First Edition: Monday, April 14, 2025

KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES

KFF Health News: Families Of Transgender Youth No Longer View Colorado As A Haven For Gender-Affirming Care
On a Friday after school, 6-year-old Esa Rodrigues had unraveled a ball of yarn, spooked the pet cat, polled family members about their favorite colors, and tattled on a sibling for calling her a “butt-face mole rat.” Next, she was laser-focused on prying open cherry-crisp-flavored lip gloss with her teeth. “Yes!” she cried, twisting open the cap. Esa applied the gloopy, shimmery stuff in her bedroom, where a large transgender pride flag hung on the wall. Esa said the flag makes her feel “important” and “happy.” (Bichell, 4/14)

KFF Health News: Magic Happens When Kids And Adults Learn To Swim. Tragedy Can Strike If They Don’t
At a swim meet just outside St. Louis, heads turned when a team of young swimmers walked through the rec center with their parents in tow. A supportive mom kept her eye on the clock while the Makos Swim Team athletes tucked their natural curls, braids, and locs into yellow swimming caps. In the bleachers, spectators whispered about the team’s presence at the pool in Centralia, Illinois — as they do at almost every competition. (Anthony, 4/14)

KFF Health News: KFF Health News’ ‘On Air’: Journalists Delve Into Effects Of Deep Federal Cuts On Public Health
KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner and national public health correspondent Amy Maxmen discussed the impact of federal cuts on public health on Connecticut Public Radio’s “The Wheelhouse” on April 9.Click here to hear Rovner and Maxmen on “The Wheelhouse” (4/12)

CBS News: FDA To Replace Laid-Off Employees With Contractors, Sources Say
The Food and Drug Administration is finalizing plans to replace some of the employees it laid off with contractors, three FDA officials tell CBS News, after steep cuts to the agency's workforce disrupted drug and food safety inspections. "Recent adjustments in staff numbers have created a heightened need for the FDA to be nimble, efficient and respond creatively, in order to continue and maintain FDA's regulatory inspection presence and the gold standard of excellence," agency officials wrote, in emails and draft contracting documents obtained by CBS News. (Tin, 4/11)

Politico: RFK Jr. Says Deep State ‘Is Real,’ Called FDA Employees ‘Sock Puppet’ Of Industry
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s visit to the FDA Friday was supposed to introduce him as a trusted leader to agency employees. It did anything but. Over the course of 40 minutes, Kennedy, in largely off-the-cuff remarks, asserted that the “Deep State” is real, referenced past CIA experiments on human mind control and accused the employees he was speaking to of becoming a “sock puppet” of the industries they regulate. (Cancryn, Gardner and Lim, 4/11)

MORE ON THE RESTRUCTURING OF HHS

The Washington Post: Official Who Oversaw Dismantling Of USAID Leaves State Department
Pete Marocco, a State Department official who oversaw the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has left the agency after less than three months, according to a senior Trump administration official. The official, who like others in this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, confirmed to The Washington Post on Monday that Marocco had stepped down. The reason for his departure, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, was not immediately clear. (Hudson and Jeong, 4/14)

Bloomberg: Trump’s Foreign Aid Cuts Are Killing Jobs For US Contractors Too
Weeks after Donald Trump won reelection, Keith Ives held an all-staff meeting at his Denver-based company to reassure his 30 employees that their work evaluating the success of US aid projects overseas wasn’t under threat. “I enthusiastically told them, ‘I’m not worried at all — the work we do isn’t political,’” said Ives, who founded Causal Design more than a decade ago. “We weren’t working in climate. We’re not working in gender. We’re not doing DEI work. We’re monitoring and evaluating emergency food aid.” (Marlow, 4/12)

Politico: The Downside Of RIFs At NIH
The National Institutes of Health mistakenly fired — and then rehired — one of its most distinguished scientists amid a slapdash effort to shrink the agency’s workforce. NIH employees were shocked last week when Richard Youle emailed them to say he’d been among those caught up in the reduction in force, according to three people with knowledge of the dismissal who requested anonymity to discuss the situation. They had believed the NIH’s 1,200-person downsizing plan meant consolidating communications, human resources and procurement functions — not axing scientists. (Schumaker, Paun and Reader, 4/11)

