Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

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

The Top Three...

Politico: A Health Care Earthquake In Congress After Congress spent years crafting new significant pharmacy benefit manager regulations and had agreed to a substantial health care package, posts on X from Elon Musk, who’s co-leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, helped upend the legislation just days before it was poised to become law. ... The impasse has left a multitude of health care provisions up in the air and the broader package’s fate in question. Eased access to telehealth and hospital-at-home care, funding for community health centers, doctor pay in Medicare, measures intended to incentivize drug development for rare pediatric diseases and more hang in the balance. (Cirruzzo and Leonard, 12/19)

MedPage Today: Health Spending Up 7.5% In 2023, CMS Says Health spending in the U.S. rose by 7.5% in 2023, to $4.9 trillion, compared with an increase of 4.6% in 2022, according to figures released Wednesday by CMS. "Much of the growth came from faster growth and spending [by] private health insurance, which increased 11.5%, and Medicare, which increased 8.1%," Anne Martin, of the CMS Office of the Actuary, said during a briefing sponsored by Health Affairs. "For Medicaid, although spending and enrollment continue to increase, the rates of growth were lower in 2023 compared with 2022 -- Medicaid spending grew by 7.9% in 2023 compared with 9.7% growth in 2022." (Frieden, 12/18)

CBS News: Trump Could Target Affordable Care Act And Medicaid To Help Pay For Lower Taxes, Experts Say The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, remains popular with the public, garnering the approval of 54% of U.S. adults, according to a recently released Gallup poll. But experts say that may not insulate the federal health insurance program from change as President-elect Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans look to renew $4 trillion in expiring tax cuts. (Gibson, 12/17)

For a Deeper Dive...

CBS News: A Government Shutdown Could Occur On Dec. 21. Here's What Services And Payments Could Be Impacted The nation's 67 million Social Security recipients would continue to receive their checks even if the government closes for business. Medicare will also continue to operate, which means seniors covered by the health care plan won't have their medications or treatments impacted. That's because both Social Security and Medicare benefits are authorized by laws that don't require annual approval. (Picchi, 12/19)

Politico: Trump Taps Brooks To Lead HHS Landing Team President-elect Donald Trump has tapped John Brooks to lead his HHS landing team, three people familiar with the selection granted anonymity to discuss government transition efforts told POLITICO. The elevation of Brooks, a former senior Medicare official during Trump’s first term who went on to advise former HHS Secretary Alex Azar on drug pricing policy, lends policy heft to a Trump health team that has faced scrutiny over its top nominees' lack of government experience. (Lim and Cancryn, 12/17)

The Washington Post: Will RFK Jr. Be Confirmed As Health Secretary? If no Democrats cross the aisle to vote for Kennedy, he can afford to lose only three Republican votes in the closely divided Senate. Some Republicans have embraced Kennedy’s selection to oversee the nation’s public health infrastructure, saying he will bring overdue changes as Americans struggle with a rise in chronic disease, premature deaths and other problems. Others have called on the former Democrat to explain his positions on vaccines, abortion and agriculture policy, warning they have serious questions about his planned agenda. (Diamond and Roubein, 12/20)

NPR: Is Anyone Actually Happy With The Business Of Health? Health care companies are ending 2024 in the hot seat. Yet some of the pressures they're facing have been mounting all year — or longer. This month's killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson thrust his company, and his industry, into the spotlight. It also sparked widespread consumer reckoning over denied claims and the high costs of care in the United States, where health care is the most expensive in the world. Now lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle are stepping up their scrutiny of the industry. (Aspan, 12/20)

USA Today: Americans Are Living Longer, Thanks To Pandemic's End, Fewer Opioid Deaths Average life expectancy in the U.S. increased by almost a year in 2023, rebounding to a level not reached since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to figures released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. U.S. average life expectancy was 78.4 years in 2023 ‒ nearly 11 months longer than in 2022 ‒ mostly due to far fewer COVID-19 deaths. It was the second consecutive year the nation's life expectancy increased after dropping more than two years from 2019 to 2021. (Alltucker, 12/19)

NPR: The FDA Has Redefined What Counts As 'healthy' On Food Labels At a time when more than half of the American diet comes from processed, packaged foods, the Food and Drug Administration has new rules aimed at helping people make healthy choices in the grocery store. The agency has updated the definition of what counts as healthy. Food companies can voluntarily use a "healthy" claim on their packages if their products meet the new definition. (Aubrey, 12/19)

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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