[Editor’s note: This transcript was generated using both transcription software and a human’s light touch. It has been edited for style and clarity.] 

Julie Rovner: Hello, from Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and WAMU Public Radio in Washington, D.C. Welcome to What the Health? I’m Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News. And, as always, I’m joined by some of the best and smartest health reporters covering Washington. We’re taping this week on Thursday, June 11, at 10 a.m. As always, news happens fast, and things might have changed by the time you hear this. So, here we go. Today, we are joined via video conference by Lauren Weber of The Washington Post. 

Lauren Weber: Hello, hello. 

Rovner: Lizzy Lawrence of Stat News. 

Lizzy Lawrence: Hi there. 

Rovner: And Sandhya Raman of Bloomberg Law. 

Sandhya Raman: Hello, everyone. 

Rovner: Later in this episode, we’ll have my interview with my colleague Tricia Neuman, who’s stepping down from her post here as KFF senior vice president and executive director of the Program on Medicare Policy, after a long and distinguished career shaping and analyzing the nation’s most prominent health insurance program. But first, this week’s news. I want to start this week with kind of a slow-motion news story that I want to make sure doesn’t get overlooked. It’s the continuing signals of declining health insurance coverage in the U.S. The Commonwealth Fund reports this week that state Affordable Care Act marketplaces are seeing the predicted shedding of policies by consumers who can’t make their premium payments. In Maryland, for example, 13% of enrollees fell off their plans between open enrollment and April of this year. That’s compared to just 3% last year. At the same time, more people are becoming underinsured because they, quote, “bought down” coverage from gold- or silver-level policies to bronze, leaving them with lower premiums but often multi-thousand-dollar deductibles. Meanwhile, three Democrat-led cities and a Democrat-led county have sued the Department of Health and Human Services over the regulation governing sign-ups for next year’s Affordable Care Act plans, charging that changes like allowing non-network plans and still higher out-of-pocket caps violate the terms of the ACA itself. So what is the outlook for the ACA, now that it’s June and it seems pretty clear that Congress is not going to extend those additional subsidies that expired at the end of last year? 

Weber: I’d say it’s not looking good, Julie, the way you just laid it out. I mean, I think the bottom line is this is a train wreck we’ve been watching in slow motion for many, many months, in the sense that you’re going to see a lot of people lose coverage. This is not exactly happening during a booming economic time, so you’ve got people cutting back because of high grocery bills, high etc., and then they see their health care go up tremendously, and they can’t cut it. And then they end up in plans that could leave them with massive bills at the end of the day. I do think this will lead to more of a groundswell of outcry, because it’s hitting folks â€” most affected, as The Commonwealth Fund pointed out, are not those in the lowest category; it’s the folks â€¦ where the subsidies ran out kind of in the mid-tier. And so you’re getting some more middle-class or lower-middle-class folks that are seeing some very, very steep health care bills. 

Rovner: Yeah, and as you point out, at the same time they’re seeing their gas bills go up, and their grocery bill’s up and basically prices for everything else. But I mean, I think there was a lot of like real sticker shock with the insurance, because you know, well, you know, gas is up $1 a gallon, and it hurts to go from paying, you know, $25 or $30 to fill your tank to $45 or $50, it’s not like saying, Hey, you’re going to go from paying $300 a month to paying $1,300 a month, which is what we saw from a lot of people.  

Meanwhile, both doctor and patient groups are up in arms over the new Medicaid work rules issued by the Trump administration last week. Rather than allowing states to automatically exempt from the work requirement people with certain conditions that would qualify them as, quote, “medically frail,” the rules stipulate that beginning in 2028 Medicaid recipients will have to prove at least twice a year not just that they have a condition, but that that condition prevents them from working. Patient groups say that will result in people who most need health insurance losing it and possibly getting sicker. Doctors, including the American Medical Association, which was conveniently having one of its meetings this week, worry that the burden of making that determination is going to fall on them, and that doctors aren’t trained for these things. They also point out that many chronic conditions fluctuate, leaving people sometimes able to maintain daily activities, like working, and sometimes not. Might this get changed due to the outcry? I think the administration, so far, seems to be saying that not doing it this way lets too many people off the hook. 

Lawrence: Yeah, I mean, I think that this is one of those things â€” again, it’s starting in January 2028. There’s sort of a year tail. I’m curious â€¦ there’s enough time that this could keep getting pushed down the road and possibly reversed, and you know, there’s also legal challenges. I know that my colleagues wrote about the Legal Action Center saying that CMS [the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] is exceeding its authority here, so definitely we should be watching to see what happens with that. 

Rovner: Like many people, I was surprised at the rules as they came out. But I’m also a little bit taken aback at how broad the backlash is, particularly to this part â€” to the really, you’re going to require people with cancer to prove that they can’t meet work requirements? And how are they going to do that? And are people on Medicaid really going to be able to get doctors to, like, write them notes to say this person should be exempted? I mean, it just, it seems like a huge bureaucratic morass. 

Lawrence: Absolutely. 

Raman: Oh, I was just gonna say, from all sides, you know, if you are on Medicaid, and maybe there’s the burden of just transportation to get to that appointment, and, you know, having the time and the energy if you have a chronic illness, but then also we’ve heard time and time again how workforce issues, doctors are already overworked and don’t have the time to do so many of the things they already have to do. This is another burden for them to be able to have to eventually do this with the limited time they do have. 

Rovner: Lauren. 

Weber: It also seems incredibly subjective. I mean, I know they said that they’re trying to get to it through the codes, but, as  [Miranda Ollstein], I mean, how does one even really evaluate that? And people can work in different stretches. Also, with the flexibility many people have now to work from home, there is an opportunity for some folks maybe to be able to work, depending on what their job is. It’s just a minefield of unintended consequences, probably. So we’ll see how that goes. 

Rovner: I’ll say, this has a long way to play out. Well, along similar lines, there are also concerns that the new crackdown on fraud that’s being spearheaded by the Trump administration is threatening people’s coverage as well. In Ohio, lawmakers rushing to address home healthcare fraud tried to speed through a bill that included a provision to ban family members from qualifying as care providers for people with disabilities. That was ultimately removed from the bill when it was pointed out that such a change could result in more people having to be institutionalized, costing the state far, far more than paying family members to help people. I’m sure we’re going to see similar efforts to crack down on fraud in more states, because the federal government is threatening to take away money. Although, as administration officials continue to claim widespread fraud throughout the home health and hospice care systems, I imagine that we’re going to see more give-and-take on this one too. 

Weber: It seems like another example of shoot first, look later. I mean, in general, that clearly would have been a very bad provision to keep in the bill. If you know anything about home healthcare, you know that most of the time it is a family member giving up much of their time and effort to keep a loved one in the home. And so wild that that was even in there to start with. I think in general this goes to this long-running conversation around fraud. Again, there is a lot of healthcare fraud. I think we should all be very clear. There’s a lot of fraud that needs to be addressed. But you can say a lot of things about fraud obliquely, but then when you get to the brass tacks, you got to be careful about what you’re doing. So this is just another example of that, and how we’ve seen the Trump administration move on this that may or may not end up in problematic outcomes. 

Rovner: Yeah, Dr. [Mehmet] Oz [the CMS administrator] keeps talking about, you know, family members who are helping carry in groceries or driving people to doctors’ appointments. That’s not what these paid caregivers are doing. These are people who are basically unable to work because they need to be with this person that they are caring for 24/7, 365. I mean, there’s a lot of work involved here that’s way more than I think a lot of people who are in Washington or, I guess in this case, in Baltimore writing these rules sometimes realize. And I think that was brought home rather vividly in Ohio when they tried to do this and then were suddenly given the facts on the ground and said, Oops, maybe we should try this another way. But Lauren, you’re right, it’s not to say that there isn’t plenty of fraud to be fought. 

