Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

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

The Top Three...

The New York Times: Combative, Defensive And Occasionally Contrite, Kennedy Walks A Fine Line He was combative, defensive and occasionally contrite. He vehemently denied, then halfheartedly apologized for suggesting in 2024 that Black children would benefit from being “re-parented.” He shouted at Democratic senators, accusing them of “grandstanding” and “selective indignation.” He insisted he had delivered “historic wins” for the health of the American people. In the end, after four days of testimony during seven separate congressional hearings on President Trump’s budget, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. walked a fine line, trying to please both his base and the White House at the same time. (Gay Stolberg and Jewett, 4/22)

The Washington Post: CDC Blocks Study Showing Covid Shots Cut Hospital Visits After Earlier Delay A report showing the efficacy of the covid-19 vaccine that was previously delayed by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been blocked from being published in the agency’s flagship scientific journal, according to three people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The report showed that the vaccine reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by about half this past winter. (Sun, 4/22)

The New York Times: Youth Suicides Declined After Creation Of National Hotline Over the two and a half years following the 2022 rollout of the 988 national suicide prevention hotline, the rate of suicides among young people in the United States dropped 11 percent below projections, decreasing most sharply in states with a higher volume of answered 988 calls, a new study has found. The findings, published today as a research letter in JAMA, compared suicide deaths from July 2022 to December 2024 with sophisticated mathematical projections that were based on historical trends. This yielded good news, with 4,372 fewer suicides of adolescents and young adults, ages 15 to 34, than had been projected. (Barry, 4/22)

For a Deeper Dive...

The New York Times: New PEPFAR Data Show Worrying Declines In Testing And Treatment For H.I.V. The United States-funded H.I.V. program that is credited with saving 26 million lives worldwide suffered big blows to its impact after the Trump administration’s abrupt stop and restart of its activities last year, according to the first tranche of data from the program since 2024. Overall, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, treated about as many people in the last quarter of 2025 as in the same period in 2024, according to a report released on Friday by the State Department. (Mandavilli, 4/17)

Healthcare Dive: More Employers Considering Medical, Pharmacy Vendor Switch Amid Rising Healthcare Costs, Survey Finds  Changing vendors can be a formidable undertaking for employers, given the costs and efforts associated with switching. But employers are open to much more aggressive action to curb growing healthcare spending, according to the Purchaser Business Group on Health, a nonprofit coalition representing 40 of the largest healthcare purchasers in the U.S. that together spend more than $350 billion each year on coverage for 21 million workers and their families. This year, 37% of the PBGH’s members have issued a “request for proposals” for medical benefits, meaning they’re shopping between insurance providers. The last time the PBGH surveyed its members on this issue, in 2024, just 12% of employers were conducting a medical RFP. (Parduhn, 4/16)

The New York Times: RFK Jr. Says His Department Advises All Children To Get Measles Vaccine Over four days and nearly 20 hours of testimony, under harsh questioning from Democrats, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly backed away from his longstanding criticism of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. On Wednesday, he made his strongest statement yet — albeit on behalf of his department and not himself. “We promote the M.M.R.,” Mr. Kennedy told the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday morning, referring to the combined vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. “We have advised every child to get the M.M.R. That’s what we do.” (Gay Stolberg, 4/22)

The New York Times: Pace Of N.I.H. Funding Slows Further In Trump’s Second Year Spending on new medical research by the National Institutes of Health has fallen roughly $1 billion behind the pace of years past, delaying thousands of scientific projects and raising concerns within the agency that it may struggle to pay out the money it was allotted by Congress. Instead of canceling grants en masse, as the N.I.H. did in the first year of this Trump presidency, it is now vetting them before approval with a “computational text analysis tool” that scans for terms including “racism,” “gender” and “vaccination refusal,” according to documents obtained by The New York Times. (Mueller and Hwang, 4/22)

Politico: Trump’s Surgeon General Pick Faces Mounting GOP Opposition A new wave of attacks from conservatives is further imperiling President Donald Trump’s pick for surgeon general — and testing the power of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again campaign to combat chronic disease. Casey Means’ nomination was already stalled in the Senate over concerns she’s insufficiently supportive of vaccines, and now Republican factions from anti-abortion activists to anti-drug warriors are starting to pile on. (Friedman and Ollstein, 4/21)

For the Visual Among Us...

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