First Edition: Thursday, Dec. 4, 2025

KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES

KFF Health News: Under Kennedy, America’s Health Department Is In The Business Of Promoting Kennedy
As health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wields one of the louder megaphones the federal government has. Yet he insists he doesn’t want to impose his opinions on Americans. “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me,” Kennedy told a Democratic congressman in May. (Tahir, 12/4)

KFF Health News: Republicans Left Tribes Out Of Their $50B Rural Fund. Now It’s Up To States To Share
The Trump administration is touting its $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program as the largest-ever U.S. investment in rural health care. But the government made minimal mention of Native American tribes in sparsely populated areas and in need of significant improvements to health care access. (Orozco Rodriguez, 12/4)

VACCINES

The New York Times: Will All Newborns Still Receive Hepatitis B Shots? A Committee’s Vote Will Tell
A federal vaccine committee is expected to vote on a significant change to the nation’s vaccine policy on Thursday, deciding whether to end a decades-long recommendation to immunize all babies at birth against hepatitis B, a highly contagious virus that can damage the liver. The committee, whose members were appointed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is most likely to end the practice, and to delay vaccination for most babies until they are older, Dr. Kirk Milhoan, the panel’s newly appointed chair, said in an interview. (Mandavilli, 12/4)

The New York Times: Former F.D.A. Commissioners Sound Alarm On Plan To Change Vaccine Policy
In an article published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, 12 former Food and Drug Administration commissioners sharply criticized anticipated changes to vaccine policy that were detailed in a leaked memo from an agency official. “We are deeply concerned by sweeping new F.D.A. assertions about vaccine safety and proposals that would undermine a regulatory model designed to ensure that vaccines are safe, effective and available when the public needs them most,” the former commissioners wrote. (Kirk, 12/3)

CIDRAP: Vaccinating Newborns Against Hepatitis B Saves Lives. Why Might A CDC Panel Stop Recommending It?
Alex Lee suffered for years because of a chronic hepatitis B infection. Like many people with chronic hepatitis B, Lee contracted the virus from his mother during birth. Lee didn't learn he was infected until he was 40, when his mother underwent a liver transplant due to organ failure caused by hepatitis B. By the time Lee was diagnosed, he already had advanced cirrhosis, a serious liver disease. (Szabo, 12/3)

The Boston Globe: Governor Healey Warns Of Hepatitis B Vaccine Misinformation
Governor Maura Healey and Public Health Commissioner Dr. Robbie Goldstein warned of misinformation about the childhood vaccine schedule, especially the infant hepatitis B vaccine, at a convening of doctors and public health officials Wednesday. The forum took place one day before a pivotal meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, in Washington on Thursday. The group of vaccine advisers, hand-picked by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are slated to discuss the pediatric vaccine schedule and vote on the recommendation to administer hepatitis B shots to newborns. (Muchnick, 12/3)

The New York Times: Inside Kennedy’s Methodical Quest To Shake Up America’s Vaccine System 
Throughout his two-decade crusade against vaccines, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. viewed the federal government’s Vaccine Safety Datalink as a kind of holy grail. With millions of confidential patient records, the database, he believed, held the potential to prove whether vaccines cause autism. (Gay Stolberg and Jewett, 12/4)

The Baltimore Sun: CDC's Vaccine Authority Falls Poll Shows - Young Americans Turn To Social Media
Americans’ confidence in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has plummeted, according to a 2025 National Foundation for Infectious Diseases survey released today, and many young people are getting vaccine advice from social media. (Hille, 12/3)

FDA

Stat: FDA Removes Office Of Nonprescription Drugs Director Theresa Michele 
The Food and Drug Administration removed the longtime director of the office of over-the-counter drugs from her position on Wednesday, six agency sources told STAT. (Lawrence, 12/3)

Stat: Tracy Beth Høeg Will Lead FDA Center For Drug Evaluation And Research 
Tracy Beth Høeg, a top lieutenant to Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, will be the next leader of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, according to an announcement from the FDA. (Lawrence and Cirruzzo, 12/3)

