Kaiser Health News
Epidemic: The Tata Way
Tue, 26 Sep 2023 09:00:00 +0000
In spring 1974, over a dozen smallpox outbreaks sprang up throughout the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Determined to find the source of the cases, American smallpox eradication worker Larry Brilliant and a local partner, Zaffar Hussain, launched an investigation.
The answer: Each outbreak could be traced back to Tatanagar, a city run by one of India’s largest corporations, the Tata Group.
When Brilliant arrived at the Tatanagar Railway Station, he was horrified by what he saw: people with active cases of smallpox purchasing train tickets. The virus was spreading out of control.
Brilliant knew that to stop the outbreak at its source, he would need the support of the company that ran the city. But he wasn’t optimistic the Tata Group would help.
Still, he had to try. So, Brilliant tracked down a Tata executive and knocked on his door in the middle of the night.
Brilliant’s message: “Your company is sending death all over the world. You’re the greatest exporter of smallpox in history.”
Much to his surprise, the leaders of Tata listened.
Episode 5 of “Eradicating Smallpox” explores the unique partnership between the Tata Group and the campaign to end the virus. This collaboration between the private and public sector, domestic and international, proved vital in the fight to eliminate smallpox.
To conclude the episode, host Céline Gounder speaks with NBA commissioner Adam Silver and virologist David Ho about the basketball league’s unique response to covid-19 — “the bubble” — and the essential role businesses can play in public health. “We need everyone involved,” Ho said, “from government, to academia, to the private sector.”
The Host:
Céline Gounder
Senior fellow & editor-at-large for public health, KFF Health News
Céline is senior fellow and editor-at-large for public health with KFF Health News. She is an infectious diseases physician and epidemiologist. She was an assistant commissioner of health in New York City. Between 1998 and 2012, she studied tuberculosis and HIV in South Africa, Lesotho, Malawi, Ethiopia, and Brazil. Gounder also served on the Biden-Harris Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board.
In Conversation With Céline Gounder:
Adam Silver
Commissioner of the NBA
David Ho
Director and CEO of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center
Voices From the Episode:
Larry Brilliant
Former World Health Organization smallpox eradication worker in India
Click to open the transcript
Transcript: The Tata Way
Podcast Transcript Epidemic: “Eradicating Smallpox” Season 2, Episode 5: The Tata Way Air date: Sept. 26, 2023
Editor’s note: If you are able, we encourage you to listen to the audio of “Epidemic,” which includes emotion and emphasis not found in the transcript. This transcript, generated using transcription software, has been edited for style and clarity. Please use the transcript as a tool but check the corresponding audio before quoting the podcast.
TRANSCRIPT
Céline Gounder: To help us tell the next chapter of the smallpox eradication history, we went to someone who’s lived a lot of lives. A civil rights activist. A Deadhead. A disciple of guru Neem Karoli Baba. A tech entrepreneur. And … an epidemiologist.
Larry Brilliant: Hi, I’m Larry Brilliant. and I had the great honor of working on the WHO smallpox eradication program.
[Light music begins playing softly]
Céline Gounder: Larry was looking for his place in the world as a young man. It took him all over the United States. And beyond …
Larry Brilliant: Hoping that I would find something that was better than capitalism … that helped the poorest and most vulnerable communities.
Céline Gounder: That calling eventually led him to India — and the campaign to end smallpox.
Larry Brilliant: In those days, the world really wanted a victory in global health. So, we wanted, as a world, to eradicate smallpox.
Céline Gounder: At one point, when government reports suggested that smallpox was getting worse, not better, a young Larry still believed his team could beat the disease.
Many said that version of him from 50 years ago was perhaps brilliant — but also impatient, and a bit brash.
So, when one honcho at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva said he would eat a truck tire if they ever managed to get rid of smallpox, Larry and his boss, a Swiss-French epidemiologist named Nicole Grasset, took the bet.
A few years later, after the WHO declared victory over smallpox in 1980, Nicole and Larry mailed the skeptic a tire — all the way from India! — with a little note saying:
Larry Brilliant: “As agreed, here is the Land Rover tire. Please inform us — the bouquet and the texture — and should you need ketchup or mustard or any other condiments, we would be happy to add them to this.”
Céline Gounder: What happened to the tire?
Larry Brilliant: We never know. He never responded. [laughs]
[Music fades out]
Céline Gounder: Larry’s laughing now, but there were lots of dark days before that win. 1974 was a particularly tough year for the eradication program.
And Larry was about to find himself in the middle of one of the worst smallpox outbreaks anyone could remember.
To stop it, he would have to become a detective and follow the clues to the source of the surge. And once he solved that mystery, he’d need to stand up to one of the most powerful companies in India.
I’m Dr. Céline Gounder, and this is “Epidemic.”
[Epidemic theme music plays]
Céline Gounder: The year started off well. The new search-and-containment strategy was working.
It was working so well that Larry and his team were convinced they had eliminated smallpox in their area.
The reports from three statewide searches had come back. Not a single case had been found.
Soon, they’d be ready to declare the region free of smallpox.
[Suspenseful music begins playing]
Larry Brilliant: And we did one more search, and we found 15 villages that were infected with smallpox.
Céline Gounder: That last search was supposed to be a victory lap. Now, the race had started all over again.
Larry dispatched teams to find out where the cases were coming from.
Larry Brilliant: No one had any idea what it was.
Céline Gounder: Then finally … a break.
Larry Brilliant: We went into a little village, and we were able to find that the first case was a young man in his 20s, and he had gone someplace for work and came back with smallpox.
Céline Gounder: Larry asked the rest of the team if they had found anything similar.
