the platform. That initiates a five-minute waiting period, after which the curtain closes again to obscure a doctor, who enters the death chamber, checks the prisoner’s pulse, and certifies the death.
In each of the executions I’ve witnessed, the prisoners look unconscious long before the rock comes out, and in the minutes following they’re presumed dead.
The rock came out at 7:41 p.m. At 7:44 p.m., Pike was still speaking quietly to Noechel.
My jaw dropped. It was clear to me then that something was very wrong.
Once the five minutes are up and the curtain closes to conceal the doctor, who confirms the time of death, the spiritual adviser moves into the witness bay and stays there until everyone leaves the facility.
But after Noechel entered the witness bay, staff came in and ordered him back into the death chamber. There was only one reason to do so: They were trying again.
The curtain reopened.
The state’s protocol dictates that, as a backup plan, prison staff can run a second round of pentobarbital. According to a statement from the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks execution attempts and their outcomes, Pike is “the first person to survive after being injected with lethal doses of execution drugs.”
Eventually, Pike stopped talking. She started snoring.
She continued to snore after the rock was put out the second time and the curtain closed again. We continued to hear her snore over the loudspeaker.
The state’s protocol does not contemplate a second round of drugs failing to kill the prisoner, so there are essentially no rules for the situation the Department of Correction found itself in with Pike.
It’s unclear what was happening behind the curtain. Her lawyers later said they weren’t allowed in the death chamber.
The curtain closed at 8:16 p.m., and we listened to Pike’s snoring for nearly 40 minutes.
Tensions rose between the media witnesses and Carter, the Department of Correction’s communications director. I asked her: “Do they do a third round? Are you going to resuscitate her?” Carter didn’t have an answer. Another witness, Steven Hale of the Nashville Banner, asked why the curtain was closed. The doctor wasn’t certifying Pike’s death. We could all hear her breathing.
At 8:53 p.m., the prison warden, Kenneth Nelsen, came over the loudspeaker and said, “Media witnesses, please exit the area.”
‘Intubated, on a Ventilator’
We went out to the news conference, which the Department of Correction usually requires media witnesses to participate in. While one of us was speaking, several emergency vehicles arrived. We saw the caravan leave with its sirens on. That was our only insight into whether Pike was alive.
Pike’s attorneys later confirmed she was hospitalized. As of Oct. 1 she remained in critical condition at an undisclosed Nashville hospital, according to her attorneys.
Her lawyers, in an emergency filing with the Davidson County Chancery Court on Oct. 2, alleged that the execution team apparently didn’t “realize that the IV lines were not correctly placed or that the veins had blown” and that pentobarbital had “in whole or in part” entered her body instead of her veins.
Pike arrived at the hospital with both of her arms “swollen, burned, and blistered,” they wrote. “She is intubated, on a ventilator, and remains unconscious.”
Pike’s future, as well as that of lethal injection in Tennessee, is uncertain.
Lee, the Republican governor who has paused executions for the rest of the year, leaves office in January. The front-runner in the Nov. 3 election to replace him, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, has been a vocal supporter of the death penalty. After Pike’s failed execution, the Republican candidate posted her solution to X.
“Bring back the electric chair and deliver justice for these victims swiftly,” she wrote. “As your governor, I will do just that.”
The electric chair was last used in the U.S. in Nashville when Tennessee executed Nicholas Sutton in 2020. He was one of five prisoners who chose the electric chair over lethal injection in the state from 2018 to 2020.
This article is from a partnership that includes WPLN, NPR, and KFF Health News.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
October 05, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsOctober 05, 2026RoseHealth News, KFF Health NewsNo commentsMore than a year into President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, a poll finds that voters in rural parts of the country are divided on whether those immigration policies have benefited or harmed their communities.
In the Associated Press-KFF survey of more than 2,000 rural voters in August, about a third said the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement had been positive for their community and about a third said it had been negative. The remaining 3 in 10, roughly, said it had no impact.
Trump promised tough enforcement on the campaign trail in 2024, and the survey highlights how a cornerstone of his base, rural supporters of his Make America Great Again movement, are especially likely to say they see a benefit where they live from the Republican president’s stringent immigration policies.
Yet many rural voters also say immigrants are a key part of their local economies, and some believe Trump’s immigration actions have gone too far.
Laura Leigh Taylor, a 37-year-old farmer who voted for Trump in 2024, said she disapproves of the wide-ranging scope of Trump’s immigration crackdown, which resulted in a friend’s hardworking father being deported.
“I understand getting rid of the rapists and the murderers,” she said. “But all the people that fell in between, that really weren’t doing nothing but taking care of their family, … they got torn from their families.”
Taylor now regrets her vote for Trump. As a resident of Smithville, Georgia, a town of about 600, Taylor thinks she will vote for Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November because, she said, the Democrats have been the ones talking about families being uprooted by Trump’s immigration enforcement.
“Just because of that simple fact, I’m going to go with him,” Taylor said.
Most Rural Voters Want Politicians To Talk About Immigration
Roughly three-quarters of rural voters say it’s “extremely” or “very” important for midterm candidates to talk about immigration, though that’s lower than the share who want them to address the cost of living, fraud in government programs, or healthcare costs.
