Many Republican lawmakers and conservative policy officials who want to scale back the joint state-federal health program are using charged language to describe it. Language experts and advocates for Medicaid enrollees say their word choice is misleading and aims to sway public opinion against the popular, 60-year-old government program in a bid to persuade Congress to cut funding.

Republicans such as , chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, are deploying provocative terms such as “,” rebranding a decades-old — and legal — practice known as provider taxes, which most states use to gain additional federal Medicaid funds.

They say it’s “” that the federal government matches state funding at a higher rate for adults covered by the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion than it does for other enrollees, including children, pregnant women, and disabled people.

And many Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, have described adults who gained Medicaid coverage through the ACA expansion as “” as they push for federal work requirements.

The term implies they have less need for government assistance than other Medicaid recipients — even though some have health conditions or caregiving responsibilities that make holding full-time jobs difficult.

“Able-bodied adults without dependents are better off with jobs than with hand-outs, and so are their communities and American taxpayers,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said in February.

To be sure, political spin is a practice older than Washington, and Democrats are no spectators in the war of words. But what’s striking about the latest GOP effort is that it is focused on cutting a health program for the nation’s poorest residents to pay, in part, for tax cuts for wealthier Americans.

A KFF poll conducted last month and found that support for proposed changes to Medicaid can wax or wane depending on what individuals are told about the program.

For example, the poll found about 6 in 10 adults support work requirements, with the same portion of respondents believing incorrectly that most working-age adults on Medicaid are unemployed. In fact, about two-thirds work.

KFF’s poll also showed that support for work requirements drops to about 3 in 10 adults when those who initially supported them hear that most Medicaid enrollees are already working and that, if the requirements were implemented, many would risk losing coverage because of the burden of proving eligibility.

When respondents initially opposed to work requirements were told they could allow Medicaid to be reserved for groups like the elderly, people with disabilities, and low-income children, support for them increased to 77%.

, a history professor at the University of Texas, said the Medicaid debate likely will be won not on the facts, but instead on which party can describe it in terms that gain the most public support. “Words are wielded as weapons,” he said.

Republicans’ word choices are designed to appeal to people’s prejudices about Medicaid, he said, adding that “loaded” terms help divert attention from a detailed policy discussion.

“Words help reinforce a position that people already lean toward,” he said.

, professor emerita of health law and policy at George Washington University, said conservatives who have long tried to shrink Medicaid have an obvious motivation.

“These people spend their lives trying to ruin the program by searching for the newest slogans, the newest quips, and the newest nonsensical monikers that they think somehow will persuade Congress to completely upend the program and take benefits away from tens of millions of people,” she said.

Medicaid and the closely related Children’s Health Insurance Program cover nearly 80 million low-income and disabled people — roughly 1 in 5 Americans. Enrollment and spending soared in the past decade due largely to the covid pandemic and the decision by more states to expand Medicaid under the ACA. Polling shows the program is nearly as popular as Medicare, the health program primarily for those 65 or older — with about 3 in 4 Americans holding a favorable opinion of Medicaid.

The House of Representatives’ budget resolution, a blueprint that narrowly passed Feb. 25 with no Democratic support, calls for cuts of at least largely from federal health and energy programs. A separate Senate resolution with no such cuts — so far — is also in play. Any proposal would need to pass both chambers.

Democrats fear most of those cuts will come from Medicaid. Trump has vowed not to touch Medicare, leaving few if any alternatives. He has said he would “cherish” Medicaid and go after only waste, fraud, and abuse in the program without offering details on how those would be interpreted — and he endorsed the House’s blueprint calling for cuts.

States and the federal government share in the financing of Medicaid, with the federal government paying of the cost of providing services to most beneficiaries. The rate is 90% for beneficiaries receiving coverage through their state’s Medicaid expansion program.

The federal matching rate varies based on a state’s per capita income relative to the national average; states with lower per capita incomes have higher matching rates. The remaining share of program funding comes from state and local sources.

The words “discrimination” and “money laundering” have been used in reports from the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative think tank led by a former Trump adviser, . Two former Paragon executives now advise Trump, and a former Paragon analyst advises Johnson.

Blase said there’s no ulterior motive in the group’s word choices. “This is us trying to describe the issue in a way that makes the most sense to members of Congress and policymakers,” he said.

Paragon analysts have argued for ending the federal government’s “discrimination” in matching state dollars for those covered under the ACA’s Medicaid expansion at a higher rate than for other enrollees. They also propose giving states a set amount of federal money per year for the program, rather than the open-ended federal funds that always have been a hallmark of Medicaid.

One way states raise funds for their share of Medicaid spending is through that hospitals or nursing homes pay. States often reimburse the providers through the extra federal money.

Blase acknowledges that provider taxes used by states to draw down more federal money — which Paragon has referred to as “money laundering” — are legal. He said calling the practice a “tax” is misleading because the providers financially benefit from it.

“Money laundering is the best term we can think of for the schemes providers and states come up with to get federal reimbursement for artificial expenditures that benefits states and providers,” he said.

, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University, defended provider taxes as a legal way states raise money to cover low-income people. She noted most states with provider taxes at least partly by Republicans.

Alker rejected the notion that enhanced funding to expand enrollment is “discrimination.” The ACA included the higher rates for covering more low-income enrollees because that was the only way states could afford it, she said.

Without providing a specific example, Blase said advocates have said cuts would “leave people dying in the streets.”

During a brief funding freeze to Medicaid providers in January, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said, “This is a blatant attempt to rip away health insurance from millions of Americans overnight and will get people killed.”

�������ýҕ�l Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about .

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For the first time, a jury has convicted a parent on charges related to their child’s mass-shooting crime: A Michigan mother of a school shooter was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. What remains unclear is whether this case succeeded because of compelling evidence of negligence by the shooter’s mother or if this could become a new avenue for gun control advocates to pursue.

Meanwhile, a prominent publisher of medical journals has retracted two articles that lower-court judges used in reaching decisions that the abortion pill mifepristone should be restricted. The case is before the Supreme Court, with oral arguments scheduled for March 26.

This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of �������ýҕ�l Health News, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, and Rachana Pradhan of �������ýҕ�l Health News.

Panelists

Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:

• Sage Journals, a major medical publisher, has retracted two studies central to abortion opponents’ arguments in a federal court case over access to the abortion pill mifepristone. Although the retraction came before next month’s Supreme Court hearing on the case, the now-discredited studies have permeated the public debate over mifepristone.
• Florida’s Supreme Court has until April 1 to stop a measure about the availability of abortion from appearing on the November ballot. The decision could be pivotal in determining abortion access in the South, as Florida’s current 15-week ban (compared with near-total bans in surrounding states) has made it a regional destination for abortion care.
• In Medicaid news, the nation is about halfway through the “unwinding,” the redetermination process states are undergoing to strip ineligible beneficiaries from the program’s rolls. Although the process will amount to the biggest purge of the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program rolls in a one-year period, it is expected that, when all is said and done, overall enrollment will look much as it did before the pandemic — though how many people are left uninsured remains to be seen.
• In the states, Georgia is suing the Biden administration to extend its Medicaid work-requirement program. Meanwhile, some states are using Medicaid funding to address housing issues. Despite evidence that addressing housing insecurity can improve health, it is also clear that state budgets would need to be adjusted to meet those needs.
• And in “This Week in Health Misinformation,” PolitiFact awarded a “Pants on Fire!” rating to the claim — in a fundraising ad for Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) — that Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, “brought COVID to Montana” a year before it spread through the U.S., among other spurious claims.

Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think you should read, too:

Julie Rovner: Alabama Daily News’ “,” by Alexander Willis.

Alice Miranda Ollstein: Stat’s “,” by Usha Lee McFarling.

Sarah Karlin-Smith: The Atlantic’s “,” by Elisabeth Rosenthal.

Rachana Pradhan: North Carolina Health News’ “,” by Michelle Crouch and the Charlotte Ledger.

Also mentioned on this week’s podcast:

• Sage Journals’ “.”
• �������ýҕ�l Health News’ “Halfway Through ‘Unwinding,’ Medicaid Enrollment Is Down About 10 Million,” by Phil Galewitz.
• �������ýҕ�l Health News’ “Congressman Off-Base in Ad Claiming Fauci Shipped Covid to Montana Before the Pandemic,” by Katheryn Houghton.

�������ýҕ�l Health News’ ‘What the Health?’Episode Title: To End School Shootings, Activists Consider a New Culprit: ParentsEpisode Number: 333Published: Feb. 8, 2024

[Editor’s note: This transcript was generated using both transcription software and a human’s light touch. It has been edited for style and clarity.]

