Life takes us in many strange directions and wonderful discoveries. It never turns out the way we thought it would.
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Ukraine Blasts 13 Russian Regions
Ukraine unleashes carnage and blasts 13 Russian regions to mark a fiery Independence Day
By Charlie Jones,
2 days ago
Ukraine has launched a massive drone assault on Russia across at least 13 regions during the night in a fiery celebration of the embattled country's Independence Day from the Soviet Union.
The strike occurred as Donald Trump reportedly grows increasingly frustrated with Vladimir Putin for prolonging the conflict.
Reports emerged that the US has now committed to delivering 3,350 Extended Range Attack Missiles (ERAM) to Ukraine within six weeks under a new Trump administration initiative, primarily financed by other Western nations.
The night-time strikes on crucial Putin energy infrastructure and fresh US missile deliveries came after Trump informed Zelensky that Ukraine "has no chance of winning the war without striking Russia".
One target hit as Ukraine today commemorated the 34th anniversary of its independence from Moscow was Russia's massive oil export port Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea coastline in Leningrad region, where flames and dense black smoke billowed.
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"Debris from the drone caused a fire at the NOVATEK terminal," stated regional governor Alexander Drozdenko.
"Firefighters and the Ministry of Emergency Situations are working to extinguish the fire.An inferno was reported at the petroleum processing and export terminal, critical for the Russian economy.
Other sources said Gazprom Ust-Luga gas processing complex in a drone swarm against Ust-Luga.The attacks caused tourist mayhem at St Petersburg's Pulkovo airport as more than 99 flights were diverted or delayed at the busy hub.
Separately, at least 15 explosions thundered over the strategic Syzran oil refinery in the Samara region which was ablaze this morning - the latest key oil-producing facility to go up in smoke.
Prices are rising and there are queues at filling stations from occupied Crimea to the Far East of Russia.
Russia claimed a fire had ignited at Kursk Nuclear Power Plant after its air defences shot down an overflying Ukrainian drone.
Bystanders look on after the attack in the Kursk region.
Ukraine has launched a massive drone assault on Russia across at least 13 regions during the night.
Fuel shortages and rising petrol prices are hitting multiple regions in Russia.
It comes as Ukraine celebrates their Independence Day from the Soviet Union.
Pictures who the massive blaze.
The strike occurred as Donald Trump reportedly grows increasingly frustrated with Vladimir Putin for prolonging the conflict.
Reports emerged that the US has now committed to delivering 3,350 Extended Range Attack Missiles (ERAM) to Ukraine within six weeks under a new Trump administration initiative, primarily financed by other Western nations.
Filter separators at the Gazprom PJSC Slavyanskaya compressor station.
The nighttime strikes on crucial Putin energy infrastructure and fresh US missile deliveries came after Trump informed Zelensky that Ukraine "has no chance of winning the war without striking Russia".
Ukrainian drones attacked Syzran oil refinery in southern Russia's Samara region.
One target hit as Ukraine today commemorated the 34th anniversary of its independence from Moscow was Russia's massive oil export port Ust-Luga on the Baltic Sea coastline in Leningrad region, where flames and dense black smoke billowed.
Strikes continue to rain down on Ukraine. This image was taken in the devastated Donetsk region.
"Debris from the drone caused a fire at the NOVATEK terminal," stated regional governor Alexander Drozdenko.
Aftermath of Russian attack on Kostiantynivka, Ukraine.
Other sources said Gazprom Ust-Luga gas processing complex in a drone swarm against Ust-Luga. The attacks caused tourist mayhem at St Petersburg's Pulkovo airport as more than 99 flights were diverted or delayed at the busy hub.
The incidents occurred as Ukraine marked independence day, commemorating its 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered remarks in a video address from Kyiv's Independence Square, emphasizing the nation's resolve.
Independence Day celebrations have been held across the country despite the war.
Separately, at least 15 explosions thundered over the strategic Syzran oil refinery in the Samara region which was ablaze this morning - the latest key oil-producing facility to go up in smoke.
Prices are rising and there are queues at filling stations from occupied Crimea to the Far East of Russia.
Russia claimed a fire had ignited at Kursk Nuclear Power Plant after its air defences shot down an overflying Ukrainian drone.
