May 13, 2026 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | May 13, 2026
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito extended his stay of a Fifth Circuit Court’s mifepristone ruling until May 14, maintaining telehealth access of the abortion medication for now. The Trump administration declined to file a brief weighing in on the decision which is bizarre since the FDA is the actual defendant in the case and the FDA’s power to regulate prescription medicine is a key issue at stake.
Trying to save his beleaguered re-election campaign, Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy is calling for the FDA to speed up its “investigation” into the safety of mifepristone. “The FDA must stop dragging its feet and reinstate commonsense safeguards to protect women from abuse and coercion,” Cassidy said Tuesday.
The GOP is trying out a new way to ban abortion:
Republicans have introduced a national abortion ban, and they think Americans are too stupid to realize it.
Last week, Senate and House Republicans introduced legislation that would effectively ban abortion after 12 weeks by criminalizing dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedures—the most common way to end a pregnancy in the second trimester.
Kylie Cheung at ABORTION, EVERY DAY calls it another one of “the GOP’s endless innovations in torturing women”.
WUSF: OB-GYN says Florida’s six-week abortion ban has taken a toll on prenatal care
A new study says there is evidence of a 9.2% increase in pregnancy-related deaths due to abortion bans.
Health Care Affordability
New polling from Navigator shows that costs top the list of health care concerns for voters:
The poll also shows that voters place the blame for high costs mostly at the feet of insurance companies, Big Pharma, and federal lawmakers.
Because of this, AXIOS reports, Republicans are in big trouble heading into the midterms.
A new report shows that the nation’s biggest hospital chains are charging higher rates and making massive profits.
Trump Administration News
The New York Times: Hantavirus Response Shows How Trump Cuts Have Compromised U.S. Preparedness
RELATED from NBC News: U.S. departure from WHO could hinder hantavirus response
RELATED from Futurism: The CDC Fired All Its Cruise Ship Inspectors Before the Hantavirus Outbreak
The Hill reports that state health insurance exchanges are starting to feel the impacts of GOP cuts to insurance premium subsidies.
Trump appeared poised to fire FDA chief Marty Makary. Yesterday, he resigned.
The New York Times reports that, although RFK Jr. has toned down his public criticism of vaccines, inside his department, a sprawling research effort to examine his long-held theory that vaccines are helping to fuel an epidemic of chronic disease is a top priority.
Reuters: Kennedy’s health officials explored US ban of some widely used antidepressants
The Guardian explores the background of Nicole Saphier, Trump’s new nominee for surgeon general. Turns out she has “cast doubt on the childhood vaccine schedule, public health interventions for Covid, and healthcare for transgender children [and] she owns her own supplement company as well.”
That company is called DropRx where she sells what she calls “clean, thoughtfully crafted tinctures that support focus, calm, balance, and overall wellness, without unnecessary fillers or hype…inspired by both traditional herbal wisdom and modern scientific insight, and designed to fit seamlessly into real life.”
She is also anti-abortion.
Trump has appointed yet another vaccine skeptic to be RFK Jr.’s senior counselor for public health.
Other Health Care News
NOTUS: One in Five HealthCare.gov Enrollees Dropped Insurance Coverage This Year
RELATED from Charles Gaba: CMS admits over 3.0 MILLION have already lost ACA coverage so far this year
The chickens from last year’s GOP big beautiful tax giveaway law are coming home to roost:
At Martin Luther King (MLK), Jr. Community Hospital…which sits on a sprawling medical campus close to the predominantly Latino and Black neighborhood of Watts, is struggling for financial stability. [...]
MLK, like many other hospitals, is scrambling to secure outside financing to avert serious disruptions of medical services when the brunt of the policies contained in the federal law begins to hit early next year. The hospital’s leadership team projects a revenue hole of $80 million to $100 million annually for the foreseeable future. It would be MLK’s largest budget gap since it opened in 2015.
The largest safety net hospital in Minnesota is facing the same fate.
RELATED from CBS News: Several Pittsburgh-area hospitals could be at risk of closing, watchdog report claims
New polling from KFF shows that about four in ten voters consider themselves MAHA supporters. It turns out they are not fire-breathing anti-vaxers or Trump/RFK Jr. supporters.
It also turns out their biggest concern is the cost of health care:
Big news out of Oregon on the corporate control of medicine:
A bitter courtroom battle that put corporate control of medicine under an unforgiving spotlight in Oregon ended in a tentative settlement Wednesday…The case, brought by a local emergency physicians group against PeaceHealth, provided the first major test of Oregon’s toughest‑in‑the‑nation law banning corporations from exerting authority over a physician’s medical judgment and clinical practices.
RELATED op-ed from Committee Advocate Sonja Halvorson in MedPage Today: Get Your Hands Off My Patients!