Julie Rovner: Hello, and welcome back to “What the Health?” I’m Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for �������ýҕ�l Health News, and I’m joined by some of the best and smartest health reporters in Washington. We’re taping this week on Thursday, Feb. 8, at 10 a.m. As always, news happens fast, and things might have changed by the time you hear this, so here we go. Today, we are joined via video conference by Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico.

Alice Miranda Ollstein: Hello.

Rovner: Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet.

Karlin-Smith: Hi, everybody.

Rovner: And my �������ýҕ�l Health News colleague Rachana Pradhan.

Rachana Pradhan: Hi, Julie.

Rovner: No interview today, so we will get straight to the news. We’re going to start in Michigan this week, where a jury convicted the mother of a teenager, who shot 10 of his high school classmates and killed four of them, of involuntary manslaughter. This is the first time the parent of an underage mass school shooter has been successfully prosecuted. The shooter’s father will be tried separately starting next month. Some gun control advocates say this could open the door to lots more cases like this, but others think this may have been a one-off because prosecutors had particularly strong evidence that both parents should have known that their son was both in mental distress and had easy access to their unlocked gun. Is this possibly a whole new avenue to pursue for the whole “What are we going to do about school shooters?” problem?

Ollstein: I mean, it seems like we’re just in an era where people are just trying various different things. I mean, there was ongoing efforts to try to hold gun manufacturers liable. There were efforts on a lot of different fronts. And the goal is to prevent more shootings in the future and prevent more deaths. And so, I think the goal here is to impress upon other parents to be more responsible in terms of weapon storage and also in terms of being aware of their child’s distress.

So, whether or not that happens, I think, remains to be seen, but these shootings have just gone on and on and on and not slowed down. And so, I think there’s just a desperation to try different solutions.

Rovner: Yeah. Apparently in other states they’re starting to look at this, but I guess we talk so much about the chilling effect. That’s actually what they’re going for here, right? As you say, to try and get parents to at least be more careful if they have guns in the house of how they’re storing them, and who has access to them.

Well, we will turn to abortion now. As we noted last week, the Supreme Court will hear the case challenging the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone on March 26. We’ll get to some of the amicus briefs that are flooding in, in a minute. But I think the most surprising thing that happened this week is that two of the journal studies that the appeals court relied on in challenging the FDA’s actions were officially retracted this week by the journal’s publisher, Sage.

In a very pointed statement, Sage editors wrote that it had been unaware that the authors, and in one case one of the peer reviewers, were all affiliated with anti-abortion advocacy organizations and that the articles were found by a new set of peer reviewers to have, “fundamental problems with study design and methodology, unjustified or incorrect factual assumptions, material errors in the author’s analysis of the data.” And a lot more problems I won’t get into, but we will in our show notes.

Now, close listeners to the podcast might remember that we talked about this last August, when a pharmacy professor in Georgia alerted the journals to some of the substantive and political problems, and Sage printed something at the time called an expression of concern. Alice, these articles were cited many times in both the lower-court and the appeals-court rulings. What does it mean that they’ve been formally disavowed by their publisher?

Ollstein: It’s really hard to tell what it’s going to mean because we’re in an era where facts don’t always matter in the courts. I mean, we had recently a whole Supreme Court case about a wedding website designer that was based on facts that did not turn out to be true about their standing. The football coach who prayed on the 50-yard line turned out to not be a true story.

And so, it’s really hard to tell. And pro-abortion rights groups have been arguing that evidence cited by the lower court was not scientifically sound. And so, it’s this “flood the zone with competing studies.” And the average person is just confused and throws up their hands. So, in terms of how much it’ll matter, I’m not sure. You already have the groups in question behind the retracted study accusing the publisher of bias. I think this back-and-forth and finger-pointing will continue, and it’s unclear what effect it’ll actually have in court.

Pradhan: I think the thing that I find troubling about it is it’s … and it’s happened with other issues too. It certainly happened during the covid-19 pandemic, where people would say that there would be research or science via press release instead of academic research really undergoing the controls that it is meant to undergo before it’s released and published in a journal. And I hope at the very least that it leads to this, if we’re going to get some amount of good change, it’s that it really does reinforce the need for really rigorous checks, regardless of what the subject of the study is, because clearly these things, it has real consequences.

And frankly, I mean, look at one of the best-known examples of a retracted study which links vaccines to autism. I mean, that happened. It was widely discredited after the fact, and it is still doing harm in society, even though it’s been retracted and the researcher discredited. So, I think it really underscores the importance. I hope that frankly some of these journals get their act together before they publish things that … because it’s too little too late by the time that the damage has been done already.

Rovner: Yeah, I feel like I would say the judicial version of the journalistic “he said, she said.”

Ollstein: I mean, that’s such a good point by Rachana about how the damage is already done in the public understanding of it. But I also am pretty cynical about the ramifications in court specifically, particularly given the fact that the same lower court that cited these studies also cited things that weren’t peer-reviewed or published in medical journals at all. Things that were just these online surveys of self-reported problems with abortion pills. And so, there doesn’t seem to be a clear bar for scientific rigor in the courts.

Karlin-Smith: I was going to say that gets to this fundamental issue in this case, which is: Are judges capable of really assessing the kinds of evidence you need to make these decisions or whether we should trust the FDA and the people we’ve charged with that to do that? Because they know how to look at research papers and the range of research papers out there and evaluate what science is credible, what’s been replicated, look for these problems.

Because if you want to make an argument, you probably can always find one scientific paper or two scientific paper that might seem like it was published in some journal somewhere that can help support your point, but it’s being able to really understand how science works and back it up with that breadth of evidence and the accurate and really reliable evidence.

Rovner: Yeah. I would note that one of the amicus briefs came from a bunch of former heads of the FDA who are very concerned that judges are taking on, basically, the kind of scientific questions that have been ceded to the expertise of the FDA over many, many generations. I don’t remember another amicus brief like this coming from former FDA commissioners banding together. Have you seen this before?

Karlin-Smith: Yeah. I mean, I certainly can’t think of something like it, but I haven’t necessarily scoured the history books to make sure of it, but it is pretty unusual. I did actually note that [former President Donald] Trump’s two FDA commissioners are not among the alive possible FDA commissioners who could have joined in, that didn’t join in on this one, which is interesting.

Ollstein: Oh, I just think that we’re seeing a lot of the medical community that has previously tried to stay above the fray now feeling like this is such a threat to the practice of medicine and regulatory scientific bodies that they feel like they have to get involved, where they didn’t before. And now you’ve reported a lot on how much the AMA [American Medical Association] has changed over time.

But I think seeing these folks in the medical community that aren’t exactly waving a flag at the front of the abortion rights parade really speaking out about this, and it’s a really interesting shift.

Pradhan: It’s certainly a case that challenges the administrative state, if you will, right? Like the one about mifepristone, about FDA’s expertise in science and scientific background in assessing whether a drug should be approved or not.

But as you all know, there’s another case going before the Supreme Court that challenges what’s known as the Chevron doctrine, which is how the agencies are relied upon to interpret federal laws and court rulings, and it’s their expertise that is deferred to, that also is now, I think being questioned and very well could be undermined potentially next year. So, who else? I guess it’s either judges or lawmakers that are supposed to be the ones that truly know how to implement various laws, instead of the folks that are working at these agencies.

Rovner: As you say, this is a lot broader than just the abortion pill. One of the briefs that I didn’t expect to see came from the former secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force who argued that restricting medication abortion would threaten military readiness by hurting recruitment and retainment and the ability for active women service members in states that ban abortion to basically be able to serve. I did not have that particular amicus on my bingo card, but, Alice, this is becoming a bigger issue. Right?

Ollstein: Well, it’s just interesting because I think about the Biden administration policy supporting service members traveling across state lines for an abortion if they’re stationed in a state where it’s now banned. And the administration has been defending that policy from attacks from Capitol Hill, et cetera, and saying, “Look, we’re not backing this policy because it’s some high-minded abortion right priority. We’re backing this because they think it’s good for the military itself.”

And so, I think this amicus brief is making that same case and saying, having tens of thousands of service members lose access to decision-making ability would really hurt the military. So, I think that’s an interesting argument. Again, like these medical groups, you don’t see the military making this kind of case very often and you might not see it under a different administration.

Rovner: Yeah. It’s yet another piece of this that’s flowing out. Well, not everything on abortion is happening in Washington. The states are still skirmishing over whether abortion questions should even appear on ballots this fall. The latest happened in Florida this week, where the Supreme Court there heard arguments about a ballot question that would broadly guarantee abortion rights in the state. Alice, you were watching that, yes?

Ollstein: Yeah. It was an interesting mixed bag because most of the current state Supreme Court was appointed by [Republican Gov.] Ron DeSantis. These are very conservative people, a lot of them are very openly anti-abortion, and were making that clear during the oral arguments, and they were repeating anti-abortion talking points about what the amendment would do. But at the same time, they seemed really skeptical of the state’s argument that they should block it and kill it.