Larry Brilliant: All of them came back “yes.”
Céline Gounder: They found a pattern — a clue. All the cases originated with a young person who had been away from home looking for work.
But where had they gone? If Larry’s team was going to stop the outbreak, they had to figure out where the workers got infected.
When the first clue surfaced, Larry was with another smallpox campaigner. A local partner, Zaffar Hussain …
Larry Brilliant: … who knew more about smallpox than I did. He knew more about smallpox than anybody.
Céline Gounder: Larry and Zaffar were running out of options. So, Zaffar tried one last thing.
Larry Brilliant: When they were preparing this boy’s body for cremation, Zaffar asked in the humblest way for permission to go through his pockets. And he did, and he found in the boy’s pockets a railway ticket from the Tatanagar Railway Station.
Céline Gounder: Tatanagar.
They had found the source of the outbreak.
[Suspenseful music fades out]
[Ambient sounds and an announcement from the Tatanagar Railway Station play]
Céline Gounder: In the summer of 2022, I followed Larry’s journey to the Tatanagar. The city — also known as Jamshedpur — is in the eastern end of India. The train station is a knot of railroad tracks. The platforms are full of vendors selling food. You have to dodge bales of cargo on the way to the train.
Tatanagar’s name comes from the family … and the company … that dominates the area: Tata.
Larry Brilliant: It was known as the “Pittsburgh of India.”
[Upbeat music begins playing]
Céline Gounder: Steel. Iron. Locomotives. Tata was a household name. It still is. The conglomerate’s dozens of businesses span heavy industry and telecommunications to aerospace.
Ever ride in a Land Rover? Tata.
A Jaguar? Tata.
Fly Air India? That’s part of the Tata Group, too.
In the ’70s, people looking for work in Tata factories took trains to Tatanagar. Thousands and thousands of people passed through the train station every day.
For many, the city was a vision of India’s future.
[Music fades out]
Larry Brilliant: So, when you thought of Tatanagar, when you thought of Tatas, in those days, you thought of wealth, power, modernity, cleanliness, all of those things.
Céline Gounder: But the scene Larry and Zaffar saw when they arrived was very different.
They found a station boiling with smallpox. Bodies wrapped in cloth were stacked like cords of wood.
[Somber music begins playing softly]
Céline Gounder: Some small enough to be children.
As the crowd swirled around Larry, an older man about to buy a train ticket caught his eye.
Larry Brilliant: He had given the couple of rupees, and he had just gotten the ticket and his hand was filled with pockmarks. And you could just imagine that that man’s about to get on a train and go back home to die in his home village. And that will be another outbreak that will be started.
Céline Gounder: Larry was overwhelmed.
Larry Brilliant: You gotta understand that the feeling of powerlessness, anger, anger at the Tatas for letting this happen, anger at … God?
[Music fades out]
Larry Brilliant: I said to Zaffar, you know, what do we do?
And he said, we’ve got to find the head of the Tatas.
Céline Gounder: At the time, that meant Russi Mody, who was the managing director of Tata Steel.
Larry and Zaffar got the address — a home in a suburb outside the city.
As they drove in the dark, Larry was thinking about the person he was about to confront.
Larry Brilliant: So I, I had a terrible, fear that the Tatas would turn a deaf ear or already knew about it.
Céline Gounder: Tatanagar was basically a company town. Tata ran the city. It was in charge of lots of things that governments would otherwise do.
Larry Brilliant: And I had this image of a company that just didn’t care.
[Instrumental music begins playing]
Céline Gounder: It was nearly midnight by the time they arrived at the home of the Tata Steel executive.
Larry Brilliant: And I, I ran up to the front door, with Zaffar pulling me back: “Don’t go, don’t go.”
And I pounded on the door. And the door opened.
Céline Gounder: An attendant answered the door. He was not impressed with Larry’s WHO credentials. The attendant tried to turn them away.
Larry Brilliant: And I kind of pushed my way in, and one of these huge Tibetan Mastiff dogs that they had grabbed my hand. And wouldn’t let me go.
Céline Gounder: By now, the ruckus was too much to ignore. The company managing director, Russi Mody, got up and came to the door.
Larry Brilliant: “Who the hell are you? What are you doing here at my house at midnight?” And while this dog still had my arm in his mouth, I told Russi, I said, “You know, your company is sending death all over the world. You’re the greatest exporter of smallpox in history.”
Céline Gounder: That got Russi’s attention. He ordered his dog to let go of Larry’s hand.
[Music fades out]
Larry Brilliant: And he’d been trained not to bite off the hand, thank God.
Céline Gounder: Russi invited Larry and Zaffar in.
When they all sat down together at the dinner table, Larry explained the situation: mysterious smallpox cases popping up all over India. The train ticket in the man’s pocket that led them to Tatanagar. The chaos they found at the train station.
Russi said he had no idea what had been going on.
But Larry had his doubts.
Larry Brilliant: It seems improbable that the head of the Tatas wouldn’t know about it, but I actually think they did not know about it. It wasn’t that they were willfully ignorant, they just didn’t know about it — that that reporting relationship didn’t exist.
Céline Gounder: Russi asked what could be done. Larry made up a number. Something close to asking for half a million dollars, he estimates. It would cover 4×4 trucks, equipment, and personnel to contain the outbreak.
But, as influential as Russi Mody was, this was a big ask.
Larry Brilliant: So he called up Bombay and spoke to Mr. Tata, J.R.D. Tata.
Céline Gounder: Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata — or J.R.D. — was the “Tata” in Tata Industries.
