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Biostatistician and epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, MD, PhD, and Dr. Mina Zadeh, ACIP Executive Secretary, CDC, look on as people present their information to members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) advisory panel for vaccines convenes, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. June 25, 2025.

Megan Varner | Reuters

A version of this article first appeared in CNBC’s Healthy Returns newsletter, which brings the latest health-care news straight to your inbox. Subscribe here to receive future editions.

A revamped government panel of vaccine advisors with newly appointed immunization skeptics has voted against a mercury-containing shot ingredient that the anti-vaccine movement has long targeted.

The group, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, voted Thursday to recommend annual single-dose flu vaccines to Americans and against influenza shots containing thimerosal – even though there is no evidence of harm from that preservative. It was the first ACIP meeting since Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gutted the panel and stacked it with new members, including several well-known vaccine skeptics. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still needs to sign off on that recommendation. If the agency does, it would affect roughly 4% to 5% of the U.S. flu vaccine supply. 

The rest of the nation’s flu shots were thimerosal-free during the last season of the virus, according to CDC data. But when it comes to vaccinating an entire country, “small percentages matter,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, an infectious disease expert with the American Academy of Pediatrics, told reporters last week. 

If the few thimerosal-containing flu shots were removed from the market, 

“that would inevitably lead to fewer people being vaccinated, at least in the short term, perhaps longer term, and subsequently more hospitalizations and deaths,” O’Leary said. 

The recommendation also reinforces longstanding, unfounded fears that the substance can lead to developmental disabilities, such as autism. Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism comes full circle with the panel’s vote: A decade before stepping into his current role, he published a book that called for the removal of thimerosal from shots and linked it to developmental disorders. 

“A very common anti-vaccine talking point is around thimerosal, so that’s a very clear strategy to sow distrust in vaccines,” O’Leary said. 

Susana Sanchez, a Nurse Practitioner, administers a flu vaccination to Loisy Barrera at a CVS pharmacy and MinuteClinic on September 10, 2021 in Miami, Florida.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Here’s why thimerosal is important. It has been widely used for decades as a preservative to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria in several medicines and vaccines with multiple doses. More than 40 studies over many decades have found no link between thimerosal and developmental delays.

But its use in approved vaccines has dropped sharply as manufacturers have shifted to single-dose packaging for their shots, which doesn’t require preservatives. The Food and Drug Administration around 25 years ago asked manufacturers to remove the substance from childhood vaccines out of an abundance of caution, not because of evidence of harm, according to the CDC. 

“The thought was, well, mercury is a scary sounding word, and let’s just get it out, let’s just make this a non-issue,” O’Learly said. He added that “many studies have shown that it is entirely safe, is not associated with any neurodevelopmental disorders or any other adverse effects.”

Some multi-dose forms of flu vaccines for adults still contain thimerosal, including Sanofi’s Fluzone and two shots from biotech company CSL Seqirus. 

One member of the panel, Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at the Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine, said he was worried that discouraging the use of multidose vials could increase the cost of vaccination and limit access for some groups. He also expressed concerns about the message the recommendation would send to other countries where the use of multi-dose flu vaccines is more common.

“That might limit the availability of the influenza vaccine for some people,” he said during the meeting after he voted against restricting thimerosal flu vaccines. 

Before the votes at the meeting, Lyn Redwood, a nurse practitioner who has been involved with anti-vaccine organizations, presented on thimerosal in flu vaccines. Redwood is among the “mercury moms” who pushed for Kennedy to get involved with mercury and children’s health. She has also served for years as president of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine organization founded by Kennedy.

Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Annika at annikakim.constantino@nbcuni.com.

Latest in health-care tech: Arcadia acquired by private equity firm Nordic Capital

Health-care data platform Arcadia has been acquired by the private equity firm Nordic Capital, the companies announced on Tuesday. 

Arcadia turns health-care data into predictive insights that payers and providers can use to help improve care for patients, reduce costs and increase revenue. The company characterized the deal with Nordic Capital as a “strategic partnership” where the firm will become the “majority owner” of Arcadia, according to a release. 

