February 18, 2026 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | February 18, 2026
Top News Stories
This week marks the one year anniversary of RFK Jr. as HHS Administrator
MedPage Today: Broken Promises: RFK Jr.’s First Year at HHS
KFF Health News: RFK Jr. Made Promises in Order To Become Health Secretary. He’s Broken Many of Them.
MedPage Today: Here’s How Many Jobs HHS Has Lost Since RFK Jr. Took Over (HINT: It’s over 17,000.)
AP: RFK Jr. promised to restore trust in US health agencies. A year later, it’s eroding. Committee Executive Director Dr. Rob Davidson is quoted in this article:
Before entering politics, Kennedy was one of the loudest voices spreading false information about immunizations. Now, he is trying to fix a trust problem he helped create, said Dr. Rob Davidson, a Michigan emergency physician.
“You fed those people false information to create the distrust, and now you’re sweeping into power and you’re going to cure the distrust by promoting the same disinformation,” said Davidson, who runs a doctor group called the Committee to Protect Health Care. “It’s upside-down.”
Protect Our Care: Year One of RFK Jr., Public Health Enemy #1
The Hill: 1 year of RFK Jr.: How his MAHA agenda has reshaped US public health
Rolling Stone: The Lowlights of the First Year of RFK Jr.’s MAHA Agenda
CIDRAP: Annenberg poll shows drop in perceived safety of vaccines
The Washington Post reports that the White House, RFK Jr. shake up health leadership after controversies. The move leaves the CDC without a director (again.)
NBC News: National Institutes of Health faces leadership vacuum as director positions sit open
NBC News: Five months after Sen. Bill Cassidy asked RFK Jr. to testify, it still hasn’t happened
MedPage Today: RFK Jr. Pledged More Transparency. Here’s What the Public Doesn’t Know Anymore.
Be sure to listen to this week's Paging America podcast when it comes out for more on RFK Jr.'s first year at HHS. It will be available here on our Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
Kylie Cheung at ABORTION, EVERY DAY describes the ongoing attacks against abortion pills:
Kentucky is really on a roll: lawmakers there are considering a bill to classify abortion pills as a controlled substance. HB 646 threatens people who possess the pills with costly lawsuits (with few exceptions) and providers with prison time. Louisiana enacted similar legislation in 2024—a disaster for hospitals, which rely on medications like misoprostol for maternal health emergencies. South Carolina is also weighing its own version.
Legislation like this is a direct response to the fact that abortion pills allow women to sidestep state bans: telemedicine accounts for nearly 30% of all abortions, and the majority of abortions in banned states. [...]
The West Virginia Senate has passed SB 173, a bill that would make it a felony to ship abortion pills into the state.
Ohio Republicans are advancing a bill that requires medication abortion patients to sign a form with anti-choice propaganda about the safety of abortion pills.
Committee Executive Director Dr. Rob Davidson is quoted in an article from States Newsroom titled, “In wake of FDA hearings on mifepristone, Michigan doctor raises alarm on limiting access”:
Dr. Rob Davidson, an emergency physician in western Michigan and the executive director of the national Committee to Protect Health Care…raised concerns about the attempts to limit access to the medication.
“Targeting mifepristone access has always been a calculated backdoor attempt to ban abortion nationwide,” he said. “Political interference in the regulatory process threatens doctors’ ability to make evidence-based decisions for our patients, whether that is to prescribe mifepristone, insulin, or blood pressure medication. Patients and providers deserve clarity, transparency, and continued access to safe, FDA-approved care.”
Bloomberg: Pregnant Women Die at Higher Rates When States Restrict Abortion
NHPR: NH lawmakers consider shield law, repealing buffer zones and other abortion bills:
Several bills moved through the State House last week that addressed abortion access and legal protection, as lawmakers again considered a repeal of patient buffer zones outside of abortion facilities, and whether to protect New Hampshire abortion providers from out-of-state legal action. New Hampshire is the only state in New England that lacks such shield laws.
AP: Puerto Rico governor signs law to recognize fetus as human being as critics warn of consequences
Trump Administration News
More RFK Jr. News
POLITICO: RFK Jr.’s allies are trying to free anti-vaccine doctors to speak their minds
The New York Times: Kennedy Allies Target States to Overturn Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren
The Hill: RFK Jr. says he ‘used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats’ on Theo Von podcast
In case you thought Kennedy has changed his mind about vaccines, he hasn’t. Just this week, his FDA refused to review Moderna’s application for a new flu vaccine made with Nobel Prize-winning mRNA technology. Vinay Prasad, Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, overrode FDA staff scientists in making the decision. Moderna is blaming the FDA for threatening “US leadership in innovative medicines.”
RELATED: Vaccine Makers Curtail Research and Cut Jobs:
In Massachusetts, Moderna is pulling back on vaccine studies. In Texas, a small company canceled plans to build a factory that would have created new jobs manufacturing a technology used in vaccines. In San Diego, another manufacturing company laid off workers. [...]
