September 24, 2025 – The Week in Health Care News
Your digest on the happenings in health care this week | September 24, 2025
The Committee in the News
Following last week’s Senate HELP Committee hearing (see below), Committee Executive Director Dr. Rob Davidson appeared on MSNBC’s Chris Jansing Reports on Sept. 17 to respond to what transpired.
Dr. Rob also went on The Mark Thompson Show on Sept. 19.
Committee-endorsed Xp Lee won his special election bid for Minnesota’s House District 34B seat. His election will return the House to a 67-67 tie after he is sworn in. The seat was formerly held by former House Speaker Melissa Hortman who was assassinated earlier this year.
Committee physicians participated in two rallies as part of a “Stop MAGA Healthcare Cuts” tour. On Sept. 17, Committee Advocate Dr. Susan Miller spoke in Richmond. On Sept. 19, Committee Advocates Drs. Susan Miller, Henry Rozycki, and Laurence Clark spoke in Chesterfield.
Trump Administration News
Last Wednesday, former CDC Director Susan Monarez and former CDC chief medical officer Debra Houry appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) to discuss their firing/resignations from the CDC.
Monarez told the Committee she was fired for “holding the line on scientific integrity” and refusing to concede to demands from Kennedy to preapprove vaccine recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which he has stacked with anti-vaccine members.
Warning the HELP Committee that ACIP may change the childhood vaccine schedules at their forthcoming meeting, Monarez said that told Kennedy she would be open to changing the schedules “if the evidence or science was supportive.” Kennedy told her that there was no science or evidence associated with them. Apparently he plans to make these dramatic changes based only on subjective feelings.
You can watch Dr. Rob and Committee Chief of Staff Miles Baker respond to some of the more shocking moments during the hearing on our Substack.
On Thursday and Friday last week, Kennedy’s newly-stocked ACIP met for the first time and the public meeting was nothing short of a colossal clown show. They met to consider their recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines, MMRV vaccine, the childhood vaccine schedule, and the hepatitis B vaccine.
The first day they voted one way on two vaccines. The next day, they changed their minds.
Kulldorff acknowledged their inexperience – what many would call being unqualified – saying, “We are rookies,” on the opening of the second day. Former CDC chief medical officer Dr. Debra Houry later pointed out that, “The people deciding vaccine policy for the United States should not be rookies. That was beyond disappointing and disheartening.”
The panel also took on COVID-19 vaccines and the result was a confusing bag of mixed messages.
Fierce Pharma has a full run-down of the two-day debacle HERE.
On Monday, surrounded by RFK Jr., Dr. Oz, and others, Trump held a press conference where he said there is a connection between the use of Tylenol (acetaminophen) and autism.
The FDA announced that it would change leucovorin’s label to reflect potential benefits in reducing autism symptoms.
STAT has a full rundown of the stunning press conference.
You can watch Committee Board Chair Dr. Kristin Lyerly responding to Trump’s announcement during an appearance on Scripps News Morning Rush HERE.
RELATED from The Wall Street Journal: Kenvue Braces for Wave of New Lawsuits Over Tylenol’s Potential Link to Autism
Meanwhile, both the European Medicines Agency and the U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said that taking acetaminophen during pregnancy remains safe and no evidence shows it causes autism in children.
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution reports that, on behalf of the Trump administration, Dr. Oz is out lying about the Trump budget bill’s impact on rural hospitals. He says the $50 billion “Rural Health Transformation Fund” is an increase when, in fact, it is a cut of $137 billion to rural Medicaid health spending.
FLASHBACK: RFK Jr. told the same lie at his Senate hearing recently.
The results of that defunding is already being felt in places like Oregon.
AXIOS reports that new changes to Medicaid due to the Trump budget bill will create huge burdens for states. Minnesota estimates the paperwork related to the work reporting requirements alone will cost its local, state and tribal governments $160 million. As a precautionary tale, Georgia spends twice as much on administrative costs for their Medicaid program as they do on health care, thanks to their work requirement.
The Washington Post: Bill to avert government shutdown stalls in Senate as Democrats demand talks. Dems are pushing hard to save the ACA premium subsidies.
Related from AXIOS: GOP considers changing and extending ACA subsidies.
Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, said in a Washington Post article that, “The cumulative effect of the health care measures in the [Trump budget] bill — and the expiration of the enhanced [ACA] tax credits — is that more than half of the insurance gains made under the ACA will be wiped out.”
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that extending the subsidies will cost $350 billion and will increase the number of insured Americans by 3.8 million over the next ten years.
Business Standard runs down how the health care sector may be negatively impacted by Trump’s new $100K price tag on H-1B visas. Bloomberg reports that physicians and medical residents may be exempted from the fee but AXIOS was unable to confirm this with Trump administration officials.
The New York Times: Trump Is Shutting Down the War On Cancer
Under the guise of “fostering self-reliance”, the Trump administration is winding down global health aid. They’re calling it the “America First Global Health Strategy.”
Reuters reports that a federal appeals court has ruled that the Trump administration cannot proceed with the dismantling of HHS.
Over 1,400 current and former federal employees have signed a letter condemning the Trump administration for executive overreach and urging Congress to step in.
STAT reports that Trump’s Surgeon general nominee Casey Means has lucrative financial ties to supplement industry. Means signed an ethics agreement that says that she will not “acquire any direct financial interest in entities listed on the Food and Drug Administration’s prohibited holdings list.” However, the supplements industry is not regulated by the FDA so she can continue to cash their checks.
Reproductive Rights/Attacks on Medication Abortion
ABC News: Texas Has a New Abortion Pill Law, but One Provider Plans to Keep Sending Them There
Angel Foster, MD, who runs Massachusetts-based The MAP, which prescribes the regimen of pills to women in every state, said her organization will keep sending pills to women in Texas, as it has about 10,000 times in the past 2 years.
“We really don’t change things unless we’re legally required to,” she said.
Dr. Foster told The Guardian, “Our mantra as a practice is: ‘No anticipatory obedience’.”
WUSF: Florida seeks to join federal lawsuit challenging abortion pill mifepristone
Amalia Luxardo, CEO of the Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network, writes in the South Carolina Daily Gazette that Senate Bill 323 is “the most extreme abortion ban [the] state has ever faced and among the harshest in the nation.” Ina Seethaler at Rewire says the bill “would outlaw the procedure entirely, including in cases of rape and incest.”
A Missouri judge has ordered a new ballot summary for a proposal to repeal most of a 2024 abortion rights amendment because it “fails to adequately alert voters that the proposed constitutional amendment would eliminate [the 2024 abortion rights amendment], which voters recently approved.” In fact, as Jessica Valenti writes at ABORTION, EVERY DAY, it currently reads like a pro-choice amendment.
Washington State Standard: WA will replace Planned Parenthood’s lost Medicaid funding with state dollars
Other Health Care News
A new Harris Poll survey shows that 55% of healthcare employees are actively looking for a new job and only a third feel very valued by their current employer or very loyal to them.
Recent Navigator polling helps explain why the so-called “MAHA agenda” is gaining some traction. See the results HERE. The Annenberg Public Policy Center released a poll with similar results HERE.
The New York Times: Western States Issue Their Own Vaccine Recommendations to Counter Kennedy
CIDRAP reports that AHIP (formerly America’s Health Insurance Plans) will cover COVID-19 vaccinations, even if ACIP decides to issue guidance that limits who should get them.
Fierce Healthcare: Democrats introduce bill to bar payers from owning certain clinics.
Newsweek: ER Deaths Surged in US Hospitals Taken Over by Private Equity, Study Finds