[Sparse percussive music begins playing]
Larry Brilliant: He was probably a combination of Steve Jobs and, I don’t know, the CEO of GM when GM was a big deal.
Céline Gounder: J.R.D. ran his business empire according to how he interpreted the values set out by its founder, Jamsetji Tata.
His speeches and public statements suggest that Jamsetji believed that his company should serve a higher purpose.
The well-being of the community — and the nation — was supposed to be a driving force behind the company. Not just profits. That approach to business was called “the Tata Way.”
But Larry wondered: Would this tycoon really help?
Larry and Russi explained what was needed.
And J.R.D. said yes.
[Music fades out]
Larry Brilliant: And by 2 o’clock that afternoon, I had 200 jeeps, and all the different Tata companies, Tata Iron and Steel, […] Tata Locomotive, all their CEOs, and most of their executives showed up at this one site that became the smallpox office.
Céline Gounder: Larry took that “yes” he got from Tata and ran with it.
Larry Brilliant: I decided — without talking to anybody, again, youthful enthusiasm — I had decided that what I was going to do is to quarantine the city.
Céline Gounder: This was no small undertaking. More than 600,000 people were living in the area. That’s like trying to quarantine Washington, D.C.
The trains stopped running.
The buses stopped running.
The only ticket in or out was proof you’d been vaccinated: a smallpox vaccination scar.
Larry Brilliant: And bear in mind, I hadn’t asked permission to do this, which is, you know, clearly a failing on my part, but it was an emergency.
Céline Gounder: Not everyone thought it was an emergency. Larry’s decision was controversial.
When a member of Parliament got caught up in the quarantine and was forced to get vaccinated, there was a big uproar.
People accused the WHO of overstepping its authority. Friends of Larry’s in the Indian government told him the pushback almost got him deported. And maybe even risked getting the entire WHO program kicked out of the country.
But Larry had made powerful friends in India’s health system. And with the Tatas.
[Grandiose music begins playing]
Larry Brilliant: The Tatas at every, every stage of that, lobbied for me to be able to stay.
Céline Gounder: Tata leaders helped keep Larry out of trouble. And they made sure their own factories followed his rules, too.
Larry Brilliant: They literally closed down the assembly lines for locomotives and they stopped making iron and steel. They stopped the coal mine, and all of their workers came to work on this for almost six months.
Céline Gounder: Local government, businesses, and community groups all stepped up. Even a flying club offered to drop leaflets from the air so people would know how to identify and report any smallpox cases.
Two months later, the smallpox outbreak was contained.
Larry Brilliant: I’d never seen anything work that well. None of us had.
There’s no question that they put public health ahead of profits because they closed down and diverted all their managers to helping smallpox be eradicated.
Now, you could argue that they would have lost more had they gotten branded with the reintroduction of smallpox in the world; you could argue that it was enlightened self-interest, but it seemed to me much more than that.
Céline Gounder: The Tata Way, perhaps.
[Music fades out]
Céline Gounder: Working with the Tatas made a big impression on Larry.
Larry Brilliant: Watching the way you could combine public health with its moral compass, with the resources and management skills of Tatas.
That was quite something.
And the Tatas were the first I’d ever seen like that. And as a young person, still formulating my own worldview, it changed me, of course, forever.
[Reflective music begins playing]
Céline Gounder: J.R.D. Tata’s support of the smallpox eradication campaign came at a critical time. But smallpox wasn’t the only public health campaign the tycoon backed.
He also used his power and money to further population control in India.
J.R.D. Tata: As the standard of living of the people increase and they want their children educated, et cetera, it’ll be here, it’ll happen here, but too late.
Céline Gounder: That’s a clip of J.R.D. on the Indian television program “Conversations” in 1987 talking about the need to curb India’s birth rate.
J.R.D. Tata: […] and therefore one must find some ways of accelerating the process.
Céline Gounder: J.R.D. used his business to make that vision a reality.
In the 1970s, the Indian government was offering its citizens cash payments if they would get sterilized as part of its population control efforts.
J.R.D. doubled it for his employees and their spouses.
From 1975 to 1976, Tata Steel claimed to have carried out 20,000 sterilizations.
[Music fades out]
Céline Gounder: That’s troubling for me as a public health professional. Offers of cash in a very poor country can be coercive. And it makes the legacy of the “Tata Way” complicated.
The company’s far-reaching influence and philanthropy also created the university where my own father studied. An opportunity that gave him a career in the United States, and ultimately shaped my life and career.
[Bouncy music beings playing]
Céline Gounder: The resources of private enterprise — they can be marshaled for good and bad alike.
We saw that at the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic. Businesses weren’t always on the same side as public health. But they can also be powerful allies.
Adam Silver: The partnerships are critically important with public health officials, with research institutions, and, and at the same time, the sort of magic of free enterprise can be extraordinarily helpful.
Céline Gounder: When we come back, we’ll speak with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and virologist David Ho about the basketball league’s response to covid and its investment in public health.
That’s after the break.
[Music fades out]
Dan Weissmann: Hey there! “An Arm and a Leg” is a show about why health care costs so freaking much. And what we can maybe do about it.
[Upbeat music begins playing]
Dan Weissmann: I’m Dan Weissmann. I’m a reporter and I like a challenge. So, my job on this show is to take one of the most enraging, terrifying, depressing parts of American life and bring you a show that’s entertaining, empowering, and useful.
“An Arm and a Leg” Guest 1: Where there’s money, there’ll be scams.
Dan Weissmann: I’m not gonna lie … we can’t win ‘em all. But it turns out, we don’t have to lose them all either.
“An Arm and a Leg” Guest 2: I was so determined. Like, I was not going to go through all of this for nothing.
