January 14, 2026 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | January 14, 2026
Committee News
On Jan. 6, Committee Board Chair Dr. Kristen Lyerly appeared on The Majority Report with Sam Seder: Administration Narrows the Guidance on National Childhood Vaccine Recommendations and on Jan. 7 she appeared on the SiriusXM POTUS Morning with Tim Farley show.
On Jan. 9, USA Today published a piece featuring Committee Exec. Dir. Dr. Rob Davidson titled, “RFK Jr. says fewer flu shots for kids may be ‘better.’ What experts say.”
On Jan. 11, Dr. Rob and Committee Member Dr. Chris Ford appeared on The Left Hook with Wajahat Ali in a segment titled, “How Can We Stop The GOP Death Merchants and Save Our Nation’s Health?”
On Jan. 12, Dr. Rob was interviewed by journalist Susan Demas for the Lincoln Square Media Substack in a segment titled, “How Will RFK Jr.’s New Vax Schedule Impact Public Health?.”
Top News Stories
Last Thursday, the House voted to extend the ACA enhanced tax credits that expired at the end of 2025 for three years. A surprising 17 Republicans joined Democrats in passing the measure which now heads to the Senate. POLITICO called the defections “a stunning rebuke to Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump.” The nonpartisan CBO estimates that, if it becomes law, it would “increase the number of people with health insurance by 0.1 million in 2026, 3.0 million in 2027, 4.0 million in 2028, and 1.1 million in 2029, relative to current law.”
In what some see as childish trolling, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins issued the 2025-2030 U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans that literally turns the previous “food pyramid” upside down:
[The new guidelines say] that Americans should choose whole-food sources of saturated fat -- such as meat, whole-fat dairy, or avocados… The guidance says “other options can include butter or beef tallow,” despite previous recommendations to avoid those fats. [...]
The new guidelines roll back previous recommendations to limit alcohol to 1 drink or less per day for women and 2 drinks or less per day for men. Instead, the guidance advises Americans to “consume less alcohol for better health.”
Attacks on Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act
One Republican Senator, MAGA-aligned Bernie Moreno of Ohio, isn’t giving up on a health care plan that can win at least 35 Senate Republicans and a majority of Democrats.
This past weekend Democrats sent Republicans a proposal to renew enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies for three years, paired with extensions of other expiring health programs and an important transparency measure that would “require hospital outpatient departments to use unique identifier numbers in a bid to crack down on what critics say is overbilling”, AXIOS reports.
No matter what happens, Trump says he may veto any extension of the subsidies that gets passed.
A federal judge ruled last week that Florida has violated the constitutional rights of people who were dropped from the Medicaid program because it sent notices to them that “border on the incomprehensible”:
In finding that the state violated due-process rights, Howard wrote that the notices are “vague, confusing and often incorrect and misleading.” She said people cannot understand the notices and whether the state made mistakes in denying them benefits.
Trump Administration News
The New York Times: Kennedy Said His Dietary Advisers Would Have ‘No Conflicts of Interest.’ Some Did.:
Soon after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was sworn in as the nation’s health secretary, he promised to overhaul the federal nutrition guidelines. A key step, he said, would be to “toss out the people who were writing the guidelines with conflicts of interest.”
His own panel, he said, would “have no conflicts of interest.” But the new guidelines, which were released Wednesday and emphasize protein, meat, cheese and milk, were informed by a panel of experts with several ties to the meat and dairy industries.
Three of the nine members have received grants or done consulting work for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association; one of those also received a research grant from and serves as an adviser to the National Pork Board. At least three members — including two of the same ones who have done work for red meat groups — have financial ties to dairy industry organizations, such as the National Dairy Council. Another is a co-creator of a high-protein meal replacement product.
Christopher Gardner, a Stanford nutrition scientist and member of the most recent advisory committee, told STAT, “This is hypocrisy! We were slandered for bowing and cow-towing to the food industry. [The Trump committee’s conflicts] “are more direct than ours with Big Meat, Big Dairy.”
At least 17 states have announced that they won’t follow the new childhood vaccination schedule recently put out by the CDC, which sharply reduced the number of recommended vaccines.
Meanwhile, medical groups are moving forward with a lawsuit over the changes to the childhood vaccine guidance:
Several major medical organizations can move forward with their lawsuit challenging policies adopted under U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy that they say will lower vaccination rates, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. [...]
[The judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy,] said the plaintiffs raised a plausible claim that the panel’s makeup is now skewed to vaccine skeptics who were appointed solely because their views aligned with Kennedy’s.
Hundreds of medical and public health organizations are urging Congress to investigate the new vaccine schedule.
MedPage Today reports that key scientists at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD) were not consulted when the decision to alter the vaccine schedule was being made. The Washington Post reports that staff at the CDC itself were blindsided, as well, and were made without “extensive consultation with the agency’s subject matter experts”.
Due to these changes to the vaccine schedule, ABC News reports that some pediatric offices “have had to change their workflow to allow more time for discussions about vaccines and to address vaccine misinformation.”
The Hill: Federal judge orders HHS to restore $12m in funding to American Academy of Pediatrics:
A federal judge late Sunday ordered the Trump administration to restore nearly $12 million in grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), after the organization’s funding was abruptly cut last month.
