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Single Payer News 2025

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21 MAR 2025

After focusing on the threat to Medicaid, I’m going to try to pull back and offer a bird’s-eye view of some broader trends. Kindly bear with me!

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Listen here: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-fvtrb-1858861

Antisemitism in America: A Warning by “Chuck” Schumer

Yes, Schumer, the nation’s top Democrat, is worried and has to warn us about something. But it’s not Donald Trump or Elon Musk or their wholesale dismantling of the U.S. government. Instead, it’s the dire threat to the nation of “anti-Semitism,” a.k.a. insufficient loyalty to Israel. No wonder Schumer waved through the radical budget plan containing broad new powers for the Muskrats. After all, he had to concentrate on his book tour in the company of gay Bronxite Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-Tel Aviv).

Frank Thorp V, Sahil Kapur & Ryan Nobles, “Chuck Schumer postpones book events due to ‘security concerns’ amid Democratic backlash over shutdown fight,” NBC News, Mar 17, 2025 https://bit.ly/4bXN2wa

To Schumer’s apparent surprise, people are so furious at him that he had to squash his book tour. Schumer and nine other Senate Democratics (including fellow NYer Gillibrand) voted to advance a 6-month funding bill Friday that Republicans could not push through on their own. The way is now cleared for further destruction of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and anything else Trump’s gazillionaires don’t fancy. But count on Chuck to keep “fighting for” us—if he’s not in Guantánamo!

Jeff Stein, “Funding bill grants Trump, Musk more control over federal spending,” Washington Post, Mar 14, 2025 https://bit.ly/41XbHfS

“Many congressional Democrats had hoped to use the deadline over government funding to force Republicans to reverse—or at least limit—the Trump administration’s unilateral cuts.” Schumer unilaterally disarmed them. The usual appropriations process includes great specificity on how money should be spent. But under the budget measure passed last week, the administration can “repurpose funds” from one program to another at will. Trump/Musk will now have even more discretion over what money is spent, not spent, blocked, canceled, held up, or redirected.

“Trump’s War on Healthcare: Public Health Watch,” Protect Our Care, Mar 17, 2025 https://www.protectourcare.org/trumps-war-on-health-care-public-health-watch-2/

Here is a handy summary of the wreckage visited on everything health-related. Protect Our Care is a new outfit “aimed at practical and concrete steps in defense of public health and health policy during the second Trump Administration.” Impossible to keep up with everything, so aggregators are helpful.

Sarah Wetter & Lawrence O. Gostin, “Are President Trump’s executive orders on health legal?” MedPage Today, Mar 6, 2025 https://bit.ly/4kyjqtl

Courts may order Trump to reverse course on some of his radical acts. Will he obey? “Many of these orders and actions violate legal statutes—or even the Constitution. The Supreme Court has already ruled against President Trump on a key effort to dismantle global aid, and rulings against other orders could follow.” But how many divisions does the Supreme Court have?

O. Rose Broderick, “‘Deliberate trauma’: SAMHSA employees detail a federal agency in shambles,” STAT, Mar 12, 2025 https://bit.ly/4im2FA3

The Muskrats are particularly eager to crush the federal agency that sees substance abuse as a medical problem instead of a police matter. SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) lost 10% of its workforce during the “Valentine’s Day Massacre,” and the rest face a viciously hostile environment. We’ll be back to locking up drug users and hoping they kill themselves more quickly. Rural areas that voted heavily for Trump will be affected as six of the ten SAMHSA regional offices close. Key employees of the 988 national crisis hot-line (that has fielded 14 million calls) have quit or retired. Overdose deaths in the U.S. are still 80K per year.

Vittoria Elliott, “‘It’s a heist’: Real federal auditors are horrified by DOGE,” Wired, Mar 18, 2025 https://bit.ly/4kycY5L

While the Muskrats say they are “auditing” government, real auditors say they don’t have a clue. Audits normally take 6 to 18 months and involve interviewing staff in detail, pouring over financial records, and combing through data and reports. One auditor quoted says, “You can’t coherently audit something like the whole Social Security system in a week or two.” But you can pretend to and then rip the place apart based on your bogus findings. “None of them have any auditing background, none have any certifications, none have any clearances.” One of them is a 19-year-old high school graduate who goes by the online moniker “Big Balls.” These are the high-level administrators of our key government institutions with access to vast quantities of data.

Jeffrey Okoro, “I’m head of an NGO in Kenya. The shutoff of USAID support has been devastating,” STAT, Mar 15, 2025 https://bit.ly/3DMRAZU

“In an instant, more than 1,000 patients at my health care clinic outside Nairobi lost access to lifesaving HIV treatments. The consequences of the aid freeze on our communities will be vast.” PePFAR, which brought AIDS treatments to a dozen African countries, was instituted by George W. Bush to repair some of the reputational damage to the United States caused by the Iraq invasion. It worked to some extent. Now, we don’t care if people in other countries hate our guts.

Arthur Caplan & Lisa Kearns, “Who will volunteer for clinical trials now?” MedPage Today, Mar 12, 2025 https://bit.ly/3DSvOE3

“Can anyone trust the U.S. government when it comes to their future health? For participants in clinical trials, the answer is a hard no.” This is deadly for future research—including pharmaceutical research—by U.S. companies. Suddenly halting ongoing trials that involve promises to study subjects is not only unethical but fatal to future recruitment. “It forces researchers to abandon participants—a mortal sin in medical ethics—and puts trial volunteers at considerable physical risk.” The partial data gathered at the cost of millions is now worthless. About half of drug trials run by American companies take place in foreign countries because they’re much cheaper. Are these pharmaceutical gangsters going to emit even a peep of complaint?

Arielle Kane, “My firing represents the death of public service,” MedPage Today, Mar 7, 2025 https://bit.ly/41X1HU7

The author, summarily sacked from HHS in February, asks, “Who will want to serve in [public service] roles if they are continually vilified?” That includes military enlistments, by the way, even though soldiers are more flattered than scorned. “We now seem to revere money and internet fame more than the consistent, middle-class work of giving back to your country through civil service. Instead, the government will most likely shift more and more work to private contractors who will run programs like businesses.” And cost more.

Sharon Lerner, “Industry-backed bills would bar use of science behind many environmental protections,” MedPage Today, Mar 9, 2025 https://bit.ly/42dtT69

IRIS, the “Integrated Risk Information System,” was established in the early days of the EPA to enable scientists to look at chemicals in their real-world context, that is, as they’re actually used together instead of one by one. Republican lawmakers and industry lobbyists have always hated it. Now, they’re on the verge of getting their maximum wish: to finally prohibit the EPA from carrying out its mission. “If the act passes, companies could even use the law to fight the enforcement of environmental rules that have long been on the books that limit their toxic emissions.” This is on top of Trump’s plan to slash the agency’s budget by 65%. We’ll be back to operating from industry-funded toxic chemicals pseudoscience that says everything’s fine.

