September 10, 2025 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | September 10, 2025
The Committee in the News
Committee Executive Director Dr. Rob Davidson was interviewed by Lincoln Square’s Susan J. Demas for a Substack titled, “RFK Jr. Wants to Make COVID Great Again.” Dr. Rob was also interviewed on SiriusXM Urban View’s The Lurie Daniel Favors Show as well as The Thom Hartmann Show on SiriusXM.
This past week, the Committee announced its endorsement in Minnesota’s House District 34B for the upcoming special election. The Committee is endorsing Xp Lee based on his response to a questionnaire that reflects his commitment to health care issues.
Ahead of RFK Jr.’s appearance before the Senate Finance Committee (see more below), the Committee drove a mobile billboard around Capitol hill to be held accountable:
On Sept. 9, Committee physicians turned out at a “Vaccines Work" press conference hosted by Senator Bernie Sanders:
Trump Administration News
RFK Jr. Senate Hearing
Last week, RFK Jr. appeared before the Senate Finance Committee where he faced aggressive questioning about the turmoil he has created at the CDC, in particular his decision to fire Director Susan Monarez, his pick for the post who had just been confirmed one month earlier. “We are the sickest country in the world. That’s why we have to fire people at the CDC. They did not do their job,” Kennedy told the Senators.
Kennedy called Monarez a liar for saying she was fired because she did not “preapprove the recommendations of a vaccine advisory panel newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric.”
Prior to the hearing, Ranking Member Sen. Ron Wyden asked that, due to Kennedy’s history of lying, he be sworn in. Chair Mike Crapo declined. Wyden was right: MedPage Today reports that Kennedy “repeatedly cited inaccurate numbers and gave evasive responses to simple queries from lawmakers during a Senate hearing.” The AP has MORE.
Kennedy also claimed that rural hospitals are getting far more money than ever. Sen. Bernie Sanders refuted the blatant lie, saying, “You know why? Because you're cutting $150 billion for rural hospitals. You're putting $50 billion back.”
Kennedy seemed conflicted on mRNA vaccines. First, he said that he believes that Trump should get a Nobel Prize for Operation Warp Speed that developed mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Then he said that mRNA vaccines “cause serious harm, including death, especially among young people.”
More about the hearing HERE.
Ahead of Kennedy's committee hearing, Democratic Senators Wyden and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) released a report outlining Kennedy’s abject failure as the head of HHS.
The Washington Post: Doubts about RFK Jr. grow for some Republicans
Other News
Want to learn how the turmoil at the CDC is affecting the people who work there? Check out a special episode of the Paging America podcast where Dr. Rob and Miles Baker talk to AFGE Local Local 2883 president Yolanda Jacobs HERE.
Kennedy is poised to name seven new members to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP.) MedPage Today dug into the new members’ backgrounds and found that most of them have supported controversial positions about vaccines.
The Washington Post: Prominent critic of RFK Jr. blocked from FDA vaccine committee
While many people see this year’s measles outbreak as proof that Kennedy and his anti-vaxx rhetoric are making America less healthy, he took to The Wall Street Journal to claim just the opposite. His claim flies in the face of what Texas officials actually experienced.
After promising to reveal “what has caused the autism epidemic” by September, Kennedy plans to announce that the use of acetaminophen (Tylenol) by pregnant people is potentially linked to autism, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal.
In response, Dr. Alycia Halladay, Chief Science Officer at the Autism Science Foundation released a statement saying, “It is disingenuous and misleading to boil autism’s causes down to one simple thing. We know that autism is incredibly complicated, and we need to move away from studies that simplify it down to one exposure without any other considerations.”
You can watch the response from Dr. Kristin Lyerly, Committee Board Chair and founding member of the Committee’s Reproductive Freedom Taskforce, HERE.
The New York Times: F.D.A. Official Overruled Scientists on Wide Access to Covid Shots
In an effort to be seen dealing with an impending loss of ACA health insurance subsidies, the Trump administration is making access to so-called “junk plans” easier. These “catastrophic health coverage” plans are inexpensive but often have astronomical deductibles.
