Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

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

The Top Three...

Modern Healthcare: Trump Budget Request Seeks HHS Cuts, Moves 340B Program Under CMS The White House is redoubling its efforts to overhaul the Health and Human Services Department and cut its funding by 12.5%, according to an outline for its fiscal 2027 budget proposal issued Friday. President Donald Trump is seeking to reduce HHS funding and revive last year’s efforts to reorganize the department, chiefly by moving the 340B Drug Pricing Program under the purview of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The administration also wants to establish a new agency that would oversee health priorities currently managed by multiple agencies. (Early, 4/3)

The New York Times: New Charter Allows RFK Jr. To Reclaim Vaccine Policy Despite Court Ruling The Trump administration published on Thursday a new charter for the federal vaccine advisory committee that would allow Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to reclaim his changes to national vaccine policy, despite a ruling last month by a federal judge blocking them. The ruling, in a lawsuit brought by several medical organizations against Mr. Kennedy, froze the committee and reversed many of the decisions the health secretary and the panel had made in the last year to rescind longstanding recommendations for childhood vaccines. The judge also said the committee’s members were not qualified to recommend shots for Americans. (Mandavilli, 4/9)

Stat: Trump Administration Drops Court Fight To Cap NIH Payments For Research Overhead Costs The Trump administration will not be asking the Supreme Court to take up its fight to slash federal support for funding that the nation’s science enterprise relies on for basic operating costs. The deadline to do so came and went this week without a petition from Trump’s Department of Justice, effectively ending the 14-month standoff over a controversial policy to drastically reduce the rate of reimbursement for “indirect costs” on federal grants. The legal battle between the administration and the research community started last February, when the National Institutes of Health abruptly announced it would cap payments for research overhead at 15%. Three lawsuits opposing the caps were immediately filed by state attorneys general and organizations representing private and public universities, hospitals, and academic medical centers. (Molteni, 4/8)

For a Deeper Dive...

Stat: NIH Would Get $5 Billion Cut Under Trump’s 2027 Budget, But Congress Unlikely To Go Along Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine who chairs the appropriations committee, called the funding cuts to biomedical research “unwarranted” in a statement responding to the president’s proposed budget. ... In January, Congress offered a near total refutation of the administration’s plan, slightly increasing the NIH’s budget for the current federal fiscal year. In that funding package, legislators included language intended to prevent the NIH from implementing a 15% indirect-cost reimbursement cap. (Molteni and Oza, 4/3)

KFF Health News: Trump’s Personnel Agency Is Asking For Federal Workers’ Medical Records The Trump administration is quietly seeking unprecedented access to medical records for millions of federal workers and retirees, and their families. A brief notice from the Office of Personnel Management could dramatically change which personally identifiable medical information the agency obtains, giving it the power to see prescriptions employees had filled or what treatment they sought from doctors. The regulation would require 65 insurance companies that cover more than 8 million Americans — including federal workers, retired members of Congress, mail carriers, and their immediate family members — to provide monthly reports to OPM with identifiable health data on their members. (Seitz and Rosenfeld, 4/8)

Roll Call: Democrats Eye 2028 For Bigger Health Care Push As Democrats vie to take control of Congress in the midterms this fall, their main message on health care policy is fairly straightforward: Undo Republicans’ Medicaid cuts and restore the health care subsidies that lapsed at the end of last year. But some analysts and lawmakers say momentum is growing for a bigger health care push in 2028. (DeGroot, 4/2)

Stat: Trump Promised To Clamp Down On Health Insurers. His Policies Are Enriching Them Almost every major decision Trump officials have made since reclaiming the White House has benefitted insurers and their bottom lines. The most recent action — finalizing higher payments to Medicare Advantage plans in 2027 — will funnel an extra $13 billion toward the industry while abandoning a reform that would have led to more accurate, and lower, payments. (Herman, 4/9)

Bloomberg: RFK Jr. Has Stopped Talking About Vaccines. A Memo Shows Why The Trump administration is putting Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on a low-risk messaging diet ahead of the midterm election. The Secretary of Health and Human Services has publicly and notably swallowed his trademark vaccine skepticism in recent weeks, even in front of the friendliest audiences. (Cohrs Zhang and Nix, 4/9)

AP: RFK Jr. Is Launching His Own Health Podcast Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is launching a new podcast that he says will begin “a new era of radical transparency in government,” according to a teaser video first obtained by The Associated Press. The show, titled “The Secretary Kennedy Podcast,” will launch next week and feature Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine crusader who has reshaped the country’s health policy, in conversation with doctors, scientists and agency staff, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials told the AP ahead of the launch. (Swenson, 4/8)

Politico: Poll: Here’s What MAHA Actually Believes Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ideas have gone mainstream, but his Make America Healthy Again movement is struggling to find its footing. MAHA-coded ideas about food and nutrition are broadly popular and a third of Americans now identify as MAHA supporters. But new results from The POLITICO Poll suggest Kennedy’s movement is disjointed. His supporters aren’t political diehards and they have a wide array of priorities that don’t neatly align with those of MAHA leadership, the poll suggests. (Brown and Hooper, 4/6)

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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