Michael Meucci, Arcadia’s CEO, said working with Nordic Capital will allow Arcadia to continue to improve its customer experience, expand on its artificial intelligence capabilities, explore new M&A opportunities and drive growth in its core segments, including value-based care. 

“It’s hugely validating,” Meucci told CNBC in an interview. “It’s validating that there are large-cap institutional investors who are as committed to transforming us (U.S.?) health care and global health care as we have been.”  

Arcadia and Nordic Capital did not disclose the terms of the acquisition. The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year, though it’s still subject to regulatory approvals. 

Meucci said he’s known the Nordic Capital team for a couple years, and that the firm had been watching Arcadia’s progress as a business. Arcadia is profitable and carried out a successful acquisition last year. Meucci said these milestones helped Nordic Capital feel confident that the company was ready for its next stage of growth. 

Arcadia last raised outside funding in 2023, when it announced $125 million in financing from Vista Credit Partners. Nordic Capital’s acquisition serves as an exit for earlier investors, Arcadia said.

“This partnership aligns seamlessly with Nordic Capital’s investment strategy and Nordic Capital is excited to support Arcadia in its next phase of growth,” Daniel Berglund, partner and co-head of health care at Nordic Capital, said in a statement.

TripleTree served as Nordic Capital’s financial advisor for the transaction, and Lazard advised Arcadia.

“This is just a further reinforcement of our mission, that we have to change the cost of health care,” Meucci said. 

Read the full release here.

Feel free to send any tips, suggestions, story ideas and data to Ashley at ashley.capoot@nbcuni.com.

An aerial view of Valley Health Hampshire Memorial Hospital on June 17, 2025 in Romney, W.V.

Ricky Carioti | The Washington Post | Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” would make sweeping changes to U.S. health care, leaving millions of vulnerable Americans without health insurance and threatening the hospitals and centers that provide care to them. 

The Senate on Tuesday voted 51-50 to pass the spending measure after a marathon overnight voting session on amendments. But the bill will face another major test in the House, where Republicans have a razor-thin majority and some members have already raised objections to the legislation. 

Recent changes to the bill would cut roughly $1.1 trillion in health-care spending over the next decade, according to new estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

More than $1 trillion of those cuts would come from Medicaid, a joint federal and state health insurance program for disabled and low-income Americans, according to the CBO. The funding cuts go beyond insurance coverage: The loss of that funding could gut many rural hospitals that disproportionately rely on federal spending.

The CBO estimates that the current version of the bill would result in 11.8 million people losing health insurance by 2034, with the majority of those people losing Medicaid coverage.

But the implications could be even bigger. Trump’s bill combined with separate policy changes could result in an estimated 17 million people losing health insurance, said Robin Rudowitz, director of the program on Medicaid and the uninsured at health policy research organization KFF.

She said those other changes include new regulations that would dramatically limit access to Affordable Care Act Marketplace coverage and expiring enhanced ACA tax credits.

“If all of this comes to pass, it would represent the biggest roll back of health insurance coverage ever due to federal policy changes,” Cynthia Cox, KFF’s director of the program on the ACA, said in an analysis published Tuesday. 

Approximately 72 million Americans are currently enrolled in Medicaid, about one-fifth of the total U.S. population, according to government data. Medicaid is the primary payer for the majority of nursing home residents, and pays for around 40% of all births. 

The Trump administration and its allies insist the cuts in the bill aim to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. Democrats have said they break the president’s repeated promises not to touch the Medicaid program. Medicaid has been one of the most divisive issues throughout negotiations in both chambers, and some House Republicans have expressed reservations about how deep the cuts are. 

“I get that they want to cut fraud, but taking a swipe across the top is not going to solve the issue,” said Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, president of the American Nurses Association. 

She said the cuts could shutter hospitals and health centers in rural areas and lead to job losses for health-care staff such as nurses. 

