Adam Gaffney

Implications of Year 1 Trump Administration Policies for Americans’ Lung Health Adam W Gaffney, MD, MPH, Steffie Woolhandler, MD MPH, David C Christiani, MD, MPH, MS, Mary B Rice, MD MPH, John Balmes, MD, C Corey Hardin, MD PhD, Cecile

Our new paper was just published in @atsblueeditor.bsky.social

Authored by the Lung Health Policy Tracking Group — a panel of lung specialists & public health experts — our paper explores impacts of Trump policies on Lung Health in 10 domains.

Open access link to "online first" version:

Tearing down the Stalinist monuments to this regime will be such a satisfying, salubrious, democratizing endeavor once the time comes. People will fill the streets, I suspect, but who knows.

It is journalistic malpractice by CBS to use a debunked photo of an alleged UFO as a caption for this tweet without mentioning that it has been debunked. What a stupid era we are living through.

UFO conspiracism, ivermectin conspiracism, chemtrails conspiracism, anti-vaccine conspiracism etc. etc. are part and parcel of the same obscurantist, right-wing, anti-Enlightenment, dark ages brain fog that is settling over the US states.

Medicaid Undone | Adam Gaffney One year ago President Donald Trump promised to “love and cherish” Medicaid. Alas, his affection for the public insurance program was short-lived. The

“Medicaid’s origins,” writes Adam Gaffney(@awgaffney.bsky.social), “lie in a state-centric welfare model ideologically predicated on the same distinction between the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’ that underpins the Trump administration’s new work requirements.”https://go.nybooks.com/46HtWJn

Medicaid Undone | Adam Gaffney One year ago President Donald Trump promised to “love and cherish” Medicaid. Alas, his affection for the public insurance program was short-lived. The

“We need to restore Medicaid, and to improve it,” writes @awgaffney.bsky.social. “But the best way to advance its mission in the long term would be to replace it with something better.”

Medicaid Undone | Adam Gaffney One year ago President Donald Trump promised to “love and cherish” Medicaid. Alas, his affection for the public insurance program was short-lived. The

Adam Gaffney (@awgaffney.bsky.social) on the plunder of Medicaid
https://go.nybooks.com/3On4lz5

Medicaid Undone | Adam Gaffney One year ago President Donald Trump promised to “love and cherish” Medicaid. Alas, his affection for the public insurance program was short-lived. The

I have an essay in the New York Review of Books about the Trump Administration’s cuts to Medicaid, and more broadly about the program’s origins, strengths, & flaws — and why the best way to advance its mission might be to replace it with something better.

www.nybooks.com/online/2026/...

More Americans Experience Troublesome Healthcare Costs Than Previously Thought Findings of nationally representative survey suggest need for 'abolishing price tags'

Among participants in a survey on healthcare expenses, 17.4% and 9.9% said they experienced cost burdens or catastrophic cost burdens at least once over 4 years. @awgaffney.bsky.social www.medpagetoday.com/publichealth...

Burdensome Health Care Spending Over Time in the US This cohort study assesses burdensome out-of-pocket health care costs over a 4-year period among individuals in the US.

When we look at rates of underinsurance and similar metrics of medical cost-burdens over just one year, we fail to see that the problem affects far more Americans over time. You may not be cost-burdened by care costs today, but you could be tomorrow.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Our new study just up in JAMA IM: we track Americans' out-of-pocket health spending longitudinally over a four-year period, showing that risks mount year after year. Whereas 11.8% of adults experience healthcare financial strain after 1 year, risk rises to 26.7% over four years

Our article in Health Affairs Forefront on the “real waste, fraud, and abuse” in healthcare — Medicare and Medicaid privatization — is now up.

MA Overpayments & excess Medicaid managed care overhead could cost as much as $1.9 trillion in coming decade.

www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/f...

I feel like this fake big animal sightings are too common!

🗞️Hot off the press in @atsblueeditor.bsky.social!

Our analysis shows that unfavourable social and environmental exposures
explain a much larger share of racial disparities in lung function than previously thought.

Details: doi.org/10.1164/rccm...

@msafavi.bsky.social @awgaffney.bsky.social

Congratulations on this publication - important work

Another great PNHP annual national conference !

Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Claims on Healthcare Aren’t Just Xenophobic—They’re False Far from draining the nation’s healthcare coffers, immigrants are actually shoring them up. But that reality is inconvenient for Republicans.

... that they are SUBSIDIZING it. Yes, immigrants (including undocumented) pay more into public and private healthcare programs than they use in services, subsidizing the native-born.

inthesetimes.com/article/trum...

...eligible for Medicaid were it not for their immigration status, so-called "Emergency Medicaid" (<0.5% of Medicaid spending).

That is it.

This is just non-stop lying & scapegoating. Immigrants are not "taking" native-born Americans healthcare. In fact, research shows...

...for whom it matters: Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid, Medicare, or ACA subsidized plans, full stop. There is a negligible amount of Medicaid funds for hospitals that (as they should and legally must) provide emergency care to some people who would be...

It's not clear to me how to respond to this endless stream of unrepentant, shameless lying from unrepentant, shameless liars like this. To be clear: I believe in taking care of everyone no matter where they're from, so I'm not so interested in these distinctions. But for those...

* associated with it amongst the powerful and influential

Easy to feel despondent now, but it’s important to remember that there is a real possibility that the Trumpian political project crashes & burns, anyone remotely associated with it is permanently discredited politically & morally, & a window opens for substantive positive change.

‘It’s only gotten worse’: As ACA premiums are set to climb, some Americans opt to go uninsured Enhanced subsidies for Obamacare have kept premiums affordable. Absent action from Congress, they will expire at the end of the year.

"Unless you are extraordinarily rich, it is effectively not possible to save enough money to cover the costs of a serious illness or major trauma,” Gaffney said. “For the uninsured, medical debt and bankruptcy is just one major illness or injury away.”

www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

So an anonymous billionaire Trump ally is dispersing $130 million in personal cash to US troops.

Truly crossing new rubicons weekly

www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

Excellent thread

Anti-vaccine myths surged on social media ahead of the CDC shooting Before the shooting, social media companies relaxed their protocols around misinformation.

In wake of the CDC shooting, so-called "post-vaccination syndrome" has come back into discussion, as this report from
@nbcnews.com describes. The assailant attributed health issues including depression to COVID-19 vaccines.

I'm quoted, & wrote about the...

www.nbcnews.com/tech/interne...

Thanks Rob

‘Post-vaccination syndrome’: a dubious diagnosis that could do harm The science behind the “post-vaccination syndrome” study is dubious — but the harm it may cause is very real.

www.statnews.com/2025/03/03/p...

but also lead us to unhelpful remedies or to misunderstandings of our illness. Particularly during this age of unprecedented and politicized anti-vaccination fervor, the establishment of a dubious 'post-vaccination syndrome,' on shaky science, is dangerous."

Link below.

This was how I concluded my STAT piece in March on "post-vaccination syndrome":

"But diagnoses are pragmatic constructs, structured both by biomedical realities and by social and political discourses. They can help us identify useful treatments and avoid injurious exposures,