In a social media post last week, President Trump noted that what Democrats are demanding in exchange for their cooperation in reopening government would require more than $1 trillion in spending and “force Taxpayers to fund Transgender surgery for minors.” Indeed, taxpayers are already funding such surgeries via Obamacare subsidies — and Democrats have shut the government down as they demand that Covid-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies, which expire on Dec. 31, keep flowing to insurers covering these treatments. //
Take Colorado, which requires all insurers to cover so-called “gender affirming care” as an essential health benefit. The state’s Division of Insurance lists all the surgical and hormonal treatments that insurers cover. The list, which runs the gamut from facial feminization to gluteal implantation and implantation of testicular prostheses, includes treatments that many Americans would at best find wasteful and at worst consider morally objectionable and offensive: //
Unfortunately, Colorado is not an outlier. The Movement Advancement Project notes that 24 states have “nondiscrimination” provisions in their insurance markets. In these states, insurers that cover procedures like mastectomies for breast cancer must also cover the same procedure as part of so-called “gender affirming care.”
What infuriates me most about this crisis is how it will devastate the very people Democrats claimed to help. Rural states and communities will see the highest rates of coverage disruption, with larger percentages of residents losing marketplace coverage and becoming uninsured. Nearly 5 million midlife adults will face higher premiums, with middle-income enrollees seeing average annual increases of more than $4,000.
Look at the real families behind these statistics: a middle-class family of four in Charlotte, North Carolina, could see their annual marketplace premium costs increase by nearly $9,500. A 60-year-old couple making $85,000 per year would see their annual premium costs jump by $15,400, from about $6,900 to about $22,300. //
This is governance by crisis, the oldest trick in the Democratic playbook. Create unsustainable programs, get people dependent on them, then blame Republicans when fiscal reality intervenes. It's political malpractice disguised as compassion. //
This crisis was entirely avoidable. If Democrats had respected constitutional limits and allowed free markets to develop affordable healthcare solutions, we wouldn't face this cliff. Instead, they chose to expand federal power, create massive dependencies, and leave Republicans to clean up the wreckage.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that 5.7 million people could lose coverage when reality breaks through Democratic fiscal fantasies. That human cost lies squarely with those who created an unsustainable system and called it reform. //
The question isn't whether Congressional Republicans will fund this broken system indefinitely. The question is whether Democrats will finally accept responsibility for the chaos they've created and work toward sustainable, constitutional solutions that serve American families without bankrupting the federal government. //
charlie
2 hours ago
We can thank John Roberts for changing his mind on the (un)constitionality of Obamacare and John McCain for being, well, John McCain. //
Jprs
3 hours ago
“The question is whether Democrats will finally accept responsibility for the chaos they've created and work toward sustainable, constitutional solutions that serve American families without bankrupting the federal government.”
Hint: they won’t. They will point to rising healthcare cost and say it was because of the BBB that was just passed. And the dishonest media will repeat this ad nauseam and many Americans will believe it. //
Under MFN, U.S. drug prices would be tied to the lowest amount paid by any OECD country with at least 60 percent of our GDP per capita. That includes many countries where government-run health systems routinely undervalue breakthrough medicines and decide which treatments patients can access — and when.
That’s not competition. That’s central planning. A market price originates from voluntary exchange, not foreign bureaucrats operating under fixed budgets and political incentives.
We know where that road leads. In countries using arbitrary price-setting benchmarks, patients are routinely denied or delayed access to new medicines. By late 2022, just 34 percent of new drugs launched globally were available in France, 37 percent in Italy, and 52 percent in Germany. Compare that to nearly 75 percent in the United States. Import their pricing models, and we’ll import their rationing — and avoidable suffering. //
Strong trade pressure best confronts these abuses. Other wealthy countries should be required to meet minimum spending targets on new medicines — benchmarked to what the United States invests relative to GDP. Those spending expectations should be written into binding agreements with clear enforcement mechanisms and consequences for noncompliance.
