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Trump’s War on Health Care: Public Health Watch

April 28, 2025

100 Days Of Trump, 100 Days of Public Health Catastrophe

Welcome to Public Health Watch, a weekly roundup from Protect Our Care tracking catastrophic activity as part of Donald Trump’s sweeping war on health care. From installing anti-vaccine zealot RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS to empowering Elon Musk to make indiscriminate cuts to our public health infrastructure, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, Donald Trump is endangering the lives of millions of Americans. Protect Our Care’s Public Health Watch will shine a spotlight on the worst of the Trump/RFK/Musk war on vaccines, science and public health and serve as a resource for the press, public and advocacy groups to hold them accountable. 

What’s Happening In Public Health?

The First 100 Days: Catastrophic Cuts Are Creating Chaos And Endangering Americans’ Health And Scientific Innovation

Stat: NIH grants plummeted $2.3 billion in Trump’s first months, as federal-academia partnership crumbles The National Institutes of Health has scaled back its awards of new grants by at least $2.3 billion since the beginning of the year, with the biggest shortfalls hitting the study of infectious diseases, heart and lung ailments, and basic research into fundamental biological systems, a new STAT analysis has found. This roughly 28% contraction in funding comes on top of threats to freeze billions of dollars of NIH funding to specific universities as well as abrupt terminations to hundreds of research projects on Covid-19, HIV/AIDS, health disparities, vaccine hesitancy, and other areas targeted by President Trump’s political agenda.

  • Stat: Trump’s first 100 days, seen through 5 lives: Grants terminated. Dreams crushed. Futures in the balance At the National Institutes of Health, that pain has arrived sharply and swiftly. Not even 100 days into Trump’s second term, his administration’s onslaught of actions has slashed the agency’s workforce and choked off funding for biomedical research. By STAT’s own analysis, billions of dollars that would normally be flowing out to universities, academic medical centers, and nonprofit research organizations have either been staunched or clawed back. Harder to wrap one’s mind around is the human toll of all these cuts — the thousands of personal tragedies playing out across the country, far beyond the NIH’s Maryland campus — as labs go dark and careers evaporate and clinical trials for new medicines lag. That trauma looks like a young scientist suddenly worried about paying rent, a researcher halting her study of maternal mortality, a lung disease specialist forced out of his dream job by his own conscience, a cancer patient facing a treatment delay, a university administrator trying to hold it all together.

NOTUS: DOGE Is On a Tear at HHS. Even Insiders Are Struggling to Keep Up. DOGE has cut the Department of Health and Human Services so aggressively that even the department’s secretary has had trouble keeping up. “I’m not familiar with those cuts,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said last week in a CBS interview when pressed about the billions of dollars promised to state health agencies that were rescinded by his agency and touted by DOGE as “savings.” Kennedy also demurred on a question about how, exactly, DOGE decides which programs are worthy of being cut. “They have a very, very sophisticated group of people, and they have very sophisticated systems for detecting fraud, waste and abuse,” Kennedy said. DOGE’s sweeping actions and the health secretary’s professed lack of knowledge about cuts within his own agency showcase just how unilaterally the administration’s largely faceless cost-cutting initiative has been able to act — giving cover to leaders like Kennedy who are able to plead ignorance when pressed about specifics.

New York Times: Trump Budget to Take Ax to ‘Radical’ Safety Net Programs The Trump administration, which has made clear that it aims to slash government spending, is preparing to unveil a budget proposal as soon as next week that includes draconian cuts that would entirely eliminate some federal programs and fray the nation’s social safety net. The proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year would cut billions of dollars from programs that support child care, health research, education, housing assistance, community development and the elderly, according to preliminary documents reviewed by The New York Times. The proposal, which is being finalized by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, also targets longstanding initiatives that have been prized by Democrats and that Republicans view as “woke” or wasteful spending. The early blueprint reflects Mr. Trump’s long-held belief that some federal antipoverty programs are unnecessary or rife with waste, fraud and abuse. And it echoes many of the ideas espoused by his budget director, Russell T. Vought, a key architect of Project 2025 who subscribes to the view that the president has expansive powers to ignore Congress and cancel spending viewed as “woke and weaponized.” He previously endorsed some of the cuts to housing, education and other programs that Mr. Trump is expected to unveil in the coming days.

  • Politico: DOGE slashes disability and aging services The Trump administration has drawn a bright line around Medicare and Social Security, promising Americans that the two programs will remain untouched. But a budget proposal obtained by POLITICO shows a different kind of rollback underway — one that could impact the lives of millions of older Americans and people with disabilities. The Trump administration is poised to eliminate dozens of federal programs, including protective services for vulnerable seniors, chronic disease self-management education, resource centers for people who have been paralyzed or lost a limb and one that tries to help older people prevent falls. Even a more modest federal initiative aimed at making polling places more accessible would be eliminated under the proposal. All of these programs facing the knife fall under the Administration for Community Living, a component of the Department of Health and Human Services that aims to help older adults and people with disabilities remain in their homes and communities. The whole department is being zeroed out, according to the budget proposal.

NBC: Medical journals complain of ‘harassment’ from Justice Department At least three medical journals have received letters from the U.S. Department of Justice that questioned their editorial practices and standards, prompting several journals to push back and assert their independence.   British medical journal The Lancet, which did not receive one of the letters, published an editorial describing the inquiries as “harassment” and intimidation, adding that U.S. science was being “violently dismembered” by the Trump administration. Last week, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, sent a letter to the CHEST Journal, a scientific journal for chest doctors, implying it was partisan and asking a series of questions about the steps it took to include competing viewpoints and protect the public from misinformation.  The letter drew ire from a First Amendment group and some scientists, who raised concerns that inquiries from law enforcement could chill academic freedom and speech. The letter prompted the journal to post a statement saying its publisher, the American College of Chest Physicians, “supports the journal’s editorial independence.”  This week, the New England Journal of Medicine told NBC News it had received a similar letter from the interim U.S. attorney.

Health Impacts:

Local Impacts: 

Chaotic Firings and Re-Hirings:

Cruel and Destructive Policy Changes:

The FDA Is Being Dismantled – Stalling Drug Development And Leaving Us Vulnerable To Food-Borne Illness

CBS: FDA head falsely claims no scientists laid off, as agency shutters food safety labs  The head of the Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly claimed in recent interviews that no scientists have been laid off at his agency, but one of the scientists in a food safety lab shuttered by the FDA’s cuts says he is either “blatantly lying” or “out of touch.” “There were no layoffs to scientists or food inspectors,” FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary told CNN on Wednesday. Makary previously said in an April 17 interview with Megyn Kelly that there “were not cuts to scientists, or reviewers, or inspectors. Absolutely none.” “That just made me so mad, that he said no scientists were cut,” said one laid-off FDA scientist, a chemist who had worked for the agency for years. Nearly all of the scientists at food safety laboratories run by the FDA in the San Francisco and Chicago areas received layoff notices this month, four laid-off chemists and microbiologists said. The scientists, who were not authorized to speak publicly, spoke on the condition of anonymity.  The San Francisco lab, opened during the first Trump administration, had been ramping up testing of infant formula. Its closure has now reduced the agency’s baby formula testing capacity by a quarter, at a time when Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for stepped up testing, laid-off scientists said.

Reuters: US FDA suspends milk quality tests amid workforce cuts The Food and Drug Administration is suspending a quality control program for testing of fluid milk and other dairy products due to reduced capacity in its food safety and nutrition division, according to an internal email seen by Reuters. The suspension is another disruption to the nation’s food safety programs after the termination and departure of 20,000 employees of the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the FDA, as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to shrink the federal workforce.

Axios: Key FDA drug data goes missing amid DOGE cuts Food and Drug Administration databases that physicians and public health experts rely on for key drug safety and manufacturing information have been neglected due to DOGE-directed layoffs, leaving health professionals flying blind on basic questions about certain drugs they’re prescribing, current and former FDA officials tell Axios. Why it matters: Information gaps that have become a hallmark of the workforce reductions and the sweeping reorganization of federal health agencies under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are putting patient safety at risk, according to agency employees. “It’s really a nightmare,” said a current FDA official who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. “Things that used to function are no longer functioning.”

Stat: With the FDA in turmoil, the ‘revolving door’ with industry is spinning faster Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has railed against what he sees as a “revolving door” between workers at drug companies and the Food and Drug Administration. But his department’s actions now seem to be causing that door to spin ever faster.  Scores of FDA employees are searching for an exit from an agency in turmoil, particularly staff members tasked with reviewing drug applications, according to interviews with former employees and industry recruiters. Many of those joining the exodus were protected from the layoffs that hit the agency earlier this month, but their work environment has become morose, and cuts to other departments are making it more difficult to do their jobs. As many as 600 drug reviewers have recused themselves from approval processes because they’re interviewing with pharma companies, former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimated during an appearance on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” earlier this week. These staff members oversee applications for new medicines and are partially funded through user fees that the FDA collects from drug companies.  “There’s an expectation that there’s going to be a lot of voluntary departures from the agency over the summer,” Gottlieb said.

Additional FDA News: 

RFK Jr. Is An Extreme MAGA Anti-Vaxxer Who’s Breaking His “Assurances” To Key Republicans To Get Confirmed And Mis-Managing HHS

Politico: RFK Jr. isn’t staying in his lane. Trump is thrilled. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is fast becoming the most prominent face of the Trump administration’s domestic agenda, taking on a portfolio well beyond the role of a traditional Health secretary. And the White House is thrilled. Senior aides believe Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” loyalists helped deliver the popular vote for President Donald Trump last November — and that keeping them in the GOP tent will be crucial to ensuring the party holds onto power come the midterms, according to four Trump aides and advisers granted anonymity to discuss internal thinking. That’s why they’re more than happy to let the presidential candidate-turned-top health official exert influence over an expanding array of key policy priorities across the government, even if it ruffles a few feathers among officials in other agencies who feel Kennedy is encroaching on their turf.

Washington Post: Americans unsure what to believe about the measles vaccine, poll shows Most Americans have encountered false claims about the measles vaccine, and many aren’t sure what the truth is, according to a KFF poll released Wednesday. Misconceptions about measles, a highly contagious virus, and its vaccine abound as cases continue rising across the United States, according to the poll. Prominent false claims suggest that there is a link between autism and the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine; that the vaccine is more dangerous than measles itself; and that vitamin A can prevent measles infections. More than half of surveyed adults expressed uncertainty about whether to believe the false statements, which Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has amplified. The proliferation of measles misinformation may have far-reaching implications, said Liz Hamel, director of public opinion and survey research at KFF, a health policy research organization. “When we look at parents, those who believe or lean toward believing one of those false claims, they’re more likely to delay or skip vaccines for their children, compared to other parents,” she said. “There’s a relationship between belief or openness to believing misinformation about measles, and decisions to vaccinate your own children.”

New York Times: Kennedy Declares ‘Sugar Is Poison’ While Announcing Ban on Food Dyes Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. escalated his war against the food industry on Tuesday, declaring that “sugar is poison.” Mr. Kennedy’s comment came during a highly publicized news conference where he also asserted that he has “an understanding” with major food manufacturers to remove petroleum-based food colorings from their products by 2026. No one from the food industry attended the event, and none have publicly agreed to Mr. Kennedy’s demands, although the International Dairy Foods Association has pledged to eliminate artificial colors in milk, cheese and yogurt sold to schools as part of the federal lunch and breakfast programs by the start of the 2026 school year. However, Mr. Kennedy and his advisers said that every major food manufacturer and some fast-food companies have contacted the agency looking for guidance. “Four years from now, we are going to have most of these products off the market, or you will know about them when you go to the grocery store,” Mr. Kennedy said.

  • Bloomberg: Food Industry Says There’s No Agreement With US Health Agency to Cut Dyes The US Department of Health and Human Services said Tuesday it plans to work with food companies to phase out use of many artificial food colorings by 2026, but industry lobbyists say there’s no agreement in place to remove the dyes, according to people familiar with the matter. In its announcement, HHS said it planned to eliminate artificial food dyes by working with companies that rely heavily on them. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his agency and the Food and Drug Administration had an “understanding” with the industry about their removal on a voluntary basis. Yet multiple people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly, said there was no agreement.

Wall Street Journal: FDA Asks Vaccine Maker to Complete New Clinical Trial for Delayed Covid-19 Shot Federal regulators are asking Novavax NVAX 2.47%increase; green up pointing triangle to complete an additional randomized clinical trial on its Covid-19 vaccine after previously delaying approval, people familiar with the matter said, a request that could be so prohibitively expensive the company might not be able to fulfill it.  The Maryland-based company was asked by the Food and Drug Administration to show its vaccine is effective with another randomized study after appointees under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. intervened in the approval process, the people said. The additional step goes beyond what other Covid-19 vaccine makers had to do to win approval, and could be an early sign of new challenges for drugmakers hoping to get approvals. The company’s shot already showed 90% efficacy in a 30,000-person, placebo-controlled trial, and it is already available in the U.S. under an emergency use authorization and has won full approval in Australia, Europe and Japan. A new randomized trial with enough participants to judge the vaccine’s ability to prevent disease could cost tens of millions of dollars, vaccine experts said.

  • Stat: U.S. health officials inject new uncertainty into approval process for Covid boosters Confusion over the Food and Drug Administration’s delay in granting full approval to Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine deepened over the weekend when the agency’s commissioner, Marty Makary, took to social media to defend the FDA’s controversial handling of the company’s submission. In the process, Makary and a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services appeared to raise the specter that, going forward, manufacturers of Covid vaccines might have to generate new effectiveness data before the release of annual updates of their vaccines — a hurdle they would be unlikely to clear to vaccinate people in time to protect them when Covid transmission is occurring.

Other MAHA Activities:

RFK’s Autism Plans Draw Widespread Condemnation And Calls For His Resignation

CBS: RFK Jr.’s autism study to amass medical records of many Americans  The National Institutes of Health is amassing private medical records from a number of federal and commercial databases to give to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new effort to study autism, the NIH’s top official said Monday. The new data will allow external researchers picked for Kennedy’s autism studies to study “comprehensive” patient data with “broad coverage” of the U.S. population for the first time, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said. “The idea of the platform is that the existing data resources are often fragmented and difficult to obtain. The NIH itself will often pay multiple times for the same data resource. Even data resources that are within the federal government are difficult to obtain,” he said in a presentation to the agency’s advisers.  Medication records from pharmacy chains, lab testing and genomics data from patients treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs and Indian Health Service, claims from private insurers and data from smartwatches and fitness trackers will all be linked together, he said.  The NIH is also now in talks with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to broaden agreements governing access to their data, Bhattacharya said.

