“The national security might be something worth paying for,” Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said July 22 in an exclusive interview with Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News.

The U.S., which has grappled with drug shortages in recent years, relies primarily on China to produce the active ingredients in many antibiotics, according to in JAMA Health Forum. Domestic facilities have closed or shifted to producing other drugs.

“Do we want China to have that sort of leverage for these drugs to be produced principally, maybe 99%, over there, and we don’t have access to them if tension rises between the two countries?” said Cassidy, who is a physician.

On July 21, Trump said in a that he would give generic drug companies two years to move production back to the U.S., after which he would impose 100% tariffs on imported products, rising to 200% the following year. Generic drugs make up an estimated 90% of all prescriptions filled in the U.S.

Cassidy, who has served in Congress , lost his bid for reelection in May after Trump endorsed a Republican primary challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow.

Last month, more than 16 months after his vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, on CBS News’ Face the Nation that the secretary broke promises he made to the senator, including that he would not change the federal recommendations for childhood vaccines.

Asked whether he would summon Kennedy again to discuss those promises, Cassidy said he had asked for him to appear before his committee but had not heard back about whether he would do so. Kennedy in April to discuss the Trump administration’s fiscal 2027 budget request for HHS.

Cassidy told Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News that when he agreed to vote to advance Kennedy’s nomination, he trusted that Kennedy would keep his word about not disparaging vaccines.

“If they agree to guardrails and disregard those guardrails, you can judge me,” Cassidy said. “You may decide my judgment wasn’t very good, but I don’t think you can say I acted in bad faith.”

Regardless, Cassidy added, Kennedy was going to exert influence in the administration, and he thought it would be better for Kennedy to be in an official post, where his work would be subject to oversight.

“I’m pretty sure that RFK was going to have the president’s ear whether he was in office or not,” he said.

While Kennedy’s efforts to roll back federal vaccine recommendations are being blocked by courts, this week reported that the number of measles cases confirmed in the U.S. so far in 2026 has exceeded the total for 2025 — making it the highest number of cases in 35 years.

Cassidy, a principal author of the 2020 No Surprises Act targeting surprise medical bills, also said he doesn’t think Congress needs to make modifications to the law in the wake of reports that doctors and other healthcare providers are winning huge payouts under the arbitration system the law created. The No Surprises Act was intended to shield patients from receiving big bills for receiving medical care they didn’t know was outside their health plan’s network.

An analysis by this week found that providers were awarded nearly $15 billion in disputed claims in 2025, more than triple the 2024 figure of $4.08 billion.

“The initial step to make sure that people are getting their best deal is price transparency,” Cassidy said.

The HELP Committee on July 22 overwhelmingly approved advancing the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, a bipartisan bill that would further expand the requirements that hospitals, insurers, and other healthcare providers make prices public and available to patients and employers. A House committee advanced a similar bill this week, also with bipartisan support, but it remains unclear whether either measure will be approved by the full House and Senate.

The interview — in which Cassidy also discussed his — was part of the “How Would You Fix It?” series featuring Julie Rovner, Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News’ chief Washington correspondent and host of the What the Health? podcast.

An abbreviated version of this interview aired July 23 in Episode 456 of What the Health? From Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News: “A Shrinking Safety Net.”

This article first appeared on Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and is republished here under a .

Mitchell noted that employers, which offer coverage to more than 160 million Americans, are a big player in the nation’s healthcare system — a role they came into because of “an accident of history,” she said.

“They weren’t looking to get into the healthcare business,” she continued, but “they were looking for alternatives to wages when there were limits on what they could offer, and they started with what was a pretty inexpensive offering — helping pay for hospital care — and that has now grown to be the second-largest line item in their budgets after payroll.”

Rovner and Mitchell discussed the fact that while large employers do have market power, the rest of the healthcare system banded together in response.

“There’s been this arms race of consolidation, meaning that even the largest employers in the world are smaller and don’t have the leverage many times,” Mitchell said.

Asked to identify the systemic changes large employers would like to see, Mitchell pointed to boosting primary care and referring patients to high-quality specialists. She said changes to business policies — in particular, banning anti-competitive practices and increasing price transparency — would help, too.

“We have a very real affordability crisis,” she said.

An abbreviated version of this interview aired July 16 during Episode 455 of What the Health? From Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News: “States Start Their Medicaid Cuts.”

This article first appeared on Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and is republished here under a .

Baldwin, who is a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said lawmakers have been forced to take unprecedented action to ensure the Trump administration properly spends taxpayer dollars.

“In this most recently passed bill that Donald Trump signed into law, we had to put guardrails that we’ve never had to put into our appropriations laws before to enforce our spending bills,” Baldwin said. “And those laws have made it clear that we expect that they must spend what we have appropriated, and not just all of it at the end of the fiscal year, but in a timely manner throughout the year.”