Well, moving on, this week we also got the annual report from the trustees of Social Security and Medicare. Not much has changed from last year as far as when the trust funds that support the programs will technically become insolvent. For Medicare’s Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, it’s still 2033, but a quarter earlier â€” so three months’ difference. Still, that’s only seven years away. In earlier times, I’ve been doing this a long time, seven years to insolvency would set off alarm bells in Congress and the administration, and would prompt action, or at least attempted action. Are we yawning our way into a very large financial crisis impacting one of the most popular health programs in the country? 

Raman: I think it’s a combination of things. A) I feel like every year we are more loose with deadlines. We address them in Congress closer and closer to them. So something that several years ago would be a big conversation ahead of time, we push it closer. And I think also the appetite in Congress to get things done right now is low, to find bipartisan agreement. And so getting something done on this would be quite difficult right now with all the other competing priorities there. 

Rovner: I think they were floating the idea of another budget reconciliation bill â€” “Reconciliation 3.0,” I guess they were calling it. And my reading of the consensus is that it is not happening. Whether there’s not enough appetite or not enough votes, or combination of those two, it doesn’t look like Congress is ready to take on something as big as Let’s make sure that Social Security and Medicare are there for the retiring baby boomers and Gen Xers, who are going to shortly follow. 

Raman: Especially in a midterms year where they’re not in as much as they might be at other times. 

Rovner: Yes, that’s right. They are definitely in and out. All right. Well, we’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back. 

Meanwhile, over at the Department of Health and Human Services, our podcast colleague  of Secretary RFK Jr. over last weekend, saying he has, quote, “shown little interest in managing the details of work in his department,” and that he, quote, “is single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful.” And, indeed, the big press event Kennedy had this week was to tout his effort to get medical schools to teach their students more about nutrition, something most medical schools had already been doing, I hasten to add. And, of course, there are still no confirmed, and in some cases even nominated, heads for some major HHS agencies, including the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, which oversees things like the Ebola outbreaks. I would note that Kennedy responded to Sheryl’s story just Wednesday â€” so, like, five days after it appeared, basically saying he’s doing much more than she realizes. What are we to make of this whole thing? 

Weber: I would encourage everyone to read Kennedy’s response, and then I would also be curious if Kennedy would like to show me where his public calendars are that he talks about in his tweet, because I would love to look at them, and I’m sure Sheryl would too. But I thought Sheryl’s framing of the story was very clear-headed and accurate. I mean, look, the bottom line is the secretary has not been publicly engaged on the Ebola response at all, which is somewhat surprising. He does not have any of these people in place. I mean, take your pick. I mean, it’s all these agencies are rudderless currently, and he has very clearly expressed serious interest in his pet projects, but has not been as engaged, according to Sheryl and all of our reporting, in some of these other issues. And I think it’s a fair look at what that means for his legacy going forward, and what that will mean in the months to come. 

Rovner: Right. And you know what’s going on actually in health right now. Over at FDA, they’ve apparently begun the safety study of mifepristone, the abortion pill, that the administration has been promising anti-abortion groups for more than a year now. But it appears that study won’t be ready before the midterms, which is actually what Republican strategists had advised, so it wouldn’t further inflame the campaign season. This is up your alley. Is this FDA acting Commissioner Kyle Diamantas’ effort to win the permanent job, or is this the White House still trying to kind of placate both sides to the debate for as long as it can possibly get away with? 

Lawrence: Yeah, so Kyle Diamantas has said to many different people that he doesn’t want the job, including to me via an HHS media spokesperson, so I tend to believe him. Although it seems likely that he will be in this role for a while, because of how many leadership positions the HHS needs to fill, and how few days there are of Congress. With the mifepristone study, it seems like, yeah, I mean, I think the timing is not lost on anyone. This seems to have worked out politically pretty well for the Trump administration, where it’s a six-month study, they can kind of see what happens in the midterms, and see, because you know, [Sen. Bill] Cassidy, this is a huge issue for him. Any FDA commissioner they’re going to put in front of him, he’s going to be hammering on mifepristone, pro-life issues. So, as long as they can pursue the strategy that they have been pursuing, of sort of just waiting and seeing and saying that they’re working and pushing it out. I think that’s what they’re going to keep doing. 

Rovner: I guess there’s this continuing promise that the administration will try to sort of rein back in on the mail-order abortion drugs, which is, I guess, what’s really â€¦ I don’t think anybody thinks that they’re going to try to revoke the approval of mifepristone. I think what the anti-abortion folks are hoping now is that they’re going to revoke the mail-order ability of people to get mifepristone, which, of course, we’ve seen people using in abortion-ban states to basically evade those abortion bans. It’s obviously a big deal for both sides that the administration would like to keep under wraps as long as it possibly can. Is that a fair assessment? 

Lawrence: Absolutely. Yeah, and I mean, there’s no safety reason to do that, so â€¦ there will be huge blowback from pro-choice advocates, but also within the agency, I would imagine, this would be a huge turning point. 

Rovner: Well, that’s the FDA. Then there is the National Institutes of Health, which actually does have a Senate-confirmed leader, Jay Bhattacharya, although he’s currently doing double duty, also overseeing CDC. But apparently things aren’t so great over at NIH. Last June, 300 NIH staffers published something they called the “Bethesda Declaration,” named for the location of NIH’s main campus, in which they said that the new administration’s policies were undermining the agency’s mission, wasting public resources, and harming the health of Americans and people across the globe. Now, one year later, about 70 NIH’ers have , including one we talked about last week that would give political appointees far more say about who gets research grants and how those grantees can behave. And another policy that would strip civil service protections from many senior employees, so they could more easily be fired for not going along with the administration’s political priorities. I guess this is this week’s trend. What seemed kind of shocking last year is now kind of status quo, right? I saw very little attention to any of these stories that are enormous changes from how the nation’s science agencies have operated over Republican and Democratic administrations in the 40 years I’ve been doing this. 

Raman: I think that one thing we’ve really seen is just how much some of these science-oriented groups have mobilized over some of these issues, just, you know, kind of stating that researchers that have been doing this kind of work for 20, 30, 40 years, that this is so out of the realm of anything they’ve seen before. This would, you know, jeopardize their research and their stability and just the way that they have been doing work for so many years. And I think even with both of the rules that we, that you mentioned, that has been something that has been really amplified by them. But I think it has been, given the number of other things happening, this space not really trickled down to the broader set of folks to really, you know, tap into. We have Ebola, we have so many other things that people, I think, are a little bit more top of mind, even though this is a huge change that under normal circumstances would have more attention paid to it. 

Rovner: Yeah, I think that’s fair. This is sort of the continuing shock and awe that we see of the administration trying to make all of the changes that it wants at once, so nobody gets a chance to focus on any of them. In sort of what we would consider normal times, any one of these would be the overwhelming story of the day. 

Well, all of this brings us to what I consider the wildest story of the week. There was plenty of drama at, of all places, the annual research meeting of the American Diabetes Association in New Orleans. And props, by the way, to the website MedPage Today for breaking this within hours of its happening last Friday. I will just read the original headline: “.” So the keynote address to open the conference was supposed to be given by NIH Director Bhattacharya, but he dropped out at the last minute. While the audience was inside listening to a talk instead from NIH senior adviser Richard Wojcik, five doctors and researchers, including the editor-in-chief of the association’s flagship medical journal, as well as a past president of the ADA, were outside handing out a thousand copies of an editorial from the journal criticizing the administration’s cuts to biomedical research. At the direction of the organization, those protesters â€” can you even really call them protesters? â€” were escorted out by security and told they could not return to the conference. And from there the backlash began. Sixty-five hundred people signed a letter of complaint to the association. Two top officials resigned, and, finally, five days later, the CEO apologized to the “editorial hander-outers” via a video. But I want to pose a larger question. This was a real-world playing out of the tensions that we were just talking about are boiling within science. Should they try to work with this administration, or should they try to fight it? It would appear that the answer to that is kind of still up for grabs. Isn’t that what this demonstrates? 

