The scientific community and stock markets are agitated over the Trump Administration’s rapid-fire health policy changes. Should patients be worried?
Who’s worried: industry, markets, and the Swamp
Guests on Monday’s NPR broadcast of 1A are worried, and they think we should be, too. One details how federal health firings will leave vulnerable patients stranded (begin at minute 27). Graduate student funds, research programs, disease tracking, county health departments – all gutted. This will shut down 20 percent of the economy, she states, including the beginning of the healthcare pipeline, a loss that we can’t recover for science.
Stock markets responded to one firing in particular. Dr. Peter Marks controlled FDA approval of biologics, the priciest of all drugs – many costing thousands of dollars per dose. These specialty drugs are a hotbed of controversy, not only because of the money and long development timeline, but because the category includes vaccines.
When DOGE recently reported $394 million In MDHHS Cuts, multiple areas of Michigan’s healthcare swamp had conniptions.
Yesterday, President Trump announced major pharmaceutical tariffs.
What’s really happening?
Healthcare as a big balloon, inflated by speculation and kept aloft by federal largesse. This is not new: it has been true for my entire life. However, it inflates more with every year.
Our taxes, in the form of government grants and contracts, pervade healthcare. They fund research, higher education, big health, big insurance, pharmaceutical companies, and of course, massive bureaucratic swamps at all levels of government.
Meanwhile, our healthcare prices go up. State and federal legislators have attempted to control prices by law, and failed. Health industries buy foreign and even off-shore jobs to save money.
The nature of balloons is that sooner or later, they burst.
The intelligent thing to do is to deflate before that happens.
Two reasons patients should not worry
Stock markets, industry, and the swamp seem to believe that without federal funding, the healthcare pipeline will come crashing to a halt. This is simply not true, for two reasons.
The real question behind the flow of money is, “Who decides?” Federal spending means federal decisions. Recipients comply with certain decisions to get those funds, but they bypass questions that seem obvious to private funders.
As we learned during COVID and from DOGE discoveries, government health funding decisions have often been about power and politics. Certainly, those are not always the choices we’d make for our health.
Just as importantly, government is not the source of these funds: we are. These are taxes, part of the wealth earned by the hard work of the American people. Access to money doesn’t disappear with government spending cuts. In fact, less government spending in healthcare gives our personal spending more power.
We decide.
As the healthcare balloon shrinks, stock markets, industry, and the swamp will adjust.
Deep background
To understand our FDA better, I highly recommend:
- Poison Pills: The Untold Story of the Vioxx Drug Scandal, a book by Tom Nesi, 2008.
- My struggle with step 1 of the FDA’s 15 step flowchart, a blog article by Trevor Klee.
