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For health clinics that rely on federal funding through Title X, April 1 is one of the most important days of the year: It’s when the grant program’s annual funds are typically renewed. Clinics rely on the money to provide reproductive health services — such as birth control, cancer screenings, wellness exams and HIV testing — to more than 2.8 million people, many of whom are low-income, uninsured or underinsured. (Bendix, 3/31)

In news about MAHA —

The White House is calling on the Senate to confirm Dr. Casey Means as U.S. surgeon general "without further delay," even as President Donald Trump signaled uncertainty about her path forward. Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday that he didn't know how Means was faring in the nomination process more than a month after her Senate confirmation hearing. "We have a lot of great candidates," he added. (Lovelace Jr., Kapur and Bendix, 3/31)

The Food and Drug Administration is moving toward allowing compounding pharmacies to produce more than a dozen injectable peptides that were banned because of potentially significant safety risks, according to a senior administration official. In 2023, 14 peptides were removed from a list of products that the F.D.A. allows compounding pharmacies to produce. The pharmacies tailor products for individual patients’ needs. The peptides had not been approved by the F.D.A. as safe or effective and, in recent years, the agency had noted that they were increasingly being marketed with unproved claims that they had cosmetic, anti-aging and disease-fighting benefits. (Jewett and Blum, 3/31)

A growing number of patients who need transfusions are asking for blood from unvaccinated donors, a difficult request to honor, given that blood centers don’t ask donors if they’ve been vaccinated and don’t label blood according to vaccinated status. These requests often delay care and, in some cases, harm patients’ health, according to a report published late last week in Transfusion. Health systems need to develop standardized policies, include counseling, to handle these requests, the report’s authors wrote. (Szabo, 3/31)

More updates from the Trump administration —

The Trump administration is changing the name of the federal health IT office back to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The Tuesday announcement also reverts the organization of the office to focus on external IT coordination, instead of also overseeing Health and Human Services’ internal use of technology. (Trang, 3/31)

It is perhaps not surprising that the director of the National Institutes of Health would invoke the name of a man revered by scientists as the architect of a policy widely credited with driving the United States’ global supremacy in biomedical research. But Jay Bhattacharya’s claim over the weekend that the Trump administration is pursuing a vision articulated eight decades ago by that scientific leader, Vannevar Bush, has provoked pushback — even outrage — in scientific circles. (Oza, 4/1)

On Medicaid, Medicare, ACA, and the high cost of health care —

More than 400 hospitals across the United States are at high risk of closing or cutting services because of the Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” according to an analysis from the progressive watchdog group Public Citizen. The fallout could make it harder for millions of people to get care and put thousands of health care workers’ jobs at risk as hospitals lose a key source of federal funding. Medicaid covers about a fifth of all hospital spending. (Lovelace Jr., 3/31)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act Darkens Outlook For Government-Backed Clinics
Bluestem Health, a clinic that serves low-income and uninsured patients in Lincoln, Nebraska, has lost money for the last two years. And CEO Brad Meyer fears times will soon get worse for the clinic and its 21,000 patients. That’s because Nebraska is set to become the first state to require certain Medicaid enrollees to work or lose their coverage under new rules in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. (Galewitz, 4/1)

More than 130 hospitals sued the Health and Human Services Department seeking to overturn a regulation that allegedly underpays them for treating Medicare patients. Hospitals in 16 states filed a complaint alleging HHS exceeded its legal authority when it finalized a 2023 rule that retroactively changed how the agency counts inpatient stays for Medicare Advantage patients in disproportionate share hospital payments. (Kacik, 3/31)

The federal government spends significantly more on retirees than any other age group in the United States, a sign of the breadth of Social Security and Medicare — and Americans’ determination to keep those programs going. Americans age 65 and older — generally part of the baby-boom generation or Silent Generation — received an estimated $2.7 trillion in federal outlays last year, six times more than the $449 billion for Americans under 26 years old. That ratio is only expected to grow as the population ages. (Lerman, 4/1)

Americans are more concerned about the availability and cost of health care than any other domestic issue, with it reclaiming the top spot for the first time since 2020, according to a new Gallup poll. The poll, released Tuesday, found that 61 percent of the 1,000 adults surveyed said they worry a “great deal” about accessing and affording health care, while 23 percent expressed a “fair amount” of concern. (Brams, 3/31)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: �������ýҕ�l Health News’ ‘Letters To The Editor’: Readers Sound Off On NIH Staff Cuts, Work Requirements, And More
‘The Federal Government’s Loss Is the County’s Gain’I wanted to thank Rachana Pradhan and Katheryn Houghton for their coverage of the loss of staff at the National Institutes of Health (“Six Federal Scientists Run Out by Trump Talk About the Work Left Undone,” March 6). In December 2024, I had accepted a tentative job offer for a dream job at NIH after eight years of being a federal contractor supporting data science work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Global Health Center and the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases during the covid response, and later with the U.S. Agency for International Development, where I supported HIV program monitoring and response data visualization. (4/1)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Listen To The Latest '�������ýҕ�l Health News Minute'
Jackie Fortiér reads the week’s news: Consumers know which party they blame after Congress failed to extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies. Plus, updated standards say seniors should aim for even lower blood pressure readings. (3/31)