August 20, 2025 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | August 20, 2025
The Committee in the News
On August 12, Committee Executive Director Dr. Rob Davidson joined the Jim Acosta Show with the now-launched Paging America Substack. You can listen to the segment HERE starting at the 29:26 mark.
On August 14, Dr. Rob did a Substack Live interview with Susan Demas, CEO and Executive Editor of Lincoln Square Media – a joint venture with the Lincoln Project. The focus of the conversation is the fallout from the new Trump budget law. Watch the entire interview HERE.
On August 11, Committee Advocates Dr. Alisan Kula and Dr. Leonard Yang participated in SEIU’s protest outside a campaign event for Virginia Lt. Gov. and gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears in Upperville. Dr. Kula was quoted in coverage by WJLA in a piece titled, “Earle-Sears holds roundtable on women, girls' safety in Va. schools; Spanberger responds”.
Committee Advocate Dr. Henry Rozycki at a second SEIU protest event on August 14 in Midlothian, VA. The protest was mentioned in coverage by The Virginia Mercury in an article titled, “In Chesterfield, Earle-Sears slams Spanberger, revives Youngkin’s winning campaign slogans.”
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
FOX News reports that over 20 Republican state attorneys general are continuing the effort to stop the use of the abortion pill mifepristone. The move is based, once again, on a report The Atlantic calls a junk science paper from a Washington, D.C.–based think tank focused on “pushing back against the extreme progressive agenda while building a consensus for conservatives.”
Following pressure from anti-abortion groups, Costco will no longer sell abortion pills. According to reporting by AXIOS, Costco says it won't pursue approval to dispense mifepristone because demand for the drug is low and the company's understanding is that patients generally get the drug directly from their medical providers.
Spectrum News 1: Texas Senate considers bill letting lawsuits target out-of-state abortion pill shipments into Texas
The Hill: Federal judge blocks Trump administration’s broad birth control mandate exemptions
The Hill also reports that the efforts to save nearly $10 million in birth control that the Trump administration plans to incinerate continue. The contraceptives are “not even close to being expired” and are intended for the world’s poorest countries. The International Planned Parenthood Federation estimates that if the supplies are incinerated, 1.4 million women and girls across those countries will go without access to life-saving reproductive care.
AP: Maine clinics fight to restore Medicaid funds after Trump’s cuts to abortion providers
Trump Administration News
The U.S. State Department has halted 'medical-humanitarian' visas for people from Gaza, including for children. Social media provocateur Laura Loomer is taking credit.
Defending his decision to cut a half a billion in federal dollars from mRNA-based vaccine research, RFK Jr. said, “Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy.”
The “5,000 peer-reviewed studies” appears to refer to a 181-page document that STAT describes as dubious at best.
In related news, Biotech Vaxart said it received a stop work order on its federally funded trial of an oral COVID vaccine due to Kennedy’s mRNA defunding.
Kennedy also recently claimed that the Hepatitis B vaccine is dangerous to children, citing what appears to be a non-existent study.
In more Kennedy anti-vaccine news, HHS has also announced that it is reviving The Task Force on Safer Childhood Vaccines. It’s a move long called for by anti-vaccine activists and it has vaccine policy experts and others very worried.
AP: Trump tax law could cause Medicare cuts if Congress doesn’t act, CBO says
Via MedPage Today, a new public health advocacy group, Defend Public Health, has issued a 11-point plan for improving the health of Americans called “Improving the Health of Americans Together.” One of the pillars of their report is “Replace Kennedy as HHS Secretary.”
Jessica Steier at The New York Times pulls back the curtain on how RFK Jr.’s pick to research a connection between autism and vaccines, David Geier, is a fraud who has been manipulating data for years in a failed effort to prove vaccines cause autism.
Despite the stated goal of “Making America Healthy Again”, STAT reports that, thanks to the Trump administration’s actions, staff cuts are undermining federal research on how to make health care better. A small federal agency that studies how to improve the health care system has been rendered functionally “incapacitated.”
The Washington Post: A gunman shot at the CDC, killing an officer. Trump hasn’t said a word.
Following the cancellation of union contracts that impact 80% of the VA’s workforce, most of whom are women, AXIOS reports that the VA has rescinded weeks of parental leave — even for some giving birth this week.
The New York Times: There’s Money to Be Made From ‘MAHA.’ Food Companies Want In.
AP: Judge orders RFK Jr.'s health department to stop sharing Medicaid data with deportation officials
Turns out all those so-called “conflicts of interest” that RFK Jr. said members he fired from the ACIP vaccine committee had were a myth. In fact, the average prevalence rate of reported conflicts of interest among ACIP members dropped from 42.8% in 2000 to 5% in 2024.
You might think that loyalty to science and health care would dominate the world view of the person running the nation’s health care agencies but apparently not. Via The Washington Post: RFK Jr. rules out 2028 presidential bid, vows ‘loyalty’ to Trump.
It’s not just job numbers that Trump wants to go away. His administration is also disappearing data related to public health in the US.
Other Health Care News
The Washington Post: As Medicaid cuts loom, North Carolina shows the stakes
Think Social Security doesn’t have anything to do with health care? Committee Board Member, and founding member of the Committee’s Reproductive Freedom Taskforce, Dr. Kristin Lyerly connects the dots HERE.
STAT reports on the new, more defiant leadership approach at the American Medical Association. “We have to stand up for science,” [CEO John Whyte] said. “People look to the AMA to do that. And I’m not sure I always realized that to the degree that I recognize it now.”
In their ongoing efforts to avoid having to negotiate drug prices with the federal government, Big Pharma corporations have formed a new group to lobby Congress.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is moving into the prior authorization arena.