Public Policy

Politico Pro (5/19/2026): Trump administration sued over eligibility limits for student loans – More than 20 states filed a lawsuit against the Education Department on Tuesday over its limits on what fields will be eligible for higher loan caps put on graduate professional degrees. Congress capped federal loans for graduate students at $20,500 per year with a $100,000 aggregate limit in the GOP's sweeping domestic policy law last year. Students in professional programs can take up to $50,000 in federal student loans per year with a $200,000 aggregate limit. These limits go into effect July 1. It was up to the Education Department to define which students would qualify as professionals eligible for the higher cap. The agency finalized a rule in April that designated 11 fields as professional, including medicine, law, dentistry and theology — an approach that drew sharp criticism for excluding nursing and other professions from eligibility for the higher loan limits. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Maryland, asks the court to block the parts of the rule the states are challenging.

Politico Pro (5/18/2026): Ways and Means chair pulls markup of hospital tax-reporting measure – Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith won’t mark up a hospital tax reporting bill this week that the Missouri Republican has been circulating. The decision follows blowback from hospital lobbyists. Smith lambasted hospital executives at a hearing last month for their “borderline extortionary” prices and, according to four people familiar with Smith’s plans, was planning to ask his panel to vote on a bill this week to force nonprofit hospitals to report a more detailed breakdown of their income, as well as how much they spend on charity care, advertising, community benefits and quality improvement, to the IRS. POLITICO granted the four people anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. A spokesperson for Smith did not respond to requests for comment. Last week, Smith’s team circulated a rough draft of the bill, prompting an outcry from hospitals. One of the people familiar with Smith’s thinking said that while the reporting is “more burdensome than it is directly harmful,” hospitals worried Smith planned “to use the information gained for much more aggressive policy reform that could lead to real cuts.” That could include changes to the 340B drug pricing program, which allows hospitals that serve low-income patients to buy drugs at a cheaper rate. But as of Monday morning, Ways and Means staffers were alerted that the bill would no longer make the health markup, now slated for Thursday.

Politico Pro (5/21/2026): Bill would give doctors long-awaited Medicare pay boost – A new bipartisan bill aims to boost Medicare payments to doctors and address a longstanding gripe physicians have had with their level of pay. A discussion draft of a bill obtained by POLITICO seeks to address changes to the payment formula used to pay doctors as well as a much maligned quality program. The legislation has not been introduced and could still include changes. The effort is led by Republican Reps. John Joyce of Pennsylvania and Greg Murphy of North Carolina as well as Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier of Washington. Doctors have complained to Congress for years that Medicare payments do not keep pace with the costs of running a practice. For the past several years Congress has stepped in with temporary spending patches to boost payments. The discussion draft hopes to address this issue by modifying the conversion factor, which is the formula used to update doctor pay under Medicare. Starting in 2027, the bill would update the conversion factor to include an increase based on part of the Medicare Economic Index, which measures how inflation has impacted the cost of health services. The bill includes a provision from a bipartisan bill introduced by Murphy that the House Ways and Means committee marked up and sent to the House for a vote on Thursday. Current law says that any increase in Medicare spending for doctors must be offset by cuts elsewhere after a dollar threshold is reached. The bill would more than double the cap, increasing it from $20 million to over $54 million.

Politico Pro (5/21/2026): FDA’s Makary-era review program will go on, for now – The FDA will continue one of former Commissioner Marty Makary’s signature programs aimed at expediting certain drug reviews but plans to reassess after receiving public input, according to an internal email obtained by POLITICO. The Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher program, or CNPV, will drop the “C” from its name, and materials referencing the pilot will be updated "accordingly," Mallika Mundkur, a staffer in the FDA commissioner’s office, wrote in an email today to the pilot program’s advisory group. “At this time, the plan remains to continue the pilot, proceed with the [public] hearing, and then determine next steps regarding program modification/formalization based on the full range of feedback received,” she wrote. Meetings with the program’s review council — a panel of senior FDA leaders — “will no longer be routinely required for applications,” Mundkur wrote, after career review staff said they preferred focusing on “substantive review activities” rather than preparing presentations for the wider group. An HHS official, granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the issue, told POLITICO the "commissioner's" reference in the program's name hasn't been dropped yet.

Politico Pro (5/21/2026): Collins pushes back on Trump’s plan to cut health research funding – President Donald Trump’s request to cut the National Institutes of Health budget by roughly $5 billion next year is “inexplicable,” Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins told the agency’s director on Thursday. The Maine Republican pressed Jay Bhattacharya at an Appropriations Health Subcommittee hearing on the White House proposal, which she said would “undermine the foundation of our nation's global leadership in biomedical research and technological innovation.” Collins' pushback comes at a pivotal moment for the senator, who is facing a Democratic challenger, Graham Platner, for her Maine Senate seat in November. Collins is a top target for Democrats hoping to regain the Senate majority next year. Collins' ability to secure federal funding for her state is a key selling point in her reelection campaign. The powerful appropriator's frustration with the Trump administration’s funding cuts and slashing of NIH grants has been building over the past year, as she’s cited concerns about how those cuts would impact biomedical research institutions in Maine.