Jonel Aleccia, “RFK Jr. and influencers bash seed oils, baffling nutrition scientists,” Associated Press, Mar 8, 2025 https://bit.ly/43WhLaZ

RFK Jr has a screwy notion of how to use scientific evidence. He expresses extreme skepticism of things he doesn’t like and total loosey-goosey acceptance of things he does. He’s opening up a debate about seed oils—okay, fine—but immediately touts the superiority of rendered animal fat. What’s the evidence for that other than his fevered personal opinions? Seed oils are used in fried and ultra-processed foods, which have been linked to a host of health problems. But beef tallow is also processed. The RFK Jr era is shaping up to be even more crackpot than Trump I.

“RFK Jr. says federal vaccine advisers are beholden to industry. The evidence does not support him,” Science, Mar 7, 2025 https://bit.ly/4iohFgP

Here’s RFK Jr getting all meticulous about unhealthy influence over a panel where it probably doesn’t matter—vaccine advisories. Said one critic: “What RFK Jr. is doing has nothing to do with real undue influence by pharmaceutical companies. This is just him trying to stack the committee with people who are like-minded.” Okay, you hate vaccines, we get it.

John Wilkerson, “CDC’s reported study on vaccines and autism could test RFK Jr.’s pledges to a key senator,” STAT, Mar 12, 2025 https://bit.ly/4iBcVUR

We know that the autism-vaccine link is bullshit. The only reason to crank up yet another study is to deepen the confusion and stimulate even more fantastical and nutty arguments. If 5 years from now, the study confirms what we already know, will the denialists be persuaded? Of course not. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) who signed off on RFK Jr based on assurances about vaccines, now agrees that such a study would be a waste of time and money. Too late.

Pooja Salhotra, “With crumbling public health infrastructure, rural Texas scrambles to respond to measles,” Texas Tribune, Mar 10, 2025 https://bit.ly/3E3BStg

In the measles epicenter, Gaines County, runners drive specimens 70 miles to the nearest FedEx office to ship specimen to a state lab. Texas got the most money of any state through the CDC’s Public Health Infrastructure Grants, but they’d rather starve themselves.

Pamela Ferdinand, “Glyphosate poses widespread risks to female fertility and reproductive health, researchers say,” U.S. Right To Know, Mar 15, 2025 https://bit.ly/3FDm9BH

If RFK Jr wants to use real science to improve our food supply, he could start with the well-known damages to our genes and hormones and to women’s reproductive organs caused by glyphosate, “the world’s most widely used herbicide.” But that would upset Trump’s golfing buddies in the Big Food industries. A recent survey of urine samples from U.S. residents showed that 80% contained glyphosate.

Michael Waterbury, “Health plans need to take accountability for a broken system,” STAT, March 4, 2025 https://bit.ly/4hH7m6j

An insurance exec calculates his job and his family’s insurance costs: “Over the past 25 years, my family [of five] and my employer have paid more than $429,000 in premiums—$771,232 when adjusted for inflation—yet our actual medical costs totaled only $200,000. The rest? That money didn’t go to care, it did not go to risk pooling for others’ health care costs. It went to health plan profit. Eventually, I couldn’t ignore the reality of how the system operates. The numbers made it impossible to look the other way.” Good diagnosis, but his remedies are the usual weak tea. Despite his clear understanding of the facts, he can’t bring himself to admit the obvious: the commercial healthcare system cannot be fixed.

Ruth Rosenthal & Casey Chiappetta, “Medical debt reforms fall short without addressing consumer debt litigation,” Pew Charitable Trust, Feb 27, 2025 https://bit.ly/4iEMEVN

Another illustration of unfixability: schemes to provide relief to the millions of Americans burdened by medical debt are noble endeavors and sometimes curb some of the more egregious abuses. But they don’t—and can’t—solve the underlying problem—that medical debt shouldn’t exist in the first place. This article points out that state laws to protect people from medical debt bankruptcy have a crucial flaw: they don’t help courts decide what is medical debt to distinguish it from other kinds. If a person is sued by a collections agency, it won’t look the same as if the suit were brought by a hospital.

Lisa Bohman Egbert, “Why I closed my OB-GYN practice in Ohio after 27 years,” STAT, Mar 11, 2025 https://bit.ly/4ifTa5x

Independent physician practices are dying out. This woman gave up after 27 years leaving 2,500 Ohio women without a gynecologist. “By the time I closed my office, I had so little money coming in that I had stopped taking a salary. I was using my own savings just to keep the practice afloat.” The fatal combo: 2 decades of steadily increasing costs, steadily reduced Medicare reimbursements, insurance company concentration, and the impossible burden of prior authorizations. How can the Feds cut Medicare reimbursements year after year in an inflationary environment? This predates Trump/Must and their Texas chainsaws.

Noam N. Levey, “Republicans once wanted government out of healthcare. Trump voters are different,” KFF Health News, Mar 2, 2025 https://bit.ly/4ifYplL

Republicans traditionally hate gummint daring to control healthcare prices—or any prices. But the MAGA-verse has a slightly different view. Instead of the mantras of “choice” and “free markets” of a decade ago, a wide majority of GOP voters now back things like an annual cap on how much patients pay towards medical debt.

Yuki Noguchi, “She got her dream job at CDC back. But she's already moving on,” NPR, Mar 7, 2025 https://bit.ly/3RhMLuA

We wrote about Ms. McNulty last week and how she was shit-canned a few weeks into her elite internship at an Iowa cancer center. Now the CDC wants her back; she told them to go fly a kite. She has a new job in a different city and wasn’t impressed by an unsigned notification apologizing for the “error.” She compared it to getting a stalking email from an abusive partner.

Matt Parr, “Stephen Feinberg’s Cerberus owned military contractor that paid millions to settle government fraud suits,” Private Equity Stakeholder Project, Dec 4, 2024 https://bit.ly/4ihN3h0

Feinberg, now the no. 2 at the Pentagon, is co-founder of the private equity sleaze-mill Cerberus, notorious in these pages for its role in looting Steward Health and leaving wrecked hospitals in the laps of states and cities trying to keep them open. He also defrauded the Pentagon, but he now fails upward into the sleaze-o-sphere of Trumpland. (No wonder the U.S. has lost the arms race with Russia.) Feinberg’s Cerberus owned Steward Health Care, a 31-hospital system, for a decade during which it extracted hundreds of millions in fees and dividends while suppliers were stiffed and employee payroll taxes were diverted.

Maureen Tkacik & Teri Buhl, “A hospital empire is closing its doors—but the stock is on a tear,” American Prospect, Mar 18, 2025 https://bit.ly/4hnIG2J

This is a long investigative piece about one of the corporate entities involved in the private equity-backed looting of the Steward hospital chain, specifically the real estate vehicle, Medical Properties Trust. Cerberus sold the victim hospitals’ property to MPT, which then leased it back to them at rip-off rates. That enabled the corporate overlords to extract hundreds of millions and leave the hospitals as smoking ruins. How this is in any way legal is a testament to the utter corruption of our entire financial apparatus. The salient details—not reported elsewhere to my knowledge—are these: while the whole Steward mess is being untangled in bankruptcy courts, MPT’s shares are booming because various state entities are throwing the failing hospitals a lifeline, and MPT (and even the disgraced Steward owners) are extorting yet more money from them under threat of letting everything collapse. “Retail investors stampeded back into the stock, which has a tantalizing 8.5% dividend. What MPT decisively does not have any money left over for is keeping the doors open of the hospitals.” Lawyers and consultants have so far scooped up $186 million in fees while nurses search the trash cans for surgical supplies. Massachusetts has spent $786 million to bail out the Steward hospitals in that state—so far. If any of these scumbags ever do face criminal charges, who wants to bet they top the list of the next round of presidential pardons?

