March 11, 2026 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | March 11, 2026
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
Texas Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Ken Paxton has filed yet another lawsuit against out-of-state abortion providers for mailing abortion pills into the state:
Paxton’s office announced a new suit Tuesday against Aid Access, a nonprofit based in Austria, as well as two medical providers. The office asked a Galveston County judge for a temporary injunction that would prevent the defendants from providing medicine to Texas residents and practicing in the state without a license.
The suit alleges Aid Access‘s founder, Dutch physician Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, and California physician Dr. Remy Coeytaux violated Texas’ abortion law by prescribing “abortion-inducing drugs” to Texans and shipping the medications into the state.
You may recall that Dr. Coeytaux has already been sued by Louisiana’s Attorney General as well as a man named Jerry Rodriguez. Rodriguez’s story, along that of his attorney Jonathan Mitchell, is detailed in a long-form journalism piece by the San Francisco Chronicle titled, “One lawyer could take down California’s abortion shield. His star client is a convicted abuser.”
As you’ve read in this newsletter previously, anti-abortion extremists have turned to a “coercion” argument frequently in recent months. They claim that telehealth access to abortion medication allows abusive partners or others to coerce women into unwanted abortions. However, in the case of Rodriguez, it’s just the opposite. He was a serial abuser of women who is using his lawsuit to coerce his former girlfriend, who he has harmed multiple times, to remain pregnant. In fact, at least three of the men Mitchell represents have been accused of harming women. Also of note, Rodriguez is the first person to avail himself of Texas’ new abortion bounty hunter law.
A bill that would have allowed doctors to end a pregnancy to save the life of the mother without facing criminal charges was defeated by Republicans in a state House committee.
Verite News: Federal funding for people in poverty heading to anti-abortion centers instead
Virginia lawmakers have passed the Right to Contraception Act and the bill now heads to pro-Choice Governor Abigail Spanberger to be signed into law. The bill codifies Virginians’ right to use contraceptives and doctors’ right to prescribe FDA-approved methods of contraception, including birth control pills, IUDs, emergency contraceptives, condoms and other contraceptive devices.
Trump Administration News
On March 3, Committee Advocates Dr. Christine Mahoney and Dr. Robert Lawrence were both quoted in a Maine Morning Star article titled, “With Collins undecided, Maine physicians urge she reject Trump’s surgeon general pick”:
“She is not a scientific expert. She is an influencer,” said Christine Mahoney, a family physician practicing in Southern and Midcoast Maine. “She’s influenced not by science, but by popularity, fame and money.” ... Mahoney also pointed out Means’ criticisms of birth control and refusal to say whether she supports access to mifepristone or abortion medication via telehealth. [...]
“Even if one believes that her special teas and blood glucose monitors actually work, her failure to disclose her financial interests in them goes against our medical ethics and our sense of fairness and decency,” said Robert Lawrence, a retired general internist who now lives in Maine. “It should also go against Senator Collins’ sense of ethics as well.” … “I think she would be a serious threat to well informed advocacy from the surgeon general to help all of us reduce our risk of poor health.”
RELATED from Rolling Stone: RFK Jr.’s Pick for Surgeon General Cashed in Promoting Companies With a History of Unsafe Products
Turns out vaccine proponents and anti-vaxxers can agree on one thing: Casey Means should not be Surgeon General.
RFK Jr. News
A growing number of states are moving quickly to ensure vaccines remain free and health care workers are protected from lawsuits following RFK Jr.’s upending of the childhood vaccine schedule, reports NBC News.
In related news, The Washington Post reports that a group of prominent scientists have launched an independent autism advisory panel over fears that RFK Jr. has politicized the key federal autism advisory board.
Also related: RFK Jr. vowed to restore public trust in health. It’s not working, a new survey suggests.
STAT: RFK Jr. has wide discretion to choose evidence to support vaccine decisions, DOJ argues:
How far can health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. go in remaking public health policy in his image?
Could he, say, call on Americans to maximize their exposure to measles in a bid to reach herd immunity?