But overseas is not the only issue; we also need to fix what’s distorting prices at home.
Begin with the supply chain middlemen. The three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) now control more than 80 percent of the prescription drug market, acting as gatekeepers between manufacturers and patients. These entities, which play no role in innovation, dictate which drugs are covered, how much patients pay, and who profits. /
In 2023 alone, the “gross-to-net bubble” — the gap between the list prices of branded drugs and net prices after rebates and other discounts — was $334 billion. In an ideal market, those savings would dramatically lower out-of-pocket costs for patients.
Instead, the system is cloaked in secrecy. Most patients are unaware of the discounts that PBMs negotiate, and they don’t see a dime of those discounts when they pick up their prescriptions. Patient cost-sharing is still based on the inflated, publicly disclosed list price — not the much lower negotiated price. //
We also need to crack down on hospital conglomerates that abuse the federal 340B program. Initially created to support low-income and rural hospitals, 340B has ballooned into a multibillion-dollar loophole.
These hospitals purchase medicines at heavily discounted prices and resell them at a steep markup — up to five times their acquisition cost — with no obligation to deliver additional care or pass savings to patients. Most 340B hospitals provide less charity care than the national average.
MyVaxIndiana is a portal created by the Indiana Department of Health (IDOH) that allows you to access your vaccine record(s) (and those of your dependents) online.
The updated MyVaxIndiana portal allows you to access your record(s) using your cell phone number or email address registered in the IDOH immunization information system known as CHIRP (Children and Hoosier’s Immunization Registry Program).
Through MyVaxIndiana, Hoosiers will have the ability to download, fax, or print official proof of immunization, which can be used for school, travel or other purposes. Each record also features the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ACIP Immunization Schedule so parents can plan for future immunizations.
Kennedy and Kennedy Obliterate Democrats' Take on HHS Funding With a Few Simple Questions – RedState
The Vigilant Fox 🦊
@VigilantFox
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Replying to @VigilantFox
Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) led the charge, slamming Kennedy for a $3 billion drop in federally funded biomedical research compared to last year.
Kennedy stood his ground.
“We’re cutting waste, we’re cutting duplicative programs,” he said.
Still, Baldwin wouldn’t let up. She framed the loss of “3,200 fewer grants” as an attack on “life-saving programs.”
Kennedy hit back with a devastating stat.
“We spend 70% of the world’s biomedical research out of NIH. 70%. And we’re the sickest country in the world,” he said.
“We’ve had a 38% increase in our agency growth over the past four years,” he added. “That money has not been well spent.”
The exchange summed up a broader dynamic: Democrats trying to paint RFK Jr. as a villain, slashing life-saving science, while Kennedy pointed out that America’s health is declining because of how this money is being spent, not despite it.
3:19 PM · May 20, 2025 //
Senator Kennedy: How many employees were there at HHS when you took over?
HHS Secretary Kennedy: 82,000.
Senator Kennedy: How many do you have today?
HHS: 62,000.
Senator Kennedy: OK.
HHS: That's about the level it was in 2019, right before COVID.
Senator Kennedy: Is, is this the first time that an institution in America has ever downsized?
HHS: I don't think so. I think private and public institutions have.
Senator Kennedy: Microsoft just announced that they were going to reduce their workforce by 6,000 people. You think that will be the end of Microsoft?
HHS: Senator, we wouldn't have reduced anybody...
Senator Kennedy: You think that will be the end of Microsoft?
HHS: I don't think so, Senator. //
Senator Kennedy: Do you hate medical research?
HHS: No, I think we need to lead the world in medical research in this country.
Senator Kennedy: In fact, isn't it true, Mr. Secretary, that you would like to see more money spent on medical research?
HHS: Obviously. I'm the secretary of this department and no secretary wants to see his budget cut.