Bob Herman, “UnitedHealth continues making stealthy deals, pushing deeper into medical care as scrutiny mounts,” STAT, Mar 7, 2025 https://bit.ly/4iAul3V

Despite all the negative attention, UnitedHealth Group continues to roll up new acquisitions to further expand its insurance-provider-pharmacy-whatever empire. Last year, UH bought more than 100 surgery centers, specialty pharmacies, and 250 other subsidiaries including highly profitable outfits like heart cath labs and orthopedic surgery, ophthalmology, and gastroenterology practices. “The new additions to UnitedHealth come as federal antitrust reviewers scrutinize how the company’s different subsidiaries work with each other.” I guess there’s a bright side though: UH is getting so big that when the country finally does decide to nationalize healthcare through a single-payer system, the takeover will go fairly smoothly because just one or two companies will be managing everything.

Helen Santoro, “You’ve already paid $6 billion for weight-loss drugs you can’t afford,” Lever News, Mar 6, 2025 https://bit.ly/4kTEmeH

The Federal Government spent $6 billion researching, developing, and implementing new blockbuster weight-loss drugs that private owners now charge $1K a month for in the U.S. The $50 billion or so that the country now pays for the fat shots are “a major driver of higher prescription drug costs” and are expected to spark an 8% rise in premiums next year. Medicare spent $5.7 billion on this class of drugs, 10 times what it spent in 2018. Ozempic only costs $93 a month in the United Kingdom.

Bee Wilson, “Ultra-processed babies: are toddler snacks one of the great food scandals of our time?” The Guardian, Mar 15, 2025 https://bit.ly/41Dz79Z

“Over-sweetened, mushy foods are creating a generation of choosy consumers whose teeth are already rotting.” Preschool teachers notice that toddlers are “eating—or rather not eating—in a new way. A significant percentage just don’t seem to like texture.” One teacher thinks the rise in the number of nonverbal 3-year-olds to “the fact that the skills and muscles needed for chewing are related to those needed for speech.” The baby food aisle is the new target for expert marketers convincing parents that the sweet, gooey ready-mades are healthier options that plain old food. The author asks, “How bad do things have to get in the baby food aisle before the government finally decides to protect infants and parents?

Elaine Chen, “NIH cancels funding for landmark diabetes study at a time of focus on chronic disease,” STAT, Mar 17, 2025 https://bit.ly/4ihYu8s

“The Trump administration has canceled funding for an ongoing 30-year, nationwide study tracking patients with prediabetes and diabetes at a time when top officials have emphasized their determination to curb the incidence of such chronic conditions.” It’s not as if anything should be making sense these days. But wrecking a 30-year-old database, the source of 200 scientific papers, is reaching for new heights of crazy.

See the full archive at www.nypan.org/single-payer-news

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DO NOT RESUSCITATE #385

14 MAR 2025

This is a shorter version of Do Not Resuscitate due to some travel days and the need to sift through the mountains of news to focus on a single topic: the threat to Medicaid. —Tim

Listen here: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-snw4k-1843feb

Nathaniel Weixel, “Republicans need to cut Medicaid to hit budget savings target, CBO finds,” The Hill, Mar 5, 2025 https://bit.ly/41Odt2Q

News flash: The GOP leadership is lying to us. They promise not to slash Medicaid to ribbons while planning to do exactly that. The proof is in the budget resolution announcing $2 trillion in cuts while they bleat on about “waste, fraud, and abuse” that doesn’t exist in anywhere near the dimensions they claim. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just clarified the lies for anyone interested: “Even if Republicans eliminate every program under Energy and Commerce other than Medicaid and CHIP, it would only be able to save a maximum of $135 billion.” That committee is charged with finding $880 billion to cut; the other $655 billion has to come from Medicaid, the program that currently provides healthcare for one-fifth of the population. Case closed.

The CBO letter: https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-03/61235-Boyle-Pallone.pdf

Andrew Solender, “House Dems go into ‘complete meltdown’ as Schumer folds,” Axios, Mar 13, 2025 https://bit.ly/3R9adKr

Offered a golden opportunity to throw a cinderblock at the Trump-Musk machine dismantling the Federal Government, Schumer surrendered. He voted to allow the budget-massacring House resolution to get Senate approval while getting bupkis in return. House Democrats feel betrayed—kinda like the American people who keep getting played by the good cop/bad cop routine. One pol said, “I have also never had so many people from home personally texting me—ANGRY. I don’t think they knew who Chuck Schumer was before today, but they know now, and they hate him.” We in New York are way ahead of them.

Josh Marshall, “Biggest federal employee union says shutdown is preferable to Elon/Trump CR,” Talking Points Memo, Mar 12, 2025 https://bit.ly/4bx34x0

AFGE, the federal workers union, pointed out that the Federal Government is already shut down—by Musk. AFGE president Everett B. Kelley asked senators to vote NO and also mentions Trump’s cancellation of the government’s collective bargaining agreement with TSA workers, declaring that the agency is now “union-free.” Democrats tossed unionized workers under the usual bus.

“The Republican House Budget Resolution’s potential $880 billion in Medicaid cuts by congressional district,” Center for American Progress, Feb 24, 2025 https://bit.ly/3DTpgF3

A handy table showing the number of residents by district of people who would be affected by the GOP Medicaid cuts, based on current Medicaid and CHIP enrollment. On average, each congressional district would lose $2 billion in federal funding over 9 years. Example: My district (NY-13) has about 330,000 Medicaid/CHIP beneficiaries, of whom 156,000 could get knocked off with a loss of $4 billion in federal funds over the next decade. Will Congressman Espaillat do something or promise to “fight for” us at some future date?

Shannon Schumacher et al., “The public’s views on potential changes to Medicaid,” KFF Health News, Mar 7, 2025 https://bit.ly/4253Y0t

How do Americans feel about Medicaid? A few zealots (17%) agree with slashing it to bits. But twice as many (42%) think it should be increased. If we lived in a democracy, this would matter. “The public’s staunch opposition to Medicaid cuts likely reflects the fact that about half (53%) of adults say they or a family member has received help from Medicaid at some point.” Even among Trump voters, it’s a hefty 45%. Nonetheless, some of the reactionary propaganda has been effective. A majority (62%) of adults “incorrectly believe that most working-age adults on Medicaid are unemployed” and thus support work requirements, which don’t get people into jobs but successfully toss eligible people out of the program. When people learn the facts, that number drops to 32%.

N. Adam Brown, “We’re getting the Medicaid message wrong—and it’s costing us,” MedPage Today, Mar 8, 2025 https://bit.ly/3DCOCHj

This ER doctor illustrates the cost of failing to actively defend Medicaid and to explain to the public what it is, what it does, and who the beneficiaries are. People on Medicaid are the working poor with few exceptions, and—incredibly—even many people on it themselves do not realize that fact. Medicaid is not called “Medicaid” in most states. It’s Healthy Connections in South Carolina, TennCare in Tennessee, and Buckeye Health in Ohio. “In Florida, Medicaid sounds like an orange juice brand: Simply Healthcare.” That’s the result of letting private companies get contracts to deliver Medicaid and use their corporate logos while downplaying the fact that the government is paying. “No wonder Tennesseans shrug when we talk about Medicaid recipients. They don’t think, or even know, they are one.” They may be in for rude awakenings. Note to advocates—say this: “If Republicans’ Medicaid plans come to fruition, you could lose your Buckeye Health Plan [or whatever] insurance.”