They were saying, “Look, it’s not our job to decide whether this amendment is good or not. It’s our job to decide whether the language is deceptive or not, whether voters who go to vote on it will understand what they’re voting for and against.” And so, they had this whole analogy of, “Is this a wolf in sheep’s clothing or is it just a wolf?” They seem to be leaning towards “it’s just a wolf” and voters can decide for themselves if they think it’s good or bad.

Rovner: Well, my favorite fun fact out of this case yesterday is that one of the five Republican members of the seven-member Florida Supreme Court is Charles Kennedy, who, when he was serving in the House in the 1990s, was the first member of Congress to introduce a bill to ban “partial-birth” abortion. So, he was at the very, very forefront of that very, very heated debate for many years. And now he is on the Florida Supreme Court, and we will see what they say.

Do we have any idea when we’re expecting a decision? Obviously, ballots are going to have to be printed in the not-too-distant future.

Ollstein: Yes. So, the court has to rule before April 1, otherwise the ballot measure will automatically go forward. And so, they can either rule to block it and kill it, they can rule to uphold it, or they can do nothing and then it’ll just go forward on its own.

Pradhan: The thing that — what I keep thinking about too is so, OK, they’ve indicated that they have to rule, right, by April 1. But then we also have this separate pending matter of what is the status of the six-week ban that is still blocked currently? And I just keep wondering, I’m like, how much could change over the course of 2024? We still don’t have a decision on that, even though that’s been pending for much longer. No?

Rovner: Yeah. Where is the Florida six-week ban? It’s not in effect, right?

Ollstein: Yes. There was the hearing on the 15-week ban, and if that gets upheld, the six-week ban automatically goes into effect after a certain period of time. So, we’re waiting on a ruling on the 15-week ban, which will determine the fate of the six-week ban, and then the ballot measure could wipe out both, potentially.

Pradhan: Right. So, it’s very topsy-turvy.

Ollstein: It’s very simple, very simple.

Pradhan: Right. Yeah. I mean, even just the 15-week ban and the six-week ban, to me, at first it was counterintuitive to think, “Oh, so either both of them stand or neither of them do.” So, it seems like we could be in for many, many changes in Florida this year, but I’m very curious about when that is going to happen because it’s been much longer since … rather than the abortion rights ballot measure for this year.

Rovner: And meanwhile, I mean, Florida is a really key state in this whole issue because it’s one of the only states in the South where abortion is still available, right?

Ollstein: Right. And we saw how important it’s become in the data where the number of abortions taking place plummeted in so many states, but in Florida, they’ve actually gone up since Dobbs, even with the 15-week ban in place. A lot of that is people coming from surrounding states. And so, it is really pivotal, and I think that’s why you’re seeing these big national groups like Planned Parenthood really prioritizing it, and there’s so many different ballot measure fights going on, but I think you’re seeing a lot of resources go to Florida, in part for that reason.

Rovner: We will keep an eye on it. Well, we have not talked about Medicaid in a while, and conveniently, my �������ýҕ�l Health News colleague Phil Galewitz has an interesting story this week that halfway through the largest eligibility redetermination in history, Medicaid rolls nationwide are down net about 10 million people or at roughly the number that they were before the pandemic. Rachana, you spend a lot of time looking at Medicaid. Does that surprise you, that the rolls ended up where they were before?

Pradhan: I think, no, not necessarily. Our esteemed KFF colleague Larry Levitt put it really well in the story Phil wrote, which is that the rapid clip at which this is happening is obviously notable, right? It is not normal for how fast enrollment is declining.

I do think the thing that I wish we had, and we only, I think maybe from a state or two know this, but we certainly don’t have nationwide data and won’t for several years, but how many of these people are becoming uninsured? I think at the end of the day, that’s really what big picture-wise matters. Right? But I think certainly, I mean, the unwinding is still occurring. We’re still probably going to have disenrollments that will, I think at least through basically the first half of this year, certain states are still going to take that long. And so, we really won’t know the full picture for obviously a little bit, but I thought that Phil’s piece was really interesting and on point, for sure.

Rovner: Yeah. We talked about how many more people joined the exchanges this year, on now ACA [Affordable Care Act] coverage. Anecdotally, we know that a lot of those came from being disenrolled from Medicaid, and obviously Medicaid is always full of churn. People get jobs and they get job insurance, and they go on, and then other people lose jobs and they lose their job insurance and they qualify for Medicaid. So, there’s always a lot of ups and downs.

But I’m just wondering, the rolls had gotten so swell during the pandemic when states were not allowed to take people off, that I think it will be interesting that when this is all said and done, Medicaid rolls end up where you would’ve expected them to be had there not been a pandemic, right?

Pradhan: Right. I think that what’ll be interesting to see is, I mean, we have some sense of ACA marketplace enrollment, the way it increased this past open enrollment, but again, we don’t know if some of those Medicaid enrollees, how many of them have shifted to job-based plans, if they have at all, or if they’ve just fallen off the rolls entirely.

One of the other things I think about also is the macro-level picture, of course, is important and good, but knowing who has lost their coverage is also … and so, children, I think have been impacted quite a lot by these disenrollments, and so that’s certainly something to keep in mind and keep an eye on. Right?

Rovner: Yeah. And I know, I mean, the federal government obviously has, I think, more data than they’re sharing about this because we know they’ve quietly or not so quietly told some states that they wish they were doing things differently and they should do things differently. But I think they’re trying very hard not to politicize this. And so, I think it’s frustrating for people who are trying to follow it because we know that they know more than we know, and we would like to know some of the things that they know, but I guess we’re not going to find out, at least not right away.

Well, so remember that work requirement that Georgia got permission to put in, as opposed to just expanding Medicaid? Georgia, remember, is one of the 10 states that have yet to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Well, now Georgia is suing the Biden administration to try to keep their experiment going, which seems like a lot of trouble for a program that has enrolled only 2,300 of a potential pool of 100,000 people. Why does Georgia think that extending its program is going to increase enrollment substantially? Clearly, this is not going over in a very big way for the work requirements. Alice, you’ve been our work-requirement person. I’ll bet you’re not surprised.

Ollstein: So, the state’s argument is that all of the back-and-forth with the administration before they launched this partial, limited, whatever you want to call it, expansion, they say that that didn’t give them enough time to successfully implement it and that they shouldn’t be judged on the small amount of people they’ve enrolled so far. They should be given more time to really make it a success.

We don’t have a ton of data of what it looks like when states really go all in on these work requirements, but what we have shows that it really limits enrollment and a lot of people who should qualify are falling through the cracks. So, I don’t know if more time would help here, in Georgia and in some other states that haven’t expanded yet. There’s a real tussle right now between the people who just want to take the federal help and just do a real, full expansion like so many other states have done, and those who want to put more of a conservative stamp on the idea and feel like they’re not just wholeheartedly embracing something that they railed against for so many years.

Rovner: Yeah. Just a gentle reminder that the majority of people on Medicaid either are working or cannot work or are taking care of someone who cannot work. And that in the few states that tried to implement work requirements, the problem wasn’t so much that they weren’t working, it’s that they were having trouble reporting their work hours, that that turned out to be a bigger issue than actually whether or not they were … the perception that, I guess, from some of these state leaders that people on Medicaid are just sitting at home and collecting their Medicaid, turns out not to be the case, but that doesn’t mean that people don’t get kicked off the program likely when they shouldn’t.

I mean, that’s what we saw, Alice, you were in … it was Arkansas, right, that tried to do this and it all blew up?

Ollstein: That’s right. And there were other factors there that made it harder for folks to use the program. But I mean, everywhere that’s tried this, it shows that the administrative burdens of having to report hours trip people up and make it so that people who are working still struggle to prove they’re working or to prove they’re working in the right way in order to qualify for insurance that they theoretically should be entitled to.

Rovner: Well, before we leave Medicaid for this week, I want to talk about the newest state trend, which is using Medicaid money to help pay for housing for people who are homeless or at risk of eviction. California is doing it, so are Arizona and Oregon; even Arkansas is joining the club. All of them encouraged by the Biden administration.

The idea is to keep people from ending up in places that are even more expensive for taxpayers, in hospitals or jails or nursing homes, and that so very many health problems cannot be addressed unless patients have a stable place to live. But pouring money earmarked for health services into housing is a really slippery slope, isn’t it? I mean, we obviously have a housing crisis, but it’s hard to feel like Medicaid’s going to be able to plug that hole very effectively.

