ECONOMIC WELLNESS: Trump and Republican candidates next year expect health care policies, along with the national mood about jobs, U.S. growth and high prices, to sway voters in midterm contests.
Whether it's a controversial GOP proposal to cut $880 billion from federal Medicaid health coverage for the poor, or efforts to dodge provisions of the now-popular Affordable Care Act, or facts vs. myths about the safety of childhood vaccines — voters experience the economy in a thousand ways that impact their wallets, their sense of health and wellbeing and their confidence in the direction of the country.
Candidates in both major parties have been buffeted by health care politics during many election cycles.
The Hill: Potential Medicaid cuts risk worsening the Black maternal health crisis.
Republican proposals to slash federal funding for Medicaid, the health program for low-income Americans shared with states, is considered so politically risky, including in red states where Medicaid enrollment is high, such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Louisiana, that the program may dodge Congress's knife this summer.
Nearly half of Republicans said they want to expand, not cut Medicaid, according to a recent poll conducted by the University of Maryland. And that may be because the federal-state coverage is not an abstraction to many Americans who see Medicaid as a financial lifeline for low-income seniors, the disabled and even the working poor who cannot afford private health insurance.
"The public's staunch opposition to Medicaid cuts likely reflects the fact that most people have a connection to the program," according to independent health policy nonprofit KFF. More than half of adults, including a similar share of those living in rural areas, say they or a family member has received help from Medicaid at some point, including 4 in 10 Republicans (44 percent) and those who voted for Trump last year (45 percent), KFF found.
The Supreme Court today will hear arguments challenging a provision of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires private insurers to cover preventive health care screenings, medical tests and checkups at no additional cost to patients.
Experts say the court's ruling in the case Kennedy v. Braidwood Management could have sweeping consequences for affordable insurance access across the United States to prevent disease and death — not to mention lower costs for patients — through treatment techniques such as cancer screenings, mammograms, statins for heart disease and HIV prevention medications.
The Supreme Court is familiar with Obamacare's provisions, having upheld the constitutionality of the law twice. The GOP in Congress tried dozens of times to legislate the ACA into oblivion, but failed, including during Trump's first term. The law remains widely popular after 15 years.
The Trump administration and GOP lawmakers promised voters in 2024 that the party would lower the cost of prescription drugs, viewed by consumers as a significant economic concern.
At the same time, the Health and Human Service Department, led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has stoked uncertainty and confusion among Americans whose suspicions grew during the pandemic about vaccines and what many scientists worry are myths about alternatives.
The Hill: Autism community sounds alarms over "harmful" Kennedy comments.
Kennedy suggests autism can be cured and he believes, contradicting research, that there's an "environmental toxin" involved. He ordered a review of the "autism epidemic."
"External factors, environmental exposures," Kennedy said at a recent press conference. "That's where we're going to find the answer."
In the past, he suggested a link between autism and childhood inoculations, which experts have debunked as not supported in research.
The secretary has said that vaccination against childhood measles, viewed for decades by medical professionals as the best way to prevent the disease and possible death, is "effective," but he also told CBS News this month that the measles vaccine was "not safety tested."
▪ The Boston Globe: The rising cost of prescription drugs is squeezing patients, health plans and employers.
▪ The Wall Street Journal: The administration wants to pull another $1 billion in federal funds from Harvard University, money that supports health research.
▪ CBS News: Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) accused Trump during a Sunday interview of "giving away intellectual assets" while punishing major universities by withholding federal research funding.
Last year's election results offered clues about voters' focus on health policy as a subset of their rising economic angst, according to a KFF assessment of the role those issues played in Trump's victory. "Voters … said they were worried about being able to afford many household expenses, including the cost of health care," the research organization wrote.
SIGNAL Part II: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about forthcoming strikes in Yemen on March 15 in a private Signal group chat that included his wife, who is a former Fox News producer; his brother, a federal employee; and his personal lawyer, The New York Times reported Sunday. The secretary shared flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets targeting the Houthis in Yemen — essentially the same attack plans that he shared on a separate Signal chat, which included a journalist on March 15. The administration has asserted the initial conversations between officials on Signal disclosed by The Atlantic were not classified. Several Democrats in Congress reacted Sunday to argue that Hegseth should no longer stay in his job.
STATE'S SHRINKING FOOTPRINT IN AFRICA: Trump is soon expected to sign an executive order, which is currently in draft form and was obtained by The New York Times, to impose "a disciplined reorganization" of the State Department and "streamline mission delivery" while cutting "waste, fraud and abuse." Among the proposed changes: elimination of nearly all operations in Africa, closure of embassies and consulates on that continent, and elimination of State's headquarter offices that deal with climate change, refugee issues, democracy promotion and human rights. The department is supposed to make the changes by Oct. 1.
EASIER TO FIRE: The administration is expected on Wednesday to move to reclassify civil service employees to make them easier to fire by removing federal job protections for an estimated 50,000 workers. The administration will issue a proposed rule, but the regulations will not officially convert any federal positions until Trump issues an executive order after the finalization of a rulemaking, as published in the Federal Register. The anticipated move will be the latest to strip away labor protections under what Trump in his first term called Schedule F, now to be classified as Schedule Policy/Career. The president on Friday explained on social media that he's making the change to "root out corruption" and improve "accountability" in the federal workforce.
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