How the War With Iran Is Widening, and U.S. Hospitals See a Surge of Uninsured Patients

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
I gave my brother a New York Times subscription.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
We exchange articles. And so having read the same article, we can discuss it.

**Dave Phillips** (0:07)
She sent me a year-long subscription, so I have access to all the games.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:11)
The New York Times contributes to our quality time together. It enriches our relationship.

**Tracy Mumford** (0:16)
It was such a cool and thoughtful gift.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:19)
We're reading the same stuff, we're making the same food, we're on the same page.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:24)
Learn more about giving a New York Times subscription is a gift at nytimes.com/gift.

**Tracy Mumford** (0:32)
From the New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today is Thursday, July 30th. Here's what we're covering.

**Dave Phillips** (0:44)
We're going to be hitting them very hard because it's our turn to hit them. They know it's coming.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:48)
They're asking us not to do it.

**Tracy Mumford** (0:50)
In the Middle East, what had been a short pause in direct fighting is now over as the conflict between the US and Iran has reignited.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:59)
It's our turn.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:01)
And we'll see if we get there with an agreement at some point.

**Dave Phillips** (1:04)
But we're going to hit them very hard.

**Tracy Mumford** (1:05)
This week, Iran fired multiple ballistic missiles on American bases in Jordan. And last night, in response, the Pentagon said it carried out a heavy wave of strikes on Iran, hitting command centers, missile and drone sites, and surveillance facilities. The escalation comes as more and more countries are being pulled into the war. In recent weeks, Iran-linked groups across the region have helped draw Jordan, along with Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Yemen, further into the conflict. Now there's also Egypt, where two ships were hit and caught fire yesterday in what appeared to be a drone strike, according to marine tracking companies. One of the ships was a US-owned natural gas tanker. It wasn't immediately clear who was behind the apparent attack, but analysts say that Iran has been increasingly trying to extend the battlefield. And they say that while the US and Israel went into the war promising a quick, decisive victory, Iran is trying to prove that it now has control of the conflict. One expert at the Middle East Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, told the Times that Iran is, quote, trying to seize the initiative or, at the very least, keep the US and Israel on their back foot.
Over the past few years, the Times has been investigating how American soldiers are at risk of serious brain injuries, not from combat, but from routine parts of their jobs. The Times has found, for example, that there were signs of brain damage in artillery crews who fired thousands of mortar rounds during training, and in Navy SEALs who used shoulder-fired rockets and fighter pilots who were catapulted off of aircraft carriers.
Now my colleague Dave Phillips, who has led this reporting, has been looking into the Coast Guard's elite rescue teams, whose job it is to rush into rough waters.

**Dave Phillips** (3:06)
I was really surprised to learn that there could be a serious injury just from riding through the waves, but when someone explained the physics to me, it made total sense. When a body standing on a boat slams down into a wave, the body actually acts like a whip crack. And so a force that might be only six times the force of gravity on the deck, pretty manageable, by the time it whips up to the head is 60 times the force of gravity, which really is the equivalent of a car crash.
When I started talking to rescue crews that are on these boats, going into really rough surfs, sometimes 25 feet high, many of them talked to me about having headaches or feeling hung over for days after. And over years of being exposed to this, people developed really serious problems. It started with sleeplessness and headaches and progressed into anxiety and really serious mood swings. And some people, as this injury continued to progress, actually died by suicide.

**Tracy Mumford** (4:06)
Dave says the symptoms crew members described are all classic signs of brain injury.
But he found that unlike other branches of the military, the Coast Guard had no regular testing for that and no formal briefings about the dangers of the pounding waves.
It does have a brain injury section on its website, but it's more than a decade out of date. And when you try to click on the links under where to get help, many of them don't work.

**Dave Phillips** (4:32)
When I reached out to the Coast Guard, all of a sudden they started discussing this.