Karlin-Smith: I feel like that’s where some of the debate is moving next, which is there’s certainly lots of evidence that shows how much being unhoused impacts somebody’s health and their life span and so forth. But state Medicaid programs have to balance their budget and are usually not unlimited. And for me, in following drugs, that’s been a big issue with some of the really new expensive drugs coming on the market is it’s not that Medicaid doesn’t necessarily want to cover it, it’s that if they cover it, they might have to cut some other health service somewhere else, which they also don’t want to cut.

So, I think maybe this evidence of the ability to improve health through housing might have to lead to thinking about, OK, how do we change our budgets or our systems to ensure we’re actually tackling that? But I’m not sure that long-term, unless we really expand the funding of Medicaid, you can really continue doing that and serve all the traditional health needs Medicaid serves.

Pradhan: Yeah, I mean, if you think about Medicaid, I mean, just going back to the bread and butter of reimbursement of providers. I mean, everyone knows that it’s bad, right? It’s too low, it’s lower than Medicare, it’s lower than commercial insurance, and it affects even a Medicaid enrollee’s ability to see a primary care doctor, specialists. I mean, because there are clinicians that will not accept Medicaid as a form of insurance because they lose too much money on it.

And so, I think this is, it’s interesting, I think there’s this big philosophical debate of, is this Medicaid’s problem? Should it be paying for this type of need when there are so many other, you could argue, unmet needs in the program that you could be spending money on? But these states are not necessarily doing that. And so, I think, obviously, I think it would help to have housing stability, but it, for me, raises these broader questions of, but look at all these other things. Like Sarah said, being able to afford drugs that are expensive, but also are quite effective potentially and could really help people. But they’re already scrambling to do those basic things and now they’re moving on to, is it a new shiny toy? Or, something that’s obviously important, but then you’re ignoring some of the other challenges that have existed for a long time.

Rovner: And housing is only one of these social determinants of health that people are trying to address. And it’s absolutely true. I mean, nobody suggests that not having housing and nutrition and lots of other things very much affect your health, and if people have them, they’re very much likely to do better health-wise. But whether that should all fall to the Medicaid program is something that I think is going to have to be sorted out.

Well, back here in Washington, Congress is having some kind of week, mostly not on health care. So, if you’re interested in the gory details, you’re going to have to find them someplace else. But in the midst of the chaos, the House yesterday did manage to pass a bill called the Protecting [Health] Care for [All] Patients Act [of 2022], which certainly sounds benign enough. Its purpose is to ban the use of a measurement called quality-adjusted life years or QALYs, as they’re known. But Sarah, this is way more controversial than it seems, right? Particularly given the bill passed on a party-line vote.

Karlin-Smith: To back up a little bit, quality-adjusted life years, or QALYs, it’s basically a way to figure out cost-effectiveness or what’s a fair price of a product based on the dollar amount that they’re saying it costs per year of quality of your life extended. So, it’s not just taking into account if your life’s extended, but the quality of your life during that time.

And a lot of people have trouble with that metric because they feel like it unfairly penalizes people with disabilities or conditions where the quality of your life might not seem quite the same as somebody who a drug can make you almost perfectly healthy, if that makes sense? And so actually, Democrats are fairly in alignment with Republicans on not being huge fans of the QALY, that particular measure. It’s actually already banned in Medicare, but they are concerned that the way Republicans drafted this bill, it could make it pretty much hard to use any kind of metric that tries to help programs, state agencies, the VA, figure out what’s a fair price to pay for a drug. And then you get into really difficult problems figuring out what to cover, how to negotiate with a drug company for that.

So, Democrats have actually been pushing Republicans to take out some language that might basically narrow the bill or ensure you could use some other measures that are similar to QALYs, but they argue is a bit fairer for the entire populace. So, something that potentially down the road there could be some bipartisan agreement to ban this measure. I think the concern from people who work in the health economist space is that it does make people, I think, uncomfortable thinking about placing this dollar value on life.

But the flip side is, is that again, every drug that saves your life, we can’t spend a billion dollars on it. Right? And so, we have to come up with some way to effectively figure out how to bargain and deal with the drugmakers to figure out what is a fair price for the system. And these are tools to do it, and they’re really not meant to penalize people on an individual basis, because, again, if the drug is priced way too high, regardless of how beneficial it is, the system and you are not going to be able to afford it. It’s a way of figuring out, OK, what is a fair price based on what this does for you? And also then incentivize drug companies to develop drugs that at the price are really a good benefit for the price.

Rovner: It’s so infuriating because I mean, Congress and health policy experts and economists have been talking about cost-effectiveness measures for 30 years, and this was one of the few that there were, and obviously everybody agrees that it is far from perfect and there are a lot of issues. But on the other side, you don’t want to say, “Well, we’re just not going to measure cost-effectiveness in deciding what is allowed.” Which essentially is where we’ve been and what makes our system so expensive, right?

Karlin-Smith: Right. I mean, you can imagine, like, if you thought about other things that are crucial in your life, like I sometimes think about it, it makes it easier if I think about water, OK, everybody needs water to live. If we let the water utilities charge us $100,000 for every jug of water, we would get into problems.

So again, I think the people that use these metrics and try and think about it, they’re not trying to penalize people or put a price on life in the way I think the politicians use it to get out of this. They’re trying to figure out, how do we fairly allocate resources in society in an equitable way? But it can be easily politicized because it is so hard to talk about these issues when you’re thinking about your health care and what you have access to or not.

Rovner: We will watch this as it moves through what I’m calling the chaotic Congress. Turning to “This Week in Health Misinformation,” we have a story from �������ýҕ�l Health News’ Katheryn Houghton for PolitiFact that earned a rare “Pants on Fire!” rating. It seems that a fundraising ad for Republican congressman Matt Rosendale of Montana, who’s about to become Senate candidate Matt Rosendale of Montana, claims that former NIH [National Institutes of Health] official Tony Fauci brought covid to Montana a year before the pandemic. In other forums, Rosendale has charged that an NIH researcher at Rocky Mountain Laboratories infected bats with covid from China. It actually turns out that the laboratory was studying another coronavirus entirely, not the coronavirus that causes covid, the covid that we think of, and that the virus wasn’t actually shipped, but rather its molecular sequence was provided. To quote from this story, “Rosendale’s claim is wrong about when the scientists began their work, what they were studying, and where they got the materials.” But other than that, these kinds of scary claims keep getting used because they work in campaigns. Right?

Karlin-Smith: It taps into this theme that we’ve seen that Republicans on the Hill have certainly been tapping into over the past year or two of whether covid came from a lab and what funding from the U.S. to China contributed to that, and what do people in the U.S., particularly connected to Democrats, know that they’re not saying.

So, even though as you start to dig into this story and you see every level how it’s just not true, the surface of it, people have already been primed to believe that this is occurring, and it’s been how we do this sort of research in this country has already been politicized. So, if you just see a clip, people are easily persuaded.

Rovner: Yes. I think it was Alice, we started out by saying we’ve become a fact-free society. I think this is another example of it. All right, well that is this week’s news.

Now it is time for our extra-credit segment. That’s when we each recommend a story we read this week we think you should read, too. As always, don’t worry if you miss it. We will post the links on the podcast page at kffhealthnews.org and in our show notes on your phone or other mobile device. Rachana, you got the first one in this week. Why don’t you go first?

Pradhan: Oh, sure. The was from North Carolina Health News. It is focusing on a very large health system known as Atrium Health, which is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. And basically, it’s really interesting, it talks about how Atrium actually operates under a public hospital authority. So, it enjoys certain benefits of being a public or government entity, including they avoid millions in state and federal taxes. They have the power of eminent domain, and they are not subject to antitrust regulations.

And again, this is one of the largest health systems in North Carolina, but it’s playing it both ways. Right? It tries to use the advantages of being a public entity like the ones I just named, but when it comes to other requirements to have checks and balances in government, as we do with various levels of government, like having open public meetings, being able to ask for public comment at these meetings and the like, Atrium does not behave like a government entity at all.

I would also note, as an aside, Atrium was, in the past, one of the most litigious hospital systems in North Carolina. They sued their patients for outstanding medical debt until they ended the practice last year. And so, it’s a really interesting story. So, I enjoyed it.

Rovner: It was a really interesting story. Sarah.

Karlin-Smith: I looked at a piece in the Atlantic from KFF [Health] News editor Elisabeth Rosenthal, “,” and she tracks the rise of people in the U.S. using GoFundMe to help pay for medical bills, which I think, at first, maybe doesn’t seem so bad if people are having another way to help them pay for medical expenses. But she shows how it’s a band-aid for much bigger problems in an unfair and inequitable system. And, really, also documents how it tends to perpetuate the already existing socioeconomic disparities.

