January 21, 2026 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | January 21, 2026
Committee News
On Jan. 12, Committee Executive Director Dr. Rob Davidson appeared on Lincoln Square’s podcast with Susan Demas for a segment titled, “How Will RFK Jr.’s New Vax Schedule Impact Public Health?”
On Jan. 13, the Committee hosted a press call with Committee Executive Director Dr. Rob Davidson, Ushma Upadhyay, PhD, MPH, public health scientist and a top expert on the safety of medication abortion, Nikki Zite, MD, MPH, practicing OB/GYN in Tennessee, and Carrie Frail, a patient, Air Force veteran, and advocate with our partner Free & Just ahead of the Jan. 14 Senate HELP Committee hearing attacking mifepristone and medication abortion. (See more on that hearing below.)
The Committee surveyed physician advocates living in the states represented on the Senate HELP Committee about the importance of mifepristone and shared 34 responses with reproductive freedom allies on the committee in advance of the hearing.
On Jan. 16, to celebrate the key milestone of the multi-year process to amend the Virginia Constitution to protect families’ reproductive health care needs, the Committee recruited and prepared Committee Advocate Dr. David Anthony Clark, an emergency medicine and family medicine physician, to join the Virginians for Reproductive Freedom press call with Senator Jennifer Boysko and Leader Charniele Herring.
On Jan. 20, Committee Advocate Dr. Erin Stevens joined other Minnesota physicians, including physician legislators, in speaking out at a press conference to condemn the obstructions to care, intimidation, and violence being caused by ICE agents in Minnesota health care settings.
Top News Stories
While Congress seems to have punted on renewing the enhanced ACA premium tax credits, there appears to be bipartisan support for Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM) reform in 2026. According to AXIOS, the prospective package would also include a measure that would require off-campus hospital outpatient departments to have a unique identifier number, a move supported by the Committee for its transparency improvements that would decrease costs for patients.
Lawmakers released the details for this bipartisan, bicameral health care deal early yesterday (Jan. 20), which they hope to pass later this week as part of a four-bill government spending package. According to POLITICO, “the agreement…would not revive enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies that lapsed at the end of last year and are causing premiums to spike for individuals on Obamacare insurance plans.”
Last week, Trump released his so-called great healthcare plan (yes, it’s actually called “The Great Healthcare Plan”.) It has all the appearances of vaporware with a flashy website and nearly no details. STAT and The Guardian have more details (such as they are) and Charles Gaba breaks down how ridiculous it all is HERE. POLITICO reports that getting what it calls the “light-on-details proposal” passed by Congress is unlikely anyway.
RFK Jr. has appointed two anti-vaxx OB/GYNs to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), Kimberly Biss and Adam Urato:
In a December 2022 podcast interview, Biss said “prior to covid I was not an anti-vaxxer, but I am now because I’ve gone down the rabbit hole, and I would love to be able someday to meet Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” [...]
“My grandchildren will not get any shots if I can help it,” she said. “The vaccine industry is disgusting.” [...]
During a December 2023 podcast interview, [Urato] said he asks people to imagine a chemical manufacturing plant and a prenatal clinic outside the gates of the plant. The vaccines and drugs are “coming fresh out of the chemical manufacturing facility” and “then they’re going into the prenatal clinic, and then they’re being injected into the pregnant women,” he said. [...]
“This is a huge problem for us just with over-intervention in medicine, too much testing, too many drugs, too many vaccines,” Urato said [in a June interview], later comparing vaccine makers to cigarette manufacturers.
Biss has also said with zero evidence that coronavirus vaccination may lead to a “huge spike in cancer” in children. Their appointments bring the number of voting ACIP members, all appointed by Kennedy, to 12.
Following a vote in the Virginia senate, a proposal to enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution will be on the November ballot.
Attacks on Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act
CBS News reports that the number of people signing up for ACA marketplace insurance coverage has plummeted by over a million people compared with 2026. Connecticut, Illinois and Pennsylvania have extended their deadlines in response. Texas, however, is an outlier. The state broke a record in the number of signups this year.
The ACA requires private health insurers to cover preventive services recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) at no cost. However, the Trump administration has taken actions recently that have slowed the task force’s work, which has some public health experts very concerned.
Trump Administration News
Multiple medical groups have gone to court to stop RFK Jr.’s changes to the childhood vaccine schedule:
Six leading medical organizations plan to ask the courts to throw out revisions to the childhood vaccination schedule announced last week by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other federal officials. [...]
The medical organizations also intend to ask the courts to block a late February meeting of federal vaccine advisers handpicked by Mr. Kennedy. A federal court in western Massachusetts has set Feb. 13 as the date for an initial hearing on the lawsuit. [...]
The plaintiffs include the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American College of Physicians, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and the Massachusetts Public Health Alliance.
In related news, STAT reports that hospitals and doctors are ignoring RFK Jr.’s new vaccine schedule and relying on pediatricians’ guidance instead.
Kennedy has said in the past that he believes cellphones may be linked to cancer or neurological damage. This may explain why the FDA has deleted government websites which say they are not dangerous and HHS has begun a new study into cellphone safety.
