April 22, 2026 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | April 22, 2026
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
The Columbus Dispatch reports that, despite Ohio voters having passed a ballot proposal to protect abortion rights, anti-abortion advocates are hoping the state supreme court’s conservative majority will allow the passage of a slew of anti-abortion laws anyway.
A similar battle is happening in Arizona following the passage of their abortion rights amendment two years ago.
In Idaho, an effort to put an abortion rights law on the books and end the state’s near-total ban appears to be headed for the November ballot.
MedPage Today: DOJ Fires Prosecutors Accused of Bias Against Anti-Abortion Activists
RELATED from NBC News: DOJ hosts anti-abortion advocates after it fired staff for work with abortion-rights orgs
Sen. Ron Wyden is challenging the EPA to defend its decision to add some contraceptives and drugs used to induce abortion in its new list of 374 pharmaceuticals that states, American Indian tribes and local water systems should monitor in the U.S. water supply:
“This administration’s attempt to co-opt environmental policy to wage a shadow war on reproductive rights is an egregious abuse of power,” wrote Wyden in a letter shared first with POLITICO and E&E News. The move is a “coordinated, politically motivated attempt to restrict women’s freedom under the guise of ‘drinking water safety,’” he added.
A Pennsylvania court on Monday said that the state’s constitution guarantees a right to abortion while striking down a decades-long law banning the use of state Medicaid funds to cover abortion costs.
News From the States: Medicaid rule targeting abortion providers set to expire:
A controversial rule enacted last year that denies federal Medicaid funding to abortion providers is likely to expire this summer, despite anti-abortion pressure on Republicans to renew it.
Leaders in Congress in recent days have insisted that a new federal spending bill needs to be as stripped down as possible and focused on funding related to immigration enforcement amid a two-month partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. They also have suggested the rule could still be revisited in future legislation, but likely not before the current budget measure expires on July 4.
Following the lopsided loss of the anti-abortion supreme court candidate in Wisconsin earlier this month, all eyes are on Georgia where abortion rights are playing a central role in the supreme court race there, as well.
Jessica Valenti at ABORTION, EVERY DAY reports that South Carolina Republicans are intent on criminalizing ALL abortions:
South Carolina Republicans advanced legislation this week that would ban abortion for rape and incest victims, force women to carry nonviable pregnancies to term, and imprison abortion patients. Happy Friday!
The bill comes from Sen. Richard Cash, who tried and failed last year to advance a bill that would punish patients as murderers—which in South Carolina could mean the death penalty. Apparently, SB 1095 is his version of a “compromise”—legislation that would ‘only’ charge abortion patients with a misdemeanor: jail for a few years, rather than a lifetime.
In Indiana, a unique “religious freedom” argument – that pregnant women should be allowed to get abortions if their religion essentially compels it – is headed to the state Supreme Court:
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit included five anonymous Indiana women and the Hoosier Jews for Choice group. They claimed that their “sincere religious beliefs… (could) direct them to seek pregnancy termination procedures that would have been deemed illegal under the law,” according to the opinion. The class action included all individuals who would have been affected, as their religious beliefs would have been in direct conflict with the ban.
Trump Administration News
MedPage Today: Medical Groups Call for Release of Detained Doctor:
The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) and Emergency Medicine Residents’ Association (EMRA) are calling for the release of a South Texas doctor who was detained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
In a statement, the organizations said they were deeply concerned about the detention of Rubeliz Bolivar, MD, an emergency medicine resident at South Texas Health System in McAllen, Texas, and an ACEP member.
Despite Trump’s denial that America has an affordability crisis, HHS is bringing on a new official to focus on health care affordability.
In related news, if it seems like many drug prices increased despite Trump’s efforts, you’re right:
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said his deals with drugmakers would bring down prescription drug prices in the U.S. But a report released by Senate Democrats finds prices have continued to climb — in some cases, sharply.
The report…found that companies that signed drug pricing deals with Trump have raised the cost of hundreds of medications and launched new ones at an average price of $353,000 a year.
STAT: Trump taps former public health leader Erica Schwartz to run CDC. Dr. Schwartz is a former deputy surgeon general. STAT reports that her nomination is being met with cautious optimism in the public health world and The Hill characterizes the move as a “shift away from vaccine skepticism.” Dr. Terry Adirim at MedPage Today questions if she’s being set up for failure.
New polling suggests that “MAHA” is less of a “movement” than some want us to think it is. The poll also shows, once again, that health care providers and scientists are the most trusted on medical issues.
RFK Jr. at Capitol Hill
Ahead of RFK Jr.’s seven hearings on Capitol Hill, Protect our Care has released a scathing report on his time at the helm of HHS titled, “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. vs. Public Health.”
At his first hearing before the House Appropriations Committee, Kennedy didn’t mention vaccines in his opening statement, complying with a recently revealed internal White House memo directing staff to avoid the topic.
He also seemed to have changed his messaging about vaccines:
In a sharp break with his past rhetoric, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. offered a qualified embrace of the measles vaccine on Thursday, as President Trump named a new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention whose views on vaccination are more conventional than Mr. Kennedy’s.
In back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill, Mr. Kennedy testified that the measles vaccine is safe and effective “for most people” and agreed it was safer than getting measles.
That didn’t stop him from getting questions about vaccines:
During the Ways and Means Committee hearing to address the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2027 budget, which calls for a 12% cut to HHS, Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-Calif.) pointed to the rapid rise in measles cases in the U.S. under Kennedy. [...]
Sánchez noted that fewer than 300 cases in 2024 under the Biden administration “ballooned” to more than 2,000 cases in 2025. [...]
“The anti-vaccine rhetoric you ran on and the anti-vaccine actions you have taken over the last year clearly correlate with the dramatic increases in preventable diseases,” Sánchez said. “As a mother, this horrifies me.”
Kennedy blamed the drop in measles vaccination rates after COVID on mismanagement by the Biden administration.
More from The Hill: RFK Jr. grilled over vaccines, MAHA in back-to-back hearings: Key takeaways
Last Friday, he faced further grilling on a wide array of topics, including vaccines, before the House Education and Workforce Committee. Asked about Trump’s mental state, Kennedy responded, “There hasn’t been a president who is more sane.”
Tuesday this week, Kennedy appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee and today, he’ll appear before the Senate Finance Committee and the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Other Health Care News
A recent poll by POLITICO seems to suggest that RFK Jr.’s anti-vaxx crusade may be working, with 46% of respondents saying they “believe facts on vaccines are still up for debate and it is damaging to enforce their uptake.” If that seems like a strange outcome, you are probably right. Dr. David Higgins took a deep dive into the poll in his Substack essay “Headlines Claim Vaccine Skepticism Is Widespread. The Data Say Otherwise.” He found that it’s a hot mess:
[D]oes this poll support the idea that RFK Jr.’s views are now commonplace and vaccine skepticism is widespread?
Absolutely not.
A careful reading of the poll data tells a different story.
Promoting the belief that vaccine skepticism is on the rise is dangerous. It emboldens anti-vaxx zealots and may actually lead to even more skepticism by those who think it’s mainstream thinking.
If you need proof that the Republicans’ rural hospital bailout fund isn’t helping save rural hospitals, it’s here, via KFF: Rural Nebraska Dialysis Unit Closes Despite the State’s $219M in Rural Health Funding
A new study has put a price tag on the cost of declining measles vaccination rates: $7.8 billion over five years.