Independence Day has become a chance to mourn the many dead
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Texas May Have To Shut Down Data Centers To Protect Its Energy Grid
Texas May Have to Shut Down Data Centers to Protect Its Energy Grid
By ZeroHedge,
1 days ago
Texas is preparing to cut off power to data centers during grid emergencies — a sign of just how strained the system has become.
MM4
Over the Fourth of July, deadly floods swept across central Texas, disrupting infrastructure and causing widespread outages. Meanwhile, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has already seen multiple price spikes and conservation alerts — not because there wasn’t enough power, but because we couldn’t move it where it was needed.
These aren’t isolated events. It’s not just a Texas problem.
Just days after the shutoff planning was announced, the U.S. Department of Energy warned that blackout risks across the country could rise 100-fold by 2030.
All of this points to a deeper vulnerability: We’re still running the grid with tools and assumptions built for a different era — one with fewer storms, slower load growth and no massive data centers.
Texas’s new normal demands smarter, faster and more adaptive grid operations. Long-term infrastructure investments are critical, but they won’t arrive in time to manage the next three summers.
Texas has made real progress in building new generation capacity, especially in solar, storage and wind. But the wires that carry that power haven’t changed. More importantly, the way we operate the grid hasn’t evolved to match the demands of either changing weather patterns or electrical load growth.
Now, surging demand from industrial expansion, electrification and AI data centers is doubling the strain. ERCOT’s own projections show that power demand in Texas may nearly double by 2030. And, other regions aren’t immune.
The Midcontinent Independent System Operator recently green-lit a?$22?billion transmission buildout to relieve rising congestion.
The California Independent System Operator saw renewable curtailments surge nearly?30% last year.
The PJM Interconnection anticipates 3% to 4% annual peak load growth through 2035 driven by data centers and expects up to 70?GW of demand over the next 15 years.
Nationally, U.S. demand is projected to climb about 16% in five years — a pace not seen since the 1980s.
That means more stress on an already-congested transmission system — one still being managed with decades-old assumptions about heat, wind and demand.
Those assumptions no longer hold. And in a hotter, stormier Texas, they’re becoming dangerous.
The case for operational intelligence
Utilities around the world are taking a different approach — one that doesn’t require waiting 10 years to build new lines.
In Europe, software-based tools like hardware-free dynamic line ratings, or DLR, and hyperlocal weather forecasting are safely increasing the amount of power that can flow through existing lines. These tools don’t involve new hardware or major infrastructure. They use data — from satellites, LiDAR scans, and thousands of weather stations — to help operators see where and when extra capacity is available and plan accordingly.
I’ve helped implement this approach with national grid operators overseas. In Estonia and Finland, for example, we applied AI-driven DLR across 7,000 miles of transmission lines — many in hilly, forested regions like much of America. The result: up to 40% more capacity on lines that, by traditional standards, were considered maxed out.
The same physics apply here. A mild breeze — just four miles per hour — can cool power lines enough to boost capacity by 30%. But grid operators typically don’t have access to sufficiently accurate weather forecasts. As a result they assume the worst-case weather at all times, just in case. That means we’re leaving megawatts stranded every day, even during critical hours and emergencies.
Load flexibility shouldn’t be the only emergency tool
Demand-side management is essential. But we shouldn’t have to shut down critical infrastructure just to survive a summer heat wave. If we can increase visibility into grid conditions, forecast congestion earlier, and bring in more power from further away, we can avoid triggering firm load shed in the first place.
Shutting off industrial loads like data centers should be a last resort — not the default backup plan.
This isn’t a call to stop building new lines or power generators. We need them. But they won’t arrive in time to handle the surging load coming in the next few years.
What we can do now is operate smarter with software-based operational intelligence — to reduce curtailment, ease congestion and lower consumer costs.
It’s not political. It’s practical. And it’s proven.
ERCOT has long served as a proving ground for U.S. grid innovation. But today, it’s also the canary in the coal mine. What Texas does next will shape how the rest of the country prepares for what’s coming.
By Georg Rute of UtilityDive
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Hiding From The Nazis In Japan
Hiding from the Nazis in Japan
By Jennifer A. Stern,
1 days ago
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Exactly 85 years ago — in August, 1940, a year after the beginning of World War II — 30-year-old Meyer Zucker received a visa from the Japanese consulate in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania. It allowed him to leave Europe and spend eight months in Japan, away from the murderous onslaught of Nazism, almost certainly saving his life.
