Loren Adler

FDA plans to tap oncology-expert Pazdur as nation’s top drug regulator Richard Pazdur, a longtime Food and Drug Administration employee, would lead its center that oversees over-the-counter and the majority of prescription drugs.

scoop: RICHARD PAZDUR set to be named FDA's top drug regulator

He'd initially turned down job leading agency's CDER but reconsidered

Hospital chain UHS just reported and joined peers in blowing the doors off on pricing. Revenue per comparable admission +9.8% YoY, revenue per comparable patient day +11.5% YoY. No wonder managed care name costs are exploding.

"experts say"
www.cnn.com/2025/08/11/b...

HHS announced today they will consider Head Start a welfare program, not an education program, and will subject it to new citizenship requirements. This goes against decades of legal precedence that all children in America have a right to education. Announcement here. www.hhs.gov/press-room/p...

1977: why would the bartender in star wars even care if some robots with artificial intelligence came into his bar

2025: ohhh ok

Byrd Rule Violations Continue to Mount on the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” | U.S. Senate Committee On The Budget The Official U.S. Senate Committee On The Budget

Seventh set of Byrd droppings is out, and WOW!

We won on trans care in Medicaid, provider taxes, FMAP, immigrants in Medicaid, and other issues.

These victories are amazing for the people they help - and cost Rs more than $250 billion of their savings by rough calculations, largely not curable.

Finance Committee text is out - this has the Medicaid cuts and the tax cuts. Will go through it in this thread.

But what we can say for certain is that, like the House version, this would be BY FAR the largest Medicaid cuts in history, kicking many millions of people off their health insurance.

An important point that the Big Beautiful Bill, as currently constructed, would barely dent federal spending when you factor in the added interest costs on the increased federal debt.

Lots of damage for such a minimal net spending reduction.

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/o...

CBO predicts the House-passed work requirements would cause 4.8 million more people to go uninsured, most of whom the evidence suggests are likely to be working or should be exempt

Excellent op-ed today describing some of the on-the-ground challenges: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/08/o...

More bureaucracy, more paperwork, and a less efficient government.

No more coverage lifeline for people between jobs.

That's what prior attempts with Medicaid work requirements have delivered, all without even increasing employment.

Percent change in after tax income for 2027. The tax cuts for the top 5% are much larger than for anyone else. The top 1% on average gets $70,542 tax cut.

New JCT analysis of the House-passed budget reconciliation bill is out.

Under the GOP plan, more tax cuts go to millionaires than the entire half of America combined.

This graph shows just the tax side. Include the Medicaid & SNAP cuts (which we'll get from CBO soon), & it's a cut for the poorest.

This is VERY bad and chilling news. As far back as I can think of the federal government has allowed researchers access to restricted government data while upholding the highest standards of data security and confidentiality.

These data belong to us all, they should be accessible to researchers.

A helpful rundown of the House-passed reconciliation bill's effects on Medicaid & the ACA, including how its scale compares to the 2017 repeal & replace efforts

www.brookings.edu/articles/new...

Cost estimate: www.cbo.gov/publication/...

More coverage detail: www.cbo.gov/publication/...

From CBO:

• 11.8 million lose coverage due to One Big Beautiful Bill provisions

• 16M fewer w/ coverage in 2034 when incorporating the 4.2M expected coverage loss from expiration of enhanced ACA subsidies

That's a 57% ↑ in # of uninsured compared to June 2024 current policy projection

Plenty of ways to save big $$ w/o taking health insurance from >10 million & ↑ costs for millions more.

Here's one alternative path: www.healthaffairs.org/content/fore...

From a fiscal perspective, even better would be to ditch the bill's net tax cuts that will add trillions to our debt.

In the search for spending savings, House Republicans could've gone after overpayments to insurers & hospitals in Medicare.

Instead, they singled out people w/ the lowest incomes for the lion's share of cuts.

Then re-directed that $$ mainly for more high-income tax cuts.

