First Edition: Thursday, April 3, 2025

KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES

KFF Health News: What’s Lost: Trump Whacks Tiny Agency That Works To Make The Nation's Health Care Safer
Sue Sheridan’s baby boy, Cal, suffered brain damage from undetected jaundice in 1995. Helen Haskell’s 15-year-old son, Lewis, died after surgery in 2000 because weekend hospital staffers didn’t realize he was in shock. The episodes turned both women into advocates for patients and spurred research that made American health care safer. On April 1, the Trump administration slashed the organization that supported that research ... and fired roughly half of its remaining employees as part of a perplexing reorganization of the federal Health and Human Services Department. (Allen, 4/3)

KFF Health News: Trump’s DEI Undoing Undermines Hard-Won Accommodations For Disabled People
For years, White House press conferences included sign language interpreters for the deaf. No longer. Interpreters have been noticeably absent from Trump administration press briefings, advocacy groups say. Gone, too, are the American Sign Language interpretations that used to appear on the White House’s YouTube channel. A White House webpage on accessibility, whitehouse.gov/accessibility, has also ceased working. (Armour, 4/3)

KFF Health News: ‘If They Cut Too Much, People Will Die’: Health Coalition Pushes GOP On Medicaid Funding
Tina Ewing-Wilson remembers the last time major Medicaid cuts slashed her budget. In the late 2000s, during the Great Recession, the pot of money she and other Medi-Cal recipients depend on to keep them out of costly residential care homes shrank. The only way she could afford help was to offer room and board to a series of live-in caregivers who she said abused alcohol and drugs and eventually subjected her to financial abuse. She vowed to never rely on live-in care again. (Mai-Duc, 4/3)

PHARMACEUTICALS

CBS News: FDA Planning For Fewer Food And Drug Inspections Due To Layoffs, Officials Say
Senior Food and Drug Administration leaders are planning for cutbacks to the number of routine food and drug inspections conducted by the agency, multiple officials say, due to steep layoffs this week in support staff. Around 170 workers were cut from the FDA's Office of Inspections and Investigations, according to two federal health officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. (Tin, 4/2)

Axios: Drug Industry Worries About FDA Delays
Pharmaceutical companies are growing increasingly concerned widespread cuts at the Food and Drug Administration could set the agency back as crucial review deadlines loom. Health industries pay billions developing and shepherding drugs through the regulatory process, including user fees that help ensure there are enough staff to evaluate products on a predictable timeline. (Reed, 4/3)

Fierce Healthcare: Trump's New Tariffs Include Pharma Exemption
President Donald Trump made good on his threat of announcing new and steeper tariffs during a Wednesday afternoon White House event, setting the stage for higher prices and supply chain uncertainty for numerous industries including healthcare. The tariffs, set to go into effect at midnight, are the largest trade policy shift for the U.S. in decades and an end to the so-called free-trade era. They include a minimum 10% tariff that affects "all countries," according to the White House. (Muoio, 4/2)

The Wall Street Journal: Trump’s Tariffs Could Blow Up Big Pharma’s Tax Shelter
Pfizer in 2019 sold $20 billion of drugs in the U.S. Its federal tax bill? Zero. That revelation was part of a Senate Finance Committee investigation done by Democratic staff, released in March, that examined how U.S. pharmaceutical giants exploit a loophole created by the 2017 Trump tax overhaul to shift profits offshore. (Wainer, 4/2)

The Wall Street Journal: FTC’s Case Against Drug Managers On Hold After Commissioners Fired
The Federal Trade Commission’s lawsuit against three large pharmacy-benefit managers over insulin prices is on hold after President Trump fired two of the agency’s commissioners. The FTC this week halted a lawsuit against the country’s largest drug middlemen, which negotiate drug prices for employers and insurers. The FTC said it needs to pause the litigation because its two remaining commissioners, both Republicans, are recused from the case, leaving none to oversee it. (Michaels and Walker, 4/2)

LAYOFFS AT HHS

The New York Times: Trump Administration Demands Additional Cuts At C.D.C.
Alongside extensive reductions to the staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Trump administration has asked the agency to cut $2.9 billion of its spending on contracts, according to three federal officials with knowledge of the matter. The administration’s cost-cutting program, called the Department of Government Efficiency, asked the public health agency to sever roughly 35 percent of its spending on contracts about two weeks ago. The C.D.C. was told to comply by April 18, according to the officials. (Mandavilli, 4/2)