“An Arm and a Leg” Guest 3: You have to be willing to tell people in authority sometimes, that you believe they’re wrong.
“An Arm and a Leg” Guest 4: I’m not scared of these fools.
“An Arm and a Leg” Guest 5: That’s when politicians really started getting involved and they passed the law.
“An Arm and a Leg” Guest 6: It’s like reading a postscript in a Dickens novel almost. Like, “Hey look! Now we can’t chain children to factory machines.” Like, “What? Wait, what? That was legal before?”
[Music fades out]
Dan Weissmann: You can catch “An Arm and a Leg” at armandalegshow.com or wherever you get podcasts.
Céline Gounder: On March 11, 2020, two basketball teams were getting ready to start a game in Oklahoma City. The arena was packed. Players from the Utah Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder were warmed up, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. But then the coaches and the referees had a meeting, and everyone on the court walked back to their locker rooms.
ESPN and NPR captured what happened next.
ESPN Clip: The fans here in the arena don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know what’s going on. And so, as soon as we get any kind of information, we will certainly pass it along. The game tonight has been postponed. You are all safe.
NPR Clip: The NBA has suspended its entire season. That decision came last night after a player with the Utah Jazz tested positive for covid-19.
Céline Gounder: I don’t think I’m alone in saying that was the moment a lot of people realized that the covid pandemic was real and would upend our lives. For NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, the challenge also presented an opportunity for the league to form business partnerships and model a path forward.
To learn more, I called up Silver and Dr. David Ho, a professor of medicine at Columbia University, who has advised the NBA on health issues since the 1990s, when he served as the doctor for NBA superstar Magic Johnson when Johnson was diagnosed with HIV.
David, thinking back to early 2020, how were you assisting Adam and the rest of the NBA in terms of research and in terms of their decision-making?
David Ho: Adam and, and the league put together a team and there were numerous discussions prior to the first case. And so there was a sort of a … anticipation that the virus would get to the U.S. and, and, and, you know, hit everyone at some point. And remember, by third week of January, China already locked down Wuhan city. So that really taught us how severe this outbreak might be.
Céline Gounder: The shutdown could not have come at a worse time for the NBA. The regular season was winding down and they were about to begin the playoffs to crown an NBA champion. Those playoffs generate a lot of money. But then, in the summer of 2020, the NBA came out with a bold idea to restart their season — at Disney World. It’s been called “the Bubble.”
Adam, from your perspective, how, how would you explain to maybe another, uh, CEO of a company, how you set up the Bubble and what this was?
Adam Silver: It was a partnership with Disney. Uh, we were fortunate that they had available this physical campus, several hundred acres, as part of Disney World that was otherwise completely shut down because of the pandemic.
So they had the hotel rooms, they had existing courts, they had facilities for training. I mean, a lot of it we needed to modify and bring in significant other equipment. But the fundamentals were there already. And at the peak of the so-called Bubble, we had about 1, 500 people there — that included players, coaches, team, and league personnel.
Celine Gounder: Now leading up to the return to play, the NBA and the Players Association helped finance a saliva-based covid test with Yale, which would later be called SalivaDirect, and they got emergency authorization from the FDA for this. NBA players even helped in the trials. Adam, why did the NBA support this initiative?
Adam Silver: Frankly, Dr. Gounder, because we were desperate for a methodology under which we could return to play. And for me, this was a function of the private sector, looking for an opportunity to partner with major research institutions — as you said, in this case, it was the Yale School of Public Health. But, you know, finding a way where we would be in position to do rapid testing on a large-scale basis.
And certainly, there were a lot of nervous people, and there were never any guarantees that we would have zero cases, which we turned out to have down in the Bubble. But, um, you know, it seemed like a wise decision at the time.
Céline Gounder: David, how can some of those innovations that were developed to restart the season be made to reach the broader public?
David Ho: Yeah, I think the public is aware of the success of the NBA Bubble, but it’s probably not aware of the fact that NBA published 10 scientific papers because of their covid response. And, for example, with the daily testing after the Bubble, the infected individuals were captured and tested every day. So we have a trajectory for the viral load of the infected people.
That’s just one example. And another would be correlates protection. NBA had one point drawn blood and we were able to measure antibodies and then NBA follow everyone and knew which, which person got infected and which ones did not. And from that, you could discern a certain antibody level was protective.
These type of contributions are, are not well known to the public, but it’s amazing. Uh, it was more successful than many academic groups on the scientific front.
Céline Gounder: Adam, what would you change about the NBA’s response to covid, if anything?
Adam Silver: If we had to do it again, I would have focused a bit more on mental wellness issues around our players living in that environment over long periods of time.
We were very restrictive in terms of who could live in the Bubble, meaning initially there were no family members permitted. And I think that the impact of the isolation was fairly profound. So we learned as we went that given the importance of the mental health issues for our players and for others in the community, on balance, we were better off allowing more family members in.
Celine Gounder: In the next public health crisis, how do you think that the private sector should respond and partner in solving?
David Ho: For a pandemic, we need everyone involved, you know, from government to academia to the private sector. Government alone can’t address this and nor could medical community alone. So, it has to be a partnership.
[“Epidemic” theme music begins playing]
Céline Gounder: Next time on “Epidemic” …
Sanjoy Bhattacharya: There are tales of how villages would empty when rumors would spread that these teams were coming ostensibly to vaccinate, but maybe really to sterilize. I mean, bodies still remember what was done to them.
Céline Gounder: “Eradicating Smallpox,” our latest season of “Epidemic,” is a co-production of KFF Health News and Just Human Productions.