Quick summary of the "big, beautiful bill":

>10 million more uninsured

>1 million low-income seniors see higher Medicare premiums & cost-sharing

Large ACA premium ↑

~ 30% cuts to SNAP

~ $3 trillion in new debt

Makes low-income households worse off & high-income households better off.

Opinion | How do Republicans plan to cut health coverage? Two basic ways. The House reconciliation plan’s provisions add up to millions more going without insurance.

A look at how the House Republican proposals would cut health coverage:

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Thread. 33 of 40 #Medicaid expansion states (+DC) will now face a 10 point cut in their expansion match rate under House GOP reconciliation bill. Latest language penalizes not only states using own funds to cover undocumented kids but also states covering legal immigrant kids/pregnant women (1/x)

This is Gary Cohn trying to reassure investors about the U.S. economy. He’s not very good at it: www.politico.com/news/2025/05...

Amid all the other news, it's easy to become inured to the basic facts here. Öztürk:

-Is not accused of committing any crime

-Is nonviolent

-Was in this country legally

-Merely engaged in speech that the administration objects to

-Has been locked up for six weeks

Despite legal resident status and having been charged with no crime, our Georgetown colleague Badar Khan Suri has been designated a 'high risk' prisoner and for that reason gets only two hours of outdoor time PER WEEK. His traumatized son "cries all the time" and has ceased speaking.

Republicans argued that allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices (as passed in the 2022 IRA) would destroy pharmaceutical innovation in the US. Will CBO score the innovation impact of a nearly 40% cut to NIH funding - and if so, how?

Mr. Kennedy’s other statements in the interview were also rife with inaccuracies. “New drugs are approved by outside panels, not by the F.D.A. or the C.D.C.,” he declared. That is false. Outside panels of experts do advise the F.D.A. on controversial or high-profile drug approval decisions, and some panel members have ties to industry that are publicly disclosed before the meetings begin. But the F.D.A. alone has authority to approve or reject new drugs, vaccines and other therapies. The C.D.C. has no role in drug approvals whatsoever.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/u...

Most take Trump’s Canada, Greenland and third-term ideas seriously — and oppose them, poll finds President Donald Trump has proposed taking over Canada and Greenland, imprisoning U.S. citizens overseas and serving an unconstitutional third term. Most Americans say they think he’s serious about ea...

President Trump has proposed taking over Canada and Greenland, imprisoning U.S. citizens overseas and serving an unconstitutional third term.

Most Americans — including many Republicans — oppose each one, according to a Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll.

Miriam Jordan By Miriam Jordan Miriam Jordan is a national immigration correspondent. April 22, 2025, 5:04 a.m. ET In late January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan immigrant working in a delivery job in Detroit, picked up an order at a McDonald’s. He was heading to the address when he erroneously turned onto the Ambassador Bridge, which leads to Canada. It is a common mistake even for those who live in the Michigan border city. But for Mr. Prada, 32, it proved fateful. The U.S. authorities took Mr. Prada into custody when he attempted to re-enter the country; he was put in detention and ordered deported. On March 15, he told a friend in Chicago that he was among a number of detainees housed in Texas who expected to be repatriated to Venezuela. That evening, the Trump administration flew three planes carrying Venezuelan migrants from the Texas facility to El Salvador, where they have been ever since, locked up in a maximum-security prison and denied contact with the outside world. But Mr. Prada has not been heard from or seen. He is not on the list of 238 people who were deported to El Salvador that day. He does not appear in the photos and videos released by the authorities of shackled men with shaved heads.

NEW from @nytimes.com: A bone-chilling account. A Venezuelan man detained alongside the 238 sent to El Salvador on March 15 seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. His name isn't among the names of those sent to CECOT that day and no one spotted him among those men. He's just... gone.

Sen Van Hollen met with El Salvador's Vice President Félix Ulloa, who told him that the reason they are holding Kilmar Abrego Garcia at CECOT is because the Trump admin is paying them to do so.

They also provided no evidence that Abrego Garcia is part of MS-13 or committed any crimes.

Trump to Bukele: "Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough."