Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

A very busy week in Washington with many implications for the health of the nation. If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest the following. Given the volume of activity this week, I encourage you to also take a deeper dive (below).

The Top Three...

The New York Times: Trump Withdraws U.S. From World Health Organization President Trump moved quickly on Monday to withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization, a move that public health experts say will undermine the nation’s standing as a global health leader and make it harder to fight the next pandemic. In an executive order issued about eight hours after he took the oath of office, Mr. Trump cited a string of reasons for the withdrawal, including the W.H.O.’s “mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic,” and the “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms.” (Gay Stolberg, 1/20)

Modern Healthcare: RFK Jr. Confirmation Hearing Date Set For Jan. 29 The controversial nomination of Robert Kennedy Jr. to be secretary of Health and Human Services is set to move forward next week when he will face questioning from a pair of Senate committees. Kennedy is among the least-certain of President Donald Trump's nominees to be confirmed. Democrats, who cannot block Kennedy on their own, are expected to largely but not unanimously oppose him, and some Republicans have expressed concerns about Kennedy's views on vaccines and his past support for abortion rights. (McAuliff, 1/23)

The Washington Post: Trump Officials Pause Health Agencies’ Communications, Citing Review The Trump administration has instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications, such as health advisories, weekly scientific reports, updates to websites and social media posts, according to nearly a dozen current and former officials and other people familiar with the matter. The instructions were delivered Tuesday to staff at agencies inside the Department of Health and Human Services, including officials at the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Institutes of Health, one day after the new administration took office. (Sun, Diamond and Roubein, 1/22)

For a Deeper Dive on the Transition...

Politico: Trump Promises Health Actions Starting This Week President Donald Trump said he will begin to make changes this week to a handful of health measures. In his inaugural speech in Washington on Monday, the 47th president promised to reverse actions taken against military members who declined to follow the Covid-19 vaccine mandate, which Congress repealed in 2023. Trump, despite largely focusing his address on immigration and the economy, also said his administration will reform the public health system. He noted chronic disease prevention and treatment as priorities, in line with the Make America Healthy Again agenda he shares with his pick to lead HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Trump also said he would change how public health agencies respond to disasters, noting flooding in North Carolina last year and the more recent wildfires in California. (Payne, 1/20)

Becker's Hospital Review: US Sets WHO Exit Date The United States will exit the World Health Organization on Jan. 22, 2026, Reuters reported Jan. 23. The planned exit comes after President Donald Trump signed a executive order Jan. 20 removing the U.S. from the WHO over "the organization's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China, and other global health crises, its failure to adopt urgently needed reforms and its inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member state," the order said. (Ashley, 1/23)

The Washington Post: Trump Team Taps Dorothy Fink To Serve As Interim HHS Secretary Incoming Trump officials have tapped Dorothy Fink, an endocrinologist and career civil servant, as the interim secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. Fink, who leads the health agency’s Office on Women’s Health and is a specialist in treating menopause, is in line to lead the nearly $2 trillion agency while Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for HHS secretary, undergoes Senate confirmation. (Diamond, 1/19)

Axios: Trump Inherits Biden's Unfinished Business On Health Policy The Trump administration inherited some big health policy headaches on Monday. And the nature of federal rules means it can't start from scratch on key questions about surprise billing, coverage of GLP-1s and prescribing controlled substances. (Goldman, 1/21)

CBS News: Trump Administration Expected To Go Outside CDC For Acting Director The Trump administration is expected to tap Susan Coller Monarez, the deputy director of a federal health research agency, to serve as the acting head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, multiple health officials tell CBS News. Picking Monarez would close an unprecedented leadership gap atop the CDC, which is tasked with tracking and responding to a myriad of emerging diseases and health emergencies. Other health agencies have also been operating without acting heads. (Tin, 1/23)

Newsweek: Donald Trump's Medicare Executive Order Explained President Donald Trump has rescinded former President Joe Biden's executive order 14087, which was put in place to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Americans. Newsweek has reached out to the Trump transition team outside of regular working hours via email for comment. ... While the executive order has been rescinded, existing laws and regulations governing prescription drug pricing and Medicare and Medicaid policies remain in effect. However, the momentum toward developing new cost-saving measures as encouraged by the previous administration has now been disrupted. (McFall, 1/21)

Axios: GOP Lawmakers Coy On Medicaid Cuts For Tax Extension Republicans from swing states and districts are ducking questions about their openness to cutting Medicaid in order to help pay for an extension of President Trump's tax cuts. Why it matters: Republican leadership can lose only a handful of votes, making cuts to the safety net program a high-stakes loyalty test that could deliver an early legislative win but result in millions of people losing their health coverage. (Sullivan, 1/22)

NPR: Medicare Targets 15 More Drugs For Price Cuts, Including Ozempic The Biden administration, in its last full weekday in office, announced the next 15 drugs up for Medicare price negotiation. Blockbuster diabetes drug Ozempic is on the list. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services negotiated prices for a first batch of drugs last year — something it could only do because of the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in 2022. Those new prices go into effect in January 2026. (Lupkin, 1/17)

The New York Times: Key Trump Nominee Hints At Push For Work Requirements In Medicaid Russell T. Vought, President Trump’s nominee to run the Office of Management and Budget, told Senate lawmakers in a confirmation hearing on Wednesday that he supported work requirements for low-income Americans receiving publicly subsidized health insurance, a policy that Mr. Trump pursued in his first term but that the Biden administration mostly reversed. The comments suggested that the Trump administration was likely to seek a broad overhaul of how the federal government administers Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance program for more than 70 million people. (Weiland, 1/22)

KFF Health News: KFF Health News' 'What The Health?': Creating Chaos At HHS President Donald Trump was sworn in Monday and by Wednesday had virtually stopped scientific policymaking at the Department of Health and Human Services. While incoming administrations often pause public communications, the acting HHS head ordered an unprecedented shutdown of all outside meetings, travel, and publications. Meanwhile, Trump issued a broad array of mostly nonbinding executive orders, but notably none directly concerning abortion. (Rovner, 1/23)

Politico: Anti-Vaccine No More? RFK Jr. Is Remaking His Image To Serve Trump Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a message that seems to be resonating in the Senate: He’s changed his mind. President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services is assuring the Republican senators who will decide whether he gets the job that he’s “all for” polio inoculations and that he won’t take away anyone’s vaccines. He has also told them he merely wants to make safety and efficacy data more readily available, lawmakers who’ve talked with Kennedy tell POLITICO. (Payne and Cirruzzo, 1/22)

KFF: What To Know About Trump’s Executive Orders on US Health Care From rolling back drug pricing policies to limiting gender-affirming care, President Donald Trump signed several health-related executive orders in the first hours of his second presidency. Here’s a roundup of the changes and what they mean. (Tarena Lofton, 1/22)

The New York Times: Sacklers Up Their Offer To Settle Purdue Opioids Cases, With A New Condition Seven months after the Supreme Court struck down a deal that would have resolved thousands of opioid cases against Purdue Pharma, the company’s owners, members of the Sackler family, have increased their cash offer to settle the litigation — but with a novel catch. Under the framework for a new deal, the Sacklers would not receive immunity from future opioid lawsuits, a condition that they had long insisted upon but that the court ruled was impermissible. (Hoffman, 1/23)

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