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Atlantic
4 minutes ago
- Atlantic
Children's Health Care Is in Danger
Alison Chandra was thrilled and gutted. She was pregnant with a much-wanted second child. But her baby had a rare disease called Heterotaxy, causing heart defects and organ abnormalities. He might not survive, her doctors warned her, describing his condition as 'likely incompatible with life.' Chandra is a nurse. She 'grew up on the far right, and very staunchly in that pro-life, single-issue-voter camp,' she told me. 'That was the first time that I had to come face-to-face with what being pro-life actually meant.' She chose not to terminate the pregnancy. Because she and her husband had no income—they had spent the past half decade volunteering on a medical ship off the coast of West Africa—the family decided to sign up for Medicaid. 'I was someone who really thought Medicaid is just for moochers and leeches,' she told me. 'Quote-unquote good people should never have to need Medicaid. It was really hard for me to walk into that office and hand over my paperwork.' But she did. 'It obviously changed the trajectory of everything because at that point we were able to pursue the best care.' Medicaid covered her prenatal visits, her son's delivery, and two open-heart surgeries. Eleven years later, her son is thriving, and Chandra is working in suburban Utah as a nurse specializing in the care of children with complex health needs—kids covered, as she and her son once were, by Medicaid. Soon she might not be able to provide that care. This summer, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Donald Trump's sweeping second-term domestic legislation. The bill does not cut Medicaid, the White House insists. It slashes taxes and offsets the revenue losses by tamping down on what Republicans describe as waste, fraud, and abuse in the health-insurance program. Annie Lowrey: A big, bad, very ugly bill Yet the Congressional Budget Office foresees that the law will drain close to $1 trillion of Medicaid's financing in the next decade and cause 11 million Americans to lose their insurance coverage. Experts anticipate a cascade of effects. Private-insurance premiums and medical-bankruptcy rates will climb. Wait times for appointments with specialists will rise. Care deserts will expand. Hospitals and clinics will have to shut down. The most fragile sectors of our health-care system will be in danger of collapsing. And pediatric care might be first on that list. The law does not target children's-health coverage or children's-health initiatives. But nearly half of American children are enrolled in Medicaid or the related Children's Health Insurance Program. If the One Big Beautiful Bill Act goes into effect as written, sick babies will end up paying for tax cuts for the wealthy. The bill 'strengthens' Medicaid, as Republicans put it, by stripping insurance coverage from adults. For the first time, the country is implementing a nationwide work requirement for the program. Any state with an expanded Medicaid initiative (meaning that the state offers coverage to all low-income adults, not just those with a disability or another qualifying condition) will have to verify that enrollees are working, volunteering, or attending school, and kick them off the rolls if they're not. The work requirement is not expected to spur more people to get a job; studies have found that nearly every adult on Medicaid already works if they can. But states will have to spend millions of dollars to implement it, diverting cash from delivering actual health care. And 8 million Americans are predicted to lose coverage as they struggle to keep up with the paperwork. The bill also contains a series of technical changes to Medicaid's financing, altering the taxes that states levy on medical providers and the payments they make to them. Experts warn that dropping parents from Medicaid will mean dropping kids, even if those children continue to qualify in their own right. Parents are twice as likely to enroll their children in a public-insurance program if they are enrolled themselves, and states that cover a small share of low-income adults tend to cover a small share of low-income kids too. Already, more than 4 million American children lack health coverage. Hundreds of thousands more might join them in a year or two. A rising uninsurance rate among children is a crisis in and of itself. Kids without insurance are less likely to have a pediatrician monitoring their well-being and development. They're more likely to be sick, less likely to get immunizations and prescription medications, less likely to be treated for severe health conditions, and more likely to be hospitalized. They are also more likely to die before reaching adulthood. At the same time as the number of uninsured children rises, states are expected to slash spending on 'optional' or 'nonessential' Medicaid initiatives, such as in-home care for children with chronic health problems and disabilities. These services allow disabled kids to learn in classrooms and sick kids to sleep in their own bedroom, alongside their pets, siblings, and stuffies, rather than in pediatric-hospital wards. Providing care at home reduces emergency-room visits, and slashes the rate of hospital admissions. It is also essential for families, Chandra told me, her tone oscillating between tempered rage and measured despair. 'Those are my patients,' she said. 