June 24, 2026 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | June 24, 2026
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
Missouri Independent: Missouri judge strikes down nearly all state abortion regulations:
Medication abortion will be available in Missouri for the first time since 2018 after a judge determined most of the state’s challenged abortion regulations are unconstitutional, including laws requiring hospital privileges, complication plans and special clinic licenses.
Following the ruling, Missouri Planned Parenthood affiliates are resuming medication abortions.
ABORTION, EVERY DAY: What Trump’s Embryo Adoption Program Is Really About:
The Trump administration is allocating millions of federal dollars to an Embryo Adoption Program—classifying frozen embryos as “children who already exist” and funding services that treat adopting a frozen embryo exactly like adopting a child.
It’s a significant step toward enshrining fetal personhood—and a brazen move from an administration that’s been trying to avoid public abortion battles ahead of the midterms.
File this one in the “You Knew it Was Coming” file: Anti-abortion activists are publicly calling for a prohibition on IVF.
Institute for Women’s Policy Research: More than $140 Billion in Lost Earnings: Abortion Restrictions Continue to Harm Women and Are a Persistent Drag on the Economy
Health Care Affordability
A new survey shows only about half of U.S. adults could afford their health care and had access to quality care last year.
Another survey shows a majority of Americans say they’re more likely to vote for midterm candidates who support lowering their health costs.
NBC News: Medicaid and ACA enrollment falls by more than 5 million, new report finds
Some good news out of Ohio:
The DOJ and Ohio attorney general’s proposed settlement announced Wednesday would require nonprofit OhioHealth to quit using certain contracting practices that the agencies say prevented health insurers from selling cheaper policies.
Even Republicans are starting to get it. Via KFF, “Republican-controlled Indiana is trying a traditionally liberal tactic to control costs: setting government price controls on hospitals.”
Trump Administration News
The Seattle Times: New federal rules threaten to obstruct scientific research:
A new federal policy would give political appointees authority to decide which [scientific] research gets funded — based on ideology rather than scientific merit — and would constrain scientists’ ability to publish and share their findings.
Democrats are pushing back vigorously.
You can learn more and get information on how to submit a comment to OMB HERE.
The Washington Post reports that RFK Jr.’s vaccine witch hunt isn’t over, it just went undercover.
Remember that positive vaccine study the CDC shot down? JAMA Network Open just published it.
Despite this, an FDA advisory panel on Thursday unanimously endorsed the use of Moderna’s trivalent flu vaccine candidate, despite Kennedy’s attacks on mRNA vaccines.
Kennedy has asked an appeals court to reverse an earlier ruling that prevents him from handpicking ACIP members according to his own personal criteria. The American Academy of Pediatrics is pushing back on RFK Jr.’s non-serious contention that the ACIP can’t meet before flu season due to the ruling. “The Secretary has lawful ways to restore ACIP,” they said. “He wants only the unlawful one and is using a self-created crisis to rush reinstatement of those unlawful appointments. We’re not going to enable him.”
The New York Times: Scores Fall Ill at Air Force Base After Hegseth Makes Flu Vaccine Optional
The Trump administration is threatening to clawback money from its so-called Rural Transformation Fund if states don’t follow the rules. The problem is, they’re changing the rules after the states have their applications approved and seem to be forbidding helping patients directly with the $50 fund billion set up to protect rural hospitals.
RFK Jr. is whining about Toxicology Reports removing a study from its journal that suggested an increased incidence of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) within a few days after vaccination. One law professor said he is “using his position to bully a medical journal.”
The Hill reports that RFK Jr. ordered the continued hantavirus quarantine of American woman despite advice from the CDC. Health law professor Lawrence Gostin described the move this way: “The hypocrisy is almost unreal. The whole raison d’etre of Secretary Kennedy’s tenure has been based upon medical freedom, ‘the patient gets to choose’, and yet here they’re issuing immediately a compulsory deprivation of liberty.” The woman has finally been released from quarantine.
Other Health Care News
MedPage Today: ED Docs Being Replaced by Private Equity-Owned Firm Call It a ‘Kick in the Teeth’
RELATED: A new report examines how private equity-backed companies have taken on an increasingly central role in Medicaid administration across the country. The news is not good and comes as states face growing pressure to implement onerous and complicated new Medicaid work requirements.
The Colorado Sun reports that Children’s Hospital Colorado was forced to resume gender-affirming care through a court order, but none of its doctors who work there are willing to actually provide the care due fears that they will be subject to criminal charges.
Use of Ivermectin to treat viruses and other diseases hasn’t gone away and in Tennessee, pharmacies sell a high-potency version without a prescription:
The drug is now marketed and sold across the state in roadside shops and small-town strip malls with little oversight from health authorities. Highway billboards advertise ivermectin as “Available Without a Prescription in Tennessee!” while dozens of pharmacies offer highly concentrated pills, sometimes at 10 or 20 times the potency of a standard tablet. [...]
After a hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship earlier this year, unproven claims that ivermectin is effective against the virus have been spread by some popular social media accounts [...]
Some pharmacy websites now offer the drug as a treatment for covid, “long haul vax symptoms,” diabetes, or cancer…while the new law largely gives pharmacists immunity from lawsuits or professional sanctions related to ivermectin.
RELATED from ABC News: Some cancer patients turn to ivermectin despite lack of evidence it works for that purpose
The number of Ebola cases in Congo has now surpassed 1,000. The number of cases surged almost 40% last week and over 250 people have died.