WASHINGTON, DC- The DC swamp is deep, and despite President Donald Trump's efforts to drain it, there are still plenty of swamp creatures dwelling in our nation’s capital. Now, a Texas congressman is warning that “unelected bureaucrats” at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have secretly revived a Biden-era rule that will have an adverse effect on diabetic patients, Breitbart News reports.
Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) said that officials within the CMS have “betrayed” diabetic patients in the middle of the recent government shutdown by undercutting coverage for limb-saving skin substitutes in clear defiance of President Trump’s directive to stop it.
Hunt told Breitbart in an exclusive interview last week that the Biden administration, in the waning days of President Autopen’s term, tried to push through a CMS regulation targeting skin allographs utilized by diabetic Medicare patients.
However, the Trump administration put the kibosh on that scheme until it was quietly revived during the government shutdown.
In an exclusive statement to Breitbart accompanying the interview, Hunt accused the CMS of putting special interests ahead of vulnerable patients.
“Once again, the Washington bureaucrats at CMS have proven they serve special interests rather than the American people,” Hunt said.
“Late Friday evening, before Halloween, CMS quietly dropped a rule slashing coverage for skin substitute allografts, lifesaving treatments that help diabetic patients avoid amputations and infections. This wasn’t transparency; it was a trick,” Hunt said.
Hunt alleged once again that DC insiders put special interests ahead of the American people.
“This rule is a betrayal of patients, doctors, and common sense,” Hunt said. “It is a perfect example of the bureaucratic swamp doing the bidding of powerful industry groups instead of standing up for those who actually need care. They have overruled the public wishes of President Trump, [Administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] Dr. Oz, and [Secretary of Health & Human Services] RFK on this issue.
“Bureaucrats at CMS should rescind this rule and start listening to President Trump and the people they’re supposed to serve, not the lobbyists whispering in their ear,” Hunt continued.
Hunt, who has announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by fellow Republican John Cornyn, said the CMS decision not only threatens patients but also jobs.
“I’ll also say that this rule, implemented first by Biden, will lower the CMS reimbursement of allografts so low it’ll force the layoffs of thousands of Americans across the country, especially in Texas,” Hunt said.
Hunt then outlined steps taken by the Biden administration that President Trump sought to overturn after he was sworn in on January 20, 2025. Hunt said the former administration tried to push through a CMS rule that would directly harm numerous Americans, particularly diabetic patients, who desperately need skin substitutes to allow for a better way of life.
“On October 31st, on Halloween night, during the government shutdown, mind you, bureaucrats that were actually part of an anti-Trump think tank are the people that implemented Joe Biden’s rule, despite the fact that President Trump put a stay on this rule for one year,” Hunt said. “So before that year was up, we had unelected bureaucrats undermine Dr. Oz and undermine President Trump to basically hurt and maim, at the end of the day, diabetes patients for the future.”
Hunt outlined how crucial the affected treatments are.
“Skin substitutes, and the implementation of skin substitutes for this particular group of people, is something that’s beyond necessary and over the past few months, I’ve actually learned a lot about it,” Hunt told Breitbart.
“We have companies that have been adversely impacted because it’s very expensive to produce these skin substitutes, but it’s also very necessary for these companies to exist, especially particular companies that are operating in good faith of the patient and operating in good faith with the president to make people’s lives easier.
“So again, we have cases of unelected bureaucrats that are undermining our president, and we have got to make sure we put an end to it.’
Hunt said that, as a result of the Halloween rule implemented under the cover of darkness, patients would lose, noting that skin-substitute companies would stop providing treatment to patients under former-President Autopen’s policy.
“This is not President Trump’s policy. And also, what’s going to happen is that President Trump is going to get blamed for this, even though he didn’t implement the policy in the first place. So this is why we’ve got to put a stop to it before patients get upset with this administration when they had nothing to do with it.”
Hunt also noted that Congress had no say in the process, since the rule was finalized during the government shutdown.
Hunt promised that his office would work with House colleagues to reverse the damage, however he is pressing the administration to step in first.
“Yes, my office and a few others, we’re going to try to fix this statutorily. But again, that takes a lot of time,” Hunt explained. “So we want to make sure that the White House is aware of this, the public is aware of this, before we move forward, so we can expedite this process.”