Additional support provided by the Sloan Foundation.
This episode was produced by Zach Dyer, Taylor Cook, Bram Sable-Smith, and me.
Swagata Yadavar was our translator and local reporting partner in India.
Our managing editor is Taunya English.
Oona Tempest is our graphics and photo editor.
The show was engineered by Justin Gerrish.
We had extra editing help from Simone Popperl.
Music in this episode is from the Blue Dot Sessions and Soundstripe.
News clips from ESPN and NPR.
We’re powered and distributed by Simplecast.
If you enjoyed the show, please tell a friend. And leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find the show.
Follow KFF Health News on X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok.
And find me on X @celinegounder. On our socials, there’s more about the ideas we’re exploring on the podcasts.
And subscribe to our newsletters at kffhealthnews.org so you’ll never miss what’s new and important in American health care, health policy, and public health news.
I’m Dr. Céline Gounder. Thanks for listening to “Epidemic.”
[“Epidemic” theme fades out]
Credits
Taunya English
Managing editor
Taunya is senior editor for broadcast innovation with KFF Health News, where she leads enterprise audio projects.
Zach Dyer
Senior producer
Zach is senior producer for audio with KFF Health News, where he supervises all levels of podcast production.
Taylor Cook
Associate producer
Taylor is associate audio producer for Season 2 of “Epidemic.” She researches, writes, and fact-checks scripts for the podcast.
Oona Tempest
Photo editing, design, logo art
Oona is a digital producer and illustrator with KFF Health News. She researched, sourced, and curated the images for the season.
Additional Newsroom Support
Lydia Zuraw, digital producer Tarena Lofton, audience engagement producer Hannah Norman, visual producer and visual reporter Simone Popperl, broadcast editor Chaseedaw Giles, social media manager Mary Agnes Carey, partnerships editor Damon Darlin, executive editor Terry Byrne, copy chief Gabe Brison-Trezise, deputy copy chiefChris Lee, senior communications officer
Additional Reporting Support
Swagata Yadavar, translator and local reporting partner in IndiaRedwan Ahmed, translator and local reporting partner in Bangladesh
“Epidemic” is a co-production of KFF Health News and Just Human Productions.
To hear other KFF Health News podcasts, click here. Subscribe to “Epidemic” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Pocket Casts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Title: Epidemic: The Tata Way
Sourced From: kffhealthnews.org/news/podcast/season-2-episode-5-the-tata-way/
Published Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2023 09:00:00 +0000
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Kaiser Health News
States Brace for Reversal of Obamacare Coverage Gains Under Trump’s Budget Bill
Shorter enrollment periods. More paperwork. Higher premiums. The sweeping tax and spending bill pushed by President Donald Trump includes provisions that would not only reshape people’s experience with the Affordable Care Act but, according to some policy analysts, also sharply undermine the gains in health insurance coverage associated with it.
The moves affect consumers and have particular resonance for the 19 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that run their own ACA exchanges.
Many of those states fear that the additional red tape — especially requirements that would end automatic reenrollment — would have an outsize impact on their policyholders. That’s because a greater percentage of people in those states use those rollovers versus shopping around each year, which is more commonly done by people in states that use the federal healthcare.gov marketplace.
“The federal marketplace always had a message of, ‘Come back in and shop,’ while the state-based markets, on average, have a message of, ‘Hey, here’s what you’re going to have next year, here’s what it will cost; if you like it, you don’t have to do anything,’” said Ellen Montz, who oversaw the federal ACA marketplace under the Biden administration as deputy administrator and director at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight. She is now a managing director with the Manatt Health consulting group.
Millions — perhaps up to half of enrollees in some states — may lose or drop coverage as a result of that and other changes in the legislation combined with a new rule from the Trump administration and the likely expiration at year’s end of enhanced premium subsidies put in place during the covid-19 pandemic. Without an extension of those subsidies, which have been an important driver of Obamacare enrollment in recent years, premiums are expected to rise 75% on average next year. That’s starting to happen already, based on some early state rate requests for next year, which are hitting double digits.
“We estimate a minimum 30% enrollment loss, and, in the worst-case scenario, a 50% loss,” said Devon Trolley, executive director of Pennie, the ACA marketplace in Pennsylvania, which had 496,661 enrollees this year, a record.
Drops of that magnitude nationally, coupled with the expected loss of Medicaid coverage for millions more people under the legislation Trump calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” could undo inroads made in the nation’s uninsured rate, which dropped by about half from the time most of the ACA’s provisions went into effect in 2014, when it hovered around 14% to 15% of the population, to just over 8%, according to the most recent data.
Premiums would rise along with the uninsured rate, because older or sicker policyholders are more likely to try to jump enrollment hurdles, while those who rarely use coverage — and are thus less expensive — would not.
After a dramatic all-night session, House Republicans passed the bill, meeting the president’s July 4 deadline. Trump is expected to sign the measure on Independence Day. It would increase the federal deficit by trillions of dollars and cut spending on a variety of programs, including Medicaid and nutrition assistance, to partly offset the cost of extending tax cuts put in place during the first Trump administration.
The administration and its supporters say the GOP-backed changes to the ACA are needed to combat fraud. Democrats and ACA supporters see this effort as the latest in a long history of Republican efforts to weaken or repeal Obamacare. Among other things, the legislation would end several changes put in place by the Biden administration that were credited with making it easier to sign up, such as lengthening the annual open enrollment period and launching a special program for very low-income people that essentially allows them to sign up year-round.
