140,000 Minnesotans could lose health care coverage over federal Medicaid cuts, analysis shows
The Minnesota Department of Human Services said Monday that Minnesota will also lose nearly $1.5 billion in federal funds over the first four years of implementation of President Trump's so-called "big, beautiful bill."
According to state officials, people not on Medicaid could see higher health care costs, too.
"The loss in coverage within Medicaid will contribute to more uncompensated care for providers and raise costs more broadly in the system for people who are privately insured," John Connolly, deputy commissioner of the Department of Human Services, said. "Because providers will feel that stress and not have a source of payment for people who lose Medicaid coverage and need to cover their costs broadly, and so that means more out-of-pocket costs, potentially, for consumers."
Even though Mr. Trump signed the bill into law earlier this month, many of the Medicaid provisions will kick in over the next few years.
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Regular exercise is known to benefit physical and mental health — but there has been some debate about whether pursuing physical improvement could conflict with Christian principles. Some have cautioned that putting too much focus on fitness could veer into "idol worship," which is when another pursuit surpasses devotion to God. In the book "Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power and the Only Hope that Matters," author Tim Keller defines an idol as "anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give." According to some points of view, that could even include exercise. Others — like Hunter Sprague, a Christian bodybuilder and father of three in Texas — take a different perspective. After spending time in Christian ministry, Sprague tapped into his personal passion for exercise and strength-building to launch Monolith Movement, a coaching and mentorship platform that helps men balance faith and fitness. In an on-camera interview with Fox News Digital, Sprague described physical health as a form of spiritual stewardship, which is reflected in 1 Corinthians in the New Testament: "Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit ... therefore honor God with your body." (See part of the interview in the video at the top of this article.) Sprague acknowledged that in Gnosticism — a set of ancient religious beliefs that emerged around the 1st and 2nd centuries AD — followers believed that the physical body and the material world "just didn't matter." "If you're going to be saved, be enlightened, you have to kind of ascend the body," he said of the belief. "It's this mindset that it's all about my heart, and my body doesn't matter." Over time, Sprague was able to strike a balance between his commitment to physical fitness and his devotion to his faith. "Our bodies matter, our physical material world matters — it was created," he said, noting that the physical form is a critical part of who we are designed to be. "That is the natural created order — if the Lord didn't desire for you to have a body, you wouldn't have one." "I think the Lord kind of used fitness to illuminate a lot of this to me," Sprague went on. "I can't just live a mental faith — there has to be some experiential power that goes along with it." "If the Lord didn't desire for you to have a body, you wouldn't have one." In his view, exercise and fitness are a form of embracing the control — the "agency" — that the Lord has given us over our bodies. "This is primarily a matter of stewardship," Sprague said. "How are you stewarding the fact that you have a functioning body? How are you stewarding the fact that you've been given all of these tools and resources and abilities?" "What are you doing with it for the benefit of others, for your benefit, as you seek to love the Lord and delight in him, and have that sense of peace and hope and resilience?" In his own personal fitness routine, Sprague said he focuses on a mix of strength training and cardio. "For a lot of people, fitness equates to just weight loss, but if you're losing weight without building muscle, you're shooting yourself in the foot," he told Fox News Digital. Strength training is "absolutely crucial" for Americans right now, the expert said, as many people are "overweight and under-muscled." Sprague spends three to four days a week in the gym lifting weights and using cable machines. "It's the hard part, it's the slow burn. It doesn't happen by accident," he said. "It's just pushing myself week after week, competing against myself." For cardio, Sprague recommends finding opportunities to keep moving and to increase daily steps. "You'll see a massive difference between 2,000 or 4,000 steps and doubling that to 8,000 or 10,000," he said. "And if you can go up from there, the more the merrier." Walking is an "easy barrier to entry," he said, and is very good for brain health and digestion. In addition to alternating between walking and sprinting, Sprague recommends finding other ways to stay active in day-to-day life. "Just more activity that's coupled with something you enjoy is really helpful," he said. In terms of nutrition, Sprague focuses on what he calls "modular eating," including a few lean proteins, fibrous vegetables and a handful of carbs. If he's trying to achieve a particular goal, he carefully tracks his food intake to get "absolute clarity" into how he's doing. When it comes to supplements, Sprague said he keeps it "very, very simple." "I do creatine and monohydrate every day. I'll utilize protein powders to reach my protein target with minimal calories." For anyone looking to honor their body and also honor the Lord, Sprague said it's important to recognize that the physical being matters, but that it will never be the main source of happiness or peace. "It's hard to be satisfied, it's hard to get to a place where you're like, 'I'm done, I made it,'" Sprague said. "There's always going to be this sense of, 'There's more to go, there's more to do.'" "My identity, my worth, my value, isn't wrapped up in what I achieve physically — rather, this process is just a joy in itself." In the pursuit of greater physical fitness, Sprague said it's essential to "notice God's goodness" in all of it. "It's a means of grace that the Lord designed endorphins for you — he designed dopamine for you," he noted. "He designed the feeling of accomplishment you get when you lift something or run a little bit farther or have a really good day with your food — that's not inconsequential." "The more you bring the Lord into this and notice His goodness in it, the better it goes." Setting specific goals and making a plan to achieve them is the most effective path to success, according to the expert. "Just get some momentum and start putting one foot in front of the other," Sprague advised. "It all comes down to time and effort. Put some pressure on yourself, set some deadlines and just go do it — because the thinking, considering and mulling it over will get you absolutely nowhere," he went on. For more Health articles, visit "And the more you bring the Lord into this and notice His goodness in it, the better it goes."
