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President Donald Trump on Wednesday dropped new tariff rates on imports from most US trade partners to 10% for 90 days to allow trade negotiations with those countries.

Trump announced the pause hours after goods from nearly 90 nations became subject to stiffer, so-called reciprocal tariffs imposed by the United States.

The president also said in a social media post that he was raising the tariffs imposed on imports from China to 125% “effective immediately” due to the “lack of respect that China has shown to the World’s Markets.”

China, which is the US’s third-largest trading partner, earlier Wednesday said it would increase its tariff rate for imports from the US to 84%.

Trump said “more than 75 Countries” contacted US officials to negotiate after he unveiled his new tariffs last week.

Stock market indices rocketed sharply higher Wednesday on Trump’s announcement, reversing four days of losses. The benchmark S&P 500 index leapt by 7%, which puts it on track for its largest single-day gain in five years.

When asked later about the reason for his decision, Trump told reporters, “Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line.”

“They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid,” Trump said at the White House.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett claimed to reporters that Trump had always intended to put the brakes on the wide-ranging tariffs the president announced last week.

“This was his strategy all along,” Bessent said at the White House, where officials, including him, had denied for days that the tariffs would be suspended.

On April 2, Trump had said he would impose a baseline rate of 10% for tariffs on imports from more than 180 countries.

A subset of 90 countries’ imports would be subject to reciprocal tariffs that took effect Wednesday. Those enhanced levies ranged from a low of 11% to a high of 50%.

Financial markets have been in turmoil since Trump announced with plan, with US stock markets suffering four straight days of declines as of Tuesday.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, criticized Trump on Wednesday,, saying the president “is feeling the heat from Democrats and across America about how bad these tariffs are.”

“He is reeling, he is retreating, and that is a good thing,” said Schumer.

“This is government by chaos,” Schumer said, “He keeps changing things from day to day. His advisers are fighting among themselves, calling each other names, and you cannot run a country with such chaos, with such unpredictability, with such lack of understanding of what’s going on in the world and the facts.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, in a tweet, said that he and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent sat with Trump while he wrote out the announcement on Truth Social, “one of the most extraordinary Truth posts of his Presidency.”

“The world is ready to work with President Trump to fix global trade, and China has chosen the opposite direction,” Lutnick wrote. CNBC

Washington hospitals are raising alarm that taxes and insurance payment caps proposed in the state Legislature could jeopardize their finances and undermine patient care.

The House and Senate are both looking at putting new limits on the reimbursement rates that health insurance plans for state workers and public school employees pay. Both chambers’ budget proposals also depend on taxes that could apply to hospitals with larger amounts of revenue.

“There’s going to be less money for patient care,” said Chelene Whiteaker, senior vice president of government affairs at the Washington State Hospital Association.

On the other side of the debate are advocates who contend that hospitals are not paying their fair share in taxes and that care should be more affordable.

“Patients are always the ones who are asked to tighten our belts or skip needed lifesaving care to protect mega hospitals’ bottom lines,” said Sam Hatzenbeler, senior policy associate at the Economic Opportunity Institute. “There is an inherent imbalance that needs to be addressed.”

“Everybody’s being asked to tighten their belts, but the health care industry is not asked ever to tighten theirs,” she added.

But industry officials say hospitals are still recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic and grappling with rising expenses that often outweigh revenue.

According to the hospital association, Washington hospitals lost $1.74 billion in 2023. While the number is high, it was an improvement from the $2.1 billion hospitals lost in 2022.

In 2023, state lawmakers moved to strengthen hospitals’ finances by approving a plan to secure more federal Medicaid dollars.

House Majority Leader Joe Fitzgibbon, D-Seattle, noted that hospitals are one of the largest recipients of state tax dollars through Medicaid, public employee insurance payments and Cascade Care, which is a public health care coverage option available in Washington.

“It’s a tough spot to be in, no question, but the reality is our budget is very squeezed right now and we’re going to have to ask hospitals as well as other beneficiaries of state payments to tighten their belts,” he added.

Hospitals are also facing uncertainty at the federal level as Republicans in Congress contemplate cuts to Medicaid.

