Risha Gidwani

FDA refuses to review Moderna’s influenza vaccine FDA refuses to review Moderna’s influenza vaccine, which could raise concerns about the agency’s posture toward vaccines and drug approvals more generally.

This is frightening and is going to kill people.

The CDC estimates that so far this season (which is not over) there have been 280,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 deaths from flu.

Looks like the FDA wants that number to increase next year.

In case you needed another reason to love Bad Bunny more. Education + art = power.

UNCONSCIONABLE. I am beyond angry that this is what my tax dollars are going towards.

More details can be found in the latest edition of the journal, Medical Care. Work is co-authored with the inestimable Cheryl Damberg!

journals.lww.com/lww-medicalc...

The point is that unaffordability remains, irrespective of Premium Tax Credit policy decisions -- they just change who shoulders that burden.

Thus, the real policy problem is WHY ACA premiums are so high in the first place. That is the main conversation we should be having right now.

(6/n)

If Premium Tax Credits continue, the affordability problem shifts from the ACA consumer to the American taxpayer.

If they remain sunsetted, the problem of affordability shifts from the American taxpayer to the ACA consumer.

It's a rock and a hard place.

(5/n)

Moving on to Premiums: within premiums, there are 2 important stakeholders to consider.

1st is the ACA consumer, of whom much has been written.

The 2nd, important yet under-recognized stakeholder is the American taxpayer, who contributes the most tax $$ for premium tax credits.

(4/n)

We found that 99% of Bronze plans sold nationwide have deductibles that are unaffordable, as determined by >= 5% of household income (Commonwealth Fund definitions).

More than 50% of Silver plans have unaffordable deductibles.

None of this will be solved with Premium Tax Credits.

(3/n)

Now, affordability. This first needs to be broken down into #premium vs #deductible affordability.

These are generally linked, so if premiums stay stable, deductibles often go up. This means the ACA consumer still faces affordability issues even if they get premium tax credits.

(2/n)

New paper alert!

We looked at all #ACA plans nationwide, evaluating (1) choice set and (2) affordability.

Sobering results: the avg ACA consumer has 121 plan options to consider -- far too many to be able to make a good decision.

(1/n)

High-Deductible Health Plans and Receipt of Guideline-Concordant Care This cohort study examines receipt of guideline-concordant health care among individuals with chronic illness enrolled in high-deductible health plans compared with those enrolled in non–high-deductib...

1) Health Savings Accounts #HSA are a solution to the wrong problem -- they don't address #ACA #premium costs and only deal with point-of-care costs.

2) we find HSA-based plans are terrible for people w/ various chronic illness. Which is >50% of the American pop.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Putting in some #ASHEcon abstracts for 2026 -- topics are: health insurance selection and consumer decision making; insurance affordability; ACA insurance; costs of care. Please ping me if you have papers in those topics and would like to submit a session with me!

Trends in US Children’s Mortality, Chronic Conditions, Obesity, Functional Status, and Symptoms This study aims to determine how US children’s health has been changing from 2007 to 2023 using multiple data collection methods and a comprehensive set of health indicators.

Sobering work out today. Compared to 18 OECD countries, kids are ~80% more likely to die in the U.S. -- mostly due to prematurity or SIDS (infants) and gun violence/car crashes (kids).

>31% of U.S. kids have a chronic illness.

All of this likely to get worse due to recent funding cuts.

The Supreme Court Just Handed RFK Jr. New and Extraordinarily Frightening Power Congress did not give Kennedy, or any other HHS secretary, these powers. SCOTUS did.

“The PSTF’s members, Kavanaugh wrote, must be appointed by the HHS secretary, who can also fire them whenever he pleases. And… Kavanaugh wrote that the HHS secretary can also directly supervise and overrule the PSTF’s decisions about which treatments must be fully covered by insurance.”

😳

Shattered Science: The Research Lost as Trump Targets NIH Funding The Trump administration cut research funding that sought cures for future pandemics, examined the causes of dementia and tried to prevent HIV transmission. More than 150 researchers shared with ProPu...

Please read this and share widely, esp w/ your elected representatives.

“Targeted projects… were seeking cures for future pandemics, examining the causes of dementia and trying to prevent HIV transmission.

The mass cancellation of grants in response to political policy shifts has no precedent.”

Agreed. What are you, as a Senator, going to to about it? You can leave the posting on social media to us non-Senators.

This cat needs a modeling contract.

Maude is beauty, Maude is grace

That is a lot easier to do if you are living in Canada vs in the U.S. Doom and despair are very linked to reality here.

Every flashbang could instead be a meal for a poor kid. Every hotel room for a National Guardsman deployed to fire at our neighbors could house a homeless vet. Every "less-than-lethal" bullet pulled from a journalist's eye could be already needed healthcare for anyone else. All of this is a choice.

Well, well, well.

Opinion | We Saw Medicaid Work Requirements Up Close. You Don’t Want This Chaos.

Medicaid work requirements are a bad solution to a non-problem.

& as part of the not-beautiful bill, if ppl get kicked off Medicaid for work requirement issues, they aren’t eligible for ACA subsidies, making that insurance out of reach.

Cue chronic disease going unmanaged, hospitals w/ bad debt

Trump administration cancels plans to develop a bird flu vaccine The Department of Health and Human Services is ending a $766 million contract with the vaccine company Moderna to develop an mRNA vaccine for flu strains with pandemic potential, including bird flu.

22 years ago I pivoted from working on antibiotic resistance to pandemic viruses.

Since then, I've argued that if we care about saving US lives in expectation, advance capacity for producing bird flu vaccine offers by far the greatest expected return on investment.

...

We were so goddamn close.

Georgetown scholar recalls terror and 'mockery of due process' in immigration jail A Georgetown University scholar who was targeted for deportation by the Trump administration said he was terrified in immigration jail.

Habeus Corpus.

This public comment period on COVID vaccine availability ends tonight at 11:59pm ET. Please make your voice heard!

www.regulations.gov/commenton/FD...

Is it perhaps more of a comment than a question?

US Health Care Reform: Progress and Next Steps In this Special Communication, President Barack Obama reviews the Affordable Care Act: why he pursued it, what it has effected, and how the health care system can still be improved.

Remembering the days when we had a president who could speak so knowledgeably on health care policy that he published a sole author paper in JAMA, with 68 citations.

WHAT?!? This is terrible news. I literally, in the past hour, just cited your work in a proposal I am putting in as an example of previously high-quality studies in the field. I'm so sorry you are dealing with this.

RFK Jr. Took His Grandkids for a Dip in a Sewage-Contaminated Creek For Mother’s Day The National Park Service bans swimming in Rock Creek due to “high levels of bacteria.”

www.vanityfair.com/news/story/r...

RFK Jr. Took His Grandkids for a Dip in a Sewage-Contaminated Creek For Mother’s Day The National Park Service bans swimming in Rock Creek due to “high levels of bacteria.”

www.vanityfair.com/news/story/r...