KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: ACA in Peril With Ginsburg’s Seat in Play


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The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — and the insistence of President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Senate to fill that vacancy this year — could have major implications for health care. The high court will hear yet another case challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act the week after the November election, and a long list of cases involving women’s reproductive rights, including both abortion and birth control, are working their way through lower federal courts.

Meanwhile, scandals at the Department of Health and Human Services continue to surface, such as the case of a media spokesperson for the National Institutes of Health who criticized his boss’s handling of the pandemic via a conservative website. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to struggle with its credibility, after posting and then taking down another set of guidelines, this one concerning whether the COVID-19 virus is spread through aerosol particles.

This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of Kaiser Health News, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Kimberly Leonard of Business Insider and Mary Ellen McIntire of CQ Roll Call.

Among the takeaways from this week’s podcast:

This week, Rovner also interviews KHN’s Sarah Jane Tribble, whose new podcast, “Where It Hurts,” drops Sept. 29. The podcast chronicles what happens to a small rural community in Kansas after its local hospital closes.

Plus, for extra credit, the panelists recommend their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read too:

Julie Rovner: KHN’s “Battle Rages Inside Hospitals Over How COVID Strikes and Kills,” by Robert Lewis and Christina Jewett

Anna Edney: The New Yorker’s “A Young Kennedy, in Kushnerland, Turned Whistle-Blower,” by Jane Mayer

Kimberly Leonard: The Wall Street Journal’s “Medicare Wouldn’t Cover Costs of Administering Coronavirus Vaccine Approved Under Emergency-Use Authorization,” by Stephanie Armour

Mary Ellen McIntire: The New York Times’ “Many Hospitals Charge More Than Twice What Medicare Pays for the Same Care,” by Reed Abelson

Other stories discussed by the panelists this week:

The New York Times’ “A Deal on Drug Prices Undone by White House Insistence on ‘Trump Cards,’” by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman

The Daily Beast’s “A Notorious COVID Troll Actually Works for Dr. Fauci’s Agency,” by Lachlan Markay

Politico’s “Trump Administration Shakes Up HHS Personal Office After Tumultuous Hires,” by Dan Diamond

The Washington Post’s “Pentagon Used Taxpayer Money Meant for Masks and Swabs to Make Jet Engine Parts and Body Armor,” by Aaron Gregg and Yeganeh Torbati


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This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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