Eric Lewis, the hospital association’s chief financial officer, said Medicaid cuts combined with the proposed state policies “could send hospitals back into financial distress.”

Both chambers had proposed bills — Senate Bill 5083 and House Bill 1123 — to limit health insurance reimbursements for hospitals under health plans for state and school employees. Senate Bill 5083 is still in play. It passed the Senate in March with only Democratic support and now awaits a floor vote in the House.

Supporters say that in addition to lowering state spending, the bill will also reduce out-of-pocket costs for patients.

But by capping the amount a health plan pays for services, the hospital association estimates $170 million in revenue would be lost.

Oregon has adopted a comparable policy, while states like Colorado, Nevada and Connecticut are looking to pass similar legislation. Hatzenbeler said that in Oregon, the state saved $100 million in the first two years and that out-of-pocket costs fell by 9.5% for patients.

Meanwhile, the House is looking to increase the state’s business and occupation tax, which would affect businesses making over a certain amount of revenue. Some large hospitals would pay the higher tax. Around 20% of hospitals — along with some other entities affiliated with them, like doctors’ offices and long-term care facilities — would pay around $110 million to $130 million more in taxes annually under the House plan, the hospital association estimates.

The Senate is also contemplating a new payroll tax on large employers, which the hospital association says would raise hospitals’ tax bills by about $160 million a year.

Hospitals say if these proposals passed, they would be under pressure to negotiate with private insurers to offset the financial hit. If those negotiations aren’t successful, then hospitals would be left looking at options like service cuts or layoffs, or allowing wait times to rise for patients.

“We do understand that the Legislature is dealing with a budget deficit, but this level of damage that these proposals are doing is intense,” Whiteaker said.

Larry Delaney, president of the Washington Education Association, the largest union for public school educators in the state, said that with many people already struggling to afford health care, hospitals should lower executive pay before asking patients to shoulder more of the burden.

“Corporate executives cry wolf every time they’re asked to do their part,” Delaney said. “[Senate Bill 5083] gives many Washington workers hope for more affordable care.” Washington State Standard

Since the major reorganization and staff reduction at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was first announced last week, there’s been little explanation so far of why whole departments have been cut. There have also also been no analyses shared of how IT and digital infrastructure systems will be managed across HHS, how their security will be maintained and how their program operations assured after the planned upheaval.

Without transparency about agency plans after the cuts have been made, lawmakers and healthcare stakeholders can only speculate on the effects that staff and contract cuts will have on these IT systems and the people relying on them. It’s often unclear whether or where certain divisions have any acquisition authority, fiscal oversight or strategic continuity.

HHS said by email Monday that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and other leaders focused personnel cuts on “redundant or unnecessary administrative positions,” providing information as background from a deputy press secretary and referring us to a previous statement, an HHS fact sheet and Secretary Kennedy’s social media post on X.

Loss of knowledge at CIO office
We interviewed two individuals this week with inside knowledge of recent cuts at the Office of the Chief Information Officer and the contract lead on a data project that’s still in operation.

“It was a huge shock to everybody,” said a former leader with a CV rich in health technology program leadership across multiple federal agencies who agreed to be interviewed without further identifiers.

“Our entire division of information technology was RIFd,” they said, referring to reductions in force. “That includes our chief information officer, our chief security officer and all our IT folks who manage the IT for the agency.”

At the Office of Management Services, which handles HR and contracts, “they were also all RIFd.”

The former hybrid full-time employee with first-hand knowledge of OCIO operations took a retirement option that keeps their benefits and pay active until Sept. 30, they said.

“There was never a plan, there was never a process – and there was never any input from any government employees on what was going on,” they told Healthcare IT News on Tuesday. “None of the senior heads had any insight into this. None. Nobody.”

According to an HHS deputy press secretary providing background, across the department’s 28 divisions, the department had 41 chief information officers.

But the idea that there are too many CIOs could be an oversimplification when the sheer amount of data and systems for the nation’s second largest federal department are considered, the source said.

“It was very CIO-heavy,” they acknowledged. “Part of that was the specialty of systems, the special knowledge that you needed to have with these systems, the capabilities that you needed to have, and certain development teams you needed to have because they have very unique applications – especially at [National Institutes of Health],” they explained.