Rural voters don’t overwhelmingly think Trump’s immigration policies have helped their communities, but they are also less likely than the general public to say that Trump has overstepped in his efforts, which have involved mass deportations and rapid deportations of immigrants to countries where they have no ties.
Only about 4 in 10 rural voters say Trump has “gone too far” in restricting legal immigration or deporting immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization, below the 55% of U.S. adults overall who said the same in a September AP-NORC poll.
John Thomas, a 55-year-old from Liberty, Kentucky, supports Trump’s efforts to deport people without legal status. Thomas, who has just been approved for disability benefits after injuring his back in 2008, believes they put too much of a burden on the healthcare system. Regulating immigration, he said, is a means of providing better healthcare to Americans.
“They’ve been taking from everybody,” Thomas said of immigrants. “People that really need this stuff can’t get it because of them.”
David Grabowski, a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School, said that research suggests immigrants use less healthcare than native-born Americans. “It is hard to argue that they are placing an undue burden on the system,” he said, because many immigrants work in healthcare and pay taxes.
Most Rural Voters See Immigrants’ Economic Importance
Immigrants often play key roles in sustaining local industries, including by filling jobs in manufacturing, healthcare, and agriculture. The survey suggests the vast majority of rural voters see immigrants in the country legally as an important part of their local economies.
Shannon Monnat, director of the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University and president of the Rural Sociological Society, said immigration has been a demographic lifeline for much of rural America. Rural areas have been losing young adults for years, she said.
“For a lot of small towns, immigrants are the reason the school and hospital stayed open and the county didn’t shrink,” Monnat said.
About 7 in 10 rural voters see immigrants who are in the country legally as “very” or “somewhat” important to their local economies, and a similar share say the same about temporary or seasonal agriculture workers. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants take seasonal jobs on U.S. farms each year, with most of them coming from Mexico, on H-2A visas.
Rural voters with a connection to agriculture and farming are more likely than those without one to say that temporary or seasonal workers are “very important” to their local economies, the poll found.
Jeff Miller, a 56-year-old Republican hydro blaster and vacuum technician, has mostly been pleased with Trump’s agenda, and he believes things are “heading in the right direction.” The one thing Miller has struggled with is Trump’s aggressive immigration policy, which he blames for the deportation of a “really good worker” and friend, who was removed from the U.S. when his work permit expired.
Miller, from Racine, Ohio, said he would support exceptions for hard workers, or just a less aggressive approach.
“There’s kind of an up-and-down thing because I lost a really good friend over that,” Miller said.
Rural voters are much less likely to say immigrants who are in the country illegally are beneficial, but 45% say they are at least “somewhat” important to local economies.
Albert Martinez, a 70-year-old Democrat from San Diego, Texas, voted for Trump in 2016, but he now believes the Trump administration has “gone amok.” The Army veteran said he is a proponent of getting criminals out of the country, but that is not what he is seeing happening with current immigration enforcement.
“They started doing everybody across the board,” Martinez said. “Innocent kids and women, people who work in restaurants, people who work in hotels, people who are building homes, people who are doing masonry work, and innocent, good, taxpaying people. Taxpayers. It’s insane.”
Rural MAGA Voters Support Trump’s Immigration Policies
Some of Trump’s most loyal supporters — rural Republicans who consider themselves MAGA supporters — are about twice as likely as rural, non-MAGA Republicans to see a benefit to Trump’s immigration policies where they live.
Roughly 4 in 10 rural voters identify as MAGA Republicans, while about 1 in 10 are Republicans but not MAGA supporters.
About two-thirds of rural MAGA Republicans say Trump’s immigration policies have had a positive impact where they live. Roughly half say the Trump administration has “not gone far enough” on deporting immigrants in the country illegally, while about half say his actions have been “about right.”
Katherine Reed, a 27-year-old Republican who supports the MAGA movement, has been pleased to see the Trump administration’s deportation policies play out. The resident of Mount Pleasant, Texas, believes her community has always been safe but that the administration’s policies have had a positive impact by reducing violent crime nationwide, saying, “It’s made life for people a lot safer.”
She believes if someone comes to America, they should “respect the law of the land” and “do it legally.”
“I want really amazing people to become Americans,” Reed said. “That’s the whole point of America.”
About the Poll
The KFF-AP Rural Voters Survey was conducted online and by telephone Aug. 12-24, 2026, among 2,241 registered voters living in rural areas, defined as census tracts that fall within codes 5-10 of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2020 Rural-Urban Commuting Area codes. Voters were reached through a combination of the probability-based SSRS Opinion Panel and a registration-based sample from the L2 voter file. Overall results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, including design effects due to weighting. Error margins are larger for subgroups. In collaboration with the AP, KFF researchers worked to design the survey sample and questionnaire and analyze and report findings.
This report is from a collaboration between KFF Health News and The Associated Press.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
October 05, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsOctober 05, 2026RoseHealth News, KFF Health NewsNo commentsMedications can snowball as we age. Pill organizers pile up. Prescriptions that are no longer necessary can mix with other drugs to create concerning side effects.