Axios: Kennedy Meets With FDA Official Amid Agency Worker Turmoil
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today met with the FDA's departing top drug regulator amid concerns the agency is in turmoil, two sources familiar with the situation told Axios. The appointment of veteran cancer specialist Rick Pazdur to lead the agency's drug center mere weeks ago came as an enormous relief to the biopharmaceutical industry, and his pending retirement has reignited fears that the agency is imploding. (Owens, 12/3)

The Wall Street Journal: Turmoil At The FDA Threatens Biotech Recovery
The Trump administration’s ambition to unleash biomedical innovation and sharpen America’s edge against China is colliding with a far messier reality inside the Food and Drug Administration. Investors riding a rare biotech recovery don’t need to jump off the train, but they should expect a bumpier ride. (Wainer, 12/4)

Stat: FDA Plans To Require Just A Single Clinical Trial For New Approvals
The Food and Drug Administration plans to begin requiring one clinical study, instead of the standard two, for medical products before consideration for approval, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary told STAT on Wednesday. (Lawrence, 12/4)

FUNDING AND RESEARCH CUTS

MedPage Today: New NIH Policies Make It Easier To End Grants, Ignore Peer Review
November brought yet another round of changes at the NIH -- including a new policy that makes it easier to terminate grants, a shift away from its standard process for awarding grants, and the replacement of AIDS research leadership. All new grants must have language stating that they can be terminated "if the agency determines that the award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities," according to a notice posted Nov. 18. (Fiore, 12/3)

Stat: Trump Science Funding Cuts Shake The Foundation Of U.S. Research 
For a substantial group of U.S. researchers, 2025 will be remembered as the year their path to a career in science was closed off, their dreams dashed. For others, it will go down as a chaotic game of red-light-green-light that left them constantly unsure of what work would be funded or halted, but that they managed to survive. For nearly everyone, the last 10 months have revealed that the research enterprise that catapulted the country to the technological fore was much more brittle than expected. (Molteni, Oza and Parker, 12/4)

Stat: Working With Monkeys Was This Lab Tech’s Dream Job. Now She’s Staffing An IT Help Desk
Brittney Dockery searched for the right words to say goodbye. Her message might have gotten across, if not for 25 million years of evolution. “Behave yourself. Keep on working on the eye tracking,” Dockery told Ulti. “You’re doing so good.” There was no hope Ulti would understand — after all, she’s a rhesus macaque. And yet Dockery couldn’t help herself. (Wosen, 12/4)

ON CAPITOL HILL

Politico: Watchdog Finds Fraudulent Obamacare Signups And Republicans Cry Foul
A federal watchdog dropped what a top House Republican called “a bombshell” Wednesday, revealing how easy it is for fraudsters to extract Obamacare payments by setting up health insurance accounts for people who do not exist. The Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, said it had set up 24 fake accounts during the 2024 and 2025 plan years and that 22 had slipped through. The fake accounts in 2025 cost the government more than $10,000 per month in subsidies. (King, 12/3)

Roll Call: Senate Panel Sees Opening, However Slight, For Health Care Deal 
At a hearing on health care affordability Wednesday, senators left the door open for a bipartisan agreement that would extend expiring Affordable Care Act enhanced subsidies before year’s end, a day after many of their colleagues had essentially slammed it shut. (Raman, 12/3)

AP: New Poll Shows ACA Enrollees Are Struggling With Health Costs
Fifty-two-year-old Dinam Bigny sank into debt and had to get a roommate this year, in part because of health insurance premiums that cost him nearly $900 per month. Next year, those monthly fees will rise by $200 — a significant enough increase that the program manager in Aldie, Virginia, has resigned himself to finding cheaper coverage. “I won’t be able to pay it, because I really drained out any savings that I have right now,” he said. “Emergency fund is still draining out — that’s the scary part.” (Swenson, Sanders and Thomson-Deveaux, 12/4)

