President’s Day Shortened Week

After the President’s Day long weekend, the House is out of session this week. The Senate is in session, with a continued focus on nominations and potential floor action on the budget resolution that the Senate Budget Committee reported last week. This week the Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing for Dan Bishop, nominated to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Healthcare could certainly be a topic that is raised at the hearing.

What remains to be seen this week is whether there will be additional steps toward budget reconciliation. Last week, the Senate and House budget committees passed very different budget resolutions. The Senate version is the first of two reconciliation efforts and is focused only on energy, immigration, and defense policies, while the House wants to pass one big package with all priorities, including extending the Trump tax cuts. Either version will likely include healthcare policies in order to offset spending priorities, although the magnitude of healthcare cuts, in particular for Medicaid, is far greater in the House, whose budget resolution targets a minimum of $880 billion in savings from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. With the House out this week, the Senate could advance its budget resolution to floor consideration and send it on to the House. Of course, the House is not required to then act on that bill. It is very possible that the House could move forward with its own approach. But, before either body can turn to the substantive work of developing a reconciliation package, a unified budget resolution must pass both bodies.

Last Thursday, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Jr. was confirmed and sworn in as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). His Senate confirmation vote was 52 – 48, with Sen. McConnell (R-KY) the sole Republican to vote no. As predicted, immediately after RFK Jr.’s swearing in, President Trump took several healthcare actions. He signed an executive order establishing the Make America Healthy Again Commission, whose initial mission is to advise the president on how to address childhood chronic diseases. The order directs the commission to study contributing causes, advise the president on public education, and provide government-wide recommendations to address contributing causes. Additional executive orders on healthcare could be forthcoming.

As forecast, the Trump administration laid off thousands of HHS employees on Friday and over the weekend, including at the US Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the National Institutes of Health. The Trump administration contends that the layoffs did not include essential workers. Individuals laid off primarily include those in a probationary period, but the impact of these changes is still being understood and is likely to impact the operation of Medicare, Medicaid, federal grant programs, and other HHS functions.

Today’s Podcast

In this week’s Healthcare Preview podcast, Debbie Curtis and Rodney Whitlock join Julia Grabo to recap the mass HHS layoffs over the long weekend and discuss next steps in the budget reconciliation process.