“Once you get to six or seven prescription medications, you get a nearly 100% chance of some sort of side effect or intolerance,” said physician K. Eric De Jonge, director of geriatrics at MedStar Washington Hospital Center.
Paula Span writes “The New Old Age” column for The New York Times and KFF Health News. She joined WAMU’s Health Hub on Sept. 30 to talk about common medications — from aspirin to benzodiazepines — that some older patients are overusing.
Span shared tips for keeping loved ones safe and said it’s important for patients and caregivers to be proactive.
“Doctors prescribe medicine based on the evidence available at the time. But science doesn’t stop,” Span said. “Your doctor might not be up on the latest research. And patients get into a routine. They may not question if they still need the drugs they’ve been taking.”
Experts and pharmacists say: Check with your doctor to make sure the meds you’re taking are still right for you.
Not all older people need benzodiazepines, antibiotics, or daily aspirin — and taking them can carry increased risks.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
October 04, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsOctober 03, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsOctober 03, 2026RoseHealth News, KFF Health NewsNo comments
KFF Health News chief rural correspondent Sarah Jane Tribble discussed the findings of a KFF-Associated Press poll about rural support for the Make America Healthy Again movement on NPR’s Morning Edition on Sept. 30.
Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed a new GLP-1 weight loss drug on CBS News’ CBS Mornings and health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments at a MAHA summit this week on CBS News 24/7’s Mornings, both on Sept. 30.
Gounder also discussed how Anthropic’s Claude agents might help develop new gene-editing technology on CBS News 24/7’s The Daily Report on Sept. 24.
KFF Health News senior correspondent Renuka Rayasam discussed the Rural Health Transformation Program on WUGA’s The Georgia Health Report on Sept. 25.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
October 02, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsOctober 02, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsOctober 02, 2026RoseHealth News, KFF Health NewsNo commentsDemocratic congressional members and candidates are already planning to use any midterm election gains to expand health coverage, including boosting Affordable Care Act subsidies, reversing Medicaid cuts, and lowering the Medicare eligibility age.
But Democratic strongholds across the country — including Oregon, California, New York, and Washington — have more ambitious goals: single-payer, universal healthcare systems.
No state is closer to that goal than Oregon. A panel created by the state legislature in 2023 is slated to send lawmakers its proposal for a universal health plan by Dec. 1. The nine-person Universal Health Plan Governance Board seeks to establish, starting in 2032, medical, vision, dental, and mental health benefits for every state resident from cradle to grave — with no premiums, deductibles, or copayments. Lawmakers could vote on a plan during the 2027 legislative session or refer it to voters as a ballot measure in 2028.
If approved, the state would be the first in the U.S. to implement what’s called a single-payer health coverage system. It could serve as a model for other states — and potentially the nation.
Proponents of the proposal argue that the public supports universal healthcare more than ever as healthcare spending and complexity grow. Surveys show patients often delay care due to out-of-pocket costs. And medical debt remains a leading cause of bankruptcy in the nation.
States have often served as laboratories to test health policies later implemented nationally. The Affordable Care Act was modeled after Massachusetts’ attempt to achieve universal health insurance coverage, once single-payer efforts there stalled. And Canada’s universal healthcare system began with a provincial plan in Saskatchewan.
“In the short to medium term, there is no chance that ‘Medicare for All’ can be passed at the national level,” said Jonathan Oberlander, a University of North Carolina health policy professor. “That’s where the states come in. A state like Oregon provides a more hospitable political environment and a more realistic path to single-payer reform.”
But advocates of the plan expect a significant fight from healthcare behemoths, including large hospital systems, seeking to sour public opinion on making such widespread changes. Nine of the Fortune 500 companies are health insurers. The industry’s deep pockets have helped derail myriad universal healthcare efforts at the federal and state levels.
In 2011, the Vermont Legislature voted to implement a universal healthcare plan but, three years later, Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin, who had campaigned on the promise of single-payer, pulled the plug, citing “potential economic disruption.”
States that took the issue directly to voters have fared no better. Ballot measures in Colorado in 2016, Oregon in 2002, and California in 1994 all failed by large margins.
“The aspirations of progressive reformers usually run smack into sobering political realities,” Oberlander said. “Translating a slogan into a legislative and political reality is a daunting task.”
Redirected Healthcare Dollars
Oregon’s proposal seeks to maintain the current level of spending on healthcare by government, business, and consumers with new corporate and personal taxes to replace insurance premiums and other out-of-pocket costs. Those would be combined with federal and state spending to create a single fund from which all hospitals, doctors, and other practitioners would be paid.
Board members said savings from cutting red tape, reducing fraud, and negotiating drug costs should allow the state to provide better benefits to more people.
In examples prepared for consumer focus groups, the board estimated that a 30-year-old making $55,000 and purchasing a benchmark silver-level plan through the Affordable Care Act now pays $5,478 a year for insurance premiums in Oregon, but instead could pay $2,331 in taxes under the proposed plan.
