GBONEWS: Announcing 16th Journalists in Aging Fellowships; USC Health Reporting Fellowships; Pulitzer Finalists; 17 Conflicts in House’s Big Budget Bill; Medicaid Cuts Would Hit Medicare; Alzheimer Plan’s False Hopes; Older Immigrants Struggle; Medicaid Work Requirements and Seniors; & MORE.
GENERATIONS BEAT ONLINE NEWS
E-News of the Journalists Network on Generations.
May 30, 2025 — Volume 32, Number 9
EDITOR’S NOTE: GBONews, e-news of the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), publishes alerts for journalists, producers and authors covering generational issues. If you have difficulty getting to the full issue of GBONews with the links provided below, simply go to www.gbonews.org to read the latest or past editions. Send your news of stories or books (by you and others), fellowships, awards or pertinent kvetches to GBO News Editor Paul Kleyman. [pfkleyman@gmail.com]. To subscribe to GBONews.org at no charge, simply send a request to Paul with your name, address, phone number and editorial affiliation or note that you freelance. For each issue, we’ll email the table of contents and links to the full issue at www.gbonews.org. GBONews does not provide its list to other entities.
In This Issue: Bad Baleful Bores Belie Their Business Booty in Beauty-less Bill.
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE: *** 16th Journalists in Aging Fellowship Applications Open Soon; *** Health and Climate Change Reporting Fellowship; *** Pulitzer Prizes Finalists on Medicare Advantage, Mental Health, Hospital Fraud
2. THE STORYBOARD
*** “House Republicans Pass Budget Reconciliation Legislation: What’s New in Coverage Provisions?” with 17-Points of Conflict, by Katie Keith, Health Affairs;
*** Two by Mark Miller—“How Medicaid cuts would impact Medicare enrollees,” Retirement Revised on Substack, and “Retirees, Get Ready to Need Long-Term Care. Here’s What to Know,” New York Times “Retiring” column;
*** “Who’s Affected by Medicaid Work Requirements? It’s Not Who You Think,” by Sara Rosenbaum, Marc A. Cohen, Jane L. Tavares and Alison Barkoff, Milbank Quarterly
*** “An Expensive Alzheimer’s Lifestyle Plan Offers False Hope, Experts Say,” by Lindsay Gellman, New York Times;
*** “Older Venezuelans in the U.S. struggle with shifting immigration policies,” by Clavel Rangel , Chicago Caregiving;
*** “You Don’t Need a Spreadsheet to Know We’re Failing Nursing Home Residents,” by Eric Goldwein, Aging in American News.
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS: *** Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Cleo Krejci Wins 8 Awards, including $25,000 Center for Integrity in News Reporting Prize.
1. EYES ON THE PRIZE
*** 16th Journalists in Aging Fellowship Applications to Open Soon: Our reporting fellowship got green-lighted again. GBONews’ publisher, the Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), and our academic partner, the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) will start accepting applications from working reporters (staff or freelance) to participate in our 2025-26 program for covering the wide-ranging issues on aging in America.
Fellows will receive a $1,500 stipend, plus all expenses covered to attend the Boston conference in November. Applications must include a one-to-two-page story pitch for a long-term, in-depth project about any research-based aspect of aging, to be completed and published in the spring of 2026. Those chosen will also produce a short-term story on any subject about aging, which does not require a proposal in the application.
New Fellows will join the roster of 245 alumni journalists from mainstream, ethnic, senior press or community media. Since the program’s start in 2010, Fellows have produced more than 850 stories in all types of media. Many have originated in non-English outlets serving U.S. audiences, from El Tiempo Latino to Sing Tao Daily, as well as in general-media outlets, such as the Washington Post, Science Magazine, NPR News, and numerous local newspapers.
Selected fellows will attend GSA’s 2025 Annual Scientific Meeting, which will take place November 12-15, 2025, in Boston. The conference will bring about 4,500 professionals in gerontology from around the world, many of whom will present their research in hundreds of symposia, papers, and study posters on nearly every topic in aging.
