Bottom line: The predicted broad, long‑term deregulation did not materialize. There were some temporary COVID-era flexibilities and one short‑lived diagnostic testing deregulatory move, but these were reversed or time‑limited, and Congress did not pass the kind of sweeping reforms described.

(a) Right‑to‑try and experimental drugs

• Federal right‑to‑try already existed before COVID-19. A federal Right to Try Act was enacted in 2018, allowing certain terminally ill patients, under state law, to access investigational drugs that had completed Phase I trials without FDA approving each individual use. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Post‑2020, there was no major expansion or “new” federalization. After 2020, Congress introduced only narrow Right to Try Clarification Act bills (e.g., to clarify access to Schedule I substances under the existing law), but these bills stalled at the “introduced” stage and did not become law. (congress.gov)
• FDA’s role remains limited but not eliminated, and usage is tiny. FDA’s own guidance emphasizes that under the Right to Try Act its role is mostly to receive annual summaries; FDA does not review or approve individual Right‑to‑Try requests, but the pathway applies only to a narrow set of eligible patients and investigational drugs, and manufacturers are not required to provide drugs. (fda.gov) Available analyses note that very few patients have actually used the Right‑to‑Try pathway, with physicians and sponsors overwhelmingly preferring the existing FDA Expanded Access route. (en.wikipedia.org)

Net effect: there was no new, major, post‑COVID shift that “federalized” right‑to‑try in a dramatically more permissive way or broadly allowed doctors and patients to use experimental drugs “on their own discretion without a federal oversight body” beyond what the 2018 law had already done.

(b) Diagnostics and testing regulation

• COVID emergency measures did temporarily speed test deployment. Starting in early 2020, FDA used Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) to let COVID‑19 tests reach the market much faster than under normal review, a deliberate emergency‑only flexibility. (pew.org) Those EUA‑based flexibilities and special enforcement policies were explicitly tied to the COVID‑19 emergency and have since been wound down as the public health emergency expired in May 2023. (fda.gov)
• A short‑lived deregulatory move on lab‑developed tests (LDTs) was reversed. In August 2020, HHS under the Trump administration announced that FDA could not require premarket review of LDTs—including COVID‑19 tests—without formal notice‑and‑comment rulemaking, effectively rescinding prior informal FDA LDT guidance and allowing labs to use many tests without EUA. This was framed as part of a broader COVID‑related deregulatory push. (ropesgray.com)
  • In November 2021, the Biden administration withdrew that policy and explicitly restored FDA’s traditional approach, again expecting COVID‑19 LDT developers to seek EUAs or other authorization. (ascp.org)
• The medium‑term trajectory has actually been toward more oversight, not less. In 2024 FDA finalized a rule to increase federal oversight of LDTs, phasing out enforcement discretion and requiring FDA review for many new tests. (reuters.com) Although this rule was later vacated by a federal court and is being rescinded in 2025, the action merely blocks an increase in regulation; it does not create a durable, new pro‑innovation deregime beyond the pre‑2020 status quo. (reuters.com)
• Congress did not enact enduring diagnostic deregulation. Bills such as the VITAL Act, which would have shifted LDT oversight firmly away from FDA to CMS (and were explicitly justified in light of COVID‑19 testing), were introduced but never passed. Conversely, the VALID Act—aimed at strengthening and systematizing FDA oversight of diagnostics—came close to passage but ultimately failed in 2022. (congress.gov)

Overall, while emergency EUAs and the brief 2020–2021 HHS LDT policy did temporarily make COVID‑era testing easier to deploy, those changes were either emergency‑only or later reversed. The enduring regulatory picture by 2025 is not one of broadly and permanently “much faster deployment” via relaxed federal oversight.

Verdict

Because:

• No major new post‑2020 federal reform has broadly “federalized” right‑to‑try or removed FDA from oversight of experimental drugs beyond the 2018 law (whose pathway remains narrow and rarely used), and
• The net long‑run trajectory for diagnostics/testing after COVID includes only temporary flexibilities, a brief Trump‑era deregulatory step that was reversed in 2021, and an attempted tightening of oversight in 2024 (even though that rule was vacated),

the prediction that “within a few years after the COVID‑19 crisis” the U.S. would significantly and durably relax federal healthcare regulation along those lines is best classified as wrong.