Lawrence: Yeah, I mean, I think that it’s a clear tension between what the members of these major medical organizations want, which, like you said, 6,500 people signed that letter. There is a real appetite to try to fight back and push back, but there’s a real fear among leadership to do anything. â€¦ This was just mind-boggling, and my colleague Liz wrote about the backlash, and their decision to escalate the situation in this way brought so much more attention than, you know, five people handing out a journal editorial would initially. So fear can lead people to do things that ultimately don’t serve their purposes. 

Rovner: Yeah, I left out the part about the ADA leaders sort of over the weekend trying to justify the expulsion of the “editorial hander-outers,” as I will call them, by saying, Oh, it could affect our 501(c)(3) status, or they were violating the code of conduct, for, you know, for the meeting. But not only did those things not fly, they did seem to make things worse. Lauren, you wanted to add something. 

Weber: I just want to say that’s probably the most press an ADA meeting has ever gotten in its entire life. So, I mean, if they â€¦ 

Rovner: Absolutely. 

Weber: At the end of the day, I mean, these, as you point out, Lizzy, I mean, this editorial guy read a lot more and got a lot more attention because of it, so we’ll see what happens from here. 

Rovner: Yeah, but I think it’s sort of a cautionary tale for leaders of these organizations who â€” do we want to fight or do we want to try to get along, and maybe you ought to ask your members first? We’ll see if this sort of comes out at other meetings. Now it’s the beginning of the summer, it’s when a lot of these scientific meetings happen. I’ll be watching more of them a little more closely. 

Well, finally, this week, it’s June, and that means it’s the season for working on the spending bills on Capitol Hill. This week we actually got a lengthy public markup of the bill that funds the majority of the Department of Health and Human Services. A reminder: FDA is funded in the Agriculture bill because food. Sandhya, how is the Labor-HHS bill shaping up? It looks like Congress isn’t going to go along with the big cuts proposed by the Trump administration, but that’s not saying there won’t be fights about funding, right? 

Raman: Yeah, so I would say you’re right. The big takeaway from this House markup is that it kind of bucked some of the White House’s suggestions on, you know, what to do with funding for this. They funded $111 billion for HHS, if this is made into law â€” so a much smaller cut â€¦ of what the White House was proposing. That included things like $100 million more for NIH, which has been something in the past worried about cuts; and funded some things that I think we’re interesting, you know, CDC’s office for smoking [Office on Smoking and Health], something that had been subject to the DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] cuts last year; , something else that â€¦  

Rovner: Yeah, I want to address that separate, I want to get to the amendments in a second. But I mean, just sort of in terms of funding, I mean, and we should point out that $100 million for NIH â€” NIH has a budget of like $40-some billion, so yeah, it’s not a big increase. It’s a rounding error increase, but it’s not a cut. 

Raman: Yes, not a cut. So the next step for this would be the House floor, but we might get kind of stalled there just because the issue on the Senate side is they’ve not agreed to top-line numbers for funding yet, and they need those in order to shape out the individual bills. So, without that, we’re kind of in a standstill, and it might be a little bit more like we’ve seen in some of the years past, where the House goes through, they make a bill, they vote on the bill, and then the Senate doesn’t publicly do theirs, but then we get to an agreement a little further down the line. But what Sen. Susan Collins, who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee, has been saying is that, you know, she wants more for NIH than what’s been presented here. But without those top lines, we don’t know. So, we’ll see, you know, in years past, we’ve really just, the funding year deadline has been pushed and pushed and pushed, so â€¦ 

Rovner: Into the next funding year. Often. 

Raman: Yes, and I think, especially like I said, when it’s a midterms year, they’re going to be in far less than normal. It’s not clear when there’s going to be the appetite to get all of that done. 

Rovner: So, often these spending bills, when they move â€” and of course they haven’t moved when they were supposed to for the last however many years â€” but it does sometimes give a chance for lawmakers to express frustration or doubt or simply disapproval with things that the administration is doing. And one of the things that they seem to be expressing disapproval is the administration’s plan to use prior authorization, which is very controversial, in Medicare, and AI â€” in fact, an AI prior authorization in Medicare, and on a bipartisan basis. They voted to tell the administration, No, please don’t do this. I’m wondering, you know, it may not become law on this bill, but this does suggest that there is bipartisan concern in Congress about these efforts on behalf of Medicare, right? 

Weber: Well, I think this goes back to our Medicare insolvency conversation earlier. Who votes? It’s the people that are on Medicare. So, and how unpopular would it be if they were to be limited in what they can access for their health care services? So, I think at the end of the day, the reason that’s bipartisan is these lawmakers know who’s keeping them in office, and prior authorization has a very bad name. I mean, it’s very interesting, because CMS has said that this will help cut down costs, but also has, out of the other side of its mouth, in hearings and so on, Oz has decried insurers using prior authorization. So there’s a lot of “for thee but not for me” vibes going on here. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t seem like this will advance because of the bipartisan opposition. 

Rovner: And of course, Lizzy, your colleagues at Stat have talked about, you know, private companies using enhanced prior authorization, which nobody seems to think is a great idea, and now we have Medicare proposing it. 

Lawrence: Yeah, I was going to say prior authorization, already unpopular, add AI to the mix. I mean, there’s not â€¦ yeah, Bob and Casey, my colleagues, , but just, in general, there is not a lot of goodwill for the AI industry with data centers and all kinds of unpopular initiatives. So, yeah, it makes sense we’re seeing strong bipartisan disapproval of this.  

Rovner: If it doesn’t show up in this bill, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it show up in some other bill that’s more likely to make it to the finish line. All right, that is this week’s news. Now we’ll play my interview with KFF’s Tricia Neuman, and then we’ll come back and do our extra credits. 

I am pleased to welcome back to the podcast my colleague and friend Tricia Neuman, who is retiring as KFF senior vice president and executive director of the Program on Medicare Policy, after a long and distinguished career here and on Capitol Hill, shaping, analyzing, and explaining Medicare policy to people like me, as well as to the nation’s decision-makers. Tricia, thanks for taking some time as you wrap things up. 

Tricia Neuman: Julie, thank you for having me. 

Rovner: So, let’s go back to the beginning, if you can remember that. What got you interested in pursuing Medicare as your health policy specialty? 

Neuman: You know, I didn’t think about it as Medicare, but I thought about it in the context of my family. I was â€¦ I remember watching my grandfather and seeing him struggle. He had Alzheimer’s, and he was trying to tie his shoe, and he couldn’t remember, and I somehow got interested in aging. And I was interested in government, and so I came to Washington ready to do policy, and I ended up at the Senate Aging Committee, which was perfect. And I got into Medicare because I had an older colleague who said, Look, you got to choose a specialty; you can do Social Security, pensions, retirement income, or you can do health and long-term care. Figure it out and go there. And so I did. 

Rovner: Yeah, and like me, you can stay forever if you want to. 

Neuman: And I seem to have stayed forever. 

Rovner: So, what’s the biggest misperception about Medicare as it exists today? People look at Medicare, and it’s like a chameleon. They see all these different things. 

Neuman: Boy, I could give you a few answers to that. I mean, one answer is people think Medicare is going broke. Medicare cannot go broke, but Medicare faces financing challenges. Interesting, you know, we talk about that today. Today’s the day that the “Medicare Trustees Report” came out, and actually, there wasn’t much of a change, a notable change. It was a slight tweak, but it’s still 2033 for the year that Medicare will be insolvent. What that means is that there won’t be enough money to pay all benefits, but it doesn’t mean the program is going broke. To me what it means is it’s time to think about how to finance care for an aging population, and what are the policy options that can do that. It’s generally reducing spending or finding new revenues, but it’s easier to do it in advance than â€¦ to wait until we’re at the precipice of a crisis. So that’s really what it signals to me. But it cannot go broke. 

