Democrats Keep Healthcare at the Fore

Senate Democrats hope a little-used law from the 1990s will help draw attention to the healthcare cost issue by forcing a vote on the Trump administration’s recent changes to the Affordable Care Act.

Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is demanding information from a medical journal that retracted a study that backed Kennedy’s claims of vaccine harm.

This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health News, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Sheryl Gay Stolberg of The New York Times, and Lauren Weber of The Washington Post.

Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:

As the midterm elections approach, congressional Democrats are pushing back on newly finalized guidelines from the Trump administration for ACA plans. The guidelines allow the sale of plans with fewer benefits and bigger deductibles next year, further eroding protections designed to keep healthcare affordable. With many voters concerned about the cost of care, Democrats’ push could prove a potent campaign message come November.

State officials in Texas and Alabama are continuing to crack down on abortion access. And new reporting reveals a trend of women going to great lengths to seek abortion care only to learn that their home pregnancy test results were false positives and they’re not pregnant.

Two medical journals recently retracted separate studies that linked vaccines to harmful health problems, with Kennedy pushing back. And legal action over Kennedy’s reconstituted vaccine panel and its decisions is leaving the nation without traditional outside expert input into seasonal vaccines as the flu season approaches — though the American Academy of Pediatrics has pointed out that Kennedy could resolve the legal issues by simply appointing experts to the panel with vaccine backgrounds, as statute dictates.

Also this week, Rovner interviews Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute and Liz Fowler of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health about their joint effort pushing for the elimination of the employer health insurance tax exclusion. You can read their Washington Post op-ed here.

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Plus, for “extra credit” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think you should read, too: 

Julie Rovner: KFF Health News’ “Trump Bought Tobacco Stocks and Raked In Industry Donations as FDA Eased Standards,” by Darius Tahir.  

Sheryl Gay Stolberg: KFF Health News’ “Tennessee Pharmacies Sell Potent Ivermectin, Led by Anti-Vaccine Doctor Who’s Taken ‘Bucketloads,’” by Brett Kelman and Rachana Pradhan. 

Anna Edney: Politico Magazine’s “Inside Trump’s Reversal on HIV,” by Alice Miranda Ollstein and Megan Messerly. 

Lauren Weber: The Atlantic’s “AI Is Taking Over Hospitals,” by Benjamin Mazer.

Also mentioned in this week’s podcast:

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