Jessie Hellmann & Sandhya Raman, “Medicaid work rules have increased coverage loss, not employment,” Roll Call, Feb 27, 2025 https://bit.ly/3FFYQXP

Here’s one way the GOP plans to slash Medicaid while pretending they aren’t: impose work requirements, playing on the false notion that beneficiaries are lay-abouts. It appeals to the brainwashed public that is hostile to “welfare,” meaning things people think shouldn’t be free like medical care. As Arkansas proved in 2018, work requirements don’t increase employment, but they do successfully create bureaucratic labyrinths that push people out of coverage. The state dropped 18,000 people from its Medicaid rolls who did not get better jobs but did postpone treatment and did accumulate more medical debt. Governor Huckabee Sanders thinks that was a success and plans to bring it back. Iowa, Montana, and Ohio also want to add the useless paperwork.

Bernard J. Wolfson, “To patients, parents, and caregivers, proposed Medicaid cuts are a personal afront,” KFF Health News/Orange County Register, Mar 6, 2025 https://bit.ly/3FFYEb3

Nearly 15 million people—a third of the population of California—are on Medi-Cal. The cost is $161 billion, of which 60% comes from Washington.

Rachel Bluth, “Medicaid shortfall forces California to borrow $3.44B,” Politico, Mar 12, 2025 https://bit.ly/3FxoU7A

California will be a prime target for the Trump/Musk slashers as the state covers undocumented immigrants under a special Medicaid program—a double red flag! The state originally estimated it would cost around $3 billion per year to insure that population. But one year after the program has been fully implemented, the new price tag is $8.4 billion.

Hannah Schoenbaum, “Montana Legislature green lights Medicaid expansion as Congress considers program cuts,” Associated Press, Feb 27, 2025 https://bit.ly/4hCPcCG

Red states face a dilemma if they have dared to expand Medicaid under the Obamacare rules. Montana raised the income limit for eligibility a decade ago with some bipartisan support and now faces a higher bill than promised. They’re happy with the lower rates of uncompensated care and better outcomes among Native populations with almost all of it (90%) covered by the Feds. Now the state could be saddled with higher costs as the standard Medicaid portion paid by Washington averages around 62%. Several states are getting ready to reverse the expansion if costs rise sharply.

Tony Leys, “Iowa Medicaid sends $4m bills to two families grieving deaths of loved ones with disabilities,” KFF Health News/Des Moines Register, Feb 18, 2025 https://bit.ly/41IzDmY

The cruelty is the point. “Collection agents for the state of Iowa seek millions of dollars from the estates of at least two people with disabilities who died after spending most of their lives in a state institution.” Most of those billed had zero assets, so the “Estate Recovery” program didn’t really apply. But it’s fun to send out the dunning letters anyway, and Iowa is “particularly aggressive” about the collections. Clawbacks don’t apply to any other federal benefit, including Medicare.

Kate Giammarise & Tom Riese, “New weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy spike Pennsylvania’s Medicaid costs,” WESA-FM, Mar 7, 2025 https://bit.ly/41PDGOv

States are getting slammed by the cost of the fat shots even before the axe falls in Washington. Pennsylvania will slow down authorization of Ozempic and other obesity drug prescriptions, “first requiring patients to attempt weight loss through diet and exercise programs or try less expensive medications.” Only the most obese patients will get the nod to receive the $1000-a-month treatments. We can foresee the fights to come once the massive cuts go through—there won’t be enough in the Medicaid pot to serve everyone, so slug it out among yourselves, the obese versus pregnant women, cancer patients against diabetics.

Phil Galewitz, “Medicaid advocates say critics use loaded terms to gain edge in congressional debate,” KFF Health News, Mar 7, 2025 https://bit.ly/4ht7NkR

The GOP slasher party likes terms like “money laundering,” “discrimination,” (because the Feds match state Medicaid funding at a higher rate for expansion enrollees), and a special favorite, “able-bodied” adults who get coverage, meaning “lazy minorities.” Said one exasperated advocate, “These people spend their lives searching for the newest slogans, the newest quips, and the newest nonsensical monikers that they think somehow will persuade Congress to completely upend the program.”

Gov JB Pritzker, “Up to a million Illinoisans will lose health care coverage with slashing of Medicaid,” Chicago Tribune, Mar 3, 2025 https://bit.ly/4i9zPCU

The governor of Illinois highlights the other likely Trump move: elimination of the extra subsidies for commercial insurance policies that people buy through the Obamacare exchanges. The result will be that people drop the unaffordable policies and rejoin the uninsured lists.

Noah Tong, “CMS rescinds Medicaid’s health-related social needs guidance,” Fierce Healthcare, Mar 5, 2025 https://bit.ly/4ivScls

Programs that fund housing, nutrition, and other social services for high-risk Medicaid and CHIP enrollees are out. These wraparound services such as temporary housing and meals for homeless people improve outcomes. But we can’t have any talk of “social determinants of health,” which might include the term “equity” in there somewhere. RFK Jr made sympathetic noises during his confirmation hearings but quickly turned his back on anything about “underlying causes” out of ideological fealty to the wreckers.

Maya Goldman, “Medicaid cuts put adult dental care on the chopping block,” Axios, Mar 5, 2025 https://bit.ly/4it1xup

Some dental services are covered by Medicaid, but when money is tight, they’re the first to go. (The reimbursement rates are also terrible.) For our new feudal lords, poor people should have terrible teeth as a sign of their moral unworthiness. “Without coverage, many will delay care or turn to emergency rooms, driving up health care costs and worsening health outcomes.” But even with strong benefits, low Medicaid reimbursement rates for dental care make it hard to convince dentists to take the insurance. Meanwhile, Utah just banned fluoridation of public water supplies.

Jaymie Baxley, “NC Medicaid expansion faces uncertain future as GOP eyes federal cuts,” North Carolina Health News, Mar 5, 2025 https://bit.ly/4ky2JOP

North Carolina finally expanded Medicaid 2 years ago and incorporated half a million new beneficiaries, one third of them in rural areas. They also figured out a way for the state itself to pay almost nothing by taxing providers for the 10% not reimbursed by Washington. Now, it’s all at risk. “The almost nonexistent financial burden on the state is partly why Republican lawmakers in North Carolina finally assented to supporting the measure after more than a decade of resistance. [But] the measure includes a ‘trigger law’ that brings expansion to a halt if the feds pick up anything less than 90%.” All the recently covered enrollees will be summarily dumped, and the struggling hospitals that got a lifeline from the expansion will again teeter on the brink of collapse from the burden of uncompensated care.

See the full archive at: www.nypan.org/single-payer-news

SINGLE PAYER LINKS #384

7 MAR 2025

This week: measles is back; Muskrats’ rolling takeover of the unity executive continues; our food is killing us, but don’t be mean to the companies who make it; digging around in the world’s viruses; tweaking our healthcare system = pounding out dents on a car that has no wheels.

