Trump’s Initial Orders Reverse Biden on Health Care Costs, Protections from Discrimination

Stat News | By Sarah Owermohle, John Wilkerson, Rachel Cohrs Zhang, and Lizzy Lawrence
 
WASHINGTON — President Trump began his second term Monday with a sweeping order aimed at reversing dozens of former President Biden’s top priorities, from regulations aimed at lowering health care costs, to coronavirus outreach, Affordable Care Act expansions, and protections against gender-based discrimination. 
 
The “initial rescissions” order, signed in front of cheering crowds at the Capital One Arena, revokes dozens of Biden administration policies that the new White House called inflammatory, inflationary, and possibly illegal. They include an October 2022 order to test Medicare and Medicaid models that could lower health care costs, an extension, Biden said, of his administration’s signature achievement to negotiate drug prices in the Inflation Reduction Act. 
 
Trump is also peeling back certain Biden administration efforts to expand access to Covid-19 treatments and vaccines, the 2021 formation of a Gender Policy Council, and multiple gender and sex discrimination protections. He ordered federal workers to return to their offices full time, and he froze federal hiring, with some exceptions.
 
Separately, Trump ordered the U.S. to begin the process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization, which he blames for mishandling the Covid-19 pandemic.
 
Trump’s broad proclamations, like any president’s executive orders, generally begin the process of regulations and rulemaking at federal agencies. The reversals could meet legal challenges or congressional intervention. Several of Biden’s orders were tied to laws 
passed by Congress…

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