  • Stat: No new autism registry, HHS says, walking back NIH director’s claim The federal health department is not creating a new registry of Americans with autism, a Department of Health and Human Services official said in a written statement Thursday. Instead, the official said, HHS will launch a $50 million research effort to understand the causes of autism spectrum disorder and improve treatments. The announcement arrives two days after National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya announced the intent to create such a registry at an all staff meeting, kicking off a firestorm of panic and confusion among autism self-advocates and the broader research community. Much of the fear centered around Bhattacharya’s remarks that the government would pull health data from private sources, such as electronic health records maintained by health care providers, pharmacy data, insurance claims and even wearables like smart watches and fitness trackers. While the NIH has dozens of existing registries for diseases and routinely awards grants to study conditions such as autism, the NIH director’s words chilled the community, leaving many people worried, including some who expressed their fears on social media.

NOTUS: Health Leaders Throw Cold Water on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Sweeping Goals and Fast Timelines The Trump administration’s health leaders came before reporters this week in an attempt to show how united they are in advancing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. Instead, they revealed divisions over whether or not that agenda is realistic. The most stark example came over an issue Kennedy has publicly prioritized: autism. National Institutes of Health director Jayanta Bhattacharya contradicted Kennedy’s timeline for determining the causes of autism when speaking to reporters after Tuesday’s event at HHS headquarters. Bhattacharya, who was previously a professor of medicine and health policy at Stanford, said that he would like researchers to “start to put out the preliminary results” within a year. He said such a timeline would constitute a “very rapid study by NIH normal standards.” Kennedy said at a cabinet meeting this month that HHS would uncover the cause of autism much earlier. “By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic, and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures,” he said during the televised meeting. But Bhattacharya said on Tuesday that “it’s hard to guarantee when science will make an advance.” “Nature has its say,” he added.

More fallout from RFK Jr.’s autism plans:

Disastrous, Dangerous Appointments

CBS: Trump’s surgeon general nominee, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, faces scrutiny over credentials President Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. surgeon general, the Fox News contributor and family medicine physician Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, has described herself as a double board-certified physician with a degree from the University of Arkansas School of Medicine — credentials the president touted in his announcement. But those claims about her certification and schooling appear to be misleading.  Nesheiwat actually earned her medical degree from the American University of the Caribbean (AUC) School of Medicine, located in St. Maarten, in the Caribbean, according to records reviewed by CBS News. A spokesperson for the University of Arkansas confirmed to CBS News she completed her residency through its family medicine program in Fayetteville, Arkansas, but did not obtain her medical degree there.  Nesheiwat has not yet come before the U.S. Senate’s health committee for a confirmation hearing, where she is expected to face questions about her credentials.

Public Health Threats

Washington Post: Millions of U.S. measles cases forecast over 25 years if shots decline The United States faces millions of measles cases over the next 25 years if vaccination rates for the disease drop 10 percent, according to new research published Thursday. No change in the current vaccination rate would result in hundreds of thousands of measles cases over the same period, according to a mathematical model produced by a team of Stanford University researchers. “Our country is on a tipping point for measles to once again become a common household disease,” said Nathan Lo, a Stanford physician and author of the study published in the medical journal JAMA.

New York Times: Measles Surge in Southwest Is Now the Largest Single Outbreak Since 2000 The spread of measles in the Southwest now constitutes the largest single outbreak since the United States declared the disease eliminated in 2000, federal scientists told state officials in a meeting on Monday. The New York Times obtained a recording of the meeting. Until now, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had not publicly described the outbreak in such stark terms. More measles cases were reported mostly in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York City and New York State in 2019. But health officials regard those as separate outbreaks, because they were fueled by multiple introductions of the virus by international travelers. C.D.C. officials now view the spread of measles in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico as a single outbreak, Dr. Dan Filardo, who leads the agency’s task force for the measles response, told state health officials at the meeting. “This is the largest outbreak in the U.S. since measles elimination was declared in 2000,” he said. The agency was sending seven additional officials to Texas, epicenter of the escalating crisis, he added.

Bloomberg: Whooping Cough on Track for Worst US Outbreak in 70 Years Whooping cough cases have surged in the US since the beginning of the year, infecting Americans at a faster pace than any time since the mid-1950s as national vaccination rates decline and protection wanes. The bacterial infection also known as pertussis has sickened 8,077 people in the US through April 16, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than double the same period a year ago, when the agency confirmed 3,847 cases, and rivals the 2012 outbreak that was the biggest in half a century. At least four people have died from whooping cough this year, including two infants in Louisiana, an adult in Idaho and a child in South Dakota who was infected with both influenza and pertussis. The rise in cases comes as the US battles a measles outbreak, with 800 confirmed cases in 24 states as of April 18. Doctors point to a decline in vaccination rates nationally for the pickup in infections. Fewer than 93% of kindergartners received routine vaccinations for the 2023-2024 school year, including the diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis shot that protects against whooping cough.

New York Times: They Caught the Flu, and Never Came Home Lauren Caggiano had felt sick for days by the time she tested positive for the flu in an emergency room on a February afternoon. Hours later, she was in the intensive care unit. By 4 in the morning, she was on a ventilator. Ms. Caggiano, a paralegal who lived in Oceanside, Calif., doted on her two dogs and had recently become a grandmother, died two days later. She was 49. “You don’t really think, if you’re in decent health, that’s going to be what gets you,” her son, Brandon Salgado, said. Many people recover from a bout of flu within a few days or a week. But every year, the virus still kills more than 36,000 people across the United States and sends hundreds of thousands to the hospital. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that this flu season has been especially severe. Some of those who died were at greater risk for getting seriously ill because of underlying conditions or their age. Others, like Ms. Caggiano, were otherwise healthy before their infections. Some had not received the flu shot, which reduces but does not eliminate the risk of death. Some were hospitalized for weeks; others felt ill for only days before they died. All of their deaths came as a shock to the people who knew them.

Opinion and Commentary

ashoup
In News

TODAY: Health Care Advocates Discuss the State of Health Care After 100 Days of President Trump

**MEDIA ADVISORY FOR APRIL 28, 2025**

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As we approach the 100th day of President Trump’s second term, health care advocates are breaking down what his administration has done for our nation’s health care system and what Americans can expect in the months ahead. After an election season filled with promises of lowering costs and making America healthier, the first 100 days have failed to deliver and have instead brought chaos and uncertainty to our health care system, making it more difficult and expensive for families and individuals to get the care they need.

On Monday, April 28 at 11:00 am EST, Families USA, Protect Our Care, Justice in Aging and the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative will be available for a virtual media availability to address the consequences of the President’s policies so far that will to restrict health care access and affordability, as well as the absence of a comprehensive plan to repair America’s broken health care system.

The organizations will discuss what these actions mean for consumers’ health and financial security, the future of critical programs like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, and their efforts to advocate for and protect access to affordable, high-quality care.

When:  Monday, April 28, 2025  at 11:00 am EST

Location:  Virtual

Zoom link:  https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83723879536?pwd=Xr2EmZ7PLYHor66aXjDxuPch8fwNAU.1&from=addon

 Speakers:

  • Anthony Wright, Executive Director, Families USA
  • Anne Shoup, Protect Our Care
  • Amber Christ, Managing Director of Health Advocacy, Justice in Aging
  • Mannat Singh, Executive Director, Colorado Consumer Health Initiative

Registration:  To register for this event or if you have any questions, please respond to this email or contact Lisa Holland [email protected], 202-695-5160 (cell).

ashoup
In News

NEW REPORT: Trump, Musk, and RFK Jr.’s Destruction of HHS Will Hurt Millions of Americans

From Cancer Patients and Pregnant Women to Seniors with Alzheimer’s and Kids with Autism – Report Shows Trump’s Dismantling of HHS Isn’t Streamlining Government, It’s Risking Lives

Click here to read the new report.

Washington, D.C. — Protect Our Care is releasing a new report detailing who will be hurt by Donald Trump, RFK Jr., and Elon Musk’s massive cuts and layoffs at HHS. Rather than lowering costs or improving care, Trump and MAGA Republicans are focused on slashing essential health programs to bankroll more tax breaks for the wealthy. The report comes as the administration proposes cutting one-third of HHS’s budget, continues to freeze grant payments, and suspends FDA food safety inspections. Across the Mall, Republicans in Congress continue to pursue devastating cuts to Medicaid. Republicans are waging a full-scale attack on Americans’ health care, and the deadly consequences are only beginning to surface.

These GOP cuts aren’t ‘draining the swamp’ or making government more efficient. They are tearing apart the programs and health care Americans count on and endangering American lives. By slashing HHS, Trump and Musk are targeting women, children, people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, cancer patients, seniors with Alzheimer’s, pregnant women and infants, people of color, and more. Trump and his administration are ripping care and critical research away from the Americans who need it most. They are undermining the safety of our food and water, slashing vital programs that protect kids from lead poisoning or help prevent domestic violence, and eliminating millions of dollars in research and innovation around cancer, diabetes, children’s health, and so much more.

“These cuts are more than just chaotic and uninformed – they are dangerous and deadly,” said Protect Our Care Chair Leslie Dach, Former Senior Counselor to Obama’s HHS Secretary. “Trump and RFK Jr., with the help of Elon Musk, have launched a senseless attack on the programs that keep Americans safe and healthy. These cuts target couples looking for the best IVF care, people with mental health or substance use disorders, low-income children enrolled in Head Start, and every American who’s ever worried about whether their food, drugs, or cosmetics are free of harmful chemicals. And the scary part is that we are only beginning to understand the devastating impacts these unprecedented cuts will have on public health and our health care system.”

Here’s a summary of who will be hurt: 

  • Women: Gutted research funding for women’s health issues and programs around reproductive health, sexual and domestic violence prevention, and maternal health
  • People with disabilities: Cut Meals on Wheels and the agency helping people with disabilities live independently
  • Children: Dismantled offices administering key child care programs and programs around asthma control, lead poisoning prevention, school shootings, and more
  • People fighting cancer and chronic illnesses: Eliminated and delayed critical research and jeopardized critical data
  • Seniors: Halted Alzheimer’s and other research and dissolved the agency responsible for supporting seniors and community living programs
  • People battling addiction and mental health issues: Gutted agencies combating drug overdoses and mental illnesses, regulating tobacco, and working to improve care
  • LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color: Eliminated research on health care disparities and inequity and targeted programs aimed at addressing diseases that disproportionately impact LGBTQ+ individuals and people of color
ashoup
In News

Trump’s War on Health Care: Public Health Watch

“We Are Flying Blind” – RFK Jr.’s Unprecedented Effort To Dismantle America’s Health Care System Continues

Welcome to Public Health Watch, a weekly roundup from Protect Our Care tracking catastrophic activity as part of Donald Trump’s sweeping war on health care. From installing anti-vaccine zealot RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS to empowering Elon Musk to make indiscriminate cuts to our public health infrastructure, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, Donald Trump is endangering the lives of millions of Americans. Protect Our Care’s Public Health Watch will shine a spotlight on the worst of the Trump/RFK/Musk war on vaccines, science and public health and serve as a resource for the press, public and advocacy groups to hold them accountable. 

What’s Happening In Public Health?

Catastrophic Cuts Are Creating Chaos And Endangering Americans’ Health And Scientific Innovation

Politico: RFK Jr. vowed to upend American health care. It’s happening faster than expected. Shortly after Donald Trump picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead his health department, a group of pharmaceutical executives traveled to Mar-a-Lago to personally express their reservations about the man who the president promised would “go wild” on health care. But Trump, confronted with their concerns about his history of anti-vaccine work and lack of government experience, waved the executives off, according to two people briefed on the conversation. Don’t worry about Bobby, he assured them. I’ll keep Kennedy under control. Five months later, federal health officials, industry executives and the public health community say they’re more worried than ever. Kennedy in his first seven weeks atop the Department and Health and Human Services has dramatically reshaped the U.S. health apparatus, eliminating entire agency divisions, abruptly shifting policy priorities and leaving the sprawling department in what six current and former employees described as an unprecedented state of upheaval.

Stat: Inside U.S. health agencies, workers confront chaos and questions as operations come unglued Beyond the thousands of workers laid off and programs shuttered, the Trump administration’s remaking of the Department of Health and Human Services — in a matter of weeks — is now sparking basic questions about how parts of the agency and those it oversees can continue to function. The chaos that NIH investigators are facing — which echoes reports seeping out of other HHS agencies under health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. —  suggests a major reckoning playing out inside the heart of the federal government’s health infrastructure. Collectively, when compounded across the $1.8 trillion enterprise, it points to a fundamental reshaping of how the department operates, and of what science and public health will look like in this country going forward. In more than two dozen interviews with employees across HHS and its subagencies, staff described grappling with challenges that they say are more dire than a mere downsizing of the workforce might suggest. Many said they were unsure how long before the fraying of certain initiatives could turn fatal, risking programs that operate largely unseen by the public but that they insist protect lives.

Politico: ‘We are flying blind’: RFK Jr.’s cuts halt data collection on abortion, cancer, HIV and more The federal teams that count public health problems are disappearing — putting efforts to solve those problems in jeopardy. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purge of tens of thousands of federal workers has halted efforts to collect data on everything from cancer rates in firefighters to mother-to-baby transmission of HIV and syphilis to outbreaks of drug-resistant gonorrhea to cases of carbon monoxide poisoning. The cuts threaten to obscure the severity of pressing health threats and whether they’re getting better or worse, leaving officials clueless on how to respond. They could also make it difficult, if not impossible, to assess the impact of the administration’s spending and policies. Both outside experts and impacted employees argue the layoffs will cost the government more money in the long run by eliminating information on whether programs are effective or wasteful, and by allowing preventable problems to fester.

Associated Press: CDC officials plan for the agency’s splintering, but questions remain A top Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official told staff this week to start planning for the agency’s splintering. Several parts of CDC — mostly those devoted to health threats that aren’t infectious — are being spun off into the soon-to-be-created Administration for a Healthy America, the agency official told senior leaders in calls and meetings. The directive came from Dr. Debra Houry, the agency’s chief medical officer, according to three CDC officials who were in attendance. They declined to be identified because they weren’t authorized to talk about the plans and fear being fired if they were identified. Asked to comment, Houry referred The Associated Press to CDC media relations representatives. CDC spokesperson Jason McDonald acknowledged the agency is planning for possible changes but that “none of the items discussed at the meeting have been finalized, and are subject to change.”