Zucker didn’t realize until years later that the man who signed his visa was Chiune Sugihara. Sugihara risked his career giving out over 2,000 visas to desperate Jews in Kovno in July and August 1940.
Today, Sugihara is honored in Japan and around the world for his courage and humanity; Yad Vashem recognized him in 1985 as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. But at the time, his decision to give visas to Jewish refugees was frowned upon.
Most of the fleeing Jews lacked the money and documentation they’d need to leave Japan once they arrived, meaning they would have to stay there — a situation that the government in Tokyo wanted to avoid. Yet despite repeated warnings from his bosses, Sugihara gave these Jews visas anyway. After the war, he was removed from the diplomatic service. His career never recovered.
The Jews he helped escape to Japan were plunged into an unfamiliar culture in a country they never expected to visit. Meyer Zucker’s experiences, described to me by his daughter, Yiddish literature scholar Sheva Zucker, give insight into this meeting of worlds — and the lives that Sugihara saved.
* * * * *
Stern: What was your father’s situation in August 1940 when he received his visa?
Zucker: He fled Warsaw after the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. He and some friends from the Jewish Labor Bund became refugees in Lithuania. Of course they knew what was happening to Jews in Poland, and dreaded a Nazi invasion of Lithuania too.
When the Soviets annexed Lithuania in August 1940, my father and the other Bundists knew they might be arrested, since the Bund was socialist and anti-communist. They traveled to Kovno, the capital where all the foreign consulates were, and heard that the Japanese consulate was giving visas to Jews.
Stern: How did your father get to Japan?
Zucker: He went by the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok. Fortunately, the Soviets didn’t interfere with Jews who had visas to Japan. It took time for him to arrange his travel and make the long train journey. So he sailed from Vladivostok to Japan in February 1941.
Stern: What were his first impressions of Japan?
Zucker: He was charmed by the little houses near the shore that he could see from the ship. He’d just crossed Siberia in winter, but spring was starting in Tsuruga, the port where they docked. Everything looked fresh and green, like a promised land.
The refugees were in Tsuruga very briefly. I wrote in the Yiddish Forverts about my recent visit to Tsuruga, where the Port of Humanity Museum (opened in 2008) suggests the mutual curiosity that Japanese and Jews felt about each other. There were some culture clashes — the Japanese were surprised that Jews would eat while walking in the street, which they considered impolite. But most Japanese were welcoming and sympathetic.
Stern: Where did your father go next?
Zucker: After their short stay in Tsuruga, the Jewish refugees were sent to Kobe, near Kyoto. There was a small but historic Jewish community in Kobe, which called itself JEWCOM. The community leapt into action to assist the refugees, helping them find food and housing and giving them advice and support. My father described living with other Bundist friends, probably in a hostel sponsored by JEWCOM. Jewish refugees also received financial support from the Joint Distribution Committee, which coordinated with JEWCOM. The local Japanese community was very supportive of the Jewish refugees.
Stern: What was your father’s life like in Japan?
Zucker: The refugees weren’t allowed to work. My father spent a lot of time sending food back to his family near Lublin in Poland. He knew that their circumstances were very difficult and they probably didn’t have enough to eat. He sent them tea, biscuits — all kinds of small items that weren’t too expensive to ship. He got appreciative letters back from his sister.
Meyer Zucker (far left) and his other refugee friends visit the Nara pagoda Courtesy of Sheva Zucker
My father was curious about his new surroundings. He and his Bundist friends visited Kyoto, and the Buddhist temples at Nara. I have a wonderful photo of a group near the pagoda in Nara, with the famous temple deer. They went further afield to Tokyo, too. They wanted to see as much as they could.
Stern: Why did your father leave Japan after eight months?
Zucker: It wasn’t by choice. By the summer of 1941, Japan had become an Axis Power, meaning they were allied with Nazi Germany. Japan decided to relocate its Jewish refugees to Shanghai, China — a city that Japan controlled. Life in Shanghai was much harder than in Kobe, especially after the Shanghai Ghetto was established. My father stayed there until early 1948, when he finally got a visa to Winnipeg in Canada, where he had family. That’s where I grew up.
Stern: Did your father talk to you about Japan while you were growing up?
Zucker: Yes, frequently, but not in an organized way. Most of the details came later, when he narrated his memoirs to me in Yiddish before he died in 1987. I translated them into English. But I always knew that Japan was a very special place for him — the place that saved his life.
