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The House abandoned a vote on the budget resolution Wednesday, leaving President Donald Trump's tax cuts and massive reductions to federal healthcare spending in limbo. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pulled the measure, which the Senate approved Monday, from the floor just before it was set for a vote. A handful of conservative Republicans rebelled because they believed the budget would not bring about sufficiently deep cuts. In consultation with Trump, Johnson said House GOP leaders would strive to mollify upstart Republicans with new language he said would ensure conservatives get the huge spending cuts they demand, and try hold a vote Thursday. Congress is scheduled to begin a two-week recess Thursday evening. (McAuliff, 4/9)

Some Americans who rely on Medicaid to pay for their health care don’t realize their insurance is funded by that very program, which congressional Republicans are looking to shrink. One reason is that state programs aren’t always called “Medicaid.” Many states have rebranded their programs with consumer-friendly names such as SoonerCare in Oklahoma, Apple Health in Washington, Medi-Cal in California or TennCare in Tennessee. And nearly all states now use private insurance companies such as UnitedHealth or Blue Cross Blue Shield to run their Medicaid programs. That means Medicaid enrollees may hold an insurance card and paperwork with the name of a commercial insurance company. (Vollers, 4/9)

A court ruling striking down a federal nursing home staffing mandate brought a sigh of relief from nursing home operators even as the industry still faces financial uncertainty. An end to the mandate could bring stability to nursing home budgets and valuations. However, some nursing homes still face challenges, such as tougher state staffing minimums, as well as the threat of potential Medicaid rate cuts. (Eastabrook, 4/9)

A Florida welfare assistance project spearheaded by first lady Casey DeSantis received a $10 million donation from the state’s largest Medicaid managed care operator — part of a $67 million out-of-court settlement involving the company’s pharmacy benefit manager. According to a copy of the settlement provided to POLITICO on Wednesday, Centene, which owns Sunshine Health in Florida, agreed to pay the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration $67 million. Of that amount, the agreement directed Centene to contribute $10 million to Hope Florida. (Sarkissian, 4/9)

Nonprofit health insurance company CareSource has invested more than $400 million to buy struggling nonprofit insurer Commonwealth Care Alliance. The deal adds nearly 50,000 Dual Special Needs Plan members who are eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare to CareSource’s book of business, the companies said in a news release Wednesday. CareSource also acquired Commonwealth Care Alliance’s two primary care clinics and its home care practice through the transaction. CareSource counts 2 million Medicaid, Medicare and exchange plan enrollees across seven states. (Tepper, 4/9)

Health insurance investors cheered after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services granted Medicare Advantage carriers their largest pay increase in a long while. Wall Street reacted enthusiastically to the 5.1% payment hike for 2026 that CMS finalized Monday, which could signal a more favorable regulatory environment under Republican President Donald Trump than during the four years Democratic President Joe Biden occupied the White House. Health insurance stocks jumped 8.4% when the markets opened Tuesday. (Tepper, 4/9)

States facing budgetary pressures have few good options to keep millions of people from losing health coverage if Congress lets federal funding for Obamacare expire at the end of the year. That isn’t stopping health officials from trying. California, Colorado, Maryland, Washington and others are all scrambling to avoid a fiscal cliff that could sharply increase health care costs for their residents. (Hooper, 4/9)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Tax Time Triggers Fraud Alarms For Some Obamacare Enrollees

Because of past fraud by rogue brokers, some Affordable Care Act policyholders may get an unexpected tax bill this season. But that isn’t the only potential shock. Other changes coming soon — stemming from proposals by the administration of President Donald Trump — could affect their coverage and its cost. And sorting out related problems and challenges may take longer as federal workers are laid off and funding for assistance programs is cut. (Appleby, 4/10)

In his first network TV interview since becoming Health and Human Services secretary under the Trump administration, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke with CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook about the measles vaccine, major government cuts and health care costs. LaPook met with Kennedy in Mesa, Arizona. When asked by LaPook if he personally approved the more than $11 billion proposed in cuts to local and state programs that address infectious disease, mental health, addiction and childhood vaccination, Kennedy said, "No I'm not familiar with those cuts. We'd have to go … the cuts were mainly DEI cuts, which the president ordered." (Hoffman, Kuzmarov and Sugerman, 4/9)

