Rural hospitals were already short-staffed. Then came Trump's H-1B visa fee
Marketplace
American Public Media
4.6 • 8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2025
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The White House’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visa applications is adding extra pressure to health care systems in rural and low-income areas. Historically, the visa has been a critical pipeline for skilled health workers in hard-to-staff settings. Affected hospitals are already feeling the added strain. Also in this episode: A bitcoin downturn won’t just hurt crypto bros, Panera announces an overhaul amid floundering fast-casual sales, and the EV market soldiers on, despite sunsetted tax subsidies and emissions regulations.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What do you like? |
| 0:02.7 | Crypto, EVs, fast casual dining, because we got it all. |
| 0:08.5 | From American public media, this is Marketplace. |
| 0:17.6 | In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizznell. |
| 0:24.1 | It is Tuesday, today, 18 November. |
| 0:27.2 | Good as always to have you along, everybody. |
| 0:29.7 | Stocks go up, as we know, and they go down, bonds the same, the dollar and oil and gold, too. |
| 0:36.8 | All of them, if not the actual economy, |
| 0:39.8 | then very closely tied to it. And for most of this year, it had looked like cryptocurrency |
| 0:45.0 | was making a play for the economic mainstream as well. The crypto exchange coinbase joined |
| 0:49.9 | the S&P 500. Congress decided to let big banks play with stable coins, even stalwart crypto holdout. |
| 0:56.2 | J.P. Morgan said it would let its clients use Bitcoin as loan collateral. And then reality started |
| 1:02.5 | to bite. Bitcoin, as you know, the OG cryptocurrency has lost about a quarter of its value since |
| 1:07.5 | its record high back in October. The overall crypto market, down about a trillion |
| 1:12.1 | dollars. So with crypto decidedly not on the upswing anymore, what happens now? Marketplace's |
| 1:20.4 | Matt Levin gets us going. Longtime crypto investors like Lee Drogan at StarKiller Capital are used to |
| 1:26.6 | watching crypto prices fall off a cliff. |
| 1:29.4 | But he says this most recent nosedive was different because crypto had reached the top of the |
| 1:33.6 | cliff like just a second ago. |
| 1:35.9 | It's the ferocity of the reversion from a good momentum new high straight into basically a crash. |
| 1:46.1 | Bitcoin true believers will tell you the cryptocurrency will ultimately become digital gold, |
| 1:51.0 | a safe store value against inflation and rising national debt. |
... |
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