Selena Simmons-Duffin

The deadline for the policy to be implemented is next January, but Nebraska is getting started early.

The state says it's not adding staff or funding to implement the requirement, which will apply to roughly 70,000 Nebraskans.

Health advocates call the rules paperwork requirements, since most people on Medicaid who can work already do.

Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR News.

The tie-breaking vote for Secretary Kennedy's confirmation last year was cast by Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the chair of the Senate Health Committee, which oversees HHS, and a member of the Finance Committee.

Cassidy is a physician who supports vaccines.

He only agreed to support the nomination after Kennedy promised not to change vaccine policy and to appear regularly before the Health Committee.

The opposite has happened.

Kennedy has made dramatic, unprecedented changes to vaccine policy and hasn't testified before the HELP Committee since September.

Since then, Cassidy has issued statements critical of the secretary's moves on vaccines, but now he has the opportunity to question him publicly.

Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR News, Washington.

Ken Warner and Parveen Vora are in their mid-50s and live in Manchester, Connecticut.

They're self-employed and use the ACA for health coverage.

Last year, they had to drain one of their two small retirement accounts.

To pay for the hip surgery and the eye surgery and the roof went.

We needed a new roof and a new boiler in the same year of the surgery.

Now they're wondering how they can pay for surgery on Vora's other eye and Warner's other hip and eyeing the retirement account that's left.

They say they feel stuck in a broken system, with health care premiums and out-of-pocket costs only getting more expensive each year.

Selina Simmons-Duffin, NPR News.

The Joint Economic Committee in Congress estimates that overpayments to insurance companies that run Medicare Advantage has cost American seniors billions.