FDA's new drug center director

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made a point of cutting ties between the FDA and drugmakers. On Monday, the agency named longtime biotech executive George Tidmarsh as its top drug regulator.

Tidmarsh helped lead the development of several approved drugs and served as CEO of companies including La Jolla Pharmaceutical Company and Horizon Pharma, Andrew Joseph and Jonathan Wosen write.

Read more about the challenges he faces, his criticism of Peter Marks, his attack on talc, and a conference he helped fund that revisited the policies of the Covid-19 pandemic.

congress

Rescissions, Elmo, and the fate of health care policies

Republicans last week took back $9 billion in funds that Congress had earlier appropriated. The money was meant for foreign aid and public broadcasting, affecting services that range from emergency alerts to stations that air shows like Sesame Street.

At first glance, the passage of that rescissions bill seems to have nothing to do with domestic health care policy. But it might. Democrats say Republicans have broken the appropriations process, which Congress routinely uses to pass health care policies, including plenty with bipartisan support. Read more for why.

This week, the Senate is scheduled to vote on a bill to fund military construction. While also unrelated to health care, it will be the first test of whether Democrats are willing to vote for bipartisan appropriations bills since Republicans passed the DOGE rescissions bill.

American indian health

Meet Kennedy's senior adviser on American Indian health

Kennedy's new adviser for American Indian health supports more tribes taking over health care services from the Indian Health Service and running their own tribal health facilities, Angus Chen reports.

Mark Cruz, a member of the Klamath Tribes from Oregon, was sworn in on June 18. He'll work across HHS agencies to provide a unified strategy on American Indian health.

Read more from Angus's interview with Cruz about how he plans to integrate Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again agenda into Indian health services and how he responds to criticism from Native community members who say Kennedy's HHS is making them less healthy.

medicaid

10 million people

That's the new 10-year coverage-loss estimate from official congressional scorekeepers, down from the 11.8 million they estimated previously, Daniel Payne reports.

When the Congressional Budget Office made its earlier estimate, it included the impact of a policy that would have penalized states that use their own money to cover undocumented immigrants. That policy was stripped from the final bill.

The CBO also now estimates higher deficit spending than before: $3.4 trillion over a decade. Read more.

research

The decline in basic science papers

The number of published basic science papers stemming from NIH grants has been falling since 2013, according to a new analysis.

That year, the agency's budget was cut by 5%. President Trump's budget proposes to cut NIH funding by nearly 40%, and Anil Oza reports that a former top NIH official warns that those cuts would further erode basic biomedical research.

Lawmakers have at times made fun of basic research for sounding silly and said it's a waste of taxpayer money. But many important discoveries are based on research that might've seemed trivial or fanciful, Anil writes.

addiction

Medicaid cuts expected to increase drug deaths

Drug deaths have fallen for the past year and a half, but they're expected to tick back up because of Medicaid cuts in the GOP's tax bill, according to a group of health economics researchers.

Lev Facher writes that Medicaid cuts could result in large numbers of enrollees losing access to medications for opioid use disorder, resulting in 1,000 additional deaths annually. About 78,000 people died from overdoses in the 12-month period ending in February, according to the CDC. The running 12-month death toll in late 2023 exceeded 110,000.

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