Blog | 6/27/2025

Trump Administration Healthcare News: June 27, 2025

Health Advances weekly healthcare tracker focused on top level government administration news.

NOTE: All words/analysis are those from the source noted, opinions are those of the original authors and not reflective of Health Advances in general nor any individual. All sources are non-confidential and in the public domain (but some may be behind paywalls).

This issue reflects news as of 11 AM on June 26, 2025. The details and broad themes may have changed.

KEY GLOBAL HEALTH NEWS

US to stop financial support of global vaccine alliance Gavi, health secretary says

  • The U.S. will no longer contribute funding to Gavi, a global alliance that helps buy vaccines for the world's poorest children, because it ignores safety, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Wednesday, without providing evidence.
  • In a video statement seen by Reuters and shown at a Gavi fundraising event in Brussels, Kennedy - a long-time vaccine skeptic - also accused Gavi of making questionable recommendations around COVID-19 vaccines, and raised concerns about the DTPw (diphtheria-tetanus-whole cell pertussis) vaccine.
  • "I call on Gavi today to re-earn the public trust, and to justify the $8 billion that America has provided in funding since 2001," Kennedy said in the video, saying Gavi should consider all available science.
  • "Until that happens, the United States won't contribute more," he said.
  • The Trump administration has previously indicated that it planned to cut its funding for Gavi, around $300 million annually, as part of a wider pullback from international aid.
  • https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-stop-financial-support-global-vaccine-alliance-gavi-says-health-secretary-2025-06-25/

Will Gates and other funders save massive public health database at risk from Trump cuts?

  • The United Nations, governments and aid agencies are scrambling to save one of the world’s largest public-health databases from extinction. In February, the US government cut all funding for the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) programme, which collects and publishes data on health, nutrition and gender equality in more than 90 countries.
  • Now, a task force has been established by the UN Statistical Commission, the world's body that sets standards for statistics. The task force, which includes representatives from national governments, UN agencies and international funders, is assessing how access to the database can continue, along with finding alternative funding sources.
  • Large funders, including the World Bank, headquartered in Washington DC, and the Gates Foundation, based in Seattle, Washington, are involved. A Gates Foundation spokesperson confirmed that funders are searching for ways to keep the DHS going for at least the next three years. They said the foundation regards the DHS as a “public good”.
  • The taskforce is also grappling with how to clarify who owns the data, which will influence whether or how other funders will get involved. USAID subcontracted the surveys programme to ICF International, a private consulting company based in Reston, Virginia.
  • ICF International has not publicly disclosed its plans for the database.
  • https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01945-9

KEY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT NEWS

Senate GOP dealt major blow on Medicaid cuts in megabill

Mehmet Oz: Insurers' prior auth pledge 'an opportunity for the industry to show itself'

  • Top officials in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are touting a multipronged effort from major payers to reform the oft-criticized prior authorization process.
  • Mehmet Oz, M.D., administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), said during a press conference Monday that the prior auth pledge is just the first step in a broader push. Oz and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. met with major payers earlier in the day to discuss the commitments.
  • The roundtable included representatives from Aetna, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, Centene, Cigna, Elevance Health, GuideWell, Highmark Health, Humana, Kaiser Permanente and UnitedHealthcare as well as from AHIP and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.
  • He said that the executives present during the meeting made clear they supported prior authorization reform "to restore common sense to the process."
  • Oz also emphasized that the pledge is not a bill or a regulation.
  • "This is an opportunity for the industry to show itself. Participation is voluntary, but by the fact that three-quarters of the patients in the country are already covered by participants in this pledge, it's a good start, and the response has been overwhelming, gratifyingly so," Oz said.
  • Press: https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/regulatory/oz-insurers-prior-auth-pledge-opportunity-industry-show-itself

Kennedy's US vaccine panel breaks norms, plans to review immunization schedule

  • U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s newly reconstituted vaccine advisory panel said during its first meeting on Wednesday that it would study the schedule of childhood and adolescent immunizations and review the use of older vaccines.
  • The influential American Academy of Pediatrics, which typically sends a non-voting representative to the meeting and takes part in work groups, boycotted the meeting in protest, saying it would publish its own evidence-based childhood vaccine schedule.
  • One of its newly appointed members, Dr. Michael Ross, unexpectedly withdrew from the panel, further fueling concerns about the internal dynamics of the reshaped group.
  • The panel will review the total number of vaccines U.S. children and adolescents receive, which he said exceeds those given to children in other developed nations.
  • The group will also evaluate individual vaccines as well as the cumulative effect of the recommended vaccine schedule.
  • Press: https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/kennedys-us-vaccine-panel-set-break-norms-meant-ensure-sound-policy-2025-06-25/
  • Additional press: https://www.statnews.com/2025/06/25/cdc-vaccines-advisory-committee-meeting-day-1   (subscription required for full text)