Senator Kennedy: Well, one way of doing that, it seems to me, would be to stop some of the stealing. And let me tell you what I mean by that. Suppose NIH gives a university $100 million to research, for medical research, to research a cure. And that university takes $30 million of it, doesn't spend it on the research, they use it to subsidize the rest of their university. Is... does that show a commitment to medical research?
HHS: No, and I mentioned before the example of Stanford, which was taking 78 percent in indirect costs, and we don't know what they were spending it on.
Senator Kennedy: That's a theft, isn't it?
HHS: It's not a good way to spend federal money.
Senator Kennedy: In Louisiana, we call that stealing. We call that stealing.
Call for action
Thirty-nine state attorneys general called on Congress to pass legislation to prohibit pharmacy benefit managers from owning or operating pharmacies.
Pharmacy middlemen
PBMs negotiate prices between manufacturers and pharmacies while also managing prescription drug benefits and formularies.
Years of consolidation
The big three pharmacy benefit managers all have their own online or brick-and-mortar pharmacies and insurance providers.
The top three pharmacy benefit managers processed nearly 80% of the roughly 6.6 billion prescriptions filled by pharmacies in 2023, according to the FTC.
In April, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, R, signed legislation banning PBMs from owning pharmacies in the state, claiming that the companies engage in anticompetitive practices. Meanwhile, a handful of other states have laws in the works to address the payment processors. On top of potential legislation, 39 state attorneys general called on Congress to pass legislation similar to Arkansas’ on the federal level.
Health care
The top three pharmacy benefit managers processed nearly 80% of the roughly 6.6 billion prescriptions filled by pharmacies in 2023, according to the FTC.
In the first few months of the new administration, we have witnessed an unprecedented dismantlingopens in a new tab or window of the national scientific and research enterprise. While certain shifts were anticipated in the wake of the 2024 presidential election, the speed and scope of these changes have been alarming. The consequences are rippling across every domain of science and medicine, leaving the academic community grappling with how to move forwardopens in a new tab or window in a rapidly shifting landscape. While debate is integral to the advancement of science, division across partisan lines harms the advancement of science and our collective health.
At a time when many individuals and organizations are unsure of how to respond, one thing is abundantly clear: silence will not protect science. As health equity researchers, our fields of science -- reproductive health, workforce diversity, and cancer disparities -- are once again at the center of conflict. One commonly observed response has been to obscure or rebrand "controversial" areas like diversityopens in a new tab or window or sexualityopens in a new tab or window in an attempt to avoid scrutiny. For example, researchers are considering and being asked to make changes to language in grants and manuscriptsopens in a new tab or window.
This strategy is both ethically and strategically flawed. Obfuscation erodes public trust and weakens the integrity of scientific inquiry. The recent threat of NIH indirect cost cutsopens in a new tab or window and canceling of grantsopens in a new tab or window and public health programsopens in a new tab or window serves as a stark warning: when we permit vulnerabilities in one area of research, the resulting fracture inevitably undermines the entire scientific infrastructure. //
George_Avery_PhD
2 days ago
We needed people to speak up when leaders at NIH tried to suppress the Lab Leak hypothesis in order to cover up the fact that the agency may well have paid to create the COVID virus. We needed people to speak up when Washington was trying to suppress those who held true to the fundamental virtue of science, which is skepticism - not just on COVID, but other areas of science. We needed to speak up when the Climategate e-mails revealed a conspiracy to suppress dissenting research. We needed to speak up for years as nutritional research clung to the ideas of Ancel Keyes, even when it was revealed that he suppressed his own results when they did not fit his ideas. We needed to speak up over the crisis in peer review. We need to speak up about health economists who neglect to consider that government intervention is itself a market failure. We needed to speak up about the misrepresented and exaggerated risks of nuclear power, and the false idea that solar and wind generation can meet growing baseline needs.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Friday that the Trump administration had granted permission to West Virginia to ban the use of federal food assistance dollars to buy soft drinks. At an event in Martinsburg, WV, RFK Jr. gave West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey a first-of-its-kind waiver to permit the ban and had a message for the rest of the country: “Apply for a waiver to my agency, and we’re going to give it to you.” //
This marks a turning point in the battle between nutritional advocates and beverage manufacturers and sellers over whether SNAP dollars should be used to buy soft drinks.