So, if you’re somebody who’s famous or has a lot of friends or just has a lot of friends with money, you’re more likely to actually have your crowdfunding campaign succeed than not. And talking about how health systems are actually directing patients there to fund their medical debt. So, it’s just one of those trends that highlights the state of where the U.S. health system is and that our health insurance system, which is in theory supposed to do what GoFundMe is now an extra band-aid for, which is, you pay money over time so that when you are sick, you’re not hit with these huge bills. But that obviously isn’t the case for many people.

Rovner: Indeed. Alice.

Ollstein: So, I have a , and it’s about the FDA coming under pressure to act more quickly now that they know that pulse oximeters, which were really key during the worst months of the covid pandemic for detecting who needed to be hospitalized, that they don’t work on people of color, they don’t work as well on detecting blood oxygen.

And so, it’s a really fascinating story about, now that we know this, how quickly are regulators going to act and how can they act? But also going forward, this is what happens when there’s not enough diversity in clinical trials. You don’t find out about really troubling racial disparities in efficacy until it’s too late and a lot of people have suffered. So, really curious about what reforms come out of this.

Rovner: Yeah, me too. Well, my extra credit this week is from the Alabama Daily News, and it comes with the very vanilla-sounding headline “,” by Alexander Willis. Now, Alabama is also one of the 10 remaining states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, much to the chagrin of the state’s hospitals, which would likely have to provide much less free care if more low-income people actually had insurance, even Medicaid, which, as Rachana points out, doesn’t pay that well. The plan put forward by the state hospital association would create a public-private partnership where those who are in the current coverage gap, the ones who earn too much for Medicaid now, but not enough to qualify for Affordable Care Act subsidies, would get full Medicaid benefits delivered through a private insurer. Ironically, this is basically how neighboring Arkansas, another red state, initially expanded Medicaid back in 2013. I did go and look this up when this happened. And it wasn’t even new then. But still, the plan could provide a quarter of a million people in Alabama with insurance at apparently no additional cost to the state for at least the first five years and maybe the first 10. So, another place where we will watch that space.

All right, that is our show. As always, if you enjoy the podcast, you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We’d appreciate it if you left us a review; that helps other people find us, too. Special thanks as always, to our technical guru, Francis Ying, and our editor, Emmarie Huetteman. As always, you can email us your comments or questions. We’re at whatthehealth@kff.org, or you can still find me at X, , or at Bluesky and at Threads. Sarah, where are you these days?

Karlin-Smith: I’m on Twitter a little bit, . And Bluesky, I’m , other platforms as well.

Rovner: Alice?

Ollstein: on X, and on Bluesky.

Rovner: Rachana?

Pradhan: I’m on X, although my presence lately has been a little lacking.

Rovner: Well, you can definitely find all of us. And we will be back in your feed next week. Until then, be healthy.

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Twenty-eight million people, or 8.6% of Americans, were uninsured for all of 2020. In 2019, 8% of people were uninsured during the full year; in 2018, it was 8.5%.

During a press conference, Census officials said there was no statistically significant difference in the number of uninsured when comparing 2018 and 2020 data. (The Census Bureau has cautioned against comparing 2020 data to 2019 data because of a disruption in data collection and individual responses due to the covid-19 pandemic — which is why 2018 served as the primary comparison.)

“It’s remarkable that, during a pandemic with massive job losses, the share of Americans uninsured did not go up,” said , executive vice president for health policy at KFF. “This is likely a testament to what is now a much more protective health insurance safety net.”

Still, the annual report shows a shift in where Americans get their insurance coverage. Private insurance coverage decreased by 0.8 percentage points from 2018. Public coverage rose by 0.4 percentage points from 2018. That shift was likely driven partly by older Americans becoming eligible for Medicare, at age 65, and showed a 0.5 percentage point increase from 2018 to 2020.

Coverage through employers also dropped significantly, said , a senior fellow in health care policy at the American Enterprise Institute, and low-income people were hit especially hard as pandemic cutbacks led to job and health insurance losses. Employment-based coverage dropped by 0.7 percentage points compared with 2018.

The Census 2020 data did show a decline in the number of workers employed full time year-round, and an increase in the number of workers who worked less than full time, suggesting that many individuals shifted to part-time work.

This changing nature of work is “part of the overall story,” said , assistant division chief of employment characteristics at the Census Bureau. For the group that didn’t work full time, the uninsured rate increased to 16.4% in 2020 from 14.6% in 2018. And that impact was concentrated at the bottom of the earnings index.

“Almost certainly, the people most prone to lose coverage because they lost their jobs were lower-paid workers to begin with,” Antos said.

Antos said the Census Bureau data, which showed there wasn’t a significant difference between 2018 and 2020 in the percentage of Americans covered by the Affordable Care Act, misses the larger role the ACA played in helping those who lost coverage get it through the program. Many of those who looked into ACA plans may have met income requirements for Medicaid and joined those rolls instead. Medicaid is a federal-state program for the poor and coverage is free or available at a very low cost. Even with a subsidy, many ACA enrollees may face premium or deductibles or both.

, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University, said one of the main points that jumped out for her was the sharp rise in children below the federal poverty level who were uninsured, rising from 7.8% in 2018 to 9.3% in 2020.

“The rich kids actually did a little bit better, and the poor kids did a whole lot worse,” said Alker.

Overall, the percentage of uninsured children ticked up only slightly and wasn’t considered statistically significant.

Further research is needed to determine the causes of rising uninsurance among the poorest children, Alker said.

Oddly, the Census report did not show an uptick in Medicaid enrollment, although other reports have shown a big increase.

, which comes from state insurance records, shows a 15.6% increase in the number of Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program enrollees from February 2020 to March 2021.

A , which analyzed the CMS data, found enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP increased by 10.5 million from February 2020 to March 2021. Enrollment increased steadily each consecutive month, with increases attributed to people losing their jobs and thus becoming eligible for public coverage and the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which passed in 2020 and ensured continuous Medicaid coverage.

This disconnect may be a result of the nature of Census data, which is self-reported by individuals.

“That’s always subject to error, and probably especially so right now,” said Levitt. “It could also be a result of particularly high non-response rates among some groups.”

Census officials acknowledged during the Tuesday press conference that response rates to their surveys were lower than normal in 2020 and have only just started rebounding in 2021. Other do seem to confirm that the uninsured rate has remained relatively constant over the past couple of years.

Another important takeaway from the data was illustrating the continuing gap in the number of uninsured people between states that chose to expand Medicaid under the ACA and states that didn’t. The Census data showed that in 2020, 38.1% of poor, non-elderly adults were uninsured in non-expansion states, compared with 16.7% in expansion states.

“That became a huge gap after the ACA, and it’s not surprising at all that it remains a huge gap,” said , director of research and data analysis for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “That highlights the need to close the coverage gap.”

The Census Bureau report also offered into national income and poverty rates:

• The official poverty rate in 2020 was 11.4%, up 1 percentage point from 2019, marking the first increase in poverty after five consecutive annual declines. In 2020, 37.2 million people lived in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019.
• Medical expenses boosted the number of impoverished people by 5 million in 2020.
• The median household income in 2020 decreased 2.9% from 2019 to 2020. This is the first statistically significant decline in median household income since 2011.

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A would require HHS to analyze within 24 months about 2,400 regulations — rules that affect tens of millions of Americans on everything from Medicare benefits to prescription drug approvals.

The move has met a fierce backlash from health providers and consumer advocates who fear it would hamstring federal health officials while they seek to control the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 250,000 Americans.

The HHS proposal appears designed to tie up the incoming Biden administration, say critics. They note the timing of the proposal, which was issued Nov. 4 — the day after Election Day, when it appeared President Donald Trump would likely lose his bid for a second term.

“The cynical part of me thinks this is a perfectly designed way to bring the department to a standstill in the next administration,” said Mary Nelle Trefz, health policy associate at Common Good Iowa, a consumer advocacy group.

She said HHS does not have the bandwidth to review all these regulations during the next two years while running its many programs, including Medicaid and Medicare.

If the proposal is finalized before Jan. 20, it is likely to be undone by the incoming Biden administration. But the chore would add to duties of HHS officials trying to attack the pandemic, she said.

HHS officials deny their proposal was aimed at the Biden administration. Brian Harrison, chief of staff at the department, said he first sought legal review of the proposal in April. “Our lawyers moved as fast as they could,” he said, and the rule was written with the expectation it would be implemented during Trump’s second term.

“The outcome of the election had nothing to do with it,” he said.

Democrats and Republicans for the past 40 years have failed to review existing regulations, leaving unnecessary and irrelevant rules on the books, Harrison said.

But Andy Schneider, a research professor at the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University who has , said he fears the sunset provision will be one of many actions the Trump team will take to distract the incoming administration.

“It speaks volumes that they waited until the end of the fourth year of the administration to decide that the regulatory process needs to be improved,” he said.

Incoming administrations have typically frozen new rules that were pending but have not taken effect before Inauguration Day. That gives new administrations time to unwind them.

