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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 Sarah Owermohle and Krista Mahr | | | With help from Ben Leonard 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.
| | | —Roughly 1 million people in the U.S. have died from the coronavirus. — Democrats could give Title 42 a reversal vote to get Covid-19 relief funds advanced. — Abortion providers want President Joe Biden to visit their clinics, highlighting what will happen if the Supreme Court overturns Roe. WELCOME TO WEDNESDAY PULSE — An interesting data point: Daily Google searches for vasectomies are up 250 percent, according to an analysis by Innerbody Research. Send news and tips to sowermohle@politico.com and kmahr@politico.com.
| | | | A message from PhRMA: New data show that 35% of insured Americans spent more on out-of-pocket costs than they could afford in the past month. Read more about how insurance is leaving patients exposed to deepening inequities. | | | | | | A TRAGIC MILESTONE — In the 27 months since San Jose’s Patricia Dowd became the U.S.’ first-known pandemic death, nearly 1 million people around the country have succumbed to the coronavirus. The toll is based on death certificates, but most experts say it’s an undercount given how many diagnoses were likely missed in the spring of 2020, when the virus was poorly understood and testing was scarce, write POLITICO’s Dan Goldberg and Annette Choi.
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One million deaths is as if the entire population of Delaware, Montana or Rhode Island, or all of Austin, vanished in just two years' time. | POLITICO Data & Graphics | One million deaths once seemed a doomsday prediction. Anthony Fauci in March 2020 forecast a worst-case scenario between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths at the time, a figure that drew ridicule in the Trump administration for being overly pessimistic. “It’s tragic. I’m pained by it, as a physician, a scientist and a public health official, to see that this country with all of our resources is going to wind up with more than a million deaths from this outbreak,” Fauci told POLITICO on Tuesday. “And many of those deaths could have been avoidable.”
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POLITICO Data & Graphics | Covid-19 is a story of waves. The virus was the third-leading cause of death in 2020, and while official stats aren’t out yet, it will likely be so in 2021, Dan and Anette write. January, 2021 became the deadliest month on record with 3,300 people dying a day. The next winter brought Omicron and more than 2,500 deaths a day. The pandemic is far from over. The Biden administration earlier this month warned that the country could see as many as 100 million new infections this fall and winter and thousands more deaths as Omicron subvariants circulate. SENATORS EDGE TOWARD DEAL ON COVID AND BORDER MOVES — Two Senate Democratic leaders said Tuesday they’re willing to give Republicans a vote on reversing President Joe Biden’s move to end pandemic-era border restrictions, provided that the GOP agrees to move a stalled $10 billion coronavirus aid deal. It’s a notable shift in Democratic strategy, weeks after the Covid aid package was sidetracked amid Republican demands for an amendment vote on Biden’s decision to lift the public health–related border restrictions, write POLITICO’s Marianne LeVine and Burgess Everett. But now that lawmakers dropped Covid relief from a $40 billion Ukraine aid package, Democrats are increasingly concerned about another vehicle for new funding. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the caucus’ No. 2 and No. 3 leaders, said in interviews that the GOP’s desired vote is worth taking to shake loose the stalled Covid bill. The decision is ultimately up to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. He’s called the GOP’s push “extraneous” and supports the Biden administration’s decision to end the deportation policy known as Title 42, following a finding by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ABORTION PROVIDERS URGE BIDEN TO VISIT — Abortion providers are urging Biden to visit states where abortion rights are likely to be reversed if Roe v. Wade is overturned, POLITICO’s Laura Barrón-López and Alice Miranda Ollstein report. Though providers say they haven’t formally requested the president to come see their clinics, they argue such a visit would inform how the White House responds to the final high court ruling and be a savvy use of the bully pulpit to draw attention to an issue Democrats hope will motivate voters this fall. A White House official said the administration’s engagement with abortion providers, advocacy groups and the public around the pending Roe decision will intensify but didn’t address whether the president or his team plan to travel to any affected state.