Rovner: Over the years, Congress has dealt with these periodic, you know, predictions about Medicare insolvency in various ways that they have, you know, sometimes they’ve actually acted when insolvency has seemed relatively near, and sometimes they have acted to make insolvency closer. This Congress doesn’t seem to be as plugged into Medicare as many previous ones. Is that a fair way to put it? 

Neuman: I think it’s fair. Julie, when you and I were working on the Hill, as your beat at the time at the Ways and Means Committee, Medicare was front and center. Medicare was part of budget conversations. Medicare was part of legislation that we dealt with every year. And that meant every year members of Congress worked hard to tweak the program, achieve some savings, also make some improvements. But Medicare was the big story. Really, of late, really, since the ACA, the ACA has been the story, Medicaid has been the story, but Medicare, oddly, has been sort of a stepchild off to the side. 

Rovner: I like to describe Medicare as one of the biggest paradoxes in health policy. Simultaneously, it’s incredibly popular â€” I mean, one of the most popular programs ever created by the federal government â€” and yet it’s actually pretty lacking as a really comprehensive health coverage. I think if people actually had, quote-unquote, “Medicare for All” the way we have Medicare today, they wouldn’t be very happy with it. 

Neuman: I think that’s right. I mean, people I know on Medicare, and soon that will be me, are very happy with the program. They like the fact that â€¦ it’s reliable, they can count on it. There are some issues between people in traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage. But it’s, you know, people are pretty happy. At the same time, there’s relatively high cost sharing, premiums are going up, and Medicare doesn’t cover some of the most expensive things for people as they grow older, such as dental, which is a big one, hearing aids, vision, which is to a lesser extent not quite as expensive. And the big one that nobody really wants to address is long-term services and support, home care for people who need help at home, assisted living, nursing home coverage, all of that is super expensive, and Medicare really doesn’t cover it. And that is a big surprise to families when all of a sudden they have a family member who needs this help and Medicare won’t pay for it. 

Rovner: Yeah, I feel like about every five years, another generation of health reporters discovers, Hey, Medicare doesn’t cover long-term care. I never knew that. 

Neuman: And a lot of time they’re discovering it because a family member of theirs needs long-term care. 

Rovner: So, I know you’re retiring, but I also know that you’re going to continue to stay engaged, because I know you. What do you think is the biggest challenge that you hope that lawmakers will address in Medicare in the next five, 10 years? 

Neuman: Oh, I have a wish list. I do hope that they’ll continue to put affordability at the top of the list. That means looking at these expenses that are not covered by Medicare, keeping an eye on premiums. Right now, 7 million people on Medicare pay more than 10% of their income on Part B premiums. That’s a big deal. So, keeping an eye on affordability is really important. I also think there should be some attention to simplification. Medicare used to be this easy program, you turned 65, you got on Medicare. It’s not so easy anymore. The average Medicare beneficiary has a choice of dozens of plans, the Medicare Advantage, prescription drugs. It’s too complicated. And it’s not like it’s a one-and-done decision when you turn 65. You really need to think about this each year, and I think that’s a tall order. And simplifying the program would make it a lot easier for our aging population. 

Rovner: Well, you may be retiring, but I’m still going to call on you as my Medicare expert. 

Neuman: Always. 

Rovner: Tricia Neuman, thank you so much. 

Neuman: Thank you, Julie. 

Rovner: OK, we’re back. Now it’s time for our extra-credit segment. That’s where we each recognize a story we read this week we think you should read, too. Don’t worry if you miss it. We will post the links in our show notes on your phone or other mobile device. Lauren, you snagged this week’s most popular story. Start us off. 

Weber: Hats off to Annie Waldman’s “,” which published in ProPublica. I was green with envy upon reading this story. It’s not only beautifully crafted, but it’s just an incredibly incisive takedown, really, of this raw milk farm and all of the people it’s harmed, and how the government has really not stepped in. It hits at so many themes in this MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] moment â€” of free speech and, you know, free medical access, but also the questions of: Do consumers know the amount of risks that they’re taking on? And what is regulators’ role when you have this farm led by this evangelist for raw milk that has been at least linked to over 220 people’s illnesses, some of which are very severe, and continues to produce not only raw milk but milk that it puts into raw cheese that makes people sick. And very sick. This is not just, like, slightly sick, I mean it’s likely that this has potentially sickened way more than the numbers that are captured. It’s a very well-done piece. I could not recommend reading it more. 

Rovner: Lizzy. 

Lawrence: My piece that I chose for this week was from the Chicago Tribune: “,” by Christy Gutowski and Gregory Royal Pratt. Kind of similar to what Lauren was talking about, this is a story about regulatory failure, but in this case with a plastic surgeon operating in Chicago who has killed at least eight women during procedures like tummy tucks and liposuction â€¦ all women of color. He’s operating in a predominantly Latino neighborhood. And Chicago authorities started looking into him to try to revoke his license in 2020, but more than five years later nothing has happened. This was a truly horrifying story, and just major kudos to the reporters, for really, you know, they tracked down all of these women’s families. And in one case there was a complaint that the surgeon, you know, not only allegations that he killed people, but that he had carved his initials into someone. So it’s a really insane piece that I think, yeah, everyone should read. 

Rovner: Yeah. Sandhya. 

Raman: So I picked the story “, and it’s in CIDRAP from Liz Szabo. And this piece is part of a larger series for the 20th anniversary of the HPV [human papillomavirus] vaccine. But Liz just does a beautiful job juxtaposing, you know, one sister who battles and eventually, you know, lost a heartbreaking battle with cervical cancer, and how her sister was in the first batch of folks to get the HPV vaccine 20 years ago. And then, you know, the sister is talking about the importance of wanting her sons to get it that are pretty young. And it just really does a good job of showing the trajectory of how effective the vaccine has been in reducing cervical cancer since its rollout. 

Rovner: Yeah, this is one of the great medical miracles that’s suddenly become controversial again. It’s really good. You should read the whole series. I will post links to it. My extra credit this week is from my Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News colleague Amy Maxman. It’s called “Anguished Parents. Doctors in Tears. Utah’s Long Measles Outbreak Takes a Toll.” Amy went to Utah and found that measles is taking a stronghold there for a whole variety of reasons, including the strength of the supplement industry that teaches residents to suspect mainstream medicine. It’s a really good read that shows the challenges public health still faces in things that we thought we had overcome years, if not decades, ago, like how to prevent childhood diseases like measles. 

All right, that is this week’s show. Thanks to our editor this week, Mary Agnes Carey, and our producer-engineer, Francis Ying. A reminder: What the Health? is now available on WAMU platforms, the NPR app, and wherever you get your podcasts — as well as, of course, kffhealthnews.org. Also, as always, you can email us your comments or questions. We’re at whatthehealth@kff.org. Or you can still find me on X , and on Bluesky . Where are you guys hanging these days? Sandhya? 

Raman: I’m at  and on  @SandhyaWrites. 

Rovner: Lauren. 

Weber: I’m on  and on  as @LaurenWeberHP. The HP is for health policy. 

Rovner: Lizzy. 

Lawrence: I’m on  as @LizzyLaw_ and on  and  (Lizzy Lawrence). 

Rovner: We will be back in your feed next week. Until then, be healthy. 

[Editor’s note: This transcript was generated using both transcription software and a human’s light touch. It has been edited for style and clarity.] 

Julie Rovner: Hello, from Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News and WAMU Public Radio in Washington, D.C. Welcome to What the Health? I’m Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News, and I’m joined by some of the best and smartest health reporters covering Washington. We’re taping this week on Thursday, April 9, at 9:30 a.m. As always, news happens fast, and things might have changed by the time you hear this. So here we go. 

Today, we are joined via video conference by Lauren Weber of The Washington Post. 

Lauren Weber: Hello, hello. 

Rovner: Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico. 