Soft drinks are the top item purchased with SNAP benefits.
Soft Drinks
Fluid Milk
Ground Beef
Bag Snacks
Cheese
Baked Breads
Cold Cereal
Fresh Chicken
Frozen Handhelds and Snacks
Lunchmeat
Candy
Infant Formula
Frozen Pizza
Refrigerated Juices/Drinks
Ice Cream
Coffee and Creamers. //
Personally, I think the framing of this issue as a "government overreach" or "rights" argument is the height of dishonesty. SNAP benefits, as the name indicates, are "supplemental" to the normal food budget. The money is a government benefit and it has the right to decide what that benefit can be used for. If you want to buy candy and soft drinks, go right ahead, but use your own money. The other major nutritional program, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, also known as WIC, already prohibits soft drink purchases, and the sky didn't fall in.
During the continuing resolution fight, the drum the Democrats kept beating was that Republicans wanted to gut Medicare - despite the fact that Joe Biden's administration oversaw years of cuts to Medicare Advantage, the plan increasingly chosen by the nation's seniors. Dems won't characterize cuts to Medicare Advantage as Medicare cuts, though, because what they're really trying to do is eliminate Medicare Advantage as a way to push "Medicare for All."
During my first term, my Administration took historic steps to correct a fundamental wrong within the American healthcare system. For far too long, prices were hidden from patients and employers, with inadequate recourse available to individuals looking to shop for care or obtain pricing information from a healthcare provider in advance of a visit or procedure. These opaque pricing arrangements allowed powerful entities, such as hospitals and insurance companies, to operate with insufficient accountability regarding their pricing practices, resulting in patients, employers, and taxpayers shouldering the burden of inflated healthcare costs.
While signing the EO, Trump clarified how this EO not only re-established the directive he put into place above, but how this new EO had even more teeth.
The map below displays the locations of 2492 direct primary care (DPC) practices across all 50 states plus Washington, DC.
Direct Primary Care, or DPC, is a new way of providing primary care that's already helped a quarter million people stay healthier and spend less on healthcare. Patients at DPC practices often receive ongoing primary care from their doctor with zero copays, convenient online scheduling options, near-wholesale prices on medications and blood tests, and even their doctor's personal cell number. It's like having a doctor in the family.
So how is this possible? Easy: direct primary care practices cut out middlemen like insurance companies, freeing themselves to provide great care at fair prices. Unlike traditional third party practices that serve the needs of insurance companies, direct primary care is for everybody; most DPC memberships cost less than your monthly cell phone or cable bill, for great care whenever you need it.
The Trump administration celebrated the confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Secretary of Health and Human Services by rolling out the creation of the Make America Healthy Again Commission.
Make America Healthy Again arose as a slogan after RFK Jr. joined the Trump campaign. While some of Kennedy's ideas about health could be classified as "exotic," he asked questions that no one else seemed interested in talking about. Like why, with our enormous national investment in biomedical research and health care, is our nation a crap hole of health outcomes, particularly from chronic diseases?
This is from the introduction to the executive order creating the MAHA Commission:
Holy cow! We're talking eight figures in many cases. Now, the time scale runs from 1990 to 2024; we might note that the guy in second place, Raphael Warnock (D-GA), wasn't elected until 2021. So in three years, the reverend managed to rake in Big Pharma bucks to the tune of $14 million and change. He's in second place - and guess who's in first?
If you guessed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I), the daffy old Boshevik from Vermont, you guessed right. The pharmaceutical companies and the organizations associated with them have been feeling the Bern to the tune of $23,193,451. "Medical Societies" are the biggest donor bribers; they're into Bernie for over half that amount, $12,749,883. When Sanders claims he hasn't taken any money from Big Pharma CEOs, we should notice that he's specifying CEOs because he's taking a lot of money from the medical societies that they doubtlessly belong to. //
The only thing Bernie gets right about what socialism claims to be is that, despite his massive net worth, he still looks and dresses like a flood victim.