“They change frequently because you’re in a development environment. You have to be ready and be very flexible and agile, and you have to have your different types of security paperwork work and government compliance that you need for these systems.”

While some think the department’s CIO designations were “territorial,” the sheer number of systems, and their complexities, account for a certain degree of necessity.

“What HHS has is not uncommon,” they said, adding that there were efforts to consolidate CIO roles.

But with Senior Executive Service staff all gone from the OCIO – through the “Fork in the Road” program and voluntary retirement or by being cut on April 1 – the loss of policy and governance expertise at HHS is near impossible to measure. Laid off from HHS in the purge are some career staff who have amassed 20-30 years of enterprise knowledge.

“We were all the policy, we were all the governance, we were what got back to [Office of Management and Budget],” the source said. “Being the policy arm, you’ve crippled it. Now, we can’t funnel up any of the information that you need for Congress or OMB or funding – and we can’t issue the policies and guidelines down.”

When asked about the current holes in the oversight and operation of the department’s digital infrastructure, this person registered concern for cybersecurity and data reporting.

“Well, we’ve let go of the lead of cybersecurity,” they said.

“You’re impacting development, you’re impacting growth, you’re impacting research systems, you’re impacting facilities systems, and even tracking those high-value assets is an impact because those are mission-critical systems,” they added. “Now we’ve got nobody to report it, too, because they basically got rid of the SES who runs security.”

Some HHS leaders were offered the option of relocating to a new job – far away in Alaska, Montana or New Mexico, according to a National Public Radio report.

One top leader was reportedly offered a transfer to work at Indian Health Services.

“They told him to move to Montana, and he was the one that was leading all the governance and policy,” they said.

La Monte Yarborough, the lead chief information security officer of HHS since January 2022, who previously served as CISO for HHS’ Office of Inspector General, spoke with us last year about the department’s outreach efforts to bolster healthcare organizations’ cybersecurity postures.

We reached out to HHS again on Tuesday, asking for a statement on how SES staff from OCIO fall in the department’s definition of redundant or unnecessary administrative positions, and we will update this story if there is a further response to our questions.

Deleting entire operations
Getting rid of duplicative administrative functions doesn’t cover “entire operational division,” said an HHS IT employee affected by the reduction-in-force cuts. “Even if there’s program staff working, in order to work effectively in the government, you still have contracts,” they said.

“You still need to get government-furnished equipment, [personal identity verification] cards for your contractors. None of that can happen without what they term admin support. It’s especially problematic for our division of IT because they do things like oversee our cloud environment and manage the government websites.

“Right now, you have scenarios where that tractor is working, but they have no technical oversight right now because all of the IT business owners, the government officials, are RIFd,” they added.

HHS had noted on background that there were “dozens of IT departments,” along with 40 procurement departments and eight senior finance officials.

The department said its reorganization from 28 to 15 divisions is necessary and is now detailing the structure of each redefined division to streamline operations, enhance responsiveness to the American people and ultimately improve the nation’s health as part of the “Make America Healthy Again” initiative.

“I don’t think there’s any plan for how that’s going to work right now,” this person said. “In the meantime, you just have everything existing without the oversight or even ability to get things done in the interim.”

According to the SES OCIO insider we spoke to, HHS is looking to centralize development at Centers of Information Technology at NIH.

“That’s really not their mission,” they said. Beyond supporting NIH campuses and functions, they “now have to support all the IT structure and be the central hub,” adding: “They don’t even have the network diagrams or the understanding of all the components.”

Potential cracks could follow cuts
Because big data programs at ASFR Response Coordination & Data Integration Team rely on contractor support, “I think the first immediate crack is there are no contract staff to renew some of these contracts,” said the HHS IT employee said.

That team is supposed to merge with the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation to create a new Office of Strategy.

“I think there’s a lot of work that has to be done to figure out how to keep basic operations moving, both in interim and then also in the future,” they said.

“I think first people are going to have to realize what they’re missing out on,” they added, citing programs such as Head Start, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, government research grant funding, many university partnerships and pencils down on development new treatments.