The New York Times: C.D.C. Cuts Threaten To Set Back The Nation’s Health, Critics Say
The reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services shrinks the C.D.C. by 2,400 employees, or roughly 18 percent of its work force, and strips away some of its core functions. Some Democrats in Congress described the reorganization throughout H.H.S. as flatly illegal. “You cannot decimate and restructure H.H.S. without Congress,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, and a member of the Senate health committee. (Mandavilli and Caryn Rabin, 4/2)

The Washington Post: FDA Cuts Senior Veterinarians Working On Bird Flu
Nearly half a dozen senior veterinarians at the Food and Drug Administration were laid off in a sweeping purge, including employees in a center that has played a key role in the recent bird flu outbreak that began rampaging through dairy herds for the first time last spring, according to three FDA staffers. Some of the veterinarians laid off this week had helped design studies last year showing pasteurization kills the virus in milk found on store shelves, according to the three staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. (Roubein and Sun, 4/2)

The Washington Post: HHS Layoffs Include Head Of The World Trade Center Health Program
The Trump administration this week fired the longtime head of a federal program that provides medical benefits to first responders and survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, alarming advocates and lawmakers who said the move could disrupt care for the program’s more than 100,000 beneficiaries. John Howard, administrator of the World Trade Center Health Program, lost his job under the sweeping layoffs that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered across U.S. health agencies as the administration continues to slash the federal workforce. (Hawkins, 4/2)

Politico: Fauci Allies, Covid Vaccine Officials Get Ax At NIH
As an anti-vaccine activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent years attacking Anthony Fauci and sowing doubts about the successful effort he led to develop a Covid vaccine. As HHS secretary, he’s exacting his revenge. Kennedy on Tuesday fired Fauci’s wife, Christine Grady, and reassigned at least three of Fauci’s longtime colleagues at the National Institutes of Health, as part of a purge of senior officials involved in the government’s development and distribution of the Covid vaccine, eight people familiar with the matter said. (Cancryn and Schumaker, 4/2)

Stat: Trump Administration Cuts Health Policy Researchers
The Trump administration has gutted two small federal agencies filled with researchers who study how the health care system functions and how to improve it. More than half of employees at the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality — both part of the Department of Health and Human Services — have been laid off, according to several current and former employees. The two agencies operate on less than $600 million combined, or about 0.04% of what the federal government spends on health care. (Herman and Bannow, 4/2)

NPR: Public Records Offices Gutted In HHS Layoffs
Teams that fulfilled requests for government documents lost their jobs on Tuesday as part of the Trump administration's 10,000-person staff cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services. Their work, mandated by Congress since the 1960s under the Freedom of Information Act or FOIA, gives the public a view of the inner workings of federal health agencies. Some public records teams were entirely cut at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies on Tuesday, according to multiple current and former staffers who did not want to be named because of fears of retribution. (Lupkin, 4/3)

San Francisco Chronicle: Trump’s HHS Layoffs In S.F. Imperil Fight Against AIDS, Experts Say
Sweeping layoffs in the federal Health and Human Services department, including shuttering the entire San Francisco branch this week, could have catastrophic consequences for HIV/AIDS services and potentially put at risk longstanding efforts to end the epidemic, public health experts say. The job cuts began Tuesday, after the Trump administration announced plans last week to slash 10,000 positions across Health and Human Services; the San Francisco office employed 318 people. (Allday, 4/2)

Politico: Means Defends HHS Cuts, Calls Bureaucracy An ‘Utter Failure’
A top adviser to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday defended deep job cuts at federal agencies and attacked the medical establishment, which he said is controlled by industry lobbyists in a conspiracy to keep Americans sick. Calley Means, a fixture in Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement and co-founder of TrueMed, said at POLITICO’s Health Care Summit that the federal health department has been an “utter failure,” pointing to rising rates of chronic disease, lower life expectancy and a culture that is too quick to medicate patients for life without addressing the underlying causes of disease. (Hooper, 4/2)

The Hill: Sen. Jim Banks Says He 'Won't Apologize' After Telling Fired HHS Employee He ‘Probably Deserved It’
Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) on Wednesday said he “won’t apologize” for telling a fired Health and Human Services (HHS) employee that he “probably deserved it,” after video footage of the exchange was widely circulated on social media.  The viral video showed former HHS employee Mack Schroeder approaching Banks in a Senate office building on Tuesday and asking him about the mass layoffs at HHS. Schroeder, who noted that he personally was among the fired HHS employees, asked the senator how he would ensure residents in his state got the services they needed. (Fortinsky, 4/2)

