Loren Adler
@lorenadler.bsky.social
Fellow and Associate Director, Brookings Institution Center on Health Policy | mostly health econ, occasionally budgets or Knicks
New Brookings databook on the No Surprises Act’s arbitration process: through 2024, IDR awards remained far above pre-law in-network commercial prices. For imaging, awards averaged 767% of Medicare vs. roughly 200% for average pre-law in-network prices. www.brookings.edu/articles/no-...
Moderna gets approval in Europe for world’s first combo covid/flu vaccine, for people age 50+: feeds.issuerdirect.com/news-release...
1/ Very pleased to have a short article, "Statutory Hammers: Legislative Drafting in an Age of Cynical Litigation," published in the Harvard Journal on Legislation Online today. journals.law.harvard.edu/jol/2026/03/...
Statutory Hammers: Legislative Drafting in an Age of Cynical Litigation – Harvard Journal on Legislation
journals.law.harvard.edu
Indiana appears poised to ban insurer penalties when hospital care involves out-of-network ancillary clinicians. That blunts market forces by limiting contracting leverage in anesthesia, EM, radiology, & likely ↑ prices, spending, & premiums. wimsradio.com/2026/03/03/i...
Indiana First in Nation to Block Insurer Penalties That Threaten Patient Access
Indiana First in Nation to Block Insurer Penalties That Threaten Patient Access to Care Bipartisan SEA 189 stops insurer reimbursement cuts tied to out‑of‑network providers Indiana has become the fi...
wimsradio.com
Detainee they are interviewing was a college student in Columbia. Waited in Mexico until he had a 2024 immigration interview in CA - a scheduled appointment - where he was told he was a danger to society. Claims he has no criminal record, never even got a traffic ticket. Was immediately detained
4-5 ACIP members seem fundamentally opposed to the committee’s central purpose throughout its history—to provide population-level recommendations for how vaccines _should_ be used—viewing even a rec. as an impediment to informed consent, etc. So we’ll be doing this over and over for other vaccines.
scoop: RICHARD PAZDUR set to be named FDA's top drug regulator He'd initially turned down job leading agency's CDER but reconsidered
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.
washingtonpost.com
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.
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...
hhs.gov
1977: why would the bartender in star wars even care if some robots with artificial intelligence came into his bar 2025: ohhh ok
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.
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
budget.senate.gov
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...
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.
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.
Aaron Sojourner@aaronsojourner.org · last yr.EXTREMELY BAD NEWS for economic research, per former BLS Commissioner @ericagroshen.bsky.social on LinkedIn. BLS is suspending access to its restricted data "for the forseeable future." Applies to projects through the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers & onsite projects with BLS. #EconSky
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...
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
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.
A look at how the House Republican proposals would cut health coverage: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
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.
washingtonpost.com
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
Erik Uebelacker@uebey.bsky.social · last yr.Now from Öztürk’s ACLU lawyer Esha Bhandari: “Rümeysa Öztürk’s case is unprecedented and shocking. She has been held behind bars for six weeks while her health deteriorates for writing an op-ed.”
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.
Democracy Now!@democracynow.org · last yr.Badar Khan Suri Is a Peace Scholar at Georgetown. Now He's Being Held as a High-Risk Threat in ICE Jail
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?
Bobby Kogan@bbkogan.bsky.social · last yr.budget calls for a breathtaking cut to NIH. this would stop so much critical research. a true own goal, leaving us sicker in the future, with countless preventable deaths.
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.
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...
washingtonpost.com