The conversation also addressed the success — and Trump-imposed limitations — of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. The resource, which was created through a bipartisan effort, has led to a notable reduction in youth suicide, according to in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“It’s heartwarming to know that this work matters,” Baldwin said.

This interview aired May 14 on Episode No. 446 of What the Health? From Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News: “In Search of a New FDA Commissioner.”

This article first appeared on Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and is republished here under a .

They discussed the pivotal role the president of the United States plays in health policy — whether it is building support for or opposition to new plans and proposals. “Presidents have a level of authority which is often underappreciated, especially in health care,” Blumenthal said.

Blumenthal and Rovner also discussed the historical reasons the U.S. has been unable to enact universal health care, incrementalism versus sweeping change, and what he described as “the dance” between proponents and opponents — usually a clear party-line split between Democrats and Republicans — of major health care reforms.

Today, the split seems to have come to a head, as public health, science, and expertise are being viewed by one end of the political spectrum as “the opposition,” Blumenthal said, which will complicate efforts. Still, he outlined ideas for moving forward.

An abbreviated version of this interview aired April 23 on Episode 443 of What the Health? From Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News: “RFK Jr. vs. Congress.”

Blumenthal’s latest book, Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science, co-written with James A. Morone, offers a behind-the-scenes look at how three presidential administrations pursued very different health policy goals.

This article first appeared on Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and is republished here under a .

LISTEN: After a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to pare down childhood vaccine recommendations, plenty of questions remain — like how annual vaccines for the flu will get approved. Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner spoke with WAMU about how the decision is rippling through the public health system.

Big swings in federal vaccine policy are creating confusion for some parents and clinicians. A federal judge recently struck down Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new, for all kids. But with the Trump administration likely to appeal, the situation is in flux. Meanwhile, cases of such as measles, mumps, and whooping cough continue to accumulate nationwide and in the Washington, D.C., area.

Julie Rovner, Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News chief Washington correspondent and host of the podcast What The Health?, appeared on WAMU’s “Health Hub” on April 1 to break down what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what’s still unclear.

This article first appeared on Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and is republished here under a .

On What the Health? From Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News, distributed by WAMU, chief Washington correspondent and host Julie Rovner sat down with Drew Altman, president and CEO of KFF, to talk about the likelihood of a national health care debate to rein in costs.

As the midterm elections approach, the cost of health care is the public’s , Altman said. Although past reforms have significantly increased the number of people with health insurance, they have not successfully addressed affordability, he said.

Altman said the U.S. health system poses two major problems: Americans’ concerns about how to pay for their own medical care, and the significant share of national spending it consumes.

Rovner and Altman also discuss the downstream effects of change, including the impact of the Trump administration’s cost-cutting on states, employers, and individuals, and lessons learned from past attempts at government reform.

This is the first in a new interview series, “How Would You Fix It?” In the months to come, Rovner will interview experts and decision-makers from a variety of backgrounds and perspectives, asking each how they would repair the health care system.

An abbreviated version of this interview aired March 19 on Episode 438 of What the Health? From Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News: “RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Schedule Changes Blocked — For Now.”

Altman’s “Beyond the Data” columns — including the column discussed in this interview, “” — can be read .

This article first appeared on Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and is republished here under a .

Yet anti-abortion activists remain frustrated, in some cases even more so than before Roe was overturned.

Why? Because despite the new legal restrictions, abortions have not stopped taking place, not even in states with complete bans. In fact, the number of abortions has not dropped at all, .

“Indeed, abortions have tragically increased in Louisiana and other pro-life states,” Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s attorney general, said at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing this month.

That’s due in large part to the easier availability of medication abortion, which uses a combination of the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, and particularly to the pills’ availability via mail after a telehealth visit with a licensed health professional.

Allowing telehealth access was a major change originally made on a temporary basis during the covid pandemic, when visits to a doctor’s office were largely unavailable. Before that, unlike most medications, mifepristone could be dispensed only directly, and only by a medical professional individually certified by the Food and Drug Administration.

The Biden administration later permanently eliminated the requirement for an in-person visit — a change the second Trump administration has not undone.

While the percentage of abortions using medication had been growing every year since 2000, when the FDA first approved mifepristone for pregnancy termination, the Biden administration’s decision to drop the in-person dispensing requirement supercharged its use. More than 60% of all abortions were done using medication rather than a procedure in 2023, the most recent year for which . More than a quarter of all abortions that year were managed via telehealth.

Separately, President Donald Trump’s FDA in October approved a second generic version of mifepristone, angering abortion opponents. FDA officials said at the time that they had no choice — that as long as the original drug remains approved, federal law requires them to OK copies that are “bioequivalent” to the approved drug.

