July 7, 2025 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | July 7, 2025
Attacks on Medicaid, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act
Trump signed his budget bill on July 4, describing the massive tax giveaway to billionaires as “the largest tax cut in the history of our country.” What he failed to mention is that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, it will force 11.8 million people off of their health insurance and cut $1 trillion from Medicaid.
One provision of the budget bill that has largely flown under the radar is an expansion of the number of drugs that are not eligible for price negotiations for Medicare.
AXIOS reports that most of the cuts to health care come later, seemingly to make it hard for Democrats to use against Republicans in future elections.
If Republicans don’t extend Biden-era enhanced ACA premium subsidies by the end of the year, enrollees of ACA exchange plans will see their premiums increase by more than 75% on average in 2026, eleven months before the election. This will be a potent talking point for Democrats.
Baltimore, MD, Chicago, IL, and Columbus, OH are suing the Trump administration over its efforts to make getting health care on the ACA exchanges more difficult
Reproductive Rights
Trump’s budget bill contains a provision, specifically targeted at Planned Parenthood (PP), that would force them to stop offering abortion in some states or lose millions in Medicaid funding for basic health care. Estimates are that as many as 200 PP clinics may close. Abortion rights supporters and opponents alike are calling it a “backdoor abortion ban.”
Thanks to the hard work of the Committee to Protect Health Care’s Advocates in Wisconsin to elect pro-health care state Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz in 2023, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the state’s 176-year-old abortion ban last week. The court’s pro-health care majority was strengthened with the election of Justice-elect Susan Crawford this year, again with support from the Committee. She takes her seat in August.
Signature gathering has begun in Idaho to place a proposal on the November 2026 ballot to end the state’s draconian abortion ban.
In Missouri, the ACLU has filed a lawsuit to prevent a backdoor ballot proposal to reinstate the state’s abortion ban on the 2026 ballot. The Missouri proposal, called Amendment 3, makes no mention of banning abortion or the fact that it would strike down last November’s vote to end the abortion ban.
A small team within the CDC that ensures contraceptives are safe for women has been fired and the CDC’s larger Division of Reproductive Health has been decimated, as well.
Trump Administration News
Six of the major medical associations in the U.S. are suing RFK, Jr. over his anti-vaxx actions.
On July 1, a federal judge issued an order blocking the Trump administration from finalizing mass layoffs in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and from issuing any further firings. She also ordered HHS to file a status report by July 11.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 19 other state attorneys general have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its decision to hand over Medicaid recipients’ data to the Department of Homeland Security, allegedly as part of its anti-immigrant deportation program.
RFK, Jr. is about to start tinkering with the federal nutrition standards for the food industry and government programs like Head Start.
The New York Times has a good overview of how RFK, Jr. is dismantling the FDA.
Other Health Care News
Moderna will soon begin late-stage trials of a combination flu-COVID-19 vaccine shot. It’s a move that will test RFK, Jr.’s tougher vaccine policies.
Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has signed a bill to regulate pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), in the state.