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Presented by PhRMA: Delivered daily by 10 a.m., Pulse examines the latest news in health care politics and policy. | | | | | |  | | By Adam Cancryn and Sarah Owermohle | | | With Dan Goldberg and Daniel Lippman Editor’s Note: POLITICO Pulse is a free version of POLITICO Pro Health Care's morning newsletter, which is delivered to our s each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day’s biggest stories. Act on the news with POLITICO Pro.
| | | — Despite Biden administration plans to make unvaccinated workers pay for their Covid-19 tests, employers could end up saddled with the bill. — The White House is encouraging businesses to press ahead with inoculating their employees, even after a court temporarily halted its workplace vaccine requirement. — The U.S. is struggling to combat Covid-19 misinformation that threatens to prolong the pandemic. WELCOME TO TUESDAY PULSE — where last week it was light out. This week, your Twitter timeline has no doubt informed you, it’s dark. Here’s how to cope. Send tips to acancryn@politico.com and sowermohle@politico.com. | | | | A message from PhRMA: At a time when the science has never been more promising, the Democrats’ latest drug pricing scheme puts patients in harm’s way by threatening future treatments and cures. Learn more. | | | | | | THE COST QUESTION BEHIND BIDEN’S VAX RULE — President Joe Biden’s new workplace vaccine rules aim to make unvaccinated workers bear the cost of their weekly Covid-19 tests. But that stick could end up hitting employers the hardest, POLITICO’s Rebecca Rainey and David Lim report. Business groups and labor-law experts say existing laws are likely to require companies to cover the cost of testing for workers who claim religious or disability exemptions from the vaccine requirement — a bill that could reach hundreds of dollars per person each month. The prospect of covering those expenses could further burden employers already facing staffing issues, adding a wrinkle to the political and legal fight the Biden administration is already waging on behalf of the vaccine-or-test mandate. Republicans have rushed to cast the requirements as anti-business, and insurers could further complicate the situation by refusing to cover any testing costs — leaving employees and their employers to hash out who’s responsible for what expenses. Biden, meanwhile, is even facing blowback from worker advocates who generally support the plan — but don’t like the requirement that unvaccinated people pay for their own masks or possibly their tests. The administration estimates nearly 90 percent of workers covered by the requirements will be vaccinated by the time they take effect on Jan. 4. But that would still leave about 9 million holdouts. The rules could also put pressure on the nation’s testing system. At-home tests aren’t allowed under most circumstances to satisfy the requirement, meaning a jump in demand will likely be placed on the clinical labs that process the tests. That could lead to backlogs and delays — making the requirement an extra inconvenience for workers the government is hoping to nudge toward getting vaccinated while doing little to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
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WH TO BUSINESSES: IMPLEMENT THAT VAX REQUIREMENT — The White House is urging businesses affected by the vaccine-or-test rule to push ahead on inoculating their workers, even after a federal court temporarily halted the regulations.
“People should not wait,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday. “They should continue to move forward and make sure they’re getting their workplace vaccinated.” Jean-Pierre also voiced confidence that the administration would prevail in a legal battle over the requirements, pointing in particular to authorities that the Department of Labor has to keep workers safe from “grave danger.” “This past year, more than 750,000 people have died of Covid,” she said. “If that’s not a ‘grave danger,’ I don’t know what else is.” The Justice Department also filed its official defense in court. Its response to the temporary halt maintains that the plaintiffs failed to show their “claimed injuries outweigh the harm” of blocking regulations that would prevent hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 infections. The administration also argued that the states, businesses and religious groups challenging the rules don’t yet have grounds for a lawsuit, since the vaccine-or-test requirement won’t have an impact until it actually goes into effect. | | | THE U.S. IS INUNDATED WITH COVID MISINFO — Americans are getting hit with a daily tsunami of misinformation about Covid-19 and the vaccines, making it increasingly difficult for the administration to win trust and hampering efforts to end the pandemic. That’s the takeaway from the Kaiser Family Foundation’s latest Vaccine Monitor survey, which found that 78 percent of adults have heard at least one of eight false statements about the virus — and either believe it to be true or are unsure what to think. A smaller percentage — 32 percent — believe or are uncertain about at least four falsehoods. Those lies include the misbeliefs that the government is exaggerating the number of Covid-19 deaths, pregnant women shouldn’t get the vaccine or that the vaccines contain a microchip. That belief in Covid-19 misinfo correlates to both vaccination status and partisanship, with 64 percent of the unvaccinated believing four or more false statements (versus just 