Aya Takahashi, a Vancouver-based Japanese journalist who writes extensively on Sugihara, contributed to this article.
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BAHCHE: A Brilliant New Turkish Restaurant Opens Near Hillsdale Mall In San Mateo, California
Posted inSan Mateo County
A family-run Mediterranean restaurant and wine bar opens in San Mateo
Bahche offers a variety of mezzes, souvlakis and wines
Avatar photo
by Adrienne Mitchel
August 6, 2025 2:41 pm
Seafood paella with saffron Spanish rice, squid, mussels, chicken, prawns, salmon, Spanish chorizo, bell peppers, green peas and lemon zest ($37) at Bahche in San Mateo. Courtesy Bahche.
Yusuf Karadogan grew up in the San Mateo County restaurant industry. His late father was a chef at Michelin-recommended sister restaurants Evvia Estiatorio and Kokkari Estiatorio, owned a Mediterranean-Turkish restaurant in San Mateo and created local fast-casual eatery Pita Gyros, which currently has three locations.
Now, Karadogan and his family are embarking on a new venture: Bahche, an upscale Mediterranean restaurant and wine bar in San Mateo’s Hillsdale neighborhood.
Top: Seafood linguini with prawns, salmon, clams, mussels, calamari, diced tomato, basil and house marinara ($32) at Bahche in San Mateo. Bottom: Pan-seared salmon served with sautéed vegetables and mango salsa ($33). Courtesy Bahche.
“This area, besides Hillsdale Mall, doesn’t really have a nice destination go-to elevated dinner and lunch place,” he said. “There’s a lot of people that live in their area, but I feel like they either go to downtown San Mateo or just other places.”
Meaning “garden” in Turkish, Bahche soft opened Friday in the former space of Roam Artisan Burgers. The menu features recipes passed down from Karadogan’s father. Find a variety of mezzes ($12-$25), salads ($16-$18), burgers ($19-$21), souvlakis ($16-$19) and mains ($27-$45), such as seafood paella, chargrilled whole branzino and seafood linguini.
According to Karadogan, standout dishes include Bahche’s hummus (which is made with caramelized onions), melitzanosalata (a charred eggplant dip), falafel and grilled octopus with romesco sauce.
For dessert, baklava, coconut creme brûlée, bread pudding and chocolate lava cake are available ($12-$14).
“We took about a month just to try to perfect every dish that we can,” Karadogan said. “We’re trying to put out the best quality … Everything we’re doing in-house on a daily basis.”
The interior of Bahche in San Mateo has a 150-inch projector that plays imagery from the Mediterranean. Courtesy Bahche.
The wine bar at Bahche in San Mateo features 60 wines, including those from Greece and Turkey. Courtesy Bahche.
In addition to being a restaurant, Bahche is also a wine bar with about 60 wines and counting. Find wines from Spain, Italy, Napa, Paso Robles, Santa Barbara, Greece and Turkey ($12-$25 a glass, $38-$165 a bottle). Four beers and grapefruit kombucha are on tap, and two Greek beers are available by the bottle ($8-$10).
“I just wanted to come and be part of the community and create a destination for the people that live in the area, and also create a destination spot where people from all the way from San Jose and San Francisco come somewhere in the middle and have a different atmosphere,” Karadogan said.
Coconut creme brûlée ($12) at Bahche in San Mateo. Courtesy Bahche.
Spiced bread pudding with golden raisins and anglaise sauce ($14) at Bahche in San Mateo. Courtesy Bahche.
Bahche’s interior features neutral, earthy tones with pops of color, as well as a 150-inch projector that plays videos of scenery from the Mediterranean. Inside seats 50, and the outdoor patio seats another 50, although Karadogan plans to fit up to 100 seats on the patio later on.
“The Bay Area is such a busy, fast-paced place. I just want people to come here and slow down life a little bit,” he said. “I want them to feel like they’re on vacation even though they’re in San Mateo. I want people to come relax and take their stress away, along with having good food and wine.”
Bahche, 3081C S. Delaware St., San Mateo; Instagram: @bahchemezze. Open Sunday to Thursday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4:30-9 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4:30-10 p.m.
