The Host
President-elect Donald Trump has continued naming out-of-the-box choices to lead key federal health agencies. Three of those picks — Marty Makary, who would lead the FDA; Jay Bhattacharya, who would head the National Institutes of Health; and Dave Weldon, chosen to administer the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — have something notable in common: All have proposed major changes to the organizations they would oversee.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court heard a case challenging Tennessee’s ban on transgender health care for minors, with the conservative justices seeming likely to support the state’s law.
This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health News, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins University’s schools of public health and nursing and Politico, and Shefali Luthra of The 19th.
Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:
In recent weeks, Trump has named his picks to lead key federal health agencies, including the FDA, NIH, and CDC. His selections suggest big changes could be in store. For instance, Weldon — a former congressman and a practicing physician — has often advocated against scientific consensus, including on vaccines.
The Supreme Court this week heard arguments on Tennessee’s law barring transitional care for transgender minors, and from listening to the conservative majority’s remarks, it seems likely they will uphold the law — with implications for those living in the more than 20 states with similar measures on the books. Plus, in a separate case on vaping, the court sounded sympathetic to the FDA’s decisions to reject applications for flavored e-cigarettes that could put children at risk of addiction.
Meanwhile, the incoming Trump administration is poised to take custody of some health-related lawsuits it could very well drop, as well as some big policies it could end — but it remains to be seen what actions it chooses to take. Medicare drug negotiations, for example, are a Biden administration policy, though Trump and his pick for Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have also advocated for cracking down on the drug industry.
In abortion news, a federal appeals court has cleared the way for Idaho to begin to enforce parts of its law making it a crime to help a minor obtain an abortion in another state. And officials in Texas and Georgia thrott …