KFF Health News’ ‘What the Health?’: Bill with billions in health program cuts passes House

The host

Julie Rovner KFF Health News @jrovner @julierovner.bsky.social

Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KFF Health News' weekly health policy news podcast, "What the Health?" A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book "Health Care Politics and Policy A to Z," now in its third edition.

With only a single vote to spare, the House passed a controversial budget bill that includes billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy, along with billions of dollars of cuts to Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the food stamp program — most of which will affect those at the lower end of the income scale. But the bill faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released a report from his commission to "Make America Healthy Again" that described threats to the health of the American public — but notably included nothing on threats from tobacco, gun violence, or a lack of health insurance.

This week's panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health News, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, and Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico.

Panelists

• Anna Edney Bloomberg News @annaedney @annaedney.bsky.social
• Sarah Karlin-Smith Pink Sheet @SarahKarlin @sarahkarlin-smith.bsky.social
• Alice Miranda Ollstein Politico @AliceOllstein @alicemiranda.bsky.social 

Among the takeaways from this week's episode:

• House Republicans passed their "big, beautiful" bill 215-214 this week, with one Republican critic voting present. But the Senate may have its own "big, beautiful" rewrite. Some conservative senators who worry about federal debt are concerned that the bill is not fully paid for and would add to the budget deficit. Others, including some red-state Republicans, say the bill's cuts to Medicaid and food assistance go too far and would hurt low-income Americans. The bill's cuts would represent the biggest reductions to Medicaid in the program's 60-year history.
• Many of the bill's Medicaid cuts would come from adding work requirements. Most people receiving Medicaid already work, but such requirements in Arkansas and Georgia showed that people often lose coverage under these rules because they have trouble documenting their work hours, including because of technological problems. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated an earlier version of the bill would reduce the number of people with Medicaid by at least 8.6 million over a decade. The requirements also could add a burden for employers. The bill's work requirements are relatively broad and would affect people who are 19 to 64 years old. 
• People whose Medicaid coverage is canceled also would no longer qualify for ACA subsidies for marketplace plans. Medicare also would be affected, because the bill would be expected to trigger an across-the-board sequestration cut.
• The bill also would impact abortion by effectively banning it in ACA marketplace plans, which would disrupt a compromise struck in the 2010 law. And the bill would block funding for Planned Parenthood in Medicaid, although that federal money is used for other care such as cancer screenings, not abortions. In the past, the Senate parliamentarian has said that kind of provision is not allowed under budget rules, but some Republicans want to take the unusual step of overruling the parliamentarian.
• This week, FDA leaders released covid-19 vaccine recommendations in a medical journal. They plan to limit future access to the vaccines to people 65 and older and others who are at high risk of serious illness if infected, and they want to require manufacturers to do further clinical trials to show whether the vaccines benefit healthy younger people. There are questions about whether this is legal, which products would be affected, when this would take effect, and whether it's ethical to require these studies. 
• HHS released a report on chronic disease starting in childhood. The report doesn't include many new findings but is noteworthy in part because of what it doesn't discuss — gun violence, the leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States; tobacco; the lack of health insurance coverage; and socioeconomic factors that affect access to healthy food.

Also this week, Rovner interviews University of California-Davis School of Law professor and abortion historian Mary Ziegler about her new book on the past and future of the "personhood" movement aimed at granting legal rights to fetuses and embryos.

Plus, for "extra credit," the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week they think you should read, too:

Julie Rovner: The Washington Post's "White House Officials Wanted To Put Federal Workers 'in Trauma.' It's Working," by William Wan and Hannah Natanson.

Alice Miranda Ollstein: NPR's "Diseases Are Spreading. The CDC Isn't Warning the Public Like It Was Months Ago," by Chiara Eisner.

Anna Edney: Bloomberg News' "The Potential Cancer, Health Risks Lurking in One Popular OTC Drug," by Anna Edney.

Sarah Karlin-Smith: The Farmingdale Observer's "Scientists Have Been Studying Remote Work for Four Years and Have Reached a Very Clear Conclusion: 'Working From Home Makes Us Happier,'" by Bob Rubila.

Also mentioned in this week's podcast:

• The New York Times' "As Congress Debates Cutting Medicaid, a Major Study Shows It Saves Lives," by Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz.
• NBC News' "Georgia Mother Says She Is Being Forced To Keep Brain-Dead Pregnant Daughter Alive Under Abortion Ban Law," by Minyvonne Burke.
• The Washington Post's "Trump and GOP's Tax Bill Would Force Cuts to Medicare, CBO Says," by Jacob Bogage and Abha Bhattarai.
• The New England Journal of Medicine's "An Evidence-Based Approach to Covid-19 Vaccination," by Vinay Prasad and Martin A. Makary.

Credits

• Francis Ying Audio producer
• Rebecca Adams Editor