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The Economist Magazine Cover For 08/02/2025
The Economist
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August 2nd 2025
How we chose this week’s image
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Cover Story
How we chose this week’s image
The Economist
Edward Carr
Deputy editor
Each summer we publish a digital-only issue and it’s a chance to experiment. This year, in what we call e-week, our cover is about the greenlash against climate-change policies. As you’ll see, we had a few ideas for jazzing it up.
But let’s start with a straight-up-and-down cover that we might have used in print—or p-week, as I suppose we should call it.
The voters are revolting and they are lobbing Molotov cocktails into the whirring arms of a windmill. An increasing number refuse to believe that strict net-zero targets are in their interest or, indeed, that they will bring benefits to anyone else. Some think they are being taken for chumps, paying good money to meet bad targets while businesses and people elsewhere are belching out carbon. Seeing an ever-more-powerful China emitting more than Europe and America combined makes them seethe.
The red light signals a stop to climate policies, the heating of the planet and a warning to humanity all at the same time. The scientific rationale for net zero is inescapable, whatever the greenlashers wish to believe. An end to warming requires the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to stop increasing. That means either a world with no such emissions or one which takes as much greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere as it puts in (the “net” in net zero).
Cramming so many meanings into a single image is impressive. Despite that, the symbolism of all those reds and greens risks being confusing.
The carriageway swerves to avoid a windmill, but it ploughs on. The greenlash will not deprive the world of its technical ability to decarbonise a great deal of its economy. Extra demand has driven the virtuous cycle of larger volumes and lower prices that have seen wind, solar and batteries become more available and cheaper. Costs are now so low that unstimulated demand will drive them even lower. Even post-Big-Beautiful-Bill America will see its emissions shrink, albeit more slowly than they could have.
This cover is also a bit confusing. The windmill is being avoided, whereas we are arguing that solar and wind will continue to do all right despite the greenlash. This cover also squanders the opportunities a digital cover creates for movement and colour.
We started by making this a-week, with some animation.
We have set an axeman loose on a wind turbine that has sprouted at Sycamore Gap. That is the place next to Hadrian’s Wall, in northern England, which made headlines around the world when a tree was chopped down for a lark by a couple of local idiots.
It’s vandalism and the axeman is not making any progress. It’s also rather beautiful. The trouble is that this cover makes the greenlash seem like an act of nocturnal sabotage whereas, in reality, it’s a fairly common reaction to a political strategy being carried out in the full glare of the noonday sun.
We could also make it c-week by making full use of colour. Here you can see how printers can reproduce only parts of the spectrum. The inks—cyan, magenta, yellow and key (jargon for black)—combine in the CMYK colour model to create a more limited palette than the red, green and blue (RGB) pixels of a digital screen. Last year for e-week, we chose a brilliant red, reminiscent of the Chinese flag.
Here is an electric green for g-week, and beside it how a printer would have rendered our eventual design, of a turbine being pulled towards the ground Gulliver-like by Liliputian greenlashers.
For rich countries to abandon stringent net-zero targets outright would demoralise greens, energise climate nihilists and make sensible reforms harder. Better to find ways to ease them into the “more of a guideline” category. “The art of the possible” may sound flat. But a politics of new possibilities could put climate policy on a more sustainable footing, as well as offering hope.
The coal was wrong for this message (although the tyre-tracks are a nice touch). Its time has passed, even in America, however much Donald Trump exalts it as a symbol of a lost age. But the turbine worked and this design was very nearly there. It needed only a few more ropes: just a t-week.
You can browse all of our covers from 2024—and learn about the creative decisions that went into each one—in this interactive Cover Story annual.
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The climate needs a politics of the possible (Leader)
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America's Ailing Health Insurers
America’s ailing health insurers
An industry that has run on government money faces a reckoning
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Medications are stored on shelves at a pharmacy in Los Angeles.
Photograph: Getty Images
Jul 31st 2025
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5 min read
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Few firms in America are more unloved than health insurers. As gatekeepers of the world’s costliest health-care system, their miserly response to claims is a constant source of patient unhappiness. Investors, by contrast, have long regarded them as soothingly safe bets: boring businesses with steady returns. That is no longer the case. UnitedHealth Group, the country’s largest insurer, stunned investors in April by reporting unexpectedly disappointing results. Within weeks it had replaced its boss and scrapped its profit forecast for the year. Its latest results, released on July 29th, offered more misery. Since November UnitedHealth’s market value has collapsed from $575bn to $240bn.
