The Trump administration is endangering women’s reproductive health

  The Trump administration has made drastic cuts to federal programs that protect the health of Americans, putting women’s health at particular risk. Job cuts described as a “bloodbath,” along with restructuring within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), will dismantle programs that support women’s health, including those that focus on chronic and infectious disease, injuries, mental health, genetic disorders, substance use, and health disparities. These cuts will scale back efforts to prevent, treat, and discover cures for illnesses and diseases, including many that affect women’s reproductive health.

Data can show if government programs work or not, but the Trump administration is suppressing the necessary information

  The U.S. has the highest rate of maternal mortality among developed nations. Since 1987, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has administered the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System to better understand when, where, and why maternal deaths occur.

  In April 2025, the Trump administration put the department in charge of collecting and tracking this data on leave.

  It’s just one example of how the administration is deleting and disrupting American data of all kinds.

Employers are failing to insure the working class – Medicaid cuts will leave them even more vulnerable

  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 7.8 million Americans across the U.S. will lose their coverage through Medicaid – the public program that provides health insurance to low-income families and individuals – under the multitrillion-dollar domestic policy package that President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025.

  That includes 247,000 to 412,000 of my fellow residents of Michigan.

  Many of these people are working Americans who will lose Medicaid because of the onerous paperwork involved with the proposed work requirements.

US health care is rife with high costs and deep inequities, and that’s no accident – a public health historian explains how the system was shaped to serve profit and politicians

  A few years ago, a student in my history of public health course asked why her mother couldn’t afford insulin without insurance, despite having a full-time job. I told her what I’ve come to believe: The U.S. health care system was deliberately built this way.

  People often hear that health care in America is dysfunctional – too expensive, too complex, and too inequitable. But dysfunction implies failure. What if the real problem is that the system is functioning exactly as it was designed to? Understanding this legacy is key to explaining not only why reform has failed repeatedly, but why change remains so difficult.

The language Alabama leaders don’t speak

  A few weeks ago I started learning Irish via an app.

  The lessons progress like any foreign language course. Start with food and water and how to get them. Gloine uisce, le do thoil. A glass of water, please.

  Step outside and describe the weather. Tá sé grianmhar. It’s sunny. Or Tá sé dorcha agus scamallach. It’s dark and cloudy.

Cutting Medicaid and federal programs are among 4 key Trump administration policy changes that could make life harder for disabled people

  While policy debates on immigration, abortion, and other issues took center stage in the 2024 presidential election, the first months of the Trump administration have also signaled major changes in federal disability policy.

  An estimated 20% to 25% of Americans have a disability of some kind, including physical, sensory, psychological, and intellectual disabilities.

Preventive care is free by law, but many Americans get incorrectly billed − especially if you’re poor, a person of color or don’t have a college degree

  Even though preventive care is supposed to be free by law for millions of Americans thanks to the Affordable Care Act, many don’t receive recommended preventive services, especially racial and ethnic minorities, and other at-risk patient groups.

  The Affordable Care Act exempted preventive services from patient cost-sharing for large chunks of the population. This means that if you receive preventive screening and have private insurance, including through the ACA Marketplace, there should be no copay at time of service, and you shouldn’t get a bill later on. Easy enough, right?

5 ways Project 2025 puts profits over patients

  Project 2025, the far-right extremist agenda developed by the Heritage Foundation, would increase the power of corporations at the expense of Americans’ health and well-being. It would give more control to health care companies—including some of the most profitable companies in the world—by jeopardizing protections that help many patients access and afford the care they need. Project 2025 would also take us back to a time when corporations were free to pump dangerous toxins into the air we breathe and the water we drink. If Project 2025’s plan for a far-right administration takes effect, corporations will profit while patients are saddled with high bills, less accessible health care, more exposure to toxins, and more harmful health conditions.

Free preventive care under the ACA is under threat again – a ruling exempting PrEP from insurance coverage may extend nationwide and to other health services

  Many Americans breathed a sigh of relief when the Supreme Court left the Affordable Care Act in place following the law’s third major legal challenge in June 2021. This decision left widely supported policies in place, like ensuring coverage regardless of preexisting conditions, coverage for dependents up to age 26 on their parents’ plan, and removal of annual and lifetime benefit limits.

  But the hits keep coming. One of the most popular benefits offered by the ACA, free preventive care, is under legal threat again by Braidwood Management v. Becerra – originally Kelley v. Becerra. The Braidwood plaintiffs are a mix of individuals and business owners who object to purchasing insurance that covers preexposure prophylaxis – or PrEP – a medicine that is almost 100% effective in preventing HIV infection. One of the plaintiffs claimed that PrEP “facilitates and encourages homosexual behavior, intravenous drug use, and sexual activity outside of marriage between one man and one woman” and that his religious beliefs prevent him from providing insurance that covers PrEP.

