|
Presented by PhRMA: Delivered daily by 10 a.m., Pulse examines the latest news in health care politics and policy. | | | | | |  | | By Alice Miranda Ollstein | Presented by |  | | | With help from Adam Cancryn and David Lim 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.
| | | — The House is planning to vote on a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill today, but a technical issue regarding Senate rules has scrambled Democrats’ plans. — A GAO probe into problems with federal Covid-19 data collection has gotten a cold reception from health agencies. — The U.S. and Europe will soon compete in the “vaccine diplomacy” so far dominated by China, India and Russia. Welcome to Friday Pulse, where Covid is remaking the way we speak along with the way we live. Are you experiencing shot-enfreude watching others get vaccinated? Is your quaranteam helping you get through this? Don’t be a pandejo: send new vocab entries and tips to aollstein@politico.com and to your regular author, acancyrn@politico.com. | | | | A message from PhRMA: As we usher in a new Congress and new administration, we can all agree that people need quality, affordable health coverage that works when they need it. We are focused on solutions that help patients better afford their medicines and protect access to innovation today and in the future. | | | | | | HOUSE TO VOTE ON MASSIVE COVID AID BILL — Democrats’ Covid-19 aid package , which contains funding for distributing vaccines, scaling up testing, reopening schools and beefing up unemployment benefits, is expected to easily pass the House today. But it will face political and procedural hurdles in the Senate. The Senate parliamentarian ruled Thursday night that a provision in the bill to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour can’t pass via budget reconciliation, a procedure Democrats need to use to get the bill through the Senate without Republican votes. The catch-22: The White House has said it will not overrule the parliamentarian, meaning Democrats will almost certainly need to strip the minimum wage hike from the bill if they want it to pass the Senate. But progressives in the House are threatening to tank the bill if it comes back to them without that provision, arguing that ending the pandemic will be impossible if Americans don’t have the economic means to miss work when sick. Senate Democrats are now weighing an alternative plan: an amendment to the bill that would strip tax benefits from companies that don’t raise wages to $15 an hour. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said in a statement Thursday night that today’s House vote will proceed as planned, with the minimum wage language intact. But the clock is ticking in the Senate. Key economic supports will run out in mid-March unless Congress can pass legislation extending them. | | | LABOR GROUP LOBBIES FOR HIGHER COBRA SUBSIDIES — As the Senate parliamentarian also weighs whether to remove private insurance subsidies for laid-off workers from the Covid bill, a union representing more than 300,000 workers in the hospitality sector is pushing lawmakers to make those subsidies more generous. Currently, the bill would cover 85 percent of the health insurance premiums of workers who lost their jobs due to the pandemic through the COBRA program. UNITE Here is lobbying for it to be increased to 100 percent. Insurance plans are so pricey, the union argues, even 15 percent is far more than many unemployed people can afford. “Our workers don’t have an extra $150 to 200 bucks a month — it might as well be 1 million,” the union’s president, D. Taylor, told PULSE. “We’re very frustrated.” Taylor noted that Biden has called for a 100 percent COBRA subsidy on the campaign trail and since assuming office. If the subsidy provision is ultimately left out, he added, “it will be damaging to the workers, and to the Democratic Party, who want to portray themselves as our champions.” REPUBLICANS FLOUNDER WITHOUT A HEALTH CARE MESSAGE — After 10 years of unfulfilled pledges to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act, Republicans don’t have a clear path forward on health care, writes POLITICO’s Joanne Kenen. A new landscape: Trump and his attempts to kill the law are gone, and a GOP-backed challenge to the law at the Supreme Court isn’t likely to succeed. Republican warnings about “Medicare for All” are falling flat when Biden has made it clear that he doesn’t support a single-payer system. And the GOP’s decades-long quest to shrink the health care safety net is politically perilous during a pandemic. That’s left the GOP in the health policy wilderness — a dynamic on full display in HHS secretary nominee Xavier Becerra’s confirmation hearings, when Republicans largely avoided talking about either the ACA or reforms to Medicare and Medicaid. | | | | NEW - “THE RECAST” NEWSLETTER: Power dynamics are changing. “Influence” is changing. More people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that all politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. “The Recast” is our new twice-weekly newsletter that breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics, policy and power in America. And POLITICO is recasting how we report on this crucial intersection, bringing you fresh insights, scoops, dispatches from across the country and new voices that challenge “business as usual.” Don’t miss out on this important new newsletter, SUBSCRIBE NOW. Thank you to our sponsor, Intel. | | | | | | | | GAO PROBE OF FEDS’ COVID DATA COLLECTION MEETS RESISTANCE — The Government Accountability Office is probing the federal government’s disparate and confusing methods of collecting, analyzing and publishing vital Covid-19 data, but health agencies aren’t eager to follow its recommendations, POLITICO’s Erin Banco reports. The GAO is likely to recommend that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other major health agencies centralize their