NEW HEALTH AGENCY ENSNARED IN POLITICAL DIVIDES — Emerging resistance to Biden’s idea of a new multibillion-dollar agency to tackle some of health care’s biggest challenges reflects a widening gap over what used to be a cross-party island in a divisive sea — funding medical research. What’s happened: An already adversarial tone among many Republicans critical of top federal scientists like Anthony Fauci was amplified by the sudden departure of Biden’s close science adviser, Eric Lander, a champion of the president’s research initiative. Democrats, meanwhile, are scrambling to sort their own key questions about a new agency. Biden said last week that former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins would serve as a temporary science adviser — a move that might complicate efforts to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health because he, like Lander, is a strong proponent of housing the agency in NIH. An increasing number of lawmakers, Democrats included, are against that idea. Why this matters: There rarely has been heated disagreement about increasing the NIH’s budget or backing new research into conditions like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease that impact scores of Americans. But the GOP anxiety over ARPA-H reflects a larger culture battle that could come into sharp focus with midterms in November, jeopardizing slim Democratic congressional majorities. Republicans have made it clear that if they retake the House, they’ll launch investigations into NIH funding of infectious disease studies and its handling of the pandemic. On the Senate side, two of the party’s most stalwart supporters of medical research and pandemic preparedness — North Carolina’s Richard Burr and Missouri’s Roy Blunt — are retiring. Sen. Rand Paul(R-Ky.), who has sparred with Fauci and questioned NIH research, stands a chance of helming the health committee in a GOP-controlled Senate. “Every American agrees we must lead the world in scientific research,” a Republican leadership aide close to ARPA-H discussions said. “But based on member conversations I’ve witnessed, the majority of Republicans in the House worry ARPA-H will become another slush fund for Fauci-minded scientists — unchecked scientists who will use more government money just to curate their public image rather than get results.” RURAL HOSPITALS NAVIGATE VAX MANDATE — Rural hospital officials who expected Covid vaccine mandates to cause a staffing crisis are facing a pleasant surprise: Religious exemptions and education efforts for the hesitant are keeping almost all health care workers on the job. The doomsday predictions from some Republican governors and lawmakers, who warned the mandate would lead to a workforce crisis and limit care, particularly in rural areas, haven’t been borne out. Nearly two dozen rural hospital officials and state hospital association leaders told POLITICO’s Megan Messerly they’ve lost just a fraction of their staff to the federal immunization requirement, which mandated that health care workers in every state except Texas received at least one shot of the vaccine by last week. Not that things are great. Hospital officials in Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming said they’re still facing significant staffing shortages, the result of longstanding recruitment and retention challenges exacerbated by pandemic-era burnout. Over the last two years, those employees who remain have been subject to increased threats and acts of violence. And many hospitals are filling the open jobs with traveling hospital workers who stress their budgets. Ballad Health, a health system serving parts of Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina, for example, is paying staffing agencies a rate that comes out to $125 million a year for 400 contract nurses. And the battle isn’t over. Several rural hospital executives said they believe all hospitals should be held to the same standard and waiving the vaccine mandate for their locales — as suggested by Virginia and West Virginia’s governors — would have done more harm than good. “These attempted interventions by these two governors appear to be purely political and clearly put patients at risk,” said Mark Nantz, Valley Health System’s CEO. A bifurcation in enforcement, rural hospital leaders said, could exacerbate staffing challenges by driving unvaccinated staff from urban to rural facilities. HOSPITAL COVID CONTRACTIONS MOUNTED LAST MONTH — More than 3,000 hospitalized patients each week in January had caught Covid sometime during their stay, more than any point of the pandemic, according to U.S. government data analyzed by POLITICO’s Rachael Levy and Allan James Vestal. A record 4,734 patients were recorded as being infected with Covid-19 in-house on Jan.19. The Omicron variant propelled those record-high rates despite the widespread availability of vaccines and N95 masks. Thirty-eight out of the 40 worst days recorded occurred in 2022, according to POLITICO’s analysis, which calculated data through Feb. 14. (For comparison: In January 2021, hospitals reported around 2,000 patients each week on average had contracted Covid during their stay). Hospital-acquired infections have long been one of the most serious risks for patients, especially those who stay for weeks or months. But the recent data show that more than two years into the pandemic, hospitals still have a long way to go to prevent transmission within their walls, Rachael and Allan write. What’s next: U.S. health officials are considering changing how hospitals report the number of patients who contract Covid-19 in-house, POLITICO has reported, a change that could set off concerns from hospital lobbyists and associations that say such transmission is rare.
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