Listen here: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-9wmtt-182a257

Mary Kekatos, “Measles cases reported in New Jersey, Kentucky amid ongoing outbreak in Texas,” ABC News, Feb 27, 2025 https://bit.ly/4h6FcBz

Several outbreaks around the country are linked to international travel. Are the disease monitoring employees at airports among those fired by the Muskrats? Measles was declared eliminated from the U.S. 20 years ago. If it’s back to stay, we may have to show proof of vaccination to travel overseas.

Neha Mukherjee, “RFK Jr. said measles outbreaks are ‘not unusual’ in the US. Doctors say he’s wrong,” CNN, Feb 27, 2025 https://bit.ly/41BQDN4

RFK Jr first downplayed the Texas measles outbreak as “not unusual” and refused to discuss vaccination as a remedy. Then, he partially backtracked a few days later and said it was a “top priority” as new cases surfaced in Rhode Island, Georgia, California, Alaska, and New Mexico. The Texas cases occurred in Gaines County, home to “a strong homeschooling and private school community” and lots of antivax sentiment. It started in a Mennonite community that doesn’t discourage vaccines, but a local doctor says “the anti-vaccine activist groups got to them.”

Andrew Joseph, “On measles outbreak, the Trump administration’s messaging strikes some as off-key,” STAT, Feb 27, 2025 https://bit.ly/41pchml

A few years ago, even Trump-era officials would have sung a consistent tune about the importance of vaccinations to halt contagious disease outbreaks. Trump himself said in 2019, “They have to get the shot. The vaccinations are so important.” The new official strategy is to let measles—and by implication any other contagious pathogen that pops up—rip through society and hope for the best.

Eleanor Klibanoff, “Texas leaders quiet amid the biggest measles outbreak in decades,” Texas Tribune, Feb 28, 2025 https://bit.ly/3DiSdtV

“Declining vaccination rates, decreasing trust in government, and a political unwillingness to endorse vaccines is shaping Texas’ measles response.” No students are being told to stay home after exposure. One Houston epidemiologist explained: “Texas is such an independent state. People don’t want to be told what to do.” Even when what they do affects other people? Guess so. Texas legislators did say they would pray for the family whose kid died, so there’s that.

Adrienne Matei, “Formerly anti-vax parents on how they changed their minds: ‘I really made a mistake,’” The Guardian, Feb 27, 2025 https://bit.ly/4inuebE

A series of anecdotes about parents who didn’t get their children vaccinated and later reconsidered includes this telling detail: “Anti-vax rhetoric may be so persistent because it is profitable.” A whopping 70% of early Covid-19 anti-vax disinformation “was generated by 12 individuals with collective annual revenues of around $36m.” Nice business model! The author adds that mothers become more susceptible to antivax narratives when their questions are brushed off by providers. But given the assembly-line approach to modern medicine, not many doctors or nurses have time to be patient with the patients.

Clare Ansberry, “We don’t trust doctors like we used to,” Wall Street Journal, Feb 23, 2025 https://bit.ly/4h5XvH1

Big drop in high ratings for MDs because “people feel less confident. They see a series of time-pressed physicians who keep visits short and struggle to build rapport with patients. That often makes it seem as if they are dismissing concerns.” Doctors and nurses are the point of contact; they pay the price of the corporate sins underlying the system.

Zeynep Tufekci, “The Texas measles outbreak is even scarier than it looks,” New York Times, Feb 28, 2025 https://bit.ly/4klfXhH

Older folks among us may think of measles as just another childhood disease that we all had and got over. “But startling research about the virus unfortunately tells a new and very different story. Measles destroys immune cells. Even people who recover from the virus lose much of their immune memory.” And, “Earlier measles infections may have been implicated in as many as half of all childhood deaths from infectious diseases.” Just what we need as Covid already has massively weakened the population’s overall immunity.

Jason Gale, “As measles cases surge in Texas, WHO’s global control program risks collapse,” Bloomberg, Feb 26, 2025 https://bit.ly/4bourt8

The WHO tests 500,000 patient samples annually to identify disease outbreaks “before they cross borders.” Now, its 760 labs face radical cutbacks as the U.S. pulls its cash. Maybe immigrants can’t cross our borders, but communicable diseases are welcome!

Rebecca Falconer, “HPV vaccine has huge impact on cervical cancer prevention, CDC study suggests,” Axios, Feb 28, 2025 https://bit.ly/41gi5hO

Pre-cervical cancerous lesions among young women fell by 80% in the past decade, almost certainly due to the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine that RFK Jr calls “dangerous and defective.” Conservatives also had a cow over it since it’s given to children when they’re 11 or 12 years old based on the crazy possibility that they might someday have sex.

Pamela Ferdinand, “Agricultural pesticide exposure linked to childhood cancers, study says,” U.S. Right To Know, Feb 16, 2025 https://bit.ly/4bmEJKj

While parents are freaking out over vaccines, thousands of nasty substances are entering their kids’ bodies through proximity to farmland. “A 10% increase in agrichemical mixtures was associated with a significant rise in pediatric cancers in Nebraska.” The pesticides and herbicides include the notorious glyphosate and paraquat along with a slew of other creepy sounding chemicals like quizalofop and triasulfuron. The cancers this stuff encourage include tumors of the brain and central nervous system and leukemia. Previous studies looked at the chemicals individually, but this one studied them in combination, which is a better reflection of what happens in the real world.

Natasha Gilbert, “As EPA considers cancer links to nitrates in drinking water, industry downplays the risks,” U.S. Right To Know/Sierra, Jan 30, 2025 https://bit.ly/4incPjp

Dismantling the EPA will stop any meaningful action on all the poisons we’re consuming in our food and drink. “Nitrates leach from chemical fertilizers and animal manure to pollute groundwater, rivers, and streams” and are suspected in the rise of cancers in farm states.

Yuki Noguchi, “Iowa has high cancer rates. Trump’s cuts to CDC and NIH are already hitting the state,” NPR, Feb 28, 2025 https://bit.ly/4h7eIQp

Iowa has the second-highest cancer incidence rates in the country (after Kentucky), and it’s getting worse. The state was trying to catch more cases with earlier diagnoses in rural areas and had a brand-new CDC intern helping out at the Iowa Cancer Consortium to work on it. She just got canned by the Muskrats after a bogus performance review and will have to leave Iowa. Although she was smart enough to land a highly competitive internship, job-hunting won’t be easy for her “because you have these extremely highly educated people who all just got let go at the same time and are all looking for a new job.”

Sarah Ladd, “Kentucky legislature moves to implement Make America Healthy Again,” Kentucky Lantern, Feb 25, 2025 https://bit.ly/3DhnjC2

Speaking of Kentucky, they’ve decided to make MAHA local, but their rhetoric about what they plan to achieve reflects the contradictions built into the RFK/MAHA universe. The state’s MAHA Kentucky Task Force will address the state’s dismal health statistics since it’s one of the sickest places in the country. They listed their goals as limiting overspending on the fat shots like Ozempic and getting people less dependent on pharmaceuticals and thinking more about “root causes” of illness. It all sounds great and has bipartisan support. But their announced desire to “restore American health over corporate profit” is going to put them on a collision course with their traditional corporate friends. Another supporter said she wants to “enhance public health and prevent overmedication, not to attack agriculture, not to attack pharmaceutical companies, not to attack processed food industries.” Huh? You’re going to ask them politely? Good luck!

