I'm sorry, WHAT state is implementing hospital price caps??

Think we can say pretty safely that the food assistance cuts from the Big Beautiful Bill will turn out to be much bigger than initially estimated (no shade at CBO, who had impossible task of guessing state response to the cost share).

This story has one of the grimmest ledes I've ever read

How very sad -- Bob was a pioneer in the scholarly area of health politics, and his work examining public opinion about health policy literally paved the way for my own, and so many others. Condolences to his friends, family, and his numerous mentees.

"'Frankly, I was appalled,' said Richard Frank, who served as assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at HHS during the Obama administration." (More on that ASPE "report" on Medicaid work requirements)

One of my favorite bits of health policy apocrypha is why we call it CMS instead of CMMS theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/wh...

hey, this is a fairly nerdy news item, but you should absolutely know about it. (looks like there are links in other posts in the thread.) the Post Office is really contemplating not delivering ballots unless states expose their voters' data to DOJ. I hate saying read that again but, read it again

So very sad about this news. There's a small army of health policy scholars — myself included — who owe their careers to Bob's taking a risk on us. And there's a much larger army of public health professionals who benefited from his wisdom as a teacher.

Congressional Democrats want to use the Congressional Review Act — a parliamentary tool that has been wielded enthusiastically by Republicans in the last decade, but was barely used before that — to force a vote on the recently-finalized annual ACA marketplace regulation

My only disappointment is that this does *not* involve Jon wearing jedi robes

What happens to racial inequities in Medicaid enrollment when we roll back the red tape required of beneficiaries? We used the ‘20-23 pause on administrative burdens to test if they narrowed. Spoiler: They do! But primarily after a concerted effort to ensure equal access. doi.org/10.1111/1475...

I've written a bit on opportunities to automate enrollment in the ACA marketplaces. But a little-noticed OBBBA policy, eliminating safe harbors on subsidy recapture, has greatly increased states' barriers to implementing those approaches.

MACPAC's June report includes a chapter on implementation of Medicaid work requirements, including a framework for metrics that could be useful in monitoring outcomes www.macpac.gov/wp-content/u...

hello fellow humans

Also there's a response to the recent ASPE report suggesting poverty would decline due to the #Medicaid work requirement: "The review, however, critically omits studies of actual Medicaid work-requirement experiments." www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore... #workrequirement #healthpolicy

New in Health Affairs: "As written, the medical frailty rule not only departs from the law on which it is based but seriously endangers the health of low-income working-age adults." www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore... #Medicaid #WorkRequirement #healthpolicy

"States are going to be asked to make a determination using information that doesn’t exist in their systems." Still lots of confusion over whether/how states can automate frailty determinations for Medicaid work requirements. And states don't have the luxury of time for CMS to figure this out.

Nellie sploot

Should insurers start lending their customers money so they can cover the plans’ high deductibles? It’s one idea being floated by the Trump administration. Here’s my story: www.nytimes.com/2026/06/11/b...

President Trump has taken a pro-tobacco regulatory stance in office. There has also been an extraordinary flow of money between Trump and the tobacco industry, including as much as $1.64 million in Philips Morris stock. My latest, with @kffhealthnews.org: kffhealthnews.org/courts/fda-t...

absolutely wild to me that MGB, one of the highest-revenue health care systems in the country apparently fundraises from patients? (I started getting these after an annual checkup)

2027 health insurance rate filings aren't yet public in most states. But there are already at least 7 insurers that have said they're exiting the health insurance Marketplace at the end of 2026, affecting more than 636k enrollees across 17 states: www.healthinsurance.org/blog/health-...

Do read @citizencohn.bsky.social on that ASPE report, quoting three former top appointees of the office. "If you read the report itself... you can detect the whiff of serious, longtime HHS analysts trying their best to produce a truthful document." www.thebulwark.com/p/donald-tru...

You have no idea how bad a report has to be to pull me back into the world of blogging. So we wrote this post to tell you.

current view from my desk

Is this a stupid fight? Yes. Is STAT on the right side of history? Also yes.

One year into new federal health leadership, new poll findings show a sharp fall in trust in the CDC, as well as continued support for childhood vaccine requirements and recent changes to dietary guidelines.