efforts to track the virus and its impact on Americans, Erin writes. This is worrying officials at HHS and CDC, who warn the shakeup could reduce the quality of the data by taking statistics and data experts off their normal beats and placing them on different teams. But GAO sees the lack of coordination between health agencies as a major problem, and has flagged that their data — on everything from how the pandemic is affecting life expectancy to how new variants are spreading throughout the country — is incomplete and often inaccurate. The report is due in mid-March. PFIZER COVID VAX CAN BE STORED AT HIGHER TEMPS — FDA announced late Thursday it will allow Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine to be transported and stored at temperatures commonly found in pharmaceutical freezers, a change that could ease and speed up distribution, particularly in rural and lower income areas, POLITICO’s David Lim reports. “The alternative temperature for transportation and storage will help ease the burden of procuring ultra-low cold storage equipment for vaccination sites and should help to get vaccine to more sites,” FDA vaccine regulator Peter Marks said in a statement. THE GLOBAL VACCINE WARS HAVE BEGUN — Western countries have so far pursued “America First” and “Europe First” Covid vaccination plans, while other leading nations have offered to share their vaccines in return for commercial and political gain, POLITICO’s Ryan Heath writes. India has a 49-country vaccine “friendship program,” while China is shipping 1 million doses a week across Africa and has vaccinated 7 million Turks. Argentina, unable to secure contracts with Western vaccine producers, was just one of 50 countries that turned to Russia for help. But Europe and the U.S. could catch up. Several Western vaccines pre-ordered by dozens of governments are now close to authorization, including vaccines from Johnson & Johnson, Novavax and GSK-CureVac. | | | CONSUMER GROUPS PUSH TO END THE DRUG REBATE CAP — More than two dozen consumer advocacy organizations are backing a Medicaid provision that would allow states to penalize drug companies for big price hikes, arguing it would lower drug costs and save billions of dollars. In a letter to congressional leaders, the group, led by Public Citizen, endorsed its inclusion in the Senate version of the Covid aid bill. Still, they cautioned that the provision only amounts to a “good first step” — urging lawmakers to pursue a broader crackdown on drug pricing that would permit Medicare to directly negotiate the cost of medicines. | | | |   | | | | | | SEEMA VERMA, SPEAKER FOR HIRE — The former Trump administration Medicare and Medicaid chief is hitting the speaking circuit, signing on with Worldwide Speakers Group. Verma, the driving force behind the contentious Medicaid work requirement rules the Biden administration has already begun unwinding, is listed as available for speeches on a range of topics including “The U.S. Federal COVID Response: Lessons Learned,” “Women in Leadership” and “Healthcare Accomplishments” during her tenure atop the agency. Verma told PULSE she’s received various speaking inquiries both inside and outside the health care industry, but has yet to settle on a fee. She’s one of several former Trump officials to seek out post-government speaking gigs, including former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, and former CDC Director Robert Redfield. KATIE MCKEOGH HEADS TO THE HILL — Former HHS spokesperson Katie McKeogh is now the press secretary for Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.).
| | | | TUNE IN TO GLOBAL TRANSLATIONS: Our Global Translations podcast, presented by Citi, examines the long-term costs of the short-term thinking that drives many political and business decisions. The world has long been beset by big problems that defy political boundaries, and these issues have exploded over the past year amid a global pandemic. This podcast helps to identify and understand the impediments to smart policymaking. Subscribe and start listening today. | | | | |
| | | Think it’s hard to get a vaccine appointment on your city’s buggy websites? It’s far, far worse for blind people and others with disabilities, report Lauren Weber and Hannah Recht for Kaiser Health News. Joy is hard to find these days, but the vaccine is bringing it to millions. Maura Judkis reports for the Washington Post on the happiness and relief experienced by both those giving and receiving the shots. A massive new Covid-19 database funded by Google launched this week, and could help scientists track the spread of new variants of the virus, Amy Maxmen reports for Nature Magazine. Researchers fear that growing optimism about vaccines and falling case counts will convince Americans to let down their guard as new Covid variants loom, Apoorva Mandavilli reports for the New York Times. | | | | A message from PhRMA: Despite our divisions, there are many things on which Americans agree. The biopharmaceutical industry is committed to working with Congress and the new administration to:
• End the pandemic. The industry remains committed to getting COVID-19 treatments and vaccines to patients, and we are working closely with governments, insurers and others to make sure they are accessible and affordable.
• Make health care better and more affordable. People want quality, affordable health coverage that works when they need it. We support solutions that will help patients better afford their medicines and protect access to innovation today and in the future.
• Build a more just, equitable society. We must address systemic racism, as has been made clear by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others and the outsized impact of the pandemic on Black and Brown communities. We remain committed to this important issue on behalf of our communities, the patients we serve and our employees. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