[Judge Beryl] Howell concluded that the Department of Health and Human Services had a likely “retaliatory motive” for the terminations, due to the AAP’s outspoken opposition to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Last week we shared news that the Trump administration is slashing billions of dollars from welfare programs, mostly those that benefit children, exclusively in blue states as a response to a welfare fraud case in Minnesota. A federal judge has paused the move while the case plays out in court.
CBS News: RFK Jr. says it may be “better” if fewer children receive the flu vaccine
RELATED:
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
The New York Times: F.D.A. Decisions on Abortion Pill Were Based on Science, New Analysis Finds:
[A] new study, published Monday in the medical journal JAMA, evaluates the F.D.A.’s track record of making decisions about mifepristone, drawing on rare access to internal memos, emails and thousands of pages of other documents.
The study was led by experts in federal health policy and drug regulation at Johns Hopkins University. They found that, in the 12 years they examined, from 2011 to 2023, important F.D.A. actions involving mifepristone almost always adhered to evidence-based recommendations from the agency’s scientists.
This unsurprising finding is in sharp contrast to the situation under RFK Jr.’s “leadership” where decisions are being made without scientific evidence.
Last week, Trump told House Republicans that they need to be “flexible” on Hyde Amendment exclusions in their efforts to make health care more affordable for Americans. “You have to be a little flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, he told House Republicans as they gathered in Washington for a caucus retreat to open the midterm election year. “You gotta be a little flexible. You got to work something.” The response from anti-abortion groups was predictably negative with Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, saying, “To suggest Republicans should be ‘flexible’ is an abandonment of [a] decades-long commitment. If Republicans abandon Hyde, they are sure to lose this November,” calling the move “a massive betrayal.”
As a bill to extend the enhanced ACA subsidies heads to the Senate, Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters that he still wants abortion restrictions, saying “you’ve got to deal with the Hyde issue.”
Following the Wyoming Supreme Court’s rulings on two abortion cases – one which found the state’s ban on abortion pills like mifepristone unconstitutional and the other find the state’s ban on abortion, in general, unconstitutional, as well – Republican legislators met to consider shrinking the court to help them pass an abortion ban in the state.
A trial began in Missouri this week challenging the state’s remaining abortion restrictions, with providers and advocates arguing that long-standing TRAP laws and administrative requirements violate the Missouri Constitution after voters approved Amendment 3 protecting reproductive freedom. The passage of Amendment 3 in 2024 protects the right to abortion care, but existing regulations and legal challenges have made access limited.
A 35-year-old Kentucky woman initially faced a fetal homicide charge as well as abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence after admitting to taking abortion pills ordered online and burying the fetus in her backyard. However, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Amanda Hampton filed a motion to dismiss the fetal homicide charge. Subsequently, a grand jury indicted her on an additional charge of concealing the birth of an infant in addition to the other charges.
Pregnancy Justice, a reproductive rights group, revealed that an Alabama woman’s conviction and 18-year sentence for a stillbirth has been vacated:
A judge vacated the conviction of our client, Brooke Shoemaker, who served five years of an 18-year sentence for experiencing a stillbirth. In vacating her conviction last week, the judge found that new evidence we presented on an infection causing the stillbirth was credible. Immediately after the ruling, the state filed a notice of appeal and demanded that Ms. Shoemaker remain incarcerated, away from her family, while the state pursues its groundless case.
Shoemaker released a statement after the decision saying, “After years of fighting, I’m thankful that I’m finally being heard, and I pray that my next Christmas will be spent at home with my children and parents. I’m hopeful that my new trial will end with me being freed, because I simply lost my pregnancy at home because of an infection. I loved and wanted my baby, and I never deserved this.”
Ohio’s Courthouse News Service reports that an “Ohio court will have to reconsider the viability of several provisions in the state’s “heartbeat” abortion law after an appeals panel overturned parts of an injunction granted to abortion providers” in 2024. The 2019 law was in direct contradiction to the will of the people who voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution via a 2023 ballot measure.
Other Health Care News
COVID-19 is still killing more than 100,000 Americans a year, new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study shows—underscoring how the virus remains a major health threat even if the height of the pandemic has long subsided.
The Washington Post: Heritage paper on families calls for ‘marriage bootcamp,’ more babies:
A report from the Heritage Foundation, titled “Saving America by Saving the Family,” urges President Donald Trump and lawmakers “to save and restore the American family” through massive tax credits for families with more children while capping alimony payments, enacting strict work requirements on social benefit programs, discouraging online dating, creating marriage “bootcamp” classes and more.
The report suggests public-private partnerships to honor and provide monetary awards for every decade a couple remains married. It calls for a 16-year-old age limit on social media and certain AI chatbots, and further age restrictions on access to pornography, and it argues that “climate change alarmism” demoralizes young people and dissuades them from having children.
With all the dramatic shifts in health policy priorities documented here - from vaccine schedules to dietary guidelines - I'm concerned about what this means for rare disease research funding. These patients often rely on consistent NIH funding and regulatory stability for treatment development. When attention shifts to political battles over mainstream health programs, orphan drug research and rare disease initiatives risk getting deprioritized. The conflicts of interest you've highlighted with the new dietary panel make me wonder: who's advocating for the 10% of Americans with rare diseases when policy decisions are being made without consulting career experts?