Acting CDER Head Becomes Latest in String of FDA Leaders to Leave Agency

  • Jacqueline Corrigan-Curay, who stepped into the role as the agency’s top drug regulator in January, is departing in July, according to an email sent to agency staff.
  • Corrigan-Curay, formerly a practicing internist, has been at the FDA for about nine years, first as the director of CDER’s Office of Medical Policy before moving to become the principal deputy director at CDER itself.
  • She took up the acting director position when the previous chief, Patricia Cavazzoni, left on January 18, just two days before Donald Trump’s second term in office started.
  • Corrigan-Curay said in her email to FDA staffers that she would stay on “for several more weeks to ensure a smooth transition,” Endpoints reported. She also wrote that the decision to leave had been “incredibly challenging” due to her colleagues’ “unwavering support, especially during recent challenging times.”
  • Corrigan-Curay had a previous eight year stint at the NIH, serving in a variety of positions culminating in becoming director of the agency’s Office of Biotechnology Activities.
  • https://www.biospace.com/fda/acting-cder-head-becomes-latest-in-string-of-fda-leaders-to-leave-agency

States anxiously wait to find out if cancer tracking and prevention funding from CDC will be renewed

  • State workers who for decades have been pivotal in identifying U.S. cancer trends, curbing new cases, and improving screening fear their federally funded programs could be deeply cut or eliminated altogether come July.
  • By next week, state and local programs that work on cancer are supposed to find out if their annual allocations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be renewed. Typically, they would’ve heard by now. But several officials who run those registries told STAT they are bracing for cuts, given that Health and Human Services Department budget proposals thus far reflect a turn away from chronic disease programs at the CDC — and the possible elimination of longstanding cancer prevention work.
  • The pot of money, which was appropriated by Congress for work through September, also covers national programs that offer breast and cervical cancer screening and treatment for poor Americans, and funds cancer control efforts at the state level. Advocates describe a dire situation if the funding is killed.
  • https://www.statnews.com/2025/06/26/cdc-cuts-threaten-cancer-screening-state-level-tracking-for-emerging-threats/   (subscription required for full text)

FDA: If used for document libraries, Elsa cannot hallucinate; unlikely to be connected to the Internet

  • The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans to make significant updates to its recently launched artificial intelligence (AI) tool Elsa within the next month and has taken critical steps to ensure that it does not hallucinate like other AI tools, agency officials said.
  • FDA launched Elsa earlier in June to mixed reviews from agency staff.
  • FDA Chief AI Officer Jeremy Walsh said that the agency is quickly updating Elsa and plans to add capabilities within the next 30 days. Beyond that, the agency is also working to add new features.
  • Walsh emphasized that FDA has taken measures to prevent Elsa from hallucinating.
  • "There are certain parts of the system the way it's designed so that when you're working on documents it forces citations,” said Walsh. “It can't hallucinate, it's not allowed to come up with figments of its imagination."
  • He said FDA has provided training, guidance, and pop-up messaging to ensure that agency staff verify the information they get from Elsa. He noted that when staff are working on documents, the system provides citations so that staff can validate Elsa’s output.
  • https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2025/6/fda-says-elsa-can-t-hallucinate,-unlikely-to-ever

Trump admin cuts contracts with scientific publishing giant

  • The Trump administration has terminated millions worth of funding for Springer Nature, a German-owned scientific publishing giant that has long received payments for subscriptions from National Institutes of Health and other agencies, Axios has learned.
  • Why it matters: President Trump and MAGA have made a push to target academic institutions as well as research organizations perceived to be the source of so-called "woke" ideology, including DEI and gender-affirming care policies, by withholding federal funding and in some cases initiating legal action.
  • State of play: Earlier this year, the Justice Department sent a letter to a Springer publication questioning its editorial practices and accusing the publishing house of acting as a partisan in scientific debates, as well as wrongfully advocating for positions, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
  • Prior to the administrative action, Donald Trump Jr. had tweeted "No more taxpayer money for woke publishers!" linking to a Breitbart story about possible cuts to government-funded subscriptions for scientific and medical journals.
  • About $20 million in grants covering subscriptions have been cut, with billions more being evaluated, according to the source.
  • Press: https://www.axios.com/2025/06/25/trump-cuts-contracts-scientific-publisher
  • White House press: https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/06/it-is-possible-to-support-science-and-hold-it-accountable-at-the-same-time/

