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.

How the ‘big, beautiful bill’ will deepen the racial wealth gap – a law scholar explains how it reduces poor families’ ability to afford food and health care

  President Donald Trump has said the “big, beautiful bill” he signed into law on July 4, 2025, will stimulate the economy and foster financial security.

  But a close look at the legislation reveals a different story, particularly for low-income people and racial and ethnic minorities.

  As a legal scholar who studies how taxes increase the gap in wealth and income between Black and white Americans, I believe the law’s provisions make existing wealth inequalities worse through broad tax cuts that disproportionately favor wealthy families while forcing its costs on low- and middle-income Americans.

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.

10 egregious things you may not know about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

  Congressional Republicans passed a radical budget and tax bill—the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—on a party-line vote. Many of the plan’s key elements will increase families’ costs for health care, food, and utilities—such as historic cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as well as terminating tax credits to produce more American-made energy—and are deeply unpopular according to recent survey data. Several provisions, however, remain less understood because they’ve received less media attention or were added during rushed negotiations that took place overnight and behind closed doors.

  This article details several lesser-known provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) that will increase costs and limit Americans’ ability to meet their basic needs; create a slush fund for Trump administration overreach; and waste taxpayer money.

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.

The workforce benefits of Medicaid expansion in Alabama

  For nearly a decade, Alabama has been outside looking in on a good deal. While hundreds of thousands of Alabamians struggle without health insurance, state leaders have failed to expand Medicaid to cover adults with low incomes. A few loud voices have politicized an issue that shouldn’t be political. And our state has paid the price in lost dollars, lost jobs, and lost lives.

  Reliable access to health care keeps people healthier and empowers them to work. That’s one reason 39 states and the District of Columbia have embraced Medicaid expansion.

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.

Poor U.S. pandemic response will reverberate in health care politics for years, health scholars warn

  Much has been written about the U.S. coronavirus response. Media accounts frequently turn to experts for their insights – commonly, epidemiologists or physicians. Countless surveys have also queried Americans and individuals from around the world about how the pandemic has affected them and their attitudes and opinions.

  Yet little is known about the views of a group of people particularly well qualified to render judgment on the U.S.‘s response and offer policy solutions: academic health policy and politics researchers. These researchers, like the two of us, come from a diverse set of disciplines, including public health and public policy. Their research focuses on the intricate linkages between politics, the U.S. health system, and health policy. They are trained to combine applied and academic knowledge, take broader views, and be fluent across multiple disciplines.

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.

Coercion and charity are opposites

  The entire welfare-state way of life is based on the concept of force. Through the threat of arrest, prosecution, incarceration, and fines, the American people are forced to be good, caring, and compassionate to others.

  Here is how the process works. People are forced to deliver a percentage of their income to the federal government, which in turn delivers the money to others. It’s not a 100 percent turnover, of course, because some of the money is used to cover the expenses associated with performing this service, such as salaries for bureaucrats in the IRS and in the federal departments, and agencies that distribute the money.

Could the Hyde Amendment be repealed in 2020?

  In 1976, conservative Congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois introduced a bill that would ban the use of federal funding for abortion expenses except in instances of rape, incest, or danger to the life of the mother.

  Today, the Hyde Amendment, which has been added as a rider to federal budget appropriation bills since 1977, prohibits abortion coverage for approximately 74 million Medicaid recipients.

  It also prohibits the federal government from covering abortion in health programs for federal employees, federal prisoners, those who rely on Indian Health Services, active military members, and veterans, among others.

Getting poorer while working harder: The ‘cliff effect’

  Forty percent of all working-age Americans sometimes struggle to pay their monthly bills.

  There is no place in the country where a family supported by one minimum-wage worker with a full-time job can live and afford a 2-bedroom apartment at the average fair-market rent.

  Given the pressure to earn enough to make ends meet, you would think that low-paid workers would be clamoring for raises. But this is not always the case.

Racism is killing black Americans

  Racism affects every aspect of American life – none more so than our medical system.

  Numerous studies over the years have laid bare the gap in health outcomes between minority groups and white Americans.

  African Americans have a lower life expectancy than white people. They are more likely to suffer and die from chronic conditions like kidney, cardiovascular, and lung disease.

Trump’s new union-busting rule will wallop home health workers

  Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services finalized an obscure rule that could have huge implications for an estimated 800,000 independent home health providers paid directly by the state for Medicaid-funded services. Under the rule, these workers will no longer be able to assign deductions from their paychecks to cover things like insurance premiums, retirement contributions, and union dues. The rule singles out the most isolated home health workers who are not employed or paid via agencies; those who are can assign deductions at will.

  Advocates argue the rule is designed to suppress unions by making it more difficult to collect dues. And there’s more than union dues at stake: Home care providers could, for example, experience lapses in health coverage by failing to keep up with premiums.

Waging a new war on poverty

  The movement for racial justice in America is inextricably linked to the fight for economic justice.

  Prominent African-American activists like Frederick Douglas W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Philip Randolph, and Angela Davis recognized that black emancipation requires economic empowerment.

  That sentiment is probably no better exemplified in American history than by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s shift in messaging near the end of his life.

  King began to call for the redistribution of economic and political power in the United States, launching a national campaign that culminated in the Poor People's March on Washington in the summer of 1968. The march took place weeks after his assassination in Memphis, where he had traveled to rally support for the city’s striking sanitation workers.