By Erin Schumaker, Daniel Payne and Carmen Paun

Dr. Garth Graham | YouTube Health

Social media might be the last place you’d expect your doctor to direct you for health information. YouTube wants to change that.

The video-sharing platform is positioning itself as a hub for authoritative medical videos, by recruiting health professionals and promising to remove harmful or misleading information. The company is also experimenting with an aritificial intelligence pilot for dubbing health videos in different languages.

Its newest initiative — a $10,000 contest for people who create health content for underrepresented groups — launched this month. Applications are open through October 5.

Erin caught up with Dr. Garth Graham, a cardiologist who heads YouTube Health, to learn more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I noticed you’re working with big health care names. Why do they want to be on YouTube? 

On the institution front, we’ve seen a lot of growth. Mayo Clinic just got to their millionth subscriber on their YouTube channel. If you think about the Mayo Clinic, a traditional health care institution embracing this new way of reaching patients, it just shows how the field is evolving.

Gone are the days of flyers, billboards and your paper printout. People are engaging on their phone; they’re looking for information right away.

Are providers recommending their videos to their patients?

Across the world, we see it utilized differently in terms of how that feedback loop occurs. In the U.K., pediatricians have experimented with this concept of prescribing videos to watch.

Is it tricky to decide which videos to take down? 

We rely on the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and local health authorities in terms of the guidance to follow, but it’s definitely an ongoing, major challenge.

The broader issue with misinformation is the balance between people being able to express their opinion, which we want and encourage on our platform, but then where does it head into the danger of misinformation?

What’s the goal of the new health creator initiative? 

We’re really trying to stimulate the ecosystem of clinician voices from underserved communities.

Patients from underrepresented communities engage better with creators from underrepresented communities. That’s particularly true in Black communities.

The question is always: How do we make it engaging? How do you take something out of the New England Journal of Medicine and put it into people’s bedrooms or dinner-table conversations?

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State and local governments are paying doctors to testify in defense of laws restricting access to gender-affirming care. The HuffPost profiles them.

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Today on our Pulse Check podcast, host Kelly Hooper speaks with health care reporter Ben Leonard about the Biden administration’s proposed rules aimed at making health insurers comply with a 2008 law requiring them to offer mental health care on the same terms as physical health.

Some in Congress aren't satisfied with implementation of a law restricting surprise medical bills. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo

The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday will examine the implementation of a 2020 law intended to protect patients from surprise medical bills.

Patients receive surprise bills when, for example, their health insurance doesn’t cover an ambulance service or they’re treated by an out-of-network doctor in a hospital.

Consumer advocates have long argued that patients in such situations are rarely informed they’ll be billed and often are in no position to refuse care.

In an attempt to end the surprise bills, the law requires out-of-network providers to work with insurers in more cases to settle on a fair price. Ground ambulances are exempt from the law.

Why it matters: The Biden administration’s interpretation of the law, including the arbitration system it established to decide how payers and providers work out costs, is a major point of contention.

Doctors say they’re not being paid, while insurers say providers game the system by making frivolous claims.

Providers have won some court battles, and some cases are ongoing.

The House hearing comes after Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician and the ranking member of the Senate committee that oversees the law, sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra asking him to justify the administration’s decisions.

JOIN US ON 9/20 FOR A TALK ON TRANSFORMING HEALTHCARE BILLING: Bipartisan legislation in the House and Senate would align costs for services across hospitals and doctors’ offices and reduce out-of-pocket spending that could potentially save the federal government billions of dollars. Can this legislation survive a polarized Congress? Join POLITICO on Sept. 20 to explore this and whether site-neutral payments and billing transparency policies could help ease health care costs. REGISTER HERE.

The Opioid Addiction Crisis has worsened since Congress passed legislation to fight it. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The House is making the first move to re-up the landmark SUPPORT Act, the 2018 law aimed at combating illicit opioids.

The law expires at the end of the month, but the bill to renew it could be brought to the House floor as soon as this week.

Sponsored by Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), the bill would renew congressional authorization of opioid recovery centers and training for providers who treat people with substance use disorder, among other programs.

“We really want to emphasize the wrap-around services for when people leave recovery centers,” Guthrie told POLITICO. That includes helping people leaving these centers get a job or a place in a sober living facility, according to Guthrie.

Why it matters: The SUPPORT Act was seen as landmark legislation in the fight against the opioid addiction crisis when Congress passed it five years ago. In addition to treatment, it also funds prevention, recovery and enforcement, and helps states use Medicaid to serve people who use illicit opioids.

But it has not prevented the crisis from getting worse. Nearly 110,000 people died in 2022 of a drug overdose, according to CDC estimates. Illicit fentanyl was involved in most of the deaths.

What’s next? Bill Cassidy (R-La.) has introduced a reauthorization bill in the Senate.

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