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This week, Trump administration officials announced their latest efforts to trim what they identified as duplicative and ineligible enrollees from government health programs. They tied the efforts to the administration’s broader crackdown on waste, fraud, and abuse — just as some states are opening polling stations for early voting.
The outcome of the midterm elections is expected to affect how and whether Congress addresses several healthcare issues during the lame-duck session, not the least of which is government spending. Plus, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled a new initiative to identify vaccine injuries, complete with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the National Institutes of Health.
This week’s panelists are Mary Agnes Carey of KFF Health News, Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Sandhya Raman of Bloomberg Law, and Paige Winfield Cunningham of The Washington Sun.
Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:
- Federal health officials this week pointed to their efforts to cut Affordable Care Act plan subsidies from people who were dead or found to have duplicate coverage under government health programs. While they were careful to say that these cases were not fraud, they tied their housekeeping activities to the Trump administration’s broader crackdown on waste, fraud, and abuse — and made that point just as some states are beginning early voting.
- The outcome of the midterm elections is expected to shape how Congress spends its time during the coming lame-duck session, with benefits or repercussions for health policy. Should the Democrats win control of one or both chambers, for instance, the party’s leaders could push to hold off on tackling government spending until they have more clout next year. Among the issues on the table are changes to the No Surprises Act, which has shielded patients from many bills but also has come under criticism for problems with the arbitration system it created.
- And Kennedy is pursuing a new initiative on vaccine injuries, opening a designated clinic at the NIH. The federal health department has also proposed reimbursing medical professionals for reporting vaccine-related injuries.
Also this week, KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner talks with Dan Weissmann, host of the healthcare podcast An Arm and a Leg, about the new and even more confusing landscape for Medicare enrollees as open enrollment begins.
Plus, for “extra credit” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think you should read, too:
Mary Agnes Carey: KFF Health News’ “People Say These Peptides Hurt Them. Their Stories Are Muffled in MAHA’s Push for Medical Freedom,” by Amy Maxmen.
Sandhya Raman: Stat’s “Helen Branswell, Whose Reporting on Infectious Diseases and Public Health Drew Acclaim, Dies at 69,” by Andrew Joseph.
Paige Winfield Cunningham: KFF Health News’ “AI, Tech Leaders Are Lobbying Trump Health Officials in a Government-Run Chat Room,” by Amanda Seitz, Maia Rosenfeld, and Darius Tahir.
Joanne Kenen: On CBS News’ Face the Nation, host Margaret Brennan’s interview with Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer at Palantir. (Read the transcript here.)
Also mentioned in this week’s podcast:
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