Reporters will find ideas for new stories and fresh angles on subjects from Alzheimer’s disease to creativity to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. Topics will range from the latest biological discoveries to public policy panels on federal cuts and how states and local services are coping with the new austerities.
Both staff journalists and freelancers must apply with an agreement by his or her editor/producer, to accept the long-term project proposal as an editorial assignment for likely publication or broadcast. Applicants who double as their outlet’s editor/producer need not provide a separate letter or email, but they should make their dual role clear in the proposal. For cases in which the original media outlet does not release a project story, the Fellow is obligated to place it in a comparable news or information medium.
If you have questions about the fellowships, contact the program’s Co-Directors, Liz Seegert, (liz@lizseegert.com; (516) 225-9636), program coordinator of JNG; or Todd Kluss (tkluss@geron.org; (202) 587-2839) GSA’s director of communications. You may also contact GBONews editor Paul Kleyman, who is co-founder and Senior Advisor to the fellowship program, pfkleyman@gmail.com, (415) 821-2801.
The program is currently supported by grants from Silver Century Foundation, The Commonwealth Fund, The John A. Hartford Foundation, and National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation (NIHCM).
*** Health and Climate Change Reporting Fellowship: These fellowships from USC Annenberg’s Center for Health Journalism support reporting projects on physical health, mental health or both “with an eye to the systemic inequities that worsen the impact of climate-related disasters and delay recovery for families and communities. Projects should focus on how climate change and health plays out in the United States in a dangerously warming world.” Apply by September 3, 2025.
These are top-rated fellowships that will bring selected reporters to Los Angeles for two days of intensive training, Nov. 13-14, 2025. Fellows receive a reporting grant ranging from $2,000-$10,000 depending on project research and travel needs (see website for details). It also includes five months of one-on-one mentorship from a veteran journalist, as well as monthly virtual meetings with fellow journalists.
Their website states, “This program is designed to look at the interaction of climate change and human health.” USC does not want proposals for disaster coverage, but the program does invite in-depth project pitches on health effects from exposure to disasters, such as wildfires, hurricanes and so on; pollution; government-systems accountability; and other areas of reporting outlined on the website. Effects on aging or intergenerational impacts should be welcome.
*** Aging-Relevant Finalists of 2025 Pulitzer Prizes: The Pulitzer’s name only a winner and up to two Finalists in each category. (See the complete list of winner and Finalists on the link here to the Poynter Institute website.)
For Investigative Reporting, the Wall Street Journal’s team of Christopher Weaver, Anna Wilde Mathews, Mark Maremont, Tom McGinty and Andrew Mollica produced “a lucid, comprehensive series that revealed how insurance companies gamed the Medicare Advantage system and collected billions of dollars for nonexistent ailments while shunting expensive cases onto the public.”
For Explanatory Reporting, ProPublica’s Annie Waldman, Duaa Eldeib, Max Blau and Maya Miller’s 10-story project, “America’s Mental Barrier,” was a Finalist for their “deep and haunting examination of how insurance companies quietly, and with little public scrutiny, deny mental health services to those in need.”
Also a Finalists, in the Public Service category, was the Boston Globe, with contributions from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, “for its sweeping coverage of the financial mismanagement of a major hospital chain, exposing how corporate malfeasance, personal greed and government neglect led to compromised care and deaths.” (The Globe blocks nonsubscribers with a hard paywall with at least a $1 payment for single-story access.)
2. THE STORYBOARD
*** “House Republicans Pass Budget Reconciliation Legislation: What’s New In The Coverage Provisions?” by Katie Keith, Health Affairs (May 23, 2025): GBONews strongly recommends that reporters not only see this article, but also follow their reporting for accurate, thorough analyses and summaries.
