HHS to Women’s Health: Drop Dead (But Please Do It Cost-Effectively)

 HHS to Women’s Health: Drop Dead (But Please Do It Cost-Effectively)

J.Michael Pontious M.D.

April 23, 2025 

Sometimes my thoughts are dark and cynical.  It is my nature.  I do not mean any disrespect by it, this approach allows me to suffer through cognitive dissonance without taking antipsychotic medications (saving me a bunch on pharmaceutical costs). 

How about we give a slow clap to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which has masterfully concluded that 33 years of groundbreaking women’s health research is just…too long. It is true that while you were distracted by the newest “Executive Order De Jour”,  HHS is axing funding for the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), one of the largest studies ever to ask, “Hey, what’s killing half the population, and can we maybe stop it?” 

The answer, apparently, is “No—but we can certainly stop funding it.”

Let’s take a moment to review this triumph of bureaucratic innovation: come September, WHI’s regional centers—those pesky outposts in states like New York and California where women inconveniently live, age, and get sick—will be shuttered. There is nothing that says “priorities” like letting scientists twist in the wind for years while HHS figures out how to reallocate those funds to something truly vital.  

Since 1991, the WHI has been the overachieving nerd of public health, enrolling 161,808 women to study everything from heart disease to dementia. Their work exposed the dangers of hormone therapy, saved an estimated 126,000 women from breast cancer, and pocketed $35.2 billion in healthcare savings.  To the trained eye that figure might make you think that investing in women’s health actually pays off. 

But HHS, ever the optimist, has opted to jettison this success into the sun.

Let’s not ignore the elephant in the room: the WHI’s fatal flaw was being too effective. By proving that common medical treatments could kill people, it disrupted the lucrative status quo of treating symptoms and ignoring causes. Worse, it expanded into “non priority agendas”  like dementia and social isolation—conditions that, as we all know, only affect women who have the audacity to exist past age 50.

Why fund studies on frailty when we can just tell Grandma to “take a walk”?  

I have to admit that the administration's subplot here is richer than a Medicare Advantage plan. But HHS, in its infinite wisdom, has chosen bipartisan pettiness: “Why solve problems when we can just… not?”  

So here we stand. Decades of data, tens of thousands of lives tracked, 2,400 papers published—all tossed into the fiscal woodchipper. Look at the money we have saved! But take heart, ladies! When your bones crumble, your heart falters, or your mind fades, you can rest easy knowing America’s health priorities are in the steady hands of “twenty something computer nerds” who’ve clearly never heard of a thing called “menopause.”  

So my advice… if you’re a woman hurtling toward old age, consider this your official nudge to invest in a good crystal ball or Ouija board. Medical science is out; vibes are in. 

My writing is proudly sponsored by HHS’s new initiative: “Survival of the Fittest (Terms and Conditions May Apply).