In addition, automatic reenrollment, used by more than 10 million people for 2025 ACA coverage, would end in the 2028 sign-up season. Instead, consumers would have to update their information, starting in August each year, before the close of open enrollment, which would end Dec. 15, a month earlier than currently.
That’s a key change to combat rising enrollment fraud, said Brian Blase, president of the conservative Paragon Health Institute, because it gets at what he calls the Biden era’s “lax verification requirements.”
He blames automatic reenrollment, coupled with the availability of zero-premium plans for people with lower incomes that qualify them for large subsidies, for a sharp uptick in complaints from insurers, consumers, and brokers about fraudulent enrollments in 2023 and 2024. Those complaints centered on consumers’ being enrolled in an ACA plan, or switched from one to another, without authorization, often by commission-seeking brokers.
In testimony to Congress on June 25, Blase wrote that “this simple step will close a massive loophole and significantly reduce improper enrollment and spending.”
States that run their own marketplaces, however, saw few, if any, such problems, which were confined mainly to the 31 states using the federal healthcare.gov.
The state-run marketplaces credit their additional security measures and tighter control over broker access than healthcare.gov for the relative lack of problems.
“If you look at California and the other states that have expanded their Medicaid programs, you don’t see that kind of fraud problem,” said Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California, the state’s Obamacare marketplace. “I don’t have a single case of a consumer calling Covered California saying, ‘I was enrolled without consent.’”
Such rollovers are common with other forms of health insurance, such as job-based coverage.
“By requiring everyone to come back in and provide additional information, and the fact that they can’t get a tax credit until they take this step, it is essentially making marketplace coverage the most difficult coverage to enroll in,” said Trolley at Pennie, 65% of whose policyholders were automatically reenrolled this year, according to KFF data. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
Federal data shows about 22% of federal sign-ups in 2024 were automatic-reenrollments, versus 58% in state-based plans. Besides Pennsylvania, the states that saw such sign-ups for more than 60% of enrollees include California, New York, Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia, according to KFF.
States do check income and other eligibility information for all enrollees — including those being automatically renewed, those signing up for the first time, and those enrolling outside the normal open enrollment period because they’ve experienced a loss of coverage or other life event or meet the rules for the low-income enrollment period.
“We have access to many data sources on the back end that we ping, to make sure nothing has changed. Most people sail through and are able to stay covered without taking any proactive step,” Altman said.
If flagged for mismatched data, applicants are asked for additional information. Under current law, “we have 90 days for them to have a tax credit while they submit paperwork,” Altman said.
That would change under the tax and spending plan before Congress, ending presumptive eligibility while a person submits the information.
A white paper written for Capital Policy Analytics, a Washington-based consultancy that specializes in economic analysis, concluded there appears to be little upside to the changes.
While “tighter verification can curb improper enrollments,” the additional paperwork, along with the expiration of higher premiums from the enhanced tax subsidies, “would push four to six million eligible people out of Marketplace plans, trading limited fraud savings for a surge in uninsurance,” wrote free market economists Ike Brannon and Anthony LoSasso.
“Insurers would be left with a smaller, sicker risk pool and heightened pricing uncertainty, making further premium increases and selective market exits [by insurers] likely,” they wrote.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The post States Brace for Reversal of Obamacare Coverage Gains Under Trump’s Budget Bill appeared first on kffhealthnews.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
This content presents a critique of Republican-led changes to the Affordable Care Act, emphasizing potential negative impacts such as increased premiums, reduced enrollment, and the erosion of coverage gains made under the ACA. It highlights the perspective of policy analysts and state officials who express concern over these measures, while also presenting conservative viewpoints, particularly those focusing on fraud reduction. Overall, the tone and framing lean toward protecting the ACA and its expansions, which traditionally aligns with Center-Left media analysis.
Kaiser Health News
Dual Threats From Trump and GOP Imperil Nursing Homes and Their Foreign-Born Workers
In a top-rated nursing home in Alexandria, Virginia, the Rev. Donald Goodness is cared for by nurses and aides from various parts of Africa. One of them, Jackline Conteh, a naturalized citizen and nurse assistant from Sierra Leone, bathes and helps dress him most days and vigilantly intercepts any meal headed his way that contains gluten, as Goodness has celiac disease.
“We are full of people who come from other countries,” Goodness, 92, said about Goodwin House Alexandria’s staff. Without them, the retired Episcopal priest said, “I would be, and my building would be, desolate.”
The long-term health care industry is facing a double whammy from President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants and the GOP’s proposals to reduce Medicaid spending. The industry is highly dependent on foreign workers: More than 800,000 immigrants and naturalized citizens comprise 28% of direct care employees at home care agencies, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and other long-term care companies.
But in January, the Trump administration rescinded former President Joe Biden’s 2021 policy that protected health care facilities from Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. The administration’s broad immigration crackdown threatens to drastically reduce the number of current and future workers for the industry. “People may be here on a green card, and they are afraid ICE is going to show up,” said Katie Smith Sloan, president of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofits that care for older adults.
Existing staffing shortages and quality-of-care problems would be compounded by other policies pushed by Trump and the Republican-led Congress, according to nursing home officials, resident advocates, and academic experts. Federal spending cuts under negotiation may strip nursing homes of some of their largest revenue sources by limiting ways states leverage Medicaid money and making it harder for new nursing home residents to retroactively qualify for Medicaid. Care for 6 in 10 residents is paid for by Medicaid, the state-federal health program for poor or disabled Americans.
