Healthcare and small business advocates crossed Wisconsin Wednesday to call on the federal government to reverse policies they said were thwarting healthcare access and support Democrats running for Congress and other offices in the Nov. 3 election.

Protect Our Care is sending a bus across Wisconsin and other Midwestern states to call attention to the importance of healthcare in this year’s election, said Joe Zepecki, Wisconsin director for the advocacy group. Main Street Action, representing small business owners, has joined the campaign. In Wisconsin it includes stops to highlight Democratic congressional candidates in the 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts.

At a stop in Madison, several speakers criticized Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor, particularly for his vote in favor of the 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that included cuts estimated at nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years while making tax cuts that heavily favored the wealthy.

While that law was enacted, Congressional Republicans several times rejected attempts to extend enhanced subsidies for health insurance purchased at the federal healthcare marketplace under the Affordable Care Act.

Zepecki said advocates have three demands: restoring the enhanced ACA premium subsidies to lower the cost of health insurance; reversing the Medicaid cuts in the 2025 law; and passing legislation that would expand the authorization for Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies.

Kyle LaFond, the owner of a manufacturing company and a member of Main Street Alliance, said his ACA coverage now costs him $2,600 more per year. But for other families who include people with disabilities or who are otherwise vulnerable, “these costs are devastating,” LaFond said.

“We can’t be complacent,” he said. “None of this should be considered normal. Healthcare is a fundamental human right.”

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, who is running for reelection this year, recalled that when he ran for office in 2018, Wisconsin was among a group of states that joined a lawsuit to overturn the 2011 Affordable Care Act. Kaul’s predecessor as attorney general, Republican Brad Schimel, had signed on to the lawsuit on behalf of the state.

“One of the issues in our race was whether Wisconsin should be part of that suit,” said Kaul, a Democrat. After Kaul was elected, he withdrew Wisconsin from the lawsuit, which subsequently lost at the U.S. Supreme Court.

While that attack on affordable health insurance coverage failed, in the current administration of President Donald Trump “access to affordable healthcare remains under attack,” Kaul said.

The 2025 bill that cut Medicaid is just one example, he said. “But beyond that, the Trump administration has acted on its own without Congress to unilaterally make cuts designed to undermine access to affordable health insurance coverage or to make access to quality care less available,” Kaul added — citing the administration’s retreat from an evidence-based childhood vaccine schedule, cuts in funding for school mental health and public health and cuts to medical research.

Joining attorneys general in other states — all Democrats — Wisconsin has sued to block such actions and have won “significant victories,” he said, including the preservation of $200 million in public health funding for Wisconsin that had been threatened.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday establishing a Women’s Health Division within the National Institutes of Health. 

The new division is set to work with the agency’s existing Office of Research on Women’s Health, which was established in 1990 and “has served as the focal point for women’s health research at NIH,” according to the NIH website.

The White House said first lady Melania Trump was involved in formulating and leading work on the order, which also creates a White House Women’s Health Task Force that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles will co-chair. 

The order is meant to “strengthen research, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care for women and girls throughout every stage of life,” according to a White House fact sheet. 

The order says it “is the policy of the United States to prioritize translating research into improved clinical care that benefits women and girls through a comprehensive approach to women’s health that recognizes evolving health needs from infancy, childhood, and adolescence through pregnancy, midlife, menopause, and aging, and supports timely, stage-specific prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and care.” 

The order does not mention research into contraception or reproductive rights. The Food and Drug Administration is conducting an ongoing safety review into abortion medication. 

Reshaping NIH

The initiative came just two weeks ahead of the midterms, as the GOP vies to maintain its razor-thin majority in the U.S. House and Senate. The order also followed many other announcements on new projects by the administration in the days leading up to Election Day on Nov. 3. 

The Trump administration has sought to reshape NIH to align with its political priorities and has sought to cut its funding, prompting pushback from Congress. NIH, the country’s largest research agency, is housed under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

“Today, we’re taking historic action to promote women’s health through all phases of life,” Trump said during a signing ceremony at the White House Rose Garden alongside the first lady. 

“Despite amazing advances in medical science, many diseases and conditions that disproportionately affect women remain chronically understudied,” the president added. 

The first lady touted the effort as establishing a “new ambition, transforming hardship and pain into scientific discovery, effective treatments and lasting cures.” 

Kennedy and Wiles were in attendance Monday, along with Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Erica Schwartz and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, among others. 

Trump said the order will promote “new research and really go after the understudied diseases affecting women and promote innovative technologies to diagnose conditions sooner and improve treatment using the best available science, and we’ve got that.” 

The task force — which will hold its first meeting Monday — will “mobilize the entire federal government to coordinate action focused on improving women’s health,” Trump said. 

Revoking Biden actions

Trump in his order also revoked a 2024 executive order by then-President Joe Biden that sought to improve women’s health research as well as a 2023 memorandum that had established the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research.

The National Women’s Law Center criticized the administration for rolling out the order amid “major attacks on women’s health,” pointing to the GOP’s mega tax and spending cut law signed by Trump in 2025, which includes sweeping Medicaid cuts that axe roughly $1 trillion in program spending over 10 years. 

“Women’s health has long been ignored as a federal priority, and while we agree that steps must be taken to close disparities in women’s health care, it’s hard not to point out the blatant hypocrisy of this unfunded order coming from an administration that is actively decimating health care access for women,” Dorianne Mason, senior director of health equity and contraceptive access at NWLC, said in a statement Monday.