“The clinical center has been locked down,” they explained. “People were more stressed out there during this time than they were during COVID because you didn’t have the freedom to treat people.”

Without anyone overseeing HHS contracts, whatever IT, cybersecurity and innovation work there could be will likely go to a contracted federal workforce.

“But then again, they just fired all the people who administer the contracts and administer [human resources],” they said.

Ethics bind for rehired employees
After two decades of service, the SES OCIO insider also said they could predict where the agency was heading, “especially when they started shoving us into offices.”

President Donald Trump questioned the productivity of federal employees working from home and ordered a return to in-person work by the end of January. In some cases, the resulting overcrowding at offices and over reliance on connectivity have also reduced employee productivity and hobbled service delivery.

“We had no office space. We had no room. … You had no privacy or confidentiality,” they said. Contractors could overhear “every word I said.”

Terminations came so swiftly that some employees who oversee contracts never saw their RIF letters sent by email just after 5 a.m. on April 1 when they were locked out of networks at midday.

The HHS IT employee, who has been with the agency for more than a decade (speaking on the condition of anonymity because they expect their official termination of benefits and pay to be June 2), has direct hands-on knowledge of data contracts. They described sitting at their desk and suddenly not able to access anything, including their email.

“I think for the time being, considering we weren’t provided with complete and accurate information for our separation, we’re still waiting to get clarity on some of those details before we can really move on and start taking new jobs.”

They also said they may be on a short list to be rehired, as they were assigned to oversee a presently active HHS program.

But with that comes the “ethics prohibitions for federal staff to work as a contractor on things that they were involved in previously,” they noted.

“From what I’m understanding, the contracts, writ large in the government, are at risk, and some are being terminated or cut, reduced. So I think it’s very much uncertain what the contracts will look like,” the OCIO insider said. Healthcare IT News

Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has approved the immediate release of ₹500 crore towards clearing the pending dues of NTR Vaidya Seva Network Hospitals.

After convening an emergency meeting with the Executive Body of the Association of Healthcare Providers of Andhra Pradesh on a short notice late night on April 7, the Chief Minister, it is learnt, has explained to the association members the challenging financial situation of the State.

“However, understanding the crucial role played by hospitals and healthcare providers, he approved the immediate release of ₹500 crore towards clearing the dues,” an official update from the association read.

According to the release, the Chief Minister assured them that the government considers clearing the remaining dues as a top priority. He has also assured the association that a follow-up meeting would be arranged shortly to discuss the pending payments and other concerns in detail.

The meeting followed an interaction with Health Special Chief Secretary M.T. Krishna Babu, who promised to the association that efforts would continue to secure the release of the remaining funds. A meeting with Health Minister Y. Satya Kumar Yadav is also expected with regard to their concerns, including pending dues, future payment scheduling, package revisions, enhancements and other operational issues.

The release from association president, K. Vijay Kumar, reads: “While the amount released is not fully satisfactory considering the huge outstanding dues, respecting the Chief Minister’s assurance and recognising the financial constraints of the State, the ASHA Executive Body has decided to resume cashless services under NTR Vaidya Seva from April 8.”

Dr. Vijay Kumar appealed to all member (empanelled) hospitals to resume services and added that the association will however, continue its efforts to ensure timely payments.

Earlier, all cashless health services, including emergency services, being offered to the public in private network hospitals under Dr. NTR Vaidya Seva in Andhra Pradesh were stopped on Monday, as the hospitals did not receive any assurance from the State government regarding dues, reportedly amounting to around ₹3,200 crore.

At the time of the formation of the TDP-led NDA government in the State last year, there were ₹2,200 crore dues, left behind by the previous government. The total dues now reached ₹3,500 crore. Last week, ₹300 crore was released by the government, according to information from the A.P. Speciality Hospitals’ Association.

The association members had written a letter to the government in March first week stating their decision to discontinue the services from April 7 and requesting that dues be cleared immediately. They wrote that monthly operational expenses were also not paid. “Despite our best efforts to continue serving the BPL population and support the State government’s healthcare initiatives, the financial strain has made it unsustainable for us to function,” the letter read. The Hindu