How Democrats will use their health oversight powers

• But the early efforts will more likely be directed at making a case for changes to federal Medicaid cuts, showcasing health affordability problems and examining whether federal health agencies are sufficiently funded and staffed.
• "You don't just do oversight to raise hell," said Tim Stretton, director of the Congressional Oversight Initiative at the Project On Government Oversight. "Trying to create some systematic change is arguably more important."

What we're hearing: The House Oversight, Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means committees will be focal points of early activity, along with the Senate health and Finance committees.

• Some law firms already are advising their corporate clients to cooperate with committee staffs and minimize their exposure to possible negative headlines from hearings.

• One prominent player will be the likely new House Oversight chair, Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) — the one who publicly warned Republicans to "lawyer up" on Tuesday after Democrats flipped control of the House.
• The former Long Beach mayor lost his mother, a frontline health worker, and stepfather to COVID and has publicly assailed Kennedy for undermining public health and preventing or delaying needed cures.
• Bernie Sanders' expected return to chair the Senate health committee will give the Vermont independent another chance to harness public outrage on drug prices and spar with Kennedy over his tenure as health secretary.

Zoom in: The power shift in Congress gives Democrats the ability to subpoena witnesses, demand records and hold officials and individuals in contempt if they don't comply.

• Hearings and investigations into problems with Affordable Care Act markets, drug pricing or hospital billing will likely be bipartisan in nature and feature ordinary citizens, to put a face on the problem.
• But Democrats will surely blame Trump administration policies and the conduct of officials for making Americans worse off. Garcia has said corruption within the administration is responsible for affordability woes.
• Along similar lines, likely Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has suggested that President Trump's drug pricing agreements amount to "sweetheart deals" with the pharmaceutical industry that won't help the vast majority of Americans.

What we're watching: Kennedy's tenure as secretary may constitute its own category of oversight and consume committees in both houses.

• Sanders is expected to bring up internal communications that the health committee's Democrats obtained from former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief medical officer Debra Houry.
• Democrats say they show Kennedy changed vaccine recommendations without expert review and directed a federal vaccine advisory panel's actions to undermine access to vaccines.
• Some of the activity took place around the time former CDC director Susan Monarez was ousted over vaccine recommendations and could shed light on whether officials misrepresented the rationale for revising recommendations.

Another group of senators, including Wyden and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), has questioned whether Kennedy personally benefited from a $50 million settlement around Merck's Gardasil human papillomavirus vaccine.

• Kennedy, a prominent vaccine critic, said during his confirmation process that he divested a contingency-fee interest in certain Gardasil lawsuits, but the senators want to know whether his ethics agreement correctly described the arrangement or whether there were conflicts of interest.

On the House side, Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats have focused on activities like the Food and Drug Administration blocking the publication of studies showing COVID and shingles vaccines were safe and what they contend is a trend of suppressing data that doesn't sync with his views.

The other side: "Secretary Kennedy has delivered the most sweeping public health reforms in modern history. Oversight hearings will not distract him from serving the American people. He will continue to put prevention at the center of health care to end the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again," said Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Emily Hilliard.

David Mansdoerfer, a senior health official in the first Trump administration, said he expects DOGE cuts to be a key focus of Democrats' oversight, followed by decision-making around vaccines, research grants and health agency budgets.

• "Outside of some minor procedural issues, I don't see a ton of substantive areas that are anything more than just an oversight hearing YouTube highlight clip," Mansdoerfer wrote on X.

The bottom line: For all the confrontational rhetoric, the administration and Democrats will pick and choose their battles, per a client alert from law firm Morrison Foerster.

• It notes the White House has added legal staff to prepare for oversight, and that the administration may assert executive privilege over certain presidential communications with private parties.