Margot Sanger-Katz

Tomorrow the Commission of Fine Arts will take another look at Trump's proposed arch, including renderings of it viewed from around the area. Here is its winged statue, peeping over the trees from the National Mall.

Scoop: Lawyers at the IRS prepared a 25-page memo recommending that DOJ move to dismiss Trump's lawsuit against the agency. DOJ instead settled the case by creating the $1.776 billion "anti-weaponization" fund.

🚨During lunch at his golf course with tobacco executives on May 2, Pres. Trump called Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Oz, furious. He wanted action on flavored vapes. And he soon got it, prompting the FDA commissioner to resign. W/ the amazing @kenvogel: 🎁 nytimes.com/2026/05/13/us/…

Trump on flying with Dr Oz: "It was the most boring trip I've ever made. He's telling me about Medicare, Medicaid. I said, 'You work out the details.'"

Full story here, with lots of helpful comparisons and context for the new Pentagon estimate: nytimes.com/interactive/20…

How expensive has the Iran war been so far? @aliciaparlap @emilymbadger

Doctors are winning big paydays from insurers under a law intended to protect patients and rein in high prices. @nytimes reporter Margot Sanger-Katz @sangerkatz talked with Tradeoffs about how this is fueling higher premiums. Listen to today's episode: tradeoffs.org/2026/04/30/doc…

Hospital CEOs are currently testifying in front on Congress. @ahahospitals just held its annual meeting, and @_daniel_payne caught this extremely candid quote from Chuck Schumer showing just how much lobbying power hospitals have. statnews.com/2026/04/27/for…

@tjsugarman @sarahkliff Always happy to talk. Sangerkatz@nytimes.com

@sangerkatz @sarahkliff I appreciate that accountability for unintended consequences of the NSA is key. As always, emergency physicians’ top priority is ensuring patients’ access to emergency care. I’d welcome the opportunity to connect and discuss further if you decide to cover this more in the future.

Really misleading article @sarahkliff @sangerkatz . Breast reduction is only 0.014% of all IDR cases. More than 37% are Emergency Medicine because insurers systematically game the system, sometimes trying to pay $0 for an ER case.

“As fountains go, it’s not a complicated fountain.” nytimes.com/2026/04/25/us/… @Fahrenthold @lukebroadwater @anfuller

@aawayne @APStylebook what

Huge news: I have just been informed that healthcare is now one word in @APStylebook

@thoughtson_tech @sarahkliff Thanks for this reply. Would it be possible to send me the text of your article? sangerkatz@nytimes.com

The enrichment story is real but it obscures something downstream that I think matters more right now. Providers aren't just winning arbitrations. They're using every loss, every batch rejection, every new CMS fee rule as a filing in federal court. The Fifth Circuit already told CMS it can't anchor awards to the qualifying payment amount, and that ruling is now cited to challenge almost any limit CMS tries to set on the process. So the arbitration firms aren't the end of the money chain. The litigation firms are. What that creates, past the headline about enriched middlemen, is a pricing lever hidden inside procedure. Who counts as a valid arbitrator, what makes two claims "similar" enough to batch, how high the filing fee sits, all of it now moves reimbursement at scale across entire specialties without anyone voting on it. That's the part that won't self-correct once the "adjustment period" ends, because there is no adjustment period. The incentive to litigate each rule is permanent. I went deep on this from an angel investing angle, because the chaos is building real demand for tools that didn't exist two years ago. QPA deviation analysis, batch similarity scoring, arbitrator pool audits. The companies solving those problems are being pulled in by their customers whether they planned to be or not. onhealthcare.tech/p/the-litigati…

The No Surprises Act was supposed to end surprise medical bills. It succeeded. But the law also accidentally created a system that has enriched medical providers, middlemen and arbitration firms. @sarahkliff

We are also hiring for a graphics reporter. No place better to make ambitious, awesome, and weird visual journalism, imo. nytco.com/careers/job-li…

The @UpshotNYT is hiring a visual editor. I am biased, but I think this is a truly awesome job. If you're interested, please apply. And if you have questions, don't hesitate to reach out. job-boards.greenhouse.io/thenewyorktime…

The number of claims is rising fast, and doctors are winning almost all of them.

But he is far from alone in using the system to earn high payments for routine medical care. We wrote about a $14,560 steroid injection and a $333,000 test to measure blood flow to the brain. One gynecology practice earned 600x the normal rate for inserting IUDs.