Someone making $55,000 a year with coverage through their employer now pays $3,063 in premiums and out-of-pocket costs. Under the draft plan, that person could pay nothing for health services and could see any doctor in the state.
Currently, many employers pay much of the health insurance costs for their workers. The plan seeks to maintain those contributions by establishing a corporate payroll tax for companies whose payrolls exceed $500,000. Their employees could receive a partial tax credit for the taxes their employers pay. As a result, 31% to 60% of Oregonians wouldn’t pay anything for health benefits.
More affluent people, however, could end up paying more than they do now. The exact numbers would depend on how lawmakers set tax rates and payment thresholds.
“What we are proposing is something very different,” said Miriam McDonell, executive director of the Oregon board. “Everyone contributes based on the amount that they are able to contribute and not based on utilization.”
Messaging Challenge Lies Ahead
The plan’s backers will try to convince hospitals and health systems that they would benefit from reducing red tape and eliminating unpaid bills. Currently, hospitals hire scores of workers to bill dozens of public and private health plans, each with its own coverage and billing rules. A single plan covering everyone in the state could streamline the process, saving billions.
Rural hospitals could gain financial stability. They now often struggle to stay afloat because they typically have higher rates of patients who are uninsured or on Medicaid, with its often low reimbursement rates.
Hospitals aren’t so sure.
“The universal health plan proposal preserves much of the broken, fragmented status quo and adds new taxes and complexity that Oregonians can’t afford,” said Becky Hultberg, president and CEO of the Hospital Association of Oregon. “With federal policy changes looming, we are entering a period of tremendous upheaval. This proposal could destabilize a system that is already struggling.”
Under the proposal, doctors and other practitioners would be paid somewhere between what Medicare pays on the low end and what private insurance pays on the high end. Although total payments to doctors would remain unchanged, rates would be negotiated with physician groups to shift more money into primary care and less into specialty services.
But it is unclear whether doctors would agree that more patient time, fewer administrative hurdles, and no more unpaid bills would be worth a payment structure that could cause specialists to lose out.
“There’s always winners and losers in designing something like this, and so how to distribute those is the hardest part,” said Rebecca Schoon, an associate health policy professor at Pacific University who is slated to join the Oregon board in January. “But the second-hardest part is, I think, messaging this.”
Courtni Dresser, vice president of government relations for the Oregon Medical Association, said her physicians group shares many of the board’s goals in improving access to care and reducing administrative burdens. But the group has yet to declare its support or opposition to the effort.
Health insurers haven’t formally weighed in on Oregon’s proposal either, but a single-payer system would, in essence, close off Oregon to any private healthcare plans.
“We expect insurance companies to put every ounce of money they can against this idea because our system is broken and they profit from it,” said Collin Stackhouse, communications coordinator for Health Care for All Oregon, a consumer group advocating for universal healthcare.
Wendell Potter, a former insurance company executive who now works to expose industry influence, said he expects health plans to hammer the Oregon proposal with claims of high taxes, loss of choice, and the specter of “socialized medicine.”
“Most people go year to year without testing the limits of their health insurance policy,” Potter said. “And so, they’re easily scared into thinking that something valuable will be taken away from them, and that they will have something that’s inferior in its place.”
Health insurers argue their health plans help shield consumers from the full impact of rising healthcare costs.
“Americans consistently report strong satisfaction with their health coverage, including more than 180 million covered through work and 36 million who choose Medicare Advantage,” said Chris Bond, a spokesperson for the health insurance trade group AHIP. “Policy solutions are needed to rein in the ever-higher prices charged by hospitals and drugmakers and make care more affordable for everyone.”
Federal Approval Needed
It’s unclear whether Oregon could secure federal approval to redirect Medicare and Medicaid dollars into its universal plan. Backers of the proposal do not expect the Trump administration to be receptive but say it will be years before approval is needed and hope the 2028 presidential election ushers in a more supportive administration. If federal waivers are not secured, Oregon could proceed in stages, starting with the non-Medicare population.
In California, Democratic candidates for governor are not debating whether to implement single-payer but how. New York lawmakers are debating a single-payer bill called the New York Health Act. And in Washington, state legislators have created a commission to design a universal healthcare plan.
The Oregon board has had regular contact with teams working on single-payer proposals in California and Washington, sharing approaches and looking for ways to collaborate, McDonell said.
Richard Bruno, an Oregon family physician and a member of Physicians for a National Health Program, said he could envision the other West Coast states joining Oregon in implementing single-payer, much as California, Washington, and Hawaii have in public health efforts to counter changes in federal vaccine recommendations.
“If our four states could do it,” he said, “that would be the momentum we would need to get it nationally.”
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
October 01, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsOctober 01, 2026RoseHealth News, KFF Health NewsNo comments
The KFF Health News Minute is available every Thursday via direct download or the RSS feed.
Oct. 1
Arielle Zionts [arr-ee-ELL ZY-ence] reads the week’s news: If you’re an older patient taking a long list of medications, consider reviewing them with a primary care provider to make sure they’re helping more than hurting. Plus, states are experimenting with Medicaid meal deliveries to cut costs and improve patients’ health.