It’s clear that reining in, if not canceling, the approval of pregnancy-terminating medication is a top priority for abortion opponents. This month, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America called abortion drugs “,” referencing their growing use in ending pregnancies as well as claims of safety concerns — such as the risk a woman could be given the drugs unknowingly or suffer serious complications. Decades of research and experience show medication abortion is safe and complications are rare.

Another group, Students for Life, has been trying to make the case that the biological waste from the use of mifepristone is , though environmental scientists refute that claim.

Yet the groups are most frustrated not with supporters of abortion rights but with the Trump administration. The object of most of their ire is the FDA, which they say is dragging its feet on a promised review of the abortion pill and the Biden administration’s loosened requirements around its availability.

President Joe Biden’s covid-era policy allowing abortion drugs to be sent via mail ”should’ve been rescinded on day one of the administration,” SBA Pro-Life America’s president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, said in a recent statement. Instead, almost a year later, she continued, “pro-life states are being completely undermined in their ability to enforce the laws that they passed.”

Lawmakers who oppose abortion access are also pressing the administration. “At an absolute minimum, the previous in-person safeguards must be restored immediately,” Senate HELP Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy said during the hearing with Murrill and other witnesses who want to see abortion pill availability curtailed.

Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) said at the hearing that he hoped “the rumors are false” that “the agency is intentionally slow-walking its study on mifepristone’s health risks.”

The White House and spokespeople at the Department of Health and Human Services have denied the review is being purposely delayed.

“The FDA’s scientific review process is thorough and takes the time necessary to ensure decisions are grounded in gold-standard science,” HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in an emailed response to Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News. “Dr. Makary is upholding that standard as part of the Department’s commitment to rigorous, evidence-based review.” That’s a reference to Marty Makary, the FDA commissioner.

Revoking abortion pill access may not be as easy as advocates hoped when Trump moved back into the White House. While the president delivered on many of the goals of his anti-abortion backers during his first term, especially the confirmation of Supreme Court justices who made overturning Roe possible, he has been far less doctrinaire in his second go-round.

Earlier this month, Trump unnerved some of his supporters by advising House Republicans that lawmakers “have to be a little flexible” on the Hyde Amendment to appeal to voters, referring to a decades-old appropriations rule that bans most federal abortion funding and that some Republicans have been pushing to enforce more broadly.

And while the anniversary of Trump’s inauguration has many analysts noting how much of the has been realized, the most headline-grabbing portions on reproductive health have yet to be enacted. The Trump administration has not, for example, revoked the approval of mifepristone for pregnancy termination, nor has it invoked the 1873 Comstock Act, which could effectively ban abortion nationwide by stopping not just the mailing of abortion pills but also anything else used in providing abortions.

Still, abortion opponents have decades of practice at remaining hopeful — and playing a long game.

HealthBent, a regular feature of Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News, offers insight into and analysis of policies and politics from Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner, who has covered health care for more than 30 years.

This article first appeared on Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and is republished here under a .

Listen: Health care has been at the heart of the federal government’s shutdown. Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner appeared on WAMU’s Oct. 22 “Health Hub” to explain the health care compromises some lawmakers want before they will agree to reopen the government.

Affordable Care Act tax credits are at the heart of government shutdowns in U.S. history. The impact is starting to be felt by families and federal employees. programs could at the end of the month. And federal health agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have faced layoffs.

Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner appeared on ” to discuss the possible compromises that could reopen the government.

This article first appeared on Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and is republished here under a .

Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner appeared Oct. 6 on the podcast “” to discuss TrumpRx, President Donald Trump’s proposal for a direct-to-consumer website aimed at lowering prescription drug costs.

While few details were made public when the program was announced on Sept. 30, Rovner explains that consumers who are enrolled in health plans through their employers or government programs may save more money on drugs using their insurance or drugmakers’ patient discount programs.

This article first appeared on Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and is republished here under a .

Federal funding ran out at midnight on Oct. 1, after Congress failed to pass even a stopgap budget while negotiations continued.

Now the question is how long the deadlock will last, with Democrats pitted against Republicans and a presidential administration that has broken with and regularly used to achieve its ends. Because Republicans hold only a slim majority in the Senate, any deal will need to attract at least a few Democratic votes.

Ramifications from a shutdown on public health systems and health programs will be felt far beyond Washington, D.C., halting almost all of the federal government’s nonessential functions, including many operations related to public health.

Even on Sept. 30, as the clock ticked toward midnight, President Donald Trump about of federal workers if Democrats didn’t acquiesce to GOP demands. Some people worry that such workforce reductions would further enable the administration to undermine federal government operations and reduce the budget impasse to what’s been described as three-dimensional chess or a game of chicken.