| | | | A message from PhRMA:   | | | | | | WHITE HOUSE HOLDS GLOBAL WORKFORCE MEETING — White House officials meet virtually this morning with leaders of several countries and international groups to call for additional support for the global health workforce around the world. The meeting comes just before the global Covid-19 summit and includes some of the same participants, our Daniel Payne reports. Today’s meeting is about plans to combat the global health care worker shortage, a senior administration official told Daniel. The Biden administration isn’t asking for financial commitments for the worker initiative. But the meeting comes amid the White House’s $1 billion request in the 2023 budget proposal to bolster the global health workforce, primarily through the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department. NEW REPORT LAYS OUT EMERGENT’S MANUFACTURING CHALLENGES — The manufacturing and quality issues that led to the Biden administration canceling a $628 million Covid-19 vaccine contract with Emergent BioSolutions were more extensive than previously understood, according to an investigation by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis and the Committee on Oversight and Reform. Nearly 400 million AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines were destroyed as a result of the lack of standards at Emergent’s Bayview facility in Baltimore, the committees found. The report also said Emergent removed “hold” tags from batches with potential quality issues during a federal inspection in February 2021 following months of internal communication about the facility’s substantial problems. Emergent refuted the findings Tuesday. Spokesperson Matt Hartwig disputed that 390 million doses had to be discarded because the substance hadn’t yet been parceled out into doses at that manufacturing stage. Hartwig also said the tag-removal incident described in the report “was brought to our attention and investigated,” adding “the facts did not substantiate the allegations. We have never knowingly misled or withheld information from the FDA.”
| | | | DON'T MISS DIGITAL FUTURE DAILY - OUR TECHNOLOGY NEWSLETTER, RE-IMAGINED: Technology is always evolving, and our new tech-obsessed newsletter is too! Digital Future Daily unlocks the most important stories determining the future of technology, from Washington to Silicon Valley and innovation power centers around the world. Readers get an in-depth look at how the next wave of tech will reshape civic and political life, including activism, fundraising, lobbying and legislating. Go inside the minds of the biggest tech players, policymakers and regulators to learn how their decisions affect our lives. Don't miss out, subscribe today. | | | | | | | | HHS REMOVES CONTACT DETAILS FROM STAFF DIRECTORY — The agency quietly removed the email addresses and phone numbers of thousands of employees from its public directory this week, reversing course on a longstanding resource to reach staff from various agencies. Spokesperson Sarah Lovenheim told POLITICO that the move — first noted by blogger Bruce Quinn — arose from security concerns. “Out of an abundance of caution, security officials decided to remove certain personal and location-related information on the employee directory due to heightened security concerns amid the pandemic.” Lovenheim didn’t respond to questions about whether specific security incidents prompted the decision.
| | | FIRST IN PULSE — The Health Innovation Alliance has a plan to bolster health data sharing , which recommends that government and industry should help patients get a single accessible health record and shield HIPAA-covered entities from penalties for sharing information. The lobbying group said that government agencies and the health care industry should facilitate patient access to information from electronic records systems and import it “into a single, accessible, longitudinal record that can be stored, shared, searched, and ingested by digital tools to make the information useful.” The group called on Congress to pass legislation that would make HIPAA-covered entities not liable for penalties if they share health data upon a patient’s request. Providers are often nervous about sharing data with third-party apps, said Brett Meeks, senior policy adviser for the Alliance. This would ease that fear.
| | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | | GUN HOMICIDES HIT HIGH DURING PANDEMIC — Gun homicides jumped 35 percent between 2019 and 2020 as Americans grappled with the chaos of life during a pandemic, Krista reports . Guns were involved in 80 percent of the nation’s homicides, the highest rate since 1994, according to CDC data released Tuesday. Who was impacted: Young people, boys and men, Black individuals and people living in areas with high poverty rates were impacted the most by the steep rise, widening a disparity already seen in previous years. The firearm homicide rate among Black males ages 10 to 24 was 21.6 times higher than their white counterparts in 2020, up from 20.6 in 2019. Why it’s happening: The CDC didn’t investigate the reason for the increase. But one senior official suggested on a call with reporters Tuesday that factors associated with the pandemic may have played a role, including “changes and disruptions to services and education, social isolation, economic stressors such as job loss and housing instability.”
| | | Bill Gates announced he tested positive for Covid-19. The Microsoft architect and philanthropist said on Twitter he’s experiencing mild symptoms and is vaccinated and boosted.
| | | POLITICO’S Megan Wilson’s dive inside the battle on Capitol Hill between specialty paper mills’ efforts to keep hard copies of prescriptions and drug companies’ push to move them online. We’re catching up on The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize–winning series on environmental health and justice. Read it here. Pediatricians are on the frontlines of the mental health crisis in teenagers, The New York Times’ Matt Richtel reports.
| | | | A message from PhRMA: According to data just released, insurance isn't working for too many patients. Despite paying premiums each month, Americans continue to face insurmountable affordability and access issues:
- Roughly half (49%) of insured patients who take prescription medicines report facing insurance barriers like prior authorization and “fail first” when trying to access their medicines.
- More than a third (35%) of insured Americans report spending more in out-of-pocket costs in the last 30 days than they could afford.
Americans need better coverage that puts patients first. Read more in PhRMA’s latest Patient Experience Survey. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
