Here are 5 health topics Trump avoided in his SOTU speech

NPR | By Selena Simmons-Duffin

Published February 25, 2026 at 4:18 PM EST

President Trump talked about drug prices and transgender youth in his State of the Union address Tuesday, but he left out most of his actions on health in the long speech.

President Trump said last month that he wants to "make health care into a Republican issue" heading into the midterm elections. But his remarks at Tuesday's State of the Union skipped over many health-related topics he has previously highlighted, from abortion restrictions to medical breakthroughs.

"It just was not a health care speech by any stretch of the imagination," says Katie Keith, director for the Center for Health Policy and the Law at Georgetown Law.

The White House defended the attention paid to health topics in Trump's remarks. In a statement to NPR, spokesman Kush Desai wrote that Trump "extensively talked about his health care agenda" and added that "health care affordability and the broader MAHA agenda were and remain top priorities for the entire Administration."

Here is a list of some of the health-related topics that Trump did not mention.

1. Kennedy and Make America Healthy Again

In last year's address to Congress, Trump spoke at length about his health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., calling out to "Bobby" multiple times throughout the speech.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his way into the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday.

This year, there was no mention of Kennedy, Make America Healthy Again, autism or vaccines.

"It may signal a pivot away from the high-profile, anti-vaccine activism of RFK," says political scientist Jonathan Oberlander of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kennedy has moved aggressively in the past year to upend federal vaccine policy, including unilaterally changing the childhood vaccine schedule. "Their actions are not terribly popular with the American public about vaccination, and I think it's a liability going into the 2026 midterms," Oberlander says.

Keith points out that Trump also left out mention of Kennedy's efforts that are less politically fraught, including going after food dyes and changing the food pyramid.

2. Cuts to Medicaid and ACA subsidies

Trump was silent on some enormous changes unfolding in health policy, with barely any mention of Medicare or Medicaid and with no mention of the Affordable Care Act fight over enhanced subsidies that caused the government shutdown last fall.

"He didn't talk about the fact that they cut almost a trillion dollars out of the Medicaid program," says Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, making reference to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. "He didn't talk anything about what they're going to do about all the people that are going to lose coverage over the next year or two."

Already, more than a million people have dropped out of the ACA marketplace.

3. Abortion

Keith, of Georgetown, notes that Trump used to talk about abortion restrictions regularly, but not in this speech. "He didn't talk about abortion or a pro-life agenda," she says.

At the same time, Trump featured a guest at the speech who benefited from his direct-to-consumer website when buying medications used for in vitro fertilization (IVF), a reproductive technology that is divisive among Republicans. IVF is opposed by the Catholic Church.

"It did strike me as notable that he didn't mention [abortion] at all, while having this emphasis on their work on IVF and fertility drugs," she adds.

4. Scientific research

In practically every presidential address to Congress, no matter which party is in power, there's a section on scientific innovation.

"That's sort of State of the Union bread and butter," Oberlander says. "Every president can say something — they're committed to science and committed to medical breakthroughs."

Trump has spoken about scientific research in past speeches. He invited cancer patients as guests for past addresses to Congress, and in 2019 he announced an ambitious effort to end the HIV epidemic.

The fact that there was no celebration of scientific research is striking, Oberlander says. "Over the past year, we've had an attack on science from the federal government, enormous reductions in funding for science, and so I think that silence probably speaks volumes."

5. Rural health

Keith says Trump missed an opportunity to highlight a bright spot. "Everybody loves rural health," she says. It's often an area of bipartisan agreement, and the Trump administration recently sent out $10 billion to states.

"You would think they would tout the billions they just put out on rural health," she says. "That jumped out as even a place where they're actually putting in money — he didn't mention that."