What’s Coming: “In the early hours on May 22, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on a party-line vote of 215 to 214, with one member voting present. The multi-trillion dollar, more than 1,000-page bill was introduced, marked up, and passed by the House in less than two weeks. . . Reflecting the quick turnaround, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has yet to fully score and assess the underlying legislation that was introduced just last week, let alone the changes adopted late on the evening of May 21 before passage by the House. From here, the Senate will consider the package.”
Fangs Out: “Preliminary CBO analysis shows that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would severely erode social safety net programs by cutting nearly $1 trillion over 10 years in Medicaid and SNAP [food stamps] alone. This includes at least $698 billion in cuts to the Medicaid program and at least $267 billion in cuts to the SNAP program. These changes would shift costs to states to the tune of at least $78 billion in new costs. Even with these cuts, the bill would increase the federal deficit by $3.8 trillion. Note that these are conservative estimates.”
Summary—17 Gross Changes: “The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, if enacted as passed by the House on May 22, would significantly reshape access to health coverage and care in America. Many of these changes are described in detail in prior articles . . . At a high level (and among many other changes), the House bill’s health-related provisions would:
* “Burden low-income Medicaid enrollees and states through new mandatory work requirements for many applicants and enrollees, more frequent eligibility redeterminations for Medicaid expansion enrollees, new copays for certain low-income Medicaid enrollees, and new limits on retroactive coverage.
* “Restrict the ways that states can raise revenue to support their share of the Medicaid program by preventing states from establishing new provider taxes to help fund their Medicaid program, freezing existing taxes at their current rate, and modifying the criteria that federal officials use to assess certain health care-related taxes for purposes of Medicaid.” And 15 more bullet points on target.
*** “How Medicaid cuts would impact Medicare enrollees,” by Mark Miller, Retirement Revised on Substack (May 19, 2025): The Lede: “Polling by KFF shows that fewer than one in five adults (17%) want to see Medicaid funding decreased, and most think funding should either increase (42%) or be kept about the same (40%). These Medicaid cuts would have a devastating effects on health insurance coverage for millions of Americans. Less understood: The cuts also would impact a significant share of people enrolled in Medicare.”
Where: “A presentation . . . at the annual Medicare Summit convened by the Center for Medicare Advocacy [showed]the possible direct and indirect effects . . . would especially impact people who are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare (the so-called “dual eligible” population).”
Hey, GOP, Got Aging Parents? Duals “constitute one-fifth of Medicare beneficiaries, and account for a disproportionate share of Medicaid spending. That is because they make up the older part of the Medicaid population–and therefore they tend to be sicker and need more healthcare. They account for 14% of the Medicaid population, but almost 30% of spending.”
Editor’s Bad Beautiful Barb: That is, GBONews readers, “duals” aren’t all “poor.” With Medicare paying only for shorter post-hospital stays, federal-state Medicaid has become de facto middle-class insurance for over 60% of all nursing home residents and many in assisted living, after any private policies run out. Others, including well aging, educated white professionals, may find their finances drone-bombed by astronomical prescription drug prices. When their savings sink, guess where they turn to stay function, alive – and voting?
*** Also from Mark Miller, “Retirees, Get Ready to Need Long-Term Care. Here’s What to Know,” New York Times “Retiring” column (May 24, 2025): The Dek – “Demand and costs for care are rising at the same time that a labor shortage threatens to worsen. How can you plan for this need now?”
Boomers: “In 2026, the oldest baby boomers will start turning 80, an age when the odds of needing care grow. The U.S. Census Bureau forecasts that the number of people 85 and older will nearly double by 2035 (to 11.8 million people) and nearly triple by 2060 (to 19 million).”
Care Shortage: “At the same time, the care industry has a shortage of workers that is driven partly by low wages. The median hourly wage for all direct care workers was $16.72 in 2023 — lower than the wage for all other jobs with similar or low entry-level requirements, according to an analysis by PHI, a nonprofit research and policy organization.
