Weekly Update: GLP-1s spike employer healthcare costs | AI’s ‘7 deadly sins’ | Investor-owned PCPs | Hospice enrollment pause

In a survey, employers told the Business Group on Health that they aren’t yet seeing evidence of long-term health benefits from taking GLP-1s for weight loss, leaving them unsure how to manage costs while continuing to cover them.

Researchers warn of potential perdition—so to speak—for doing algorithmic medicine wrong in any of these easily avoidable ways. 

The days when most doctors worked in independent practice settings are fading from memory like old photoprints in a musty scrapbook.

Private-equity acquisitions of primary-care provider practices neither alter hospitalization rates nor affect acute-care outcomes, according to new research out of Brown University. 

The former proprietor of a pharmacy in New Jersey was caught billing federal insurance for prescriptions of the antibiotic Dificid at $4,000 a pop, despite providers never ordering the pills. He pleaded guilty to charges of healthcare fraud conspiracy in November 2025.

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary is about to become a former FDA chief. The departure comes as no surprise since President Donald Trump OK’d a plan to fire him last week. 

Do: Use large-language AI to help analyze your specific symptoms. Don’t: Ask a chatbot if you should go to the emergency room.

Epic makes the list with its enterprise inpatient EHR and related platforms. So does PCC, aka Physician’s Computer Company, which supplies pediatric-specific ambulatory EHR and practice-management products and services. 

The United States appears to be leading all high-income countries in an unfortunate, distinctly undesirable statistical category. 

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said it’s issuing a nationwide moratorium on new providers entering the spaces until it has a chance to look into allegations of fraud, waste and abuse. It confirmed investigations of various organizations are pending.