KEY REVERSALS – RESCINDED ITEMS

Trump administration makes sweeping changes to ObamaCare, ends ‘Dreamer’ coverage

  • The Trump administration is shortening ObamaCare’s annual open enrollment period and ending the law’s coverage of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as children, according to a final rule.
  • According to the rule, the federal open enrollment period will run from Nov. 1 through Dec. 31. Currently, federal open enrollment ends Jan. 15.
  • States operating their own health insurance exchanges will have the flexibility to set their open enrollments, so long as they run no longer than nine weeks between the November and December dates.
  • In addition to the shortened enrollment period, the administration said it is ending ObamaCare coverage for immigrants who came into the U.S. illegally as children, also known as “Dreamers.”
  • The provision will undo a Biden-era rule that was estimated to allow 147,000 immigrants to enroll in coverage. A federal judge blocked the rule from being enforced in 19 states, and it is still being litigated.
  • Press: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5361480-trump-obamacare-dreamer-coverage-ends/
  • Rule: https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/2025-marketplace-integrity-and-affordability-final-rule

NIH halts grant terminations ‘effective immediately,’ email says

  • Days after a federal judge ordered the restoration of more than 1,000 biomedical research grants, the National Institutes of Health is halting further terminations of grants, an internal email shows.
  • Since President Trump’s inauguration in January, the nation’s largest biomedical research funder has terminated an unprecedented number of research grants. The email obtained by STAT does not state the reason for the decision, but it came a week after a federal judge in Boston ruled that some of the terminations were “void and illegal” — and just hours after the judge refused the administration’s request to pause his order.
  • The email, sent Tuesday afternoon by Michelle Bulls, director of the Office of Policy for Extramural Research Administration, suggests more grants were in the queue for termination. It reads: “Effective immediately, please do not terminate any additional grant projects. Please unrelease all grant projects that are in the cue to be terminated. Again, do not terminate any additional grant projects.”
  • https://www.statnews.com/2025/06/25/nih-halts-research-grant-terminations-email-shows/   (subscription required for full text)

Federal Court vacates 2024 HIPAA Reproductive Health Privacy Rule

  • U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas vacated nearly all of the 2024 amendments to the HIPAA Privacy Rule that created special protections for reproductive health care information, finding that HHS exceeded its statutory authority.
  • The court determined that the Reproductive Health Privacy Rule improperly limited state child abuse reporting laws, impermissibly redefined key statutory terms like "person" and "public health," and violated the "major questions doctrine" by regulating politically significant areas without clear congressional authorization.
  • As a result of the ruling, HIPAA covered entities and business associates must revisit and potentially revise policies, procedures, training programs, business associate agreements, and notices of privacy practices that were updated to comply with the now-vacated rule.
  • Despite the vacatur, the HIPAA Privacy Rule continues to protect reproductive health information, and enforcement actions for impermissible disclosures of such information remain possible under the existing HIPAA framework.
  • https://www.reedsmith.com/en/perspectives/2025/06/federal-court-vacates-2024-hipaa-reproductive-health-privacy-rule

KEY POLLS – SURVEYS - STUDIES

4 in 5 Americans support childhood vaccine requirements, poll finds

  • A poll released today shows that 79% of US adults support requiring children to be vaccinated against preventable infectious diseases like measles, mumps, and rubella to attend school, with even two thirds of Republicans and those who support the "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement agreeing with such measures.
  • The poll of 2,509 adults, conducted by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the de Beaumont Foundation, also found that, among the 21% who don't support school vaccine mandates, their reasoning focused more on parental choice than on safety concerns.
  • The poll was conducted from March 10 to March 31 among a representative sampling. It has a margin of error for the entire sample of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.
  • The poll found that 90% of Democrats, 68% of Republicans, and 66% of MAGA supporters agreed with the statement, "Parents should be required to have their children vaccinated against preventable diseases to attend school." Seventy-two percent of parents or guardians felt the same way.
  • Among the 79% who support routine childhood vaccine requirements, 90% cited vaccine effectiveness, and 87% noted family responsibilities to keep schools safe as major reasons.
  • Press: https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/childhood-vaccines/4-5-americans-support-childhood-vaccine-requirements-poll-finds
  • Poll: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/poll-amid-multi-state-measles-outbreak-79-of-americans-support-routine-childhood-vaccine-requirements/

KEY BIOPHARMA NEWS

Medicare drug spending will slow due to IRA price negotiations, CMS economists predict

CDC to hire former head of anti-vaccine group founded by RFK Jr.