In the CBS News interview, Kennedy publicly encouraged people to get the measles vaccine, marking the first time he has done so since becoming HHS secretary. "The federal government's position, my position, is that people should get the measles vaccine," he said, but added, "The government should not be mandating those." (Moniuszko, 4/9)

A national public health organization is calling for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign the federal post he assumed just weeks ago, citing “implicit and explicit bias and complete disregard for science.” (Cooney, 4/9)

Weeks after ordering Food and Drug Administration employees back into the office, the agency is reversing course, allowing some of its most prized staffers to work remotely amid worries that recent layoffs and resignations could jeopardize basic functions, like approving new medicines. An internal email obtained by The Associated Press states that FDA leadership are “allowing review staff and supervisors to resume telework” at least two days a week. The policy shift was confirmed by three FDA staffers who spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency matters. (Perrone, 4/10)

Nearly half of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's staff working on developmental disabilities and birth defects was laid off this month, multiple officials tell CBS News, wiping out teams working on research about adults with cognitive disabilities and sickle cell disease. Work likely to be halted by the cuts includes the collection of data for studying Americans with sickle cell, a painful blood disorder that predominantly affects Black families, as well as supporting testing for its more dangerous complications. (Tin, 4/9)

A small office that produced data on alcohol-related deaths and harms, and worked on policies to reduce them, has been shuttered by the Trump administration. Those involved with the work say it was the only group in the federal government focused on preventing excessive drinking and the many problems associated with it, including chronic diseases. (Cueto, 4/9)

Nearly half of all U.S. counties will experience economic losses of at least $250,000 as a result of the Trump administration's planned cuts to indirect funding by the National Institutes of Health, per the Science & Community Impacts Mapping Project. (Reed, 4/9)

When Veronica Sanchez called a Social Security hotline Thursday, she waited two hours before her call was abruptly disconnected. On Friday, she was on hold for six hours and still did not get through to anyone. "I'm gonna have to take time out of my work to stand in line and hopefully get this resolved," the 52-year-old medical practice manager in Canoga Park said Monday. For Sanchez, the stakes are high: If she does not obtain a medical letter from the agency by April 15, her parents, who are on a fixed income, risk losing about $2,500 a month in medical care. They would no longer receive insulin medication for their diabetes, she said, and could lose their daily visit from a nurse. (Jarvie and Solis, 4/9)

Although Trump recently implemented a 90-day pause on some tariffs, he said Wednesday he's still serious about putting tariffs on pharmaceuticals to boost U.S. drug manufacturing. "We're going to put tariffs on the pharmaceutical companies, and they're going to all want to come back," Trump said, speaking from the Oval Office. The raw ingredients of almost all medications are made overseas, even for drugs that are manufactured in the U.S., meaning tariffs could drive up the costs of several medications including over-the-counter painkillers as well as antibiotics, heart medications and asthma drugs. (Kekatos, 4/10)

With President Trump’s latest tariffs underway, a group of House Democrats are calling on the administration to try to protect medical supply chains from the “devastating consequences” the mounting trade war could inflict on patients. Led by Democratic Reps. Doris Matsui (Calif.) and Brad Schneider (Ill.), 26 House Democrats signed a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick warning that “reckless tariffs” are a threat to already fragile medical supply chains. (Choi, 4/9)

Amid the hard-to-follow cutbacks at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a little-known but important office was eliminated — and the implications will be felt not only by drugmakers, but consumers. (Silverman, 4/9)

Shortly after Donald Trump picked Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead his health department, a group of pharmaceutical executives traveled to Mar-a-Lago to personally express their reservations about the man who the president promised would “go wild” on health care. But Trump, confronted with their concerns about his history of anti-vaccine work and lack of government experience, waved the executives off, according to two people briefed on the conversation. Don’t worry about Bobby, he assured them. I’ll keep Kennedy under control. (Cancryn, 4/9)

Wednesday's House hearing on restoring trust in the FDA included something that doesn't happen often: testimony from an industry representative begging for his industry to be regulated. "Lack of uniform quality control standards for hemp products at the federal level has forced responsible farmers and small business owners to compete against unscrupulous actors who generate headlines by distributing poorly manufactured products that are sometimes inappropriately marketed to children," Jonathan Miller, general counsel for the Hemp Roundtable, which advocates for the hemp industry, told members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. (Frieden, 4/9)