19 percent of those vaccinated). Republicans were more likely to fall for misinformation than Democrats, with 94 percent of GOP-identifying adults saying they believe or are unsure about at least one false statement. That compares to 62 percent of Democrats. Getting the right info to people is proving difficult. Americans have little trust in any news media source, compounding the problems in getting people the facts about Covid-19. Local TV news is the most-trusted source — and even then, fewer than 50 percent say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in it. The faith in news that exists breaks down along predictably partisan lines. Most Democrats have a great deal or fair amount of trust in network news, local news and brands like CNN and MSNBC — but very little in Fox News or Newsmax. Republicans don’t overwhelmingly trust any source, with Fox News leading the pack at 49 percent. The statistics are even worse among the unvaccinated, with fewer than one in four trusting any source except for Fox News (30 percent). One last (unsurprising) stat: Those who believe the greatest number of false statements tended to say they trusted Newsmax and One America News for their information. Fox News was close behind in third. | | | SENATE STARES DOWN A HOLIDAY PILE-UP — The Senate has at least four major goals to accomplish this year and vanishingly little time to get them done — including finding a compromise on Biden’s $1.75 trillion spending bill that can get through the narrowly divided chamber, POLITICO’s Burgess Everett and Marianne LeVine report. Senators are only scheduled to be in session for three weeks before the end of 2021, adding to the odds that they could end up facing several deadlines all at once. In addition to the social spending package, Congress needs to fund the government past Dec. 3, pass a major defense policy bill and find a way to lift the debt ceiling. The reality: If there’s one piece of business that slips into 2022, it’ll likely be the spending package. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is already in favor of slowing down the negotiations, and it could take several days for the Senate to resolve each of their remaining agenda items. “We will go to the reconciliation bill sometime” after finishing the defense bill, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mon.) said. “But I think it’s going to take a while.” | | | SD GROUP PETITIONS TO PUT MEDICAID EXPANSION ON THE BALLOT — Advocacy organization South Dakotans Decide Healthcare submitted signatures Monday to put Medicaid expansion on the state’s November 2022 ballot, POLITICO’s Dan Goldberg reports. South Dakota is one of the dozen states that has not expanded the insurance program under the Affordable Care Act. If approved, nearly 43,000 residents would be newly eligible for Medicaid. Six states have voted to expand Medicaid since 2017, but South Dakota could be more challenging. The legislatures is asking voters to approve a rule requiring amendments like Medicaid expansion to receive more than 60 percent of the vote to pass — a question that will be presented to voters during a June primary election when turnout is expected to be lower. A second group had also planned to petition for expansion on Monday. But Dakotans for Health decided to wait until May to avoid the possibility of having two nearly identical constitutional amendments on the November 2022 ballot. | | | | A message from PhRMA:   | | | | | | Katherine Tyner is a senior policy adviser at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. She was previously the acting associate director for science at the Office of Pharmaceutical Quality in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, and a White House leadership development fellow. The National Pharmaceutical Council has elected Steven Romano as the chair of its board for 2021 and 2022. Romano is executive vice president and chief scientific officer at Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals.
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| | | Even as drug overdoses hit record highs, pharmacists have avoided stocking gold-standard medications like buprenorphine for fear the Drug Enforcement Agency will accuse it of contributing to the opioid epidemic, Kaiser Health News’ Aneri Pattani reports. A drug industry campaign promoting an aggressive diabetes treatment ended up fueling an epidemic of hypoglycemia among the patients it was purporting to help, Reuters’ Robin Respaut, Chad Terhune and Deborah J. Nelson report. Biogen is investigating the death of a 75-year-old patient potentially linked to its controversial new Alzheimer’s drug, Endpoints News’ Zachary Brennan reports. | | | | A message from PhRMA: The Democrats’ hyper-partisan drug pricing plan is a detriment to patients and the future of medical research.
The plan guts the very incentives necessary to encourage investment in further research and development after medicines are approved, giving the government the power to pick winners and losers for lifesaving medicines.
While some would have you believe this is “negotiation,” it isn’t. It’s government price setting that does little to address patient affordability and will decimate the competitive ecosystem in the United States that has brought hope to so many Americans in the form of new medical advances where before there were none. No matter what they call it, this plan will result in the same outcome: negative consequences for the patients with the most need. Read more. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
