The connections between health care and the ICE surge

I wrote in Tuesday's newsletter about how the latest killing of an ICE protestor complicates the passage of HHS spending legislation, but that’s not where the connections between health care and what’s happening in Minneapolis end.

For starters, the administration used health care fraud in Minnesota to justify ICE raids.

During the Biden administration, federal prosecutors uncovered a massive scheme to defraud a government meals program for kids in Minnesota’s Somali community, which led to fraud investigations into other state-run social services schemes, including those in the Medicaid program.

Soon after conservative commentators revived that years-old scandal, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X that ICE was in Minneapolis “conducting a massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud.”

One also could argue that Medicaid cuts helped pay for the ICE surge. Republicans’ tax bill gave ICE an additional $75 billion to spend over four years, making it the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the country. Under pressure from budget hawks, Republicans sought to pay for spending increases in the bill. Medicaid cuts did not directly pay for ICE funding, but the overall cost of the tax bill was offset by more than $1 trillion in cuts to health care funding, the vast majority of which came from Medicaid.

“A reminder that the largest cuts in Medicaid's history were made by this Congress in part to fund a tripling of ICE/DHS budget,” Joan Alker, head of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University, posted on X.

vaccines

States are the next battleground over vaccines

The Trump administration’s overhaul of the federal vaccine schedule paved the way for weakening vaccine requirements. The real work begins this year as advocates for “health freedom” fan out to lobby state legislatures, Daniel Payne and Isabella Cueto report.

Though often overlooked on the national stage, state-level changes to vaccine law can be more meaningful than changes in federal recommendations, according to those opposed to vaccine requirements.

Some state-level bills championed by vaccine skeptics have already gained traction. Read more.

autism

21

That’s the number federal autism advisers that health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appointed yesterday.

Many of the new members of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee have questioned the established science that vaccines do not cause autism, according to O. Rose Broderick.

Some of the new members have already recently met in private, and Rose reported that the autism community is concerned that many of the new appointees are members of the Make America Healthy Again movement.

Here comes TrumpRx

The administration has said it would launch TrumpRx sometime in January. And as the month nears an end, the White House is expected to launch the website on Friday, according to drug lobbyists and this MS NOW reporter.

It’s not clear how it will work, but medicines will not be for sale on TrumpRx, according to the placeholder site. Instead, it’s expected to point consumers to where they can find the lowest prices by buying directly from drugmakers.

Chelsea Cirruzzo called the White House about the launch but didn’t get a response.

medicare price negotiation

Shelter for expensive drugs

The Trump administration on Tuesday released the next 15 drugs subject to Medicare price negotiation, including for the first time treatments administered in doctor offices.

The list includes some HIV and cancer drugs that could save the government a lot of money due to their protected status in Medicare.

But I neglected to mention in the story that a few other drugs with the potential for major savings were likely excluded from the list, thanks to Republicans’ tax bill. That bill delayed or exempted from negotiation drugs that treat multiple rare diseases, including Keytruda, and delayed Medicare negotiation for drugs first approved as orphans and later approved for wider use. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that measure to cost $8.8 billion over a decade.

insurance

Tough luck

Health insurers had hoped that the Trump administration would alleviate the problems that they’ve endured in Medicare Advantage over the past three years.

But in the words of Bob Herman, “Tough luck, for now.”

The administration proposed a minuscule pay hike for Medicare Advantage that surprised investors and sent stocks tumbling for the largest sellers of private Medicare plans, including UnitedHealth Group, Humana, CVS Health, and Elevance Health.

Read more about the challenges that industry faces in getting the administration to increase payment rates.

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