Hunt then explained what the rule does from a technical standpoint. First, he said, it “lowers the reimbursement for skin substitutes,” while making it “economically unfeasible” for those companies to exist. He said many of those companies at risk are based in the Lone Star state, which affects is constituents. Hunt said many of those companies are located in his congressional district.
Conservative commentator Steve Gruber, host of Real America’s Voice, slammed the timing of the rule change. At the same time, Americans were distracted by the goings-on during the shutdown and amid Halloween activities. He said the planned rule would be devastating for care.
Allografts are placenta-based grafts that cover chronic wounds and promote healing, and are used primarily for diabetic patients. Use of such grafts exploded during the COVID era as regulators allowed expanded use through telehealth exemptions in nursing homes and mobile wound clinics.
Spending on allographs via Medicare rose from approximately $10 billion in 2024 to an expected $15 billion this year. However, instead of targeting fraud and abuse, Biden-era regulators implemented “draconian price caps” that could bankrupt much of the industry and leave patients with no options.
The Halloween rule, Gruber explained, reimburses skin substitutes based on the smallest possible graft size—a price point so low that only a small number of America’s roughly 50 skin substitute makers would be able to survive financially. He said that while this would initially push down headline costs, it would do so at the expense of a market dominated by the cheapest, least innovative products.
Biden’s CMS also made sure to direct higher reimbursement rates starting in 2027 to a hand-picked group of companies, ostensibly leading to “state sponsorship to a small number of chosen medical providers and manufacturers,” Gruber alleged. He noted that many companies had relied on longstanding FDA guidance that didn’t require clinical data trials, meaning they will be virtually locked out unless they can satisfy shifting data demands.
Gruber’s report detailed some troubling information, however, what he called “pay-to-play" red flags. One favored company, for example, donated $5 million to a Trump-aligned Super PAC and an additional $2.5 million to a White House ballroom fund. Conversely, senior CMS officials with deep past ties to big pharma and insurance interests pushed the new pricing scheme from inside the agency.
As has become a familiar refrain, the real driver of runaway costs, Gruber noted, is weak oversight and COVID-era billing practices that allowed providers to charge Medicare and Medicaid for skin substitutes with minimal guardrails, not the reimbursement levels themselves. “If CMS truly wants to control costs,” he said, it should focus on fraud and abuse rather than “punishing the patients and innovators who have made modern wound care possible.”
When Real America’s Voice posted Gruber’s segment on X earlier this month, Hunt responded, writing on X that “elected bureaucrats pushing anti-MAHA policy on a Halloween Friday night in the middle of a government shutdown is unacceptable,” in reference to the president and RFK’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. “I will be looking into this,” he promised.
In a March Truth Social post, the president warned diabetic Medicare patients that the Biden-era rule pushed through after the 2024 election would negatively impact primarily veterans and minorities by cutting of access to limb-saving products, noting the possibility of hundreds of thousands of unnecessary amputations and nearly 200,000 avoidable deaths if coverage lapsed.
Trump promised “Help is on the way!” and said that the Biden-era rule would be buried and not enforced, adding that he would not allow a policy that “kills innovation” while increasing emergency room visits, amputations, and deaths.
Breitbart noted that in April, the MASS Coalition, which represents stakeholders in the skin substitute industry, praised the president and the administration for their decision to delay Medicare Local Coverage Determinations restricting access to skin substitute products until January 1, 2026.
They noted the delay would give time to implement a fairer coverage model and payment framework that protects Medicare beneficiaries, particularly in rural areas where patients may have diabetic foot ulcers and venous leg ulcers, while maintaining innovation and without punishing providers who follow the law.
CMS’s stealth Halloween move, however, undermines that pause and implements the reimbursement cuts, which prompted Hunt’s investigation and industry outcry.
Rep. Hunt has made it his life’s mission, as a House member, to protect vulnerable patients and hold the government accountable. Earlier this month, he asked Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins to expand an investigation into illegal aliens fraudulently receiving SNAP benefits, saying that American taxpayers are being “robbed in daylight.”
As a Senatorial candidate, Hunt highlighted the CMS rule as an example of unelected swamp creatures overriding the president’s MAHA agenda, while at the same time endangering diabetics who depend on vital limb-saving care. Hunt is urging Congress and the administration to act before patients and workers are adversely affected.
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