The Medicaid coverage gap requires permanent closure

  Inequities and disparities in U.S. health care access have had insidious impacts on communities for centuries and will require robust and long-term action to remedy. As of March 2020, 13 million people had gained Medicaid coverage in states that implemented the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Medicaid expansion. However, in 11 of the remaining states that have not expanded the program, 2.2 million people are stuck in the “coverage gap”: Despite having incomes below the federal poverty level (FPL), they do not qualify for Medicaid and are also ineligible for financial assistance for marketplace coverage. As a result, millions of low-income individuals—who are disproportionately Black and Latino—are unable to access the coverage they need.

The next attack on the Affordable Care Act may cost you free preventive health care

  Many Americans breathed a sigh of relief when the Supreme Court left the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in place following its third major legal challenge in June 2021. This decision left widely supported policies in place, like ensuring coverage regardless of preexisting conditions, coverage for dependents up to age 26 on their parents’ plan, and removal of annual and lifetime benefit limits.

  But the hits keep coming. One of the most popular benefits offered by the ACA, free preventive care through many employer-based and marketplace insurance plans, is under attack by another legal domino, Kelley v. Becerra. As University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley sees it, “[t]his time, the law’s opponents stand a good chance of succeeding.”

What the American Rescue Plan says about President Biden’s health care priorities – and what they mean for you

  As millions of Americans receive COVID-19 vaccines, the Affordable Care Act just got a booster shot of its own.

  After 11 years of existential threat and months after an argument before the Supreme Court, the ACA has been strengthened under President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, the US$1.9 trillion economic relief package. This means greater access to health insurance at lower costs for millions of Americans.

Seven things President-elect Biden can achieve on health care

  President-elect Joe Biden has plenty of work ahead of him; reining in the out-of-control pandemic tops the list, and beyond that, there are significant challenges on health care in general.

Four myths about the public option

  The idea of a public option for health insurance has become increasingly politicized. Insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, and powerful hospital systems—all groups that profit from the status quo—are attempting to stir up fears about a plan that would actually help American families. In reality, a public option would lower costs, save American families money, and allow private insurance plans to continue to compete. The public option also remains a popular path for reform with growing support: A recent survey shows that 2 in 3 voters support a public option. In this column, the Center for American Progress sets the record straight on what a public option would do and discusses four common misconceptions about the plan.

Conservatives backed the ideas behind Obamacare, so how did they come to hate it?

  The Affordable Care Act is back before the U.S. Supreme Court in the latest of dozens of attacks against the law by conservatives fighting what they now perceive to be a government takeover of health care.

  Yet, in an odd twist of history, it was Newt Gingrich, one of the most conservative speakers of the House, who laid out the blueprint for the Affordable Care Act as early as 1993. In an interview on “Meet the Press,” Gingrich argued for individuals’ being “required to have health insurance” as a matter of social responsibility.

The Trump administration treats seniors as expendable

  Amid a pandemic in which seniors have been disproportionately infected and killed, the Trump administration and its allies continue to fail at protecting seniors’ health care access. By downplaying the COVID-19 pandemic and failing to act, and discounting the impact of the coronavirus on seniors with preexisting conditions, the Trump administration and its allies are letting down older adults and those who love them. Meanwhile, the administration continues to push for repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which would cause seniors’ out-of-pocket premiums and prescription drug costs to soar, and to punt on prescription drug pricing reform. In the middle of a historic health crisis, the Trump administration has left seniors behind.

If Obamacare goes away, here are eight ways your life will be affected

  More than 10 years after its passage, the Affordable Care Act once more hangs in the balance. There have been plenty of near misses before, including previous Supreme Court appearances and Congressional votes. Yet in the wake of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, this time around Republicans may finally be successful in undoing the Obama Administration’s signature achievement. Hearings before the Supreme Court are scheduled to begin on Nov. 10 on whether a change in tax law makes the ACA unconstitutional.

Trump’s ideological judges have led to politicized courts

  President Donald Trump has made clear that he values personal loyalty to himself above all other traits in those around him, both when it comes to his political aides and who he calls “his” judges. He has personally attacked judges who rule against his administration’s interests while promising that those he nominates will carry out his administration’s policy goals. Those goals chiefly include eliminating the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—as he is currently urging the U.S. Supreme Court to do in a lawsuit—and dismantling Roe v. Wade.

While the U.S. is reeling from COVID-19, the Trump administration is trying to take away health care

  The death toll from COVID-19 keeps rising, creating grief, fear, loss, and confusion.

  Unfortunately for us all, the pain only begins there. Other important health policy news that would ordinarily make headlines is buried under the crushing weight of the coronavirus. Many have not had time to notice or understand the Trump administration’s efforts to wreck health care coverage.

How the Trump administration’s deregulation agenda has worsened the coronavirus pandemic

  In 2015, Donald Trump promised: “Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.” Yet, long before news of the COVID-19 outbreak reached the United States, the Trump administration had been dismantling policies and proposing new ones that have vastly exacerbated the coronavirus pandemic.

  As the United States braces to combat a public health crisis and a severe economic downturn, it is important to note that the Trump administration’s policies have contributed to this crisis. Three years of deregulation under the Trump presidency and a botched response to the COVID-19 pandemic have in part spurred what may be one of the costliest public health crises in American history—both financially and in terms of human life. This column breaks down four of the Trump administration’s deregulatory actions that have worsened the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.