Politico: Trump Wants A Health Care Deal. He’s Leaving The Details To Congress
The White House is providing congressional Republicans with few specific demands on what kind of health care legislation President Donald Trump might support, giving some Republicans heartburn about how they will prevent a dramatic spike in some health premiums next month. Republican lawmakers crafting legislation to address the subsidy cliff, however, say they are regularly in touch with the White House and focused on getting a plan that could reach the president’s desk — requiring consensus among their own party and the Democrats needed to get a bill through the Senate. (Haslett and Carney, 12/4)

The 19th: Rep. Delia Ramirez Criticizes ICE Treatment Of Pregnant, Postpartum Immigrants
Rep. Delia Ramirez, a Democrat from Illinois, introduced a resolution Wednesday calling on the Trump administration to permanently reinstate policies protecting pregnant immigrants and to closely monitor reproductive health care quality and access across all detention facilities. (Barclay, 12/3)

LGBTQ+ HEALTH

Chron.com: Texas Lawmakers Finally Got Their 'Bathroom Bill.' Here's How It Works
After more than a decade of failed efforts, Texas Republicans finally passed a bill that regulates the restrooms that transgender people use. Senate Bill 8, also known as "The Texas Women's Privacy Act" but more commonly known as the "bathroom bill," will go into force on Dec. 4. (Howerton, 12/3)

LGBTQ Nation: University Forces Students Into "Dangerous" Environments To Comply With GOP Bathroom Bill
Students at the University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA) are being forced out of their current dorm rooms and made to relocate because of a new bathroom ban. While the ban is intended to target trans people, any students sharing a bathroom between their rooms with someone of a different gender assigned at birth are being forcibly rehoused to comply with the new law. “It’s just creating a dangerous environment,” Katarina Rendon, a UTSA sophomore lives in a mixed-gender dorm, told KSAT. “Like, you could have a transgender individual who rooms with their friend, and then all of a sudden, they’re moved with someone who has violent tendencies towards people like that.” (Collington, 12/3)

HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY

AP: Luigi Mangione Appears In Court On Anniversary Of UnitedHealthcare CEO's Killing
A high-stakes hearing in the New York murder case against Luigi Mangione continues Thursday, a year to the day after prosecutors say he gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to both state and federal charges. Before any trials get scheduled, his lawyers are trying to preclude the eventual jurors from hearing about his alleged statements to law enforcement officers and items — including a gun and a notebook — allegedly seized from his backpack. (Peltz, 12/4)

San Francisco Chronicle: California CEO Accused Of $7M Fraud Arrested At SFO
Federal prosecutors say a California health care executive, accused of a sweeping fraud that allegedly drained more than $7 million from a program meant to support aging veterans, was arrested at San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday just as he tried to board a flight to Nigeria. Cashmir Chinedu Luke, believed to be 66 and living in Antioch, now faces a criminal complaint alleging he billed the Department of Veterans Affairs for thousands of home care services that never happened. (Vaziri, 12/3)

Modern Healthcare: UnitedHealthcare Suit Highlights Medicare Advantage Broker Fight 
A battle over Medicare Advantage insurers limiting enrollment is intensifying as two insurers take a state to court and other states voice concern. Insurance regulators in six states told insurers last month that they must cease their pullback on Medicare Advantage marketing. Insurance companies seeking to reduce their exposure to costly new enrollees have taken steps such as trimming or eliminating commissions to brokers and third-party marketers and tightening access to online portals they use. (Tong, 12/3)

Modern Healthcare: Ensign Group Adds Nursing Homes In Colorado, Arizona And Kansas
Senior living company Ensign Group has expanded its footprint with four nursing home deals across three states. The company said in a Tuesday news release it acquired the operations of the 103-bed Rehabilitation Center at Sandalwood in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, and 69-bed Edgewater Health and Rehabilitation Center in Lakewood, Colorado, on Monday. Both deals are subject to a long-term lease with a third-party landlord, according to the release. (Eastabrook, 12/3)

