December 11, 2025 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | December 11, 2025
Committee News
Committee Member Dr. Heidi Appel was featured in coverage by The Hill of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) decision to end their recommendation that all newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine:
Heidi Appel, a pediatrician in the D.C. area and a member of the Committee to Protect Health Care, is doubtful that pediatricians will give much credence to the ACIP’s recommendations.
“In the past, it was well-respected,” Appel said. “But in the past, the ACIP agreed with the AAP [American Academy of Pediatrics] and the AMA [American Medical Association] and family medicine and OB-GYN associations.”
“I will encourage parents to keep checking the AAP website, because clearly we can’t trust what’s being said on the ACIP,” Appel added.
Dr. Appel was also quoted in an article in USA Today titled, “Will your baby get a hep B vaccine? What RFK panel’s ruling means.”
On Dec. 3, Committee Advocates Dr. Mandy Swanson and Dr. Jessie Pettit joined Senator Chris Murphy and Protect Our Care for a press call calling on Congress to extend the ACA enhanced premium tax credits.
In advance of Texas’ House Bill 7 taking effect on Dec. 4, physicians and members of the Reproductive Freedom Taskforce from Texas, Wisconsin, Maryland and Ohio held a press call on Dec.1 to sound the alarm on the harmful impact this law will have on patient access to abortion care and the broader attacks against medication abortion from the FDA and courts. The call resulted in numerous media hits including FOX 4 News and ABC 7 News.
On Dec. 5, the Times-Picayune in Louisiana published an op-ed by Committee Advocate Dr. Clarissa Hoff and NJ.com in New Jersey published an op-ed by Committee Advocate Dr. Victor Sloan, both calling on Congress to immediately protect health care coverage for millions by extending the ACA tax credits, while also addressing the root cause of rising health care costs by passing legislation for site neutral payments, banning facility fees, and using national provider identifiers.
Attacks on Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act
Republicans in the Senate continue to flail with no clear direction on what to do about expiring ACA subsidies. There will be a vote on the Senate Democrat’s plan for a three-year extension this week which does not have GOP support needed to pass and only a minority of Republicans think they should offer an alternative.
One that is being considered is from Sens. Bill Cassidy and Mike Crapo which relies exclusively on health savings accounts:
Cassidy and Crapo’s legislation would give HSA funding to those earning less than 700 percent of the poverty level, $1,000 for people ages 18 to 49 and $1,500 for those 50 to 65.
However, to get the HSA an individual must purchase a bronze or catastrophic plan on an Obamacare exchange. The bronze plans offer lower premiums than other plan tiers but have higher out-of-pocket costs, such as deductibles and co-pays.
The average deductible for a bronze plan was roughly $7,000 last year, according to data from the nonpartisan health policy research organization KFF.
In a piece titled, “Breaking: Senate Republicans come up with one big pile of sh*t.,” Charles Gaba breaks down why this is a truly unserious effort if you’re trying to actually lower health care costs.
In the House, Speaker Mike Johnson is expected to offer legislation that recycles previously failed GOP efforts while Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick is vowing to introduce yet another bipartisan blueprint. Again: flailing.
The Hill reports that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is pressing centrist Republicans to help Democrats extend ACA tax credits before they expire at the end of the month by offering a discharge petition to force a vote on a three-year extension.
Despite the turmoil and the fact that Obamacare users will be asked to pay more for plans that cover less, ACA enrollments are up over last year.
Trump Administration News
The New York Magazine has an astonishing look at what it has been like to work at the FDA since Trump took office in January in a piece called, “Doughnuts and Bullets – The agony and absurdity of working for RFK Jr.”
POLITICO reports that the Trump administration is offering states a bribe: pledge to enact White House-favored policies for a chance to win a bigger share of the rural health care system Hunger Games pot.
MedPage Today reports that the Trump administration has rescinded a Biden-era rule that required a minimum number of healthcare staff in nursing homes.
The revolving door at HHS continues as the FDA’s top regulator, Richard Pazdur, quit after less than a month on the job following conflicts with Trump officials.
One investment advisor wrote “FDA has more drama than the Real Housewives shows.” Extremist Tracy Beth Høeg, a critic of the response to COVID-19, will be acting director, the fifth person to hold the position this year. The longtime director of the office of over-the-counter drugs was removed from her position, as well. AXIOS reports that the FDA may be “at a tipping point.”