'Those are the kids I love.' Medicaid already has an 'institutional bias,' explains s.e. smith, the communications director of Little Lobbyists, an advocacy group for children with disabilities and complex health needs. The program covers care in hospitals and clinics more comprehensively than care provided at home or in the community. When state Medicaid programs face financing crunches, they tend to slash in-home services first. The bill will lead to much greater cuts, separating kids 'from loving families, depriving them of a free and appropriate public education, and denying them an opportunity to participate in society,' smith told me. Jonathan Chait: They didn't have to do this As at-home care is reduced and demand for in-hospital treatment rises, the bill will make it harder for parents and caregivers to access institutional services too. Over the past decade and a half, health systems have gotten rid of 20 percent of pediatric beds and 30 percent of pediatric-care units. That's because hospitals make more money admitting adults than children: Kids are much more likely to be on Medicaid, and Medicaid offers lower reimbursement rates than Medicare and private-insurance plans do. As a result, pediatric care has become concentrated in specialty children's hospitals that cannot meet the existing demand. The country has too few hospital beds for babies and teenagers, too few pediatric-health specialists to make diagnoses and provide treatment, and far too few pediatric-health providers in low-income and rural areas. What institutions exist are fragile: Nonprofit children's hospitals have profit margins of 2.7 percent, versus 6.4 percent for all hospitals. The system is a rickety structure, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act a hurricane-force wind. With fewer kids covered by Medicaid, revenue per patient will go down, giving health systems a yet-greater incentive to focus on providing care to adults and seniors; hospitals will close, affecting not only kids with Medicaid but all children; in surviving pediatric institutions, demand will rise, given that families will have fewer options for treatment. Doctors foresee panicked parents driving their ill and injured kids for hours and hours to a children's ER or ICU—only to find it overflowing. Health experts anticipate exactly the same dynamic playing out in rural medical care. 'This is going to impact 62 million Americans,' Alan Morgan, the CEO of the National Rural Health Association, told me. 'If you're in a rural area, it's impacting your ability to access health care, because you're reducing the bottom line of these facilities and the ability of these facilities to stay in the community.' They see the same dynamic playing out in nursing-home, rehabilitative, and long-term care as well. A law intended, putatively at least, to get adults to work might end up destroying fragile institutions for the country's most vulnerable, and weakening those providing health care to everyone. The bill's work requirements do not come into effect until after the 2026 midterm election—a sign that, perhaps, Republicans understand just how catastrophic and unpopular the party's policies are. Aides on Capitol Hill and hospital executives believe that Congress might soften the bill or push parts of it back. But there are tax cuts to pay for, and people with disabilities and cancer available to pay for them. 'I have lived and worked in countries where people lack access to health care. I know what that looks like,' Chandra told me. 'It is heartbreaking to me that we are facing, potentially, some of the same challenges that I've dealt with in some of the poorest countries in the world. It should not be the case anywhere, but especially not in the richest country in the world.'
Forbes
33 minutes ago
- Forbes
Why The Power Grid Must Be A Strategic Priority For Businesses
Shaun Walsh, CMO at Peak Nano, is a marketing leader with expertise in grid-enhancing technologies, fusion, nuclear, cybersecurity and AI. When we consider national security risks, cybersecurity, AI, pandemics and military threats dominate the conversation. Yet America's power grid is arguably our biggest vulnerability—a 'silent risk' often invisible to business leaders, policymakers and the public. Every aspect of our economy is based around a functional grid, but we aren't in the driver's seat. Take the recent U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods; in response, Ontario announced a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to several U.S. states, though this plan was suspended. This incident, while disruptive, pales in comparison to the risk of relying on other countries to source and replace grid components. We have the technology to eliminate this risk, but struggle to communicate its severity. Leaders must make the invisible visible—showing how the grid underpins every aspect of our economy so we can work toward establishing resilience. Challenges Facing The Grid Reliance on foreign suppliers has left our grid dangerously exposed. The Department of Energy has warned that America lacks the supply chain for true energy independence. Decades of offshoring have hollowed out domestic manufacturing, limiting our capacity to ramp up production during demand spikes and crises. With rising geopolitical tensions and market volatility, China's ability, in particular, to disrupt America's supply of grid materials grows. Imported technologies could also give hostile actors remote access to our critical infrastructure, threatening national security. If our supply of grid materials is cut off, utilities will lose their ability to maintain and expand our grid. During demand spikes and relentless heatwaves, like the ones breaking records this summer, major grid components like power capacitors, which are essential for grid stability, can't cool down. This triggers chain reactions that can lead to brownouts and dangerous blackouts. As AI data centers force technology companies to become power companies themselves, and industries are expected to begin reshoring manufacturing, our fragile grid can't keep pace. To solve these challenges, businesses and policymakers must incentivize strategic shifts. And to be successful, we need