Stat: After Trump NIH Cuts, What's Next? A New Paper May Provide Clues 
Normally, a perspective piece in a small, two-month old journal would not garner much attention. But, a paper published last week, called “A Blueprint for NIH Reform,” is circulating in academic circles as well as within the National Institutes of Health, as scientists search for hints of where the agency may go in the coming months and years. (Oza, 4/3)

FUNDING AND RESEARCH CUTS

AP: Scientists Sue NIH, Saying Politics Cut Their Research Funding
A group of scientists and health groups sued the National Institutes of Health on Wednesday, arguing that an “ideological purge” of research funding is illegal and threatens medical cures. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, hundreds of NIH research grants have been abruptly canceled for science that mentions the words diversity, gender and vaccine hesitancy, as well as other politically charged topics. The suit was filed by the American Public Health Association, unions representing scientists and some researchers who were stripped of grants. (4/2)

Stat: NYC Just Lost $100 Million In Federal Health Funds. That Has Consequences
If a child in New York City showed up with a fever and a rash that might be measles, it should be simple to have a blood test quickly confirm one way or the other. But  $100 million in federal funding  was just cut from New York City’s health budget, and that included money for staff and supplies at its public health labs. (Cooney, 4/2)

VACCINES

Bloomberg: RFK Jr. Lays Off Staffers Who Run FDA’s Vaccine Expert Panel
The Food and Drug Administration laid off staffers who run an expert panel that advises the agency on vaccines, according to people familiar with the situation. The responsibilities of the four employees included monitoring conflicts of interest and overseeing meetings, according to the people who asked not to be named because the moves aren’t public. (Cohrs Zhang, 4/2)

Politico: Top Trump FDA Official Brenner Hits Pause On Novavax Covid-19 Vaccine Decision
A top FDA official directly intervened in an agency review of Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine, pausing the approval process to ask for more data on the shot, according to four people familiar with the decision granted anonymity to discuss the approval status. Dr. Sara Brenner, FDA’s Principal Deputy Commissioner, took the highly unusual step, cutting against longstanding precedent at the agency designed to shield scientific assessments from political interference. (Lim, Cancryn and Gardner, 4/2)

The New York Times: Shingles Vaccine Can Decrease Risk Of Dementia, Study Finds
Getting vaccinated against shingles can reduce the risk of developing dementia, a large new study finds. ... The study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, found that people who received the shingles vaccine were 20 percent less likely to develop dementia in the seven years afterward than those who were not vaccinated. (Belluck, 4/2)

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

AP: Supreme Court Appears Divided Over Planned Parenthood Funding Case
The Supreme Court appeared divided Wednesday in a case over whether states should be able to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, which comes amid a wider push from abortion opponents to defund the nation’s largest abortion provider. Low-income patients who go there for things like contraception, cancer screenings and pregnancy testing could see their care upended if the court sides with South Carolina leaders who say no public money should go the organization. (Whitehurst, 4/3)

NBC News: CDC's IVF Team Gutted Even As Trump Calls Himself The 'Fertilization President'
A team that tracked how well in vitro fertilization worked across the U.S. was abruptly cut Tuesday as part of the sweeping layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services. The elimination of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance team — a group of six epidemiologists, data analysts and researchers — shocked public health experts and IVF advocates who said they had felt encouraged by President Donald Trump’s comments supporting access to the infertility treatment. (Lovelace Jr. and Brooks, 4/2)

The Hill: Trump Restoring Millions In Family Planning Funds To Oklahoma And Tennessee
The Trump administration is restoring millions of dollars in Title X funds to Oklahoma and Tennessee after the Biden administration chose to withhold those funds because both states failed to comply with program rules. The news was first reported by Politico, but the Oklahoma State Department of Health confirmed to The Hill that the Trump administration has awarded it $1.96 million under the Title X family planning program. The total award amount could be more, though, according to a department spokesperson. (O’Connell-Domenech, 4/2) 

PUBLIC HEALTH

Politico: Supreme Court Upholds FDA Decision Banning Flavored Vapes
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that the FDA properly refused to approve flavored vape products by two e-cigarette companies because regulators determined they were too great a risk to public health. The ruling overturned a decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that found that the FDA unfairly changed its standards while assessing products made by Triton Distribution and Vapetasia. (Ali Kanu, 4/2)