  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is hiring Lyn Redwood, a nurse and the former head of a group critics have denounced as anti-vaccine, to work in its vaccine safety office, multiple CDC officials tell CBS News.
  • Redwood was the president of the group now called Children's Health Defense, which lists as its founder Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who now oversees the CDC as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
  • She is joining the CDC office responsible for overseeing most of the agency's work and data to probe potential safety risks from vaccines, including databases used by health officials to collect and analyze reports from the public and health care systems.
  • Redwood is expected to be hired as a special government employee, the CDC officials said, a status often afforded to advisers and other temporary experts brought on for specific projects or committees.
  • The CDC and Redwood did not respond to CBS News' requests for comment.
  • https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-vaccine-safety-office-hire-former-head-anti-vaccine-group-founded-rfk-jr/

KEY DIAGNOSTICS – LIFE SCIENCE RESEARCH NEWS

House Appropriations To FDA: Don’t Enforce LDT Rule, Expand OTC Diagnostics

KEY HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (HIT) NEWS

US Health Secretary Kennedy says HHS to launch campaign to encourage wearable devices

  • U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Tuesday that the Department of Health and Human Services plans to launch an advertising campaign to encourage Americans to adopt wearable devices, such as those that measure heart rate or blood glucose levels.
  • "We think that wearables are a key to the MAHA agenda, Making America Healthy Again ... my vision is that every American is wearing a wearable within four years," Kennedy said, speaking before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Health during a hearing on his department's 2026 budget request.
  • "It's a way of people can take control over their own health ... they can see what food is doing to their glucose levels, their heart rates and a number of other metrics as they eat it," he added.
  • Kennedy also described the campaign as "one of the biggest" in the agency's history.
  • https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-health-secretary-kennedy-says-hhs-launch-campaign-encourage-wearable-devices-2025-06-24

Digital health on the Hill: First hearing in 2025 obscured by looming cuts in reconciliation bill

  • Digital health companies testified to the House Ways and Means health subcommittee Wednesday morning about the benefits of using wearables and remote monitoring devices to track personal health data.
  • The discussion about healthcare technology was dwarfed by conversation about healthcare cuts in the reconciliation bill, which is moving through the Senate this week.
  • Democratic lawmakers resoundingly questioned why the panel was discussing technology to aid healthcare when 16 million Americans stand to lose coverage if the reconciliation bill passes, according to an estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.
  • At the hearing entitled “Health at Your Fingertips: Harnessing the Power of Digital Health Data,” representatives of WHOOP, a wearable digital health device company, CoachCare, a remote patient monitoring provider, and Epic Systems, a prominent electronic health record company, testified to lawmakers. 
  • Medicaid and ACA cuts in the reconciliation package would prevent millions of people from receiving healthcare and being able to afford consumer digital health devices, Corlette told lawmakers.
  • Press: https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/ai-and-machine-learning/congress-first-digital-health-hearing-obscured-looming-cuts-reconciliation
  • Hearing: https://waysandmeans.house.gov/event/health-subcommittee-hearing-on-health-at-your-fingertips-harnessing-the-power-of-digital-health-data/

As AI device market grows, FDA’s accounting goes silent

KEY MEDTECH NEWS

An Eye on CDRH: Regulating for a New Era of Medical Devices (FDA Podcast Transcript)

FDA blocks some Olympus medical devices from entering US

  • The Food and Drug Administration has blocked certain Olympus medical devices made in Japan from entering the U.S., citing safety concerns.
  • Among the affected devices are 58 models used for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures within the urinary tract, respiratory tract, abdomen and pelvis as well as devices that reprocess endoscopes.
  • The agency’s action, announced Tuesday, stems from issues the FDA uncovered when it inspected the company’s facilities in 2022.
  • https://www.modernhealthcare.com/medical-devices/mh-fda-olympus-medical-devices-us/   (subscription required for full text)  

KEY ACRONYMS

  • ACA = Affordable Care Act
  • AHIP = America's Health Insurance Plans
  • DHS = Demographic and Health Surveys
  • CDC = Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • CDER = Center for Drug Evaluation and Research
  • CMS = Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services
  • DEI = Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
  • FDA = Food and Drug Administration
  • GOP = Grand Old Party (Republicans)
  • HHS = Department of Health and Human Services
  • HIPAA: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
  • LDTs = Lab Developed Tests
  • MAGA = Make American Great Again
  • MAHA = Make America Healthy Again
  • NIH = National Institutes of Health
  • OTC = Over the Counter
  • UN = United Nations
  • USAID = U.S. Agency for International Development

 

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