Can’t see the audio player? Visit kffhealthnews.org to listen.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
September 29, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsSeptember 29, 2026RoseHealth News, KFF Health NewsNo commentsThis story describes a lethal injection procedure used in state executions.
In May, a group of healthcare workers spent about an hour trying to establish complete IV access so they could inject Tony Carruthers, an inmate at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, Tennessee, with a lethal dose of sedative.
Maria DeLiberato, an attorney for Carruthers, was in the room. She said the workers stuck his arms and feet with needles, to no avail. A doctor then tried to insert a central line through his collarbone and shoulder. That didn’t work, either.
Carruthers groaned in pain and blood oozed from puncture wounds, DeLiberato said in a news briefing.
After more than an hour, Gov. Bill Lee called the warden, ordering him to halt the execution attempt. He later granted Carruthers a one-year reprieve.
Now, as another death row inmate’s execution approaches, doctors and nurses in the state say they want medical professionals removed from the execution process. They’ve also joined defense attorneys and nine Republican state lawmakers in demanding a moratorium on the death penalty and an overhaul of the state’s execution methods.
The doctors’ arguments echoed those the American Medical Association has made before the U.S. Supreme Court and in its code of ethics.
Tennessee is among 27 states where the death penalty is legal, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit that offers data and analysis on issues surrounding capital punishment.
Governors in four of those states have halted all executions, citing moral concerns and logistical ones, such as being unable to obtain lethal injection drugs amid pharmaceutical companies’ refusal to sell them for use in executions. Lethal injection is still the primary execution method nationwide, but some states may use gas, a firing squad, or electrocution.
Since the beginning of 2020, 170 people have been executed in 17 states, with most occurring in Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma. In that time, six states have had botched lethal injections, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which defines those as executions that include a departure from the protocol because of unanticipated problems and that cause more pain for the prisoner than anticipated, whether they ultimately end with a death or not. Several of the stories read like Carruthers’ — protracted but ultimately failed attempts to establish IV access.
Tennessee Health Workers’ Concerns
The IV team gave up on trying to place a typical line into Carruthers after several failed attempts, according to DeLiberato’s account. Following protocol, physician Mark Fowler, a contractor for the state’s prison system, then tried to place a central line in a deeper vein. That’s a quasi-surgical procedure in which a plastic tube is inserted in the chest, groin, or neck. Fowler used a series of syringes, trying to insert the tube under Carruthers’ collarbone and then through his shoulder.
In an October 2025 deposition, Fowler said he hadn’t done such a procedure in the 12 years since he had stopped working in an emergency room, and didn’t know that placing a central line could be among his execution duties.
Fowler told NPR by phone on Sept. 24 that “the doctor does not participate in the execution. The only thing the doctor does is declare the person dead.” He did not have further comment.
Two months after the halted lethal injection, more than 40 doctors and nurses sent a letter to Lee, calling on the Republican governor to pause executions and redesign the protocol to omit health workers from the process.
The letter said that Tennessee’s rules requiring the participation of pharmacists, physicians, and other healthcare workers in executions are at odds with medical ethics, as well as guidelines explicitly laid out by groups such as the American Medical Association. The AMA code says doctors are to preserve life when there is hope of doing so and bars participation in executions.
“This means that the health care professionals who agree to take part in Tennessee’s executions are those willing to set aside their professional ethics,” the letter to Lee reads. “The problems that we have seen, such as in Mr. Carruthers’s case, are the predictable result of working with such unscrupulous actors.”
John Greer, a retired Nashville hematologist, said in a news conference about the letter that he wasn’t surprised the central line placement went awry.
“Placing a central line is not just sticking a needle in a person’s arm,” he said.
Greer said the doctor has to tap a large vessel above the heart. He said that it’s a risky procedure in which an error could cause a collapsed lung or heavy bleeding — and that only those with specific training and routine practice should attempt.
“And I cannot imagine that there would be someone who’s doing these routinely who would be involved in this procedure,” Greer said.
Some Republican state senators also called for a hold on executions and an overhaul of the process, saying that “incompetent administration” of capital punishment gives its critics more ammunition.
This summer, Lee said he didn’t want a pause.
“The Department of Correction did exactly what they should,” he said. “It should not affect executions in the future.”
“It’s one of the most difficult things that we do in this state,” Lee said later. “But I am committed to making sure that it is done in the way that it should be.”
The state’s lethal injection protocol orders the prison to keep a curtain over the media witnesses’ viewing window until the IVs are established, so none of them could offer a visual account of the failed execution attempt.
A lawsuit challenging that policy has been filed has been filed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and news outlets including NPR member station WPLN. The lawsuit argues the lack of transparency during the IV placement process obscures problems like the ones that happened in Carruthers’ case.
There’s a broad understanding in the U.S. that the medical establishment doesn’t participate in executions, said Matthew Wynia, director of the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado’s medical school.
“We came out of World War II with a whole bioethics and medical ethics enterprise that is really strongly opposed to medicine serving as an arm of the state and using specialized medical skills to hurt people or kill people,” Wynia said.