Eric Daugherty
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RFK just gave a flawless answer to Bernie Sanders asking if health care is a human right.
Bet Sanders didn't expect an answer this intelligent... he interrupted RFK IMMEDIATELY.
SANDERS: Is it a human right? Yes or no?
RFK: In the way that free speech is? It's different, because free speech costs nothing. In health care - if you smoke cigs for 20 years, and you get cancer - you are now taking from the pool of resources..-
12:12 PM · Jan 29, 2025
But Sanders wasn't done. He went off on a crazy rant about baby onesies that were produced by an organization that Kennedy had been involved with that said, "Unvaxxed unafraid" and "No vax, no problem." But apparently Sanders didn't know or couldn't absorb that Kennedy said he was no longer part of the organization or on the board. He just started shrieking his head off. Kennedy started laughing, as did Megyn Kelly, who was sitting behind him in the audience.
"Are you supportive of these onesies?" Sanders screamed.
"I'm supportive of vaccines," Kennedy calmly replied.
Sanders continued to scream, "Are you supportive of this clothing which is militantly anti-vaccine?"
Kennedy and Kelly started laughing, because it was just so ridiculous. "I'm supportive of vaccines... I want good science." //
DK1969
4 hours ago
Healthcare is not a human right because it's product of someone's labor (scientists, doctors, administrators etc.). If one has a right to product of someone's labor, it's called slavery.
Concrete data shows that the ways to mitigate health care costs are greater competition among health care providers, price reform and transparency, and incorporation of more holistic health approaches to treating a person as a whole human and not as unrelated parts (heart, lungs, kidneys, feet, etc.). Instead of playing a financial and quantitative numbers game of farming through patients like cattle, health care providers should focus on reducing the incidences of chronic metabolic illness, along with mitigating urgent and catastrophic care.
Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. often points to our poor American diets and our over dependence on pharmacology as key reasons why we are metabolically unwell, but it is also our inability to build consistent health habits and do routine screenings which factor into this equation. All of these aspects are where the majority of corporate health care continues to fail, particularly to the degree it continues to align with intrusive government. //
Novant Health appears to be trying a new model of actual people and patient care minus the corporate bureaucracy and government overreach. They're partnership with Jordan is helping to make this happen. //
CaptainCall
8 hours ago
Rip out the bureaucracy and administrative nightmare in the healthcare industry and costs would be reduced by double digit percentages. For example, there are 0ver 70,000 different diagnostic and treatment codes providers must submit in order to get paid by Medicare and other insurers. Reduce the number to 5,000 and thousands of billing specialists are no longer needed, payments are processed faster, fewer errors are recorded and require re-filing. That's just one piece of the puzzle.
There are dozens of other stupid, time wasting, expensive requirements that add to the cost of healthcare and take doctors away from patients. And much of it can be laid at the feet of Obamacare, which purposely created the monster we have today as a means to end private healthcare altogether and move to the single payer, govt-run model the Dems dream of.
Probable Cause CaptainCall
7 hours ago
Adding on... I like to point to all the people involved in health care, who don't actually provide health care. All the employees of the insurance companies. All the billing people on the provider side who submit the claims to the insurers. All the HR people everywhere who deal with health care benefits.
They're not bad people -- the system created their jobs, and someone has to do them. But they don't administer strep tests or reset broken bones. And they have to be paid. //
GregInFla
5 hours ago
Concierge office care is one option, where people pay a fixed fee to the doctor to get office visits covered, with no insurance participation. Also allowing more cash-for-doctor's visits. I believe a doctor cannot charge a cash patient less than Medicare would be billed.
