December 3, 2025 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | December 3, 2025
Committee News
A Committee press release warning about the impact of a new Texas law that will allow private citizens to sue anyone who distributes abortion medication received media coverage at KFOX-14, ABC7 News, and Urban Milwaukee.
Pennsylvania cardiologist and Committee Member Dr. Amanda Cai is featured in a PennLive piece about Republicans from the state that signed a letter to investigate mifepristone.
Attacks on Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act
POLITICO reports that, following his failed effort at presenting a health care plan that could pass Congress, all eyes are on Trump to see what he plans to do next because it’s clear lawmakers won’t make a move without his blessing.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar predicts there will be a vote before the end of the year. “If they don’t want to do anything about people’s costs and their grocery bills and their health care and pummel them with these punishing Trump tariffs, then we will simply have to beat them in the midterms. We have no other choice,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
Karl Rove agrees: Without a health care agenda, the GOP is “going to be in deep trouble” in the midterms.
Efforts to end the enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) health care insurance subsidies and replace them with health savings accounts (HSAs) – or “Trump Health Freedom Accounts”, as Sen. Rick Scott calls them – may lead to massive profits for the corporations administering the accounts, according to Senate Democrats. “The common theme across these arrangements is massive profits for financial institutions and big insurance companies,” the Senate Finance Democrats said in a report.
The Washington Post explains why HSAs are not a solution for most people.
The New York Times writes about former anti-ACA Republicans who are now on Team ACA now that they find themselves in competitive swing districts.
Trump Administration News
Vinay Prasad, the nation’s top vaccine regulator as the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, sent an email to FDA staff in which he said, without offering proof, that ten kids had died as a result of receiving COVID-19 vaccinations:
The team has performed an initial analysis of 96 deaths between 2021 and 2024, and concludes that no fewer than 10 are related [to the COVID-19 vaccine]... For the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children. Healthy young children who faced tremendously low risk of death were coerced, at the behest of the Biden administration, via school and work mandates, to receive a vaccine that could result in death. In many cases, such mandates were harmful. It is difficult to read cases where kids aged 7 to 16 may be dead as a result of covid vaccines.
Did COVID-19 vaccine programs kill more healthy kids than it saved? … [T]he truth is we do not know if we saved lives on balance… [I]t is horrifying to consider that the US vaccine regulation, including our actions, may have harmed more children than we saved.
The article heavily references the work of Tracy Beth Høeg, a lieutenant to FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, who wanted to change the label of all COVID-19 vaccines to say the risks outweighed the benefits for men ages 12 to 24 which would make it prohibitively difficult for men in this age group to get the vaccine.
Outside experts said they would need much more evidence to understand whether it had been established that the Covid vaccine caused deaths in children. They said it was surprising that more data were not included in the memo, which they viewed as certain to be made public. Some claims in the memo, such as the implication that the federal government sets school vaccine mandates, are incorrect.
“It’s irresponsible science at best and it’s dangerous to the public at the very least,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. [...]
Prasad’s memo also understated the risk Covid posed to children, experts said. Prasad said that children faced “a tremendously low risk of death”… A 2023 JAMA paper said that during the 12 months ending in July 2022, 821 people aged 19 and under died of Covid, making it the eighth leading cause of death in that age group.
At the end of his email, Prasad made it clear that it is his way or the highway for FDA staff:
Some staff may not agree with these core principles and operating principles. Please submit your resignation letters to your supervisor and CC my deputy Katherine Szarama.
The letter may have been timed to be “leaked” just in time for the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting happening tomorrow. “Childhood/Adolescent Immunization Schedule” is on their agenda.
Speaking of ACIP, Dr. Martin Kulldorff is being replaced as its chair by Dr. Kirk Milhoan, who has blamed vaccines for causing cardiovascular disease. Kulldorff, who once described the ACIP as “rookies”, is leaving to take a leadership role within HHS.
POLITICO reports that the kids at HHS are fighting:
A top aide to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is locked in a power struggle with his boss and the White House over vaccine policy and personnel, according to two senior administration officials.
For now, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, Marty Makary, still has his job, but the dispute — which centers on how the agency will examine vaccine side effects — is unresolved, the officials said. Both were granted anonymity to discuss confidential deliberations.
Louisiana Surgeon General Dr. Ralph Abraham, who has called COVID-19 vaccines “dangerous” and has echoed many of RFK Jr.’s unproven beliefs about vaccines, has been quietly named to be the second in command at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and is the highest-ranking official there with a medical degree. That medical degree, however, doesn’t mean he’s a good actor when it comes to public health. From Inside Medicine (via MedPage Today):
In February 2025, Abraham made headlines by announcing that Louisiana would end mass vaccination campaigns. [...]
The state of Louisiana, under Abraham’s leadership, failed to alert physicians and the public about two whooping cough deaths and the largest outbreak in the state in 35 years for months, despite medical professionals’ attempts to raise the issue.
A MedPage Today analysis found that out of around 12,000 practicing physicians in 2021, Abraham was the seventh highest prescriber of ivermectin in the state, a drug that by then had already been found to be ineffective in treating COVID. [...]
As the opioid crisis became more apparent last decade, Abraham was found to be among the most active prescribers of the drug class [...]
While Abraham holds an MD, and presents himself as a “family physician,” it appears that he is not board-certified in Family Medicine.
Medicare prescription drug negotiations, put in place with Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, are expected to save $12 billion over a year, per AXIOS. This is allowing Trump administration officials to take credit for one of Biden’s major achievements.
NOTUS reports that a CDC website that helped Americans find vaccines has been quietly turned off.
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
A Texas county has passed a draconian local ordinance that outlaws traveling across county or state lines for an abortion, prohibits ordering of abortion pills by mail by residents of the county, and assigns personhood to fetuses:
The ordinance prohibits anyone from transporting a pregnant Howard County resident across county or state lines to obtain an abortion. It also restricts ordering abortion-inducing medication by mail. Supporters argue the measure protects unborn children, while opponents worry it may restrict access to emergency reproductive care like miscarriages and pregnancy complications.
Big Spring resident Shiloh Salazar said the ordinance could impact women needing emergency treatment. “If I am having an active miscarriage, and I have to get a DNC in another county, I have to pass through unincorporated parts of Howard County. That could trigger this travel ban — even though I’m not getting an abortion, I’m seeking emergency care from my OB,” Salazar said… The ordinance also defines legal personhood beginning at conception [...]
Other residents raised concerns about access to reproductive care in rural areas. “We’re already in a healthcare desert in Howard County. We don’t have an OB-GYN to even provide the services they’re banning anyway,” said concerned parent Ashlyn Sloan.
Other Health Care News
KFF Health News: South Carolina’s Measles Outbreak Shows Chilling Effect of Vaccine Misinformation
Kentucky Lantern: Third unvaccinated Kentucky baby dies of whooping cough