“We are facing the collision of two policies here that could further erode staffing in nursing homes and present health outcome challenges,” said Eric Roberts, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
The industry hasn’t recovered from covid-19, which killed more than 200,000 long-term care facility residents and workers and led to massive staff attrition and turnover. Nursing homes have struggled to replace licensed nurses, who can find better-paying jobs at hospitals and doctors’ offices, as well as nursing assistants, who can earn more working at big-box stores or fast-food joints. Quality issues that preceded the pandemic have expanded: The percentage of nursing homes that federal health inspectors cited for putting residents in jeopardy of immediate harm or death has risen alarmingly from 17% in 2015 to 28% in 2024.
In addition to seeking to reduce Medicaid spending, congressional Republicans have proposed shelving the biggest nursing home reform in decades: a Biden-era rule mandating minimum staffing levels that would require most of the nation’s nearly 15,000 nursing homes to hire more workers.
The long-term care industry expects demand for direct care workers to burgeon with an influx of aging baby boomers needing professional care. The Census Bureau has projected the number of people 65 and older would grow from 63 million this year to 82 million in 2050.
In an email, Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the agency “is committed to supporting a strong, stable long-term care workforce” and “continues to work with states and providers to ensure quality care for older adults and individuals with disabilities.” In a separate email, Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said foreigners wanting to work as caregivers “need to do that by coming here the legal way” but did not address the effect on the long-term care workforce of deportations of classes of authorized immigrants.
Goodwin Living, a faith-based nonprofit, runs three retirement communities in northern Virginia for people who live independently, need a little assistance each day, have memory issues, or require the availability of around-the-clock nurses. It also operates a retirement community in Washington, D.C. Medicare rates Goodwin House Alexandria as one of the best-staffed nursing homes in the country. Forty percent of the organization’s 1,450 employees are foreign-born and are either seeking citizenship or are already naturalized, according to Lindsay Hutter, a Goodwin spokesperson.
“As an employer, we see they stay on with us, they have longer tenure, they are more committed to the organization,” said Rob Liebreich, Goodwin’s president and CEO.
Jackline Conteh spent much of her youth shuttling between Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Ghana to avoid wars and tribal conflicts. Her mother was killed by a stray bullet in her home country of Liberia, Conteh said. “She was sitting outside,” Conteh, 56, recalled in an interview.
Conteh was working as a nurse in a hospital in Sierra Leone in 2009 when she learned of a lottery for visas to come to the United States. She won, though she couldn’t afford to bring her husband and two children along at the time. After she got a nursing assistant certification, Goodwin hired her in 2012.
Conteh said taking care of elders is embedded in the culture of African families. When she was 9, she helped feed and dress her grandmother, a job that rotated among her and her sisters. She washed her father when he was dying of prostate cancer. Her husband joined her in the United States in 2017; she cares for him because he has heart failure.
“Nearly every one of us from Africa, we know how to care for older adults,” she said.
Her daughter is now in the United States, while her son is still in Africa. Conteh said she sends money to him, her mother-in-law, and one of her sisters.
In the nursing home where Goodness and 89 other residents live, Conteh helps with daily tasks like dressing and eating, checks residents’ skin for signs of swelling or sores, and tries to help them avoid falling or getting disoriented. Of 102 employees in the building, broken up into eight residential wings called “small houses” and a wing for memory care, at least 72 were born abroad, Hutter said.
Donald Goodness grew up in Rochester, New York, and spent 25 years as rector of The Church of the Ascension in New York City, retiring in 1997. He and his late wife moved to Alexandria to be closer to their daughter, and in 2011 they moved into independent living at the Goodwin House. In 2023 he moved into one of the skilled nursing small houses, where Conteh started caring for him.
“I have a bad leg and I can’t stand on it very much, or I’d fall over,” he said. “She’s in there at 7:30 in the morning, and she helps me bathe.” Goodness said Conteh is exacting about cleanliness and will tell the housekeepers if his room is not kept properly.
Conteh said Goodness was withdrawn when he first arrived. “He don’t want to come out, he want to eat in his room,” she said. “He don’t want to be with the other people in the dining room, so I start making friends with him.”
She showed him a photo of Sierra Leone on her phone and told him of the weather there. He told her about his work at the church and how his wife did laundry for the choir. The breakthrough, she said, came one day when he agreed to lunch with her in the dining room. Long out of his shell, Goodness now sits on the community’s resident council and enjoys distributing the mail to other residents on his floor.
“The people that work in my building become so important to us,” Goodness said.
While Trump’s 2024 election campaign focused on foreigners here without authorization, his administration has broadened to target those legally here, including refugees who fled countries beset by wars or natural disasters. This month, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the work permits for migrants and refugees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who arrived under a Biden-era program.
“I’ve just spent my morning firing good, honest people because the federal government told us that we had to,” Rachel Blumberg, president of the Toby & Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences of Boca Raton, a Florida retirement community, said in a video posted on LinkedIn. “I am so sick of people saying that we are deporting people because they are criminals. Let me tell you, they are not all criminals.”
At Goodwin House, Conteh is fearful for her fellow immigrants. Foreign workers at Goodwin rarely talk about their backgrounds. “They’re scared,” she said. “Nobody trusts anybody.” Her neighbors in her apartment complex fled the U.S. in December and returned to Sierra Leone after Trump won the election, leaving their children with relatives.
“If all these people leave the United States, they go back to Africa or to their various countries, what will become of our residents?” Conteh asked. “What will become of our old people that we’re taking care of?”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The post Dual Threats From Trump and GOP Imperil Nursing Homes and Their Foreign-Born Workers appeared first on kffhealthnews.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
This content primarily highlights concerns about the impact of restrictive immigration policies and Medicaid spending cuts proposed by the Trump administration and Republican lawmakers on the long-term care industry. It emphasizes the importance of immigrant workers in healthcare, the challenges that staffing shortages pose to patient care, and the potential negative effects of GOP policy proposals. The tone is critical of these policies while sympathetic toward immigrant workers and advocates for maintaining or increasing government support for healthcare funding. The framing aligns with a center-left perspective, focusing on social welfare, immigrant rights, and concern about the consequences of conservative economic and immigration policies without descending into partisan rhetoric.