CBS: RFK Jr. says he’s “not familiar” with all health program cuts in exclusive interview Since his appointment in February, Kennedy has facilitated sweeping cuts affecting a wide range of programs and employees. When asked by LaPook if he personally approved the more than $11 billion proposed in cuts to local and state programs that address infectious disease, mental health, addiction and childhood vaccination, Kennedy said, “No I’m not familiar with those cuts. We’d have to go … the cuts were mainly DEI cuts, which the president ordered.” LaPook provided Kennedy with an example of a $750,000 University of Michigan grant focused on adolescent diabetes, which was eliminated. “I didn’t know that, and that’s something that we’ll look at,” Kennedy said. He added that he could not speak to if it should be considered a DOGE cut. “I just, I’m not familiar with that particular study. But there’s a number of studies that were cut that came to our attention and that did not deserve to be cut, and we reinstated them. Our purpose is not to reduce any level of scientific research that’s important.”

  • Politico: What HHS told House staff about RFK Jr.’s overhaul of the agency Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is expected to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on his agency’s budget in the coming weeks, but HHS officials told committee staffers that he might not be able to speak on his department’s sweeping overhaul, a Democratic aide for the panel said Friday. According to the aide, granted anonymity to share details of a private meeting, the agency officials argued in a closed-door briefing that because of the sweeping reduction in force — which aims to cut 10,000 of the department’s workers — Kennedy won’t be able to discuss the matter for 60 days. Those officials cited U.S. Office of Personnel Management statutes.
  • Stat: RFK Jr.’s Senate hearing on health department cuts to be delayed for weeks Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will likely delay his appearance before the Senate’s health committee by several weeks, even as he makes historic changes to the Department of Health and Human Services and contends with a surging measles outbreak. Senate health committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and ranking member Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) publicly asked the secretary to appear on April 10. They made the request on April 1, the same day that Kennedy executed major cuts to the federal health workforce. Kennedy’s team confirmed receipt of the request but did not confirm attendance, according to committee staff. Typically, hearings have to be scheduled at least seven days in advance, though that requirement can be waived in certain cases. After this week, the Senate is taking a two-week break and is due to return April 28.  Asked if Kennedy had a date set to appear before the committee, an HHS spokesperson declined to comment. A Cassidy spokesperson said Monday there was no update on the timing of the hearing but previously said it’s “not uncommon for the proposed date to be negotiated to accommodate schedules.”

New York Times: As Kennedy Champions Chronic Disease Prevention, Key Research Is Cut Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spoken of an “existential threat” that he said can destroy the nation. “We have the highest chronic disease burden of any country in the world,” Mr. Kennedy said at a hearing in January before the Senate confirmed him as the secretary of Health and Human Services. And on Monday he is starting a tour in the Southwest to promote a program to combat chronic illness, emphasizing nutrition and lifestyle. But since Mr. Kennedy assumed his post, key grants and contracts that directly address these diseases, including obesity, diabetes and dementia, which experts agree are among the nation’s leading health problems, are being eliminated. These programs range in scale and expense. Researchers warn that their demise could mean lost opportunities to address an aspect of public health that Mr. Kennedy has said is his priority. “This is a huge mistake,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine.

  • Associated Press: RFK Jr. wants to target chronic disease in US tribes. A key program to do that was gutted Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent time in tribal communities in Arizona and New Mexico this week highlighting ways they are trying to prevent chronic disease among Native Americans and Alaska Natives, something he has said is one of his top priorities. But Kennedy didn’t appear to publicly address a Native health program using traditional medicine and foods to tackle disproportionate rates of conditions like diabetes and liver disease. The program, called Healthy Tribes, was gutted in this month’s federal health layoffs. Some Native leaders say they are having trouble grasping the dissonance between Kennedy’s words and his actions. With little information, they wonder if Healthy Tribes is part of the Trump administration’s push to end diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. There also is confusion about what and who is left at the 11-year-old program, which was part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, under Kennedy’s agency, and doled out $32.5 million a year.

Health Impacts:

Local Impacts: 

Chaotic Firings and Re-Hirings:

Cruel and Destructive Policy Changes:

RFK Jr. Is An Extreme MAGA Anti-Vaxxer Who’s Breaking His “Assurances” To Key Republicans To Get Confirmed And Mis-Managing HHS 

New York Times: The Many Ways Kennedy Is Already Undermining Vaccines During his Senate confirmation hearings to be health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presented himself as a supporter of vaccines. But in office, he and the agencies he leads have taken far-reaching, sometimes subtle steps to undermine confidence in vaccine efficacy and safety. The National Institutes of Health halted funding for researchers who study vaccine hesitancy and hoped to find ways to overcome it. It also canceled programs intended to discover new vaccines to prevent future pandemics. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shelved an advertising campaign for the flu shot. Mr. Kennedy has said inaccurately that the scientists who advise the C.D.C. on vaccines have “severe, severe conflicts of interest” in promoting the products and cannot be trusted. The Health and Human Services Department  cut billions of dollars to state health agencies, including funds needed to modernize state programs for childhood immunization. Mr. Kennedy said in a televised interview on Wednesday that he was unaware of this widely reported development. The Food and Drug Administration canceled an open meeting on flu vaccines with scientific advisers, later holding it behind closed doors. A top official paused the agency’s review of Novavax’s Covid vaccine. In a televised interview last week, Mr. Kennedy said falsely that similarly created vaccines don’t work against respiratory viruses. Some scientists said they saw a pattern: an effort to erode support for routine vaccination, and for the scientists who have long held it up as a public health goal

Associated Press: RFK Jr. says HHS will determine the cause of autism by September The nation’s top health agency will undertake a “massive testing and research effort” to determine the cause of autism, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced. Kennedy, a longtime vaccine critic who has pushed a discredited theory that routine childhood shots cause the developmental disability, said Thursday that the effort will be completed by September and involve hundreds of scientists. He shared the plans with President Donald Trump during a televised Cabinet meeting. Trump suggested that vaccines could be to blame for autism rates, although decades of research have concluded there is no link between the two. “There’s got to be something artificial out there that’s doing this,” Trump told Kennedy. “If you can come up with that answer, where you stop taking something, eating something, or maybe it’s a shot. But something’s causing it.”

Washington Post: RFK Jr.: If you eat doughnuts or smoke, should society pay for your health care? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked whether society should pay for the health care of Americans who eat doughnuts or smoke when they know those habits can contribute to poor health outcomes. “If you’re smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, should you expect society to pay when you get sick?” the nation’s top health official asked in an interview released Wednesday with CBS News chief medical correspondent, physician Jon LaPook. Kennedy went on to say that it is an American’s choice to “eat doughnuts all day” or drink sodas, and he promised not to take those choices away. “But in terms of, should you then expect society to care for you when you predictably get very sick at the same level as somebody who was born with a congenital illness?” he asked. “The best answer to that is to realign our incentives so that the economic incentives, the individuals and the industry align with the public health outcomes that we desire.”

Politico: RFK Jr. says Deep State ‘is real,’ called FDA employees ‘sock puppet’ of industry HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s visit to the FDA Friday was supposed to introduce him as a trusted leader to agency employees. It did anything but. Over the course of 40 minutes, Kennedy, in largely off-the-cuff remarks, asserted that the “Deep State” is real, referenced past CIA experiments on human mind control and accused the employees he was speaking to of becoming a “sock puppet” of the industries they regulate.

Stat: Health secretary RFK Jr. declares certain vaccines have ‘never worked,’ flummoxing scientists Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has expressed another unorthodox view on vaccines, with the long-time vaccine critic declaring that vaccines for respiratory bugs that target a sole part of the pathogen they are meant to protect against do not work. The claim was dismissed as erroneous by vaccine experts, who were befuddled by the secretary’s theory, espoused during an interview with CBS News.  Kennedy made the claim in explaining a controversial recent decision by political appointees at the Food and Drug Administration to delay granting a full license to Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine, which is still given under an emergency use authorization or EUA.  “It is a single antigen vaccine. And for respiratory illnesses, the single antigen vaccines have never worked,” Kennedy said when asked by CBS’s chief medical correspondent, Jonathan LaPook, why the decision was delayed.

  • Stat: RFK Jr. suggests some vaccines are risky or ineffective, downplays measles threat Facing a growing outbreak of measles that could test his leadership, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week is sowing doubt about the safety and efficacy of some vaccines — beyond the measles shot — and arguing the government shouldn’t mandate their use. He also raised questions about what killed an 8-year-old girl whose death was attributed to measles by health officials, his latest remarks that downplay the threat of the virus. In an interview with CBS News that aired Wednesday, the nation’s top health official said that “people should get the measles vaccine,” a more direct assertion than has been typical from Kennedy, who has a long history of questioning vaccine safety.  At the same time, however, he appeared to minimize the threat of a growing outbreak centered in Texas and New Mexico and sent mixed signals about vaccines, saying many vaccines “aren’t safety tested.” He went on to argue they’re not tested against placebo groups or only over short periods of time. Public health officials across independent bodies have repeatedly approved vaccines based on their safety and efficacy evidence, including placebo-controlled trials and long-term studies. “When I say they’re not safety tested, what I mean is that they’re not adequately [tested],” he said.

The Atlantic: What RFK Jr. Told Grieving Texas Families About the Measles Vaccine On Sunday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. met with the families of two girls who had died from measles in West Texas—and raised doubts about the safety of vaccines. “He said, ‘You don’t know what’s in the vaccine anymore,’” Peter Hildebrand, whose 8-year-old daughter, Daisy’s, funeral had been held just hours earlier, told me. “I actually asked him about it.” The secretary of Health and Human Services had traveled to the small, remote city of Seminole, where 1,000 mourners for Daisy filled the wooden pews of an unmarked Mennonite church. After the service, coffee and homemade bread were served at a traditional gathering known as a faspa. Kennedy was there, he wrote on X that afternoon, to “console the families and to be with the community in their moment of grief.” The slow-brewing crisis, in which more than 600 people have been infected with measles and three have died—America’s first deaths from the disease in a decade—has left Kennedy in an awkward position. For many years, he has been the country’s most prominent anti-vaccine activist. Americans “have been misled by the pharmaceutical industry and their captured government agency allies into believing that measles is a deadly disease and that measles vaccines are necessary, safe, and effective,” he wrote in a foreword to a 2021 book. Since taking office, though, he has moderated his tone, at times endorsing the shots’ importance to public health. In his public post from Seminole, Kennedy did so once again, describing his department’s efforts to supply Texas pharmacies and clinics with “needed MMR vaccines,” which he called “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles.” Yet there’s ample reason to believe that Kennedy hasn’t really changed his views: “I have worked with Bobby for many years, and I can confidently say that he has a heart that is incapable of compromise,” Del Bigtree, the communications director for Kennedy’s independent presidential campaign, said on X, in an effort to reassure some angry and confused supporters. “He is at a poker table with the slyest serpents in the world,” he added; “we should not ask him to show his cards.” (Bigtree also called the MMR vaccine “one of the most effective ways to cause autism,” despite the fact that study after study has disproved the link.) Indeed, when I spoke with Hildebrand by phone on Monday, I learned that Kennedy was questioning vaccines behind the scenes, even in the midst of his condolence trip to Texas.

  • The Guardian: RFK Jr stayed silent on vaccine, says father of child who died from measles A Texas man who buried his eight-year-old daughter on Sunday after the unvaccinated child died with measles says Robert F Kennedy Jr “never said anything” about the vaccine against the illness or its proven efficacy while visiting the girl’s family and community for her funeral. “He did not say that the vaccine was effective,” Pete Hildebrand, the father of Daisy Hildebrand, said in reference to Kennedy during a brief interview on Monday. “I had supper with the guy … and he never said anything about that.”

Bloomberg: RFK Jr.’s Inconsistent Measles Messages Alarm Health Officials Health officials across the US are increasingly concerned that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., head of the federal health department, is sowing confusion about the effectiveness of the measles vaccine amid an outbreak that has left two unvaccinated children in Texas dead. On Sunday, in a post on X disclosing the latest death, Kennedy wrote that “the most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine,” marking his clearest endorsement of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to date. Hours later, Kennedy posted photos with two Texas doctors he claimed had “healed” about 300 children with measles by using a steroid treatment and an antibiotic. Neither has proved to treat measles, which is a virus and thus not susceptible to antibiotics. To public health experts, such statements from the secretary of Health and Human Services risk misleading people into thinking unproven treatments are a viable alternative to the measles vaccine, which is more than 90% effective at preventing infection.

  • NBC: Kennedy draws from misinformation playbook by touting an inhaled steroid to treat measles The measles outbreak in West Texas has reignited familiar anti-vaccine tactics: claiming there are readily available treatments for the disease while sowing doubt in the safety of vaccines.  Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday touted two particular medications that have not been shown to work as first-line treatments for measles: the steroid budesonide and the antibiotic clarithromycin. Although experts say there are no specific treatments proven to help people recover faster from measles, Kennedy claimed on X that the medications had been instrumental in treating around 300 children in Texas, and told Fox News that doctors prescribing them had seen “very, very good results.” Kennedy has been sharply criticized by medical experts for weeks for spreading misinformation about the measles vaccine and failing to encourage parents to vaccinate their children.
  • Washington Post: Trump has faced measles before. The difference this time is RFK Jr. Six years ago, as measles outbreaks cropped up across the country, President Donald Trump was asked what parents should do. “They have to get the shots,” he said. “The vaccinations are so important.” On Sunday, Trump was asked about the growing measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico. “It’s so far a fairly small number of people,” he said, though the outbreaks were similar in size at the time of both interviews. “This is not something new.” Two children have died of measles-related complications, and a third death has been linked to the infection so far this year. No one died in the 2019 outbreaks. Public health experts and former officials are bemoaning the current lack of action, noting the clear difference between the government’s response then and now. With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary and increasing public hesitancy over vaccines, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been muzzled, messaging has been muddled, and public health funding has been slashed.

