The Trump administration’s healthcare policy changes have sparked a great deal of concern about their short and long-term consequences. In their monthly discussion, Debunked Podcast hosts MedCity News Editor-in-Chief Arundhati Parmar and Samir Batra, managing partner of Health Innovation Pitch, highlighted the significant cuts to medical research grants, the CDC vaccine board changes and where the burden would likely shift: to big pharma companies.
The hosts also called attention to the backlash from these cuts — a letter signed by NIH workers addressed to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya. A recent article in MedCity News highlighted some of the drama. In a June 9 letter to Bhattacharya, NIH workers rebuked these actions and said they are causing “a dramatic reduction in life-saving research.” The letter criticized: ending hundreds of grants funding scientific and biomedical research; firing more than 1,000 employees this year; and moving to end billions in funds to partner institutions overseas, a move current and former NIH workers say will harm research on rare cancers and infectious diseases, as well as research that aims to minimize tobacco use and related chronic illnesses, among other areas.
Another talking point of the podcast was the decision by Robert Kennedy, Jr, Secretary of Health and Human Services, to gut the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel and replace them with members with anti-vax stances.
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Samir noted that one consequence of medical grant cuts would be that big pharma companies would likely carry the burden of the early R&D that was previously subsidized by the federal government.
“The biggest thing here that people don’t realize is that government funds early research and development,” said Samir. “These capabilities will be hampered without federal support.”
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