The Hill: HHS Officials Lack Clarity On Agency Layoffs, House Aide Says
Department of Health and Human Services officials during a closed-door briefing could not give a full accounting of the number of people who have been fired from the agency, a Democratic aide for the House Energy and Commerce Committee said Friday. HHS officials insisted to committee staff that the agency’s massive staffing cuts had been performed “with a scalpel” and “with nuance” but they did not have any numbers of who had been laid off, the aide told reporters. “There did not seem to be a function level understanding of who had been terminated,” they added. (Weixel, 4/12)

Stat: Key NIH Grant Review Panels Resume Meeting, But Are Not 'Back To Normal'
After being indefinitely suspended in the first days of the Trump administration, key National Institutes of Health committees that approve research grants resumed meeting this week. It appears to be a positive step toward restoring the flow of billions of dollars in biomedical research funding to universities and medical schools that for months has been significantly staunched. (Molteni, 4/11)

NBC News: One Of The Country's Leading Alzheimer's Projects Is In Jeopardy
Andrea Gilbert thought she knew what would happen to her brain. The 79-year-old retired attorney, who has Alzheimer’s disease and receives care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, agreed to donate it for research in 2023. She hoped to help scientists unlock the keys to a disease that had left her writing notes to remind herself if she’d already brushed her teeth. The fate of that program is now in limbo because the Trump administration has upended the system that funds biomedical research. (Bush, 4/13)

Stat: Why CDC Cuts Are Being Called 'The Greatest Gift To Tobacco Industry In The Last Half-Century'
Amid the 10,000 job cuts so far this month at the U.S. health department, what happened to OSH is “the greatest gift to the tobacco industry in the last half century,” said Tim McAfee, who headed the division from 2010 to 2017. (Todd, 4/14)

Stat: Tech Modernization At Community Health Centers In Limbo After Federal Workforce Cuts
The future of a technology modernization program, meant to help the government understand if the billions of tax dollars it spends on community health centers are in fact making Americans healthy, now looks uncertain. (Trang, 4/14)

LGBTQ+ HEALTH CARE

The Hill: Trump Administrations Tells States Medicaid Funds Cannot Be Used For Gender-Affirming Care
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is urging states to not use Medicaid funds for gender-affirming care for minors, specifically gender reassignment surgeries or hormone treatments. “As a doctor and now CMS Administrator, my top priority is protecting children and upholding the law,” Mehmet Oz, the recently confirmed agency head, said in a statement Friday. (O’Connell-Domenech, 4/11)

KVPR: White House Orders NIH To Research Trans 'Regret' And 'Detransition'
The Trump administration has ordered the National Institutes of Health to study the physical and mental health effects of undergoing gender transition, including regret. The research comes at a time when the administration has cut hundreds of grants for research into health issues affecting the LGBTQ community. (Stein, 4/11)

The Washington Post: Trump Health Nominee Called For ‘Corrective Care’ For Trans Youth
President Donald Trump’s pick for a top health post has called for transgender youth to undergo “corrective care” instead of transitioning and has repeated conspiracy theories about the covid-19 pandemic, according to a Washington Post review of his podcast and radio appearances. Brian Christine, a 61-year-old Alabama urologist, would succeed former U.S. assistant secretary for health Rachel Levine, who made history during the Biden administration when she became the highest ranking openly transgender federal government official. (Nirappil, 4/12)

AUTISM

The New York Times: Experts Doubt Kennedy’s Timetable For Finding The Cause Of Autism
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, pledged on Thursday to seek out experts globally to discover the reasons for the increasing rates of autism in the United States. “We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world,” Mr. Kennedy announced at a cabinet meeting held by President Trump. “By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.” (Jewett, 4/11)