CBS: RFK Jr. calls for end of fluoride in water, after Utah ban Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called Monday for the end of community water fluoridation, praising Utah’s move to ban the addition of fluoride to the water supply. “It makes no sense to have it in our water supply. And I’m very, very proud of this state for being the first state to ban it. And I hope many more will come,” Kennedy told reporters in Utah. It comes as the Environmental Protection Agency says it has now launched a new review of fluoride’s health effects, working with Kennedy’s department as it weighs whether to tighten federal restrictions on its addition to drinking water.  Kennedy will also be reconvening his department’s Community Preventive Services Task Force to make a new recommendation on water fluoridation, an HHS official said. The federal task force previously recommended water fluoridation after a review in 2013, citing “strong evidence” of its public health benefits to reduce cavities outweighing its costs.

  • Axios: EPA “prepared to act” on RFK’s request to remove fluoride from drinking water The Trump administration is formally taking on fluoride in drinking water, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy planning to tell the CDC to end its longtime recommendation for the practice. EPA head Lee Zeldin also said his agency is “ready to act. Why it matters: Public health and dental experts have warned ending the addition of fluoride to drinking water will harm children’s teeth. Driving the news: Zeldin and Kennedy joined Utah lawmakers in a Monday media event to praise the state’s first-in-the-nation ban on fluoride in public water systems. Kennedy later told the AP he planned to assemble a task force to examine the mineral in drinking water and tell the CDC to stop recommending it.

Associated Press: Ex-official says he was forced out of FDA after trying to protect vaccine safety data from RFK Jr. Shortly before he was forced to resign, the nation’s top vaccine regulator says he refused to grant Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s team unrestricted access to a tightly held vaccine safety database, fearing that the information might be manipulated or even deleted. In an interview with The Associated Press, former Food and Drug Administration vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks discussed his efforts to “make nice” with Kennedy and address his longstanding concerns about vaccine safety, including by developing a “vaccine transparency action plan.” Marks agreed to give Kennedy’s associates the ability to read thousands of reports of potential vaccine-related issues sent to the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS. But he would not allow them to directly edit the data. “Why wouldn’t we? Because frankly we don’t trust (them),” he said, using a profanity. “They’d write over it or erase the whole database.”

Other MAHA Activities:

Court Battles

Stat: HHS firings could face legal challenges over inaccuracies, process used to make cuts A week after widespread cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services, many workers are left wondering: Was that legal? Some lawyers and labor experts say errors in termination notices and the swift speed and scale of the firings raise legal questions.  The reduction-in-force, or RIF, brought the toll at HHS to 20,000 workers, according to government estimates. Some agencies, like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are believed to have lost nearly one-fifth of their workforce, impeding basic functions.  Lawyers and others who have watched the RIFs unfold say it’s not clear if  government officials followed the specific rules and processes required by law. A few key issues raise their eyebrows: The kinds of workers who were cut, the way the government drew the boundaries, and the drama unfolding at a critical appeals board.  Workers across HHS have reported that whole offices and programs were slashed, forcing out both newer employees and some with decades of experience. That is unconventional, experts told STAT.  Typically in a RIF, the government first draws a boundary around a certain function or program that it wants to make leaner. Then, officials must make what’s called a retention register. This list, which ranks workers by many factors — including seniority, tenure, veteran status, and job performance — is used to rank personnel.

Disastrous, Dangerous Appointments

Wired: Dr. Oz Pushed for AI Health Care in First Medicare Agency Town Hall Dr. Mehmet Oz, the new administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), spent much of his first all-staff meeting on Monday promoting the use of artificial intelligence at the agency and praising Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again Initiative,” sources tell WIRED. During the meeting, Oz discussed possibly prioritizing AI avatars over frontline health care workers. Oz claimed that if a patient went to a doctor for a diabetes diagnosis, it would be $100 per hour, while an appointment with an AI avatar would cost considerably less, at just $2 an hour. Oz also claimed that patients have rated the care they’ve received from an AI avatar as equal to or better than a human doctor. (Research suggests patients are actually more skeptical of medical advice given by AI.) Because of technologies like machine learning and AI, Oz claimed, it is now possible to scale “good ideas” in an affordable and fast way.

Washington Post: Trump health nominee called for ‘corrective care’ for trans youth President Donald Trump’s pick for a top health post has called for transgender youth to undergo “corrective care” instead of transitioning and has repeated conspiracy theories about the covid-19 pandemic, according to a Washington Post review of his podcast and radio appearances. Brian Christine, a 61-year-old Alabama urologist, would succeed former U.S. assistant secretary for health Rachel Levine, who made history during the Biden administration when she became the highest ranking openly transgender federal government official.

Public Health Threats

CBS: Weekly measles cases top 90 in U.S. for first time in years The number of measles cases reported in the U.S. in a single week has topped 90 for the first time since a record wave in 2019, according to figures published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ninety-one cases of measles were reported with rashes that began the week of March 23, with Arkansas, Hawaii and Indiana joining the list of two dozen states with confirmed measles cases. For the week of March 30, 81 cases were reported, and another 21 cases were reported for the following week. But those figures are expected to rise as more cases are confirmed. So far this year, at least 712 measles cases have been confirmed in the U.S. — the second-highest number of cases reported in a single year since the 1990s. Nearly 30,000 measles cases were reported in 1990, largely due to gaps in vaccination. In 2019, there were 1,274 confirmed measles cases.

Associated Press: Measles exploded in Texas after stagnant vaccine funding. New cuts threaten the same across the US The measles outbreak in West Texas didn’t happen just by chance. The easily preventable disease, declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, ripped through communities sprawling across more than 20 Texas counties in part because health departments were starved of the funding needed to run vaccine programs, officials say. “We haven’t had a strong immunization program that can really do a lot of boots-on-the-ground work for years,” said Katherine Wells, the health director in Lubbock, a 90-minute drive from the outbreak’s epicenter. Immunization programs nationwide have been left brittle by years of stagnant funding by federal, state and local governments. In Texas and elsewhere, this helped set the stage for the measles outbreak and fueled its spread. Now cuts to federal funding threaten efforts to prevent more cases and outbreaks.

  • CBS: Extra measles vaccine shot recommended for some travelers to Texas, other areas with outbreaks, CDC says  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is now backing an additional measles vaccine shot for some travelers within the United States, multiple health officials tell CBS News, in response to record outbreaks of the highly contagious virus this year.  In a letter shared with health departments on April 8, the CDC said it would now be recommending that visitors to areas affected by measles outbreaks within the United States follow stepped up vaccination guidance issued by local authorities. Most adults still do not need an additional dose of the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, the CDC says. But for “people going to or living in areas in the United States with ongoing community-wide measles transmission,” the CDC says doctors should “reassess need” for vaccination.
  • Texas Tribune: Push for Texas to weaken vaccine mandates persists as measles surge As measles tears through West Texas — infecting hundreds, hospitalizing dozens and claiming the lives of two children — some lawmakers in Austin are pushing bills to roll back vaccine requirements and expand access to exemptions under the banner of “choice.” Measles, a highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated from the U.S. in 2000, has swept through West Texas communities with lower-than-average vaccination rates, turning Texas into the epicenter of a possible national epidemic with 505 cases identified since late January, including 57 hospitalizations and two deaths. Two shots of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, which has been administered for decades, is the safest and most effective way to build immunity to the virus. Still, Texas lawmakers have introduced bills to weaken vaccine mandates and make it easier for parents to obtain exemptions for their children — and there’s little indication that the state’s worst outbreak in three decades has changed their thinking.

ProPublica: Why You Should Also Worry About Whooping Cough Amid Measles Outbreak In the past six months, two babies in Louisiana have died of pertussis, the disease commonly known as whooping cough. Washington state recently announced its first confirmed death from pertussis in more than a decade. Idaho and South Dakota each reported a death this year, and Oregon last year reported two as well as its highest number of cases since 1950. While much of the country is focused on the spiraling measles outbreak concentrated in the small, dusty towns of West Texas, cases of pertussis have skyrocketed by more than 1,500% nationwide since hitting a recent low in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Deaths tied to the disease are also up, hitting 10 last year, compared with about two to four in previous years. Cases are on track to exceed that total this year. Doctors, researchers and public health experts warn that the measles outbreak, which has grown to more than 600 cases, may just be the beginning. They say outbreaks of preventable diseases could get much worse with falling vaccination rates and the Trump administration slashing spending on the country’s public health infrastructure. National rates for four major vaccines, which had held relatively steady in the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, have fallen significantly since, according to a ProPublica analysis of the most recent federal kindergarten vaccination data. Not only have vaccination rates for measles, mumps and rubella fallen, but federal data shows that so have those for pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus, hepatitis B and polio.

ABC: Trump’s Immigration Tactics Obstruct Efforts To Avert Bird Flu Pandemic, Researchers Say Aggressive deportation tactics have terrorized farmworkers at the center of the nation’s bird flu strategy, public health workers say. Dairy and poultry workers have accounted for most cases of the bird flu in the U.S. — and preventing and detecting cases among them is key to averting a pandemic. But public health specialists say they’re struggling to reach farmworkers because many are terrified to talk with strangers or to leave home. “People are very scared to go out, even to get groceries,” said Rosa Yanez, an outreach worker at Strangers No Longer, a Detroit-based Catholic organization that supports immigrants and refugees in Michigan with legal and health problems, including the bird flu. “People are worried about losing their kids, or about their kids losing their parents.” “I used to tell people about the bird flu, and workers were happy to have that information,” Yanez said. “But now people just want to know their rights.”

Reuters: U.S. fentanyl deaths have been plunging. Enter Trump Federal spending cuts instigated by the White House threaten to reverse a steep decline in American overdose deaths and are jeopardizing other gains in the battle against synthetic opioids, people on the front lines of the anti-narcotics fight say. Government drug researchers have been sacked. One of the nation’s premier narcotics testing labs has furloughed chemists who test the potency of illicit drugs. A Pennsylvania outreach center that distributed thousands of doses of lifesaving overdose-reversal medication has closed its doors. An Illinois nonprofit that works to reduce overdose deaths in communities of color is slated to lose grants worth 60% of its budget. The office of federal workers who conduct the nation’s only annual survey on drug use has been gutted. To piece together how the Trump administration’s actions could affect the nation’s overdose crisis, Reuters spoke with more than three dozen current and former U.S. health officials, public health experts, community-level harm reduction advocates and recently fired federal workers. Their warning was stark: Layoffs and funding cuts are dismantling the carefully constructed health infrastructure that drove the number of overdose deaths down by tens of thousands last year.

Bloomberg: Idaho Governor Approves Ban on School, Business Vaccine Mandates Idaho will soon prohibit vaccine and other medical intervention requirements for employees and students under a law set to take effect this summer. The ban is part of legislation (SB 1210) Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) quietly signed into law April 4 stating that entities in the state may not require a “medical procedure, treatment, device, drug, injection, medication, or medical action” as a condition for employment or school attendance. 

Public Health Threats Around The World:

Opinion and Commentary

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In News

Trump’s War on Health Care: Public Health Watch

Welcome to Public Health Watch, a weekly roundup from Protect Our Care tracking catastrophic activity as part of Donald Trump’s sweeping war on health care. From installing anti-vaccine zealot RFK Jr. as Secretary of HHS to empowering Elon Musk to make indiscriminate cuts to our public health infrastructure, including the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, Donald Trump is endangering the lives of millions of Americans. Protect Our Care’s Public Health Watch will shine a spotlight on the worst of the Trump/RFK/Musk war on vaccines, science and public health and serve as a resource for the press, public and advocacy groups to hold them accountable. 

What’s Happening In Public Health?

Catastrophic Cuts Are Creating Chaos And Endangering Americans’ Health And Scientific Innovation

Washington Post: NIH to terminate or limit grants related to vaccine hesitancy and uptake The National Institutes of Health will cancel or cut back dozens of grants for research on why some people are reluctant to be vaccinated and how to increase acceptance of vaccines, according to an internal email obtained by The Washington Post on Monday. The email, titled “required terminations — 3/10/25,” shows that on Monday morning, the agency “received a new list … of awards that need to be terminated, today. It has been determined they do not align with NIH funding priorities related to vaccine hesitancy and/or uptake.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the new secretary of NIH’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, has disparaged vaccines for years. He gained national notoriety over the past two decades by promoting misinformation about vaccines and a conjectured link to autism, drawing widespread condemnation from the scientific community. It is unclear if Kennedy had a role, directly or indirectly, in the move to cancel these grants. But his ascendancy to HHS leadership has caused a stir in the research community. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, another part of HHS, was asked by the Trump administration to launch a study into a possible connection between vaccines and autism, despite repeated research that shows no link between the two.

Politico: HHS braces for a reorganization The Trump administration is readying to slash the Department of Health and Human Services workforce again, according to seven people familiar with the plans who were granted anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the changes. The announcement could come soon, three of the people said. HHS employees have braced for changes after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took over as health secretary in early February. In addition to Kennedy’s goals, the Trump administration has tasked him with downsizing key agencies and overhauling their policy priorities. As part of that, HHS agencies were asked to submit budgetary plans, including workforce reductions. Discussions of a reorganization come as the courts are pushing back on Trump’s initial attempts to shrink the federal government. On Thursday, federal district court Judge William Alsup in San Francisco ordered agencies to immediately rehire the tens of thousands of probationary employees fired in February under the Department of Government Efficiency initiative. It’s unclear whether Alsup’s decision would dissuade the administration, which is likely to appeal the decision, from making further cuts. Cuts are expected agency wide, according to the people. More specifically, job cuts could impact staff working with the assistant secretary for technology policy and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, according to four of the people, as well as the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Health Resources and Services Administration, and the Administration for Children and Families, three of the people said.

  • Stat: At NIH, ‘everyone is on edge’ as they brace for deep cuts and more centralized control With the National Institutes of Health facing deep workforce cuts and little information from agency leadership about how those cuts will be made, scientists, administrators, and other employees at the nation’s premier funder of biomedical research are reeling, afraid and confused.  “Nobody feels like their job is safe. Everyone is on edge,” said Kim Hasenkrug, an NIH scientist emeritus with knowledge of ongoing activities at Rocky Mountain Laboratories. “They’re trying to hide these numbers. Even the top people can’t keep track because they’re hiring and firing so much. Direct supervisors of those who were terminated didn’t even know that it was happening.” The pending cuts add to what has already been two months of stress, uncertainty, shifting policies around funding, communications and travel, firings and, in some cases, rehirings — all before President Trump’s nominee for NIH commissioner, Jay Bhattacharya, has been confirmed by the Senate.

