Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
CMS Inks Broad Changes To Eligibility, Plan Options For 2027 ACA Exchanges
Modern Healthcare: CMS Finalizes ACA Exchange Rule For 2027
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a regulation Friday that will usher in major changes to the Affordable Care Act of 2010 health insurance exchanges next year. The final rule institutes substantial new policies, including tighter eligibility verification requirements and broader access to non-traditional health plans such as catastrophic policies that can be in place for multiple years and insurance without provider networks. (Early, 5/15)
NBC News: FDA Leadership Shakeup Continues With Departure Of Top Drug Regulator
Dr. Tracy Beth Høeg is leaving her role as head of the FDA division that regulates over-the-counter and prescription drugs, according to a Department of Health and Human Services official. Høeg, a sports medicine doctor who criticized Covid shots for children during the pandemic, served as acting director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research for about five months. (Lovelace Jr. and Bendix, 5/15)
KFF Health News: Trump Bought Stock In Drugmaker As His Government Boosted Its Obesity Drugs
President Donald Trump earlier this year bought as much as $680,000 in stock of Eli Lilly, the maker of blockbuster obesity drugs, as the agencies he oversees undertook an agenda that largely benefited the company. On May 14, the federal government released ethics disclosures revealing a list of stock and bond trades made on Trump’s behalf from January to March of this year. They included extensive trades across the economy, including investments in tech giants such as Microsoft and Nvidia, aerospace firms such as Boeing, and household-name companies such as Target and Chipotle. (Tahir, 5/18)
RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement —
Politico: RFK Jr.’s Department To Make It Easier To Fire Career Staff
The Health and Human Services Department is moving hundreds of senior career staff to a new civil service classification that will make it easier to fire them. President Donald Trump tinkered with the idea late in his first term and the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, recommended the reclassification of career staff with policy-making responsibilities in its Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s second term. Trump dismissed that document during his campaign, but has since adopted many of its proposals. (Paun and Sophie Gardner, 5/15)
Politico: How Cassidy’s Loss Could Turn Into An Even Bigger Win For RFK Jr.
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his followers scored a big win Saturday when Kennedy’s nemesis, Sen. Bill Cassidy, went down in his Louisiana primary. The cherry on top for Kennedy and his Make America Healthy Again movement would be if another Republican doctor in the Senate, Kansas’ Roger Marshall, replaces Cassidy next year as chair of the Health Committee. Marshall, unlike Cassidy, is a big Kennedy fan, having founded a MAHA caucus to promote Kennedy’s push to combat chronic disease. (Levien, 5/17)
Roll Call: As RFK’S Lifestyle Seeps Into Policy, Some Fret Over Long-Term Effect
When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the helm of the department in February 2025, he pledged to remove special interests from HHS and chart a new path focused on “gold-standard science.” He made his core policy interests clear in November 2024, even before he was President Donald Trump’s pick for the job, accusing the federal government of suppressing “psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, vitamins, clean foods, sunshine, exercise, nutraceuticals and anything else that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.” (DeGroot, 5/15)
KFF Health News: A Danish Couple’s Maverick African Research Finds Its Moment In RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Policy
In 1996, Guinea-Bissau seemed like an ideal research post for budding pediatrician Lone Graff Stensballe. Her supervisor, a fellow Dane named Peter Aaby, had spent nearly two decades collecting data on 100,000 people living in the mud brick homes of the West African country’s capital. Aaby and his partner, Christine Stabell Benn, believed that the years of research in the impoverished country had yielded a major discovery about vaccines — and what they described as “non-specific effects”: The measles and tuberculosis vaccines, which were derived from live, weakened viruses and bacteria, they said, boosted child survival beyond protecting against those particular pathogens. (Allen, 5/18)
More news from the Trump administration —
NPR: Trump's Immigration Crackdown Takes A Toll On Mental Health. One Clinic Tracks It
As the Trump administration's immigration crackdown stretches into its second year, researchers and health care workers say that it is creating a mental health crisis in immigrant communities. Data from one primary care clinic in Los Angeles, shared exclusively with NPR, shows a sharp rise in anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts among patients. (Chatterjee, 5/17)
The Washington Post: Efforts To Understand America’s Drugged-Driving Problem Stalls Under Trump
Two state transportation workers were replacing a sign on the shoulder of U.S. Highway 6 in western Colorado one morning when a Jeep Grand Cherokee swerved off the road and struck them. The workers, Nathan Jones and Trent Umberger, died in the September 2024 crash, as did a passenger in the Jeep. Tests found that the driver, Patrick Sneddon, then 59, had oxycodone and six times Colorado’s presumed impairment threshold of THC — the psychoactive compound in cannabis — in his blood. He pleaded guilty and is serving 30 years in prison on three counts of vehicular homicide and other charges. (DiCola, 5/17)
Stat: U.K. Advocacy Groups Threaten Legal Action Over Provision In U.S. Pharma Deal
Two advocacy groups are demanding the United Kingdom revoke regulations at the heart of a new trade agreement with the U.S. over concerns the deal will allow outsiders to influence official decisions about the cost-effectiveness of medicines. And if the government does not comply, the groups are readying legal action. (Silverman, 5/17)