The Hill: Autism Society Says RFK Jr.'s Comments 'Unrealistic And Misleading'
Leadership at The Autism Society of America is pushing back against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s recent pledge to find the cause of autism spectrum disorder. Kennedy promised to launch a “massive testing and research effort” on Thursday to figure out what has caused the “autism epidemic” by September. “We find that unrealistic and misleading,” President and CEO of The Autism Society of America Christopher Banks told The Hill. ... It is unclear who will lead the new testing and research effort and what methodology will be used in the process.  (O’Connell-Domenech, 4/11)

The Hill: Former FDA Vaccine Chief On RFK Jr. And Autism Cause: Giving People False Hope Is ‘Wrong’
Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks weighed in on Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s remarks about finding a cause of autism, saying giving people false hope is “wrong.” Marks joined CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, where host Margaret Brennan asked him about Kennedy’s claim that the world will find the cause of the “autism epidemic” by September. (Irwin, 4/13)

TARIFFS AND PHARMACEUTICALS

Bloomberg: Pharmaceuticals Tariffs Will Harm Patients, AstraZeneca Chairman Says
Tariffs on pharmaceuticals would hurt patients and drugs should be exempt from these levies, AstraZeneca Plc’ Chairman Michel Demaré said. US President Donald Trump has warned that tariffs on pharmaceutical companies — which weren’t part of the so-called reciprocal tariffs he imposed and then paused — are imminent. (Furlong, 4/11)

The Washington Post: Millions In The U.S. Take This Drug. Tariffs Could Complicate Their Care
Thousands of miles from a manufacturing plant in China, where the key active ingredient in heparin is sourced, Wanda Crowell receives a daily infusion of the drug in her bed at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Doctors give Crowell the inexpensive, essential anticoagulant every day, to prevent life-threatening blood clots from forming in her central line, a plastic tube inserted in her chest that delivers the nutrients she needs to live. ... She also needs heparin to treat a history of blood clots. (Malhi, 4/11)

The Washington Post: U.S. Manufacturers Are Feeling The Effects Of Trump’s Volatile Tariffs
President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff-driven reversal of decades of free trade is creating financial chaos for the very sector it’s meant to rebuild: American manufacturing. Although the full extent of economic damage is still unclear, volatile tariff policies are making it tougher for American companies to make and sell goods, whether they’re producing medical devices in Florida, toys in Ohio or bicycles in California. (Bhattarai, 4/13)

The New York Times: Trump Signals New Tariffs On Chips, Calling Exclusions Temporary
President Trump signaled on Sunday that he would pursue new tariffs on the powerful computer chips inside smartphones and other technologies, just two days after his administration excluded a variety of electronics from the steep import taxes recently applied on goods arriving from China. (Romm, Swanson and Mickle, 4/13)

MEDICAID AND MEDICARE

Modern Healthcare: CMS To End Medicaid Designated State Health, Investment Programs 
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is cutting off funding for initiatives designed to address health-related social needs for Medicaid enrollees, the agency notified states in a letter Thursday. So-called designated state health programs and designated state investment programs currently in operation under 1115 waivers may continue, but CMS will not extend them nor approve new applications, Center for Medicaid Director Drew Snyder wrote in a letter to state officials. (Early, 4/11)

The Wall Street Journal: The $600 Billion Medicaid Maneuver On The Chopping Block
An obscure set of state taxes on hospitals and other health providers is in the crosshairs of congressional budget cutters because the levies can lead to higher federal spending on Medicaid. Known as provider taxes because states impose them on hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities that provide healthcare, the taxes boost a state’s budget for funding Medicaid. That in turn attracts more matching federal dollars to fund the program—money that is ultimately directed back to the hospitals and clinics. (Walker, 4/14)

The New York Times: Trump Administration Delays Plan To Limit Pricey Bandages
The Trump administration announced Friday it would delay the implementation of a Biden-era rule meant to restrict coverage of unproven and costly bandages known as skin substitutes. The policy will be delayed until 2026, allowing companies to continue setting high prices for new products, taking advantage of a loophole in Medicare rules. The companies sell those bandages at a discount to doctors, who then charge Medicare the full sticker price and pocket the difference, The New York Times reported on Thursday. (Kliff and Thomas, 4/11)