Experts fear that shortage will be exacerbated by the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Immigrants make up 28 percent of the long-term care work force — a figure that has been rising in recent years, according to KFF, a health policy research group.”
*** “Who’s Affected by Medicaid Work Requirements? It’s Not Who You Think,” by Sara Rosenbaum, Marc A. Cohen, Jane L. Tavares and Alison Barkoff, Milbank Quarterly Opinion (April 30, 2025): If you don’t already know this highly regarded journal includes incisive analysis of health and social developments by leading scholars, such as these authors from
George Washington University and UMass Boston. With many House and Senate Republicans pressing for strict Medicaid work requirements that would disproportionately affecting older workers—and few younger ones–who may face age discrimination, so this analysis is especially pertinent today.
The Lede: “Since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion passed in 2010, Medicaid work requirement proponents have sought to convince policymakers that the Medicaid working-age adult population is dominated by young, ‘able-bodied’ adults who simply don’t work. This assertion is contrary to a mountain of evidence showing that the vast majority of working-age adults (aged 18-64) insured through Medicaid are either working, caring for family members, or exempt because of health issues. Nonetheless, these baseless claims persist.”
The Study: “Using what the authors cite as ‘responsive records’ supplied by 23 states, a new report from the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) argues that ‘most Medicaid beneficiaries do not work at all.’ Legally, a ‘responsive record’ is a term of art under the Freedom of Information Act meaning a ‘record provided by a government in response to an information request.’”
Who’s Affected: Overwhelming evidence shows what can happen under broad mandates that tie health care to compliance with work reporting: Affected people, including workers and potentially exempted people are unable to navigate the reporting maze, lose their health care, uninsurance rates rise, and employment rates don’t change. .
The article goes on, “We analyzed data from the 2023 American Community Survey (ACS), the Census Bureau’s gold standard annual population survey and the premier source of highly detailed information about Americans. The survey contains information collected from over 3.5 million households regarding multiple aspects of life, including income, health and health care, family and living arrangements, and work status.
* “Medicaid enrollees classified as able-bodied represent only 15.8% of the total nonworking Medicaid population ages 18-64 (and only 8% of the total Medicaid population).
* “Four in five (79.2%) non-working adults considered able-bodied “are women, with an average age of 41. One in four (26%) is over age 50. Their median income is zero. They live in families with annual incomes averaging under $45,000 and an average household size of 4.4. In other words, they are exceptionally poor women on the older end of the working-age spectrum.
* “They are not healthy young adults just hanging out. Although they may not have current health problems, many are middle-aged women or older, and a quarter are older than 50. They are very poor, have limited education, the majority once worked, most have left the workforce, and now they care for family and cannot afford to lose their own health care.”
*** “An Expensive Alzheimer’s Lifestyle Plan Offers False Hope, Experts Say,” by Lindsay Gellman, New York Times (May 21, 2025): The Dek – “Thousands of people have paid for Dale Bredesen’s unconventional program to reverse Alzheimer’s symptoms. The medical establishment says there’s little to no proof it works.”
The Lede: “Kerry Briggs had trouble keeping track of the supplements. To help, her husband, John Briggs, created a spreadsheet with rows for ashwagandha, Omega-3 and curcumin extract. There was ginseng, lion’s mane mushroom and the antioxidant liposomal glutathione, too.
‘Ms. Briggs, 64, had started taking the supplements last July, a daily regimen that grew to include 34 capsules and tablets along with two scoops of powder. . . . But the suggestion that Alzheimer’s can be reversed through lifestyle adjustments has outraged doctors and scientists in the medical establishment, who have repeatedly said that there is little to no proof for such a claim, and expressed concern that the idea could harm a large group of vulnerable Americans.”
Unverified Claims: “Mr. Briggs had come across the idea after learning about Dale Bredesen, who had been performing a series of small and unconventional studies through which he claimed to have designed a set of guidelines to reverse Alzheimer’s symptoms. ‘Very, very few people should ever get this,’ Mr. Bredesen told an audience last July, referring to cognitive decline. . . . Mr. Bredesen’s 2017 book, The End of Alzheimer’s, has sold around 300,000 copies and became a New York Times best seller.”
