I just realized I accidentally linked the accompanying editorial instead of the paper itself. Correct link below! jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

A new paper led by Harvard Health Policy PhD student Ye Shen finds that, in the current policy environment, more than six in ten kids will have been enrolled in Medicaid for some period of time by their 18th birthday; the program is absolutley critical for children. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Flagging this new TFAH report for other health policy/politics syllabi-updaters www.tfah.org/wp-content/u...

would be pretty weird to get raptured on our anniversary tbh

And insurers (and marketplaces) are supposed to send letters notifying current enrollees of premium increases that *arrive* no later than November 1. Screenshot is from HealthCare.gov:

Shana tovah to my Jewish friends and good luck in tomorrow’s Rapture to my Christian ones

The government knowingly putting false information in the label of a drug is crossing a Rubicon that should not be taken lightly

So cool they discovered the cause of autism on basically day they guessed they would. I’m also glad they are withholding this information for a few days to prep for a WrestleMania-style announcement. This is how science works.

Those who don't subscribe to the Federal Register might be missing some very unusual developments today on the leucovorin front. There's a notice that FDA is approving a previously withdrawn NDA for leucovorin tablets. That in itself is unusual. /1

My kingdom for a counterfactual.

“yes hello is it the weekend yet”

Once again marveling at AHIP getting to be the undisupted good guys

Thread. ACIP's reversal this morning imposes new financial barriers to accessing the MMRV vaccine for VFC-eligible families, while AHIP's public statements mean that privately insured families will continue to have access with no cost-sharing, at least for now.

With Hepatitis B vaccination under threat, here is one frustrating fact about testing for Hep B. It’s super complicated, based on multiple tests. I’ve often consulted this chart to interpret tests, and occasionally ended up in the dreaded “four interpretations possible” section.

Many new ACIP members claim to want people to be able to choose whether to receive certain vaccines. But some of their votes would remove certain vaccines from VFC purchasing, significantly limiting people's ability to afford them. Stunning that some members appear to not understand this point.

Two perennial strategies of the most strident critics of vaccines: suggesting all sorts of specific studies that haven’t been done but need to be, and discounting any study that doesn’t support their views as either methodologically flawed or COI-biased. We’re being bombarded with both today at ACIP

Another first in my ~20 years of watching ACIP meetings: committee members asking questions to CDC subject-matter experts as if they were attorneys cross-examining witnesses. Asking questions to which they have their own answers ready, no matter how CDC responds.

Once again, words cannot describe how dire a situation has to be for scores of civil servants to put their names to a letter like this. And there have been multiple such letters!

➡️ We see two important implications: 1. Most expansion enrollees are actively receiving care. The coverage losses predicted under the OBBBA's work requirement will thus likely introduce discontinuities in care. 4/N

During debate on the OBBBA, I realized we know very little about health care needs and use in the adult Medicaid expansion population. We have a short paper out in Health Affairs Scholar this week that uses national Medicaid claims data in an attempt to fill that gap: ⬇️ 1/N

It's obviously secondary to the substance of the hearing, but I was in awe of how composed Monarez and Houry stayed throughout

This was one of the more 👀 moments I think I've ever seen in a congressional hearing

Everyone loves to hate insurers; imagine making ~AHIP~ come across as the good guy

Some of my thoughts about OBBBA's role in what I call "the Great Retrenchment" are here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Also worth noting the role of Republicans in Congress here: There are no exemptions to Medicaid work requirements in OBBBA for those experiencing homelessness. In fact, the law repealed the SNAP work requirement exemption that had existed for that population.

Monarez: "I believe preventable diseases will return -- and I believe that we will have children harmed by things that we know they do not need to be harmed by" Absolutely true, and here's an example www.thebulwark.com/p/rfk-jr-ken...

With today's announcement, it still remains to be seen how much of the $50 billion rural health fund will go to hospitals. According to CMS, payments to providers for care "cannot exceed 15% of the total" though other uses, like capital investments, could also benefit hospitals.

