April 15, 2026 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | April 15, 2026
Top News Stories
On April 7, Wisconsin Judge Chris Taylor defeated her conservative opponent for state Supreme Court by more than a 20-point margin, widening the liberal majority to 5-2 and solidifying it until 2030. The race was called less than an hour after polls closed. This victory by Judge Taylor, who was formerly a law and policy director for Planned Parenthood, increases the likelihood that reproductive rights will be protected when challenged in the state’s highest court.
The CDC is delaying a report showing benefits of COVID-19 vaccines beyond preventing the disease:
The acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has delayed publication of a CDC report showing the covid-19 vaccine cut the likelihood of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for healthy adults last winter by about half, according to two scientists familiar with the decision. The scientists spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
The move has raised concerns among current and former officials that information about the vaccine’s benefits are being downplayed because they conflict with the views of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been an outspoken critic of the shots.
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
AP: Judge refuses to block sending abortion pill by mail for now, but says FDA must finish review
The radical anti-abortion group Students for Life is urging supporters to demand the EPA add “the active components of Mifepristone, along with any generic look alike, which include monodemethylated, didemethylated, and hydroxylated metabolites, all of which retain considerable affinity toward human progesterone and glucocorticoid receptors” to the agency’s Drinking Water Contaminant Candidate List.
NPR: Over-the-counter medication abortion? These researchers say it would be safe
Florida is not releasing maternal mortality data since their 6-week abortion ban went into effect two years ago.
Two bills, the Right to Contraception Act and the Contraception Equity Act, have passed the Virginia legislature and are headed to newly-elected Governor Spanberger for her signature.
The Maryland House has passed legislation that would create a state-level version of the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), codifying protections for emergency abortion care.
Trump Administration News
The Trump administration is quietly seeking unprecedented access to medical records for millions of federal workers and retirees, and their families.
A brief notice from the Office of Personnel Management could dramatically change which personally identifiable medical information the agency obtains, giving it the power to see prescriptions employees had filled or what treatment they sought from doctors. The regulation would require 65 insurance companies that cover more than 8 million Americans — including federal workers, retired members of Congress, mail carriers, and their immediate family members — to provide monthly reports to OPM with identifiable health data on their members. [...]
The agency’s notice asks insurers that offer Federal Employees Health Benefits or Postal Service Health Benefits plans to furnish “service use and cost data,” including “medical claims, pharmacy claims, encounter data, and provider data.” It says the data will “ensure they provide competitive, quality, and affordable plans.”
The move affects over 8 million people.
Trump’s recently-released 2027 budget cuts over 10% from NIH and over 12% from HHS as a whole. POLITICO reports that it’s likely dead on arrival in Congress and probably isn’t even supported by the agency head tasked to defend it:
White House budget director Russ Vought isn’t done trying to cut the National Institutes of Health’s funding, but Congress isn’t taking him seriously anymore.
Vought released a proposal last week to slash the 2027 budget for the world’s largest funder of health research by 10 percent, down from 40 percent last year. It’s unlikely Congress or the agency’s head will listen to him.
Lawmakers rejected Vought’s first big cut in the spending bill they passed in February and already promised to reject the smaller one this year. [...]
The health research agency’s director, Jay Bhattacharya, is expected to defend the budget to Congress, but it’s unclear whether he stands behind cuts to his agency any more than Congress does. While other agencies, like the State Department, defied Congress and implemented Vought’s cost-cutting vision by not spending their budgets last year, Bhattacharya spent every dollar Congress gave him.
These cuts to HHS, along with last summer’s “Big, Beautiful Bill”, and current plans to jam another reconciliation bill (Big, Beautiful Bill Part 2) through by June 1 (potentially using cuts to health care to pay for the war and DHS funding) mean health care continues to be under severe threat. Hospitals, in particular, are extremely worried.
As you would expect, using cuts to health care to pay for war is wildly unpopular:
The war in Iran is impacting raw materials used to make medicines and rubber gloves, helium for MRI machines, and is even causing one water utility in Maryland to reduce the fluoride it’s adding to the water supply.