Evangelical Christians who supported Trump in 2024 are now having buyers remorse.
STAT: Major report that tied moderate drinking to disease won’t be released, researchers say. Apparently reducing alcohol consumption is not part of the MAHA agenda.
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
During his Senate Finance Committee hearing last week, RFK Jr. claimed that the Biden administration had “actually twisted the data to bury one of the safety signals, a very high safety signal” about mifepristone, the primary pill used in medication abortions. Some worry this will be used as evidence to roll back access to the drug.
Texas legislators have passed a bill to outlaw mailing abortion pills into the state. It goes much farther than that, however:
Plaintiffs related to the “unborn child” can receive $100,000 in damages through lawsuits filed against abortion providers. People with no connection to the pregnancy can receive $10,000 if they file suit; the remaining $90,000 would be donated to a charity, though the bill doesn’t specify which.
The New York Times: States Heading Toward Constitutional Showdown Over Abortion Shield Laws
Some good news from Minnesota:
A lawsuit seeking to nullify abortion protections in Minnesota has been dismissed after a federal judge ruled that the suit lacked standing… Last year, the Women's Life Care Center and National Institute of Family and Life Advocates claimed that the state’s abortion laws don’t fully inform women about abortion, and that the policies do away with parental rights.
And some bad news from South Carolina (emphasis added):
South Carolina Republicans are reviving their push for a total abortion ban—scheduling an October 1 hearing for SB 323, the ‘Unborn Child Protection Act.’ [...]
If passed, SB 323 would ban all abortion, stripping away exceptions for rape, incest, and fatal fetal abnormalities. Women who end their pregnancies could be charged with murder and subject to the death penalty. [...]
[T]he legislation starts the ball rolling to ban contraception by claiming that emergency contraception, IUDs, etc aren’t really birth control.
Other Health Care News
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, a member of the anti-vaxx group America’s Frontline Doctors, held a press conference this week where he announced that the state is moving to “end all vaccine mandates” which he compared to “slavery.”
One expert predicts that “Florida’s going to become a hotbed of transmission.”
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union with Jake Tapper”, Ladapo was asked if he and his staff had done an analysis or projection of how many more kids would get one of the preventable diseases vaccines are targeted against. “Absolutely not,” Ladapo replied. “It’s an issue of right and wrong… We don’t need to do any projections. We handle outbreaks all the time, so there’s nothing special that we would need to do.”
Meanwhile, other states are going in the opposite direction:
Colorado issued orders allowing people to get a COVID vaccination this year without a prescription.
Pennsylvania’s Board of Pharmacy has voted to revise its rules to allow pharmacists to follow the vaccine recommendations of medical authorities other than the CDC.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order to authorize pharmacists to provide the vaccine to almost anyone who wants it without a prescription.
In Massachusetts, the Department of Public Health issued an order last week to ensure that anyone in Massachusetts over the age of 5 can get a COVID-19 booster shot despite federal limitations. The state will also require insurers to pay for the shots.
California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii have formed a west coast public health alliance they say will provide “evidence-based immunization guidance” rooted in “safety, efficacy, and transparency” to ensure residents receive “credible information free from political interference,” according to a statement from California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania have formed a similar alliance on the east coast because, as Boston University School of Public History Professor Matt Motta puts it, they “simply can't trust the recommendations coming from the federal government anymore.” Former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky agrees.
Meanwhile, Dr. Pamela Rockwell, a clinical professor of family medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School who served seven years on ACIP, the independent panel of vaccine experts, is teaming up with other physicians to form a coalition that will essentially be a “shadow CDC”.
In an effort to put pressure on his Republican colleagues to extend the ACA subsidies soon set to expire, Sen. Chuck Schumer has sent a letter to ACA insurers, asking about the impact of Congress failing to extend them. In other news, POLITICO reports that 10 House Republicans have legislation to extend them.
A new survey of 1,700 companies conducted by Mercer shows that employers are anticipating the sharpest increases in medical costs in about 15 years.
A San Francisco woman turned the tables andused AI to successfully appeal her health insurance claim denial using a free platform utilizing AI to fight against denied claims.