New York Times: Federal Agency Dedicated to Mental Illness and Addiction Faces Huge Cuts Every day, Dora Dantzler-Wright and her colleagues distribute overdose reversal drugs on the streets of Chicago. They hold training sessions on using them and help people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction return to their jobs and families. They work closely with the federal government through an agency that monitors their productivity, connects them with other like-minded groups and dispenses critical funds that keep their work going. But over the last few weeks, Ms. Wright’s phone calls and emails to Washington have gone unanswered. Federal advisers from the agency’s local office — who supervise her group, the Chicago Recovering Communities Coalition, as well as addiction programs throughout six Midwestern states and 34 tribes — are gone. “We just continue to do the work without any updates from the feds at all,” Ms. Wright said. “But we’re lost.” By the end of this week, the staff of the agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, could be cut by 50 percent, according to senior staff members at the agency and congressional aides who attended briefings by Trump officials. With just under 900 employees and a budget of $7.2 billion for large state grants and individual nonprofits that address addiction and mental illness, SAMHSA (pronounced SAM-sah) is relatively small. But it addresses two of the nation’s most urgent health problems and has generally had bipartisan support.

  • Stat: ‘Deliberate trauma’: SAMHSA employees detail a federal agency in shambles The new administration’s decision to fire a tenth of the workers at the federal government agency that oversees mental and behavioral health will imperil efforts to curb suicides and drug overdose deaths, according to current and former employees.  Roughly 100 employees of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration were let go according to insiders’ estimates. That’s more than 10% of the agency’s workforce, the 2025 fiscal report shows. The stories from former and current workers, who spoke with STAT on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation, mirror similar news of chaos and confusion spilling out of other health agencies, as the Trump administration laid off probationary employees, mostly without notice and often under false allegations of poor performance. The actions, one employee said, were causing “deliberate trauma.”

HuffPost: Trump Administration Shutting Down HHS Legal Offices That Help Fight Fraud The Trump administration plans to shut down a half dozen regional offices at the Department of Health and Human Services that work on everything from violations of nursing home safety standards to fraudulent hospital billing. The regional offices are part of the Office of General Counsel, whose attorneys are basically the in-house lawyers for HHS. They advise the massive agency on how to write, publicize and enforce standards for a variety of federal health programs ― and what to do when a person, organization or business may be violating those standards.

Mother Jones: ‘Health Security Is At Risk’: Inside the Purge of HHS I spoke with five HHS workers over the past two days who are eligible for the buyouts, three of whom said they plan to try to take it. Two others said they will stay in their jobs. Each one characterizes the choice as a daunting one: Leave and lose income and abandon critical work, or stay and try to continue to make a difference in public health as officials at the highest levels of government seem hellbent on undermining them and imposing burdensome working conditions. “Somebody has to stay to help clean up the mess that they’re most likely going to make,” a public health advisor on infectious diseases at the CDC told me. “If you want to get rid of me, you’re basically going to drag me kicking and screaming out of here.”

ProPublica: National Cancer Institute Employees Can’t Publish Information on These Topics Without Special Approval Employees at the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, received internal guidance last week to flag manuscripts, presentations or other communications for scrutiny if they addressed “controversial, high profile, or sensitive” topics. Among the 23 hot-button issues, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica: vaccines, fluoride, peanut allergies, autism. While it’s not uncommon for the cancer institute to outline a couple of administration priorities, the scope and scale of the list is unprecedented and highly unusual, said six employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. All materials must be reviewed by an institute “clearance team,” according to the records, and could be examined by officials at the NIH or its umbrella agency, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Staffers and experts worried that the directive would delay or halt the publication of research. “This is micromanagement at the highest level,” said Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association. The list touches on the personal priorities of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine activist who has repeatedly promoted medical conspiracy theories and false claims.

Stat:  Former NIH director Francis Collins, once beloved in Washington, now worries for his safety there As Francis Collins, longtime director of the National Institutes of Health, took to the steps below the Lincoln Memorial on Friday for a sound check before speaking at the Stand Up for Science rally, he was confronted by an agitated protester who warned, “You’re going to prison.” The incident was witnessed by a reporter from STAT, and the man afterward identified himself only as “Jeff” and said he was there to protest Collins’ oversight of NIH, and specifically the agency’s funding of gain-of-function research at a lab in Wuhan, China, where some believe the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have originated. “He’s an indicted felon, he lied before Congress,’’ Jeff, baselessly, told the reporter. The confrontation was the latest public manifestation of the dramatically altered public image of Collins, from a near-legendary geneticist who led the Human Genome Project and was beloved by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle — and was asked to stay on by President Trump in his first term — to a target demonized by Trump’s Make America Great Again followers.  Collins told STAT he is so concerned for his personal safety that he has hired security at his home.

Chaotic Firings and Re-Hirings:

Cruel and Destructive Policy Changes:

RFK Jr. Is An Extreme Anti-Vaxxer Who’s Already Breaking His “Assurances” To Key Republicans To Get Confirmed

NBC: Kennedy spends first month as health secretary downplaying vaccines and targeting food additives A month into his new role as health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is beginning to make his priorities for the country clear — and confirming some public health experts’ worst fears. Since Kennedy was sworn in Feb. 13, the agencies he leads have canceled or postponed meetings about flu shots and other vaccines and announced plans to investigate already debunked links between vaccines and autism. He has downplayed the importance of vaccination in the Texas measles outbreak while endorsing unproven remedies for the highly contagious disease. At the same time, Kennedy has begun to act on his long-standing concerns about the U.S. food system, directing the Food and Drug Administration to tighten a rule about the use of food additives and railing against seed oils in a Fox News interview. As a whole, these actions and statements indicate that Kennedy has not abandoned some of the fringe beliefs that made him a controversial pick. His early moves on vaccines have worried health experts, who fear he is sowing confusion that could ultimately lead to the spread of preventable diseases.

New York Times: Without Offering Proof, Kennedy Links Measles Outbreak to Poor Diet and Health In a sweeping interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, outlined a strategy for containing the measles outbreak in West Texas that strayed far from mainstream science, relying heavily on fringe theories about prevention and treatments. He issued a muffled call for vaccinations in the affected community, but said the choice was a personal one. He suggested that measles vaccine injuries were more common than known, contrary to extensive research. He asserted that natural immunity to measles, gained through infection, somehow also protected against cancer and heart disease, a claim not supported by research. He cheered on questionable treatments like cod liver oil, and said that local doctors had achieved “almost miraculous and instantaneous” recoveries with steroids or antibiotics. The worsening measles outbreak, which has largely spread through a Mennonite community in Gaines County, has infected nearly 200 people and killed a child, the first such death in the United States in 10 years. Another suspected measles death has been reported in New Mexico, where cases have recently increased in a county that borders Gaines County.

Rolling Stone: RFK Jr. Reminds Everyone He’s Not a Huge Fan of Vaccines in Bonkers Fox Interview As a major measles outbreak spreads out of West Texas into other states, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continues to spread a confusing message about vaccine safety. In an interview with Fox News that aired on Tuesday, Kennedy touted the vaccine — but also suggested that the best way to get lifetime immunity from the measles is to simply become infected with measles, and that the measles vaccine is dangerous to those who take it.  “It used to be — when you and I were kids — that everybody got measles. And the measles gave you lifetime protection against measles infection. The vaccine doesn’t do that,” Kennedy told Sean Hannity from inside the Steak & Shake fast food restaurant where the interview was conducted. “The vaccine is effective for some people for life, for many people it wanes.”

New York Times: Keeping With Kennedy’s Advice, Measles Patients Turn to Unproven Treatments Struggling to contain a raging measles epidemic in West Texas, public health officials increasingly worry that residents are relying on unproven remedies endorsed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, and postponing doctor visits until the illness has worsened. Hospitals and officials sounded an alarm this week, issuing a notice explaining which measles symptoms warranted immediate medical attention and stressing the importance of timely treatment. “I’m worried we have kids and parents that are taking all of these other medications and then delaying care,” said Katherine Wells, director of public health in Lubbock, Texas, where many of the sickest children in this outbreak have been hospitalized. Some seriously ill children had been given alternative remedies like cod liver oil, she added. “If they’re so, so sick and have low oxygen levels, they should have been in the hospital a day or two earlier,” she said.

The Guardian: RFK Jr praises beef tallow on Fox News show with burger and fries Robert F Kennedy Jr, the health secretary, appeared with a cheeseburger and fries in a nationally televised interview on Fox News – a highly unusual move for a federal health official. The appearance, in which he endorsed the decision of the burger chain Steak ‘n Shake to cook its fries in beef tallow, comes as Kennedy has attacked seed oils and made claims about the measles vaccine that lack context. “We are poisoning ourselves and it’s coming principally from these ultra-processed foods,” said Kennedy, while seated at a table with the Fox News host Sean Hannity. “President Trump wants us to have radical transparency and incentivize companies like this one to switch traditional ingredients for beef tallow,” Kennedy added, before he was delivered a double cheeseburger and french fries at a restaurant location in Florida. Kennedy has moved to make the health department significantly less transparent using a little known provision called the “Richardson waiver”. In multiple interviews, Kennedy has claimed seed oils are harmful to health and that fats, such as beef tallow, are preferable. The advice contradicts that of the American Heart Association (AHA), the largest nation’s largest non-profit focused on heart disease. A 2017 review by the organization found replacing saturated fats such as beef tallow, lard and coconut oil with unsaturated vegetable oils could reduce cardiovascular disease at rates “similar to the reduction achieved by statin treatment”, according to clinical trials.

  • Washington Post: Steak ’n Shake was struggling. It turned to beef tallow — and MAGA.  Steak ’n Shake was looking for change. The Indianapolis-based fast food chain for burgers and milkshakes replaced its leadership after a lackluster 2024. In mid-January, it announced that all of its restaurants would switch to cooking their french fries with beef tallow. Executives said the move would make for tastier fries. It also aligned Steak ’n Shake with President Donald Trump’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has made replacing seed oils a key plank of his plans to overhaul America’s food industry. Conservatives hailed Steak ’n Shake’s decision as a win for Trump’s controversial Cabinet pick. The company leaned in. “We RFK’ed our fries,” Steak ’n Shake COO Dan Edwards said in a February Fox News interview. Now, Steak ’n Shake’s X account posts images of Tesla-themed storefronts on Mars and slogans like “Make Frying Oil Tallow Again” printed on MAGA-esque red hats. The account reposted endorsements from conservative firebrands like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) and Laura Loomer, who snapped a picture of herself dining at the establishment.

NPR: RFK says most vaccine advisers have conflicts of interest. A report shows they don’t Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pledged to purge conflicts of interest from the government agencies he’s now in charge of, alleging close ties between employees and the pharmaceutical industry. In his confirmation hearings for the role, he took aim at Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee that plays a key role in setting policies around vaccine schedules and access, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. Kennedy said on Jan. 29 of the committee: “I think 97% of the people on it had conflicts. I think we need to end those conflicts and make sure that scientists are doing unobstructed science.” He was citing an older government report on ethics disclosures, which he said came from a “government oversight investigation committee.” NPR tracked down that 2009 report, spoke with those involved with the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee at the time, and learned that Kennedy’s statement about it is inaccurate.

Stat: RFK Jr.’s ‘MAHA’ commission meets for the first time — behind closed doors An array of federal government officials and “Make America Healthy Again” moms met Tuesday in what was the first convening of a new commission led by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The meeting, held in Washington on Tuesday afternoon, was not made public or announced before it occurred. It marked the start of a monthslong effort, birthed by President Donald Trump’s pen on Feb. 13, which aims to identify and then solve the nation’s chronic ills. The meeting was first reported by the New York Times. STAT independently verified that it took place.  Among those empaneled to the MAHA commission are domestic policy advisers, as well as Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who were both in attendance Tuesday. The leaders of the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institutes of Health are also appointed to the commission. Trump’s picks for those roles — Marty Makary, Dave Weldon and Jay Bhattacharya — have yet to be confirmed.

Politico: Kennedy gives food company CEOs an ultimatum Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered a stark ultimatum to major food company CEOs in a closed-door meeting this week: Ban certain artificial dyes from your products or the government will do it for you. Kennedy on Monday pressed leaders of companies like PepsiCo, General Mills, Tyson Foods, Smucker’s, Kraft Heinz and Kellogg’s for commitments to reduce food additives, according to a readout of the meeting sent to industry stakeholders and viewed by POLITICO. It was the Health and Human Services secretary’s first major meeting with the very executives he’d spent months accusing of making Americans sick.

Disastrous, Dangerous Appointments

Rolling Stone: Dr. Oz Won’t Commit to Protecting Medicaid The Department of Health and Human Services is already headed by a vaccine skeptic, and the Trump administration would like to install a TV doctor to run the nation’s most vital health care systems.  Dr. Mehmet Oz sat today for a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee to discuss his nomination as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. When asked by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) an incredibly basic question — if he would oppose cuts to Medicaid — Oz declined to answer the question directly.  “I cherish Medicaid, and I’ve worked within the Medicaid environment quite extensively, as I highlighted, practicing at Columbia University,” Oz said. 

Wyden interjected, restating his request that Oz answer directly.   “I want to make sure that the patients today in the future have resources if they get ill, the way you protect Medicaid is by making sure that it’s viable at every level,” Oz replied, once again skirting the question. “Let the record show that I asked a witness, who said he cherishes this program, ‘will you agree to oppose cuts,’ and he would not answer a yes or no question,” Wyden told the committee.

Reuters: US Senate Memo says Dr. Oz, Trump Medicare nominee, may have underpaid taxes for 3 years Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity physician nominated by President Donald Trump to oversee Medicare and Medicaid, appears to have underpaid his social security and Medicare taxes in recent years, according to a memo drafted by Democratic staffers on the Senate Finance Committee. “Dr. Oz may have significantly underpaid his Social Security and Medicare taxes in 2021, 2022, and 2023–with negligible Social Security or Medicare taxes paid in 2022 and no Social Security or Medicare taxes paid in 2023,” the memo, seen by Reuters, states.