Forbes
an hour ago
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UnitedHealth Stock Is Being Dumped By Wall Street—Here's Why
UnitedHealth stock is being offloaded. It just reported billions in profit. Earnings were strong. The story sounded stable. Yet the stock has been sinking. It's trading near multi-year lows, underperforming peers, and reacting poorly to every quarterly release. The market doesn't move like this for nothing. Markets often sniff out risks long before they're made official. The headlines are piling up: government investigations, operational failures, and leadership questions, but the price has already started to discount something deeper. Investors are trained to react to numbers. But when structure breaks, the numbers are often the last to go. This isn't about a soft quarter. The model itself is cracking, and the market sees it. The way UnitedHealth generates earnings, the incentives behind its vertical integration, and the regulatory heat all point to fragility that isn't captured in consensus spreadsheets. The market is whispering what many investors don't want to admit: that something is changing here. And once trust fades, the re-rating isn't temporary. It's structural. UnitedHealth Stock: Big, Profitable, Misunderstood UnitedHealth trades with a market value of about $226 billion, against $400 billion in revenue for 2024, with 2025 revenue expected to reach mid‑$445 billion to $448 billion. Size doesn't really equal a safe company; it often hides the fragility beneath. Most investors can't describe how the business works. They see adjusted EPS. They don't question the mechanics. They assume that anything producing this much cash must be built to last. But what looks durable can rot from the inside. The core of UnitedHealth's engine is vertical integration. Optum decides on care, delivers it, and pays itself. One hand washes the other, all under the same roof. It's efficient when unexamined. But regulators are finally paying attention. When the payer, provider, and data all sit in one unit, it becomes harder to separate health outcomes from billing outcomes. Investors often mistake size for insulation. But complexity cuts both ways. When that model starts to wobble, through government probes, whistleblower claims, or unexplained earnings distortions, it doesn't usually collapse overnight. It slowly leaks. This is what we are witnessing. The price action is the tell. This isn't about sentiment anymore. It's about what the market now knows; the market no longer trusts what it thought it understood. You can see it is undone. Slowly at this point. But it's picking up. UnitedHealth Is In The Crosshairs Of The Regulators The Department of Justice now runs both criminal and civil investigations into UnitedHealth's Medicare Advantage billing, officially confirmed on July 24, 2025. Washington is targeting diagnostic coding and risk adjustment practices tied to higher payouts. A process investigators say may have involved pressure, bonuses, and algorithmic recommendations to staff for certain lucrative diagnoses. At the center is Optum, UnitedHealth's massive care delivery and analytics arm, which assigns diagnoses, delivers services, and influences payer reimbursement. That vertical structure underpinned margin expansion until it became a regulatory vulnerability. Congress and CMS are now eyeing those same incentives for bundled services that may prioritize profit over care. And according to multiple reports, lawmakers are drafting reforms to Medicare Advantage to clamp down on what they see as systemic abuse. This is more than a compliance issue. If enforcement leads to fines or limits on Optum's ability to steer claims, UnitedHealth loses both margin and narrative. The company disclosed a potential settlement cost of $1.6 billion tied specifically to these investigations. For investors, this isn't a question of past performance but future structure. If Washington forces a redesign in how payer, provider, and auditor relationships operate within Optum, valuation multiples change. You won't see regulatory risk on a spreadsheet. It's not in the line items. But it's in every fund manager's head. And the market is already pricing that doubt. Earnings Vs. Trust UnitedHealth keeps beating the numbers. But the market's not cheering anymore, and that should make investors stop to think. Second‑quarter 2025 adjusted EPS came in at $4.08, while GAAP net earnings per share were about $3.74, reflecting a 9‑10% spread. This isn't a one-off. The company has leaned on adjustments for several quarters, removing charges from cyberattacks, restructuring, litigation, and 'normalizing' expense items. Each quarter it gets harder to square the adjusted reality with the actual income statement. Investors have tolerated this because the stock used to respond. Now, even beats fall flat. The