to change the way we talk about our grid. The Power Paradox The push to reshore manufacturing is gaining momentum but faces a fundamental obstacle: power itself. For example, my company, Peak Nano, is expanding U.S. production of advanced capacitor films—essential components of our power grid. As we do so, our biggest barrier isn't capital, workforce or land. It's access to sufficient, reliable electricity. The grid is stretched thin, and new industrial projects face long waits for connections. This is a nationwide bottleneck impacting everything from semiconductor fabs to battery plants and data centers. We can't reshore critical industries without guaranteeing them power. If we don't invest in grid modernization, the promise of an American manufacturing revival will be stalled—not by lack of ambition or innovation, but by the simple inability to plug in and power up. Making The Case For U.S. Innovation Companies producing grid-enhancing technologies (GETs)—including my company—like solid-state transformers, high-frequency switching and advanced capacitor film often struggle to communicate the value of these technologies to utilities, which face limited capital for scaling and upgrading and regulatory challenges for new substations and power lines. For example, the U.S. currently relies completely on imported capacitor film that needs frequent replacement. Domestically made GETs that improve performance and protect our energy security should be a no-brainer, but the grid's complexity and constant operation often make its risks easy to overlook—until it fails. Most assume electricity will always be available and underestimate the serious consequences of outages. Public attention is often focused on more immediate threats, like cyberattacks or conflicts, which have clearer stories. Explaining supply chain vulnerabilities requires simplifying technical details and turning an invisible problem into relatable stories. It's no simple task. Every added degree of heat stress affects hospitals, homes and businesses—the infrastructure we depend on. As climate extremes become the new normal and other demand pressures rise, modernizing grid components with U.S.-made technology is essential. We need boards, customers and partners to advocate for and invest in upgrading the grid. Communications teams must clearly connect grid weaknesses to business impacts like lost revenue, public safety, reputational damage and national competitiveness. With a steady drumbeat of crises, cutting through requires fresh angles, clear analogies and tangible stories. Striking the right tone is hard, but essential. We need to convey urgency without fearmongering, which leaves audiences feeling apathetic. Ten Years To Grid Independence Achieving true grid independence won't happen overnight. But with focused investment and a strategic approach to infrastructure, we can secure our grid within a decade. Secretary Wright and the Department of Energy have called for a comprehensive strategy to scale, stabilize and secure the grid. Here's how business leaders can help: • Audit and diversify your supply chain. Map suppliers for critical components. Identify adversarial country dependencies and invest in domestic alternatives. • Treat power as a strategic asset. When planning expansions, engage with utilities early and advocate for local grid upgrades and on-site energy solutions. Factor power access into site selection and risk planning. • Invest in talent and training. Partner with schools and STEM programs, offering apprenticeships and upskilling to engineers and tradespeople to operate, maintain and repair our grid. • Modernize and future-proof operations. Upgrade to advanced, energy-efficient equipment like capacitor films that can handle higher loads and extreme conditions. Making Power A Strategic Communications Priority America's grid is the backbone of our economy and national security. The threats it faces, from supply chain vulnerabilities to aging infrastructure and escalating demand, are urgent and undeniable. But they present a clear call to action and communications opportunity. Communications leaders have a vital role to play in elevating U.S. energy independence as a strategic priority. By educating stakeholders on reshoring our supply chains, advocating for domestic infrastructure and building strong partnerships with policymakers and industry peers, they can accelerate progress. With effective communication, we can mobilize business and government leaders to treat power as a critical economic asset—protecting our technological and industrial leadership and securing the nation's future. Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
New York Post
15 hours ago
- New York Post
Chipotle, Sweetgreen bet big on small, local farmers amid ongoing agriculture crisis
National brands are betting big on small farmers. Food giants such as Chipotle and Sweetgreen have long emphasized close partnerships with small or local farmers, in many cases, due to corporate sustainability goals. Advertisement Today, those relationships may be essential to the survival and resilience of the American agriculture industry, as the sector faces increasing instability. 'The agricultural industry has lost 40x more farmers than it has gained over the last decade,' said Chipotle Chief Brand Officer Chris Brandt. 'Greater awareness of where food comes from and how it is grown can not only help everyone but can also begin to reverse an agricultural industry crisis,' he told Fox Business. Experts and policymakers alike increasingly argue that the long-term viability of small farmers and ranchers is essential to ensuring a more resilient, transparent food supply. Advertisement It is a key belief of the administration's Make America Healthy Again initiative, which emphasizes clean and local food sourcing, and the National Farm Security Action Plan, introduced in July by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke L. Rollins. 