CNN: Patches of low vaccination in the US are becoming bigger, riskier holes:
Opting out of childhood vaccines is becoming more common across most of the United States, leaving larger shares of the population vulnerable to preventable diseases like measles, which is continuing its record-breaking spread across the country.
RFK Jr. has removed at least two members of a committee that advises the federal government on its vaccine injury compensation program, the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccinations, without explanation.
At the very end of 2025, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration can resume sharing location data about undocumented immigrants receiving public health insurance benefits with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, starting this month:
A spokesperson for the California Department of Justice said after the ruling that people signed up for the state’s health care program with the understanding that their personal information would be used for that purpose alone.
“The Trump Administration’s effort to use Medicaid data for immigration enforcement is a violation of their trust and will lead to fewer people seeking vital healthcare,” they said in a statement.
Although undocumented immigrants are not eligible to enroll in federal Medicaid programs, a number of blue states —California, Illinois, Colorado, New York, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, as well as Washington, D.C. — allow some people to receive state-funded benefits through their Medicaid implementation programs regardless of immigration status.
HHS sent out funding termination notices last week to around 2,800 mental health and addiction programs nationwide, effectively terminating almost $2 billion of their funding. Following a flurry of lobbying efforts and a letter to RFK Jr., with signatures from 100 House members, the funding was restored a day later with no explanation from the Trump administration.
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill indicted a California abortion provider, Dr. Rémy Coeytaux of Sonoma County, for mailing abortion pills into her state and Gov. Jeff Landry signed an extradition order. It’s the second time the two have done this. In response, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he was blocking Louisiana’s overreach.
On Jan. 14, the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee, led by Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, held a hearing deceptively titled “Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs.” The HELP Committee’s announcement of the hearing describes mifepristone as “a dangerous chemical abortion drug” despite decades of safe use.
Here’s how Ms. Magazine characterized the performative hearing:
Rather than offering new evidence or legitimate oversight, the hearing played out exactly as reproductive health experts warned: a partisan exercise in recycling debunked claims, elevating junk science and laying the groundwork for further restrictions on the most commonly used abortion medication in the United States.
Prior to the hearing, Washington Senator Patty Murray issued a statement saying, “We all know this hearing is not about the actual science or the facts—and it’s certainly not about what is best for women’s health. This hearing is really about the fact that Trump and his anti-abortion allies want to ban abortion nationwide and medication abortion is the most common method of abortion in the U.S.”
Jessica Valenti has a deeper dive into the event at ABORTION, EVERY DAY and ABC News has one HERE, as well.
Valenti also highlights new legislation introduced in South Carolina that would make donating to an abortion fund a felony:
We’ve told you before about the bill that would allow for anti-abortion civil suits to the tune of $100k; but there’s something else in H. 4637: it could criminalize abortion funds.
The legislation would make it a felony to “knowingly pay for or reimburse the costs associated with obtaining an abortion,” regardless of where that abortion takes place. In other words, helping pay for an out-of-state abortion would be a crime—punishable by up to five years in prison.
ProPublica reports that a pregnant North Carolina woman at risk for heart failure couldn’t get the urgent treatment she needed. She died waiting for an abortion because of the state’s abortion ban.
Via AXIOS, we learn that prosecutors in states with abortion bans are increasingly charging mostly low-income women with pregnancy-related crimes like child abuse, neglect, or other crimes related to pregnancy or pregnancy loss.
The ACLU has dropped its lawsuit against the Trump administration over funding cuts to Planned Parenthood and some other health clinics after HHS quietly released tens of millions in funding in December. The administration is still defending far bigger federal cuts to abortion groups in a federal court, however. The release of the funds is making anti-abortion groups very angry, especially following Trump’s recent remarks that lawmakers need to be “flexible” on Hyde Amendment exclusions in their efforts to make health care more affordable for Americans.
RELATED from POLITICO: Abortion opponents threaten to withhold midterm support amid rift with Trump
Other Health Care News
ICE agents are menacing Minnesota hospitals:
Health care workers in the Twin Cities report that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are entering hospitals with detained individuals, sometimes with warrants and sometimes without, and they are frequently present during patient care.
Their presence is terrifying medical staff and raising concerns about patient safety, according to five nurses at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing their jobs.
“A part of me wants to go on the news with my face and scream this at the top of my lungs,” an HCMC nurse said. “But I am very much right in the middle of this.”
The New York Times has more.
RELATED from CIDRAP: Minnesota residents delay medical care for fear of encountering ICE
Yet another study proves that the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy has no connection to autism in children.
NBC News: ‘Staring over the edge’: South Carolina measles outbreak doubles in a week:
More than 500 people are in a 21-day quarantine and about 200 are "actively infected." The largest outbreak currently in the U.S. has spread to at least three other states.
RELATED from AP: Measles cases jump again in South Carolina, rising to more than 550
Some good news from CBS News: A new milestone in the cancer fight: 7 in 10 patients now survive five-plus years