The Department of Consumer Protection is removing oversight and enforcement of the marijuana industry from the agency’s Drug Control Division less than a month after state officials apologized for what appeared to be a retaliatory inspection at a cannabis cultivation facility. (Pazniokas and Brown, 4/9)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Misinformation About Fentanyl Exposure Threatens To Undermine Overdose Response

Fentanyl, the deadly synthetic opioid driving the nation’s high drug overdose rates, is also caught up in another increasingly serious problem: misinformation. False and misleading narratives on social media, in news reports, and even in popular television dramas suggesting people can overdose from touching fentanyl — rather than ingesting it — are now informing policy and spending decisions. (Larweh, 4/10)

A drug originally developed to treat a rare neurological disease that weakens nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord may also hold promise for combating Alzheimer's, according to new research from Illinois's Northwestern University. The compound, NU-9, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for clinical trials in the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as "Lou Gehrig's disease". (Notarantonio, 4/9)

The Trump administration is seeking to spend tens of billions of dollars to set up the machinery to expand immigrant detention on a scale never before seen in the United States, according to a request for proposals posted online by the administration last week. ... Facilities under the contract will not have to meet the standards for services and detainee care that ICE has typically set for large detention providers. Instead, they can operate under the less rigorous standards the agency uses for contracts with local jails and prisons. These facilities typically do not include comprehensive medical care, like access to mental health services, nor do they offer access to information about immigrants’ legal rights. (McCann, Berzon and Aleaziz, 4/7)

Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi are home to 14 of the 20 largest immigration detention centers in the country. Democratic and Republican administrations have long used them as a hub for immigrant detention. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's decision to quickly ship several of the academics arrested in the last few weeks to Louisiana has brought heightened awareness to how crucial the state has become in the process since Donald Trump's first term. And it has revived concern about a longstanding practice called "forum shopping," a strategy lawyers for the detained say the government is using to have these deportation cases heard before more conservative courts. (Diaz and Florido, 4/8)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Trump’s Immigration Tactics Obstruct Efforts To Avert Bird Flu Pandemic, Researchers Say

Aggressive deportation tactics have terrorized farmworkers at the center of the nation’s bird flu strategy, public health workers say. Dairy and poultry workers have accounted for most cases of the bird flu in the U.S. — and preventing and detecting cases among them is key to averting a pandemic. But public health specialists say they’re struggling to reach farmworkers because many are terrified to talk with strangers or to leave home. (Maxmen, 4/10)

Federal immigration officials will begin screening social media for antisemitic activity to block immigration benefits, immigration officials announced on Wednesday. A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services news release said this included “antisemitic activity on social media and the physical harassment of Jewish individuals.” The guidance immediately affects people applying for lawful permanent status, foreign student visas and others affiliated with educational institutions, according to the release. (Cuevas, 4/9)

The acting head of the IRS plans to resign after being bypassed over a new agreement to share the tax data of undocumented immigrants with Homeland Security personnel, according to two people familiar with the situation. Acting IRS commissioner Melanie Krause — the tax agency’s third leader since President Donald Trump’s inauguration — will participate in the deferred resignation program the Trump administration offered to agency employees in recent days, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. (Bogage and Najmabadi, 4/9)

Almost 600 children in Pennsylvania, many fleeing abuse or persecution, are being forced to navigate the immigration court system without legal representation, according to immigrant advocacy groups. Recent federal funding cuts have left more than 26,000 unaccompanied minors nationwide without legal aid. Cathryn Miller-Wilson, executive director of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society-Pennsylvania, said federal funding unexpectedly stopped four weeks ago, leaving attorneys without support to help migrant children in shelters in Bethlehem and northwestern Pennsylvania. (Smith, 4/9)

Debate over a bill to deny certain immigrant children the right to an education was disrupted Monday as two Lutheran pastors knelt in front of a House committee room and recited the Lord’s Prayer. Others in the audience soon joined from their seats. The bill (HB793/SB836) by Sen. Bo Watson of Hixson and House Majority Leader William Lamberth of Portland — both Republicans — would give public school districts the option of verifying student immigration status, charging tuition of students who cannot prove they are legal residents or barring enrollment entirely. (Wadhwani, 4/8)

In the New York village of Sackets Harbor, teachers launched a days-long effort to secure the release of three students. Less than two weeks later, the students were back in their classrooms. (Rodriguez, 4/10)