The Washington Post: Supreme Court Sides With Truck Driver Who Was Fired Over CBD Product
The Supreme Court cleared the way Wednesday for a truck driver to sue the company that sold him a cannabidiol, or CBD, product that he says led to him getting fired after testing positive for THC. In a 5-4 ruling, the justices upheld an appeals court decision that allowed Douglas Horn to take legal action against Medical Marijuana Inc., under a landmark federal law that is better known as a tool used by prosecutors to target organized crime. (Jouvenal, 4/2)

Stat: FDA Cuts In Tobacco Control May Worsen Chronic Disease, Experts Say
The tobacco center at the Food and Drug Administration has drawn criticism from all sides in recent years. Tobacco opponents said it wasn’t doing enough to crack down on sales of illegal e-cigarettes and stop young people from vaping. Harm-reduction groups saw top tobacco regulator Brian King as a stubborn foe of products that could help people quit smoking. And the vaping industry itself complained the FDA had rejected 99% of the more than 27 million applications it had received without providing detailed product standards. (Todd, 4/3)

ON CAPITOL HILL

Modern Healthcare: Senate Budget Resolution Could Soften Medicaid, Healthcare Cuts
The Senate Budget Committee unveiled a budget resolution Wednesday that could pave the way to less draconian cuts in health programs than House lawmakers previously proposed. The Senate proposal includes the House's earlier recommendations that could lead to billions in health program cuts — but it also includes instructions for the Senate to go a different route while renewing tax cuts passed during President Donald Trump's first term. (McAuliff, 4/2)

Politico: Republicans Say Efficiencies Will Save Medicaid. Dems Say 'Not Possible'
The Trump administration and Republicans broadly have said they can cut Medicaid’s budget without hurting patient care by finding efficiencies. Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette, the top Democrat on a key health care panel, says that’s not so. “We just simply don’t have that much money,” DeGette said at POLITICO’s Health Care Summit Wednesday. (Reader, 4/2)

The Hill: Bipartisan Senators Unveil Measure Providing Flexibility In School Lunch Milk Options
A bipartisan trio in the Senate unveiled a proposal Wednesday to require schools to offer nondairy milk options at lunch to accommodate students who are lactose intolerant or have other dietary restrictions. The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) has long required school lunches to include milk on all trays in order for schools to be reimbursed for the meals. (Fortinsky, 4/2)

HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY

The Boston Globe: Mass General Brigham Layoffs Are Affecting Patients, Some Say
When Mass General Brigham announced the most layoffs in its history in February, the health system’s chief executive said the hundreds of job cuts would focus on managers and administrators, not employees who dealt directly with patients. But Dr. Anne Klibanski’s assurance to staff in a Feb. 10 email didn’t prevent layoffs of some employees who worked closely with patients, often under trying circumstances. (Saltzman and Bartlett, 4/2)

Modern Healthcare: The Ensign Group Expands In California, Washington
The Ensign Group said Wednesday it has expanded its footprint across California and Washington with acquisitions involving three skilled nursing facilities. The San Juan Capistrano, California-based company said in a news release it acquired the real estate and operations of Pacific Haven Subacute and Healthcare Center, a 99-bed skilled nursing facility in Garden Grove, California. Standard Bearer Healthcare REIT, The Ensign Group’s real estate unit, acquired the property, which will be operated by an Ensign-affiliated tenant, the release said. (Eastabrook, 4/2)

Health News Florida: UF Health St. Johns, Aetna Settle On Insurance Reimbursements After Eight-Month Impasse
Nearly 10,000 people across St. Johns and Flagler counties will have reduced health care costs now that UF Health Flagler has reached a hospital-insurer agreement with Aetna Inc. (Brown, 4/2)

Fierce Healthcare: Hospitals' Excessive Use Of Agency Nurses, Overtime Risks Safety
Hospitals’ increased reliance on agency nurses and overtime shifts for in-house nurses appears to have implications for patient safety, a study published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open suggests. Among a sample of 70 hospitals, researchers from George Washington University (GWU) and Premier Inc. found breakpoint thresholds at which increasing these nurse staffing approaches was associated with higher risk of pressure ulcers—an Agency for Health Research and Quality (AHRQ) patient safety indicator long tied to nursing care and staffing. (Muoio, 4/2)

Becker's Hospital Review: Nonradiologists Interpret Nearly 44% Of Imaging Studies, Researchers Find
Nonradiologists interpreted 43.6% of office-based imaging studies in 2022, according to a study published April 2 in the American Journal of Roentgenology. Researchers from the Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute analyzed more than 1.6 million Medicare physician office-based imaging claims ordered by nonradiologists. They found that just 36.4% of the studies were interpreted by a radiologist. (Twenter, 4/2)