MedPage Today: MedPAC: Medicare Paid MA Plans $38 Billion For Non-Medicare Services In 2024
Last year, Medicare Advantage (MA) plans spent $38 billion on services traditional Medicare doesn't pay for, such as gym memberships, meals, transportation, and dental care. But a report presented to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) Thursday lamented the agency's inability to evaluate the value of those services, to what extent beneficiaries actually used them, and with which companies the plans contract to provide them. (Clark, 4/11)

Modern Healthcare: Hospitals To See Medicare Rate Increase For 2026 In CMS Proposal 
Medicare reimbursements for inpatient hospital care would increase 2.4% in fiscal 2026 under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published Friday. Long-term care hospitals would get a 2.6% pay hike under the same draft regulation. A separate rule issued Friday calls for a 2.4% boost to inpatient psychiatric facility rates next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. (Early, 4/11)

Modern Healthcare: Nursing Homes Could See 2.8% Medicare Pay Increase In 2026 
Skilled nursing homes would receive a 2.8% payment bump in fiscal 2026 under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced late Friday. MS said the proposed rate increase includes a market basket update of 3%, a 0.6% market basket forecast error adjustment and a cut of 0.8% due to a productivity adjustment. The proposed pay hike is far below the 4.2% pay increase CMS gave nursing homes in fiscal 2025. (Eastabrook, 4/11)

MEASLES

AP: Measles: How Stagnant Vaccine Funding Helped Texas Outbreak Spread
The measles outbreak in West Texas didn’t happen just by chance. The easily preventable disease, declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, ripped through communities sprawling across more than 20 Texas counties in part because health departments were starved of the funding needed to run vaccine programs, officials say. “We haven’t had a strong immunization program that can really do a lot of boots-on-the-ground work for years,” said Katherine Wells, the health director in Lubbock, a 90-minute drive from the outbreak’s epicenter. (Ungar, Smith and Shastri, 4/13)

The Hill: Cassidy Praises Kennedy For Promoting Measles Vaccination Amid Outbreak
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) applauded Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for promoting measles vaccination amid a deadly outbreak in Texas. Since the start of the spread, the U.S. has reported 700 cases of the measles virus in states across the country. The Louisiana lawmaker said immunizations were safe and would be crucial to saving lives during a Sunday interview with radio host John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM’s “The Cats Roundtable.” (Fields, 4/13)

The New York Times: The Many Ways Kennedy Is Already Undermining Vaccines
During his Senate confirmation hearings to be health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presented himself as a supporter of vaccines. But in office, he and the agencies he leads have taken far-reaching, sometimes subtle steps to undermine confidence in vaccine efficacy and safety. The National Institutes of Health halted funding for researchers who study vaccine hesitancy and hoped to find ways to overcome it. It also canceled programs intended to discover new vaccines to prevent future pandemics. (Mandavilli, 4/13)

MORE FROM THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

The Washington Post: Exclusive: Trump Administration Overrode Social Security Staff To List Immigrants As Dead
A senior executive who objected was marched out of his office and put on leave, while earlier warnings about the agency’s deaths database were ignored. (Natanson, Rein and Kornfield, 4/12)

Bloomberg: Trump Says He Aced A Cognitive Test During Physical Exam
President Donald Trump said he underwent and passed a cognitive exam during a roughly four-hour physical exam conducted on Friday by his physician. “I took a cognitive test and I don’t know what to tell you other than I got every answer right,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Florida. (Sullivan and Wingrove, 4/12)

ABORTION

AP: Strict Idaho Abortion Ban Loosened By Judge's Ruling On Medical Exemptions
An abortion in Idaho is not prohibited if pregnancy complications could cause a woman’s death, even if that death “is neither imminent nor assured,” a state judge said Friday in a ruling that loosens one of the strictest abortion bans in the U.S. Four women have sued over Idaho’s strict abortion bans. The women, who are represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, aren’t asking for the state’s abortion ban to be overturned. Instead, they want the judge to clarify and expand the exceptions to the strict ban so people facing serious pregnancy complications can receive abortions before they are at death’s door. (4/12)