Karolina Corin, “Could our nation’s newest virus-hunting program cause the next pandemic?” U.S. Right To Know, May 30, 2024 https://bit.ly/4kr1EIk

Virus hunters are out there uncovering “yet-to-be-recognized deadly viruses,” which sounds like a worthy scientific endeavor, sampling bats and dozens of other mammals to find the next Covid bug. But there are risks as we all now know—harvesting viruses or fiddling around with them to make them deadlier opens the door to lab leaks or, theoretically, biological warfare. One biology professor pointed out that just publishing genetic sequences of potential pathogens could provide bad actors “blueprints for an arsenal of plagues.” Others say there’s no upside to the search: “The only applications are bioweapons-agents discovery and bioweapons-agents threat assessment.”

Cristina Criddle & Stephanie Stacey,” Pollution from Big Tech’s data centre boom costs US public health $5.4bn,” Financial Times, Feb 23, 2025 https://bit.ly/3QzSICW

“Data centres cause pollution through high electricity use.” Since AI and other Big Tech activities gobble up enormous quantities of electricity, they lead to lots more air pollution. Air pollution is highly carcinogenic. The U.S. plans to massively increase AI, which requires a huge investment in new energy infrastructure. Data center energy use is already about 4% of the total U.S. consumption. One could argue that the fancy AI innovations promising to improve healthcare delivery will be fixing the new health problems that AI itself creates.

Pamela Ferdinand, “Billions in drug and medical device company payments to medical specialists may compromise patient care,” U.S. Right To Know, Feb 27, 2025 https://bit.ly/4kgAR1z

“Financial relationships with drug companies impacts decision-making in ways that benefit drug companies, including altering prescribing habits.” English translation: People, including doctors, are susceptible to bribes. Ethical doctors should not let themselves be wined and dined by Pharma. The amount of cash sloshing around is astounding: billions of dollars for things like free travel and meals at conferences, speaking fees, product samples, and other benign-looking emoluments. There’s plenty of research evidence that these little—or big—gifts influence prescribing habits. Pharma knows this: they spend $2 billion a year on the stuff. “A BMJ report shows doctors who received industry-sponsored meals were more than twice as likely to prescribe a new heart failure drug to Medicare recipients.” Another big payout area is royalties for inventions. Takeaway lesson: If you’re getting a knee replacement, ask you surgeon if he’s getting money (aside from his fee) for the product he proposes to put in you.

Miranda Yaver, “My $30,000 health insurance claim was denied. Then I tweeted about it,” The Guardian, Feb 26, 2025 https://bit.ly/4inVSW7

Yaver shamed her insurer by publicizing its denials on social media. She also prepared a killer 17-page appeal full of technical arguments. So yes, complain on Twitter. But why are we reduced to this indignity?

Richard K. Leuchter, “An open letter to RFK Jr: Stop the spread of private equity in healthcare,” MedPage Today, Feb 19, 2025 https://bit.ly/4kqvlsY

For all the attention to the malignant influence of private equity (PE), it’s still a booming business. The author says RFK Jr, given his priors, should naturally want to halt the trend, but that would put him at odds with Trump’s golfing buddies.

Joyce Frieden, “Health prices are getting more transparent, but it’s still not enough,” MedPage Today, Nov 20, 2025 https://bit.ly/41EPTqk

Nineteen states now have price transparency laws covering PBMs, and Trump recently called for less secrecy in hospital pricing. We can know a little more about the big variations in, say, what a hospital charges to different insurance plans. But price data is still completely arcane and presented in ways that no average person can figure out. Frieden quotes a critic: “For something to be ‘shoppable,’ it needs to be specific, and it needs to be searchable. It needs to be easy.” But who says we need “shoppable” healthcare? Illnesses and injuries are not washing machines.

Julia Shapero, “Arizona advances bill to keep AI from rejecting medical claims,” The Hill, Feb 21, 2025 https://bit.ly/4h9sHFj

Arizona state lawmakers voted 58–0 to ban the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to deny medical claims. Fine. But why won’t insurers simply get one of their doctor-slaves to take a pile of AI denials and sign the whole lot? The underlying problem is the power the insurers have, not their means of exercising it.

Dave Muoio, “RFK Jr. orders HHS to end ‘extra-statutory’ notice, public comment process in rulemaking,” Fierce Healthcare, Feb 28, 2025 https://bit.ly/41pBTzl

No more public comment on pending health regulations and policy changes. “The new instructions appear to run at odds with the secretary’s promises of leading a more transparent public health apparatus.” Now, the priority is to speed things up before anyone can react. Trumpians and the Supreme Court insisted on upholding the public comment practice when conservatives were trying to block everything.

Sriparna Roy & Amina Niasse, “DOJ launches UnitedHealth billing probe,” Reuters, Feb 21, 2025 https://bit.ly/4hmUz9f

UH hasn’t been doing well, and even Trump isn’t cutting them a break. It shares are tanking, and its executives are hiding out. A fraud investigation over MA upcoding has been in the works for a while, and its PBM is vulnerable as well. The UH suits better up their game and make more friends at Mar-a-Lago.

Brian Witte & Rodrique Ngowi, “Fired cybersecurity chief for Veterans Affairs site warns that health and financial data is at risk,” Associated Press, Feb 25, 2025 https://bit.ly/3XpikGp

“Sensitive financial and health data belonging to millions of veterans and stored on a benefits website is at risk of being stolen or otherwise compromised.” The guy in charge of keeping it safe just got the boot. He said keeping the databases decentralized is protective; the DOGEbags want to centralize it, “increasing the chances for abuse.”

Juan Cole, “Palestinian life expectancy in Gaza cut from 75.5 to 40.6 years by Israeli total war,” Informed Comment, Feb 22, 2025 https://www.juancole.com/2025/02/palestinian-expectancy-israeli.html

The Lancet says the 35-year drop is hardly surprising given the “deliberate targeting of civilians and reckless disregard for civilian life.” Gazans’ life expectancy (40 years) is now the lowest in the world, below Chad and Lesotho. Israel’s is 82.7 years.

See the full archive at www.nypan.org/single-payer-news

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Muskrats with chainsaw

Do Not Resuscitate #383 ex Single Payer Links

Tim Frasca

Mar 4

28 FEB 2025

Trump/Musk tag team take a chainsaw to the Federal Government; Democrats prepare to surrender; early casualty lists; fat-shots cripple state budgets; Pharma revolving door wind tunnel.