Millions of Americans will lose coverage

The cuts in the bill come from several different provisions, but the lion’s share of Medicaid savings will come from two changes. 

One would establish a new, strict national work requirement for certain Medicaid beneficiaries ages 19 to 64. It would require childless adults without disabilities and parents of children older than 14 to work, volunteer or attend school for at least 80 hours a month to keep their insurance coverage, unless they qualify for an exception. 

Current law prohibits basing Medicaid eligibility on work requirements or work reporting rules, according to KFF. 

The new work requirement in the bill won’t kick in until 2026. It is projected to save about $325 billion over a decade, the CBO said. 

An analysis published June 23 by the UC Berkeley Labor Center said that the work requirement would cause the most people to lose insurance and “poses an especially draconian barrier to older adults.” The center said there is a steady drop-off in employment after age 50 due to factors “outside [people’s] control,” including deteriorating health, age discrimination and increasing responsibility to provide care for aging family members. 

“These same factors make older adults particularly vulnerable to coverage loss under Medicaid work requirements,” the analysis said.

People living in rural communities, such as seasonal farmers, may also struggle to find employment for parts of the year, Mensik Kennedy said.

AARP, an advocacy group focusing on issues affecting those 50 and older in the U.S., sent a letter over the weekend to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., opposing another provision that would disqualify people who fail to meet Medicaid work requirements from receiving premium tax credits to purchase coverage through the ACA Marketplaces.

“This creates a steep coverage cliff for those in their 50s and early 60s — particularly for those nearing retirement or working part-time — who may be left with no affordable coverage option at all,” the group said. 

Hospitals, health centers, patients in rural areas at risk 

A surgeon walks past in the surgical unit at Valley Health Hampshire Memorial Hospital on June 17, 2025 in Romney, W.V.

Ricky Carioti | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Another driving source of Medicaid savings will come from a provision that will cap and gradually reduce the tax that states can impose on hospitals, health plans and other medical providers. Those provider taxes are designed to help fund state Medicaid programs, with the federal government matching a portion of the state’s spending. 

Some members of the Trump administration and conservative lawmakers argue that it is a loophole for states to receive disproportionately more federal funds than they contribute. 

The bill’s restrictions on provider taxes and another strategy called state-directed payments would cut spending by a combined $375 billion, according to the CBO report.

But some GOP senators and experts raised concerns that capping provider taxes would threaten a critical funding stream for rural hospitals, which could force them and other health centers to close. Mensik Kennedy said health-care providers in rural areas, particularly critical access hospitals, rely more on Medicaid funding to support them compared with those in urban areas. 

“You’re going to see closures of rural hospitals that are the backbone of their community and were already struggling financially. You’re going to see half a million job losses,” Mensik Kennedy said. 

She said pregnant women in rural areas could be forced to drive 30, 40 or more miles to deliver a baby, while emergency medical services could have to drive an hour to reach a patient having a heart attack. 

Patients in rural communities already have higher rates of chronic illnesses and mortality because they have limited access to care, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Senate Republicans have added a $25 billion fund to the bill to help rural hospitals stay open in the face of Medicaid cuts. 

But Mensik Kennedy said that fund is “putting a bucket of water on the house fire,” adding that it is not enough to offset the cuts from the cap on provider taxes and other provisions. 

Cuts in overall Medicaid funding for rural hospitals would exceed 20% in more than half of states, according to a report from the National Rural Health Association.

A win for pharma 

Senate Republicans handed a win to drugmakers after they added back a provision into the bill that would exempt more medicines from the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare drug price negotiations. 

Under the bill, medicines used to treat multiple rare diseases will be exempt from those price talks between Medicare and manufacturers. The Senate initially left out that provision, called the ORPHAN Cures Act, in its first draft of the bill last month. 

The pharmaceutical industry argues that excluding those drugs from the negotiations will encourage more investments in treatments for rare conditions. Currently, only drugs that treat a single rare disease or condition can be exempted from price talks.

