16 million

That's how many people would become uninsured over a decade under Republicans' health care agenda, according to two projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The budget scorekeepers broke the projections into two parts. The tax bill would lead to about 11 million people losing insurance, according to the official score of the One Big Beautiful Bill. A separate analysis found that another 5 million people would become uninsured from a combination of expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies and new ACA rules that Trump's health department proposed.

That's the same number of people who were at risk of losing their insurance when Republicans attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017. Read more.

industry

UnitedHealth's oops

UnitedHealth Group unintentionally sent STAT confidential talking points that were meant to calm investors and downplay complaints about its business practices during the company's shareholder meeting.

The document offers a rare, behind-the-scenes look at how one of the nation's most powerful health care conglomerates is enduring trying times, Casey Ross, Tara Bannow, and Bob Herman report.

Read all the details here.

public health

A safety net has multiple layers

Robert Goldstein, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and founder of the Massachusetts General Hospital Transgender Health Program, speaks for others in public health across the country.

Because he can, from a deep blue state.

"The needs that this department has are the same as the Texas department's or the North Dakota department's," Goldstein said in an interview with Eric Boodman.

Goldstein describes public health as the safety net's safety net. People's health is affected by programs that seem to have nothing to do with health care, including education, transportation and housing. When those programs are cut, they strain public health. Read more.

cancer

Very early cancer detection

Sales are soaring for tests that identify the DNA of cancer tumors in the blood. They hold a lot of promise, but cancer researchers whom Angus Chen interviewed at this year's American Society for Clinical Oncology annual meeting weren't ready to say these tests actually improve clinical decisions.

There were dozens of abstracts presented at the ASCO meeting in Chicago on the technology's use in clinical decision-making. Despite all the research, it's still not clear whether people who are tested with the technology live longer.

Read more from Angus about how the technology is being used and what the research has found so far.

chronic disease

CDC chronic disease center's fate is uncertain

Chronic disease prevention is a priority for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and President Trump proposed $14 billion for programs that aim to reverse the chronic disease epidemic.

But those efforts haven't taken shape, and in the meantime, the administration plans to abolish the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Elizabeth Cooney reports.

Federal health leaders want to fold the CDC's chronic disease center into the Administration for a Healthy America, a new entity within HHS. That leaves the current center in limbo, with almost no budget or staff and no place to call home.

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What we're reading

The U.S. slashed HIV/AIDS funding. Here is how countries that relied on it might adapt, STAT
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Merck gets lift from U.S. patent office in battle over injectable form of Keytruda, STAT
Anorexia in middle age and beyond, The New York Times