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: What Can House Republicans Cut Instead Of Medicaid? Not Much. The House passed a budget resolution Tuesday night after the speaker, Mike Johnson, persuaded several Republican lawmakers, including those who have expressed reservations about possible Medicaid cuts, to support the bill. In theory, the budget, which kicks off the process of passing an extension of tax cuts enacted in 2017 and up to $2 trillion in spending cuts meant to partly offset them, could become law without significant cuts to Medicaid. But it won’t be easy. (Sanger-Katz and Parlapiano, 2/25)

NBC News: FDA Cancels Meeting To Select Flu Strains For Next Season's Shots A Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory committee meeting scheduled for March to select the strains to be included in next season's flu shot has been canceled, a panel member said Wednesday. Federal health officials notified members of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee of the cancelation in an email Wednesday afternoon, said committee member Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. (Lovelace Jr., 2/27)

NPR: Nearly All USAID Programs Have Been Cut By The Trump Administration The Trump administration is terminating thousands of USAID foreign assistance grants and awards, according to the State Department. The move effectively guts the six-decade-old agency. Elisha Dunn-Georgiou, president and CEO of the Global Health Council, said the situation is "horrible." She said that even some of the programs that had received waivers for being "life saving humanitarian assistance" – including ones that provided HIV medications – have now received termination notices. (Tanis and Langfitt, 2/26)

For a Deeper Dive...

The New York Times: Slashing Medicaid To Pay For Trump’s Tax Cuts Could Lead To Vast State Shortfalls The change could leave the 40 states that participate in the Obamacare program with a difficult set of choices. They could shoulder the extra costs to preserve Medicaid coverage for millions, make cuts to coverage or look for cuts from other large government programs to offset the reduction in federal funds. (Weiland and Kliff, 2/25)

Modern Healthcare: How Trump May Reshape Medicare Pay, ACA, 340B Through Lawsuits Major changes to Medicare payments, the Affordable Care Act and labor issues could be on the horizon depending on the Trump administration's next moves in court. The administration must decide whether to defend the federal government's position in a series of key healthcare cases that could reshape coverage requirements under the ACA, influence billions of dollars in hospital payments and restructure fundamental workforce policies. (Early, 2/24)

Politico: Republicans Say States Are Pulling A Fast One On Medicaid Republicans in Congress see a way around the $880 billion budget shortfall they need to fill to extend President Donald Trump’s tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. States aren’t going to like it. To qualify for federal Medicaid dollars, states must also kick in their own matching funds. GOP lawmakers want to stop states from taxing insurers and health care providers to raise that money, a maneuver that would leave states with a $612 billion hole in their budgets over the next decade. (King, 2/27)

Roll Call: Medicaid Work Rules Have Increased Coverage Loss, Not Employment House Republicans are coalescing around work requirements in Medicaid as part of the massive budget blueprint the House adopted Tuesday. But there’s one problem: They don’t increase employment, experts say. They do, however, result in people losing coverage. (Hellmann and Raman, 2/27)

KFF Health News: Republicans Once Wanted Government Out Of Health Care. Trump Voters See It Differently Like many Americans who voted for Donald Trump, Jason Rouse hopes the president’s return will mean lower prices for gas, groceries, and other essentials. But Rouse is looking to the federal government for relief from one particular pain point: high health care costs. “The prices are just ridiculous,” said Rouse, 53, a retired Michigan firefighter and paramedic who has voted for Trump three times. “I’d like to see a lower cap on what I have to pay out-of-pocket.” (Levey, 2/27)

KFF Health News: Trump Froze Out Project 2025 In His Campaign. Now Its Blueprint Is His Health Care Playbook Few voters likely expected President Donald Trump in the first weeks of his administration to slash billions of dollars from the nation’s premier federal cancer research agency. But funding cuts to the National Institutes of Health were presaged in Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” a conservative plan for governing that Trump said he knew nothing about during his campaign. Now, his administration has embraced it. (Armour, 2/24)

AP: Pennsylvania Hostage-Taking And Shootout Highlight Rising Violence Against US Hospital Workers The man apparently intentionally targeted the hospital after he was in contact with the intensive care unit earlier in the week for medical care involving someone else, according to the York County district attorney. Such violence at hospitals is on the rise, often in emergency departments but also maternity wards and intensive care units, hospital security consultant Dick Sem said. “Many people are more confrontational, quicker to become angry, quicker to become threatening,” Sem said. “I interview thousands of nurses and hear all the time about how they’re being abused every day.” (Gruver, 2/24)

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Health Affairs: From Laggard to Leader: Why Health Care in The United States is Failing, And How To Fix It. DM Berwick, E Batchlor DA Chokshi, P Gabow, R Gilfillan, F Isasi, A Milstein, and LM Nichols

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