Alice Miranda Ollstein: Hi, everybody. 

Rovner: And my fellow Michigan Wolverine this national championship week, Maya Goldman of Axios. Go, Blue! 

Maya Goldman: Go, Blue. 

Rovner: No interview this week, but plenty of news. So let’s get right to it. We’re going to start with reproductive health. On Tuesday, a federal judge in Louisiana ruled for the Trump administration and against anti-abortion forces in a lawsuit over the availability of the abortion pill mifepristone. Wait, what? Please explain, Alice, how the administration and anti-abortion groups ended up on opposite sides of an abortion pill lawsuit. 

Ollstein: Yeah. So this has been building for a while, and it is not the only lawsuit of its kind out there. There are several. A bunch of different state attorneys general, who are very conservative and anti-abortion, have been suing the FDA in an attempt to either completely get rid of the availability of the abortion pill mifepristone or reimpose previous restrictions on it. So right now, at least according to federal rules, not according to every state’s rules, you can get it via telehealth. You can get it delivered by mail. You can pick it up at a retail pharmacy. You don’t have to get it in person handed to you from a doctor like you used to. So these lawsuits are attempting to bring back those restrictions or get the kind of national ban that a lot of groups want. And so you have other ones pending: Florida, Texas, Missouri, you have a bunch of ones. So this is the Louisiana version. And the Trump administration, it’s important to note, they are not defending the FDA or the abortion pill on the merits. They are saying, we don’t want this lawsuit and this court to force us to do something. We want to go through our own careful process and do our own internal review of the safety of mifepristone, and then we may decide to impose restrictions. But they’re asking courts to give them the time and space to complete that process and saying, you know, This is our power we should have in the executive branch. And so, in this case, the judge, in ruling for the Trump administration, basically just hit pause. This doesn’t get rid of the case. It just puts a stay on it for now, and that’s important. In some of these other cases, the Trump administration has asked the courts to throw out the case, but that was not the situation here. So this doesn’t mean that abortion pills are going to be available forever. This doesn’t mean nothing’s going to happen, and they’re going to be banned. This just means, you know, we’re kicking the can down the road.  

Rovner: I was saying, just to be clear. I mean, we know that this FDA quote-unquote “study” â€” whether it is or isn’t going on â€” is part of, kind of, a delaying tactic by the administration, because they don’t want to really make abortion a big front-and-center issue in the midterms. So they’re trying to sort of run the clock out here. Is that not sort of the interpretation that’s going on right now?  

Ollstein: That’s what people on both sides assume is going on. It’s really been fascinating how everyone is being kept in the dark about what’s happening inside the FDA â€” and if this review is even happening, if it’s real, if it’s in good faith, what is it based on? And so it’s become this sort of Rorschach test, where people on the left are saying, you know, They’re laying the groundwork to do a national ban. This is just political cover. They just want to wait until after the midterms, and then they’re going to go for it. And people on the right are saying, you know, The administration is cowardly, and they aren’t really doing anything, and they’re just trying to get us to shut up and be patient. We don’t know if either of those interpretations or neither of them are true.  

Rovner: Lauren, you want to add something? 

Weber: I just think it’s pretty clear this is also just on a [Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F.] Kennedy [Jr.] priority. I mean, let’s go back. The man â€¦ comes from one of the top Democratic political families originally. You know, there’s obviously been a lot of chatter around his anti-abortion beliefs. Now, obviously, he’s on a Republican ticket. I think some of that plays into this as well. And he already has his hand on the stove on so many other hot issues that, [if] I had to guess, I don’t think that they’re trying to rock the boat on this one. â€¦ I think, some background context too, to some of what’s going on.  

Rovner: We’ll get to some of those hotter issues. But, meanwhile, the Journal of the American Medical Association [Internal Medicine] has a  suggesting that medication abortion is so safe that it could be provided over the counter â€” that’s without any consultation with a medical professional, either in person or online. This doesn’t feel like it’s going to happen anytime soon, though, right? While we’re still debating the existence of medication abortion in general. 

Ollstein: That’s right. I mean, there are a lot of people who can’t get this medication prescribed by a valid doctor right now, let alone over the counter. I will say it is common in a lot of parts of the world to get it over the counter, whereas in the United States, the most common way to have a medication abortion is with a two-pill combination, mifepristone and misoprostol. In a lot of parts of the world, people just use misoprostol alone, and it is effective and it is largely safe. It’s slightly less safe than using both pills together. And so I think there’s a lot of international data out there, and people point to that and advocate for this. And I will say there are activist groups in the United States who are setting up networks, underground networks, to get these pills to people with no doctor’s involvement. And so that is already going on. I think that a lot of people would prefer to get it from a doctor if they could. But because of bans and restrictions, they can’t. And so people are turning to these activist groups. 

Rovner: I will point out, as a person who covered the entirety of the fight to have emergency contraception â€” which is not the abortion pill â€” made over the counter, it took like, 15 years. It shortened my life covering that story. Lauren, did you want to add something?  

Weber: Yeah, I just wanted to say I find it really interesting. Obviously, reproductive issues end up taking 15 years, as you pointed out, to make it over the counter. But there are a lot of things that are considered potentially more dangerous that you can order up in a pretty basic telehealth visit or even just buy in not-so-sketchy ways that the administration is also even looking to deregulate. So I think the differences of access of this compared to other less studied, potentially more unsafe medication is quite striking. 

Goldman: Part of [President Donald] Trump’s “Great Healthcare Plan” is making more medications available over the counter. So this is certainly something that they have said they want to do, in general. This is a political nightmare, though, to do that for abortion. 

Ollstein: Yeah, and people have been pointing to this and a lot of other policies for a while to argue about something they call abortion exceptionalism, in which people apply a different standard to anything related to abortion, a different safety standard, a different standard of scrutiny than they do to medications for lots of other purposes. And you’ve seen that, and that comes up in lawsuits and political arguments about this. And I think, you know, people can point to this as another example. 

Rovner: So last week, we talked about the federal family planning program Title X, which finally got funded after months of delays. But Alice, you warned us that the administration was planning to make some big changes to the program, and now those have finally been announced. Tell us what the plan is for a program that’s provided birth control and other types of primary and preventive care since the early 1970s. 

Ollstein: Well, the changes have sort of been announced. They’ve more been teased. What we are still waiting for is an actual rule, like we saw in the first Trump administration, that would impose conditions on the program. And so what we saw recently, it was part of a wonky document called a “Notice of Funding Opportunity,” or NOFO, for those in the D.C. lingo. And basically it was signaling that when groups reapply â€” they just got this year’s money, but when they reapply for next year’s money â€” it sets up sort of new priorities and a new focus for the entire program. And what was really striking to me is, you know, this is a family planning program. It was created in the 1970s and it is primarily about delivering contraception to people who can’t afford it around the country, providing it to millions of people who depend on this program, and the word “contraception” did not appear in the entire 70-page document other than an assertion that it is overprescribed and has bad side effects. And instead, they signaled that they want to shift the program to focus on, quote, “family formation.” So this is really striking to me. I think we saw some signs that something like this was coming. You know, about a year ago, there was some Title X money approved to focus on helping people struggling with infertility. But that was sort of just a subset of the program, and now it looks like they want to make that, you know, an overriding focus of the program. So I think when the actual rule to this effect drops, and we don’t know when that will be â€” will they wait till after the midterms to, you know, avoid blowback? Who knows? I think there will certainly be lawsuits then. But I think right now, this is just sort of a sign of where they want to go in the future. And it’s important to note that it came very quickly on the heels of a big backlash from the anti-abortion movement over the approval of this year’s funding going out to all of the clinics that got it before, including Planned Parenthood clinics. The anti-abortion groups were agitating for Planned Parenthood to be cut off at once, you know, not in the future, right now. 

Rovner: Just to remind people that the ban on Planned Parenthood funding from last year was for Medicaid, not for the Title X program. 