A history of medical abuses by government doctors — such as forced sterilizations and unethical studies of untreated syphilis in the U.S., and murder and torture in Nazi Germany — forged that consensus, he said.
Wynia mentioned other nations where medical professionals still participate in executions.
“But they are, you know, Iran and Saudi Arabia and Russia, sort of authoritarian states, where medicine is an arm of the government,” Wynia said. “Medical involvement in executions ends up happening because medicine is unable to say, ‘No, we don’t do that.’”
Upcoming Execution
On Sept. 30, Tennessee is scheduled to execute Christa Pike, who was 18 years old when she and her boyfriend killed Colleen Slemmer.
Pike’s attorneys this year raised several concerns that the state’s lethal injection protocol would violate her rights. Among them is their contention that because she suffers from a platelet disorder, it’s likely she will need a central line placed. They also argued that she was at risk of needless suffering, alleging Carruthers’ execution showed that Fowler — who has confirmed publicly that he will oversee Pike’s execution — is incompetent at placing central lines.
In June, they put all of those concerns in a request to the Tennessee Supreme Court, asking for a special investigator to collect evidence and hold hearings to determine whether they warranted an order to delay her execution and design a method for only her.
The court did appoint a special investigator, Senior Judge Mark Ward. He held a series of hearings in Knoxville last month. Ward said he didn’t believe Pike’s rights would be violated by the process and submitted his report to the court.
On Sept. 23, the Tennessee Supreme Court denied Pike’s stay, agreeing with Ward, saying none of the concerns amounted to a constitutional violation. On Sept. 28, Lee announced he would not grant her clemency.
This article is from a partnership that includes WPLN, NPR, and KFF Health News.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
September 28, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsSeptember 28, 2026RoseHealth News, KFF Health NewsNo commentsThe run-up to the midterm elections is turning into a food fight — literally.
The summer was marred by a massive foodborne outbreak that sickened scores of people and the recall of tens of thousands of pounds of imported meat, turning the safety of the U.S. food supply into a topic of national conversation and a political cause.
Late-night talk show hosts joked about symptoms that included explosive diarrhea. As a precaution, chain restaurants such as Chipotle and Taco Bell yanked lettuce, jalapeños, and other suspected products from menus. Some food safety scientists blamed the outbreaks on federal cuts to public health.
These dynamics collectively have raised questions about whether it’s safe to order a salad or burger.
Democrats have come out on the offensive, saying voters worried about the safety of the U.S. food supply should oust Republicans in the midterm elections. The Trump administration has countered by accusing Democrats of scaremongering over food safety to score political points.
The political fracas reflects the toll that large-scale outbreaks have had on the public psyche. Midterm voters have long cared about pocketbook issues such as grocery prices, but the spate of recalls has them worried about whether the food they’re buying is safe to eat — and political leaders are paying attention.
The outbreak linked to cyclospora in lettuce led to almost 20,000 laboratory-confirmed cases of illness from May through August, compared with 1,180 cases during the same span in 2025, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That makes it the largest recorded outbreak of the parasite.
“One of the reasons food safety is in the news this year, and people have been rightfully concerned, is the combination of high-profile restaurant names and the absolute colossal number of illnesses,” said Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, or PIRG, an advocacy group, referring to a recent cyclosporiasis outbreak. “It’s thousands of people. It makes it more real.”
Data shows there have been about 200 food recalls so far in 2026, which is about on par with the number at this time last year, according to PIRG data.
Following the Numbers
A majority of registered voters have little or no confidence in government oversight of food safety, with Democrats far more likely than Republicans to doubt the protections in place, according to a July survey by Quinnipiac University. Ninety-four percent of U.S. adults indicated they were concerned about the frequency of food recalls in a poll by GS1 US, a data standards organization.
The share of consumers who strongly agree that the U.S. food system produces food that’s safe to eat declined to about 30% in August, from 40% in November, based on survey data released in September by the University of Illinois and Purdue University.
Democrats have jumped at the chance to repeat criticisms of President Donald Trump’s budget cuts and priorities.
The Democratic National Committee recently posted a list of recalled food items on social media while calling Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a “complete disaster” who must resign.
“Trump is dismantling our government — and it’s harming people,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) posted Sept. 2 on the social platform X, adding: “Slashed food safety agencies → cyclospora outbreak.” Just weeks earlier, she had written to Kennedy demanding answers for what she described as the administration’s “failed response” and its connection to political contributions.
Rep. Gabe Amo (D-R.I.) posted Sept. 5 on X: “I’m calling on Trump to stop gutting the FDA & restore its inspectors. We deserve safe food.”
The campaign for Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) posted Sept. 5 on X: “Trump is cutting our food safety funding and workforce, and we have seen far too many food recalls this summer.”
But the number of recalls doesn’t tell the whole story.
While recalls aren’t markedly up this year compared with 2025, they are up over a broader time span. The country saw 320 food recalls by the Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2025, up from 296 in 2024, according to PIRG.
