Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest...

The Top Three...

CNN: CDC Leaders Call Shooting Targeted And Deliberate As Rattled Staff Say They Felt Like ‘Sitting Ducks’ In a large and hastily arranged Zoom call on Saturday, about 800 rattled staffers with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tried to make sense of the trauma they endured just a day earlier when a gunman opened fire on the agency’s buildings from across the street. They had been winding down for the weekend when more than 40 bullets smashed through their office windows, whizzing just over their cubicle walls and petrifying staffers in at least four buildings. (Faheld, Goodman and Tirrell, 8/11)

CNN: New ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Report To Be Released In Weeks Americans will have to wait several weeks for the Trump administration’s next steps in its agenda to “Make America Healthy Again,” according to three people familiar with the matter. While President Donald Trump’s MAHA Commission will submit its strategy to the White House on Tuesday — sticking to an executive-ordered deadline — scheduling issues stand in the way of its public release. (Owermohle and Cancryn, 8/11)

The Washington Post: HHS Revives Childhood Vaccine Safety Panel Sought By Anti-Vaccine Activists The Department of Health and Human Services said Thursday it is reviving a long-defunct task force aimed at improving the safety of childhood vaccines, fulfilling a demand of anti-vaccine activists. The resurrection of the panel appears to be the first concrete step to achieve HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s longtime goal of upending the current childhood immunization schedule, which recommends which shots children receive and when. (Roubein and Sun, 8/14)

For a Deeper Dive...

Nature: Trump Order Gives Political Appointees Vast Powers Over Research Grants President Donald Trump issued an expansive executive order Thursday that would centralize power and upend the process that the US government has used for decades to award research grants. If implemented, political appointees — not career civil servants, including scientists — would have control over grants, from initial funding calls to final review. This is the Trump administration’s latest move to assert control over US science. The EO, titled ‘Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking’, orders each US agency head to designate an appointee to develop a grant-review process that will “advance the President’s policy priorities”. Those processes must not fund grants that advance “anti-American values” and instead prioritize funding for institutions committed to achieving Trump’s plan for ‘gold-standard science’. (Garisto, 8/8)

The New York Times: Draft Of ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Report Suggests RFK Jr. Won’t Push Pesticide Regulations A highly anticipated White House report on the health of American children would stop short of proposing direct restrictions on ultraprocessed foods and pesticides that the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has called major threats, according to a draft of the document that was reviewed by The New York Times. The report, if adopted, would be good news for the food and agriculture industries, which feared far more restrictive proposals than the ones outlined in the draft. Through his “Make America Healthy Again” movement, Mr. Kennedy has sought to overhaul the nation’s diet by pushing those industries to make major changes. (Blum, Mueller and Callahan, 8/14)

NPR: The Hidden Costs Of Cutting Medicaid With the passage of the big Republican tax and spending bill, the federal government is poised to reduce support for Medicaid and the insurance marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that these cuts could cause 10 million Americans to lose health insurance by 2034. Lawmakers have justified these cuts as a necessary step to address the bigger budget deficit exacerbated by tax cuts and other spending increases in the big bill. However, that doesn't capture how these cuts will send costs spilling out around society, to be paid by hospitals, clinics, individuals and then in the end, back to the federal government. (Crawford, 8/12)

ProPublica: Doctors And Nurses Reject VA Jobs Under Trump Veterans hospitals are struggling to replace hundreds of doctors and nurses who have left the health care system this year as the Trump administration pursues its pledge to simultaneously slash Department of Veterans Affairs staff and improve care. Many job applicants are turning down offers, worried that the positions are not stable and uneasy with the overall direction of the agency, according to internal documents examined by ProPublica. The records show nearly 4 in 10 of the roughly 2,000 doctors offered jobs from January through March of this year turned them down. That is quadruple the rate of doctors rejecting offers during the same time period last year. (Armstrong, Umansky and Coleman, 8/8)

California Healthline: Experts Say Rural Emergency Rooms Are Increasingly Run Without Doctors There was no doctor on-site when a patient arrived in early June at the emergency room in the small hospital at the intersection of two dirt roads in this town of 400 residents. There never is. Dahl Memorial’s three-bed emergency department — a two-hour drive from the closest hospital with more advanced services — instead depends on physician assistants and nurse practitioners. (Zionts, 8/12)

The New York Times: Trump Administration Scraps Research Into Health Disparities The federal government has for decades invested vigorously in research aimed at narrowing the health gaps between racial and socioeconomic groups, pouring billions of dollars into understanding why minority and low-income Americans have shorter lives and suffer higher rates of illnesses like cancer and heart disease. Spending on so-called health disparities rose even during the Trump administration’s first term. But in its second, much of the funding has come to a sudden halt. (Caryn Rabin and Hwang, 8/13)

The Boston Globe: Mass. May Make Its Own Vaccine Policy Amid Kennedy Reforms Disruptions to national vaccine recommendations under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are starting to reverberate across Massachusetts, threatening the state’s access to COVID shots just as the annual season for respiratory viruses — and vaccines to protect against them — approaches. Federal approval for flu and RSV shots was granted only in the last few days, weeks later than is typical, and health officials are still waiting to learn whether the Trump administration will recommend any vaccinations for COVID. Insurers rely on that guidance to decide what doses they will cover. (Laughlin, 8/13)

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A few years ago I started a weekly e-mail for friends and colleagues who want to keep up on major federal health policy developments but did not have time to plod through all the minutiae--they were busy doing important things like running organizations and taking care of patients! Much to my surprise, it became pretty popular. I have now converted to a weekly newsletter format so you can manage your own subscription preferences and forward to others that might be interested.

These summaries represent my judgement on health policy issues that may not on the front pages, but are relevant to clinicians, administrators, and educators. I monitor many news sources and clipping services to identify content for this newsletter and I try hard to be as factual, balanced, and non-partisan as possible. While the articles are written by others (with credit attributed), the choice of what to include is entirely mine. If you are interested in receiving a daily summary of health policy news, you might consider signing up for the KHN Morning Briefing. If you enjoy podcasts, I suggest What the Health? and Tradeoffs.

-Gregg S. Margolis, PhD