President Trump started his second term on Monday by rescinding a long list of executive orders from former President Biden. This included reversing policies to lower healthcare costs, coronavirus outreach, Affordable Care Act (ACA) expansions, and safeguards against gender-based discrimination.
An order to test Medicare and Medicaid models that could lower healthcare costs, an extension of the Inflation Reduction Act is one of the regulations to be reversed.
Trump repealed an order that prompted the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) to develop three drug pricing experiments. The first model was to help state Medicaid programs pay for cell and gene therapies. The second model would have Medicare pay less for drugs that receive accelerated approvals from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), making them available sooner. The third project was to encourage Medicare prescription drug plans to provide generic drugs for common chronic conditions for a flat $2 copay. “The measures from the previous administration that they say was designed to save on costs has now been disrupted,” Newsweek’s Marni Rose-McFall explained today.
“Donald Trump is already following through on his dangerous plans to jack up the costs of drugs to appease his billionaire backers after the Biden-Haris administration took on Big Pharma and won,” DNC Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Families USA and more than 425 organizations across the U.S. are calling on President Trump, to protect Medicaid. In a letter addressed to the President, the organizations wrote, “Cutting Medicaid would shift costs and administrative burdens onto working class families, states and health systems. Proposals to cap funding, reduce the federal share of Medicaid spending, establish block grants, institute work requirements — now being referred to as community engagement requirements, cut state revenue from provider taxes or otherwise undermine the fundamental structure of the Medicaid program all have the same effect.”
“Trump is also peeling back certain Biden administration efforts to expand access to COVID-19 treatments and vaccines,” Sarah Owermohle, John Wilkerson, Rachel Cohrs Zhang, and Lizzy Lawrence reported for STAT on Monday.
Additionally, Trump is rolling back Biden’s executive order, that led to more extended enrollment periods for ACA plans and extra funding for third parties that assist people with enrollment in ACA insurance plans.
Trump is also undoing the 2021 formation of a Gender Policy Council and multiple gender and sex discrimination protections. “It will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Trump proclaimed during his inauguration speech.
Furthermore, Trump signed an executive order to remove the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO), Healthcare Innovation’s editor-in-chief, Mark Hagland, reported on January 21.
“The reversals could meet legal challenges or congressional intervention,” the authors with STAT noted.