Ollstein: Right.  

Rovner: And that’s why Planned Parenthood got money. 

Ollstein: Yes, and Planned Parenthood is not allowed to use any Medicaid or Title X money for abortions, but the anti-abortion groups say it functions like a backdoor subsidy, and so they wanted it to be cut off. So they were very pissed that this money went out to Planned Parenthood. And so very quickly after, the administration put out this document, saying, Look, we are taking things in another direction, and it is not the direction of Planned Parenthood. 

Rovner: Lauren, you want to add something? 

Weber: Oh, I just wanted to say Alice has really been owning the beat on all the Title X coverage, so â€¦ 

Rovner: Absolutely.  

Weber: â€¦ glad we are able to have her explain it to us. But just wanted to throw out a kudos for breaking all the news on that front.  

Goldman: Yeah, great coverage. 

Rovner: Yes. Very happy to have you for this. Turning to the budget, which is normally the major activity for Congress in the spring, we finally got President Trump’s spending blueprint last week. It does propose cuts to discretionary spending at the Department of Health and Human Services to the tune of about $15 billion, but those cuts are far less deep than those proposed last year. And, as we have noted, Congress didn’t actually cut the HHS budget last year by much at all. And many programs, like the National Institutes of Health, actually got small increases. Is this budget a reflection of the fact that the administration is recognizing that cuts to Health and Human Services programs aren’t actually popular with the public or with Congress, for that matter, going into a midterm election? 

Weber: I think it’s that last little piece you mentioned there, Julie. I think it’s the “going into the midterm election.” I think you hit the nail on the head there. Cuts are also not good economically for many Republicans. You know, we saw Katie Britt be one of the â€” the Alabama Republican senator â€” be one of the most outspoken senators in general about some of the cuts that were floated for the budget for HHS last year. So I think what you’re hinting at, and what we’re getting at, is that it’s not politically popular, it can be economically problematic, on top of the scientific advances that are not found. So I suspect you are right on that. 

Ollstein: The administration knows that this is “hopes and dreams” and will not become reality. It did not become reality last year. It almost never becomes reality. And I think you can see the sort of acknowledgement that this is about sending a message more than actually making policy in things like Title X, because at the same time they put out this guidance from HHS about the future of Title X, moving away from contraception, in the president’s budget he proposed completely getting rid of Title X, completely defunding it, which he has in the past as well. And so why would they put out guidance for a program that doesn’t exist? 

Goldman: I think, also, this is the second budget that they’re putting out in this administration, right? So now they are just a little more used to what’s going on, and they have more of their feet under them. 

Weber: As a preview for listeners, too, I’m sure we will have Kennedy asked about this budget when he appears in a series of so many hearings next week and the week after. And there were a lot of fireworks last year with him and various members of Congress about the budget. So I am sure that we will hear a lot more on this front in the weeks to come. 

Rovner: Yeah, I would say that’s one thing that the budget process does, is when the president finally puts out a budget, the Cabinet secretaries travel to all of the various committees on Capitol Hill to, quote, “defend the president’s budget,” which is sometimes or, I guess in the case of Kennedy, one of the few chances that they get to actually have him in person to ask him questions. But in the meantime, you know, we have the budget, then we have the president himself, who at an Easter lunch last week â€” that was supposed to be private, but ended up being live-streamed â€” said, and I quote, “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicare, Medicaid, all these individual things.” The president went on to say that states should take over all that social spending, and the only thing the federal government should fund is, quote, “military protection.” Did I just hear a thousand Democratic campaign ads bloom? 

Goldman: I think this is a prime example of when you should take Trump seriously, but not literally. I don’t think that there’s any world, at least in the foreseeable future, where the federal government isn’t funding Medicare. But, you know, you certainly have to watch at the margins. It’s like, it’s not a secret that this is something that they’re interested in cutting back spending on. It’s super politically difficult to do that, and they know that, and that’s part of why, which I’m sure we’ll talk about in a little bit, they bumped up the payment rate for 2027 to Medicare Advantage plans.  

Rovner: Which we will get to. 

Goldman: Yeah, so I mean, it’s certainly an eye-opening statement, and you should remember it. But I don’t think that we’re in immediate jeopardy here. 

Rovner: This is the president who ran in 2024, you know, saying that he was going to protect Medicare and Medicaid. I mean, it’s been, you know, against some of the recommendations of his own administration. I was just sort of shocked to see these words come out of his mouth. Lauren, you wanted to say something?  

Weber: I mean, it’s not that surprising, though. I mean, look at what the One Big Beautiful Bill [Act] did to Medicaid. He’s already pushed through massive Medicaid cuts, which are essentially being offloaded to the states. So, I mean, I think this ideology has already borne out and will continue to bear out, and obviously it’s happening amid the backdrop of a war. So that plays into, obviously, the commentary as well.  

Rovner: Well, meanwhile, Republicans are still talking about doing another budget reconciliation bill, the 2.0 version of last year’s Big Beautiful Bill, except this time it’s essentially just to fund the military and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and border control, because Democrats won’t vote for those things, at least they won’t vote for additional military spending. What are the prospects for that to actually happen? And would Republicans really be able to do it if those programs are paid for with more cuts to Medicare and/or Medicaid, as some have suggested? 

Goldman: You know, my co-worker Peter Sullivan wrote about this last week, and there was a lot of blowback from politicos, from advocates, from, you know, kind of across the spectrum of groups there. I think that it would be extremely politically unpopular, especially going into the midterms, to use health care as an offset. But I would say that Republicans are pretty good at rhetoric, right? That’s one of the things that they’re known for right now, and there’s always a way to spin it. 

Rovner: Alice and I spoke to a group earlier this week, and I went out on a limb and predicted that I didn’t think Republicans could get the votes for another big budget reconciliation this year. I mean, look at how close it was last year. The idea of cutting any deeper seems to me unlikely, just given the margins that they have. 

Goldman: And I think that is something that you do in between election years. That’s not something you do in an election year. 

Rovner: That’s true, yes â€¦ you do tend to see these bigger bills in the odd-numbered years rather than the even-numbered years, but … 

Ollstein: And I think it’s important to remember that the reason Republicans are in this bind and that they feel like they have to keep reconciliation nearly focused on funding immigration enforcement is because Democrats refuse to fund immigration enforcement. And so they feel pressured to put all their effort and political capital towards that, and don’t want to mess that up by adding a bunch of other health care things that could cause fights and lose them votes.  

Goldman: The money has got to come from somewhere. 

Rovner: And health care is where all the money is. Speaking of Medicare and Medicaid, where most of the money is, there is news on those fronts, too. Maya, as you hinted on Medicare, the administration is out with its payment rule for private Medicare Advantage plans for next year. And remember, we talked about how HHS was going to really go after overbilling in Medicare Advantage and cut reimbursement dramatically? Well, you can forget all that. The final rule will provide plans with a 2.48% pay bump next year. That’s compared to the less than 1% increase in the proposed rule. That’s a difference of about $13 billion. The final rule also eliminated many of the safeguards that were intended to prevent overbilling. What happened to the crackdown on Medicare Advantage? Are their lobbyists really that good? 

Goldman: Their lobbyists are pretty good. This was a year where there were â€” I think CMS [the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] said there were a record number of public comments on their proposed rate, flat rate increase, flat rate update. But I think it’s also not that surprising. Historically, the final rate announcement for Medicare Advantage is almost always a little higher than the proposed because they incorporate additional data from the end of the previous year that wasn’t available when first rate is proposed, the initial rate is proposed. But certainly they backed away from a big change to risk adjustment, or, like, the way to adjust payment based on how sick a plan’s enrollees are. You get more pay â€¦  

Rovner: Because that’s where the overbilling was happening, that we’d seen a lot of these wonderful stories that plans were basically, you know, inventing diagnoses for patients who didn’t necessarily have them or didn’t have a severe illness, and using that to get additional payments. 

