A longtime expert puts 2025-so-far in perspective

An Arm and a Leg

Society & Culture, Medicine, Health, Health & Fitness, Documentary

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With news blasting from Washington like a firehose, it feels impossible to take it all in — to stay on top of all the changes the Trump administration has been trying to make.

But for health care, one person is probably closer to anyone than to understanding the full picture: KFF Heath News Chief Washington Correspondent Julie Rover.

In this episode, Julie helps us see that picture, by telling us two stories:

The first concerns a teeny part of the health care system — an obscure federal agency, one of many that the Trump administration has taken a chainsaw to.

The other is anything but obscure: Possible cuts to Medicaid —which Julie thinks Republicans will actually find very difficult to make.

Plus, reporting from Julie’s KFF Health News colleague Arthur Allen. And a cameo from one of Julie’s beloved corgis.

Check out Julie’s weekly health policy news podcast: What the Health?

Read more from Arthur Allen on cuts to AHRQ in KFF Health News:

What’s Lost: Trump Whacks Tiny Agency That Works To Make the Nation’s Health Care Safer

Trump HHS Eliminates Office That Sets Poverty Levels Tied to Benefits for at Least 80 Million People

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Planet Money helps you understand the economy.
0:02.7	We find the people at the center of the story.
0:05.1	Garbage in New York, that was like a controlled substance.
0:08.6	We show you how money influences everything.
0:11.6	Tell me what you like by telling me how you spend your money.
0:15.5	And we dig until we get answers.
0:17.5	I had a bad feeling you're going to bring that up.
0:19.4	Planet Money finds out.
0:20.7	All you have to do is listen. the Planet Money podcast from NPR.
0:24.2	Hey there. 2025 has been a lot so far, especially since the second Trump administration got
0:31.8	started. We hear about a lot of sudden moves, a lot of cuts, maybe some reversals in health care and everywhere else.
0:39.8	With bigger moves maybe still to come.
0:43.0	But what has actually happened so far?
0:47.1	I mean, I can't keep up there.
0:49.5	But I know some people who might.
0:53.3	Our pals at KFF Health News have a whole news room, dozens and dozens of people publishing stories every day.
1:01.3	And one person there in particular is as plugged in as can be.
1:06.5	Julie Rovner has been covering health care in Washington, D.C., for longer than anybody.
1:12.1	Close to four decades.
1:14.0	When we first start talking, Julie gestures behind her.
1:17.4	On a bookshelf in her office, there are copies of Congressional Quarterly, where she started reporting in the 1980s.
1:24.2	Literally, every time somebody in Congress sneezed on health care, I wrote a story. That was my job for eight years. It was sort of the beginning of my career, but I've sort of thought about it ever since. Over the decades, she has watched big changes happen incrementally, one sneeze at a time. Julie covered health care for NPR for more than 15 years, and since
	...

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