MedPage Today: Lung Cancer Screening Rates Nearly 4 Times Lower Than Breast, Colon Cancers
Americans eligible for lung cancer screening are about four times less likely to undergo screening for the disease than for breast cancer or colorectal cancer (CRC), an analysis of CDC survey data found. Population-weighted estimates showed that fewer than 18% of eligible patients actually got a low-dose CT scan for lung cancer screening, yet about 65% of those same patients received screenings for breast cancer or CRC, reported Chi-Fu Jeffrey Yang, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and colleagues. (Bassett, 4/2)

STATE WATCH

Post-Tribune: Indiana Medicaid Bill Amended, Passed House Committee
A major Indiana Senate Medicaid bill has been amended and passed the House Ways and Means committee. Senate Bill 2 — authored by Sen. Ryan Mishler, R-Mishawaka — places restrictions on Medicaid, including work requirements on an insurance program for Hoosiers with a medium income and between ages 19 to 64, according to Post-Tribune archives. (Wilkins, 4/2)

ABC News: More Cities, Counties Start To Remove Fluoride From Public Drinking Water
More cities and counties across the U.S. are moving to ban fluoride in public drinking water after Utah became the first state in the country to do so. The Miami-Dade County commissioners voted 8-2 on Tuesday to stop adding fluoride to the public water supply. Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez, who sponsored the legislation, referred to fluoride as a "neurotoxin" and that studies show it "should not be in the water." (Kekatos, 4/2)

CBS News: San Francisco Ends Policy Of Providing Drug Paraphernalia Without Treatment
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie on Wednesday announced that the city would no longer give users free paraphernalia to consume drugs without providing treatment counseling. The move marks a shift away from the standing policy of providing supplies for people to use drugs in a safer manner, including clean foil and needles. San Francisco has long been criticized for its lax views on public drug use. (Ramos and Pehling, 4/2)

North Carolina Health News: Three Rural NC Counties Map Out Paths To Reducing Opioid Deaths
Across rural North Carolina, the opioid epidemic has left a devastating mark — overdose deaths have surged, families have been shattered and communities have struggled to find resources to fight the crisis. More than 4,440 overdose-related deaths were reported across the state in 2023, with rural counties accounting for about 41 percent of the toll. (Baxley, 4/3)

Redlands Daily Facts: Death Of Veteran Found In Car At California VA Latest In String Of Suicides 
A military veteran wanted by police was found dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound inside a parked vehicle this week at the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans' Hospital in the latest of a string of suicides connected to the VA Loma Linda Health Care System in California. (Schwebke, 4/2)

Los Angeles Times: A Federal Judge Is Demanding A Fix For L.A.'s Broken Homelessness System. Is Receivership His Next Step?
With the top city and county elected officials sitting in his jury box, the judge lectured for more than an hour, excoriating what he called the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” of homeless services in Los Angeles. But when it came time to reveal the drastic remedy anticipated by a courtroom full of spectators, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter hit pause at a hearing last week. (Smith, 4/2)

AP: Police Say The 2023 Nashville School Shooter Hid Mental Health Issues From Doctors And Family
The shooter behind the 2023 Nashville elementary school attack that killed six people, including three children, had been obsessively planning it for years while hiding mental health issues from family and doctors, a police report released Wednesday reveals. (Mattise, Kruesi and Loller, 4/2)

GLOBAL WATCH

NBC News: Not Even Wealth Is Saving Americans From Dying At Rates Seen Among Some Of The Poorest Europeans
Fifty years ago, life expectancy in the U.S. and wealthy European countries was relatively similar. That began to change around 1980. As European life expectancy steadily increased, the U.S. struggled to keep pace — and its life expectancy even began declining in 2014. Today, the wealthiest middle-aged and older adults in the U.S. have roughly the same likelihood of dying over a 12-year period as the poorest adults in northern and western Europe, according to a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. (Bendix, 4/2)

CBS News: 241 Passengers, Crew Sickened With Norovirus On Luxury Cruise Ship
More than 200 luxury cruise ship passengers caught norovirus on a monthlong transatlantic voyage that won't officially end until Sunday, U.S. health officials said. A new outbreak report from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention tracked 224 of 2,538 passengers who became ill from the virus while on board the Cunard cruise line ship Queen Mary 2, along with 17 crew members. The vessel carried 1,232 crew overall, according to the CDC. (Mae Czachor, 4/2)