Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

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

The Top Three...

Healthcare Dive: Trump Releases 2026 Budget Including Heavy Healthcare Cuts. The White House released a 2026 budget on Friday that includes steep cuts to healthcare programs, particularly those housed in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, continuing the Trump administration’s broadside against biomedical research and public health funding. The president’s budget is a wish list and holds no weight on its own, though Congress often takes the blueprint into account when allocating funding for the upcoming year. The 40-page request sent to Congress by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought includes a 23% cut to the government’s discretionary funding and a 13% increase in military spending overall. If enacted, the HHS would have its discretionary funding cut by 26%. (Pifer, 5/5)

Roll Call: House GOP Drops Some Medicaid Cuts From Reconciliation Plan Republicans will have to come up with alternative savings to make up for hundreds of billions of dollars in potential Medicaid cuts that GOP leaders appeared to rule out after meeting with moderates in Speaker Mike Johnson’s office Tuesday evening. Johnson, R-La., said leadership had ruled out two Medicaid policies that could go a long way toward meeting the Energy and Commerce Committee’s $880 billion, 10-year savings target but faced strong pushback from blue-state GOP centrists. (Hellmann, Raman and Bridges, 5/6)

Politico: The MAGA Backlash To Trump’s MAHA Surgeon General Pick President Donald Trump’s new pick for surgeon general — wellness influencer Casey Means — is already the target of MAGA vitriol, underscoring a split inside the president’s base over the future of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. Trump’s decision to select Means came just hours after news broke about his decision to withdraw Janette Nesheiwat, a former Fox News contributor, for the post. (Gardner, 5/8)

For a Deeper Dive...

The Hill: Millions Of People Could Lose Insurance Under GOP Medicaid Options, CBO Finds Millions of people would lose health insurance coverage under various Republican options to cut Medicaid spending to pay for President Trump’s domestic policy agenda, according to an analysis the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released Wednesday. For instance, a cap on Medicaid spending for beneficiaries in the expansion population would save $225 billion and result in 1.5 million additional people being uninsured by 2034. Limiting state provider taxes would save $668 billion but would mean an additional 3.9 million uninsured people by 2034. (Weixel, 5/7)

The Washington Post: Trump Tells Congress To Raise Taxes On The Rich In Budget Bill President Donald Trump instructed congressional Republicans this week to raise taxes on the wealthiest earners as part of his “big, beautiful bill,” rattling his party’s brittle consensus on economic issues and muddling the GOP’s path toward enacting his campaign promises. ... House GOP leaders in recent days have ruled out certain cuts to social safety net programs that the GOP had earlier targeted to meet budget goals. Speaker Mike Johnson said the House would not cut the amount states receive to fund Medicaid, and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-Pennsylvania) told The Washington Post that his committee would not rescind federal anti-poverty food assistance money. Hard-liners had been eyeing both of those areas as potential sources of savings. (Bogage and Stein, 5/8)

The New York Times: Migrants Are Skipping Medical Care, Fearing ICE, Doctors Say A man lay on a New York City sidewalk with a gun shot wound, clutching his side. Emily Borghard, a social worker who hands out supplies to the homeless through her nonprofit, found him and pulled out her phone, preparing to dial 911. But the man begged her not to make the call, she said. “No, no, no,” he said, telling her in Spanish that he would be deported. Ms. Borghard tried to explain that federal law required hospitals to treat him, regardless of his immigration status, but he was terrified. (Baumgaertner Nunn, Agrawal and Silver-Greenberg, 5/8)

Stat: Trump Signs Order In Bid To Boost Pharma Manufacturing In The U.S. Amid ongoing anticipation over tariffs on pharmaceuticals, President Trump on Monday signed an executive order designed to lower regulatory hurdles and make it faster for drug companies to manufacture their products in the U.S. The move also includes plans to place more pressure on foreign drugmakers to comply with quality control inspections. (Silverman, 5/5)

The Hill: Bipartisan Senators Offer New Bill Aimed At Lowering Drug Prices A bipartisan pair of senators introduced legislation to lower prescription drug prices by prohibiting pharmaceutical companies from selling drugs in the U.S. at higher prices than the international average. The bill from Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Peter Welch (D-Vt.) is a riff on the “most favored nation” policy President Trump pushed in his first term, which tried to tie domestic prices for certain prescription drugs in Medicare to the lowest level paid by comparable countries. Drug companies sued shortly after the effort was launched as an interim final rule, and it was blocked in federal court. (Weixel, 5/5)

