Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

For the week of May 23-30, 2025

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

The Top Three...

CBS News: Medicaid Cost-Cutting Measures Passed By House To Be Scrutinized By GOP Senators As They Take Up Trump Agenda The Senate will soon be considering the massive legislation containing President Trump's second-term agenda after House Republicans passed it last week, following days of negotiations over changes to Medicaid, among other key issues. Senate Republicans will put their "imprint" on the bill, as Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota put it, and some pointed to changes to Medicaid as a possible red line for those who are undecided. (Hubbard and Yilek, 5/29)

NPR: CDC To Stop Recommending COVID Vaccine For Kids, Pregnant Women The federal government has removed COVID-19 vaccines from the list of shots recommended for healthy pregnant women and children, federal health officials announced Tuesday. ... The decision will make it much harder for parents to get their children vaccinated and for pregnant people to get the shots because insurance companies will likely no longer pay for them. (Stein, 5/27)

CIDRAP: 'A National Scandal': US Excess Deaths Rose Even After Pandemic, Far Outpacing Peer Countries Excess deaths in the United States kept rising even after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, with more than 1.5 million in 2022 and 2023 that would have been prevented had US death rates matched those of peer countries, estimates a Boston University (BU)-led study today in JAMA Health Forum. The data show a continuation of a decades-old trend toward increasing US excess deaths, mainly among working-age adults, largely driven by drug overdoses, gun violence, auto accidents, and preventable cardiometabolic causes, the researchers say. (Van Beusekom, 5/23)

For a Deeper Dive...

NBC News: Medicaid Cuts In Republican Bill Emerge As An Early Flash Point For The 2026 Elections Early battle lines are forming over a centerpiece of the sprawling domestic policy bill that House Republicans narrowly passed, with Medicaid spending cuts emerging as a flash point that could define the 2026 midterm elections. Democrats are fine-tuning their message as they blast the legislation, which now heads to the GOP-led Senate, as a tax cut for the wealthy that would be funded by cutting health care, after Republicans broadly promised they wouldn't cut Medicaid. (Kapur, 5/29)

CBS News: House Speaker Mike Johnson Says Medicaid Work Requirements In Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill' Have A 'Moral Component' House Speaker Mike Johnson, who shepherded President Trump's "one big, beautiful bill" through Congress, said Sunday that the Medicaid work requirements — which could affect his home state of Louisiana — have a "moral component" to them because people on Medicaid who "refuse" to work are "defrauding the system." "If you are able to work and you refuse to do so, you are defrauding the system," Johnson said Sunday on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan." "You're cheating the system. And no one in the country believes that that's right. So there's a moral component to what we're doing. And when you make young men work, it's good for them, it's good for their dignity, it's good for their self-worth, and it's good for the community that they live in." (Linton, 5/26)

The Washington Post: CDC Blindsided As RFK Jr. Changes Vaccine Recommendations Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are scrambling to understand Kennedy’s decision, announced in a 58-second video on X on Tuesday morning, which took agency staff by surprise. Five hours later, CDC officials received a one-page “secretarial directive,” dated May 19 and signed by Kennedy, that contradicts some of what he said in his video, according to two current and one former health officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. (Sun, 5/28)

CNN: NIH Staff Stage Walkout During Director’s Town Hall As Tensions Persist Over Research Cuts, Ideology Twenty-seven minutes into a town hall with staff last week, US National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya acknowledged that he was going to get into uncomfortable territory. “This one’s a tough one for me,” Bhattacharya told the audience of researchers and other NIH employees gathered in an auditorium at the biomedical research agency’s headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, last Monday, before introducing one of the most divisive topics in science. (Tirrell, 5/26)

The Hill: House GOP's SNAP Changes Defended By Speaker Johnson House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) defended the House GOP’s proposed changes to the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) on Sunday, arguing that states will better administer food stamp benefits if they have to shoulder more of the costs. “The states are not properly administering this because they don’t have enough skin in the game,” Johnson told CBS’s Margaret Brennan in an interview on “Face the Nation.” (Crisp, 5/25)

CNN: Trump Administration’s MAHA Report On Children’s Health Filled With Flawed References, Including Some Studies That Don’t Exist The first report from the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again Commission, released last week, appears to be rife with errors, including some studies that don’t exist. Touted by US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a milestone, the report lays out the government’s priorities for addressing chronic health problems in children, which it ascribes to poor diet, lack of exercise, stress, overprescribing of drugs and exposure to environmental chemicals. (Goodman, Howard and Klein, 5/29)

Politico: RFK Jr.’s Report Had A Surprise Target: Your Doctor From food to pharma, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took on all the suspects he’s long maligned in a report on health threats to kids — along with one unexpected one: Doctors. Laced throughout the report from Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again Commission are accusations against doctors — for reportedly being influenced by the pharmaceutical industry to overprescribe certain medications and for failing to treat the root causes of disease. (Cirruzzo, 5/23)

Politico: RFK Jr. Threatens To Bar Government Scientists From Publishing In Leading Medical Journals HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. threatened to stop government scientists from publishing their work in major medical journals on a podcast Tuesday as part of his escalating war on institutions he says are influenced by pharmaceutical companies. Speaking on the “Ultimate Human” podcast, Kennedy said the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association and The Lancet, three of the most influential medical journals in the world, were “corrupt” and publish studies funded and approved by pharmaceutical companies. (Cirruzzo, 5/27)

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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