Satisfying to help set the record on work requirements straight with @adrianna.bsky.social "Given the research evidence and policy details, we conclude that, in the real world, Medicaid work requirements are much more likely to worsen poverty than to reduce it."

Good. Grief. Here's my latest on how Dr. Oz's CMS is at every turn taking these already terrible Medicaid cuts and making them harsher for the most vulnerable (gift link):

Having relied on HHS's planning and evaluation office to provide solid evidence for assessing important policies, I'm very disappointed at their hack job supporting the Trump work requirements. @adrianna.bsky.social and @chloeneast.bsky.social have the goods. open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

Increasingly seeing obviously-Claude-prepared slides out in the wild and I'm pretty sure that will always trigger a reflexive skepticism

Even if you take the ASPE report's lit review at face value — and you shouldn't, it skips critical recent + relevant work — the rosiest 1990s work requirements study in their technical appendix suggests an effect size less than 10% of what the report's "model" projects with @chloeneast.bsky.social:

NEW: Hot on the heels of the Medicaid work requirement rules (by total coincidence), a @umich.edu team has released findings from a 10-year evaluation of Michigan's Medicaid expansion showing benefits to individuals & hospitals: michmed.org/4NVXe @ihpidirector.bsky.social @noraverlaine.bsky.social

New at Can We Still Govern: The Trump admin released a report saying that Medicaid work requirements will increase work and reduce poverty. There is a technical term for this: malarkey. Actual experts @chloeneast.bsky.social & @adrianna.bsky.social break it down. open.substack.com/pub/donmoyni...

💡 Excellent read from PBS News on Nebraska’s rollout of Medicaid work requirements — the first state in the nation to implement the new federal requirements, providing an important early test case for policymakers and researchers — featuring insights from Ben Sommers. Read the article below ⬇️

what i said was this builds on prior work what i meant three people had said it before no one believed them i'm going to try again

We're hiring! The KFF Project on Hospital Costs is searching for a Senior Policy Analyst or Senior Data Analyst to work on timely policy analyses relating to hospital and health system spending, prices, finances, and business practices: kff.bamboohr.com/careers/115

Excited about this new work!

AHRQ is a no-brainer for anyone interested in better, cheaper healthcare. Congress agrees and has funded it accordingly, but Trump & OMB are hellbent on killing it. New AHRQ awards by fiscal year: FY24: 317 (pre-Trump) FY25: 6 FY26: 0 See more of our curves here: grant-witness.us/funding_curv...

This week on #WTHealth podcast: @sangerkatz.bsky.social, @alicemiranda.bsky.social, and @lizessleywhyte.bsky.social on new Medicaid work rules, politics and grant funds, and fixing the surprise bill mess. Also, the latest #BOTM. kffhealthnews.org/podcast/what...

The Trump administration’s rollout of a mandate that millions of Medicaid enrollees work or risk losing benefits is forcing states to scrap months of preparation. States had already committed to paying contractors millions to comply w/the law. @kffhealthnews.org kffhealthnews.org/medicaid/tru...

Okay this isn't close to the most horrifying part but: "We need a good health record system, and one of the things that really surprised me most when I came into office is that there is — that the systems are broken" No one nominated to ~lead HHS~ should be surprised by something so fundamental

all legs when she snoozes

In reading more about OMB's federal funding proposed rule, it's hard to avoid this quote, from @jtimmer.bsky.social: "If you wanted to cripple science research and were disappointed that Congress continued to fund it, this is the sort of document you would produce." arstechnica.com/science/2026...

lol. but also lmao. (from the ASPE report appendix)

Was glad to have the opportunity to join @selenasd.com on All Things Considered yesterday to chat about the new work requirements regulation, which is will dial up paperwork — and, as a result, coverage losses — for some of the most vulnerable Medicaid enrollees

The Trump administration wants low-income people who have cancer, kidney failure, and other complex conditions to prove they can't work in order to keep their Medicaid coverage. www.statnews.com/2026/06/03/m...

In their release of the #Medicaid work requirements rule, CMS touts an ASPE report as evidence that work requirements increase employment. In fact, the report simply assumes “illustrative” impacts that are “not necessarily what is or will occur in the real world”. tinyurl.com/2czhrtcw

Trump administration puts out strict Medicaid work rules exceeding what was in H.R.1 www.npr.org/2026/06/02/n...

That's a wrap for #ARM26 for me. Great to see old friends and new!