Efforts to enact reviews of funding bills and other legislation, known as sunset clauses, have been popular among conservatives for years. The federal government has occasionally used sunset provisions in legislation, such as the tax cuts enacted during the George W. Bush administration, but it is rare to make department regulations subject to these types of mandatory deadlines.

The option is , which have adopted varying procedures for measures passed by the legislatures or regulatory boards. Those efforts run the gamut from requiring most initiatives to be reviewed to identifying specific agencies or legislation that must be reconsidered on a regular timetable.

HHS accepted public comments on the proposal though Dec. 4, except on part of the rule affecting Medicare regulations, which has a Jan. 4 deadline. A final rule is expected before Biden becomes president on Jan. 20.

HHS officials don’t point to any specific regulations they say are outdated. However, in their supporting material for the proposal, they note in part:

“An artificial-intelligence-driven data analysis of HHS regulations found that 85 percent of department regulations created before 1990 have not been edited; the Department has nearly 300 broken citation references in the Code of Federal Regulations, meaning CFR sections that reference other CFR sections that no longer exist.”

Harrison said the scarcity of reviews is due to “inertia” and “lack of an incentive mechanism.”

“Many presidents have formally ordered their agencies to review existing regulations, and it has been existing law for 40 years, so simply asking the divisions to review these regulations has been tried for decades and proven to be ineffective,” Harrison said.

“We need to incentivize their behaviors,” he said.

With more than 80,000 employees, the department should be able to complete the review of 2,400 rules in 24 months, he added.

Harrison said the proposal is authorized by a law signed by President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s requiring federal agencies to review existing rules. But that law has no provision that calls for cutting regulations that are not reviewed within a certain time frame, Schneider said.

The proposal says the HHS secretary would have flexibility to stop some regulations from being eliminated “on a case by case basis.”

HHS estimates the reviews would cost up to $19 million over two years. Regulations would have to be reviewed every 10 years under the proposal.

When he took office in 2017, Trump vowed that for every regulation his administration issued, it would remove two. In July, he said his administration had more than exceeded that goal.

“For every one new regulation added, nearly eight federal regulations have been terminated,” he said in a Rose Garden speech. The Washington Post Fact Checker was based on “dubious math and values each regulation as having equal weight.”

One of the few groups to endorse the HHS proposal is the National Federation of Independent Business. The group said the proposal would alleviate regulatory burdens on small businesses.

But other groups, such as the American Academy of Neurology, suggest the proposed rule would limit input from interest groups on changes to existing regulations, because it would not follow the usual process of seeking public comments when altering rules. “The AAN is highly supportive of the current process to modify and rescind regulations through the notice and comment period, as it affords stakeholders the necessary opportunity to provide feedback on proposed regulations prior to changes being implemented,” the group told HHS.

The Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, which advises Congress, opposes the proposal. “MACPAC questions the need for a proposed rule that creates a duplicative and administratively burdensome new process that is likely to create confusion for beneficiaries, states, providers, and managed care plans,” the group said . “The new requirements will create additional unnecessary work that will distract the department and CMS from the critical roles they play in our health care system, Medicaid and CHIP amid the pandemic and its resulting economic challenges.”

It’s unclear how the proposed rule would affect long-standing regulations for product safety and standards, said Betsy Booren, senior vice president of the food lobbying group Consumer Brands Association. “The idea that these regulations would be sunset because a regulations timer went too long is not acceptable,” she wrote in comments on the proposed rule.

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• The Census Bureau’s report this week defied usual economic models. Normally, the more people employed, the more people insured.
• Health advocates blame a variety of actions by the Trump administration for the lower rate of insured Americans. Those include policies intended to deter people from staying on or signing up for Medicaid; the elimination of the tax penalty for not having coverage; and the announcement that immigrants’ use of public benefits such as Medicaid could affect their ability to get a green card allowing them to live and work in the U.S.
• The biggest surprise in the Census Bureau report was the increase in children without insurance. Coverage for kids has generally been a bipartisan goal on Capitol Hill. It’s not clear what caused that drop. It could just be a result of differences in how the survey was conducted, or it may be another sign of immigrants worried about whether using public insurance could lead to their deportation.
• The administration’s announcement that it is moving forward on a ban of flavored vaping products comes as worries grow among parents and public health officials about an epidemic of lung problems around the country. Among those worried parents is first lady Melania Trump.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi appears to be inching closer to releasing her plan to curb high drug prices. It’s not clear yet whether President Donald Trump will sign on to her effort. But Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is seeking support for his more modest plan instead, arguing to his Republican colleagues that if they don’t stand with him, they may be forced to accept Pelosi’s legislation if she manages to make a deal with the president.
• Opponents of some of the legislation to curb surprise medical bills appear to have made progress over Congress’ August recess with a major advertising campaign saying the measures would hurt local hospitals and doctors. Advocates say the legislation is not dead, but the strong momentum it had is waning.

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Hatch played key roles in shepherding the 1983  to promote drug development for rare diseases, and the 1984 , which helped create a national transplant registry. And in 1995,��when many people with AIDS were still feeling marginalized by society and elected leaders, he testified before the Senate about reauthorizing funding for his  to treat uninsured people who have HIV.

“AIDS does not play favorites,” Hatch told other senators. “It affects rich and poor, adults and children, men and women, rural communities and the inner cities. We know much, but the fear remains.”

Hatch, now 84, co-sponsored a number of bills with Democrats over the years,��often with Sen. Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. The two men were sometimes called “the odd couple,” for their politically mismatched friendship.

In 1997,��the two proposed a broad new health safety net for kids — �ٳ����.

“This is an area the country has made enormous progress on, and it’s something we should all feel proud of — and Senator Hatch should too,” said , executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.

Before CHIP was enacted, the number of uninsured children in America was around 10 million. Today, it’s under half that.

Hatch’s influence on American health care partly came from the sheer number of bills he sponsored —  — and because he was chairman of several powerful Senate committees.

“History was on his side because the Republicans were in charge,” said , an emeritus professor in public health at the University of Utah and Hatch’s health director in the 1980s.

When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1981, the Senate became Republican-controlled for the first time in decades. Hatch was appointed chairman of what is now known as the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The powerful legislative group has oversight of the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

“He was virtually catapulted into this chairmanship role,” Sundwall said. “This is astonishing that he had chairmanship of an umbrella committee in his first term in the Senate.”

In 2011, Hatch was appointed to the influential Senate Finance Committee, where he later became chairman. There he helped oversee the national health programs Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP.

Hatch’s growing influence in Congress did not go unnoticed by health care lobbyists. According to the watchdog organization Center for Responsive Politics,��in the past 25 years of political campaign funding,��Hatch ranks  for contributions from the pharmaceutical and health sector. (That’s behind Democratic senators who ran for higher office — President Barack Obama and presidential nominee Hillary Clinton).

“Clearly, he was PhRMA’s man on the Hill,” said , referring to the trade group that represents pharmaceutical companies. Green is a professor of the history of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Though Hatch did work to lower drug prices, Greene said, the senator’s record was mixed on the regulation of drug companies.

For example, an important piece of Hatch’s legislative legacy is the 1984 , drafted with then-,��an influential Democrat from California. While the law promoted the development of cheaper, generic drugs,��it also rewarded brand-name drug companies by extending their patents on valuable medicines.

The law did spur sales of cheaper generics, Greene said. But drugmakers soon learned how to exploit the law’s weaknesses.

“The makers of brand-name drugs began to craft larger and larger webs of multiple patents around their drugs,” aiming to preserve their monopolies after the initial patent expired, Greene said.

Other brand-name drugmakers preserved their monopolies by paying makers of generics not to compete.

“These pay-for-delay deals effectively hinged on a part of the Hatch-Waxman Act,” Greene said.

Hatch also worked closely with the dietary supplement industry. The multibillion-dollar industry specializing in vitamins, minerals, herbs and other “natural” health products, is concentrated in his home state of Utah.

“There was really no place for these natural health products,” said , president of the United Natural Products Alliance and a Hatch staffer in the late 1970s.

As the industry grew, there was a debate over how to regulate it: Should it be more like food or like drugs? In 1994, Hatch sponsored �ٳ����, known as DSHEA, which treats supplements more like food.

“It was necessary to have someone who was a champion who would say, ‘All right, if we need to change the law, what does it look like,’ and ‘Let’s go,'” Israelsen said.

Some legislators and consumer advocacy groups wanted vitamins and other supplements to go through a tight approval process, akin to the testing the Food and Drug Administration requires of drugs. But DSHEA reined in the FDA, determining that supplements do not have to meet the same safety and efficacy standards as prescription drugs.

That legislative clamp on regulation has led to ongoing questions about whether dietary supplements actually work and  with other medications patients may be taking.