Fortune: Health care for more than 100 million Americans is being turned over to a supplement salesman President Donald Trump’s health officials want you to take your vitamins. Mehmet Oz, the nominee to lead the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, has fed calves on camera to tout the health wonders of bovine colostrum on behalf of one purveyor in which he has a financial stake. Janette Nesheiwat, the potential surgeon general, sells her own line of supplements. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services, said he takes more vitamins than he can count—and has suggested he’ll ease restrictions on vitamins, muscle-building peptides, and more. Their affection for supplements might lead to tangible consequences for Americans’ health regimens. Late in the 2024 campaign, Kennedy claimed the federal government was waging a “war on public health” by suppressing a vast array of alternative therapies—many of them supplements, like nutraceuticals and peptides. In February, Trump announced the “President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission” with Kennedy at the helm, calling for “fresh thinking” on nutrition, “healthy lifestyles,” and other pathways toward combating chronic disease. Spokespeople for Kennedy did not reply to multiple requests for comment. Supplements can be beneficial, particularly in aiding fetal development or warding off anemia, said Pieter Cohen, a general internist at the Cambridge Health Alliance, who researches supplements. “I recommend supplements routinely,” he said. Still, “the majority of use is not necessary to improve or maintain health,” and due to only light regulations, supplement makers may make claims about their benefits without sufficient evidence, Cohen said. “No supplement needs to get tested or vetted by the FDA before it’s sold.” Consumer watchdogs, regulators, and researchers have reported cases of finding traces of lead and other toxins in supplements. And a 2015 analysis from a team of federal health researchers attributed about 23,000 emergency department visits annually to supplement use. (The Council for Responsible Nutrition, the industry’s lobbying group, challenged the findings, arguing some visits were due to over-the-counter and homeopathic medicines that should not have been included.)

Washington Post: White House abruptly pulls Dave Weldon’s CDC nomination before hearing The White House has withdrawn the nomination of Dave Weldon, a former Florida congressman who questioned vaccine safety, to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention amid concerns he could not be confirmed by the Senate. The Senate health committee announced Weldon’s nomination had been pulled shortly before he was scheduled to testify Thursday morning before the panel. The pulling of Weldon marks a rare setback for a Trump administration nominee. The Senate has confirmed every controversial choice brought to a full vote on the floor to date. Weldon, a 71-year-old doctor who left Congress in 2009, drew scrutiny for his longtime promotion of the false claims that vaccines can cause autism. In a four-page statement, Weldon said a White House assistant called him Wednesday night to inform him his nomination was being withdrawn because he lacked the votes to be confirmed. Weldon said Republican senators concerned about his vaccine views doomed his nomination and that he suspected the pharmaceutical industry also played a role.

Public Health Threats

CNN: Measles outbreak holds higher risk for pregnant women, babies A newborn with measles is among the cases reported in the growing West Texas outbreak, Lubbock public health officials say. Experts say the case serves as a reminder that the disease can be especially dangerous for pregnant women and very young children. “This is how widespread this epidemic is, that it’s even showing up in unvaccinated pregnant women,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. At least two pregnant women have been infected in this outbreak, according to officials at Covenant Hospital in Lubbock. Eighty-one measles cases have been reported in children ages 4 and younger across Texas and New Mexico. This is part of the larger outbreak that now spans three states, including Oklahoma, and totals 258 reported cases. The infant, who has recovered, was born to an unvaccinated mother who was recently infected with the virus, according to Katherine Wells, director of Lubbock Public Health.

CNN: Three months into 2025, US measles cases surpass total for 2024 Three months into 2025, the United States has surpassed the total number of measles cases in the country for all of last year. The high number of cases is driven by a multistate outbreak that has reached nearly 300 cases. As of Friday, Texas has reported 259 cases this year, New Mexico has tallied 35 cases and Oklahoma reported two. Experts say this is probably a severe undercount. In 2024, there were 285 total measles cases reported in the US, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A CNN tally suggests that there have been at least 320 cases so far in 2025, including 296 associated with the multistate outbreak.

Stat: Why health experts fear the West Texas measles outbreak may be much larger than reported The growing measles outbreak centered in West Texas, with cases reaching into New Mexico and now Oklahoma, is the country’s largest in six years. But experts say that even with more than 250 cases reported across the three states, the outbreak is likely much larger. “My gut tells me there are cases that are unreported — you don’t have to come in and get tested for measles,” said Katherine Wells, the director of public health in Lubbock, a Texas city on the edge of the outbreak where some sick children have been taken to be hospitalized. “It’s going to be a long process to get everything measles-free again in this area, but I can’t tell you if that’s 500 cases or a thousand.”  Public health officials and other experts believe they are capturing only a fraction of cases for reasons that have to do with the epidemiology of the outbreak as well as reports of a lack of cooperation among some people in the areas where cases have been detected. But a large part of it is simple math.

Politico: States target mRNA shots as vaccine critic RFK Jr. takes charge in Washington A growing number of states are considering measures to limit or ban the use of messenger RNA vaccines — the latest manifestation of Covid-19 pandemic backlash. Republican policymakers in states from Florida to Idaho propose more roadblocks to the vaccines based on a mix of medical freedom rhetoric and incorrect assertions of how they work in the body. Several bills introduced in the Texas Legislature would ban the administration, manufacture or sale of mRNA vaccines there. Legislation in Kentucky would prohibit the use of mRNA vaccines in children under 18. In Idaho, a GOP state senator has proposed a 10-year moratorium on mRNA vaccine administration. While some efforts have already failed — and likely would be challenged in federal court if they succeeded — public health experts worry that their existence now could be a bellwether for the future.

Wall Street Journal: In Rural Texas, a Measles Outbreak Hasn’t Swayed Vaccine Skeptics The dusty plains of Gaines County stretch endlessly, peanut fields fading into cotton farms and oil fields, punctuated by signs touting God. This sprawling rural region is defined by oil, agriculture and a large Mennonite community—members of the Anabaptist family of churches that includes the Amish—who emigrated here from Mexico in the 1970s.  Now, it is also the epicenter of a measles outbreak that has spread across nine counties since late January, leading to nearly 200 documented infections, 23 hospitalizations and the nation’s first measles-related death in a decade. The same strain of the measles is responsible for 30 reported cases across the state line in Lea County, New Mexico, where a measles-related death is under investigation. Gaines County exemplifies pockets of America where antivaccine sentiment has surged, fueled by deepening distrust in the U.S. government after the pandemic. With many states making it easier to get vaccine exemptions for school-age children, what was once a rare exception has become common. “Personal choice” is a term I heard many times when talking to Gaines County area residents about the decision to get a vaccine, even among health officials. What has long been hailed by doctors as a critical lifesaving public-health tool is now considered optional. Even a measles outbreak and death isn’t enough to drive many residents into free vaccine clinics. While that is a personal choice, deeply entrenched vaccine skepticism affects us all.

Public Health Threats Around The World:  

Opinion and Commentary

ashoup
In News

FACT SHEET: Trump’s CDC Director Nominee David Weldon Is An Anti-Vaccine Extremist

This week, Trump’s nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Dave Weldon, faces a Senate confirmation hearing. As a measles outbreak continues to spread throughout the Southwest, alongside a historically bad flu season and a raging bird flu epidemic that has infected dozens of Americans, Republicans are poised to empower an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who has voiced plans to upend vaccine safety review and recommendation protocols. During his hearing, Weldon will have to answer for the Trump White House’s past suggestions that they plan to severely cut and even eliminate the CDC altogether. As CDC Director, Weldon would wield significant power to delay and veto vaccine approvals, spread misinformation, and cripple the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. With Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Dave Weldon at the helm, American lives are at risk.

The CDC “Is In Big Trouble” With Former Republican Congressman David Weldon In Charge. Weldon is a former GOP member of Congress from Florida; he spent nearly 15 years in Congress from 1995 to 2009 and served as a member of the hard-right Republican Study Committee.  Trump’s nomination announcement proudly proclaimed, “Dave will proudly restore the CDC to its true purpose, and will work to end the Chronic Disease Epidemic,” even though rumors have circulated for weeks that the Trump White House has plans to severely cut or eliminate the CDC altogether. One reporter wrote that the CDC “is in big trouble” with Weldon in charge.

Weldon Supports Dangerous Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Theories Just Like RFK Jr. Ever since Trump nominated Weldon, health experts have raised alarms about him being a “persistent skeptic” of vaccines. Most notably, Weldon has argued time and again that there are links between vaccines and autism. He has pushed unfounded concerns about a link between the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism, and also spread an unfounded conspiracy theory that thimerosal, a preservative formerly used in some vaccines, led to autism – despite a complete lack of evidence linking the MMR vaccine or thimerosal to the development of autism. When confronted with evidence to the contrary, Weldon stated that the report was “perilously reliant on epidemiology, based on preliminary incomplete information, and may ultimately be repudiated.” He has also implied that there might be “some underlying trait” in certain children that could be activated through vaccination – a completely baseless claim. Under anti-vaccine extremist RFK Jr.’s leadership as HHS Secretary, the CDC is already moving ahead with an unnecessary conspiracy-fueled study into vaccines and autism in keeping with Weldon and Kennedy’s anti-vaccine beliefs.

Weldon Has Big Plans To Revamp Vaccine Recommendations – With Far-Reaching Consequences For Hundreds of Millions of Americans. Weldon has expressed interest in completely revamping vaccine safety review and recommendation protocols. While in Congress, Weldon introduced legislation shifting responsibility for vaccine safety from the CDC to a new independent agency within HHS, and he has repeatedly voiced “serious reservations about the independence of the federal government’s vaccine safety review process,” as far back as 2007: “Federal agencies charged with overseeing vaccine safety research have failed. They have failed to provide sufficient resources for vaccine safety research. They have failed to adequately fund extramural research. And, they have failed to free themselves from conflicts of interest that serve to undermine public confidence in the safety of vaccines.” The CDC director has the power to veto the process of recommending vaccines, which is usually guided by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). Weldon’s nomination could have huge consequences for hundreds of millions of Americans; under the Affordable Care Act, health insurers are required to cover all vaccines recommended by ACIP for free, and the Inflation Reduction Act expanded the slate of free vaccines to people on Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP.

Weldon Is An Anti-Choice Extremist Who Spearheaded A Key Amendment Used By The First Trump Administration To Withhold Federal Funding From California Over Abortion Care. While serving in Congress, Weldon worked tirelessly on anti-choice efforts. He introduced protections for health care workers and organizations refusing to provide abortions to patients, codified as the Weldon Amendment – which has subsequently been attached to every HHS spending bill in Congress since 2005. The Guttmacher Institute found that the Weldon Amendment “emboldens health insurance plans, health care institutions and medical providers to deny abortion services and coverage … often under the rubric of protecting ‘conscience’ or ‘religious freedom.’” In 2020, the Trump administration even used the Amendment to withhold $200 million in federal Medicaid funds from California, alleging that state-mandated abortion coverage violated the Amendment. Weldon worked to ban late-term abortions and permanently ban patenting human embryos as well. During a 2012 Senate debate, Weldon also argued that abortion access infringes on religious freedoms.

Weldon Is Closely Aligned With HHS Secretary RFK Jr. Not only does Weldon share many of Kennedy’s anti-choice and anti-vaccine beliefs, but Kennedy has also cited Weldon’s advocacy work in his own arguments against the CDC, reportedly referring to the agency as a “subsidiary of the pharmaceutical industry.” A prominent anti-vaccine advocate who worked closely with Kennedy during his 2024 presidential campaign publicly applauded Weldon’s appointment.

While Serving In Congress, Weldon Pushed Legislation To Force A Review of the Terri Schiavo Case Against Schiavo’s Family’s Wishes. In the early 2000s, Weldon introduced legislation to force a review of the case of a Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state, Terri Schiavo, keeping her alive against the wishes of Schiavo’s family. Her husband, Michael, fought the Congressional intervention spearheaded by Weldon, and reportedly said that she “would not have wanted to be kept alive artificially.”

protectourcare
In News

House Energy & Commerce Committee Continues to Deliver On Their Promise to Americans With More Legislation Designed to Lower Costs, Improve Care, and End Trump Administration’s Sabotage

Democrats, Responding to the Mandate from Voters in November, Introduce Bills to Reverse the Trump Administration’s Harmful Cuts to the Navigator Program, Provide States More Funding to Establish State-Based Marketplaces, and Provide Funding for States to Set Up Their Own Reinsurance Programs

Washington, DC — Today, the Subcommittee on Health of the Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing announcing a second round of bills that are aimed at lowering costs, increasing access to care, and blocking the Trump administration’s sabotage of our health care system. The first round of bills considered by the committee would halt the administration’s harmful waivers, roll back junk plans that undermine protections for people with pre-existing conditions and provide insufficient coverage, and restore funding for open enrollment that has been slashed by President Trump in an act of deliberate sabotage.

This set of bills would reverse the Trump administration’s harmful cuts to the navigator program that denied people access to fair and impartial information on enrollment and financial assistance options; provide states more funding to establish state-based marketplaces giving states the ability to tailor the program to meet the particular needs of their residents; and provide funding for states to set up their own reinsurance programs that make health care more affordable for everyone throughout the individual market including those with serious medical conditions.

“Last November, voters rejected the Trump administration and their GOP allies’ repeal and sabotage agenda and scores of Republicans in Congress were shown the door as a result,” said Brad Woodhouse, executive director of Protect Our Care. “Democrats are continuing to turn the page on the willful sabotage by Republicans by doing what the American people asked of them – make health care more affordable and accessible to all. With this set of bills, Democrats are continuing to show us they’re serious about delivering on their promise to voters to lower costs and improve care for all Americans.”

Background

The Health Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce will consider the following bills:

H.R. 1425, the “State Health Care Premium Reduction Act” would provide $10 billion annually to states to establish a state reinsurance program or use the funds to provide financial assistance to reduce out-of-pocket costs for individuals enrolled in qualified health plans. The bill also requires the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to establish and implement a reinsurance program in states that do not apply for federal funding under the bill.

H.R.1386, the “Expand Navigators’ Resources For Outreach, Learning, And Longevity (ENROLL) Act” would provide $100 million annually for the Federally-facilitated Marketplace (FFM) navigator program. The bill would reinstate the requirement that there be at least two navigator entities in each state and would require the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to ensure that navigator grants are awarded to entities with demonstrated capacity to carry out the duties specified in the Affordable Care Act. The bill would also prohibit HHS from considering whether a navigator entity has demonstrated how it will provide information to individuals relating to association health plans or short-term, limited-duration insurance plans.

H.R.1385, the “State Allowance For A Variety Of Exchanges (SAVE) Act” would provide states with $200 million in federal funds to establish state-based Marketplaces. Under current law, federal funds are no longer available for states to set up state-based Marketplaces.  