The Department of Justice seems to think so. In defending the health secretary’s changes to the childhood vaccine schedule and to the federal vaccine advisory committee in federal court on Wednesday, government lawyers said that Kennedy and other health officials have broad discretion to issue such guidance — and to choose the kinds of evidence to consider and the experts to consult. [...]
The case…has become one of the most closely watched challenges to Kennedy’s sweeping changes of vaccine policy.
The New York Times: How Kennedy Is Trying to Revamp Medical School
During an event hosted by MAHA Action, RFK Jr. said people should eat liver and cheap cuts of steak to address affordability concerns of eating healthy. “Most of the cheap cuts of meat are very inexpensive… If you buy, you know, a porterhouse steak, it’s going to, it is going to take you back. You can buy liver or the cheaper cuts of steak that are very, very affordable.”
Kennedy used his official government Twitter account to show his utter lack of seriousness by using AI to promote a fake RFK Jr. action figure.
Fears that Kennedy may disband the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) which makes evidence-based recommendations on preventive healthcare services heightened this month when a third consecutive meeting was cancelled. The task force typically meets three times a year but hasn’t convened since March of 2025.
RELATED from STAT: As controversial decisions mount, FDA shuns public advisory meetings
Other Trump Administration News
Vinay Prasad, head of the FDA, was driven out last July, largely thanks to the efforts of Trump whisperer Laura Loomer, before being brought back less than two weeks later. Now he’s out again:
The Food and Drug Administration’s embattled vaccine chief, Dr. Vinay Prasad, is once again leaving the agency — the second time in less than a year that he’s departed after controversial decisions involving the review of vaccinations and specialty drugs for rare diseases. [...]
Prasad’s latest ouster follows a string of high-profile controversies involving the FDA’s review of vaccines, gene therapies and biotech drugs in which companies have criticized the agency for reversing itself, in some cases calling for new trials of products previously greenlighted by regulators.
CIDRAP reports on a new study showing that federal RNA vaccine funding cuts threaten decades of scientific progress:
Federal investment in RNA vaccine research has supported nearly three decades of scientific work spanning infectious diseases, cancer, and vaccine development, but recent and proposed funding cuts threaten to stall that progress, according to a cross-sectional study published yesterday in JAMA Network Open. [...]
“Our study showed that RNA technology could impact virtually every aspect of human health, from debilitating chronic diseases to conditions even thought incurable,” lead author Anirudha S. Chandrabhatla, MD, said in a UVA Health press release.
Americans express greater confidence in federal career scientists and independent medical groups than in the political leaders running U.S. health agencies, more likely to accept vaccine recommendations from the AAP than from the CDC.
MedPage Today: Tylenol Orders Down, Leucovorin Scripts Up After Trump’s Unproven Claims
CMS Administrator Dr. Oz says lack of action on prior authorization is the fault of doctors. “When I ask insurance companies about why they don’t accelerate prior authorization and do it instantaneously, the answer they give me -- and we’ve done this with all the big players -- is that doctors won’t share data,” Oz said at a conference sponsored by Accountable for Health.
CNN: Hospitals are making cuts after ‘big beautiful bill,’ fueling Democrats’ midterm attacks:
In northeast Georgia, a hospital closed its maternity ward. In rural New Hampshire, a community health center shuttered. And in Iowa, a Des Moines hospital system laid off dozens of employees and closed a clinic.
All these providers cited President Donald Trump’s sweeping domestic policy agenda package, which slashed more than $1 trillion in federal support for health care, as a factor in their decisions.
Other Health Care News
The new war in Iran has hospitals in the U.S. preparing for cyberattacks that could hamper their ability to operate.
New polling from Navigator shows that the GOP may be in serious trouble in the midterms due to their actions on health care:
The poll also shows that voters trust Democrats to lower health care costs over Republicans by 8 points.
We may be through with measles but it’s not through with us. There are currently almost 1,300 cases in the U.S. There were 2,258 in 2025. A total of 90 children have died from flu-related complications this season.