AP: Wyoming: Abortion Bans Set To Be Argued In State Supreme Court
When a Wyoming woman phoned the state’s only abortion clinic recently to make an appointment to end her pregnancy, she received news that complicated her life even more. Wellspring Health Access had stopped providing abortions that same day, responding to a slew of new requirements for the Casper clinic to become a licensed surgical center. ... Though abortion remains legal in Wyoming, it has become increasingly difficult because of new requirements for abortion clinics and women seeking abortions. In this case, the woman had to go to Colorado, which partially borders southern Wyoming. (Gruver, 4/13)

The Texas Tribune: Texas Republican Lawmakers Unwilling To Change Abortion Laws To Address Doomed Pregnancies
For the first time since Texas banned nearly all abortions, Republican lawmakers are considering tweaking the language of the law to protect the lives of pregnant women. But this much-lauded bipartisan effort will offer no reprieve for women carrying doomed pregnancies diagnosed with lethal fetal abnormalities. (Klibanoff, 4/11)

AP: Anti-Abortion Faction Wants Criminal Charges For Abortions
As Kristan Hawkins, president of the national anti-abortion group Students for Life, tours college campuses, she has grown accustomed to counterprotests from abortion rights activists. But more recently, fellow abortion opponents, who call themselves abortion abolitionists, are showing up to her booths with signs, often screaming “baby killer” at her while she speaks with students. Hawkins has had to send alerts to donors asking them to help pay for increased security. (Fernando, 4/12)

HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY

The Baltimore Sun: Pediatric Unit At Upper Chesapeake Medical Center Closing In June
The University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Medical Center’s inpatient pediatric unit has delayed its planned closing from May to June, the president and CEO of the center announced Thursday. (Foster, 4/14)

STATE WATCH

Stat: Tennessee Officials Find Express Scripts Violated Law In Pharmacy Dealings
In an unusual move, an audit of commercial health plans by Tennessee officials found that Express Scripts, one of the largest pharmacy benefit managers in the United States, violated state laws in its dealings with pharmacies, according to newly released documents. (Silverman, 4/13)

Politico: DeSantis’ Hope Florida Scrutiny Deepens Amid New Revelations On $10M Payment
Part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crusade to defeat a Florida recreational pot ballot measure received $10 million from two groups that got money from a nonprofit associated with first lady Casey DeSantis’ community-based assistance program. Hope Florida has received heightened scrutiny over whether it improperly received money intended for the state. Two organizations said to Hope Florida in letters that they did not use the money for political activity. (Sarkissian and Fineout, 4/11)

Politico: Cuomo’s Unused COVID Haul Keeping Warehouses Well Stocked
In the chaotic early weeks of the Covid pandemic, nothing consumed Andrew Cuomo’s administration like the frantic effort to acquire medical equipment. But all that energy might have been wasted. An audit released this morning by Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found the state spent $453 million on 247,343 devices like pulse oximeters, oxygen tanks, X-ray machines and ventilators in 2020. Just three of those devices have been used. The remaining 247,340 are still sitting in the manufacturers’ packaging in warehouses throughout the state. (Mahoney, 4/11)

NBC News: North Carolina Flu-Related Deaths At All-Time High
North Carolina has reported a record number of flu deaths this respiratory virus season, health officials said this week. More than 500 flu-related deaths were reported for the 2024-25 respiratory virus season, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said in a Wednesday press release. The figure marked the highest statewide total since reporting began in 2009. (Lavietes, 4/12)

The New York Times: Pig Kidney Removed From Alabama Woman After Organ Rejection
Surgeons removed a genetically engineered pig’s kidney from an Alabama woman after she experienced acute organ rejection, NYU Langone Health officials said on Friday. Towana Looney, 53, lived with the kidney for 130 days, which is longer than anyone else has tolerated an organ from a genetically modified animal. She has resumed dialysis, hospital officials said. (Caryn Rabin, 4/11)