To hear directly from the experts, consider attending AcademyHealth’s National Health Policy Conference in January for insight on what factors will drive the 2017 health care agenda. The preliminary agenda is online here.
Day One and Beyond: What Trump’s Election Means for the ACA
Timothy Jost | Health Affairs
“Donald Trump states at his website, ‘On day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare.’ If by Obamacare Trump means the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, this will not happen. First, any repeal proposal would be subject to a filibuster in the Senate and the Democrats retain more than enough votes to stop a repeal bill. Second, the Affordable Care Act contains hundreds of provisions affecting Medicare, program integrity, the health care workforce, biosimilars, prevention, and other issues unrelated to what most Americans think of as ‘Obamacare.’ …The ACA is inextricably interwoven into our health care system and is not going away immediately…. Congress and the President, can, however, repeal many of the provisions that are identified by the public as ‘Obamacare’ using the budget reconciliation process.”
Trump Health-Care Agenda Evolves Toward Core Republican Thinking
Amy Goldstein | The Washington Post
“According to insiders to the transition, the shifts in the agenda primarily reflect the views of people chosen to help handle his ascension to the Oval Office, not a deliberate strategy by Trump to align with the GOP majorities in the House and Senate….The tweaked health-care agenda ‘is certainly moving in the direction of traditional Republican thinking,’ said Gail Wilensky, a veteran health-policy expert who ran the Medicare and Medicaid programs under President George H.W. Bush and has not conferred with the Trump post-election team. ‘Not with a fulsome leap, but he’s definitely moved in that direction.’”
Science and Technology Under a Trump Presidency
Msikan Akpan and Leigh Anne Tiffany | PBS Newshour
“The President-elect will also select the next heads of the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Department of Health and Human Services, Gostin said, which may influence future research on topics like gun violence, emergency for outbreak like Zika and pollution-related illness. Plus, research funding for these agencies and the National Science Foundation…is largely decided by Congress. But Trump’s health agenda will extend overseas too. ‘Basically, no one can be elected to the head of the World Health Organization without U.S. support,’ Gostin said. The WHO will soon appoint its next leader, but the global health agency’s recent positions have run contrary to those of Republicans. In recent years, the WHO and its governing body — The United Nations — have pushed for policies like taxes on sugary drinks and universal health coverage, including for refugees. Gostin expects U.S. funding for these items to be clear sticking points for Trump and a Congress, which recently capped all payments to the United Nations.”
What will President Trump Mean for Science?
Sarah Kaplan | The Washington Post
“Although Trump has pledged to cut federal spending, he hasn’t offered details on how this will affect funding for scientific research. The majority of academic researchers rely on grants from government agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Last year, Trump told conservative radio host Michael Savage, ‘I hear so much about the NIH, and it’s terrible.’”
3 Reasons Researchers are Terrified about Donald Trump’s Presidency
Lindsay Dodgson | Business Insider
“A lot of people are skeptical of vaccinations, despite the fact that Andrew Wakefield's paper claiming autism was induced by the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine was retracted from The Lancet and widely discredited in the scientific community. These claims have also been repeatedly debunked, and Wakefield is barred from practicing medicine in the UK. Nevertheless, Trump has jumped on this belief time and again, playing into the fears of many parents…. Many analyses of Trump's budgets are that it looks like a disaster, and this could have a bad effect on scientific funding. Deficits are likely to explode, and Trump hasn't identified any areas of science that he thinks are worth supporting.”
Fearful of a Trump Administration, Many in Research Call for a ‘Tutorial’ for the President-Elect
Sharon Begley | STAT
“Biomedical and public health researchers struggled Wednesday to fathom what the incoming Trump administration might mean for their fields, as they tried to separate their personal views about the election (many supported Hillary Clinton) from what’s known or expected about the president-elect’s plans. ‘It’s so hard to know” what the Trump White House will do,’ said Dr. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute and professor of genomics at the Scripps Research Institute. One hopeful sign: Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives and a close Trump ally, last year called for a doubling of the National Institutes of Health budget and is a strong supporter of science research (he used to have a replica of a T. rex skull in his office).”
JAMA Forum: Notes on the Presidential Transition
Joshua Sharfstein | The JAMA Forum (Commentary)
“After a difficult and divisive campaign, the election of Donald Trump and Michael Pence has stunned many in the fields of medicine and public health who had hoped for a different outcome. Eight years ago, I was part of the transition after the election of President Barack Obama. Our excitement about what was now possible for the country was tempered with a recognition that others saw matters quite differently. This experience informs several thoughts about the current transition.”