DSHEA was co-sponsored by Democrat Tom Harkin,��then a senator from Iowa.

While that kind of bipartisanship defined much of Hatch’s career, it has been less evident in recent years. He was strongly opposed to the Affordable Care Act, and in 2018 called supporters of the heath law among �ٳ����” he had ever met. (Hatch later characterized the remark as “a poorly worded joke.”)

In his  on the Senate floor in December, Hatch lamented the polarization that has overtaken Congress.

“Gridlock is the new norm,” he said. “Like the humidity here, partisanship permeates everything we do.”

This story is part of a partnership that includes , and Kaiser Health News.

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Aunque en términos estadísticos no es un gran salto -la proporción de niños sin seguro llegó a 5% en 2017, comparado con 4.7% el año anterior- todavía es sorprendente. La tasa de no asegurados por lo general se mantiene estable o cae en tiempos de crecimiento económico. En septiembre, la tasa de desempleo en los Estados Unidos alcanzó su nivel más bajo desde 1969.

“La nación está retrocediendo en el camino por asegurar a los niños, y es probable que esto empeore”, dijo Joan Alker, coautora del estudio y directora ejecutiva del Centro para Niños y Familias de Georgetown.

Alker y otros defensores de la salud infantil culpan de este cambio a la administración Trump y al Congreso controlado por los republicanos, porque dicen que sus políticas y acciones han obstaculizado la inscripción para tener seguro.

De acuerdo con datos del Censo analizados por Georgetown, la cantidad de niños sin cobertura aumentó a 3.9 millones en 2017, de aproximadamente 3.6 millones el año anterior.

Los niños hispanos siguen siendo los que tienen la tasa más alta de no asegurados: 7,8%, en comparación con el 4,9% entre los blancos no hispanos y el 4,6% entre las personas de raza negra no hispanas. (Los hispanos pueden ser de cualquier raza).

La tasa general de personas sin seguro en todas las edades, que cayó de 2013 a 2016 luego de la implementación de la Ley de Cuidado de Salud Asequible (ACA), se mantuvo sin cambios: 8.8% el año pasado.

La proporción de niños con cobertura patrocinada por el empleador aumentó modestamente en 2017, pero no lo suficiente como para compensar la disminución de niños que se inscriben en Medicaid o que obtienen cobertura a través de los mercados de seguros del Obamacare, dijo Alker.

Si bien ningún estado logró frenar esta baja, nueve experimentaron aumentos importantes de niños sin cobertura médica. El mayor fue Dakota del Sur (de 4.7% a 6.2%), Utah (de 6% a 7.3%) y Texas (de 9.8% a 10.7%).

Más de 1 de cada 5 niños sin seguro en el país vive en Texas, aproximadamente 835,000 niños. Por lejos, el número más alto entre todos los estados.

En Florida vivían 325,000 niños sin seguro el año pasado, ya que la tasa de no asegurados para ese grupo de edad aumentó 0.7 puntos porcentuales, a 7.3%. California tenía 301,000 niños sin seguro, aunque su número se mantuvo prácticamente sin cambios, en comparación con el año anterior.

Otros estados con aumentos significativos fueron Georgia, Carolina del Sur, Ohio, Tennessee y Massachusetts.

Las tasas de niños sin seguro de salud aumentaron casi el triple en los estados que no expandieron Medicaid bajo ACA, según el informe. Los estudios han demostrado que los niños cuyos padres están asegurados tienen más probabilidades de tener cobertura.

Georgetown ha estado siguiendo estas cifras desde 2008, cuando 7,6 millones de niños, alrededor del 10%, no tenían de cobertura de salud.

Debido a que casi todos los niños de bajos ingresos son elegibles para Medicaid o para el Programa de Seguro de Salud Infantil (CHIP), el desafío es asegurarse de que los padres reciban información sobre estos programas, averigüen si son elegibles, los inscriban y los mantengan registrados, dijo Alker.

El Congreso tardó varios meses en aprobar el financiamiento del programa CHIP en 2017, por lo que muchos estados tuvieron que alertar a los consumidores sobre posibles congelamientos en la inscripción. El Congreso restauró la financiación federal a principios de 2018.

Además, el año pasado, las familias de bajos ingresos fueron bombardeadas por noticias sobre la intención del Congreso de derogar la ley de salud, que logró extender la cobertura a millones de personas. En los últimos dos años, la administración Trump ha recortado los fondos para los navegadores del Obamacare, que ayudan a las personas a inscribirse para tener seguro de salud.

Alker también señalo como algo negativo la de septiembre de la administración Trump, conocida como “carga pública”, que podría dificultar que los inmigrantes con papeles obtengan la (Green card o tarjeta verde) si recibieron ciertos tipos de asistencia pública, incluidos Medicaid, cupones de alimentos y subsidios para la vivienda. La tarjeta verde les permite vivir y trabajar permanentemente en los Estados Unidos.

OLE Health, un gran proveedor de servicios de salud con sede en Napa Valley, California, que atiende a muchos inmigrantes, dijo que ha visto a los pacientes retirarse de Medicaid en el último año. La directora ejecutiva, Alicia Hardy, dijo que muchos han abandonado la cobertura por temor a que la ayuda pueda poner en peligro su estatus migratorio.

“Tienen miedo de ser deportados”, dijo.

Estos eventos pueden haber influenciado para que las familias sacaran a los niños de las coberturas. “La alfombra de bienvenida ha sido retirada y, como resultado, vemos más niños sin seguro”, agregó Alker.

Y concluyó que la forma más fácil de cambiar la tendencia sería que más estados expandieran Medicaid. Catorce estados aún tienen que hacerlo. Aunque la expansión impacta en gran medida a los adultos, cuando los padres se inscriben, es probable que también inscriban a sus hijos.

La cobertura de KHN de los problemas de salud de los niños es apoyada en parte por la Fundación Heising-Simons.

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While not a big jump statistically — the share of uninsured kids rose to 5 percent in 2017 from 4.7 percent a year earlier — it is still striking. The uninsured rate typically remains stable or drops during times of economic growth. In September, the U.S. unemployment rate hit its lowest level since 1969.

“The nation is going backwards on insuring kids and it is likely to get worse,” said Joan Alker, co-author of the study and executive director of Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families.

Alker and other child health advocates place the blame for this change on the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress, saying their policies and actions cast a pall on enrollment.

The number of children without coverage rose to 3.9 million in 2017 from about 3.6 million a year earlier, according to Census data analyzed by Georgetown.

The overall uninsured rate for people of all ages — which plummeted from 2013 to 2016 following the health law’s implementation — remained unchanged at 8.8 percent last year.

The share of children with employer-sponsored coverage rose modestly in 2017, but not by enough to make up for the drop in children enrolling in Medicaid or getting coverage from Obamacare insurance exchanges, Alker said.

While no states made any significant gains in lowering children’s uninsured rate, nine states experienced significant increases. The biggest occurred in South Dakota (up from 4.7 percent to 6.2 percent), Utah (up from 6 percent to 7.3 percent) and Texas (from 9.8 percent to 10.7 percent).

More than 1 in 5 uninsured children nationwide live in Texas — about 835,000 kids — by far the highest number of any state.

Florida had 325,000 uninsured children last year, as its uninsured rate for that age group rose 0.7 percentage points to 7.3 percent. California had 301,000 children without insurance, though its number remained virtually unchanged, relative to the previous year.

Other states with significant increases were Georgia, South Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Massachusetts.

The uninsured rates for children increased at nearly triple the rates in states that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, according to the report. Studies have shown that children whose parents are insured are more likely to have coverage.

The uninsured rate among Hispanic children was 7.8 percent, compared with 4.9 percent among whites and 4.6 percent among blacks overall. (Hispanics can be of any race.)

Georgetown has been tracking these figures since 2008 when 7.6 million children — or about 10 percent of kids — lacked health coverage.

Because nearly all low-income children are eligible for Medicaid or the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, the challenge is making sure parents are aware of the programs, getting them enrolled and keeping them signed up as long as they are eligible, Alker said.

Congress let the CHIP program funding lapse for several months in 2017, putting states in a position of having to warn consumers that they would soon have to freeze enrollment. Congress restored federal funding in early in 2018.

In addition, low-income families were bombarded by news reports last year of Congress threatening to repeal the health law that expanded coverage to millions. In the past two years, the Trump administration has slashed funding to Obamacare navigators to help people sign up for coverage.

Alker also pointed to the Trump administration’s September , known as the “public charge” rule, which could make it harder for legal immigrants to if they have received certain kinds of public assistance — including Medicaid, food stamps and housing subsidies. Green cards allow them to live and work permanently in the United States.