The total number of recalls grew 21% from 2021 to 2025, based on an analysis by Trace One, a provider of regulatory guidance software. A rise in Class I recalls, which are the highest priority because the products could cause serious illness or death, drove much of the increase.
But recall numbers can be misleading. For starters, federal agencies do not publicize all recalls, especially if products are no longer on the market. Recall data itself is suspect because a single contaminated food can result in multiple recalls if the item is incorporated into processed food or other products.
A far better measure is the number of people sickened, epidemiologists say. And this summer’s specific multistate outbreak from cyclospora was exceptional, affecting people in 21 states.
When it comes to bacterial contamination of food — which is more common and includes E. coli, listeria, and salmonella — the overall trend points to outbreaks in which fewer people are falling ill. That’s a promising sign, some food safety leaders say, although the CDC says an estimated 48 million people each year in the U.S. experience foodborne illness.
“That’s an indication we’re finding more outbreaks and finding more when they are smaller and limiting the extent to which they can get bigger,” said Craig Hedberg, a public health professor at the University of Minnesota and leader in food safety surveillance.
Still, the perception that the food supply is riskier has been enough to ignite political rancor.
The FDA recently asserted on X that recalls for fiscal year 2026 are among the lowest levels recorded in over a decade, stating, “Don’t believe the fake news.” It included a chart that showed recalls dropping to 1,836 in fiscal 2026 from almost 4,000 in fiscal year 2013.
On the same day, HHS senior adviser Calley Means doubled down on the claim, posting on X that Kennedy is doing so well that Democratic operatives are slamming the FDA for doing its job by conducting food recalls.
“It makes sense that these craven, disingenuous attacks are all these influencers have,” he wrote.
But some food safety experts question the numbers, noting that the agency’s recall totals cover a range of products. The tally also includes drugs and medical devices, based on an analysis of the posted data by Susan Mayne, who was director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition from 2015 to 2023. Some food safety leaders say it’s misleading to imply that food safety recalls have declined if the data the claim is based on includes recalls not related to food.
“This HHS assertion appears to be based on incorrect data,” Mayne said on LinkedIn, a job-oriented social networking site.
It’s About More Than Recalls
Food safety has occasionally taken center stage in politics. In 1993, for example, an E. coli outbreak traced to Jack in the Box fast-food outlets pressured newly inaugurated President Bill Clinton to make it an agenda item at his first Cabinet meeting. His administration wound up adopting a new approach focused on preventing foodborne illness and credited with drastically reducing E. coli infections.
Concern about food safety has especially taken hold now, public health leaders say, because the administration is portraying itself as a safety crusader while cutting staffing and funding for federal agencies responsible for surveillance and inspection.
“There’s a level of hypocrisy from the administration when they promise to make our food safer and then eviscerate the agencies and programs that detect and prevent outbreaks,” said Sarah Sorscher, regulatory affairs director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
The FDA continues to have the staff required for outbreak investigations, and no FDA investigators were affected by staffing changes or reductions in force, HHS spokesperson Grace Davis Jamison said in an email.
The CDC lab supporting foodborne outbreak investigations also was not impacted by reductions in force, she said, and the agency maintains a dedicated team investigating foodborne outbreaks and working closely with state and local health departments.
“The Trump Administration has mounted a robust response to each outbreak, working closely with health departments in all 50 states and leading the public health response by promptly identifying known sources and providing Americans with the information they need to protect themselves,” she said.
The administration’s initiatives risk weakening food safety protections. Trump in late August said he would take action to make it easier for small livestock operations to slaughter and process their own meat, raising concerns among food safety leaders that the change could allow inadequately inspected beef to enter the food system.
Trump also announced the U.S. would import more beef from Argentina and Brazil, despite concerns about inspections and safety. The European Union has implemented a ban on Brazilian beef imports because of noncompliance with food safety and antibiotic use.
The administration withdrew a proposed Biden-era rule that would have stopped the sale of raw turkey and chicken containing high levels of salmonella. And it said it would delay compliance with a rule requiring grocery stores and companies to trace food in their supply chains, allowing for quick removal in cases of contamination. Implementation, originally set for Jan. 20 of this year, would instead occur in July 2028.
The actions came after hearing concerns from stakeholders about the time needed to comply, Davis Jamison said.
Some food safety leaders say the administration should do more to prevent foodborne illnesses, saying that failing to direct more resources into preventing problems makes it harder for Kennedy’s campaign to encourage people to eat more fresh foods.
In fact, almost half of consumers changed their habits regarding which groceries they bought and 40% modified purchases at restaurants in the past month due to foodborne illness concerns, according to the survey by the University of Illinois and Purdue University. Concerns about foodborne illness exposure via fresh vegetables increased in August compared with feedback from the previous two years.
“If you want people to eat real food, fresh fruits and vegetables, they have to be safe,” said Sandra Eskin, chief executive at Stop Foodborne Illness, a nonprofit public health organization. “Instead, we have had farmers plowing under fields because people aren’t buying lettuce.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
September 28, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsSeptember 27, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsSeptember 26, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsSeptember 25, 2026RoseHealth - The New York Times, NYT > HealthNo commentsSeptember 25, 2026RoseHealth News, KFF Health NewsNo commentsMAPLEWOOD, Mo. — After Missouri voters added abortion protections to the state constitution in 2024, Kelly McCoomb decided to keep her yard sign supporting the measure in the basement of her suburban St. Louis home.
