The Changes Coming to the ACA, Medicaid, and Medicare - Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Note: This brief was originally published on July 8 and updated on August 3, 2026 to include proposed 2027 rates from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Every spring and summer, health insurers submit rate filings to state regulators detailing expectations and premium rate changes for individual market health plans for the coming year. This analysis focuses on individual market filings for plans selling Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace coverage. These filings provide insight into what factors insurers expect will drive health costs for the coming year. The individual market is mostly comprised of people enrolled in Affordable Care Act (ACA)-compliant health plans, particularly those sold through the Marketplaces (Healthcare.gov and state-run platforms like Covered California). While less than 10% of Americans get their health coverage through the individual market, many of the factors driving premiums in this market – like growth in hospital or pharmaceutical costs – are similar across all private plans, and the detailed filings available for ACA-compliant coverage provide insight into these cost drivers.

Children who eat more ultra-processed foods (UPFs) show stronger responses in the brain's reward network when viewing images of appetizing foods-and these brain responses are linked to increases in body fat one year later. The findings, just published in JAMA Network Open, suggest that the brain may become more sensitive to food cues when children consume more UPFs. UPFs are manufactured food products-such as breakfast cereals, packaged bread and instant soups-that are designed to be highly palatable, convenient and shelf-stable. They often contain artificial sweeteners, colors and other ingredients that people do not typically use when cooking at home. On average, U. S. children get about 67% of their daily calories from UPFs.

Hiroshima University researchers investigated the effects of hydrogen supplementation on sleep quality in healthy human volunteers. While hydrogen supplementation had no significant effect compared to a placebo, individuals in the hydrogen-supplementation group reporting better sleep quality were discovered to have a lower abundance of hydrogen producing bacteria in their gut microbiome. A Hiroshima University-led randomized, double-blind clinical trial found that hydrogen supplementation did not significantly improve sleep quality compared to a placebo; however, exploratory analyses suggest that differences in the abundance of hydrogen-producing gut bacteria may be associated with individual differences in sleep-related responses.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced the beginning of the first clinical trial of an Ebola vaccine in the outbreak that started in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said in a social media post on Friday that participants in the trial were vaccinated with the Ervebo vaccine in Bunia, the capital of the DRC’s northeastern Ituri province, which is the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3Kenya announces second Ebola death, says ‘no evidence’ of community spreadlist 2 of 3Nigeria’s first Ebola case matches DR Congo strain, health officials saylist 3 of 3WHO warns ‘more complex’ Ebola outbreak now present in 3 African countriesend of listErvebo, a vaccine approved for use against the more common Zaire strain of Ebola, will be put through a full-scale human trial to see if it offers any cross-protection against the Bundibugyo species of Ebola that is behind the epidemic. “This trial will help us understand whether any of the vaccine candidates designed for Bundibugyo virus work,” the WHO chief said on X.