The New York Times: Who Is Casey Means, Trump’s Pick For Surgeon General?President Trump said on Wednesday that he would nominate Casey Means, a Stanford-educated doctor turned critic of corporate influence on medicine and health, as surgeon general. Dr. Means, an ally of the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has described becoming disillusioned by establishment medicine. She rose to prominence last year after she and her brother, Calley Means, a White House health adviser and former food industry lobbyist, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show. (Mueller and Jewett, 5/7)

The New York Times: Trump Administration Asks Court To Dismiss Abortion Pill Case The Trump administration asked a federal judge on Monday to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks to sharply restrict access to the abortion pill mifepristone — taking the same position as the Biden administration in a closely watched case that has major implications for abortion access. The court filing by the Justice Department is striking, given that President Trump and a number of officials in his administration have forcefully opposed abortion rights. (Belluck, 5/5)

MedPage Today: Trump's HHS Deputy Secretary Pick Breezes Through Senate Hearing James O'Neill -- President Donald Trump's pick for the No. 2 spot at HHS under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. -- faced questions on vaccine mandates, HHS cuts, and even the hiring of David Geier to lead a new agency study on vaccines and autism, but emerged from a Senate committee hearing on his nomination relatively unscathed. O'Neill was supposed to field questions from the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee on Thursday morning alongside Janette Nesheiwat, MD, Trump's previous pick for Surgeon General. However, O'Neill faced the committee alone after Nesheiwat's nomination was pulled hours before the hearing. (Henderson, 5/8)

Bloomberg: GOP Eyes Pharma Tax Hike, Nixing Drug Price Deal For Trump Bill House Republicans are considering nixing a Medicaid drug pricing plan floated by President Donald Trump and fiercely opposed by the pharmaceutical industry as the party pushes to strike a massive tax and spending deal in the coming days. But drugmakers may not be totally off the hook. (Cohrs Zhang, 5/8)

Roll Call: Conservatives Chafe At Taking Medicaid Savings Options Off Table House Republican leadership’s decision to step back from two pathways to major Medicaid cost savings has fueled contempt among hard line conservatives, raising questions about the future of a reconciliation package that faces a key markup next week. The proposals would’ve cut federal Medicaid spending by billions of dollars, but they could not gain enough support from a key group of more moderate GOP lawmakers. (Raman and Hellmann, 5/7)

What Is Changing...

NBC News: Trump Administration Has Shut Down CDC's Infection Control Committee The Trump administration has terminated a federal advisory committee that issued guidance about preventing the spread of infections in health care facilities. The Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) crafted national standards for hand-washing, mask-wearing and isolating sick patients that most U.S. hospitals follow. Four committee members said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention delivered the news about HICPAC’s termination to members Friday. (Bendix, 5/7)

Stat: Trump Proposes Billions In Cuts To Federal Health Agencies From NIH To CDC President Trump on Friday proposed massive cuts to the federal government’s health agencies in his 2026 budget request, arguing that Congress should reduce spending by tens of billions from current levels. The request would be a 26% cut to the Department of Health and Human Services’ discretionary budget, which doesn’t include spending on health coverage programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year, which starts in October, is a request to Congress and is rarely passed without major changes. (Payne, 5/2)

CBS News: Worker Safety Agency NIOSH Lays Off Most Remaining Staff Nearly all of the remaining staff at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health were laid off Friday, multiple officials and laid-off employees told CBS News, gutting programs ranging from approvals of new safety equipment to firefighter health. Much of the work at NIOSH, an arm of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had already stalled after an initial round of layoffs on April 1 at the agency ordered by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Tin, 5/3)

Axios: Senators Say HHS Cuts Imperil Indian Health Services A bipartisan group of senators warned Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday that cuts to the federal health care workforce are threatening Native Americans and other beneficiaries of Indian Health Services care. (Goldman, 5/7)

AP: Cuts Have Eliminated More Than A Dozen US Government Health-Tracking Programs U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s motto is “ Make America Healthy Again,” but government cuts could make it harder to know if that’s happening. More than a dozen data-gathering programs that track deaths and disease appear to have been eliminated in the tornado of layoffs and proposed budget cuts rolled out in the Trump administration’s first 100 days. ... Among those terminated at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were experts tracking abortions, pregnancies, job-related injuries, lead poisonings, sexual violence and youth smoking, the AP found. (Stobbe, 5/4)

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