The fallout over FDA vaccine chief Vinay Prasad’s internal memo to FDA staff continues with former FDA leaders attacking his claims in an op-ed in The New England Journal of Medicine. The FDA has no immediate plans to release data proving that ten children died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, the centerpiece of Prasad’s memo.
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
A long-awaited study on the “safety” of mifepristone is being delayed until after next year’s midterm elections. HHS denies it’s for political reasons (though few are likely to believe that.)
Missouri Independent: Missouri appeals court rewrites ballot proposal to clarify a ‘yes’ would end right to abortion (The original language didn’t bother to mention that the new proposal would undo the state’s newly-passed constitutional abortion protections.)
[A new Texas] law, which [went] into effect December 4, creates civil penalties for health care providers who make abortion medications available in Texas, allowing any private citizen to sue medical providers for a minimum penalty of $100,000. The bill’s backers have said it would also allow suits against drug manufacturers. It would not enable suits against the people who get abortions.
A case involving “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs) will soon be decided by the US Supreme Court. Jessica Valenti and Kylie Cheung at ABORTION, EVERY DAY explain:
[W]hat happens in First Choice v. Platkin is not just about one organization in New Jersey. In fact, the very fact that SCOTUS is hearing the case at all—bypassing lower courts—is alarming. The pro-choice advocates we spoke to fear that SCOTUS hand-picked this case to help conservatives—potentially giving CPCs the ability to deceive abortion-seekers and community members unchecked, and discouraging or disallowing state attorneys general and agencies from investigating the groups at all.
POLITICO: Judge blocks provision of law that strips Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood affiliates.
Other Health Care News
On Dec. 5, the ACIP voted to remove their recommendation that all newborns receive the Hepatitis B vaccine. As The Guardian points out, no new evidence on harms from the vaccine, which has been given to 1.4 billion people for more than three decades with a stellar safety record, was presented at the meeting.
Studies “generally found that the vaccine was safe and well-tolerated”, said Mark Blaxill, an author who has argued that vaccines cause autism and other conditions and who was recently named senior adviser at the CDC.
He pointed, however, to one study in which 18% of vaccine recipients reported minor side-effects like fatigue or weakness, diarrhea and irritability. “Those were dismissed as ‘well, the baby is just fussy’,” Blaxill said. “If you do compare those descriptions to definitions of encephalitis, those are possibly connected.”
“Irritability, fatigue, weakness, diarrhea, that is absolutely not encephalitis,” said Cody Meissner, a pediatrician and ACIP member, after Blaxill’s presentation. “That’s not a statement that a physician would make. They are not related to encephalitis and you can’t say that.
“There were so many statements that I don’t agree with that it’s hard to be succinct,” Meissner said in response to the presentations on the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.
Following their decision, Kirk Milhoan, the new anti-vaxx chair of the panel, said that he felt like panel members were “puppets on a string” instead of an independent advisory board, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Bizarrely, one of the presenters at the ACIP meeting was Aaron Siri, a leading anti-vaccine lawyer. After his presentation, Dr. Meissner told him, “What you have said is a terrible, terrible distortion of all the facts.” Another member, Joseph Hibbeln, said he repeatedly asked for data to support the change but “no data of harm was presented.” It’s no wonder that Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy called ACIP “totally discredited.”
More from around the internet:
MedPage Today: Delaying Hep B Vaccine in Infants Carries Significant Risks, Report Warns
STAT: As vaccine panel prepares hepatitis B review, CDC and industry experts are excluded
Chicago Tribune: Illinois to conduct its own review of hepatitis B vaccine recommendations made by federal committee
The New York Times: Former F.D.A. Commissioners Sound Alarm on Plan to Change Vaccine Policy
MedPage Today: Resurrecting a Global Killer: ACIP’s Hep B Vote
CIDRAP: Three-fourths of Americans support hepatitis B vaccine for newborns, poll finds
The same day the ACIP made their decision, Trump praised the decision and ordered federal health officials to review the decades-old U.S. childhood immunization schedule and consider reducing the number of recommended vaccinations to align with developed nations like Denmark and Japan.
Genesis HealthCare, a large, troubled nursing home chain with 49 facilities across New England and a history of serious health violations, is wiping out many of the liability claims against the company by selling the company to itself, according to reporting by The Boston Globe.
There have now been 1,828 confirmed cases of measles in the U.S. in 2025, with three confirmed deaths.