4 Chipotle and Sweetgreen are betting big on local farmers despite the ongoing crisis in the agricultural industry. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Her plan addresses what the administration says are 'urgent threats from foreign adversaries' while strengthening the resilience of our nation's food and agricultural systems. American Farm Bureau Federation economist Faith Parum underscored that it's a challenging time for America's farmers and ranchers due to a combination of falling crop prices paired with rising land prices and expensive labor costs, regulatory uncertainty and an ever-changing trade landscape. Advertisement 'There are a number of concerns weighing on the minds of farm country,' Parum said. While the farm bureau is encouraged by the agriculture provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, including making permanent vital tax provisions and increased support for key farm safety net programs, Parum said 'there is still work to be done.' 4 The relationship is vital for the two corporate giants to have a close-knit partnership with local farmers to help out with their sustainability goals. AFP via Getty Images To underscore how much the sector has suffered in recent years, U.S. Department of Agriculture data, published last year, reveals a significant decline in both the number of farms and the total farm acreage across the U.S. since 2017. Advertisement According to the 2022 Census of Agriculture, there were 141,733 fewer farms in 2022 than in 2017. During the same period, total farmland shrank by more than 20 million acres, falling to 880.1 million acres. To help strengthen the agricultural sector and meet its goals, Chipotle and the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation contributed more than $5 million since 2019 to support farmers through education programs, scholarships, grants and multi-year contracts for young farmers. The company has awarded 275 Seed Grants, providing $5,000 each to help next-generation farmers build stronger, more sustainable operations. In addition, Chipotle has supported the transition of 425 acres from conventional to organic farming through transitional growing practices. Chipotle said it will continue to rely on more farmers as it scales up its operation. 4 Experts claim that having a relationship between farmers and ranchers is significant and helps make the food supply more efficient. Bloomberg via Getty Images It plans to open 315 and 345 new restaurants in the U.S. this year. Advertisement 'The job will never be done,' Brandt said, adding that it purchased over 47 million pounds of local produce in 2024. 'That's farm-to-table at a massive scale,' he added. Nicolas Jammet, co-founder and chief concept officer of Sweetgreen, told FOX Business that the company continues to lean on its long-standing partnerships with small farmers as it scales nationally. This year alone, the brand is opening 40 new restaurants in 2025 and launching in three new markets: Sacramento, Phoenix and Cincinnati. Advertisement 'Farmers consistently tell us that our partnership is important to their business, giving them predictable revenue, especially through times of uncertainty, and an opportunity to scale their distribution to new markets and open new revenue streams,' Jammet told FOX Business. He also underscored how these partnerships, some of which have lasted well over a decade, help the company provide fresh and ethically sourced ingredients. 'We've shown that as you scale, you can do that. And you can support the right kind of growers,' Jammet said. Keep up with today's most important news Stay up on the very latest with Evening Update. Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Advertisement 'That's been such a part of our history and story.' One of their customers, Dan Drake, owner of Drake Family Farms, said he considered shutting down his operation entirely before partnering with the fast-casual restaurant chain. With the company continually sourcing from the farm, Drake said it's allowed them to stay afloat. 'We thought, if they keep growing and ordering more cheese, we'd be able to sustain our farm – and we have,' he said, adding that its partnership with Sweetgreen 'shows the value and impact that national restaurant brands can have on a local farm, enabling us to grow and scale as they do.' Advertisement Chobani told FOX Business that it expects to purchase 3 billion pounds of raw milk from over 430 family farms in Idaho, Michigan and New York in 2025, and that this number is projected to increase to 11 billion pounds per year by 2031. 4 Chobani said that it also expects to purchase three billion pounds of raw milk from over 430 family farms in Idaho, Michigan, and new York in 2025. Getty Images The company said it has also invested significantly with our farmers to improve their quality of life — from health fairs to new break rooms, soccer fields, personal protective equipment distribution, warm winter clothing and on-farm safety training. 'Supporting small farms isn't charity—it's a long-term business strategy that builds resilience in our supply chain, trust with our consumers, and vitality in our communities,' the company said in a statement to FOX Business. 'By making our products in America and supporting our rural communities, we're directly contributing to the local economies in our hometowns and helping to build a stronger ecosystem.' This investment also 'creates a ripple effect in the community helping to support dairy infrastructure and businesses like feed mills, dairy equipment companies, tractor dealers, veterinarians, as well as local grocery stores, and provide a tax base for schools and other community services,' the company continued.