Kaiser Health News
California’s Much-Touted IVF Law May Be Delayed Until 2026, Leaving Many in the Lurch
California lawmakers are poised to delay the state’s much-ballyhooed new law mandating in vitro fertilization insurance coverage for millions, set to take effect July 1. Gov. Gavin Newsom has asked lawmakers to push the implementation date to January 2026, leaving patients, insurers, and employers in limbo.
The law, SB 729, requires state-regulated health plans offered by large employers to cover infertility diagnosis and treatment, including IVF. Nine million people will qualify for coverage under the law. Advocates have praised the law as “a major win for Californians,” especially in making same-sex couples and aspiring single parents eligible, though cost concerns limited the mandate’s breadth.
People who had been planning fertility care based on the original timeline are now “left in a holding pattern facing more uncertainty, financial strain, and emotional distress,” Alise Powell, a director at Resolve: The National Infertility Association, said in a statement.
During IVF, a patient’s eggs are retrieved, combined with sperm in a lab, and then transferred to a person’s uterus. A single cycle can total around $25,000, out of reach for many. The California law requires insurers to cover up to three egg retrievals and an unlimited number of embryo transfers.
Not everyone’s coverage would be affected by the delay. Even if the law took effect July 1, it wouldn’t require IVF coverage to start until the month an employer’s contract renews with its insurer. Rachel Arrezola, a spokesperson for the California Department of Managed Health Care, said most of the employers subject to the law renew their contracts in January, so their employees would not be affected by a delay.
She declined to provide data on the percentage of eligible contracts that renew in July or later, which would mean those enrollees wouldn’t get IVF coverage until at least a full year from now, in July 2026 or later.
The proposed new implementation date comes amid heightened national attention on fertility coverage. California is now one of 15 states with an IVF mandate, and in February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order seeking policy recommendations to expand IVF access.
It’s the second time Newsom has asked lawmakers to delay the law. When the Democratic governor signed the bill in September, he asked the legislature to consider delaying implementation by six months. The reason, Newsom said then, was to allow time to reconcile differences between the bill and a broader effort by state regulators to include IVF and other fertility services as an essential health benefit, which would require the marketplace and other individual and small-group plans to provide the coverage.
Newsom spokesperson Elana Ross said the state needs more time to provide guidance to insurers on specific services not addressed in the law to ensure adequate and uniform coverage. Arrezola said embryo storage and donor eggs and sperm were examples of services requiring more guidance.
State Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Democrat who authored the original IVF mandate, acknowledged a delay could frustrate people yearning to expand their families, but requested patience “a little longer so we can roll this out right.”
Sean Tipton, a lobbyist for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, contended that the few remaining questions on the mandate did not warrant a long delay.
Lawmakers appear poised to advance the delay to a vote by both houses of the legislature, likely before the end of June. If a delay is approved and signed by the governor, the law would immediately be paused. If this does not happen before July 1, Arrezola said, the Department of Managed Health Care would enforce the mandate as it exists. All plans were required to submit compliance filings to the agency by March. Arrezola was unable to explain what would happen to IVF patients whose coverage had already begun if the delay passes after July 1.
The California Association of Health Plans, which opposed the mandate, declined to comment on where implementation efforts stand, although the group agrees that insurers need more guidance, spokesperson Mary Ellen Grant said.
Kaiser Permanente, the state’s largest insurer, has already sent employers information they can provide to their employees about the new benefit, company spokesperson Kathleen Chambers said. She added that eligible members whose plans renew on or after July 1 would have IVF coverage if implementation of the law is not delayed.
Employers and some fertility care providers appear to be grappling over the uncertainty of the law’s start date. Amy Donovan, a lawyer at insurance brokerage and consulting firm Keenan & Associates, said the firm has fielded many questions from employers about the possibility of delay. Reproductive Science Center and Shady Grove Fertility, major clinics serving different areas of California, posted on their websites that the IVF mandate had been delayed until January 2026, which is not yet the case. They did not respond to requests for comment.
Some infertility patients confused over whether and when they will be covered have run out of patience. Ana Rios and her wife, who live in the Central Valley, had been trying to have a baby for six years, dipping into savings for each failed treatment. Although she was “freaking thrilled” to learn about the new law last fall, Rios could not get clarity from her employer or health plan on whether she was eligible for the coverage and when it would go into effect, she said. The couple decided to go to Mexico to pursue cheaper treatment options.
“You think you finally have a helping hand,” Rios said of learning about the law and then, later, the requested delay. “You reach out, and they take it back.”
This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
USE OUR CONTENT
This story can be republished for free (details).
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The post California’s Much-Touted IVF Law May Be Delayed Until 2026, Leaving Many in the Lurch appeared first on kffhealthnews.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
This content is presented in a factual, balanced manner typical of center-left public policy reporting. It focuses on a progressive healthcare issue (mandated IVF insurance coverage) favorably highlighting benefits for diverse family structures and individuals, including same-sex couples and single parents, which often aligns with center-left values. At the same time, it includes perspectives from government officials, industry representatives, opponents, and patients, offering a nuanced view without overt ideological framing or partisan rhetoric. The emphasis on healthcare access, social equity, and patient impact situates the coverage within a center-left orientation.
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