Here are some of the healthcare policy highlights from the first half of the year

The first year of a new presidential administration is always busy, but so far 2025 seems to have past years beat, as President Donald Trump has signed a record number of executive orders in just his first 100 days.

Now that we’re a little over halfway through the year, we wanted to look back on what has happened in the healthcare industry so far.

Hiring and firing

With a new administration comes the appointment of new department heads. That has included Robert F. Kennedy Jr. being named secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Mehmet Oz tapped to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), Jay Bhattacharya as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Marty Makary to run the FDA, and Susan Monarez to head up the CDC.

However, these departments also saw major staffing overhauls. The NIH saw top officials step down in mid-February, with hundreds of layoffs following. HHS announced in late March it would lay off 10,000 employees—on top of 10,000 who had resigned already—which has impacted specific research areas like reproductive health and environmental health.

Across all agencies, funding has also been slashed, impacting the industry from developing research to funding grants to keeping community health systems afloat.

Pushing boundaries (and pharma)

One of the concerns that came up frequently during RFK’s confirmation hearings was his past associations with vaccine disinformation and skepticism. Since taking over HHS, he has vowed to determine the cause of autism—an effort that includes leading a study that would analyze private medical records.

The spike in proliferating misinformation has public health and pharma experts nervous. In particular, mRNA has come under fire (again), and some researchers are worried cuts might hurt their efforts to develop new vaccines.

Previously, the Biden administration had also implemented a program that allowed CMS to negotiate drug prices directly with drugmakers. Trump took that a step further by signing an executive order that would lower drug prices to be more in line with the lower costs other countries pay.

And speaking of more transparency around pricing, he also signed an executive order in late February that updated a ruling from his first administration, requiring hospitals to share cost information for 300 services.

Complicating Medicaid and Medicare

Before the election, experts were speculating about how Medicare and Medicaid might be impacted.

Since cutting federal spending was a major goal of this administration, it perhaps comes as no surprise that one of the Biden-era proposals changed was that GLP-1s would no longer be covered under Medicare and Medicaid.

But, canceling out any potential savings made there, CMS announced in early April it would raise average Medicare Advantage payments to 5.06%—a $25 billion increase—from 2025 to 2026.

Then on May 22, the House of Representatives passed a budget that called for significant Medicaid cuts (nearly $800 billion, according to KFF) and a revamped Affordable Care Act marketplace, potentially leading to millions without insurance coverage. Before it was passed in the House, a report found that Medicaid cuts of this scale could lead to more than 888,000 job losses and hurt hospitals’ finances.

Saying goodbye to DEI

Across the board, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have been targeted by this new administration. Healthcare has been no different, with gender-affirming care for minors in particular thrown in the spotlight.

While Trump signed an executive order in late January to ban clinicians and defund institutions providing gender-affirming services for young patients, a legal expert told us the law wasn’t enforceable. (Though that didn’t stop some institutions from pausing this type of care, at least temporarily, leaving patients in limbo.)