Listen here: https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-eudqh-1820881

Stephen Semler, “How Biden set the stage for GOP budget cuts,” Polygraph, Feb 15, 2025 https://bit.ly/3XjaaPH

After all those calming promises about how Trump won’t attack Medicare or Social Security, we now have some hard facts in the budget resolution: cuts of at least $1.5 trillion. The big targets are $230 billion from Agriculture (SNAP a.k.a. food stamps) and a whopping $880 billion from Energy and Commerce (Medicaid). Even Armed Services ($100 billion) and Homeland Security ($90 billion) get a theoretical whack. But: “The GOP’s budget resolution would have sparked greater public outcry if Biden hadn’t spent the last two years normalizing social welfare cuts. Expanded Medicaid coverage, enhanced SNAP benefits, and the student loan pause were all meant to be temporary—but they didn’t have to be. The broader war on welfare is bipartisan.” The Trump I tax cuts were peddled as “temporary” also, but keeping them is a top GOP priority (not the deficit, which will they will let rise). Who wants to bet that Dems will go along with making the tax cuts permanent? A personal note/rant: I spent most of last year banging the drum about Biden letting 25 million people get kicked off Medicaid. Can Democrats really raise a hue and cry over Trump going them one better? Ditto for SNAP—the post-Covid pullback severely cut food aid—in 2023. “Congress buried these cuts in a nearly 1,700-page bill passed over the holidays, leaving virtually no room for public debate.” Democrats were complicit then and will be now—Schumer and Pelosi backed the cuts because the package had money for Ukraine and the Pentagon. Expect no real fight against the Trump chainsaw.

Sahil Kapur, “Trump and Musk's slash-and-burn tactics are a sticking point in talks to prevent a shutdown, NBC News, Feb 26, 2025 https://bit.ly/41aWffC

Buried in this inside-baseball chronicle about the DOGE takeover of the Federal Government is a revealing tidbit: while the two sides are at odds over the Muskrat hatchet, they are “close on the numbers,” according to the top GOP negotiator. That can only mean one thing: the Democrats are ready to go along with massive cuts to Medicaid. Oklahoma senator Tom Cole: “We’re pretty far apart still on trying to limit presidential powers,” adding that Republicans will insist on abolishing inconvenient portions of the Constitution. By contrast, Democrats will give up their leverage by inserting toothless language about “following the law” instead of forcing Trump to stop breaking it.

Eli Hager, “Anxiety mounts among Social Security recipients as DOGE troops settle in,” ProPublica, Feb 22, 2025 https://bit.ly/3QwqHw2

“Social Security recipients rely on in-person service in all 50 states, and the shuttering of offices everywhere from rural West Virginia to Las Vegas could be hugely consequential. Elon Musk’s team has descended on an already understaffed Social Security Administration.” Meanwhile, Trump continues to issue reassurances that you are not seeing what you are seeing. “Social Security will not be touched.” (“It’s just a shower.”) Technically that could even be true, but if the 119,000 daily visitors to SSA offices are suddenly bunched into fewer sites where people can’t get an appointment, the “untouched” benefits will be out of reach. Trump also floated the idea of outsourcing SSA jobs so that instead of visiting an SSA office, we deal with a voice in the Philippines.

Melanie Zanona, Sahil Kapur & Ben Kamisar, “House Republicans representing large shares of Medicaid, SNAP beneficiaries face tough budget test,” NBC News, Feb 21, 2025 https://bit.ly/3D7plER

A few Republicans are skittish about throwing thousands of their constituents off Medicaid/SNAP. Despite making some weak “concern” noises, none of them voted no on the budget. They might fear their voters, but they fear Trump more. Rep. David Valadao from central California is the most nervous GOP member because he already lost his seat once after voting to end Obamacare. His district has the second highest Medicaid population in the country. (No. 1 is the Israeli-occupied Bronx district of Ritchie Torres.) Fun fact: one third of all Medicaid spending goes to elderly people in nursing homes and assisted living.

Blake Jones, “Valadao treads lightly on Medicaid as Obamacare vote haunts him,” Politico, Feb 20, 2025 https://bit.ly/4bi7nvS

Valadao’s San Joaquin Valley district “is being bombarded with TV ads pressuring him not to slash Medicaid.” Didn’t work. Democrats are postponing their “resistance” until November, 2026. That won’t work either.

Allan Smith, Melanie Zanona & Laura Strickler, “USDA says it accidentally fired officials working on bird flu and is now trying to rehire them,” NBC News, Feb 18, 2025 https://bit.ly/3QAqzvB

Oopsie. The wrecking crew “accidentally” fired the people in charge of dealing with bird flu (H5N1) and then thought better of the idea. These supposed gaffes are a feature, not a bug; DOGE is staffed with people who have no prior experience by design. They remind everyone that there are no rules and no consequences.

Lizzy Lawrence, “Trump administration rehires some FDA employees it fired,” STAT, Feb 23, 2025 https://bit.ly/41yb90S

Fire, aim, ready! “The Trump administration has started quietly rehiring some of the FDA employees it fired last week, including “all 12 of the people who worked in the office reviewing surgical and infection control devices. It’s not clear if the 200 workers who check out hip implants, pacemakers, and AI software will get callbacks.

Megan Messerly & Adam Cancryn, “Trump officials defend HHS cuts as more methodical than the slashing at other agencies,” Politico, Feb 15, 2025 https://bit.ly/4hTpwTp

“More methodical” is supposed to be reassuring. We should accept “surgical” cuts as better than. . . what exactly? Those done by dull machetes or a Texas chain-saw? Trump officials “stressed that employees in key areas—namely politically sensitive staffers such as CDC and FDA scientists, frontline health care workers, and Medicare employees—had been exempted.” This is false and adds to the (intentional) confusion. “Probationary staffers spent much of the day in the dark over whether and when they would be fired. Supervisors were unclear even on what criteria was used to make the decisions.”

Usha Lee McFarling, Angus Chen & Sarah Owermohle, “Growing number of federal health agencies are combing grants for taboo words, unnerving researchers,” STAT, Feb 13, 2025 https://bit.ly/41lL6Jj

Conservatives have raised hell about private/public censorship of some of their views on social media during Biden’s term. But they don’t have a problem with the word-search censorship now rampant in government, nor the systematic search for trigger words, like “trans,” “diversity,” “bias,” “equity,” and “women.” Absurdities abound. A microbiome or a set of galaxies can be “diverse.” “Bias” is a technical term used in statistical analysis. Other words that trigger the MAGA snowflakes: “political,” “trauma,” “female.” I guess RFK Jr should avoid discussing “trans fat” products!

Alexander Tin, “Mental health agency loses 1 in 10 staffers to DOGE cuts, 988 hotline team impacted,” CBS News, Feb 21, 2025 https://bit.ly/4h3vBey

Substance abuse and those who suffer from it have never been a priority, and now we are to go back to ignoring or simply imprisoning them. The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) lost 10% of its entire staff, including people working on the 988 suicide hotline. It’s as if they want people to die off or something.

Annie Waldman & Duaa Eldeib, “They worked to prevent death. The Trump Administration fired them,” ProPublica, Feb 22, 2025 https://bit.ly/4klRGb9

Congress slowly and tediously authorized the hire of some specialty workers to tackle issues of bipartisan consensus. Now, they’re out. One reviewed e-cigarettes to block designs and flavors that appeal to kids; another worked on the high rates of maternal mortality in the U.S. that are heavily skewed by racial group (which is no longer to be mentioned). A third tracked transplantable organ shipments so that they don’t get lost in transit and destroyed. “One [kidney] was accidentally left on an airport luggage trolley.” She’s been fired.