Chart: The Economist
The infection has spread. This earnings season has delivered a drip-feed of bad news. On July 17th Elevance Health, America’s second-largest health insurer, also cut its profit forecast for 2025. Centene, another big competitor, swung to a $253m loss in the latest quarter, from a $1.1bn profit a year ago. Another, Molina Healthcare, has lowered its earnings estimates twice in as many weeks, blaming a “season of great uncertainty”. Since mid-April the three firms have lost more than 40% of their market value. Only Cigna and cvs Health have avoided the rout (see chart 1). Both firms’ insurance operations are part of a bigger business, which has lessened the damage (see chart 2).
The downturn reflects underlying symptoms. Medical costs are rising, regulatory scrutiny is growing and public funding is tightening. Investors are now coming to terms with how reliant these firms are on government money and how vulnerable they are to policy change.
Chart: The Economist
For many years, public programmes drove growth. Despite America’s lack of universal health care, the government still foots much of the bill for treatments. Medicare, a federal scheme for those aged 65 and older, covers more than 68m people. Most now choose Medicare Advantage, a private alternative under which insurers are paid to provide equivalent care but with added benefits.
Medicaid, run by the states, serves low-income Americans and covers 71m (including 12m also on Medicare). Most states outsource the administration to private insurers. The Affordable Care Act (aca), passed in 2010, boosted the industry by providing subsidies for people who do not get health insurance from their employer but buy it from private firms on government-run exchanges. Altogether, public health-insurance programmes cover about 170m people, roughly half the population.
Larry Levitt of kff, a health-policy think-tank, says with low expansion in employer-provided insurance, Medicare Advantage has become a growth engine for private insurers. It has also been lucrative. UnitedHealth’s revenues from Medicare and Medicaid have risen from $70bn in 2014 to $220bn in 2024. These programmes once brought in nearly three-fifths of its insurance income; now they account for nearly three-quarters. The government pays well. Medpac, a congressional advisory body, estimates that Medicare Advantage costs taxpayers 20% more per patient than standard Medicare.
The model is now under strain. Medical costs are climbing at the fastest rate in over a decade. pwc, a consultancy, expects a rise of 8.5% in both 2025 and 2026, fuelled by pricey cancer treatments, growing demand for mental-health care and booming sales of weight-loss drugs. Patients on public plans tend to be especially costly. Mark Newsom of Avalere Health, another consultancy, notes that people enrolled on Medicare and Medicaid are “the sicker population” compared with those on commercial plans. They use more hospital services, have more prescriptions filled and need more care.
Government payments are not keeping pace. s&p Global, a financial-data firm, forecasts that the medical-loss ratio, the share of premiums spent on care, will hit 88% this year for the big insurers, up from 83% in 2020. Most aim for 80%. The rise, driven by publicly insured patients, is eating into margins.
More pain may be on the way. President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill act (obbb), passed earlier this year, includes deep cuts to federal health-care spending. According to the Congressional Budget Office (cbo), a non-partisan agency, Medicaid funding will fall by $910bn over the next decade, equivalent to a spending cut of 14%. The obbb also imposes stricter conditions for coverage, including tougher and more frequent checks on eligibility. Meanwhile, generous subsidies for aca plans are due to lapse at the end of the year. These tax credits currently lower premiums for millions.
The result, says the cbo, will be 16m more uninsured Americans by 2034 than would otherwise be the case. Those leaving the market are likely to be healthier, leaving insurers with a smaller, sicker and more expensive pool of patients.
Regulators are also circling. On May 1st the Department of Justice (doj) filed a lawsuit against Aetna, Elevance and Humana, alleging they conspired to steer patients into Medicare Advantage. The doj claims the firms paid brokers “hundreds of millions of dollars” in kickbacks to push people toward their plans, even if those services were not in patients’ best interests. The companies deny any wrongdoing. UnitedHealth, for its part, revealed last week that it faces both civil and criminal probes into its billing practices. The Wall Street Journal reported that the firm allegedly inflated diagnoses to make patients appear sicker and trigger higher government payments. UnitedHealth says it has “full confidence” in its practices.
Insurers are likely to pass on the added costs. Centene, the largest seller of Medicaid plans, expects states to raise payments. In the aca exchanges, most insurers are seeking premium increases of 10–20% for 2026, according to kff. Patients may lack sympathy over the industry’s pain but soon they may be paying for it to go away.■
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