UPDATED: 1:30 p.m. ET
The House Ways and Means Committee hearing has adjourned.
Secretary Kennedy will head to the House Appropriations committee later this afternoon, before returning to the Hill next week for a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday morning at 10 a.m.
He’ll follow that hearing up with a move to the Senate side of Congress at 2:30 p.m. before the Senate Appropriation Committee’s HHS Subcommittee. The hearing gauntlet will end on Wednesday, with a 10 a.m. hearing before the Senate Finance Committee and a 2 p.m. session with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.
Stick with Fierce Healthcare for future coverage on these congressional sessions.
UPDATED: 12:15 p.m. ET
Beyond Kennedy’s more controversial positions, one of the areas for which he drew praise was around the administration’s work in rural healthcare.
In an exchange with Iowa Republican Randy Feenstra, Kennedy said that rural health is “in crisis right now.” He noted in opening remarks that 120 rural hospitals have closed since 2010, and when they close the ripple effects across a community are broad.
A rural hospital’s closure effects access to care but also shutters a key economic engine in this regions, Kennedy said.
One of the biggest policy pushes around rural health is Rural Health Transformation Fund, which was instituted as part of the H.R.1 legislation last year to placate senators hesitant about the bill’s sweeping Medicaid cuts. The fund includes a $50 billion commitment to rural health over the next decade.
Kennedy called it the “biggest investment in history in rural healthcare.”
Fenstra noted that rural areas particularly face challenges in accessing maternal care, as even for hospitals in this regions that stay open, it can be difficult to operate labor and delivery units. He said that there are women who can travel 50 miles or more for routine services.
“One of the biggest problems we’re having in rural America … is the diminishing access to maternal healthcare,” he said.
While Kennedy didn’t point to any specific policy program that tackles maternal health in rural regions, he did point to the transformation fund as well as a recent $135 million commitment to support community health centers as the backbones of the administration’s rural health efforts.
UPDATED: 11 a.m. ET
In a heated exchange, Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-California, pressed Secretary Kennedy on rising measles infection rates that occurred alongside his overhaul of vaccine policy.
Sanchez said that in 2024, under the last year of the Biden administration, there were about 280 measles cases, which then rose to more than 2,000 in 2025. So far this year, more than 1,600 measles cases have been recorded, which will far outpace 2025 if that trend carries.
“The antivaccine actions you’ve taken over the last year clearly correlate,” she said.
Kennedy said that the data represents misinformation, and that other countries — including Canada and Mexico — have higher rates of measles infections.Â
In addition, Rep. Greg Murphy, R-North Carolina, took another swing at the insurance industry in his comments. Murphy, a urologist and outspoken critic of payers, urged Kennedy and HHS to take aim at vertical integration and to do more to regulate “middlemen” like pharmacy benefit managers.
He said vertical consolidation is “destroying” the relationship between doctors and their patients, and is a driving force in rising healthcare costs.
Murphy acknowledged that payers recently released data suggesting that they’re making progress toward a pledge they made last year to reduce prior authorization, but said he’s skeptical of promises made by the “vain and arrogant insurance companies.”
“If people can’t afford healthcare, that’s not access to healthcare,” he said.
PUBLISHED: 10 a.m. ET
Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in front of the first in a gauntlet of congressional hearings as he stumps for the president’s health budget request.
Kennedy starts the string of appearances this morning before the full House Ways and Means Committee, where in early questioning several key topics have emerged: the affordability of healthcare, efforts to combat waste and vaccine policy.
In his opening comments, Kennedy said that his work has focused on addressing the growing chronic disease burden in the U.S., the driving refrain of the Make America Healthy Again movement that he spearheads.
“We stand at a generational turning point,” Kennedy said. “Our children are the sickest generation in modern history.”
Democrats hit Kennedy early on vaccinations, which have been a controversial cornerstone of his policy efforts. In January, he championed a significant overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule, and has remade the membership of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Kennedy also had a lengthy exchange with Rep. David Schweikert, R-Arizona, about spending and fraud in the Medicare Advantage program. He acknowledged that upcoding is a significant problem in the program, while also acknowledging that enrollees tend to have better outcomes in MA compared to traditional Medicare.
Schweikert noted that reports from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) have consistently highlighted the upcoding issue.
“It’s a stunning amount of money,” he said.
He argued that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services should look into a potential model that eschews the existing risk adjustment and star ratings to instead design a model that focuses on rewarding the plans that “make your profit by helping your brothers and sisters be healthier.”
Kennedy will appear later today before the House Appropriations Committee. He we also speak to several House and Senate committees next week. Earlier this month, the White House pitched a 12.5% budget cut for Health and Human Services, putting a focus on its plan to reorganize the agency.