post-earnings reaction in July was strong, with headline numbers, and yet shares sank over 4%. It's not the earnings they're questioning. It's the whole premise. When the market no longer trusts the adjustment logic, the premium unwinds. At some point, 'adjusted' starts sounding like wishful thinking. That's a dangerous pivot for a stock that trades on perceived consistency. The issue here is credibility. And when credibility gets questioned in a complex, vertically integrated healthcare giant with active DOJ probes and massive opacity in its internal operations, the path forward narrows quickly. UnitedHealth's numbers still impress. But the market is no longer listening to the numbers alone. It's watching what they're trying to cover. Optum: The Black Box That Powered Growth At UnitedHealth For years, Optum was UnitedHealth's crown jewel. It gave the company vertical integration that most healthcare giants could only dream of. Run the insurer. Own the doctor's office. Control the pharmacy benefit manager. Route the claims. Capture every step of the dollar. Investors praised it as genius. Until now. Optum was built for margin expansion. By combining payer and provider, UnitedHealth collapsed the value chain into itself. But that same structure is now drawing fire. Regulators are asking whether a company can truly manage care outcomes and approve and profit from the services being recommended. This questions their entire integration strategy. What used to be pitched as 'scale and efficiency' now looks like opacity. Good luck getting through an Optum report without needing aspirin halfway. It's all intentional. In a market that once rewarded complexity, investors are shifting toward simplicity and transparency. Optum is the opposite. Here's the rub: the more essential Optum is to UnitedHealth's story, the more exposed the company becomes to scrutiny. Break the chain or just shake investor faith in it and the premium vanishes. Optum was once the crown jewel. Now it's the bullseye. The Cyberattack Was A Wake-Up Call At UnitedHealth When Change Healthcare, an Optum subsidiary, was hit by a massive ransomware attack earlier this year, most investors treated it as a one-off disruption. It wasn't. It was a systemic failure that revealed how fragile UnitedHealth's infrastructure had become and how slow its leadership was to respond. The breach paralyzed billing and claims systems for weeks across the U.S. healthcare network. Providers couldn't get paid. Pharmacies stalled. Patients were caught in the middle. For a company that sells itself on reliability and integration, the collapse of a core system fully exposed them to operational risk. But the real damage was reputational. CEO Andrew Witty's delayed response and lack of transparency during the fallout shook investor confidence. For a business model that depends on centralized control, a failure of this scale felt like the opposite of control. The market didn't punish the stock immediately, but the tone shifted. Since the hack, UnitedHealth stock has lagged peers, failed to respond to buybacks, and sold off post-earnings despite beats, indicating trust erosion. In healthcare, operational execution is the product. And the cyberattack told the market what the earnings couldn't: UnitedHealth may be bigger than ever, but its foundation isn't as solid as the numbers suggest. Defensive Stocks Are No Longer Safe Havens Investors once treated UnitedHealth like a bond proxy. It was dependable, defensive, and cash-rich, perfect in a zero-rate world, but the world has moved on. And the assumptions that supported its premium are unraveling with it. But investors have moved on. Higher rates change everything. Safety no longer commands a valuation premium. If anything, it draws sharper scrutiny. Now, capital seeks efficiency and flexibility. It rotates out of perceived stability the moment cracks appear. That's exactly what's happening with UnitedHealth. It's mainly about multiples. Stocks like UnitedHealth were priced on the assumption that growth would stay steady, margins wouldn't come under pressure, and regulators would remain passive. That's no longer the case. Every part of the thesis, from Medicare Advantage economics to Optum's integration, is under review. And the old multiple doesn't hold under new conditions. At 9 to 10 times forward earnings, UnitedHealth stock is still priced for control. But what happens if growth slows, scrutiny increases, and earnings quality erodes? That multiple doesn't hold when earnings wobble and faith erodes. And that's what we're starting to see. The idea that defensive means safe no longer applies. In a world where capital costs more and scrutiny cuts deeper, structural risk matters more than past predictability. And UnitedHealth is showing investors what happens when they confuse size for safety. Market Behavior Is Telling