Idaho will enforce a first-in-the-nation ban on vaccine mandates in businesses and schools this summer after legislators on the last day of their session passed a revised "medical freedom" bill. (Goldman, 4/9)

As measles tears through West Texas — infecting hundreds, hospitalizing dozens and claiming the lives of two children — some lawmakers in Austin are pushing bills to roll back vaccine requirements and expand access to exemptions under the banner of “choice.” (Guo, 4/9)

The Pentagon is reaching out to some 8,700 ex-service members who were forced out of the military over the Defense Department’s COVID-19 mandate during the Biden administration, offering them their old jobs and the back pay they lost. The former military personnel, some of whom were close to retirement when they were booted out, also will receive formal letters of apology because of what they went through, a Defense Department official said Tuesday. (Glenn, 4/8)

Health officials in Kansas today reported six more measles cases, bringing the total in the state's growing outbreak to 32 and adding to the national total. ... Yesterday officials in Colorado confirmed its third measles case this year, in an adult with unconfirmed vaccination status. In Hawaii, officials with the Hawaii Department of Health (DOH) confirmed a case of measles in an unvaccinated child under 5 years of age on Oahu that appears to be linked to recent international travel. A household member with similar symptoms is also being evaluated for a possible measles infection. (Dall, 4/9)

The number of confirmed measles cases in Knox County has risen to 14, seven of which are Ohio residents, health officials said Tuesday. The cases join those confirmed in Ashtabula (10 cases), and Allen (1) counties in the past few weeks. (Washington, 4/9)

A fourth case of measles has been confirmed in Michigan in 2025, this time in Montcalm County. According to the Mid-Michigan District Health Department, a Montcalm Co. resident who recently traveled out of state was diagnosed with measles. It’s currently unknown if there are any other exposure sites. (Foster and Kuznicki, 4/9)

The Texas Department of State Health Services this week released an updated set of vaccine recommendations for 10 West Texas counties at the center of an ongoing measles outbreak that has so far claimed two children’s lives and infected more than 500 people in the region. (Langford, 4/9)

The measles outbreak in West Texas has reignited familiar anti-vaccine tactics: claiming there are readily available treatments for the disease while sowing doubt in the safety of vaccines. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday touted two particular medications that have not been shown to work as first-line treatments for measles: the steroid budesonide and the antibiotic clarithromycin. (Bendix, Szabo and Zadrozny, 4/9)

A new government task force will consider big changes to America’s intelligence community and examine whether material about the origins of COVID-19 and other topics of public interest should be declassified, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said. Known as the Director’s Initiatives Group, the panel will study how intelligence agencies can cut costs in line with recent executive orders from President Donald Trump, the department said Tuesday in a statement announcing the creation of the task force. (Klepper, 4/9)

Nearly 1 in 7 working-age US adults had experienced long COVID by late 2023, and socially disadvantaged adults were over 150% more likely to have persistent symptoms, two new studies find. (Van Beusekom, 4/9)

A new U.S. government paper documenting an increase in maternal mortality from 2018 to 2022 does not hedge in its conclusion, calling the issue “an urgent public health priority.” That it was published amid massive job and funding cuts at federal health agencies charged with reducing these deaths has not escaped notice. (Oza, 4/9)

During a recent five-year period, a substantial portion of maternal deaths in America — almost one-third — took place more than six weeks after childbirth, at a time when most new mothers think they are in the clear, researchers reported on Wednesday. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, is one of the first to track maternal health complications during pregnancy and in the year after delivery. (Caryn Rabin, 4/9)

As part of the cuts to federal health agencies by the Trump administration, the entire team behind a key CDC dataset for ob/gyn research has been axed. On April 1, all 17 members of the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) team received a reduction-in-force notice, as did almost the entire Division of Reproductive Health at CDC. They lost access to their laptops shortly after. Technically, everyone is on administrative leave until June 2, when they have to depart from the CDC. (Robertson, 4/9)

With less than six weeks left in the legislative session, Missouri House Republicans scrapped their latest of several iterations of an abortion ban in search of a new solution. The newest proposed constitutional amendment got its first committee hearing Wednesday night with a bill filed by Republican state Rep. Ed Lewis of Moberly presented to the House Children and Families Committee by its new handler, state Rep. Brian Seitz, a Branson Republican. ... The ballot language for the latest legislation was also not yet public Wednesday evening, but the bill it was based on was criticized for excluding any direct reference to an abortion ban. Instead it sought to ask if voters wanted to “guarantee access to care for medical emergencies, ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages,” a right that is already guaranteed in the Missouri Constitution. (Spoerre, 4/10)

