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: RFK Jr. To Reform Health Panel That Determines Which Screenings Insurers Cover Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Thursday that he was reforming an influential task force that determines which preventive medical screenings, procedures and medications insurance companies must cover at no cost for millions of Americans. Speaking at a congressional hearing, Mr. Kennedy accused the panel, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, of having been “lackadaisical and negligent for 20 years.” He said he would appoint new members with “a clear mission,” which he did not elaborate on. (Astor and Blum, 4/16)

The New York Times: Trump To Nominate Dr. Erica Schwartz, A Vaccine Supporter, As CDC Director Dr. Erica Schwartz is seen as a highly qualified traditional choice and tapping her is the strongest signal yet that the administration is veering away from vaccine skepticism this election year. (Mandavilli, 4/16)

The Wall Street Journal: Around 14% Of Enrollees In ACA Plans Failed To Make Payments, Data Shows One in seven people who signed up for Affordable Care Act plans this year failed to pay after premium costs rose sharply, according to an analysis that provides the first comprehensive look at the impact of expiring federal subsidies. Nationally, around 14% of those who enrolled in ACA plans this year didn’t pay their first monthly bill for January coverage. In some states, the share was a quarter or more, according to a new analysis from the actuarial firm Wakely Consulting Group, provided exclusively to The Wall Street Journal. (Wilde Mathews, 4/15)

For a Deeper Dive...

The New York Times: RFK Jr. Shifts Tone On Vaccines In Congressional Hearing In a sharp break with his past rhetoric, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offered a qualified embrace of the measles vaccine on Thursday, as President Trump named a new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention whose views on vaccination are more conventional than Mr. Kennedy’s. (Gay Stolberg and Blum, 4/16)

Politico: Trump Is Still Trying To DOGE The NIH. Republicans Are Tired White House budget director Russ Vought isn’t done trying to cut the National Institutes of Health’s funding, but Congress isn’t taking him seriously anymore. Vought released a proposal last week to slash the 2027 budget for the world’s largest funder of health research by 10 percent, down from 40 percent last year. It’s unlikely Congress or the agency’s head will listen to him. Lawmakers rejected Vought’s first big cut in the spending bill they passed in February and already promised to reject the smaller one this year. (Hooper, 4/11)

Modern Healthcare: CMS Proposes Easing Prior Authorizations For Prescription Drugs Health insurance companies and states would have to resolve prior authorization requests for drugs more quickly and publicly disclose their denial rates under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published Friday. The regulation would require Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program insurers, along with state Medicaid and CHIP administrators, to respond to non-urgent prior authorization requests for prescription drugs within 24 hours after receiving a request. (Tepper, 4/10)

CIDRAP: New Poll Shows Support For MAHA Is ‘Highly Vulnerable’ A new poll from a progressive polling firm shows support for the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement is narrow and highly vulnerable, and that support drops significantly when voters learn about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s actions in office and his policies. The poll, conducted by Data for Progress and RFK Jr Watch, a project of 314 Action, comes from a national sample of 2,350 likely voters. While many say they support the movement’s goals, only one in six actually identify with the movement. Roughly 30% of those polled outright reject it. Half of Republicans (50%) and 40% of swing district voters said they support many tenets of MAHA but do not identify with the movement. (Soucheray, 4/15)

KFF Health News: Medi-Cal Immigrant Enrollment Is Dropping. Researchers Point To Trump’s Policies For months, a cloud of fear has hovered over the immigrant community in San Bernardino, California, making it hard for María González to do her job as a community health worker in this city where almost a quarter of residents are foreign-born. It started building over the summer, fed by news of immigration raids across Southern California, Trump administration plans to share Medicaid data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the passage of state and federal restrictions on immigrant Medicaid eligibility. Then in November, the federal government released a new “public charge” proposal that, if enacted, could block certain immigrants from obtaining permanent legal residency if they or family members have used public benefits, including Medicaid. (Boyd-Barrett, 4/15)

AP: Polls Show Why Many Americans Are Turning To AI For Health Advice When Tiffany Davis has a question about a symptom from the weight-loss injections she’s taking, she doesn’t call her doctor. She pulls out her phone and consults ChatGPT. ... Turning to artificial intelligence tools for health advice has become a habit for Davis and many other Americans, according to a Gallup poll published Wednesday. The poll, conducted in late 2025 and backed up by at least three other recent surveys with similar findings, found that roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults had used an AI tool for health information or advice in the past 30 days. (Swenson and Sanders, 4/14)

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