Goldman: Right. And they did move forward with a plan to prevent diagnoses that are not linked to information that’s in a patient’s medical chart from being used for risk adjustment. But a lot of plans had said, like, Yeah, this is, that’s the right thing to do, and it’s not going to be that impactful for us. You know, overall, this is a win for health insurance. I think one thing to note is that Chris Klomp, the director of Medicare, said, We’re still really focused on trying to right-size this program. That’s still a priority for us as an administration, but we also want to safeguard it. And so I think insurers are not off the hook entirely. There’s still going to be a lot of scrutiny, but their lobbyists are pretty good. And you know, no one wants to be seen as the candidate that cuts Medicare. 

Rovner: And we have seen this before, that when Congress cuts “overfunding” for Medicare Advantage, the plans, seeing that they can’t make its big profits, drop out or they cut back on those extra benefits. And the beneficiaries complain because they’re losing their plans, or they’re losing their extra benefits, and they don’t really want to do that in an election year either, because there are a lot of people, many millions of people, who vote who are on these plans. So, in some ways, the plans have the administration over a political barrel, in addition to how good their lobbyists are.  

Well, apparently, one group that HHS is still cracking down on are legal immigrants with Medicare. Most of the publicity around the health cuts in last year’s budget bill focused on the cuts to Medicaid. But we at Ñî¹óåú´«Ã½Ò•îl Health News have a story this week about legal immigrants who’ve paid into the Medicare system with their payroll taxes for years and are now being cut off from their Medicare coverage. This is apparently the first time an entire category of beneficiaries are having their Medicare taken away. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more attention to this, or if it’s just too much all happening at once. 

Ollstein: I mean, there’s a lot happening at once, and even just in the space of immigrants’ access to health care, there is so much happening at once. And so this is obviously having a huge impact on a lot of people, but so are 100 other things. And I think, you know, the zone has been flooded as promised. And really, state officials who are also dealing with a thousand other things, Medicaid cuts, you know, these federal changes, work requirements, are grappling with this as well. 

Rovner: Lauren, you wanted to add something? 

Weber: Yeah. I mean, I thought it was, there was a striking quote in the story from Michael Cannon, who basically said, The reason this isn’t resonating is because this won’t upset the Republican base. And I think that’s a striking quote to be considered. 

Rovner: Michael Cannon, libertarian health policy expert, just kind of an observer to this one. But yeah, I think that’s true. I mean, or at least the perception is that these are not Republican voters, although, you know, as we’ve seen, you know, Congress has tried to take aim at people they think aren’t their voters, and it’s turned out that those are their voters. So we will see how this all plays out.  

Well, at the same time that this is all going on, the folks over at the newsletter “Healthcare Dive” are reporting that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are trying to embark on all these new initiatives on fraud, and work requirements, and artificial intelligence with a diminished workforce. While CMS lost far fewer workers in the DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] cuts last year than many other of the HHS agencies â€” it was in the hundreds rather than the thousands â€” CMS has long been understaffed, given the fact that it manages programs that provide health insurance to more than 160 million Americans through not just Medicare and Medicaid, but also the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Affordable Care Act. I know last week, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said he wants to hire more workers to replace the 3,000 who were RIF’ed or took early retirement there at the FDA. And CMS does have lots of job openings being advertised. But it’s hard to see how replacing trained and experienced workers with untrained, inexperienced ones are going to improve efficiency, right? 

Goldman: Tangentially, I was talking to a health insurance executive yesterday who was saying that his team is so much bigger than CMS, and they cover a fraction of the market, and they’re often the ones coming to CMS and proposing ideas and working with CMS on it. I don’t, I think that is a dynamic that far predates this administration, but â€¦ 

Rovner: Oh, absolutely. 

Goldman: But it’s certainly interesting. And â€¦ CMS has very ambitious plans, and not that many people to carry them out. But, you know, I think one thing that I also want to note is that when I talk to trade associations and stakeholders about this CMS, they are generally like, pretty support- â€¦ like, they say that they think they’re being heard, and they think that CMS and the career staff are doing, you know, the same kind of caliber of work that they’ve been doing, which I think is notable. 

Rovner: And as we have mentioned many times, you know, Dr. [Mehmet] Oz, the head of CMS, is very serious about his job and doing a lot of really interesting things. It’s just, it’s hard, you know, in the federal government, if you don’t have the resources that you want to â€¦ if you don’t have the resources to match your ambitions. Let’s put it that way.  

Well, meanwhile, on the Medicaid front, we’re already seeing states cutting back, and some of the results of those cutbacks.  on how psychiatric units are at risk of being shut down due to the Medicaid cuts, since they often serve a disproportionate number of low-income people and also tend to lose money. And The New York Times has a  of an Idaho Medicaid cutback of a program that had provided home visits to people living in the community with severe mental illness, until those people who lost the services began to die or to end up back in more expensive institutional care. Now the state has resumed funding the program, but obviously will end up having to cut someplace else instead. I know when Republicans in Congress passed the cuts last year, they said that people on Medicaid who were not the able-bodied working-age populations wouldn’t see their services cut. But that’s not how this is playing out, right?  

Weber: I just think the story by Ellen Barry, who you should always read on mental health issues in The New York Times, “,” is such an illustrative example of unintended consequences from these cuts. And the reason that they’re being reversed â€” by Republican legislators, no less â€” in Idaho, is because it’s more expensive to have cut the money from it than it is efficient. I mean, what they found was, is that after they cut the money to the schizophrenia program, they saw this massive uptick in law enforcement cases and hospitalizations, uninsured hospitalizations, that this avoided. And I think it’s a real canary in the coal mine situation, because we’re only starting to see these states cut these things off. And this was a pretty immediate multiple-death consequence. And I think we’re going to see a lot of stories like this, of a variety of programs that we all don’t even have any idea that exist in the safety net across the country that are being chipped away at.  

Rovner: Well, turning to other news from the Department of Health and Human Services, we’re getting some more competition here at What the Health? Health secretary Kennedy has announced he’ll be unveiling his own podcast, called The Secretary Kennedy Podcast, next week. He promises to, according to the trailer posted online on Wednesday, quote, “name the names of the forces that obstruct the paths to public health.” OK then, we look forward to listening.  

Meanwhile, in actual secretarial work, the secretary this week also unveiled changes to the charter of the Advisory Committee on [Immunization] Practices after a federal judge last month invalidated both the replacement members that he’d appointed last year and the changes made to the federally recommended vaccine schedule. So what’s going to happen here now? Will this get around the judge’s ruling by watering down the expertise that members of this advisory committee are supposed to have in vaccines? And why hasn’t the administration appealed the judge’s ruling yet? 

Goldman: You know, I don’t have actual answers to this, but I do wonder and speculate that this is going to end up being some kind of legal whack-a-mole situation where the secretary and HHS says, OK, you don’t like it that way? We’ll do it this way, and then they’ll do it another way, and advocates will sue, and we’ll see how this plays out going forward in the courts. I think this is not the end of the story. Even though the judge’s decision was a big win for vaccine advocates, it’s just we’re in the midpoint, if that. 

Rovner: And Lauren, speaking of vaccines, your colleague Lena H. Sun has  on HHS and vaccine policy. 

Weber: Yeah, Lena Sun is always delivering. She found out that the acting director of the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] at the time delayed publication of a report showing that the covid-19 vaccine[s] cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half. So even though Kennedy is not talking more about vaccines, it appears that, based on this reporting, that some of his underlings are not necessarily touting the benefits of vaccine, so to speak. And I’m very curious, going back to Kennedy’s podcast, I found the rollout of that so interesting because the teaser was very leaning into the Kennedy that got elected, you know, someone who speaks about, you know, dark truths that are hidden from the public, and so on. And then the press team had these statements of, like, Kennedy will investigate the affordability of health costs and food and nutrition. And I think this dichotomy of who Kennedy is and who the White House and the press secretary and HHS want Kennedy to be before the midterms really could come to a head in this podcast. So I think we will all be listening to hear how that goes. 

