Nurses at University Medical Center of Southern Nevada (UMC) say they’re feeling the pinch of looming federal cuts from President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” at the same time the hospital's CEO Mason Van Houweling receives an almost $300,000 pay bump.

The Affordable Care Act was transformational for Nevada, helping its uninsured rate drop from 22 percent in 2012 to 8 percent this year. Experts describe the Trump administration’s recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” as the biggest health care shake-up since Obamacare was enacted in 2010.

It’s been nearly two years since the Biden-Harris administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Since then, the law’s provisions on prescription drugs have lowered prices for Medicare users across the country, including thousands of Nevadans.

Renown Health holds a dominant place in Northern Nevada’s health care landscape. The nonprofit health system owns and operates two of the six major hospitals in the broader Carson-Reno-Tahoe region and has a 100,000-square-mile service area that’s one of the largest territorial reaches in the state.

The nursing home resident’s first recorded signs of COVID-19 were subtle: a low-grade fever, accompanied by coughing.

Health officials predict many US hospitals soon will be overrun with patients. Well before the outbreak, in total, Nevada had 6,304 hospital beds in 2017. Nevada’s 2.1 hospital beds per 1,000 people is lower than the national average of 2.4, according to the Nevada Current.

Nevada’s shortage of doctors means many worried patients are scrambling to find a primary care physician who can provide quick diagnoses about coronavirus symptoms or testing options.

Chris Singer approaches patients and their families sitting in a doctor’s waiting room with a smile every time.