Fierce Healthcare: 'Clinic-In-A-Box' Company OnMed Expands To 30 Charter Schools
OnMed, a company that developed an innovative way to provide medical check-ups almost anywhere, inked a new partnership to expand its CareStations to 30 charter schools as part of an initial pilot. In partnership with 22Beacon, OnMed will launch the Public Charter School Health Equity Initiative, bringing OnMed's CareStation kiosks to charter schools across 22Beacon's portfolio network with plans to expand the pilot into a national offering, executives said. (Landi, 12/3)

Modern Healthcare: Hims & Hers To Acquire YourBio Health
Direct-to-consumer telehealth company Hims & Hers Health said Wednesday it has agreed to acquire YourBio Health, a medical device company that develops blood sampling technology. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal is slated to close early next year pending customary closing conditions, according to a release. (Famakinwa, 12/3)

New Hampshire Public Radio: NH Needs To Find $5 Million To Cover Overruns From Design Mistake At New Psych Hospital
A mistaken calculation in the design of a new state psychiatric hospital is pushing back the project’s completion date until late 2027, and will potentially leave New Hampshire taxpayers on the hook for an additional $5 million. (Bookman, 12/3)

CIDRAP: Medical Societies Jointly Launch Infection Prevention Initiative
Two medical societies are teaming up on an initiative to provide guidance on infection prevention and antimicrobial stewardship in US health care settings. Launched yesterday by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) and the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), the Healthcare Infection Prevention Advisory Group (HIPAG) aims to fill the gap left by the Trump administration’s dissolution of a federal advisory group on infection prevention in May. (Dall, 12/3)

PHARMA AND TECH

Bloomberg: India Court Allows Dr. Reddy’s To Export Generics Of Novo Nordisk’s Semaglutide
An Indian court has allowed Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd. to manufacture and export generic versions of Novo Nordisk A/S’s obesity and diabetes drugs, ahead of global patent expiries in 2026. Novo Nordisk’s petition to block production of semaglutide was rejected by the Delhi High Court in its Dec. 2 interim order. The court allowed Dr. Reddy’s to export to markets without patent protection, while accepting the Indian company’s commitment that it will not sell the products in the local market until Novo’s patent lapses. (Mahajan and Sanjay, 12/4)

NBC News: Novo Nordisk Still Sees Potential In Ozempic For Alzheimer’s, Despite Trial Setbacks
Novo Nordisk says it still thinks GLP-1 drugs could be a promising treatment for Alzheimer’s, despite two major trials last month that found an older drug similar to Ozempic had no effect in slowing early-stage disease. While GLP-1 drugs have become synonymous with dramatic weight loss, they’ve also become one of the most closely watched experimental approaches for slowing Alzheimer’s, a disease with few treatment options. (Lovelace Jr., 12/4)

Modern Healthcare: RSNA 2025: Philips, GE HealthCare Unveil AI Tools, MRI Scanners 
The radiology community gathered at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting this week in Chicago, eager to see the latest breakthroughs in imaging and artificial intelligence technology. Those include two 3.0T MRI innovations, which are the most advanced, widely used type of MRI technology, and AI solutions designed to ease radiologists’ growing workloads. Some of the developments are a work in progress, while others are pending Food and Drug Administration clearance. (Dubinsky, 12/3)

STATE WATCH

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: CDC: Georgia Posts One Of Nation’s Largest Life Expectancy Gains
Georgia experienced one of the largest increases in life expectancy in the nation in 2022, rising 1.6 years, according to a new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Thursday. Georgia residents’ life expectancy of 75.9 years still ranked near the bottom of states and the District of Columbia in 36th place, the report shows. Hawaii ranked first at 80. West Virginia was last at 72.2. (Redmon, 12/4)

