April 29, 2026 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | April 29, 2026
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
A federal appeals court will revisit a North Carolina lawsuit that has left state regulations on mifepristone on hold for nearly two years:
The case arrived at the appeals court in June 2024, after U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Eagles struck down parts of the North Carolina law restricting mifepristone, including a requirement that only physicians could prescribe the pill.
Both supporters and opponents of North Carolina’s abortion restrictions said in 2024 that Eagles had erred in blocking some, but not all, of the provisions of Senate Bill 20 concerning mifepristone.
AP: Judge refuses to block sending abortion pill by mail for now, but says FDA must finish review. But we’re not in the clear – Louisiana’s attorney general appealed the ruling. Louisiana Illuminator: Murrill asks 5th Circuit to stop telehealth abortion pill prescriptions while court case plays out.
HuffPost: The Trump Admin Wants To Test Drinking Water For Abortion And Birth Control Pills
WHYY: Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court strikes down ban on Medicaid for abortion
AP: Wyoming judge blocks law that bans all but earliest abortions
Mother Jones takes a deep dive into the problematic clients of Jonathan F. Mitchell, an anti-abortion attorney with a penchant for taking on violent, abusive clients.
The Trump administration is coming after your birth control:
President Trump seems intent on killing Title X. This month, the Department of Health and Human Services quietly issued new funding guidelines that have effectively subverted the program’s entire purpose. Instead of getting highly effective contraception methods to the country’s poorest women so that they may decide if and when to have children, Title X under Mr. Trump seems aimed at getting more women pregnant, whether they want to be or not.
In late March, EXPOSED by CMD published an excellent overview of efforts around the country to criminalize ALL abortions by so-called “abortion abolitionists" titled, “Abortion Abolitionists Play the Long Game”.
Trump Administration News
A couple of weeks ago, we reported that the CDC was delaying the release of a study showing benefits of COVID-19 vaccines beyond preventing the disease. Now we learn they are cancelling its release entirely:
The report showed that the vaccine reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by about half this past winter.
The move, which has not been previously reported, has raised concerns among current and former officials that information about the vaccine’s benefits is being downplayed because they conflict with the views of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been an outspoken critic of the shots.
Democrats are calling for the Trump administration to drop a proposal asking 65 insurance companies to provide monthly reports with detailed medical and pharmaceutical claims data of more than 8 million people enrolled in federal health plans.
The New York Times: The ‘Make America Healthy Again’ Movement Is Cooling on Trump and Republicans:
Six of the [MAHA] movement’s most prominent leaders, who together have millions of social media followers, said in separate interviews that the mostly white, mostly female voters who followed Mr. Kennedy into Mr. Trump’s camp are so disappointed with the president that Republicans risk losing them. [...]
“They have nowhere to go,” said Ms. Clark, who works for Turning Point U.S.A., the right-wing organization founded by Charlie Kirk. “They feel like their vote is useless. They have lost the energy. They have lost the enthusiasm. They feel like the Democrats don’t care about them. They feel like the Republicans lied to them, and they’re not planning on voting.”
The move comes as the US Supreme Court heard a case surrounding the pesticide glyphosate (aka “Roundup”) that could limit Americans’ ability to sue pesticide companies.
The PACs pushing the so-called “MAHA” agenda are in trouble. They aren’t raising much money and much of what they did raise is actually from Big Pharma, the industry they are most at odds with.
Pete Hegseth says members of the military are no longer required to get a flu shot. The program has been a major factor in lower rates of hospitalizations among service members than national U.S. rates, according to Military Times. Experts are rightly concerned.
Last August, RFK Jr. canceled a half billion dollars in funding for mRNA vaccines used to combat a wide array of diseases. “We reviewed the science, listened to the experts, and acted…terminating 22 mRNA vaccine development investments,” Kennedy said. In February, Kennedy’s FDA rejected Moderna’s application for its mRNA-based flu vaccine.
The stupidity of all of this became evident this week when a new study generated headlines like New Study Finds mRNA Cancer Vaccine Could Be a Game Changer.
Additionally, Pfizer researchers announced that an experimental Lyme vaccine had demonstrated more than 70% efficacy. Also, Moderna is launching a large-scale clinical trial of its mRNA bird flu vaccine, despite Kennedy’s efforts to defund it.