Abortion access is important to McCoomb. She wants her daughter to grow up in a state where the option is available if needed, and the sign was a keepsake from the day Missourians voted to reverse the state’s near-total ban. McCoomb also couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d need to display the sign in her yard again soon.
“I have little faith in our Missouri government,” McCoomb said, sitting on her front porch.
Sure enough, just two years later, the state’s Republican-dominated legislature is asking Missouri voters to overturn the abortion protections they recently supported. The conflicting measures even have the same title: Amendment 3. But while a “yes” vote in 2024 supported adding protections to the state constitution, a “no” vote in 2026 would keep them. McCoomb covered the “YES” on her yard sign with a “NO” made from black duct tape before placing the sign back in her yard.
Voters will weigh in on abortion in Missouri, and three other states, in the November general election. Missouri is also one of two states voting on it for the second time since 2024. Nevada will vote again, too.
The spate of referenda comes after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections with its 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, leaving each state to make its own abortion policy. The result has been a patchwork of state rules with varying degrees of bans or limitations, and even a series of “shield laws” in states where abortion remains legal that aim to protect providers from prosecution in states where it’s not.
“I just think there’s a constitutional crisis that’s coming,” said Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy for the anti-abortion organization Students for Life Action.
“Can you have 50 state standards on whether or not a human being is a human being? Can you have 50 state standards on whether human beings have legal protection?” Hamrick said.
Advocacy Groups Work To Clarify Ballot Measures
That patchwork of abortion protections is the reason Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom introduced the 2024 ballot measure to enshrine the state’s law allowing abortions up to 24 weeks after conception into the state constitution, said Denise Lopez, president of the coalition.
The measure received strong support two years ago, with 64% of voters in favor. Nevada law requires two majority votes to enshrine constitutional amendments, so voters will need to support the expanded protection again in November for it to be enacted.
The Nevada ballot measure wouldn’t change the state’s existing law allowing abortions up to 24 weeks after conception. But the proposal would make it more difficult to overturn abortion access, requiring voter approval of any new ban in two elections.
Lopez said Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom has been campaigning to ensure voters are still mobilized.
“Folks care about it,” she said. “They’re seeing what’s happening at the national level, and they want to make sure that whatever’s happening in our neighboring states, like Idaho and Utah, doesn’t happen here in Nevada.”
Idaho, where a ballot measure establishing abortion rights recently qualified to go before voters in November, has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country. Voters will decide whether state statute should allow abortion through fetal viability, the point when a fetus can survive after birth, which is generally considered to be around 24 weeks.
In Utah, abortion is allowed up to 18 weeks while legal challenges to the state’s ban continue.
In Virginia, where abortion is already allowed through two trimesters of pregnancy, until 28 weeks, voters will decide whether to amend their state constitution to codify those rights.
Missouri is the only state voting this year on removing abortion protections already on the books. The measure would repeal the 2024 amendment that guaranteed abortion access through fetal viability in the state and replace it with a ban on abortions with exceptions for medical emergencies, fetal anomalies, and pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. Abortions for rape and incest would have to occur before 12 weeks of pregnancy.
Missouri was the first state to ban abortion after the Dobbs decision in 2022. At that time, abortions had already mostly ceased in the state after three decades of state regulations targeting the practice, including a 72-hour waiting period, minimum dimensions for procedure rooms and hallways in clinics that provide abortions, and a mandate that the clinicians have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals, among others. Only 150 abortions were performed in Missouri in 2021, down from 5,772 in 2011, state records show.
Even though Missouri voters backed the abortion amendment in 2024, it took nearly two years for medication abortions to resume in the state.
A Second Vote Causes Confusion
Margot Riphagen-Dunn, CEO of St. Louis-based Planned Parenthood Great Rivers, said the whiplash of a second statewide vote on abortion mirrors the confusion that patients have experienced about whether abortion is available in the state.
“Chaos is kind of the point here,” Riphagen-Dunn said, “and it is absolutely a tactic that gets in the way of being able to provide.”
The confusion has presented problems for abortion opponents in the state as well.
“I think it’s unfortunate,” said Reagan Barklage, who is a vice president of Students for Life of America and the treasurer of the Missouri Students for Life Ballot Committee. “People need to be very clear on what they’re voting for.”
Barklage said she has had to correct anti-abortion voters while out canvassing to remind them that they are voting “yes” on Amendment 3 this year even though they voted “no” on Amendment 3 last time.
“It is crazy that it ended up being even the same number. I do not think that was intentional, but we’ve got to deal with what we’ve got,” Barklage said, adding, “I hope the pro-choicers kept their yard signs from last time.”
In Maplewood, Missouri, McCoomb said she was happy that her repurposed sign supporting abortion access had been noticed.
“I hope lots of people see and remember to revote,” McCoomb said.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.