Rovner: Yeah, we keep hearing about how the secretary is being, you know, sort of put on a leash, if you will. And, you know, told to downplay some of his anti-vaccine views and things like this. And that seems quite at odds with him having his own podcast. Alice, do you want to …? 

Weber: I guess, it depends on who’s editing the podcast and who they have on. I’m just very â€¦ you could even tell from the trailer to how his press secretary presented it, there was an interesting differential in framing, and I am curious how that plays out as we see guests on it. 

Ollstein: I mean, it’s also worth noting that this is an administration of podcasters. I mean, you have Kash Patel, you have so many of these folks who have a history of podcasting, clearly have a passion for it, just can’t let it go while working a full-time, high-pressure government job.  

Rovner: We shall see. Meanwhile, HHS, together with the Environmental Protection Agency, is waging war on microplastics, those nearly too impossible to detect bits of plastic that are getting into our lungs and stomachs and body tissues through air and water and food. The plan here seems to be to find ways to detect exactly how much microplastics we are all getting in our water and what the health impacts might be, since we don’t have enough information to regulate them yet. I would think this would be one of those things that pleases both MAHA [Make America Healthy Again] and the science community, right? Or is it just, as one MAHA supporter called it, theater? 

Goldman: I think this is a great example of the, you know, part of the reason why MAHA is so interesting to such a wide swath of people. Like, there’s a lot of legitimate concern, not that other concerns aren’t necessarily legitimate, but there’s a lot of concern over, from the scientific community, over microplastics. I’m honestly surprised that we’re this far into the administration with this announcement. I would have thought that this is something they would have done sooner, but they obviously had other priorities as well. 

Rovner: Well. Finally, this week, speaking of other priorities, HHS Secretary Kennedy and CMS Administrator Dr. Oz are declaring war on junk food in hospitals. Again, this seems like a popular and fairly harmless crusade; hospitals shouldn’t be serving their patients ultraprocessed food. Except, almost as soon as the announcement came out, I saw tons of pushback online from doctors and nurses who worried about patients for whom sugary food or drinks are actually medically indicated, or who, because of medications they’re taking, or illnesses they have, can only eat, or will only eat, highly palatable, often processed food. Nothing in health care is as simple as it seems, right?  

Weber: I think what’s also interesting is one of my favorite examples in the memo they put out was they hope that every hospital, as an example, could serve quinoa and salmon. And I just am curious to see how fast that gets implemented. And it’s a very valid â€” a lot of people complain about hospital food. It’s a very valid thing to push for better food. But I also question, as I understand it, this seems more like a carrot than a stick when it comes to the regulation they put out. 

Rovner: As it were. 

Weber: As it were. And so I’m curious to see how it gets implemented. That said, there are hospitals that have taken it upon themselves â€” the Northwell [Health] example in New York is a good example â€” to really improve their hospital food. And frankly, it’s a money maker. If your food’s better, people come to your hospital, especially in an urban area where there is hospital competition. So you know, like most MAHA topics, there’s a lot of interesting points in there, and then there’s a lot of what’s the reality and what’ actually going to happen. And so I’ very curious to see how this continues to play. 

Rovner: I did a big story, like, 10 years ago on a hospital chain that had its own gardens, that literally grew its own healthy food. So this is not completely new but, again, interesting. 

All right, that is this week’s news. Now it’s time for our extra-credit segment. That’s where we each recognize a story we read this week we think you should read, too. Don’t worry if you miss it. We will post the links in our show notes on your phone or other mobile device. Alice, why don’t you start us off this week? 

Ollstein: I have a piece from my co-worker Simon [J.] Levien, and it is called “.” This is about thousands of doctors around the country who are from other countries that are placed on, you know, a list by the Trump administration of places where they want to scrutinize and limit the number of immigrants coming from there. And so these are people who are already here, already practicing, have poured years into their training, have been living here, and, in some cases, are the only folks willing to work in certain areas that have a lot of medical shortages, and they just can’t practice because their paperwork isn’t getting processed in time. And so they’re sort of in this scary limbo, and that’s putting these hospitals and clinics that they work in in a really tough bind. And so they’re hammering the Trump administration to give them answers about what their fate is. You know, they’re not trying to deport them yet, but they’re not allowing them to continue working either.  

Rovner: For an administration that’s been pushing really hard to improve rural health care, this does not seem to be a way to improve rural health care. Maya. 

Goldman: My extra credit this week is called “Trump’s Personnel Agency Is Asking for Federal Workers’ Medical Records.” It’s a great KFF Health News scoop from Amanda Seitz and Maia Rosenfeld. It’s a really great example of the administration, you know, sort of moving in silence, doing these small regulatory announcements that could have big impact. Basically, the Office of Personnel Management is asking for personally identifiable medical information from health insurers, and its reasoning is to analyze costs and improve the health system, but they could get very detailed medical information from federal employees, including things like, did they get an abortion? Are they undergoing gender-affirming care? And, obviously, there is a strong concern that that could be used against them.  

Rovner: Yeah â€¦ this was quite a scoop. Really, really interesting story. Lauren. 

Weber: Mine was a pretty alarming story by Holly Yan at CNN: “.” And basically there’s this type of drug test that the scientists have found is not that effective, and it’s led to things like bird poop being scraped off a man’s car appearing on a drug test as cocaine, a great-grandmother’s medication testing positive for cocaine, and a toddler’s ashes registering as meth or ecstasy, and horrible legal and other consequences of this kind of misdiagnosis in the field. And the reason these drug tests are often done is because they’re cheaper. There’s a more expensive, more accurate version, but these are cheaper. They’re done in the field. But the potential side effects and horrible, wrongly accused effects are quite large, and so Colorado has passed this law to try and move away from this. And it’s curious to see if other states will follow suit. 

Rovner: Yeah, this was something I knew nothing about until I read this story. My extra credit this week is from The Atlantic by Katherine [J.] Wu, and it’s called “.” And it’s about how some of the very top career officials from the NIH [National Institutes of Health], the CDC, and other agencies have, after having been put on leave more than a year ago, finally been reassigned to far-flung outposts of the Indian Health Service in the western United States. They got news of their proposed reassignments with little description of their new roles and only a couple of weeks to decide whether to move across the country or face termination. Now, if these officials’ skills matched those needed by the Indian Health Service, this all might make some sense. But what the IHS most needs are active clinicians: doctors and nurses and social workers and lab technicians. And those who are now being reassigned are largely managers, including â€” and here I’m reading from the story, quote â€” “the directors of several NIH institutes, leaders of several CDC centers, a top-ranking official from the FDA tobacco-products center, a bioethicist, a human-resources manager, a communications director, and a technology-information officer.” The Native populations who are ostensibly being helped here aren’t very happy about this, either. Former Biden administration Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a Native American who’s now running for governor in New Mexico, called the reassignment proposals, quote, “shameful” and “disrespectful.” Also, and this is my addition, not a very efficient use of human capital. 

OK, that’s this week’s show. Thanks this week to our fill-in editor, Mary-Ellen Deily, and our producer-engineer, Francis Ying. A reminder: What the Health? is now available on WAMU platforms, the NPR app, and wherever you get your podcasts — as well as, of course, kffhealthnews.org. Also, as always, you can email us your comments or questions. We’re at whatthehealth@kff.org. Or you can find me on X , or on Bluesky . Where do you guys hang these days? Maya. 

Goldman: I am on LinkedIn under my first and last name, , and on X at . 

Rovner: Alice. 

Ollstein: I’m on Bluesky  and on X . 

Rovner: Lauren. 

Weber: Still @LaurenWeberHP on both  and . 

¸é´Ç±¹²Ô±ð°ù:ÌýWe will be back in your feed next week. Until then, be healthy.