Meanwhile, anti-vaxxers are spreading a conspiracy theory that mRNA vaccines cause fast-spreading “turbo cancer.”
Anti-abortion groups are mounting an effort to scuttle Casey Means’ bid to become Surgeon General.
Speaking of Means, her grifting brother Callie has a more than $25 million stake in a company that profits from health savings accounts being expanded by the Trump administration.
After trying and failing to slash the budget of the National Science Foundation for the past two years, Trump fired an unknown number of its 25-member board with a form letter that gave no reasoning behind the dismissals. The board is set up to guide the nation’s nearly $9 billion basic science funding agency. Keivan Stassun, a board member since 2022, called the move “a wholesale evisceration of American leadership in science and technology globally.”
Timothy McAfee, who headed the Office of Smoking and Health at the CDC from 2010 to 2017, describes the appointment of a former VP at a multinational tobacco corporation to a senior position at the CDC as “opening a door that has been closed for decades, and letting the fox into the henhouse with open arms.”
Following RFK Jr.’s decision to stop recommending the HepB vaccine for newborns, a new study published in JAMA found that “even brief delays in HepB vaccine initiation were associated with a substantial increase in HBV infections, adverse health outcomes, and health care costs.”
RFK Jr. on Capitol Hill
RFK Jr. continued with his tour of Capitol Hill last week. Here are some “highlights”:
During the House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee hearing, Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) pointed out that Kennedy’s work to cast doubt on vaccines is causing people to forgo shots for things he hasn’t talked about. When asked about giving babies a vitamin K shot:
Kennedy responded that he had never said anything about the vitamin K shot.
“That’s exactly the point,” Schrier said. “You don’t say anything about it. But the doubt you’ve created about all of medicine and science is causing parents to make dangerous decisions.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren pressed him on TrumpRx, pointing out that a number of drugs offered on the president’s website are actually more expensive than the generic versions. “If you’re buying a drug on TrumpRX, there is a more than one in four chance that Trump’s discount is actually a price hike,” she said, saying it steers patients to more expensive drugs “that are going to pad Big Pharma’s profits.”
Rep. Raul Ruiz asked Kennedy about Trump’s CDC director nominee, Dr. Erica Schwartz. “If Dr. Schwartz is confirmed, will you commit on the record today to implement whatever vaccine guidance she issues without interference?” “I’m not going to make that kind of commitment,” he answered, but flip-flopped a day later.
Throughout his appearances, Kennedy repeatedly denied he had anything at all to do with rising measles and flu infections. “The measles outbreak is not an American phenomenon. It is global. It’s happening all over the world. And we’ve done better under my leadership than any country in the world in limiting it,” he said. MedPage Today and AP point out that this is decidedly not true.
Kennedy also:
Said, “We promote the MMR. We have advised every child to get the MMR. That’s what we do.”
Denied that the White House had anything to do with his recent silence on vaccines.
Feigned ignorance about Tony Fabrizio’s polling on vaccines showing voters are not happy with his actions.
Claimed “there are no cuts to Medicaid.”
He oddly defended Trump’s dummy math:
“If you have a $600 drug, and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600 percent reduction,” Mr. Kennedy said during a congressional hearing.
Mr. Kennedy is mathematically incorrect. A price reduction from $600 to $10 would be a discount of more than 98 percent. A price discount cannot be more than 100 percent, because that would lower the price to zero — or suggest that the company was giving you money for buying the product.
NBC News: RFK Jr. draws backlash for ripping Medicaid programs that pay people to care for relatives.
Other Health Care News
Some good news for Prescription Drug Affordability Boards in two states:
Legislators in two states have resisted efforts to restrict prescription drug affordability boards…
In Virginia, the General Assembly unanimously rejected a move by Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) to delay a key provision of two bills that would create a board and allow it to place price caps that mirror the negotiated prices paid by Medicare. Spanberger must now either accept or veto the legislation…
In Colorado, the House Health and Human Services Committee postponed consideration of a bill that would exempt orphan drugs, which are used to treat rare diseases, from pricing caps that might be pursued by the state board…[T]he bill is effectively dead.
New polling shows that nearly 70% of people agree that Congress should act to ensure affordable health care, even if that means regulating health care companies.
A commitment to streamline prior authorization requirements and reduce administrative burdens for providers has been signed by about 50 companies, including UnitedHealthcare, Aetna and Cigna.