Next week former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez will testify in a Senate hearing. The reporters who cover health care in Washington think there could be big revelations about why Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. fired her.

Sandhya Raman, health care reporter for Congressional Quarterly and Roll Call, and Michael McAuliff, who covers policy for Modern Healthcare, join our Reporters’ Roundtable. McAuliff says no matter what is discovered during the testimony, Kennedy’s future still rests with President Trump.

In addition, McAuliff notes the federal health care workforce challenges right now. “If you look across…all the agencies in the HHS, you would find similar sorts of things where normal processes that help folks in the country just can’t happen because they just don’t have the people,” he observes.

Hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter also talk to the guests about the COVID vaccine controversy, the new Make America Healthy Again children’s health report and the looming threat of a government shutdown.

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Supporters say Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is fulfilling his vision to be “pro-safety,” not anti-vaccine. His recent actions have included restricting COVID eligibility, dissolving expert panels, installing skeptical voices and defunding mRNA development.

Michael Osterholm, Ph.D., director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, is pushing back and says, “I've never in my 50 years in public health experienced anything like this in terms of the threat to good public health.”

Osterholm and Mark Olshaker are the co-authors of a new book, “The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics.”

The effort to suspend development and availability of certain vaccines is “not based on science. It's not even based on a political philosophy. These are dangerous decisions that have been made and we will pay a big price for them as we are now in preparedness freefall,” Osterholm says.

“Conversations on Health Care” hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter ask him point-blank to respond to National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya’s contention that they’re winding down mRNA vaccine development because the technology had “failed a crucial test: earning public trust.”

Osterholm responds that “distrust has been sown by the very people who are supposed to be promoting vaccines.” Olshaker says, “We've taken for granted how much vaccines have changed our lives.”

Osterholm adds, “There's still a substantial trust in public health. When you have a megaphone the size of one that the Secretary now has, it does start to basically drown out science … but I think we have to continue to remember that the science is on our side.”

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Dr. Victor Montori, a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist, internationally recognized researcher, and author of “Why We Revolt,” joins hosts Mark Masselli and Margaret Flinter to talk about what it really means to fix a health care system that he believes has lost its way.

Montori leads The Patient Revolution, a global movement aiming to make health care more elegant with “no waste or haste, focused on the biology and biography of each person, responsive to each patient’s problems, and minimally disruptive, of patients’ lives and loves.”

For example, the initiative offers tools and materials they’ve developed over the last 18 years to support patients and clinicians. The Plan Your Conversation cards help patients think through what they’d like to share and “practice” a conversation they’d like to have with the clinician. The cards can be used for any condition or issue and in any care setting.

“Revolution is not about branding. It’s about turning away from the processing of people, and toward care,” Montori explains. He yearns for a return to “careful and kind care for all,” and for health systems to re-center themselves on the relationships that make healing possible.

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