Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

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

The Top Three...

Stat: Kennedy Cancels $500 Million In MRNA Vaccine Contracts Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday announced that the government’s emergency preparedness agency will no longer fund work on messenger RNA vaccines, delivering a crippling blow to the country’s capacity to develop vaccines during the next pandemic or public health emergency. (Branswell, 8/5)

The Hill: ACA Premiums Set To Spike The proposed rates are preliminary and could change before being finalized in late summer. The analysis includes proposed rate changes from 312 insurers in all 50 states and DC. It’s the largest rate change insurers have requested since 2018, the last time that policy uncertainty contributed to sharp premium increases. On average, ACA marketplace insurers are raising premiums by about 20 percent in 2026, KFF found. (Weixel, Choi and O’Connell-Domenech, 8/6)

The Hill: Trump Threatens 250% Tariffs On Pharmaceutical Imports President Trump on Tuesday threatened to impose tariffs of up to 250 percent on pharmaceutical imports, the highest rate he’s discussed to date. “We’ll be putting a, initially small tariff on pharmaceuticals,” Trump told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “But in one year, one in a half years maximum, it’s going to go to 150 percent, and then it’s going to go to 250 percent, because we want pharmaceuticals made in our country,” Trump said. (Weixel, 8/5)

For a Deeper Dive...

KFF Health News: Work Requirements And Red Tape Ahead For Millions On Medicaid Now that the Republicans’ big tax-and-spending bill has become law, new bureaucratic hurdles have emerged for millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid for health coverage. A provision in the new law dictates that, in most states, for the first time, low-income adults must start meeting work requirements to keep their coverage. Some states have already tried doing this, but Georgia is the only state that has an active system using work requirements to establish Medicaid eligibility — and recipients must report to the system once a month. (Mador, 8/4)

San Francisco Chronicle: Bay Area County Could Raise Taxes To Offset Trump Medicaid Cuts In response to recent federal legislation that cuts billions of dollars to Medicaid, Santa Clara County supervisors on Thursday unanimously voted to add a ballot measure to November’s special election that would increase local sales tax by five-eighth cent (0.625%) for five years to try to backfill some of the projected lost federal revenue. The federal legislation HR 1 was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in July. It includes the biggest cuts to Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance program for low-income Americans, in the program’s history. (Ho, 8/7)

Bloomberg: Medicaid Cuts Set To Drain Revenue At Elite Teaching Hospitals In US Few in the US healthcare sector are immune to the effects of Washington’s recent cuts to Medicaid, even the cash-rich teaching hospitals affiliated with top-notch medical schools. These facilities, often known as academic medical centers or AMCs, are usually seen as the cream of the industry crop for their top-tier credit ratings and ability to churn out revenue. But federal cuts to the public health insurance program for low-income and disabled people will lead to less funding for teaching hospitals around the country. In response, they’ve already started to reduce staff and scale back operations. (Hudson and Rembert, 8/7)

CPR News: A New Strategy Emerges To Reform Health Care — Ballot Measures In Multiple States To Provide Insurance For Everyone The elevator pitch is simple, said one of the organizers, retired journalist T.R. Reid. “The United States ought to provide health care for everybody. We're never going to get it done on a national basis because Congress is owned by the insurance companies and Big Pharma,” he said. The way to get it done, Reid believes, is by winning ballot measures in multiple states, all in the same election – to remake the health care system. Like women's suffrage, child labor laws and legalized marijuana, Reid said, once one or two states do it, others will follow. (Daley, 8/4)

The Washington Post: What RFK Jr. Gets Wrong About MRNA Vaccines And Fighting Future Pandemics The Trump administration’s decision to terminate hundreds of millions of dollars to develop mRNA vaccines and treatments imperils the country’s ability to fight future pandemics and is built on false or misleading claims about the technology, public health experts said. Vaccine development is typically a years-long process, but mRNA technology paired with massive injections of federal funding during the coronavirus pandemic drastically slashed the timeline. (Johnson and Weber, 8/6)

The Hill: Kennedy Examines Ousting Of Task Force Members Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Monday he is “reviewing” whether to remove all members of an influential advisory committee that offers guidance about preventive health services. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is composed of medical experts who serve four-year terms on a volunteer basis. They are appointed by the HHS secretary and are supposed to be shielded from political influence. (Weixel, 8/4)

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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