congress
Democrats try to undermine Trump on IVF
Democrats are trying to undermine one of the president’s signature health care achievements while taking back the advantage on another.
Price cuts for IVF drugs are among the most notable discounts on TrumpRx. They also feed into President Trump’s effort to claim the upper hand on a topic that has been a liability to his party.
On the campaign trail, Trump called himself the “father of IVF,” said Republicans are “the party for IVF,” and promised to make IVF free to everyone. The president used the Oval Office to announce a deal with EMD Serono to lower fertility drug prices, and he invited the first patient to buy steeply discounted IVF medication via TrumpRx to his State of the Union address.
However, Trump appointed Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, which jeopardized in vitro fertilization in some states. In 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children with a right to life. The state legislature has since passed a law to shield fertility clinics and patients from liability, but it does not resolve the personhood issue at the core of the ruling. Last month, Texas Republicans adopted a platform that calls for protecting fetal life from “destructive practices, such as IVF and commercial surrogacy.”
Last week, Senate Democrats tried to pass a bill, by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), that would establish a nationwide right to IVF, expand coverage for the procedure to military families, and require all employer-sponsored insurance programs to cover it.
Republicans blocked it. Asked whether Trump’s IVF price cuts help patients, Duckworth said the availability of IVF is the bigger problem.
“You can’t say that you’re lowering the fertility drug cost, but then support the banning of the procedure,” Duckworth told STAT.
health insurance
Medicare subsidies rise, projecting to drive up numbers of uninsured
The annual amount of federal subsidies for all types of health insurance is projected to rise by $1.5 trillion in the next decade, and 60% of that increase — $900 billion — will go toward Medicare, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Medicare Advantage is expected to account for 61% of Medicare spending on hospital and outpatient services in 2036, up from 54% now. Over that period, annual spending on each MA enrollee is projected to be 7% higher on average than spending on seniors enrolled in original Medicare.
Meanwhile, the number of uninsured people is projected to rise from 30 million this year to 37 million in 2036, largely due to cuts to federal health care spending in the tax bill that Republicans passed last summer. Reduced Medicaid enrollment is expected to be the main driver of the higher uninsured figures, though there also is expected to be a drop in marketplace enrollment.
federal research
Black-and-blueprint for academia
The White House’s science blueprint favors AI over life science, and industry over academia, Anil Oza reports.
The report, called “Science: A New Golden Age,” calls for shifting hundreds of billions of research dollars from universities to industry, primarily tech and AI companies.
It outlines some issues that have interested science policy experts for years. But some of the report’s goals could be undermined by other administration actions, including its crackdown on immigration and the dismantling of research programs.
Read more.
peptides
A pep in the step toward a MAHA goal
A panel of FDA advisers recommended easing access to six of the seven peptides they considered last week, Lizzy Lawrence and Sarah Todd report.
Peptides are a drug class. They’re short-chain amino acids. Drugs like Ozempic (semaglutide) and Mounjaro (tirzepatide) are synthetic peptide chains.
But those are FDA-approved drugs. The peptides that the advisory panel considered are not. Nevertheless, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a big believer in them, as are many social media influencers. (FDA career staff advised that the peptides should remain restricted.)
Read more for what could happen next.
health tech
Modernizing health data sharing without regulations
A year ago, Medicare leaders got big tech and health care companies like Apple, Epic, and UnitedHealth to voluntarily agree to create better health data sharing pathways, standards, and apps. How is it going, a year on?
According to Kennedy and chief adviser Chris Klomp, 60% of people can now import their health record into an app of their choice, up from 5% a year ago.
“We think it’ll be 80% by October,” Klomp said at an event at HHS headquarters yesterday.
Officials also gave updates on what’s been accomplished and unveiled eight new pledge categories. Read Brittany’s story for details on the new direction, how CMS is supporting providers’ adoption of the new technology, and which song blasted over the speakers as pallbearers marched a coffin down the aisle (yes, that really happened). — Brittany Trang