Who: “Mr. Bredesen, 72, was once also a top neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, but he has not had an active medical license for much of the past three decades and doesn’t see patients anymore. . . . Despite decades of research and the development of a few medications with modest benefits, a cure for the disease has remained elusive.
“But a number of people close to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and aligned with the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement have claimed that Mr. Bredesen’s research points to a solution. Calley Means, a top adviser to Mr. Kennedy, considers himself a fan. Mr. Means’s sister, Dr. Casey Means, who President Trump has picked for surgeon general, has called Mr. Bredesen “a medical hero” of hers.”
The Science: “The Alzheimer’s Association, which helped fund Mr. Bredesen’s earlier and more conventional research, sees his recent approach as insufficiently rigorous.”
A Quote: “Today, many people see the medical and pharmaceutical industries as ‘driven by greed,’ said Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, the director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. ‘They fail to see, however, that the “natural medicine” movement also may be exploiting them.'”
Editor’s note—This institute was established by the family of Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., who was an aviator killed during World War II, and the uncle of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.)
*** “Older Venezuelans in the U.S. struggle with shifting immigration policies,” by Clavel Rangel , Chicago Caregiving(May 1, 2025): Note — Clavel Rangel is a Venezuelan journalist and co-founder of the Network of Journalists from the Venezuelan Amazon.
The Lede: (“Mariela Sucre, a Venezuelan asylum seeker, has spent the past few weeks feeling utterly overwhelmed. There’s too much on her plate: working, caring for her 86-year-old mother (who has dementia), and waiting on an asylum case that hasn’t moved in the seven years since she arrived in the United States.
“Now, she faces a new worry: the Trump administration’s rollback of immigration protections. ‘It feels incredibly unstable,’ says 64-year-old Sucre. ‘I used to think, if they finally called me for an interview, my asylum would be granted; I have all the evidence. But now, it feels like nothing is guaranteed, no matter what you have.’ Her case is one of thousands stuck in limbo.’ ”
A Quote: “Ana Gil, director of the Illinois Venezuelan Alliance, a nonprofit that supports migrants in Chicago, says older migrants experience even more uncertainty than younger ones due to the daily emotional stress of shifting immigration policy.
“She says the alliance regularly sees older migrants experiencing depression, anxiety, and social isolation. ‘Older adults aren’t afraid of deportation — they’re afraid of being detained in their home countries,’ she says. ‘These are people who entered the U.S. with proper documentation, believing they had at least two years of legal stability.’” Sucre and her mother arrived in the U.S. in 2018 to escape political persecution on Venezuela’s Margarita Island, where they had lived most of their lives.
Who: “A former criminal court judge, Sucre says the government removed her from the bench because she refused to align with its agenda. . . In the U.S., she works as a delivery driver.”
Another Source: “Organizers behind the Venezuelan American Caucus — an organization that builds networks of active, informed Venezuelan-American citizens — have heard many stories like Sucre’s since the Trump administration began dismantling protections for Venezuelans, including temporary protected status.”
*** “You Don’t Need a Spreadsheet to Know We’re Failing Nursing Home Residents,” by Eric Goldwein, Aging in American News (AiA News, May 27, 2025):
Who: A former journalist, Goldwein founded 320 Consulting, which works with small teams and nonprofits data into “user-friendly tools and compelling stories.” He explains, “Since 2019, I’ve been analyzing staffing levels in U.S. nursing homes using the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Payroll-Based Journal (PBJ) data . . . The findings are clear:
* Most nursing homes are understaffed — 9 out of 10, based on new methodology that accounts for resident acuity. Most aren’t even close.
* The typical nursing home provides 3.69 total staff hours per resident per day (HPRD), far below the 4.10 recommended by a federal study. Night, weekend, and holiday staffing is much lower.
