Data editor @KFFHealthNews. Former @dallasnews investigative reporter. Fueled by French roast & curiosity. I love a good scatterplot.

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Holly Hacker retweeted
A team of financiers, techies+ government officials are talking on a government-run chat room about how to get Americans to use medical AI, turn over their medical records, and for the companies to profit. From @AmandaSeitz, @maia_rosenfeld and myself: cbsnews.com/news/ai-tech-lea…
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Holly Hacker retweeted
Here's my absolute favorite genre of public relations spin. When a university HAS to release it's 10th day enrollment numbers. But, those numbers are catastrophically bad. So they issue a 1,000 word press release that is full of nothing but fluff. They released the first version of the article on September 3, which didn't contain the actual enrollment number. Then they update that exact same press release a week later that buries the most important number at the bottom. Actual enrollment. I highlighted it in the screenshot below. You can barely see it. And they also don't include previous year's enrollment numbers so a person has to go Googling to see actually how bad it is. Western Illinois had 5,337 students enrolled in the Fall of 2025. This year, it's 4,447. That's a 16.7% decrease. Which is, like I said above, catastrophically bad. In 2008, WIU's enrollment was 13,175. They have lost two-thirds of their students in less than 20 years.
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Holly Hacker retweeted
Much of the mourning for the late great @washingtonpost has rightly focused on how democracy dies in darkness at the national level, which is hugely important. But the evisceration of Metro coverage is every bit as devastating because there is no comparable news outlet keeping local governments and institutions honest. Eight of my 20 years at the Post were spent on Metro, which was the heart and soul of the Post under the legendary @dongrahamdc1. The undertakers now running the paper have all but wiped out the metro staff, leaving just 12 reporters, according to reports, to cover a region of 6.5 million people. We had twice that many journalists in Fairfax alone back in the day. And it mattered. Reporters are the eyes and ears of the community, keeping tabs on people in power. We were there for every supervisors meeting, every school board meeting. We pored through planning commission documents and campaign filings. When county officials wasted taxpayer money, raised taxes on overstretched homeowners, gave sweetheart zoning deals to developers who filled their election coffers, we were there. When teachers who sexually abused students were quietly transferred to other schools to do it all over again, we were there. We were there for the more uplifting stories too, the cops who broke a cold case, the educators who turned around a struggling school, the residents who rallied to help neighbors in trouble, the student athletes who won the big game, the entrepreneurs who started something new. Our friend @SariHorwitz who has won more Pulitzers than I can count, wrote so movingly online about the Post (facebook.com/share/p/1AZLTTD…). To recognize how indispensable local coverage is, you need only look at her holy-shit investigations of a broken child welfare system, rampant police shootings and the corporate-fed opioid crisis, stories that opened eyes and led to change. Democracy is not just what happens at the White House and the Capitol but in our own backyards. The Post has just turned the lights down at home too.
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Holly Hacker retweeted
There was no doctor on-site when a patient arrived at the emergency room in the small hospital at intersection of two dirt roads in Ekalaka, MT. There never is. Experts believe ERs, especially in rural areas, increasingly operate with few or no doctors. kffhealthnews.org/news/artic…
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Thanks to the Red Line @wmata train operator for suggesting we transfer at Ft Totten to escape this morning’s RL delay hellscape.
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Holly Hacker retweeted
The Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies threaten to cut a key source of labor for nursing facilities and home health agencies that rely on foreign-born workers. @vanesanchez_g + @dchangmiami report for KFF Health News + @NBCNews. ⤵️ nbcnews.com/health/health-ne…
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Holly Hacker retweeted
Trying to make sense of the massive changes at HHS? @jrovner leans on her 40 years covering HHS to put this moment in context and answer questions from @tradeoffspod listeners about what this means for hospitals, states, research + more. tradeoffs.org/2025/04/03/mak…
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Holly Hacker retweeted
The man responsible for a $1.3 billion fraud scheme. A doctor who gave unnecessary eye injections. A CEO made a fortune on pain and pee. President Trump claims he will stop health care fraudsters. In his first term, he let these fraudsters go. kffhealthnews.org/news/artic…
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Holly Hacker retweeted
When Slack is down and we have to operate in Microsoft Teams…

ALT This Is Fine GIF

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Holly Hacker retweeted
🧵Opioid settlement money was meant to be spent on the addiction crisis specifically. So when I heard a Kentucky county spent $15,000 of it on an ice skating rink, I needed to learn more. Here's what I found: kffhealthnews.org/news/artic…
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Holly Hacker retweeted
We @KFF had already downloaded these government data files and will be able to see what, if anything, changes if/when the data come back online
THREAD: Federal government surveys and datasets that have been taken offline
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Holly Hacker retweeted
JOURNO Friends: With the new Purdue Pharma deal announced, it's the perfect time to dig into reporting on opioid settlements. @KFFHealthNews can help! We're hosting a webinar to share tips on how you can use our database of 7,000+ ways state & local govts are spending the money
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❗️ Help requested from @KFFHealthNews reporter. Working on a story for the @latimes. Are you a health provider that has been evacuated or lost your home due to the fires? We'd like to talk to you. My dms are open. Thank you.
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