Filip Timotija, “White House restores 9/11 health program funding after uproar,” The Hill, Feb 21, 2025 https://bit.ly/3DbahWI

A few of the firings generated enough backlash to be reversed. For example, a slew of GOP pols went to bat for the 9/11 victims whose disability needs were about to be undermined. New York senators Schumer and Gillibrand joined in. They know how to fight back if they want to.

David Lipschutz, “Threats to Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs increasing, Center for Medicare Advocacy, Feb 20, 2025 https://bit.ly/3EUlD1X

Trump said people working on Medicare management wouldn’t be fired—another lie. Also, cuts of 90% were applied to the navigator program helping people understand and obtain their Medicaid/CHIP benefits.

Megan Molteni, Usha Lee McFarling & Angus Chen, “Graduate student admissions paused and cut back as universities react to Trump orders on research,” STAT, Feb 19, 2025 https://bit.ly/4bfIlxq

Universities are holding up acceptance letters; grad students are rethinking their careers; labs are contemplating shutdowns; and experts warn of a “cascading” chain reaction that will cripple the country’s research base. Young Americans will be the next wave of foreign students as they escape to greener pastures.

Sarah Todd & Lizzy Lawrence, “The ‘GRAS’ loophole lets untested additives into Americans’ food. Can RFK Jr. close it?” STAT, Feb 19, 2025 https://bit.ly/4bppkJ5

One thing RFK Jr could do that most people would go along with is to end the abuse of the FDA’s GRAS (“generally recognized as safe”) rule. This allows food manufacturers to introduce new additives without first receiving regulatory approval—in fact, they don’t even have to tell the FDA what they’re putting in their products. It’s basically “innocent until proven guilty” applied to chemicals rather than its opposite, the precautionary principle, i.e., prove it’s safe before you feed it to people. GRAS has let “thousands of ingredients never reviewed by the FDA to become embedded in the foods Americans eat.” But RFK Jr can’t do much without staff, and his boss just canned 1/3 of the people who review additives. Even though 99% of chemicals now in the U.S. food supply were added without any FDA oversight, don’t expect anything to happen to the “natural flavors” listed on food packages.

Anne Hultgren, “How one foundation changed its approach to diversify grant recipient institutions,” STAT, Jan 8, 2025 https://bit.ly/3EVeNJH

The lost spirit of broadening one’s base of beneficiaries, once known as “equity,” scored some successes before being beaten to death in the basement. This foundation head said her institution found itself “perpetuating the concentration of grant funding at elite institutions” and decided to review grant proposals blinded by gender, race, or institutional identifiers. Even applicants’ names were deleted. The result was “a reduction in the relative advantage of applicants from the more prestigious institutions.” Enough of that—elitism is back.

Kelly Hooper, “Diet drug boom weighs heavily on state budgets,” Politico, Feb 12, 2025 https://bit.ly/4i6Ellg

“Colorado’s spending on highly effective but costly weight-loss drugs for state workers more than quadrupled last year, and costs are doubling every 6 months. Now, the state wants to scrap the benefit.” A lot of states are in the same boat. They leapt into the fat-shot frenzy with both feet and are now suffering buyers’ remorse. More than 10% of everyone in the U.S. reports taking a GLP-1 drug—how crazy is that? North Carolina and West Virginia have already eliminated coverage. Delaware estimated the cost for its state employees at around $2 million and instead spent $14 million with projections for next year at $53 million. The situation pits state officials against patients and unions while Pharma sits placidly on the sidelines watching the catfights.

Matt Stoller, Monopoly Roundup, BIG, Feb 12, 2025 https://bit.ly/439CJmy

“ConEdison is asking to raise its rates on electricity by 11% and gas by 18%. I went through the docket to find out why it needs so much money. A small part of the increase has to do with the company passing along the costs of its workers using Ozempic.” The flood of cash into the fat-shot companies are affecting electric utility rates!

Christine Mai-Duc, “Top California Democrats clash over how to rein in drug industry middlemen,” KFF Health News/San Francisco Chronicle, Feb 13, 2025 https://bit.ly/3ESW41n

Drug prices are too high, so California’s Democrats—who rule the state—got ready to do something and passed a bill nearly unanimously. The governor promptly killed it. Meanwhile, drug costs are up 50% in California in the last decade.

Adam Feuerstein, “Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla inflicts injury on his company—and all of pharma,” STAT, Feb 24, 2025 https://bit.ly/3DaCb5c

Pfizer snapped up a new employee: former top FDA drug regulator Patrizia Cavazzoni will be its new chief medical officer. This isn’t a revolving door—it’s a particle-accelerator wind tunnel. So much for the MAHA fretting about the Pharma/FDA coziness. “Bourla has just given every pharma-hating, vaccine-doubting person in this country a legitimate reason to further loathe and distrust the industry.”

Madeline Ashley, “Massachusetts hospitals face ‘perilous’ dual crisis,” Becker’s Hospital CFO Report, Feb 10, 2025 https://bit.ly/43jjAyv

Massachusetts’ hospitals are in a mess. On the one hand, the meltdown that followed the systematic looting by crooks at Steward Health bankrupted several hospitals in the state; some closed. Meanwhile, the more prosperous units are facing financial headwinds with more than half losing money on operations. (Moi: Why do hospitals have to break even? Why is medicine a commodity?) Paradox: while hospitals are laying off staff to save money, a state-funded study says hospitals have 15,000 unfilled vacancies.

Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech, “New York sues major vape companies for targeting kids, teens,” The Hill, Feb 20, 2025 https://bit.ly/4igbLhm

States will take on more regulatory functions as the Feds abandon the field. New York is suing vape distributors for continuing to illegally sell flavored products like Puff Bar and Elf Bar to minors. New York and several other states collected $462 million from Juul in a similar suit.

Paul Cuno-Booth, “Some Medicaid recipients would pay premiums under Ayotte’s budget plan,” New Hampshire Public Radio, Feb 24, 2025 https://bit.ly/3QBCDMT

States are following suit and looking at ways to make up for the anticipated Medicaid cuts from Washington: New Hampshire doesn’t currently charge premiums for beneficiaries, but that is likely to change. Parents could start owing 5% of their annual income to keep the children’s coverage. That’s around $3000 a year for a family at the upper end of the eligibility income scale.

Kristina Fiore, “Supplemental benefits offer few advantages for MA enrollees,” MedPage Today, Jan 15, 2025 https://bit.ly/3EZezRC

Despite all those bells and whistles that lure people into signing up for Medicare Advantage (MA) plans—dental, vision, and hearing extras, “enrollees didn’t get more care and spent just as much out of pocket as those with traditional Medicare.” A lot of the enrollees don’t use the benefits they have—a major reason for that is that they don’t know about them. “Many MA beneficiaries weren’t aware that they had dental (54.2%) or vision (54.3%) coverage.” Solution: stop paying billions in extra costs to MA plans and use the savings to expand traditional Medicare benefits. This is not hard; won’t happen.

See the full archive at www.nypan.org/single-payer-news

SINGLE PAYER LINKS #383

28 FEB 2025

Trump/Musk tag team take a chainsaw to the Federal Government; Democrats prepare to surrender; early casualty lists; fat-shots cripple state budgets; Pharma revolving door wind tunnel.

Note: I'm sticking with the email blast as usual, but you should also get the digest for this week via Substack as I am migrating everything there. Still in the experimental stage!