“The ORPHAN Cures Act will enable more options for Americans living with rare disease,” the trade group Biotechnology Innovation Organization wrote Wednesday in a post on X. The group also said only 5% of rare diseases have an approved treatment, while the economic toll of rare conditions in the U.S. surpassed $997 billion in 2019. 

But on Tuesday, drug pricing group Patients For Affordable Drugs Now called on the House to remove the ORPHAN Cures Act from the bill and allow Medicare drug price negotiations to deliver more savings to patients. 

The decision to include it in the legislation “moves us in the wrong direction, undermining hard-fought progress to lower drug prices,” Merith Basey, executive director of the group, said in a statement. 

“Pharma lobbyists will stop at nothing to maintain industry profits, and when a majority of the Senate caves to their interests, it’s a reminder to Americans why they’re paying the highest drug prices in the world. Simply put: it’s because Congress allows it,” Basey said.

She called it a “completely unnecessary $5 billion giveaway” to the pharmaceutical industry, referring to CBO estimates for how much the ORPHAN Cures Act would cost taxpayers over the next decade. 

The exterior view of the entrance to Merck headquarters in Rahway, New Jersey, on Feb. 5, 2024.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s revamped government panel of outside vaccine advisors on Thursday recommended the use of Merck‘s shot to protect infants from respiratory syncytial virus, a temporary reprieve for public health officials and companies concerned about the Health and Human Services secretary’s immunization policy.

The group, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, also voted unanimously to include Merck’s shot in the government’s list of recommended childhood immunizations that receive wide insurance coverage.

The votes in favor of the injectable antibody, Enflonsia, are a sigh of relief for drugmakers and the medical community after Kennedy earlier this month gutted the panel and tapped replacements, some of whom are well-known vaccine critics. 

The signoff will allow the company to launch the shot ahead of the RSV season that typically kicks off around fall and winter and lasts through the spring. Enflonsia, recommended for infants during their first RSV season, will compete head-to-head with a rival shot from Sanofi and AstraZeneca called Beyfortus.

Both are preventative monoclonal antibodies, which deliver antibodies directly into the bloodstream to provide immediate protection. But each targets a different part of the virus, making it difficult to compare them directly.

ACIP’s “recommendations are an important step forward in efforts to help reduce the significant burden RSV continues to place on infants, families, and health care systems,” said Dr. Richard M. Haupt, Merck’s head of global medical & scientific affairs, vaccines and infectious diseases, in a statement.

 RSV causes thousands of deaths among older Americans and hundreds of deaths among infants each year, and complications from the virus are the leading cause of hospitalization among newborns. In a mid- to late-stage trial on Enflonsia, the shot reduced RSV-related hospitalizations by more than 84% and decreased hospitalizations due to lower respiratory infections by 90% compared with a placebo among infants through five months.

Two of the vaccine critics on the panel, Retsef Levi and Vicky Pebsworth, voted against recommending Merck’s shot and questioned its safety throughout the meeting. 

But some other members underscored the safety of Merck’s shot, which won approval from the Food and Drug Administration earlier this month. 

“These are truly remarkable products. They are safe and they’re effective, and I don’t think there’s any further data that needs to be presented,” said member Dr. Cody Meissner, a professor of pediatrics at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. 

The ACIP “work group has spent an enormous amount of time, the FDA has spent an enormous amount of effort looking at safety and efficacy, and it is simply not an issue here,” said Meissner, who has also held advisory roles at the CDC and FDA.

Other experts at the meeting, who aren’t members of the committee, agreed. 

“This is a tremendous advance for medical science, and I urge the committee to approve and pass this resolution so that we can continue to protect our children and keep them healthy,” said Dr. Jason Goldman, president of the American College of Physicians. 

Levi said he voted against the shot because he believes it is not “ready to be administered to all healthy babies. He added, “I think we should take a more precautionary approach to this.”

The vote specifically recommends one dose of Merck’s shot for infants ages 8 months or younger born during or entering their first RSV season.