In other HHS news, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality hasn’t funded any new research projects in almost a year, and it hasn’t issued grant funding for existing projects since before the end of the previous fiscal year in September. This is despite having $345 million appropriated by Congress for the current fiscal year. Last year they sent $80 million of their funding back to the Treasury.
RFK Jr. adviser Callie Means, brother of Casey Means, Trump’s choice for Surgeon General denies that his sister’s nomination is under threat, telling The Hill, “Casey is one of the smartest and most eloquent doctors in the country, and at this moment, we don’t need a doctor who is a defender of the status quo.”
The Hill: RFK Jr. moves to broaden CDC vaccine panel eligibility after federal judge found new members unqualified (old charter, proposed charter.)
RELATED from MedPage Today: Experts Blast New Rules for CDC Vaccine Panel:
Infectious disease experts warned that the renewed charter for the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) could become a revolving door for the return of vaccine-skeptical members. [...]
The updated charter “is another alarming action by Secretary Kennedy that will further dismantle U.S. vaccine infrastructure, spread misinformation and confusion about vaccines, and lead to reduced vaccine uptake by an already confused and distrustful public,” said Ronald Nahass, MD, the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, in a statement.
President Trump and his health leaders have repeatedly directed their ire toward health insurance companies, painting them as fat cats that need to be reined in.
But almost every major decision Trump officials have made since reclaiming the White House has benefitted insurers and their bottom lines. The most recent action — finalizing higher payments to Medicare Advantage plans in 2027 — will funnel an extra $13 billion toward the industry while abandoning a reform that would have led to more accurate, and lower, payments.
The New Republic: RFK Jr. Using Your Taxpayer Money to Become a Podcast Bro:
As bombs rain down on innocents in the Middle East, gas prices skyrocket, and data centers displace poor communities across the land, at least Americans can take solace in the fact that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is starting a podcast.
The Health and Human Services secretary…announced his new podcast Wednesday with a 90-second video on his government X account.
“Many of us have come to the conclusion that the government actually lies to us,” Kennedy says in the video, presumably forgetting the fact that he works for the government. “This podcast is about telling the truth, especially when it’s uncomfortable.”
A new survey by POLITICO shows that RFK Jr. has done what some thought impossible: He convinced Republicans to demand more federal oversight of corporations (so long as they are food and drug corporations.)
A FOX News regular, biotech executive and ophthalmologist Houman Hemmati, is being considered for a top vaccine position at the FDA to replace Vinay Prasad.
Other Health Care News
Colorado has a Prescription Drug Affordability Board but Big Pharma is, for the second time, trying to exempt so-called “orphan drugs”:
The effort reflects concerns that patients may lose access to these drugs if pharmaceutical companies halt sales of such treatments in the state. But opponents argue exemptions would unnecessarily extend to numerous big-selling medicines for common conditions that — thanks to regulatory endorsements — also happen to have an orphan designation.
The arguments made by Big Pharma ignore the fact that the legislature created a process to give patients even more input into how the PDAB determines which medications to review after their last attempt to scuttle the effort to reduce Rx prices. This bill would prevent the PDAB from reviewing the cost of hundreds of commonly-prescribed medications. These drugs don’t work if people can’t afford them, and all patients, including people living with rare diseases, deserve affordable medication.
Yet another study shows acetaminophen does not cause autism.
The Center for American Progress has created a “Patients’ Bill of Rights To Lower Health Care Costs”. It has four distinct proposals:
Limit excessive premium increases, decreasing average premiums by $415 for individuals in 14 states and by $1,156 for family employer coverage in 11 states.
Lower deductibles by reducing outlier hospital prices, cutting average employer deductibles in half in concentrated markets, and lowering average family premiums for employer coverage by $1,308 per year by 2032.
Prevent price gouging by health insurance companies, reducing average premiums by up to $132 per enrollee per year for a total of about $6 billion per year.
Ban and replace prior authorization.
139 children have died from influenza in the 2025-2026 season, ~85% of whom were not fully vaccinated.