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In News

Costs Up, Coverage Down: The Real HHS 2018 Annual Report

Washington, DC — Today, as HHS released its 2018 annual report and Secretary Azar gave a speech on drug pricing, one thing has become clear: the Trump administration does not want the American people to know the real impact of its war on health care — higher costs and less coverage. Leslie Dach, chair of Protect Our Care, issued a statement in response to Azar’s claims in his speech:

“While Secretary Azar is attempting to tout his record at HSS, Americans are suffering from the truth. The administration is  is hiding the real impact of its agenda: drug prices are going up, drug companies are enjoying massive tax giveaways, millions no longer have health insurance because of the administration’s sabotage campaign, and protections for pre-existing conditions are under attack. The claim that President Trump and Secretary Azar’s HHS improved America’s health care is ludicrous. The real story is that costs went up, coverage went down, and the American people lost out.”

Despite what’s in their annual report, we know what their record is:

  1. Drug companies continue to increase prices while reaping billions of dollars from the Trump tax bill and seeing massive profits. The Trump tax scam means billions of dollars in tax breaks for pharmaceutical companies. An Axios study found that 21 health care companies collectively expect to gain $10 billion in tax savings during 2018 alone. Most of the tax break windfall for health care companies is going toward share buybacks, dividends, acquisitions and paying down debt. Pharmaceutical companies raked in more than $30 billion in profits in the third quarter of 2018, with Pfizer alone bringing in $4.1 billion — the highest of any publicly traded health care company.  Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies continue to increase prices. In January 2019 alone, Pfizer and Novartis announced price increases on dozens of drugs, including increasing the cost of a breast cancer medication to $12,000 for 21 pills. All in all, nearly 30 drugmakers are expected to raise prices in 2019. One drug industry lobbyist has said that drug companies’ limited concessions are “a calculated risk” summarizing big pharma’s strategy to play the Trump administration: “take these nothing-burger steps and give the administration things they can take credit for.”

  1. Under Trump, the uninsured rate has risen to its highest levels since the Affordable Care Act took effect. Gallup’s quarterly health survey reveals that the uninsured rate has risen to the highest rate since the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion was completed, leaping from 10.8 percent in 2016 to 13.7 percent in 2018 and representing about 7 million more Americans who are now uninsured. A major reason for this increase? Trump’s relentless health care sabotage. Among the factors contributing to this uninsured rate, Gallup cited increased premiums, major cuts to outreach funding and open enrollment, slashed funding to health care navigator groups, and Trump’s hostility to the ACA.
  2. Sec. Azar and the Trump administration have expanded access to junk plans that are allowed to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. In August, the Trump administration finalized a rule that allows consumers to purchase junk plans with an expanded duration of 364 days, as opposed to the the previously allowed maximum of three months, and renew such plans for up to three years. Since finalizing the rule, the Trump administration has urged navigator groups that help people sign up for coverage to push consumers toward junk plans and has issued guidance urging states to let ACA subsidies be used to purchase these skimpy plans. Junk plans are notoriously ripe for fraud, drive up health care premiums, leave consumers with worse coverage and at risk for bankruptcy.
  3. The Trump administration’s health care sabotage means Americans are paying more for premiums than they should. While Azar tries to claim that premiums have stabilized under him, health care analyst Charles Gaba has found that marketplace premiums are roughly 8 percent higher than they would be absent GOP sabotage. With GOP sabotage, premiums increased 2.8 percent in 2019. Absent such sabotage, premiums would have decreased 5.37 percent.
  4. The Trump administration has encouraged states to impose onerous Medicaid work requirements designed to kick people off of their health coverage — so far, more than 18,000 have lost coverage in Arkansas alone. In 2017, the Trump administration encouraged states to adopt policies that make it harder for people to access health care through Medicaid. One such way is by requiring Medicaid enrollees to work in order to maintain health coverage through Medicaid. So far, the Trump administration has approved waivers in seven states — AZ, AR, IN, KY, MI, MS, and WI — that will prevent people from being covered through Medicaid unless they meet restrictive requirements. Similar waivers are pending in eight states: AL, OH, OK, SD, TN, UT, and VA. Already, more than 18,000 Arkansans have lost coverage because of these burdensome requirements.
  5. Secretary Azar and the Trump administration have engaged in a years-long effort designed to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, going so far as to argue in court that protections for people with pre-existing conditions should be overturned. Trump along with Republican attorneys general and governors have already sued to try to overturn our health care laws in the Texas lawsuit. Just several weeks ago, President Trump boasted that the Affordable Care Act and its protections for people with pre-existing conditions would be “terminated” through the case. A complete list of the administration’s sabotage efforts is below and can be found in our health care sabotage tracker:

February 2019

  • Trump predicts the Affordable Care Act will be “terminated” through the Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the law.
  • In an effort to restrict access to information about women’s reproductive health, the Trump administration removes web pages associated with the ACA and its contraceptive coverage from HHS’s Office of Population Affairs website.

January 2019

  • Thanks to GOP sabotage, the uninsured rate surges to the its highest level since 2014. Roughly seven million fewer people are estimated to have health care now than did two years ago.
  • The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposes changes to the ACA’s benefit and payment parameters, reducing subsidies available to those who purchase health care through the exchange, increasing premiums, and raising  the out-of-pocket maximum for people with employer-sponsored health care.
  • In a win for big Pharma, the Trump administration proposes changes to the rebate system that would raise premiums, benefit pharmaceutical companies, and contain no mandate to lower list prices of drugs.

December 2018

  • Hand-picked Federal Judge Reed O’Connor rules in favor of twenty conservative states to overturn the Affordable Care Act, jeopardizing coverage for 17 million people and ripping away the ACA’s vital consumer protections such as protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
  • Under the Trump administration’s relentless sabotage, the uninsured rate increases for the first time since 2010. As the Kaiser Family Foundation finds, “In 2017, the uninsured rate reversed course and, for the first time since the passage of the ACA, rose significantly to 10.2% [from 10%].”

November 2018

  • Trump administration issues new guidance urging states to “tear down basic pillars of the Affordable Care Act, demolishing a basic rule” that federal subsidies can only be used to purchase ACA-compliant plans. Experts warn against this move, saying it will push affordable, comprehensive care further out of reach for individuals with pre-existing conditions.
  • Under the Trump administration, the number of uninsured children grows for the first time in nearly a decade. After a decade of steady decreases in the number of uninsured children, in 2017 the number of uninsured children increased from 3.6 million to 3.9 million.

October 2018

  • Republicans appoint Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh is known to be hostile to the Affordable Care Act.
  • The Trump administration issues guidance that allows federal subsidies to be used to purchase junk plans that can deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

September 2018

  • The Trump administration’s Department of Justice joins twenty conservative states in court in opening arguments to argue that the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions should be overturned.
  • Nearly 4,600 Arkansans are unable to meet Arkansas’ reporting requirements for the state’s Medicaid work requirements and lose Medicaid coverage.

August 2018

  • Trump administration finalizes rule for bare-bones short-term plans that are exempt from key consumer protections, such as the requirement that insurance covers prescription drugs, maternity care, and hospitalization.

July 2018

  • CMS halts risk adjustment payments, that enable insurance companies to cover everyone, regardless of whether they are healthy or sick.
  • Trump Administration slashes funding for non-profit health navigator groups, that help people shop for coverage, from $36 million to $10 million. CMS encourages groups to use the remaining funds to push people to sign up for junk plans that skirt important consumer protections.
  • President Trump nominates Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh has previously forced a young woman to continue a pregnancy against her will and has criticized Justice Roberts for upholding the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality.

June 2018

  • Department of Justice takes to the courts to argue that insurance companies should be able to discriminate against as many as 130 million Americans with a pre-existing condition.
  • Republican coalition, the Health Policy Consensus Group, released their latest proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions, let insurance companies charge older people an age tax, and deny key coverage for basic services like maternity care.
  • Trump Administration finalizes proposal to expand access to association health plans that skirt key consumer protections.

May 2018

  • President Trump boasts about health care sabotage: “We will have gotten rid of a majority of Obamacare.”
  • Trump Administration enlists help of former drug lobbyist in writing its drug plan.
  • Congressional Republicans try to use annual farm bill to authorize $65 million in taxpayer funding to set up association health plans, which can  exclude prescription drug coverage, mental health care, and maternity care.

April 2018

  • House Republicans vote on a balanced budget amendment that would cut Medicaid by $700 billion over ten years, $114 billion in a single year alone.
  • Trump Administration limits access to assistance for consumers who want to enroll in marketplace coverage. This change removes the requirement that every area has at least two “navigator” groups to provide consumer assistance and that one be local. Now, just one group could cover entire states or groups of states.

March 2018

  • Republicans sabotage efforts to pass a bipartisan bill that would have stabilized Affordable Care Act marketplaces by insisting the bill restrict access to abortion.

February 2018

  • The Trump Administration announces that it will expand access to short-term health plans that do not have to comply with key consumer protection provisions required by the Affordable Care Act.
  • Urban Institute calculates that repeal of the individual mandate and expansion of short term plans will increase individual market premiums by an average 18.2 percent in 2019.
  • Trump Administration releases budget that calls for the Affordable Care Act to be replaced by Graham-Cassidy, in a move that experts predict would reduce health coverage for 32 million Americans.

January 2018

  • The Trump Administration announces that it will support states that impose onerous work requirements on Americans covered by Medicaid, and approves Kentucky’s worst-in-the-nation waiver the next day.
  • The Trump Administration announces a move to allow providers to discriminate by allowing them to deny patient care for almost any reason.
  • The Trump Administration makes plans to announce even more exemptions from the requirement people have health coverage before this provision is repealed altogether.

December 2017

  • The Trump Administration proposes a rule to expand association health plans, which would gut consumer protections, raise costs for people with pre-existing conditions and further destabilize the insurance markets.
  • Congressional Republicans pass their tax scam, which doubles as a sneaky repeal of the Affordable Care Act  by kicking 13 million people off of their insurance and raising premiums by double digits for millions more.

November 2017

  • Republicans refuse to move forward on the bipartisan Alexander-Murray bill to address the CSR crisis even though it had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

October 2017

  • The Trump Administration takes direct aim at birth control by rolling back a rule that guaranteed women access to contraception. (A court has since questioned the legality of the action.)
  • President Trump signs an Executive Order to roll back key consumer protections that will result in garbage insurance, raise premiums, reduce coverage and again expose millions of Americans to discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.
  • The Trump Administration dramatically cuts in-person assistance to help people sign up for 2018 health coverage.
  • After threatening for months to stop funding cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) that help lower deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, the Trump Administration stops the payments altogether. The CBO finds that failing to make these payments will increase premiums by 20% and add nearly $200 billion to the debt.

September 2017

  • The Administration orders the Department of Health and Human Services’ regional directors to stop participating in Open Enrollment events. Mississippi Health Advocacy Program Executive Director Roy Mitchell says, “I didn’t call it sabotage…But that’s what it is.”

August 2017

  • The Administration cuts the outreach advertising budget for Open Enrollment by 90 percent, from $100 million to just $10 million – which resulted in as many as 1.1 million fewer people getting covered.

July 2017

  • The Trump Administration uses funding intended to support health insurance enrollment to launch a multimedia propaganda campaign against the Affordable Care Act.
  • President Trump, again, threatens to end cost-sharing reduction payments.

June 2017

  • Senate Republicans embark on a monthslong failed attempt to pass BCRA, Skinny Repeal and Graham-Cassidy, all repeal bills that would have caused millions of Americans to lose their health coverage and raised premiums by double digits for millions more. They would have ended Medicaid as we know it, putting the care of children, seniors and people with disabilities at risk.

May 2017

  • House Republicans vote for and pass a health care repeal bill that would cause 23 million people to lose coverage and gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions. It would have imposed an age tax and allowed insurers to charge people over 50 five times more for coverage and ended Medicaid as we know it, putting the care of seniors, children and people with disabilities in jeopardy.

April 2017

  • The Trump Administration cuts the number of days people could sign up for coverage during open enrollment by half, from 90 days to 45 days.
  • In an effort to convince Democrats to negotiate a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, President Trump threatens to cut off cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) that help low-income marketplace customers pay for out-of-pocket costs.

March 2017

  • The Trump Administration sends a letter to governors encouraging them to submit proposals which include provisions such as work requirements that make it harder for Medicaid beneficiaries to get affordable care and increase the number of people who are uninsured.

February 2017

  • The Trump Administration proposes a rule to weaken Marketplace coverage and raise premiums for millions of middle-class families.

January 2017

  • On his first day in office, President Trump signs an Executive Order directing the administration to identify every way it can unravel the Affordable Care Act.
  • Also on January 20th, the Department of Health and Human Services begins to remove information on how to sign up for the Affordable Care Act.
  • The Trump Administration pulls funding for outreach and advertising for the final days of 2017 enrollment. This move is estimated to have reduced enrollment by nearly 500,000.
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Cost Of Care: Trump Administration Rigs System To Make Drug Companies Even Richer While Americans Pay More

Today, the “Health Care Congress” continues to respond to the will of the voters with a House Ways & Means hearing on the Cost of Rising Prescription Drug Prices. While President Trump repeatedly promises to lower the cost of prescription drugs, Republicans are protecting the rigged system for the drug companies, allowing insurance companies to deny drug coverage to people, and rewarding the drug companies, instead.

Republicans and the Trump administration did do one thing on this issue: America’s largest pharmaceutical companies got a huge huge tax break from the Trump Tax bill and are lining the pockets of shareholders and CEOs while continuing to raise prices for everyday Americans.

The Trump Administration’s Talk is Cheap, But Drug Prices Aren’t…

Health care is prohibitively expensive for many Americans, causing many who have insurance to skip or delay care and prohibiting many who lack insurance from signing up for care.

  • A Protect Our Care poll found that 84 percent of Americans support requiring drug companies to notify the government in advance when they plan to significantly raise drug prices and create a mechanism to identify and stop unjustified increases; 82 percent support allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with drug companies to get lower prices on prescription drugs.
  • 15.5 percent of those who have insurance either skipped or delayed care because of cost or trouble paying bills in 2017.
  • Roughly one in four, or 26.2 percent of non-elderly people struggle with insurance affordability problems.
  • Cost is of particular concern to those in fair or poor health — 46.5 percent of those in fair or poor health are uninsured or have problems affording care despite having coverage. This includes 13.5 percent who are uninsured and 32.9 percent who have insurance but had a problem affording care in the last year.
  • Cost is the most cited reason for being uninsured — 45 percent of uninsured nonelderly adults in 2017 said they were uninsured because the cost is too high.