United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson's assassination in early December caused me to think about why Americans are so frustrated with insurance companies. As the owner of an independent pharmacy in Duarte, California, I deal with insurance on a daily basis. I got an email one evening from a patient. I've read this email before, from countless patients before this one. I have even received a letter from the Superior Court of Minnesota, listing me as a creditor for a patient who filed for bankruptcy after cancer treatment. This particular email read:
"Could you tell me what I owe you and what I may have paid. I’m trying for some grants. I can’t even buy groceries. I’ve already missed taxes on our home. But I don’t want to keep on not paying you." //
Insurance is a catch-22. It almost seems like you're punished if you use it, but you're a fool not to have it. I would love to respond to the email above with, "Don't worry, I'll take the loss, and your husband's health is more important than money." However, per insurance requirements, legally I cannot.
Affordable coverage
In 2024, a job-based health plan is considered "affordable" if your share of the monthly premium in the lowest-cost plan offered by the employer is less than 8.39% of your household income. In 2025, it is considered "affordable" if the premium is less than 9.02% of your household income.
" The lowest-cost plan must also meet the minimum value standard. //
If the premiums aren’t considered affordable for the employee and the household, they may qualify for savings in a Marketplace plan. But, if the premium is considered affordable for the employee, but not for other members of the household, then only the other household members may qualify for savings.
Citizen_bitcoin
Jameson Lopp (@lopp) on X
Hospital bill for delivering a baby + 1 week recuperation in 1956.
Total: $107.55
The US is an outlier in healthcare costs, by almost a factor of two, while delivering comparable or inferior results.
…
US performance is generally comparable to, or poorer than, countries that spend much less. I could not find any significant health metric in which the US excelled over other first-world countries.
Collins frets about the politicization of science, but largely conflates science with his own political agenda. //
But don’t expect many mea culpas from Collins about his time at NIH. He offers no apology for funding the harvesting of body parts from late-term aborted babies for medical research. Or for financing research that used gender-destructive puberty blockers on young people. Likewise, he fails to acknowledge his past promotion of the failed Darwinian idea that our genome is swamped with “junk DNA.”
Nor does Collins take real ownership of his most significant missteps during Covid. During the rollout of the Covid vaccines, Collins falsely assured the public that mRNA from the vaccines wouldn’t stay in the body “beyond probably a few hours.” A subsequent study showed that the mRNA could persist in a person’s lymph system some two months after vaccination. Collins’ promotion of misinformation has been memory-holed. So has his emphatic promise in April 2021 that “There’s not going to be any mandating of vaccines from the U.S. government, I can assure you.” A few months later, Collins was praising the imposition of mandates as a “forceful, muscular approach” and demonizing those who didn’t want to take the vaccines as killers on the wrong side of history.
Collins does acknowledge problems with government messaging during Covid and the “collateral damage” inflicted on ordinary Americans by various policies. But he calls the collateral damage “inevitable.”
For many people, his admissions will be too little, too late. //
The most serious flaw is Collins’ core message. He frets about the politicization of science and the growing distrust of claims made in the name of science. He wants to restore public trust in “science” and the experts.
The problem is he largely conflates science with his own political agenda. By the end of the book, it becomes clear that for him “science” has become a convenient club to bludgeon people who disagree with him. //
His “pre-bunking” is entirely one-sided. His goal is to shut down critical inquiry, not cultivate it. //
Collins also suggests listening to people with whom you disagree. Unfortunately, he has spent much of his career doing the opposite.
In October 2020, three distinguished epidemiologists published the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized the government’s lockdown policies. How did Collins respond? Did he convene a meeting with them to hear them out? No, he derided them in private as “fringe” figures and told subordinates: “There needs to be a quick and devastating take down” of their ideas. Collins expresses regret for his “intemperate” language, but says he has “no regrets for the point I made.”
In other words, he really hasn’t learned anything.
It’s precisely because Collins has insulated himself from fellow experts who disagree with him that he finds it so easy to caricature the viewpoints he opposes.
That is not the road to wisdom. It’s a road to folly.