“There will be less invention, investment and innovation in vaccines generally, across all the companies,” Dr. Stephen Hoge, the president of Moderna, said in an interview.
Speaking of Vinay Prasad, he’s being accused of “sexual harassment, retaliation against subordinates and verbally berating staff.”
Dozens of Democrats call for removal of two newly-appointed anti-vaxx OB-GYNs from ACIP.
Realfood.gov, the FDA’s new food nutrition website, now features a chatbot tool from Elon Musk that’s rather skeptical of RFK Jr.’s new food pyramid. In related news, a new study shows that whole grains and plant-based foods are key to lowering the risk of coronary heart disease. “On the other hand, diets that are high in refined carbs and animal-based fats and proteins were associated with higher risk,” NBC News reports. This is in sharp contrast to RFK Jr.’s new nutritional guidelines.
Tony Lyons, an RFK Jr. ally and co-founder of the group MAHA PAC recently put out a memo warning Republicans not to take MAHA adherents for granted when it comes to elections:
In a new memo obtained by POLITICO, Lyons described the Republican Party as “renting MAHA voters” but not fully committed to “purchase.” [...]
“We need to convince every Republican to buy into the MAHA movement, just like Trump has,” he wrote in a late Wednesday memo.
Using polling commissioned from Trump’s campaign pollster, Tony Fabrizio, Lyons encouraged Republicans to talk more about five of Kennedy’s policy goals.
Other Trump Administration News
EPA will stop regulating CO2 and rejects climate change as a health threat. In related news, Trump ordered the Pentagon to buy more coal-fired electricity. Referring to the idea that climate change is a threat to public health, Trump said “This is all a scam, a giant scam.” California is suing.
Dr. Oz is trying out a new spin to explain the Republican decimation of Medicaid by blaming the massive cuts to rural health care on Democratic-run urban areas who are gaming the system and then giving the funds to undocumented immigrants. The answer to rural communities’ health care problems is AI, according to him:
Dr. Mehmet Oz is pitching a controversial fix for America’s rural health care crisis: artificial intelligence.
“There’s no question about it — whether you want it or not — the best way to help some of these communities is gonna be AI-based avatars,” Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said recently at an event focused on addiction and mental health hosted by Action for Progress, a coalition aimed at improving behavioral health care. He said AI could multiply the reach of doctors fivefold — or more — without burning them out.
Speaking of Dr. Oz, he’s in the Epstein Files.
The Colorado Sun: Colorado required to share personal Medicaid data with federal government, which can be used by immigration authorities
NATURE: Exclusive: Key US infectious-diseases centre to drop pandemic preparation:
Staff members at the United States’s premier infectious-disease research institute have been instructed to remove the words “biodefense” and “pandemic preparedness” from the institute’s web pages, according to e-mails Nature has obtained. [...]
NIH director Jay Bhattacharya explained the restructure at an event with other top agency officials on 30 January. “It’s a complete transformation of [the NIAID] away from this old model” that has historically prioritized research on HIV, biodefence and pandemic preparedness, he said. The institute will focus more on basic immunology and other infectious diseases currently affecting people in the United States, he added, rather than on predicting future diseases.
Other Health Care News
HEALTH CARE un-covered: Hawley and Warren Introduce “Break Up Big Medicine Act” to Force Separation of Insurers, PBMs and Providers:
[The] bipartisan bill modeled on the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act would require health care conglomerates to divest vertically integrated subsidiaries. [...]
At its core, the legislation prevents common ownership of a medical provider organization and one or more of the following: an insurance company, pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), or a prescription drug or medical device wholesaler. The bill requires individuals who currently own, operate, or control both types of entities to divest from one category (either the provider organization or the insurer, PBM, or wholesaler) within one year of the bill’s enactment.
In related news, the PBMs’ main lobbying group CEO apologized to members of Congress for not convincing them how important the massively profitable PBMs are:
Wednesday’s House hearing on the pharmaceutical supply chain…contained a few surprises.
One was an apology from David Marin, president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA), a trade group for PBMs. “As an association, we have failed you,” he told members of the House Energy & Commerce Health Subcommittee. “We have not done a good enough job articulating PBMs’ value to you. We have not been the partner you need. We’re going to change that ... My commitment to you today is that we will work with this committee to answer your questions, be a better partner, and help advance solutions that will make it easier and more affordable for your constituents to get the medications they need.”
The AMA and the Vaccine Integrity Project have announced that they will independently assess vaccine safety and effectiveness for the 2026-2027 respiratory virus season, saying the existing system has “now effectively collapsed.”
CIDRAP: Study finds no link between COVID-19 vaccines and autism
The New York Times: Senate Questions Health Care Firm for Profiting Off Program Meant for Poor