Americans pay more for drugs than do people in any other country. At $1,208 per capita, people in the U.S. spend more on pharmaceuticals per capita than do people in any other country in the world. British researchers found that U.S. prices were consistently higher than in other European markets, six times higher than in Brazil, and 16 times higher than in the lowest-price country, which was usually India.

Drug Prices Continue to Soar Under Trump. A report by Senate Democrats finds that the prices of the 20 most-prescribed drugs under Medicare Part D have increased substantially over the past five years, rising 10 times faster than inflation. Another report from the Pharmacy Benefits Consultants finds that over the past 14 months, 20 prescription drugs saw list-price increases of more than 200 percent.

Drug companies are engaging in the dangerous practice of price-gouging — pursuing massive profits to the detriment of people who need their medication to survive. In September 2018, Nostrum chief executive Nirmal Mulye defended his choice to raise the price of an antibiotic from $474.75 to $2,392 a bottle, saying he had “moral requirement…to sell the product for the highest price.” In 2017, Mylan, the company that made the EpiPen, came under fire for charging $609 for a box of two devices even though each only contained about $1 worth of the drug epinephrine. Between 2012 and 2016, the price of insulin, which 7.5 million Americans depend on, nearly doubled from $344 to $666.

…Pharmaceutical Companies Are Raking It In…

Pharmaceutical Companies Have Reaped Huge Benefits From The Trump Tax Bill. The Trump tax scam means billions of dollars in tax breaks for pharmaceutical companies. An Axios study found that 21 health care companies collectively expect to gain $10 billion in tax savings during 2018 alone. Most of the tax break windfall for health care companies is going toward share buybacks, dividends, acquisitions and paying down debt. According to Axios, nine pharmaceutical companies are are spending a combined $50 billion on new share buyback programs. All of the buybacks were announced during or after passage of the tax bill. Some drug companies are also increasing dividends for shareholders, with AbbVie increasing its cash dividend by 35 percent while also announcing a new $10 billion share repurchase program.

Massive Profits And Price Increases. Pharmaceutical companies raked in more than $30 billion in profits in the third quarter of 2018, with Pfizer alone bringing in $4.1 billion — the highest of any publicly traded health care company. Of the 19 companies that tallied at least $1 billion of third-quarter profit, 14 were drug companies.  Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies continue to increase prices. In January 2019 alone, Pfizer and Novartis announced price increases on dozens of drugs, including increasing the cost of a breast cancer medication to $12,000 for 21 pills.  All in all, nearly 30 drugmakers are expected to raise prices in 2019.  

Soaring CEO Pay. According to an Axios study, the CEOs of 70 of the largest U.S. health care companies cumulatively have earned $9.8 billion since 2010. CEOs took home nearly 11 percent more money on average every year since 2010 — far more than the wage growth of nearly all other workers. In 2017 alone, 30 health care executives made a combined $976 million.

…And Republicans Are Making it Worse

Republicans refuse to let Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices. Though 92 percent of Americans support allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries, Republicans refuse to let Medicare negotiate drug prices. A 2018 Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Democratic Committee report found that Medicare Part D could save $2.8 billion in a single year if it were allowed to negotiate drug prices.

Trump Installed Big Pharma Executives In Key Administration Posts. President Trump installed a former Eli Lily executive, Alex Azar, as his secretary of Health and Human Services and his appointment of Scott Gottlieb at FDA was described as “music to pharma’s ears.” Other pharma lobbyists writing Trump’s health policy include senior adviser at FDA, Keagan Lenihan, who joined the administration after lobbying for the drug distribution giant McKesson, former Gilead lobbyist, Joe Grogan, who reviews health care regulations at the Office of Management and Budget, and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy Lance Leggitt, who has lobbied for a variety of drug-industry clients.

Trump’s Proposals Always Fall Far Short Of His Promises. President Trump promised that he would allow Medicare to use its buying power to negotiate drug prices directly with suppliers, but after meeting with pharmaceutical executives early in 2017, Trump abandoned that pledge, calling it “price fixing” that would hurt “smaller, younger companies.” The planned announcement to move some drugs from Medicare Part B, in which pharmaceuticals are purchased and administered by medical providers, to Part D, will do little to restrain the cost of prescription drugs for America’s seniors and falls far short of Trump’s promises.

Because Washington Republicans Repealed The Requirement That Most People Have Insurance And Encouraged People To Sign Up For Junk Plans, 2019 Premiums Are Higher Than They Should Be. Charles Gaba, health care analyst, calculates that individual marketplace premiums are increasing by an average of 2.8 percent nationally. However, Gaba estimates that if not for Republican sabotage, premiums would decrease by an average of 5.4 percent.

The Administration Has Consistently Advocated For The Repeal Of The Affordable Care Act, Including Eliminating The Requirement That Insurance Companies Cover Prescription Drugs. After the Trump administration tried and failed to repeal the ACA legislatively, it took to the courts in hopes of eliminating the health law. In 2018, the Justice Department decided not to defend the Affordable Care Act in court against a lawsuit seeking to overturn it. Since, a federal judge has ruled to overturn the law, including its requirement that insurance companies cover patients’ prescription drugs.

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In News

Trump Regime Launches Cover Up Of Its Health Care Sabotage


Washington DC — As reported by the Associated Press, the Trump White House is claiming it has done nothing to “sabotage” the Affordable Care Act. In a report expected to be released today, the Council of Economic Advisers is trying to claim that the administration’s relentless war on Americans’ health care does not constitute “sabotage.” This is blatantly false. Brad Woodhouse, executive director of Protect Our Care, issued the following statement:

“We’re just over a month into 2019 but this whopper is already in the running for the lie of the year. The Trump administration’s relentless sabotage of our health care system is well-documented. In November, voters took to the polls and rejected the Republican war on health care, and the fact that this administration is launching a massive cover-up of their sabotage means that they’re already bracing themselves against the wrath of voters in 2020.”

Don’t believe us? Take a look at our sabotage tracker:

February 2019

  • Trump predicts the Affordable Care Act will be “terminated” through the Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn the law.
  • In an effort to restrict access to information about women’s reproductive health, the Trump administration removes web pages associated with the ACA and its contraceptive coverage from HHS’s Office of Population Affairs website.

January 2019

  • Thanks to GOP sabotage, the uninsured rate surges to the its highest level since 2014. Roughly seven million fewer people are estimated to have health care now than did two years ago.
  • The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposes changes to the ACA’s benefit and payment parameters, reducing subsidies available to those who purchase health care through the exchange, increasing premiums, and raising the out-of-pocket maximum for people with employer-sponsored health care.
  • In a win for big Pharma, the Trump administration proposes changes to the rebate system that would raise premiums, benefit pharmaceutical companies, and contain no mandate to lower list prices of drugs.

December 2018

  • Hand-picked Federal Judge Reed O’Connor rules in favor of twenty conservative states to overturn the Affordable Care Act, jeopardizing coverage for 17 million people and ripping away the ACA’s vital consumer protections such as protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
  • Under the Trump administration’s relentless sabotage, the uninsured rate increases for the first time since 2010. As the Kaiser Family Foundation finds, “In 2017, the uninsured rate reversed course and, for the first time since the passage of the ACA, rose significantly to 10.2% [from 10%].”

November 2018

  • Trump administration issues new guidance urging states to “tear down basic pillars of the Affordable Care Act, demolishing a basic rule” that federal subsidies can only be used to purchase ACA-compliant plans. Experts warn against this move, saying it will push affordable, comprehensive care further out of reach for individuals with pre-existing conditions.
  • Under the Trump administration, the number of uninsured children grows for the first time in nearly a decade. After a decade of steady decreases in the number of uninsured children, in 2017 the number of uninsured children increased from 3.6 million to 3.9 million.

October 2018

  • Republicans appoint Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh is known to be hostile to the Affordable Care Act.
  • The Trump administration issues guidance that allows federal subsidies to be used to purchase junk plans that can deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

September 2018

  • The Trump administration’s Department of Justice joins twenty conservative states in court in opening arguments to argue that the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions should be overturned.
  • Nearly 4,600 Arkansans are unable to meet Arkansas’ reporting requirements for the state’s Medicaid work requirements and lose Medicaid coverage.

August 2018

  • Trump administration finalizes rule for bare-bones short-term plans that are exempt from key consumer protections, such as the requirement that insurance covers prescription drugs, maternity care, and hospitalization.

July 2018

  • CMS halts risk adjustment payments, that enable insurance companies to cover everyone, regardless of whether they are healthy or sick.
  • Trump Administration slashes funding for non-profit health navigator groups, that help people shop for coverage, from $36 million to $10 million. CMS encourages groups to use the remaining funds to push people to sign up for junk plans that skirt important consumer protections.
  • President Trump nominates Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh has previously forced a young woman to continue a pregnancy against her will and has criticized Justice Roberts for upholding the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality.

June 2018

  • Department of Justice takes to the courts to argue that insurance companies should be able to discriminate against as many as 130 million Americans with a pre-existing condition.
  • Republican coalition, the Health Policy Consensus Group, released their latest proposal to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions, let insurance companies charge older people an age tax, and deny key coverage for basic services like maternity care.
  • Trump Administration finalizes proposal to expand access to association health plans that skirt key consumer protections.

May 2018

  • President Trump boasts about health care sabotage: “We will have gotten rid of a majority of Obamacare.”
  • Trump Administration enlists help of former drug lobbyist in writing its drug plan.
  • Congressional Republicans try to use annual farm bill to authorize $65 million in taxpayer funding to set up association health plans, which can  exclude prescription drug coverage, mental health care, and maternity care.

April 2018

  • House Republicans vote on a balanced budget amendment that would cut Medicaid by $700 billion over ten years, $114 billion in a single year alone.
  • Trump Administration limits access to assistance for consumers who want to enroll in marketplace coverage. This change removes the requirement that every area has at least two “navigator” groups to provide consumer assistance and that one be local. Now, just one group could cover entire states or groups of states.

March 2018

  • Republicans sabotage efforts to pass a bipartisan bill that would have stabilized Affordable Care Act marketplaces by insisting the bill restrict access to abortion.

February 2018

  • The Trump Administration announces that it will expand access to short-term health plans that do not have to comply with key consumer protection provisions required by the Affordable Care Act.
  • Urban Institute calculates that repeal of the individual mandate and expansion of short term plans will increase individual market premiums by an average 18.2 percent in 2019.
  • Trump Administration releases budget that calls for the Affordable Care Act to be replaced by Graham-Cassidy, in a move that experts predict would reduce health coverage for 32 million Americans.

January 2018

  • The Trump Administration announces that it will support states that impose onerous work requirements on Americans covered by Medicaid, and approves Kentucky’s worst-in-the-nation waiver the next day.
  • The Trump Administration announces a move to allow providers to discriminate by allowing them to deny patient care for almost any reason.
  • The Trump Administration makes plans to announce even more exemptions from the requirement people have health coverage before this provision is repealed altogether.

December 2017

  • The Trump Administration proposes a rule to expand association health plans, which would gut consumer protections, raise costs for people with pre-existing conditions and further destabilize the insurance markets.
  • Congressional Republicans pass their tax scam, which doubles as a sneaky repeal of the Affordable Care Act  by kicking 13 million people off of their insurance and raising premiums by double digits for millions more.

November 2017

  • Republicans refuse to move forward on the bipartisan Alexander-Murray bill to address the CSR crisis even though it had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

October 2017

  • The Trump Administration takes direct aim at birth control by rolling back a rule that guaranteed women access to contraception. (A court has since questioned the legality of the action.)
  • President Trump signs an Executive Order to roll back key consumer protections that will result in garbage insurance, raise premiums, reduce coverage and again expose millions of Americans to discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.
  • The Trump Administration dramatically cuts in-person assistance to help people sign up for 2018 health coverage.
  • After threatening for months to stop funding cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) that help lower deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, the Trump Administration stops the payments altogether. The CBO finds that failing to make these payments will increase premiums by 20% and add nearly $200 billion to the debt.

September 2017

  • The Administration orders the Department of Health and Human Services’ regional directors to stop participating in Open Enrollment events. Mississippi Health Advocacy Program Executive Director Roy Mitchell says, “I didn’t call it sabotage…But that’s what it is.”

August 2017

  • The Administration cuts the outreach advertising budget for Open Enrollment by 90 percent, from $100 million to just $10 million – which resulted in as many as 1.1 million fewer people getting covered.

July 2017

  • The Trump Administration uses funding intended to support health insurance enrollment to launch a multimedia propaganda campaign against the Affordable Care Act.
  • President Trump, again, threatens to end cost-sharing reduction payments.

June 2017

  • Senate Republicans embark on a monthslong failed attempt to pass BCRA, Skinny Repeal and Graham-Cassidy, all repeal bills that would have caused millions of Americans to lose their health coverage and raised premiums by double digits for millions more. They would have ended Medicaid as we know it, putting the care of children, seniors and people with disabilities at risk.

May 2017

  • House Republicans vote for and pass a health care repeal bill that would cause 23 million people to lose coverage and gut protections for people with pre-existing conditions. It would have imposed an age tax and allowed insurers to charge people over 50 five times more for coverage and ended Medicaid as we know it, putting the care of seniors, children and people with disabilities in jeopardy.

April 2017

  • The Trump Administration cuts the number of days people could sign up for coverage during open enrollment by half, from 90 days to 45 days.
  • In an effort to convince Democrats to negotiate a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, President Trump threatens to cut off cost-sharing reduction payments (CSRs) that help low-income marketplace customers pay for out-of-pocket costs.

March 2017

  • The Trump Administration sends a letter to governors encouraging them to submit proposals which include provisions such as work requirements that make it harder for Medicaid beneficiaries to get affordable care and increase the number of people who are uninsured.

February 2017

  • The Trump Administration proposes a rule to weaken Marketplace coverage and raise premiums for millions of middle-class families.

January 2017

  • On his first day in office, President Trump signs an Executive Order directing the administration to identify every way it can unravel the Affordable Care Act.
  • Also on January 20th, the Department of Health and Human Services begins to remove information on how to sign up for the Affordable Care Act.
  • The Trump Administration pulls funding for outreach and advertising for the final days of 2017 enrollment. This move is estimated to have reduced enrollment by nearly 500,000.
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