aacj

July 18 2025

Prescription Denials Surge; Insurance Premiums Hikes; Recession Fears Ease; Altman's Unlikely Trump Alliance; Trump Orders Partial Epstein Release; Iranians Back At It

Greg Loving

18 Jul 2025 • 6 min read

A digital billboard in San’a, Yemen, last week showed a Houthi attack on a cargo ship in the Red Sea. PHOTO: YAHYA ARHAB/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

Prescription Denials by Insurers Surge 25% As Obamacare Premiums Set for Double-Digit Hikes in 2026

Recession Fears Ease as Economists Raise Growth Forecasts

How Sam Altman Forged an Unlikely Alliance With Trump

Trump Orders AG to Seek Release of Epstein Grand Jury Testimony

Major Weapons Seizures Reveal Renewed Iranian Push to Arm Proxies

1. Prescription Denials by Insurers Surge 25% As Obamacare Premiums Set for Double-Digit Hikes in 2026

A. Prescription drug denials by private insurers in the United States jumped 25 percent from 2016 to 2023, according to a new analysis of more than four billion claims, a practice that has contributed to rising public outrage about the nation’s private health insurance system. The report, compiled for The New York Times by the medical data company Komodo Health, shows that denial rates rose from 18.3 percent to 22.9 percent. The rejections went up across many major health plans, including the country’s largest private insurer, UnitedHealthcare. The data offers a rare look into the largely hidden world of rejected insurance claims. While some government-funded health plans are required to publish their denial rates, most private insurers keep that information confidential. Komodo draws from private databases that collect denial details from pharmacies, insurers and intermediaries.

NYT

B. If you buy your own health insurance, you are probably going to pay more next year—a lot more. Insurers are seeking hefty 2026 rate increases for Affordable Care Act marketplace plans, the coverage known as Obamacare. Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Illinois wants a 27% hike, while its sister Blue Cross plan in Texas is asking for 21%. The largest ACA plans in Washington state, Georgia and Rhode Island are all looking for premiums to surge more than 20%. The companies say the big increases are needed because of higher healthcare costs and changing federal policy, including cuts to subsidies that help consumers pay for plans. The higher premiums would come after years of enrollment growth and mostly single-digit rate increases in the Obamacare market, where individuals and families buy insurance for themselves. About 24 million people have ACA plans.

WSJ

2. Recession Fears Ease as Economists Raise Growth Forecasts

Economists this month dialed back their earlier pessimism that U.S. trade policies would lead to slower growth and higher inflation this year—at least for the near term. Their latest forecasts in the quarterly Wall Street Journal survey showed a reduced chance of recession and stronger gross domestic product growth in the second quarter. Economists lowered the likelihood of a recession in the next 12 months to 33%, down from 45% in April—but still higher than the panel’s 22% consensus in the January survey. Historically, a reading of 33% in the WSJ survey is slightly elevated. Improved second-quarter GDP forecasts are part of economists’ less-pessimistic near-term outlook. In April, economists expected an annualized, inflation-adjusted growth rate of only 0.8% for the quarter. Now, the consensus is up to 2.2%. That reflects, in part, encouraging economic data on jobs, unemployment and inflation. The advance estimate of second-quarter GDP is due July 30 from the Commerce Department.

WSJ

3. How Sam Altman Forged an Unlikely Alliance With Trump

Just two weeks after Elon Musk’s spectacular breakup with President Trump, the tech billionaire’s nemesis strode into the dining room of the president’s New Jersey golf club wearing a suit and a wide smile. Sam Altman, the 40-year-old chief executive of OpenAI, had just finished a long one-on-one meeting with Trump, and the two men were about to dine with the president’s top donors. Trump introduced Altman to the club’s applauding members as “a very brilliant man,” adding: “I hope he’s right about AI.” That warm reception in June was a far cry from the cold shoulder Altman got in the first few weeks after Trump’s election. Altman was estranged from Musk, his OpenAI co-founder, and Musk’s new position as “first buddy” had kept Altman out of meetings at Mar-a-Lago and in the overflow room at the inauguration rather than on the dais with his fellow tech CEOs. So Altman bided his time, quietly maneuvering around Musk. He put together AI infrastructure deals that Trump supported and avoided his former friend, who had sued OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, for allegedly betraying its mission. Altman forged his own relationship with the president, dining with him at Mar-a-Lago in March and speaking to him on the phone from time to time. A longtime Democrat who had once compared Trump to Hitler, Altman told associates he now regretted his harsh criticism during Trump’s first campaign and term. On July 4, Altman posted on X that he was no longer a Democrat, saying the party had moved to the left so much that it had left him “politically homeless.”

WSJ

4. Trump Orders AG to Seek Release of Epstein Grand Jury Testimony

President Trump announced Thursday night that he was authorizing Attorney General Pam Bondi to seek the public release of grand jury testimony from the prosecution of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, and Ms. Bondi said she would make that request in federal court on Friday. Mr. Trump, under intense pressure from his right-wing base after a Justice Department review found no evidence to support conspiracy theories about the sex trafficking case, ordered Ms. Bondi to “produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval,” in a social media post. The president cited “the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein” for his directive, which falls far short of demands from some congressional Republicans to make public all investigative files collected by the department and the F.B.I., not just testimony presented in federal court. Ms. Bondi, a Trump loyalist accused by far-right influencers of abetting a cover-up, responded immediately with a post on social media that undercut the memo the department and F.B.I. drafted this month declaring Mr. Epstein’s 2019 jailhouse death a suicide and the case closed.

NYT

5. Major Weapons Seizures Reveal Renewed Iranian Push to Arm Proxies

Iran suffered a significant setback when Israel killed top military leaders and the U.S. struck its nuclear facilities, but a pattern of high-value weapons seizures shows Tehran is making new efforts to arm its militia allies across the Middle East. Forces allied with Yemen’s internationally recognized government this week intercepted a major shipment of missiles, drone parts and other military gear sent to Houthi rebels on the Red Sea coast. Syria’s new government says it has seized a number of weapons cargoes, including Grad rockets—for use in multiple-launch systems mounted on trucks—along its borders with Iraq and Lebanon. The Lebanese army, meanwhile, has seized shipments brought in across its border with Syria that include Russian antitank missiles favored by Hezbollah. “Iran is rebuilding its presence in the Levant by sending missiles to Hezbollah and weapons from Iraq to Syria,” said Michael Knights, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Washington Institute for Near East Policy with expertise in Iran’s militia allies. Yemeni forces said Wednesday they had seized a record number of Iranian missiles destined for the Houthis. The shipment was intercepted by the National Resistance Force, a military coalition aligned with the Yemeni government. The U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for America’s military operations in the Middle East, said it was the National Resistance Force’s largest seizure of advanced Iranian conventional weapons—750 tons of cruise missiles, antiship and antiaircraft missiles, warheads, targeting components and drone engines.

WSJ