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Morning Briefing

Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations

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Thursday, Sep 11 2025

Full Issue

Fight Over Obamacare Premiums Could Trigger Federal Government Shutdown

Senate and House Democrats are demanding that Republicans stop a sharp spike in Affordable Care Act premiums. In other news, House lawmakers have included an amendment in their 2026 spending bill to fund mRNA vaccine research — in direct opposition to HHS chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Democrats are threatening to block a bill needed to avert an Oct. 1 US government shutdown unless Republicans agree to stop a sharp spike in Obamacare health insurance premiums or meet other demands by the minority party. Obamacare insurance subsidies, which have slashed premiums for millions of Americans, will expire Jan. 1, and out-of-power Democrats said they view the stopgap funding bill as their best legislative chance. Republicans need at least seven Democratic votes in the Senate to pass the bill. (Wasson and Dennis, 9/10)

House appropriators have snubbed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by including an amendment in their 2026 spending bill that specifically funds continued messenger RNA vaccine research, despite his effort to roll it back. (Cirruzzo, 9/10)

On children's nutrition —

A House hearing on Tuesday aimed at discussing ways to improve children's diets -- but also veered off into many other directions. At the House Oversight Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services hearing on "Better Meals, Fewer Pills: Making Our Children Healthy Again," Rep. Wesley Bell (D-Mo.) said, "The health of the American people, especially our children, face significant risk when the most pressing threat is the growing anti-vaccine rhetoric that undermines decades of scientific consensus and life-saving health policy." (Frieden, 9/10)

More school-age children and adolescents are now obese than underweight, a new report from the United Nations’ children’s agency, UNICEF, has revealed, with 188 million young people affected. (Woodyatt, 9/10)

More on federal funding cuts and DEI —

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked Trump administration restrictions on services for immigrants in the country illegally, including the federal preschool program Head Start, health clinics and adult education. The order from the judge in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island applies to 20 states and the District of Columbia, whose attorneys general, all Democrats, sued the administration. It puts the administration’s reinterpretation of a Clinton-era federal policy on hold while the case is decided. (Seminera, 9/10)

The Trump administration said Wednesday that it will withhold $350 million in grants to hundreds of colleges that serve large populations of minority students, calling the decades-old programs discriminatory. The Education Department said it would cease funding eight discretionary grant programs that individually support Black, Native, Hispanic and Asian American students across the country. The agency said it will reallocate funding for fiscal 2025 to other priorities. (Douglas-Gabriel and Rosenzweig-Ziff, 9/10)

Harvard University said it has received notice that some of the federal research funding frozen by the Trump administration is being restarted, although the money hasn’t started flowing yet. The notification followed a court victory for Harvard last week in which a federal judge ruled that the US illegally froze more than $2 billion in research dollars for the school. It can take several days for the university to receive authorized funding after submitting a request. (Lorin and Ryan, 9/10)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: Watch: Patient Numbers At NIH Hospital Tumble After Trump Cuts

Government documents viewed by Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News show a drop in patients receiving care this year at the National Institutes of Health’s renowned research hospital, a 200-bed facility at NIH headquarters in Maryland. We previously reported a decrease in the number of patients being treated at the NIH Clinical Center from February through April. Since then, we’ve obtained newer data showing the drop has continued. (Pradhan, 9/11)

This is part of the Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.
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