Such threats to fire, rather than temporarily suspend, federal workers are “unprecedented,” said G. William Hoagland of the Bipartisan Policy Center. The lack of negotiations between Capitol Hill Republicans and Democrats in advance of the shutdown is also unprecedented in his experience, said Hoagland, a longtime GOP Senate Budget Committee aide.

The stalemate centers largely on health coverage, with Democrats and Republicans clashing over the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid cuts. For Americans with ACA marketplace plans, government subsidies cap the percentage of household income they must pay toward premiums. Lawmakers expanded the subsidies in 2021 and extended that additional help through the end of 2025, and the of those expanded subsidies would increase costs and reduce eligibility for assistance for millions of enrollees.

Democrats want a further extension of the subsidies, but many GOP lawmakers are resistant to extending them as is and say that debate must wait until after a budget deal to keep the federal government afloat. Antagonism has grown, with the parties in a pitched battle to convince voters the other party is to blame for the government’s closure.

Said Senate Minority Leader on the Senate floor Sept. 30: “Republicans have chosen the losing side of the health care debate, because they’re trying to take away people’s health care; they’re going to let people’s premiums rise.”

But Senate Majority Leader accused Democrats of attempting to “take government funding hostage.”

The longer a shutdown lasts, the more impacts could be felt. For example, some community health centers would be at risk of closure as their federal funding dries up.

by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to reduce damage from future natural disasters will stop, for example. Rescue services at national parks that stay open will be limited. And at the National Institutes of Health, many awaiting access to experimental treatments may not be admitted to its clinical center.

Entitlement programs such as Medicaid and Medicare will continue, as will operations at the . But disease surveillance, support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to local and state health departments, and funding for health programs will all be hampered, based on federal health agencies’ .

The Department of Health and Human Services is expected to furlough about 40% of its workforce, which has already been downsized by about 20,000 positions under the Trump administration. Across the federal government, roughly 750,000 employees will be furloughed, according to an by the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan agency that calculates the cost of legislation. While furloughed employees won’t be working, eventually they will get back pay, totaling about $400 million daily, the CBO estimated.

At HHS, research is on the links between drug prices and the Inflation Reduction Act, the major law enacted under former President Joe Biden to boost the economy. Despite reports that Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary said the FDA would basically be untouched, the agency won’t accept and food safety efforts will be reduced. Federal oversight of a program that and evacuate individuals in environmental crises is expected to stop.

Fewer federal staff will be available to Medicaid and Medicare enrollees. CDC responses to inquiries about public health matters . And the work of a federal vaccine injury program is also .

Congressional Democrats insist the ACA subsidies must be renewed now because enrollment for the Obama-era health program opens on Nov. 1. Without the extended subsidies, health insurers are warning of double-digit premium hikes for millions of enrollees.

House Democratic Leader has argued that a “Republican-caused health care crisis” is hanging over Americans as a result of Trump’s new tax-and-spending bill, which adds restrictions to Medicaid that are expected to kick millions off the program. Republicans have also advanced and funding cuts at the nation’s health department and caused widespread confusion over access to some vaccines.

“We’re not going to simply go along to get along with a Republican bill that continues to gut the health care of everyday Americans,” Jeffries told reporters Sept. 29. “These people have been trying to repeal and displace people off the Affordable Care Act since 2010.”

Republicans, meanwhile, have blasted Democrats for holding up funding over the subsidies and say any deal will require concessions.

“If there were some extension of the existing policy, I think it would have to come with some reforms,” Thune, the Senate Republican leader, said Sept. 26.

Such a deal may involve changes to a policy that caps what consumers have to pay for ACA marketplace plans at, no matter how much they earn. It could also alter their ability to obtain plans with no premiums, an option that became more widely available because of the beefed-up subsidies.

Adding restrictions to the ACA subsidies is likely to decrease enrollment in the program, which saw declines during the first Trump administration and did not reach 20 million for the first time until last year, a milestone reached in large part due to the subsidies.

Several Republicans have expressed interest in extending the subsidies, including a group of GOP representatives who proposed legislation to do so last month.

Democrats may be betting that the timing of the shutdown will put pressure on their Republican colleagues to come to the negotiation table on the ACA subsidies.

Within days of the government’s closure, ACA enrollees are expected to get notices from their health insurers advising them of . Insurers have said the expiring subsidies have forced those large premium hikes because the healthiest and youngest people are more likely to opt out of coverage when prices go up.

The White House, meanwhile, ramped up its pressure campaign on Democrats. White House press secretary insisted Sept. 29 that Trump wants to keep the government open.

“Our most vulnerable in our society and our country will be impacted by a government shutdown,” she said.

This article first appeared on Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and is republished here under a .