And, "Oz also said the federal government can 'claw back' funding from states that 'don’t perform' and redistribute it, saying: “This is not punitive. This is a very clever decision by the crafters of the law.'" Not sure how states are supposed to feel confident allocating and spending these funds.

The perennially difficult thing with writing about vaccine polling -- which this story handles nicely -- is that it's crucial to highlight two things at once: -Americans broadly (and correctly) support vaccination, across party lines -There are concerning cracks being leveraged in that consensus

Deeply researched article detailing the Trump admin’s “deliberate and targeted attack” on cancer research. Attacks on NIH are compounded by efforts to undermine FDA (causing many cancer drug reviewers to depart) and to patients’ ability to get and retain insurance. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/m...

Enhanced ACA premium tax credits do not expire until the end of the calendar year. But, if open enrollment starts November 1 without an extension, many people could drop coverage when they see skyrocketing out-of-pocket premiums and their eyes pop out of their heads.

But use of "GenAI" to write NIH grant proposals is forbidden? grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

brb updating syllabus

It should not be up to John Oliver to be publicly making the argument that university presidents should be making loudly & collectively on the news & in front of the US Capitol every day.

New paper w/ Brian McGarry, Ashvin Gandhi, and Drew Wilcock in @jamainternalmed.com! Hospitals are complaining across the US that patients are "stuck" waiting for rehab beds at nursing homes when they are medically stable and ready for discharge. What is going on?? jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Not sure if there are any other erstwhile metro-Detroiters who occasionally crave the "peasant soup" from Olga's, but with a few mods for ease/flavor, this copycat recipe is p spot-on

the maga constitution doesn’t allow any institution, public or private, to explicitly work to ameliorate racial inequality but allows the government to racially profile

"Harvard has been unable to access any funds from the NIH since April because of the restrictions imposed by DOGE through its oversight of the NIH’s payment system, including in the two-month period in which Young’s ruling mandated that grant awards listed in the ruling be resumed."

Glad to have supported this team! One highlight: Even though the OBBBA offers states modest grants to update data systems (totaling $200M nationally), this amount compares unfavorably with the roughly $50M Georgia spent on its work requirement administration program. #Medicaid #WorkRequirement

Sharing some encouraging news re: CDC PRAMS. The CDC has indicated they will weight and clean the 2024 PRAMS data. Also, the PRAMS data collection system (PIDS) is up and running again and some sites have begun 2025 PRAMS data collection. Hopefully restoration of the ARF portal is coming soon too.

He's exploiting what sociologists call the availability heuristic: the more people hear about something, the more common they assume it to be. If he can spew vaccine skepticism all over the airwaves, then he can create the perception that such skepticism is more widespread than it is. 1/

Several states are moving fast to remove barriers, but their power over insurance coverage is more limited than their power to permit pharmacists to give vaccines.…

Once again, the timeliness of KFF's polling amazes — this late July/early August poll actually ~pre-dates~ Florida's vaccine announcement by a few weeks. Screenshot from this morning's Politico Pulse: www.politico.com/newsletters/... Poll results/write-up here: www.kff.org/quick-take/m...

Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting the Broad Street pump! Sadly, I saw that the pump handle had been removed. I worked to reinstall the pump handle so local residents would not be deprived of this vital resource. So glad to bring some of the latest American public health ingenuity to London!

One important issue here is administrative preparation/capacity and its potential to create errors that cause eligible people to lose coverage. The piece notes that CMS spent three years preparing for unwinding, while work requirements will be imposed on a much shorter timeline.

New @georgetownccf.bsky.social report using #Medicaid performance indicators to assess states' readiness to implement harmful work reporting requirements and other #Medicaid cuts included in the budget reconciliation law: ccf.georgetown.edu/2025/09/04/a...

So I have a question... RFK, Jr. says he does not believe "modeling studies" to estimate the number of premature deaths prevented by COVID vaccines, He want to see real data. Question: What data does he have in mind? 1/2

Ben Sommers and I have a new piece up at @jamahealthforum.com on how to think about generalizing lessons from unwinding to looming new Medicaid red tape requirements. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... We appreciate support from the @commonwealthfund.org for this work!