* Turnover is high. Nursing homes lose nearly half their staff each year, and churn is even higher when measured by hours.”
The Consequence: “But . . . you don’t need a spreadsheet or a regression model to know nursing homes are understaffed. Just walk into your uncle’s five-star nursing home, smell the urine, and watch one nurse aide try to do the work of two. Or ask a resident. They’ll tell you the staff work hard but are stretched thin.
“Research consistently links lower staffing with worse outcomes — pressure ulcers, falls, hospitalizations, COVID, you name it. And yet most nursing homes operate well below the recommended levels and are rarely held accountable.”
The States: Unfortunately, a federal staffing standard isn’t going to save the day. In April, the courts struck down a mandate requiring 24/7 RN coverage and a modest but meaningful minimum staffing standard. . . Some states have minimum staffing standards.
“While not a cure-all – they are often underenforced or easily gamed – perhaps they can help. States like Oregon and North Dakota, which have such standards, consistently rank near the top in staffing levels. . . With the federal path blocked, progress will depend on states, on advocates, and on anyone still willing to fight for the dignity and safety of nursing home residents.”
3. GEN BEATLES NEWS
*** Kudos Plus $25,000 went to Cleo Krejci for winning the 2025 Center for Integrity in News Reporting (CINR award, print media category) for “her investigation into the staffing crisis straining Wisconsin’s rapidly growing assisted living industry,” as announced her newspaper in “Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Cleo Krejci wins Center for Integrity in News Reporting award,” (May 7, 2025).
Krejci, whose project was supported by a Journalists in Aging Fellowship, accepted the award at a ceremony at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, on May 6. Her story package was also tapped for seven other honors. Among them she was named a Goldsmith Award semifinalist, one of the top awards in journalism, and a Livingston Award finalist, which honors journalists under 35. (Livingston Award winners will be announced in June.)
As the Journal Sentinel reported, “Krejci, who covers workforce development for the Journal Sentinel through Report for America, was inspired by her own experience working as a direct caregiver. What she witnessed formed the basis of her investigative project, The Gray Zone.”
Krejci emailed GBONews, “It has been rather insane to get these awards, in all honestly, since I had no plan to even publish something when I got the memory care job. I know I’ve said it before, but getting the fellowship is what allowed me to convince the Journal Sentinel to let me do a project, so I am super grateful to you guys,” referring to her Journalists in Aging Fellowship.
The Journal Sentinel article continues that she “delved into hundreds of state reports and interviewed more than 50 workers, families, nurses, researchers and others. She found that over the past 20 years, the number of assisted living beds has doubled, but the number of complaints has tripled. Caregivers told Krejci they were thrown into the job without preparation, putting themselves and residents in danger and fueling a vicious cycle of turnover.”
Before she was hired at the newspaper, as Krejci explains in her main story, she started working as a memory care resident aide “in late August 2022, driven by questions about the care of older adults in the U.S. and my own grandparents’ experiences with aging. I based my search on minimal criteria: A facility willing to hire someone with no health care experience, but with a background in journalism.
“By early January 2023, I found myself so burnt out by mismanagement and neglect that I scaled back to part time and started waitressing. Like many others, I simply became exhausted at the way the negative outweighed the positive.”
The paper’s announcement of her CINR prize explained, “When Cleo joined our team, she wasn’t sure what to do with all she had seen and experienced as a caregiver,” said Greg Borowski, executive editor of the Journal Sentinel. “We encouraged her to follow the story and dig deeper. She did so with determination, empathy and integrity, always centered on telling the story with care and heart.”
The Journalists Network on Generations (JNG), founded in 1993, publishes Generations Beat Online News (GBONews.org). JNG provides information and networking opportunities for journalists covering generational issues, but not those representing services, products or lobbying agendas. Copyright 2025 Paul Kleyman. For more information contact GBO Editor Paul Kleyman.
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