Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

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

The Top Three...

Modern Healthcare: Medicare Doctor Pay, PBM Bills In Limbo As Congress Takes A Break Members of Congress headed home for the summer over the weekend, leaving the healthcare community in an all-too-familiar position: Wondering how key priorities will turn out after lawmakers failed to address them in the first part off the year. At the top of the list is money, with billions of dollars in cuts to physician pay and safety net hospitals funding set to begin in January, as well as appropriations for expiring programs such as community health centers. (McAuliff, 8/5)

Stat: Millions Of People Became Uninsured As Medicaid Programs Cut Coverage, New Data Show The national uninsured rate rose from 7.7% to 8.2% earlier this year, a result of states booting millions of Americans from their state Medicaid programs, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Herman, 8/6)

CNN: Monthly Abortions Continue To Trend Up In The US In 2024, New Report Shows Despite restrictions and bans that have taken effect in the two years since the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision revoked the federal right to an abortion, the average number of abortions provided each month in the United States continues to rise, a new report shows. (McPhillips, 8/7)

For a Deeper Dive...

Fortune Well: 5 Ways A Harris-Walz Win Could Reshape U.S. Health Care
Health policy experts stress that a lot of what Harris and Walz could do in office largely depends on what happens in Congress. “This is still a divided country,” says Leighton Ku, PhD, MPH, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health. “I don’t think Harris would be likely to have control of both houses of Congress, but all sorts of things can happen.” “No matter who the president is, reforming health care in the United States is a tall order given the power and lobbying abilities of the health insurance companies,” says Perry N. Halkitis, PhD, dean of the Rutgers School of Public Health. (Miller, 8/6)

Reuters: US States Sue Over Biden Rule Extending Health Insurance To DACA Immigrants A group of Republican-led states filed a lawsuit on Thursday seeking to block the Biden administration from allowing up to 200,000 immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children to access federally-run health insurance. The 15 states led by the office of Republican Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach say a rule adopted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in May violates a federal law that prohibits giving public benefits to people who lack legal immigration status. (Wiessner, 8/8)

KFF Health News: Harris’ California Health Care Battles Signal Fights Ahead For Hospitals If She Wins When Kamala Harris was California’s top prosecutor, she was concerned that mergers among hospitals, physician groups, and health insurers could thwart competition and lead to higher prices for patients. If she wins the presidency in November, she’ll have a wide range of options to blunt monopolistic behavior nationwide. The Democratic vice president could influence the Federal Trade Commission and instruct the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to prioritize enforcement of antitrust laws and channel resources accordingly. (Wolfson and Galewitz, 8/5)

Modern Healthcare: Walgreens May Sell Entire VillageMD Stake Walgreens is considering selling its entire majority stake in primary care provider VillageMD, a move that would be a dramatic about-face from its previous commitment to the care model. The company is evaluating "a variety of options" in light of "VillageMD’s substantial ongoing and expected future cash requirements," Walgreens said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Wednesday. Options include selling all or part of its stake in VillageMD, a restructuring or other opportunities, the company said. (Hudson, 8/7)

KFF Health News: Inside Project 2025: Former Trump Official Outlines Hard Right Turn Against Abortion From his perch in the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, Roger Severino made a controversial name for himself, working to shield health workers who declined to perform medical procedures including abortion on religious grounds. After President Donald Trump left office, Severino helped the conservative Heritage Foundation develop a plan to expand that conservative stamp to the broader department, recasting HHS with a focus on traditional marriage and family. (Armour, 8/6)

Axios: The States With The Most Uninsured Americans, Mapped Texas is home to the country's largest share of Americans under 65 without health insurance, according to new Census Bureau data, with 18.8% of residents uninsured as of 2022. That's a big improvement over 2006, when 27.6% of Texans were uninsured — but still nearly double the national uninsured rate of 9.5%. (Fitzpatrick and Beheraj, 8/6)

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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