Minnesota Star Tribune opinion writer on health care. Applying Minnesota mom sensibilities to coverage: don't fib, don't be mean & you better have done your homework. StarTribune.com
Of course he did.

@jburcum.bsky.social
Minnesota Star Tribune opinion writer on health care. Applying Minnesota mom sensibilities to coverage: don't fib, don't be mean & you better have done your homework. StarTribune.com
Of course he did.
Billions of dollars’ worth of contracts predicting oil would fall and the S&P 500 would rise were placed about 15 minutes before Trump announced a U-turn on Iran in a post on Truth Social. CFTC staff began to investigate...then were told to lay off. www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
@univofminnesota.bsky.social
expert Peter Huckfeldt examines the financial pressures driving insurers’ retreat from #MedicareAdvantage @jburcum.bsky.social @startribuneguild.bsky.social www.startribune.com/open-enrollm...
FDA may allow some toxic chemicals to be added to food without safety review. Experts are alarmed www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
NYC Comptroller Mark Levine urges Target's board to commission an independent review of any coordination or cooperation between Target and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), following the shooting involving ICE agents in Marble Hill on October 8.
Holy shit
FOUR members of the ethics committee in Denmark that gave the green light to allow the widely-condemned RFK Jr-funded trial to proceed in Guinea-Bissau have now resigned in protest
This quote is 🔥
Great reporting by @melodyschreiber.com
RFK Jr is funding a grotesquely unethical study on newborn babies in Guinea-Bissau; ethicists, pediatricians, clinical trial experts, & infectious disease experts are calling this horrific trial The New Tuskegee. It is unethical to withhold a life saving intervention from half of newborns FFS.
???
“You are now enrolling newborns in a lottery to test a hypothesis,” Hansen said. Babies will “contract hepatitis B in the context of being part of a research project,” Hansen said, which made their infection happen, in effect, “by design.”
www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
That there is an endless supply is so depressing.
From April
The breast cancer center appealed thousands of Blue Cross reimbursements for being too low. At trial, the insurer revealed that it had never considered any of the appeals — and that they were pointless: “An appeal is not available to review an underpayment.” (Published April 2025)
A lab worker’s death after a reported accident in Russia has raised concern for #plague.
A reminder: As the US dismantles public health, we weaken our ability to detect and contain the next threat.
Cutting surveillance doesn’t eliminate danger. It makes us slower to see it.
A cluster of three major health system mergers in Minnesota this year reflect urgency among providers to grow and generate efficiencies that shield them from looming federal cutbacks.
Thank you!
Brutal! The Cornell rapists had to write those essays in longhand while still recovering from a slap on the wrist.
Breaking: The Texas Tribune has identified the ICE agent who witnesses say fired through an open van window and killed 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston nearly three months ago.
Here’s the most incredible story you’ll read today. A small plane with four people aboard crashes in a field. Another pilot witnesses it. That pilot happens to be flying a bunch of skydivers. They offer to jump to assist, are given permission. The skydivers happen to be EMTs. Everyone survives.
This is like accusing someone of robbing a bank because they deposited money and never withdrew it
“As of May 2026, the C.D.C. had 30 percent fewer employees than it did before the layoffs…Interviews with more than 30 current & former employees reveal the agency is now tightly controlled by Mr. Kennedy and his associates, and its scientists are finding it increasingly difficult to do their jobs”