The Texas Tribune: Stephanie Muth Named Texas Health Commissioner
Stephanie Muth, the former commissioner of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, has been named Texas’ next health commissioner. Her first day will be on Jan. 3. (Simpson, 12/3)

KBIA: Some Missouri Restaurants Developing Menus For Red-Meat Allergy 
Chris Galloway, or “Pappo,” as he’s better known, said for many years he felt like a monster. There were times in the mid-1980s when he would accidentally ingest red meat. After a few hours, he started to get hives. Then, he realized, it was getting harder and harder to breathe. (Smith, 12/4)

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer: Toledo Doctor Charged With Forcing Abortion Drugs On Pregnant Girlfriend 
A doctor is facing multiple felony charges after he was accused of forcing a pregnant woman to take abortion pills. Dr. Hassan Abbas, 32, a surgical resident at the University of Toledo Medical Center, was indicted Wednesday by a grand jury in Lucas County, WTOL Channel 11 reports. (Pinckard, 12/3)

SUBSTANCE ABUSE

The Washington Post: Doctor Sentenced To 30 Months Over Matthew Perry’s Death From Ketamine 
Salvador Plasencia, a physician who pleaded guilty in July to multiple drug charges in connection to actor Matthew Perry’s death, was sentenced Wednesday to two and a half years in prison. “I failed Mr. Perry — I failed him, I failed his family,” Plasencia said in court, according to the New York Times. He told Perry’s family in the courtroom: “I’m just so sorry.” (Beck, 12/3)

North Carolina Health News: NC Prisons Ramp Up Opioid Addiction Treatment Before Release 
Evan Ashkin, a family physician and director of the North Carolina Formerly Incarcerated Transition Program, has long been concerned about people who are returning to the community from prison — especially people with substance use disorders. (Crumpler, 12/4)

OUTBREAKS AND HEALTH THREATS

CIDRAP: US Measles Outbreak Tops 1,800 Cases As Respiratory Illness Surveillance Returns 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today confirmed 30 more measles cases reported in the United States this past week, raising the national total to 1,828 confirmed cases so far in 2025. Current US hot spots are Utah, Arizona, and South Carolina, where outbreaks among predominately unvaccinated or under-vaccinated people have led to community spread and widespread quarantines at schools. The CDC added that it will be updating respiratory surveillance data on Fridays, the same day FluView is published. (Soucheray, 12/3)

CIDRAP: Global Whooping Cough Resurgence After COVID Lull May Point To Need For Better Vaccines
After a lull during the COVID-19 pandemic, pertussis (whooping cough) has made a resurgence—especially in adolescents—with larger outbreaks than those seen during recent peaks in many countries, according to a summary of an online workshop organized by the International Bordetella Society in mid-November. While most countries didn’t experience significant declines in pertussis vaccination during the pandemic, better vaccines may be needed to more fully protect against infection and curb disease transmission of circulating strains, the authors said. (Van Beusekom, 12/3)

CIDRAP: Single HPV Vaccine Dose Matches Protection Of 2-Dose Regimen, New Trial Shows
A large-scale randomized controlled trial from Costa Rica finds that one dose of either a bivalent (two-strain) or nonavalent (nine-strain) human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine provides the same protection against infection with the HPV16 or HPV18 types as the more common two-dose series, offering a potentially transformative tool for global cervical cancer prevention. HPV types 16 and 18 cause more than 77% of cervical cancers worldwide. (Bergeson, 12/3)

The Hill: Shredded Cheese Sold In Walmart, Target, Aldi Recalled Over Metal, FDA Says
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers to double-check their shredded cheese after an Ohio-based company recalled multiple products distributed to 31 states for potentially containing metal fragments. The recall from Great Lakes Cheese Co. was first initiated on Oct. 3, but was reclassified on Monday to Class II, which is defined as “a situation in which use of or exposure to a violative product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote,” according to the FDA. (Pflaumer, 12/3)

GLOBAL WATCH