OLE Health, a large health provider based in Napa Valley, Calif., that serves many immigrants, said it has seen patients disenroll from Medicaid in the past year. CEO Alicia Hardy said many have dropped coverage over fears the help could jeopardize their immigration status.

“They are afraid of being deported,” she said.

All those events could have deterred families from getting their kids covered. “The welcome mat has been pulled back and as a result we see more uninsured children,” Alker said.

She said the easiest way to change the trend would be for more states to expand Medicaid under the health law. Fourteen states have yet to do so. Though the expansion largely affects adults, as parents enroll, their children are likely to follow.

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“Aquellos que buscan migrar a los Estados Unidos deben demostrar que pueden mantenerse económicamente”, dijo Kirstjen Nielsen, secretaria del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS), en un comunicado.

La propuesta, que se anunció el sábado 22 de septiembre a la noche, marca una nueva frontera en el esfuerzo a largo plazo de la administración Trump por frenar la inmigración, tanto ilegal como legal. Esta norma ya ha provocado intensas críticas por parte de los demócratas, activistas contra la pobreza, organizaciones de atención médica y defensores de los derechos de los inmigrantes: consideran que busca poner en práctica restricciones sin precedentes.

“Estamos operando en un clima general de gran temor y ansiedad como resultado del enfoque general de la administración sobre la aplicación de las políticas migratorias”, dijo Mark Greenberg, investigador principal del Migration Policy Institute, quien estudia las políticas de migración y refugiados a nivel local, nacional e internacional. Greenberg también es un ex funcionario de la administración Obama.

Pero, ¿qué efecto tendría esta propuesta?

Es una pregunta complicada, que toca a vastos programas gubernamentales, con miles de millones de dólares en juego. Si bien las implicaciones todavía no son claras, Kaiser Health News analiza algunos de los elementos clave.

1. Primero lo primero: ¿Qué está proponiendo la Casa Blanca?

La administración Trump quiere redefinir un concepto conocido como , una categoría que se usa para determinar si una persona que busca el estatus de residente permanente “es probable que se vuelva dependiente principalmente del gobierno para subsistir”.

En el pasado, las personas corrían el riesgo de que se las definiera como una “carga pública” si recibían asistencia monetaria en efectivo, conocida como Asistencia Temporal para Familias Necesitadas o Ingreso de Seguridad Suplementario, o ayuda federal para pagar la atención médica a largo plazo. (Los inmigrantes deben estar legalmente en el país por cinco años antes de ser elegibles para esta asistencia).

Y esa designación de “carga pública” podía socavar sus solicitudes de residencia permanente (cuando un inmigrante solicita la tarjeta verde, o Green Card).

La nueva regla ampliaría la lista para incluir a algunos programas de seguros de salud, alimentos y vivienda. Específicamente, penalizaría a los que aspiran a tener una tarjeta verde por usar Medicaid, el programa de salud federal-estatal para personas de bajos ingresos. (Las sanciones no se aplicarían por usar Medicaid en ciertas emergencias o para algunos servicios que brinda a través de escuelas y programas para personas con discapacidades).

El uso de cupones de alimentos, la asistencia para rentas de la Sección 8 y los vales de vivienda federales también funcionarían en contra de los solicitantes. La inscripción en un subsidio de la Parte D de Medicare, que ayuda a las personas de bajos ingresos a comprar medicamentos recetados, también los perjudicaría.

La propuesta “es definitivamente un cambio dramático con respecto a cómo funciona la carga pública hoy”, dijo Kelly Whitener, profesora asociada del Centro para Niños y Familias de la Universidad de Georgetown, quien se especializa en beneficios de salud pediátrica y sistemas de atención administrada.

Una versión de la regla que se filtró a la prensa en marzo sugiere que los funcionarios también estaban considerando penalizar a aquellos que reciben subsidios para comprar un seguro de salud en los mercados establecidos por la Ley de Cuidado de Salud Asequible (ACA). Pero esa idea no estaba en la propuesta publicada el 22 de septiembre. Los subsidios del mercado están dirigidos a personas con un nivel de ingresos generalmente más alto a los que apunta el plan de Trump, señaló Whitener.

“Realmente se están enfocando en los inmigrantes de bajos ingresos”, agregó.

Nielsen dijo que la regla propuesta tiene “la intención de promover la autosuficiencia de los inmigrantes y proteger los recursos limitados”.

1. Como dicen los críticos, ¿es cierto que esta medida no tiene precedentes?

Sí.

La carga pública es un viejo concepto. En la década de los 90, legisladores lo ampliaron para considerar explícitamente si las personas habían recibido asistencia social en efectivo.

Pero incluir programas como Medicaid y cupones de alimentos, que tienen un alcance mucho más amplio, es un cambio significativo. Es más probable que afecte a los trabajadores: la mayoría de las personas con Medicaid están empleadas, y casi el 80% vive en familias con al menos un miembro activo, según datos compilados por la Kaiser Family Foundation.

Los niños que son ciudadanos estadounidenses, pero cuyos padres son inmigrantes, podrían ser los más propensos a sufrir repercusiones, dijeron expertos. Cuando los padres optan por no recibir asistencia pública por temor a su propio estatus legal, es menos probable que sus hijos se inscriban, por ejemplo, en el Programa de Seguro Médico Infantil (CHIP), para el cual calificarían.

Para ser claros, recibir ayuda pública no necesariamente evitará que las personas obtengan una tarjeta verde. Pero podría afectar el proceso negativamente.

“Otro componente es la enorme libertad que tendrá la administración bajo su propuesta para emitir juicios sobre quién será admitido en el país y quién recibirá la residencia permanente”, dijo Greenberg.

1. ¿Cuándo entrará en vigencia este cambio de política?

Este es el primer paso en el complejo proceso de elaboración de reglas federales. Y hay muchas cosas que podrían cambiar.

Una vez que la regla propuesta aparece en el , comienza una cuenta regresiva de 60 días, durante la cual cualquier persona puede opinar.

Una regla final probablemente no entraría en vigencia hasta 2019.

Y el DHS todavía está recopilando opiniones sobre algunos detalles. Por ejemplo, no ha decidido si CHIP se contará como uno de los programas elegibles dentro del nuevo paraguas de “carga pública”.

Mientras tanto, no se penalizaría a las personas que recibieron beneficios públicos antes que la regla entre en vigencia.

1. Sin embargo, la propuesta ya está teniendo efectos

El DHS estima que el 2.5% de los inmigrantes elegibles abandonarían los programas de beneficios públicos debido a este cambio, lo que representaría alrededor de $1.5 mil millones en dinero federal por año. Pero otros esperan un impacto mucho mayor.

“Los efectos irán mucho más allá de los individuos directamente afectados”, dijo Greenberg. “Hay razones considerables para creer que [la estimación de la Casa Blanca] puede ser una subestimación significativa”.

En la regla propuesta, el DHS señala que los cambios podrían resultar en “peores resultados de salud”, “mayor uso de salas de emergencia”, “mayor prevalencia de enfermedades contagiosas”, “mayores tasas de pobreza” y otras preocupaciones.

Dada la complejidad de estos programas y la regla propuesta, y las altas apuestas en juego, los inmigrantes de bajos ingresos tendrían muchas más probabilidades de evitar por completo los beneficios públicos, dijeron expertos en inmigración. Es probable que millones de inmigrantes se vean afectados directa o indirectamente, según el Center for Law and Social Policy, una organización sin fines de lucro con sede en Washington, DC.

Eso podría tener graves consecuencias para la salud.

Familias podrían dejar de vacunar gratuitamente a sus niños, aunque éstos sean elegibles y aunque la inmunización no esté sujeta a la regla de “carga pública”, por temor de poner en peligro una residencia permanente, ejemplificó Whitener.

Agregó que ya hay informes de personas que rechazan la asistencia federal, a pesar que aún no ha sucedido nada.

“El factor miedo no se puede subestimar”, dijo.

1. ¿La gente va a demandar?

Es probable que haya acciones legales.

Funcionarios como el fiscal general de California, Xavier Becerra, quien frecuentemente se ha enfrentado a la Casa Blanca, están analizando los desafíos a la regla.

“La propuesta de la administración Trump está castigando a las familias inmigrantes trabajadoras, incluso apuntando a niños que son ciudadanos, por utilizar programas que brindan nutrición básica y atención médica. Esto es un ataque contra nuestras familias y nuestras comunidades”, dijo Becerra en un comunicado.

Pero estas acciones dependen de lo que contenga la norma final, que podría cambiar a través del proceso de elaboración.

“Es probable que reciban una gran cantidad de comentarios drásticamente críticos, y no hay forma de saber qué cambios podrían hacer como resultado”, dijo Greenberg.

La cobertura de KHN de los problemas de salud de los niños es apoyada en parte por la .

�������ýҕ�l Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about .

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