Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

Happy Birthday America! Health policy took a back seat to a lot of other news this week-Supreme Court decisions, world cup games, and heat waves, to name a few. This weeks issue is a little early due to the holiday. If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest...

The Top Three...

AP: Millions Drop Obamacare Health Plans After Subsidies Expire And Costs Rise About 3 million fewer people in the United States had Affordable Care Act health insurance plans in February compared with the same time last year, according to new federal data. In the report released Friday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggested the 13% drop in enrollment from 22.1 million people in 2025 to 19.2 million this year could be attributed to a federal crackdown on fraudulent or “phantom” enrollment. But health analysts said it was more likely related to the Jan. 1 expiration of federal subsidies, which caused a surge in plan costs that resulted in many people being unable to pay their premiums. (Swenson, 6/27)

AP: Half Of States Sue Trump Administration Over Medicaid Work Rules Democrats in 25 states and the District of Columbia on Monday sued the Trump administration over its recent guidance on new Medicaid work requirements, arguing the strict rules will prevent eligible Americans from accessing the care they need. The attorneys general and governors who filed the lawsuit allege that an interim final rule released earlier this month by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services oversteps the text of the law last summer that set in motion the changes to Medicaid. (Swenson, 6/29)

The Hill: CDC Elevates Ebola Response To Highest Level The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is raising its Ebola response to the highest level, agency officials said Friday, as the outbreak continues to spread uncontrolled across Congo and Uganda. “Elevating the response level reflects the urgency, scale, and complexity of the outbreak, and allows CDC to bring additional resources to support the coordination and operational needs of our response,” Satish Pillai, the CDC’s Ebola response incidence manager, told reporters. (Weixel, 6/26)  

For a Deeper Dive...

Modern Healthcare: CMS Proposes 2.4% Home Health Pay Increase For 2027 Home health providers would receive a 2.4% pay bump in 2027 under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published Wednesday. The draft regulation also would accelerate the process for excluding any type of provider or supplier from Medicare when fraud is detected. CMS placed a moratorium on new home health and hospice provider enrollment into Medicare last month as it conducts fraud investigations. (Early, 7/1)

Stat: How The Alcohol Lobby Shapes Health Policy Len Lichtenfeld had a long-overdue apology to make. He was haunted in late 2024 by an exchange with a New York Times reporter almost a decade earlier, during which Lichtenfeld defended the American Cancer Society’s official stance that a drink or two a day was safe, even for cancer prevention. (Cueto and Facher, 7/1)

KFF Health News: Affordable Healthcare Emerges As A Voter Priority In Purple Nevada One issue will decide Steven Cohen’s vote for Nevada governor this fall: Which candidate can best protect him from getting kicked off Medicaid? Cohen is a 38-year-old Las Vegas resident with autism and has dual enrollment in Medicaid and Medicare. He said he’s very concerned that he could lose his Medicaid coverage once work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks take effect in January, under congressional Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “When you’re going to some providers, notably mental health, once a month, or in the case of one provider, a couple of times a week, those copays quickly add up,” Cohen said. (Rodriguez, 7/1)

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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