Diana Greene Foster is responsible for landmark research on the effects of abortion access — a massive 10-year study that tracked thousands of people who had an abortion or were denied one. But funding for a follow-up to her seminal Turnaway Study has just been cut as part of a wave of canceled health policy research. Foster received a MacArthur “genius grant” for the Turnaway Study. That piece of research, which examined the impact of restrictions even before the fall of Roe v. Wade, helped shape public understanding of how abortion access can affect people’s health and economic well-being by finding that people who were denied abortions were more likely to experience years of poverty compared to those who could terminate their unplanned pregnancies. (Luthra, 4/9)

Repro46's target audience is people across the political spectrum who are in the middle when it comes to abortion. Its strategy is three-pronged: comprehensive communication across different forms of media, larger educational events and more intimate five-to-ten-person conversations called “Open House, Open Minds.” (Taylor, 4/10)

A study of female sex workers in Japan found that doxycycline pre-exposure prophylaxis (doxyPrEP) is tied to significantly reduced overall incidence of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) without increasing other vaginal infections, researchers reported today in JAC-Antimicrobial Resistance. (Dall, 4/9)

A pair of new studies finds no significant benefit of the antiviral drug nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) in alleviating the symptoms of adult long-COVID patients or in preventing the development of the condition in adolescents. (Van Beusekom, 4/7)

Opioid exposure in the second or third trimester was associated with smaller brain volumes in newborns, a prospective U.S. study found. ... The exposed group also had significantly smaller volume compared to the control group for cortical gray matter, deep gray matter, white matter, cerebellum, brainstem, and the right and left amygdala, they reported in JAMA Pediatrics. (Henderson, 4/7)

Biomarker and cognitive data supported treatment with the anti-amyloid agent lecanemab (Leqembi) for up to 36 months in early Alzheimer's disease, initial findings from the CLARITY AD open-label extension study suggested. Continuous treatment led to greater changes in plasma amyloid-beta 42/40 levels, reported Christopher van Dyck, MD, of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, in a poster presented at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) annual meeting. (George, 4/6)

People diagnosed with various mental health disorders can sometimes start engaging in intense political behavior, such as violent protests, civil disobedience and the aggressive expression of political views. So far, however, the link between political behavior and the brain has been rarely explored, as it was not viewed as central to the understanding of mental health disorders. Researchers at Harvard Medical School, Stanford University School of Medicine and Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine recently carried out a study investigating the neural underpinnings of political behavior. Their findings, published in Brain, unveil the existence of a brain circuit that is associated with the intensity of people's political involvement, irrespective of their ideology or party affiliation. (Fadelli, 4/9)

The $6.3 trillion wellness industry thrives on distrust of science, glorifying “natural” alternatives, and fear-based marketing. The result? Pseudoscience that’s not just harming human health. It’s killing animals, too, specifically via H5N1 bird flu. (Andrea Love, 4/10)

As someone who finds Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine stances alarming and who adamantly opposed him becoming health and human services secretary, I have been unnerved by his popularity among a group with whom I identify: mothers. (Leana S. Wen, 4/9)

There are multiple drivers of the big employment gains in health care and social assistance, including federal decisions to expand health insurance coverage with the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997 and Affordable Care Act in 2010. But the near-doubling of the 65-and-older population from 31 million in 1990 to 59 million as of 2023 is one of the most obvious, with the number of home health care workers — who mostly care for the elderly — rising from 262,000 in 1990 to 1.9 million last month. (Justin Fox, 4/9)

The growing burden of documentation, clerical demands and administrative paperwork has become one of the most significant contributors to medical provider burnout. In an era where physicians and nurse practitioners spend nearly twice as much time on computers as they do with patients, technology is emerging as a tool reshaping that narrative. (Jonathan Woolverton, 4/9)

With Florida having one of the highest senior populations, there is a critical need for comprehensive hospice care. (Marvell Adams, Jr., 4/9)

Maintaining the prohibition of the religious exemption protects not only the child next door, but also every vulnerable child dependent on herd immunity. (Helena Weisskopf, 4/9)