Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

For the week of May 30-Jun 6, 2025

Author

Gregg S. Margolis, PhD
June 06, 2025

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

The Top Three...

Healthcare Dive: Nearly 11M would become uninsured under GOP reconciliation bill: CBO.  The latest analysis from the nonpartisan budget scorekeeper found 7.8 million would lose coverage due to Medicaid cuts.  Nearly 11 million more people would be uninsured in 2034 under the budget reconciliation bill passed by the House, according to an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office released Wednesday. The analysis from the nonpartisan budget scorekeeper found 7.8 million would lose coverage due to cuts to the safety-net insurance program Medicaid.  Provisions under the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s purview, including the Medicaid policy changes, would lower the federal deficit by $1 trillion. But the bill overall would increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion, according to the CBO. (Olsen, 6/5)

Politico: Medicare Is A Target As Senate GOP Faces Megabill Math Issues Senate Republicans are eyeing possible Medicare provisions to help offset the cost of their megabill as they try to appease budget hawks who want more spending cuts embedded in the legislation. Making changes to Medicare, the federal health insurance program primarily serving seniors, would be a political long shot: It would face fierce backlash from some corners of the Senate GOP, not to mention across the Capitol, where Medicare proposals were previously floated but didn’t gain traction. (Carney, Lee Hill and King, 6/5)

The New York Times: CDC Issues New Advice On Covid Vaccines For Children That Contradicted RFK Jr. Days after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that Covid shots would be removed from the federal immunization schedule for children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued updated advice that largely countered Mr. Kennedy’s new policy. The agency kept Covid shots on the schedule for healthy children 6 months to 17 years old, but added a new condition. Children and their caregivers will be able to get the vaccines in consultation with a doctor or provider, which the agency calls “shared decision-making.” (Jewett, 5/30)

For a Deeper Dive...

Modern Healthcare: Tax Bill To Cost $1T In Medicaid, Other Healthcare Cuts: CBO The Republican tax-and-spending-cuts legislation speeding through Congress would take more than $1 trillion out of the healthcare system over a decade, according to an analysis the Congressional Budget Office published Wednesday. ... In healthcare, Medicaid would be subject to the lion's share of the cuts and see its federal budget diminish by $864 billion. The work requirement provisions alone would reduce spending by $344 billion. (McAuliff, 6/4)

Politico: White House Insists Medicaid Policy Won’t Cut People Who Deserve It The White House plans to confront resistance to Medicaid cuts from Senate Republicans by arguing that any reductions in coverage would only affect people who didn’t deserve it in the first place. A strong bloc of Republicans in the Senate has signaled that they are uncomfortable with Medicaid reductions in the sweeping tax-and-spending bill enacted last month by the House. President Donald Trump’s advisers are determined to confront those concerns by claiming that cuts would chiefly target undocumented immigrants and able-bodied people who should not be on Medicaid. (Cancryn and Traylor, 6/2)

The Hill: Dr. Oz On Medicaid Cuts: People Should ‘Prove That You Matter’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz defended President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” over criticism that millions of people could lose health coverage, saying those who would face new work requirements should “prove that you matter.” Oz made the comments during an interview Wednesday on Fox Business, arguing that when Medicaid was created in the 1960s lawmakers did not include work requirements because it “never dawned on anybody that able-bodied people who work would be on Medicaid.” (O’Connell-Domenech, 6/5)

AP: CDC Leadership 'Crisis' Apparent Amid New COVID-19 Vaccine Guidance There was a notable absence last week when U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a 58-second video that the government would no longer endorse the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children or pregnant women. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the person who typically signs off on federal vaccine recommendations — was nowhere to be seen. The CDC, a $9.2 billion-a-year agency tasked with reviewing life-saving vaccines, monitoring diseases and watching for budding threats to Americans’ health, is without a clear leader. (Seitz and Stobbe, 6/5)

Bloomberg: Trump Obscures Medicaid Cuts In Bid To Pass Massive Tax Bill Donald Trump publicly resisted Medicaid cuts — until his budget director, Russell Vought, convinced the president that reductions to health coverage for low-income people, embedded in the Republican tax bill, were just weeding out fraud and abuse. Trump has readily adopted that rhetoric, repeatedly declaring that his signature bill contains “no cuts” to the social safety program, even as the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates at least 7.6 million people would become uninsured if the bill takes effect. (Cook, 6/4)

