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Gregg Margolis: Key health policy reads of the week

Gregg Margolis/LinkedIn

May 4, 2025, 01:19

Gregg Margolis: Key health policy reads of the week

Gregg Margolis, Director of Health Policy Fellowships and Leadership Programs at the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), posted on LinkedIn:

“If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest…

AP: Trump 100 Days: Public Health At the Department of Health and Human Services, 10,000 jobs are gone. Billions of dollars in research sent to scientists and universities was shut off. Public meetings to discuss flu shots and other vaccines have been canceled. Fluoride in drinking water may be the next to go, according to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy has done a blitz of his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign at day cares, schools and health centers around the country where he has promised to work with Trump’s other agency leaders to prohibit soda from the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, limit dyes in the food supply and call for fluoride to be removed from drinking water. (Seitz, 4/27)

Politico: The White House Wants To Avoid Medicaid Cuts. To GOP Hard-Liners, They’re Essential. The fate of Republicans’ sweeping domestic policy bill is snagged on a crucial question: Are deep cuts to Medicaid, the federal health care program covering nearly 80 million Americans, something to be avoided? Or are they the whole point of pursuing the legislation? That clash – with the White House on one side and GOP hard-liners in Congress on the other – is now playing out in closed-door meetings and in the hallways of Capitol Hill as the party rushes to write the megabill and potentially cut more than a half-trillion dollars from the safety-net health program over the coming decade. (Cancryn, Leonard and Lee Hill, 5/1)

The Wall Street Journal: U.S. Delays Hospital Payments As Medicaid Scrutiny Intensifies Unexpected delays in billions of dollars of supplemental Medicaid payments have forced some hospitals across the country to cut costs including laying off staff and pausing payments to medical suppliers. Hospital associations in at least 10 states said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency responsible for approving funds known as state-directed payments, has been unusually slow at processing applications for them. Some of the delays date to the fall of 2024. (Mosbergen, 5/2)

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