Fierce Healthcare: Fired Federal Workers Say HHS, DOGE Violated Federal Privacy Law A new class action lawsuit asserts the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) fired civil servants based on incorrect internal personnel records. Three months ago, the HHS cut its workforce by about 10,000 workers through a reduction in force (RIF), which is separate from the probationary worker firings that preceded it. Several lawsuits are challenging the legality of the RIF starting the week of March 31. (Tong, 6/3)

Fierce Healthcare: Unpacking The RFK Jr.-Backed 25% HHS Budget Cut A recent budget document prepared by the White House is giving new clarity over how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) could operate for fiscal year 2026. The document closely mirrored other budgetary insights from earlier this year. Under the wishes of President Donald Trump’s staff, the department’s discretionary budget would be nearly $95 billion, a $32 billion decrease amounting to a one-fourth slashing. (Tong, 6/2)

What is Changing?

Modern Healthcare: What Is HHS' Administration For A Healthy America? The Health and Human Services Department is about to have a brand-new agency for the first time in nearly a quarter century as Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. kickstarts his "Make America Healthy Again" agenda. The Administration for a Healthy America, proposed in the department's fiscal 2026 budget request, would centralize activities that other HHS agencies and offices currently oversee that touch on areas such as primary care, HIV/AIDS, mental health, maternal and child health, environmental health, rural health, and the healthcare workforce. (Early, 6/4)

The New York Times: Trump Budget Eliminates Funding For Crucial Global Vaccination Programs The Trump administration’s proposed budget for the coming fiscal year eliminates funding for programs that provide lifesaving vaccines around the world, including immunizations for polio. The budget proposal, submitted to Congress last week, proposes to eliminate the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s global health unit, effectively shutting down its $230 million immunization program: $180 million for polio eradication and the rest for measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases. (Mandavilli, 6/4)

The New York Times: Here Are The Nearly 2,500 Medical Research Grants Canceled Or Delayed By Trump In his first months in office, President Trump has slashed funding for medical research, threatening a longstanding alliance between the federal government and universities that helped make the United States the world leader in medical science. Some changes have been starkly visible, but the country’s medical grant-making machinery has also radically transformed outside the public eye, a New York Times analysis found. (Hwang, Huang, Anthes, Migliozzi and Mueller, 6/4)

KFF Health News: Native Americans Hurt By Federal Health Cuts, Despite RFK Jr.’s Promises Of Protection Navajo Nation leaders took turns talking with the U.S. government’s top health official as they hiked along a sandstone ridge overlooking their rural, high-desert town before the morning sun grew too hot. Buu Nygren, president of the Navajo Nation, paused at the edge with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Below them, tribal government buildings, homes, and juniper trees dotted the tan and deep-red landscape. (Houghton, Orozco Rodriguez and Zionts, 6/3)

KFF Health News: Trump Administration Is Ending Multiple HIV Vaccine Studies, Scientists And Officials Say The Trump administration has moved to end funding for a broad swath of HIV vaccine research, saying current approaches are enough to counter the virus, several scientists and federal health officials say. Notifications that the funding would not be extended were relayed May 30 to researchers, who were told by National Institutes of Health officials that the Department of Health and Human Services had elected “to go with currently available approaches to eliminate HIV” instead. (Gounder and Tin, 6/3)

AP: Deep Cuts Erode The Foundations Of US Public Health System, End Progress, Threaten Worse To Come Americans are losing a vast array of people and programs dedicated to keeping them healthy. Gone are specialists who were confronting a measles outbreak in Ohio, workers who drove a van to schools in North Carolina to offer vaccinations and a program that provided free tests to sick people in Tennessee. State and local health departments responsible for invisible but critical work such as inspecting restaurants, monitoring wastewater for new and harmful germs, responding to outbreaks before they get too big — and a host of other tasks to protect both individuals and communities — are being hollowed out. (Ungar and Smith, 5/31)

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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