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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 | | | 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. WELCOME TO THURSDAY PULSE — After a storm of questions about reports of a 10-year-old rape victim seeking an abortion, the Columbus Dispatch reported Wednesday that a local man had been charged for her rape. Send news and tips to sowermohle@politico.com and kmahr@politico.com.
| | | | A message from PhRMA: Inflation is causing pain for people across the country. As policymakers search for ways to help provide relief, some are erroneously tying inflation to prescription medicines. To make matters worse, this false premise is being used to build support for harmful policies. It’s important to make medicines affordable for patients, but let’s get a few facts straight – starting with the fact that prescription drugs are not fueling inflation. | | | | | | |  States with slow uptake amid kids 5–11 years old are ordering a fraction of Covid-19 shots for toddlers and babies. | Scott Olson/Getty Images | DOCTORS ALARMED BY SLUGGISH KID VAX UPTAKE — States where parents have hesitated to inoculate their children against Covid-19 are now ordering fewer vaccine doses for children under 5 than others. Experts broadly agree states shouldn’t order more doses than they think they’ll use. But the trend underscores a problem the Biden administration has struggled to solve — convincing parents to vaccinate their kids just as a highly transmissible variant sweeps the nation. Krista and POLITICO’s Lauren Gardner contacted each state, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to ask how many of the recently authorized Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines they ordered. Thirty-eight jurisdictions provided the requested data.
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Vaccination rates are lagging in the southeast. | The numbers: Several states that reported placing some of the lowest orders relative to their under-5 populations also have low Covid-19 vaccination rates for 5- to 11-year-olds, an early indication that vaccinations for the youngest kids could follow a similar pattern. In Alabama, where 16 percent of 5- to 11-year-olds received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose, the state ordered enough doses to cover about 13 percent of its under-5 population with a single dose. Mississippi, where the 5-to-11 single-dose vaccination rate is just over 16 percent, ordered enough shots to cover roughly 16 percent of its under-5 population with one dose, while Oklahoma, where the 5-to-11 single-dose vaccination rate is over 20 percent, ordered enough to cover roughly 19 percent. Different factors are at play. A CDC spokesperson said the vaccines’ rollout over two holiday weekends might have affected both demand and appointment availability and cautioned that it could be too early to correlate orders of the 5-and-under vaccines with older kids’ vaccination rates. But it’s hard to ignore the broader climate, especially with slow adult booster rates. “Never before have we had a vaccine available for young children that has been in billions of people before it was given to a young child,” said Kawsar Talaat, a vaccine expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “The distrust in government, the distrust in public health and the distrust in science is growing and is very, very worrisome.”
| | | | 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. | | | | | BURR ‘DOUBTFUL’ USER FEE RIDERS SURVIVE — A crowded legislative calendar, industry lobbying and a wide gap between the House and Senate packages to reauthorize the Food and Drug Administration’s user fee programs are endangering yearslong efforts to revamp oversight of diagnostics, dietary supplements and cosmetics. “I think it’s doubtful,” Senate HELP ranking member Richard Burr (R-N.C.) told POLITICO’s David Lim when asked whether major riders overhauling the regulation of those three areas in the Senate user fee package will remain in the final version. Senate HELP Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) is pushing for Congress to advance the version of the legislation that advanced out of her committee by a 13-9 vote in June. Talks are ongoing. Staff-level negotiations on the regulatory reform efforts are still underway, according to congressional aides and lobbyists. “Until there is a higher-level conversation about when and how this is passing, the four corners staff aren’t empowered to start affirmatively adding or subtracting riders at this point,” a former HELP Committee staffer told POLITICO. “Will this likely have to get skinnier — probably — but I don’t think we or they know how until September.” Outside pressure isn’t helping. Some advocacy groups are lobbying against regulatory reforms and appear to have found an ally in House Energy and Commerce ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who is pushing for a narrow user fee package to be passed. McMorris Rodgers wants Congress to adopt the House-passed user fee package, which won a 392-28 suspension vote in early June. So, a standoff. “There’s stuff in the House bill that I can’t support; there are odds and ends that shouldn’t exist in the bill,” Burr said. “I’m not going to get ahead of myself, I’ll wait till we start horse-trading with the House.” What’s next: While the FDA has significant user fee carryover balances, it’s unlikely the agency will be able to delay sending out furlough notices to thousands of employees at the beginning of August, according to Burr.
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The Novavax shot uses a different, older technology than other authorized Covid-19 vaccines. | Serum Institute of India for Novavax via AP | A FOURTH VACCINE OPTION — The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday granted emergency use authorization to Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine, opening up another option for adults who haven’t received immunization against the virus. Novavax executives have said they hope the shot will see uptake in individuals who have expressed hesitancy toward other Covid-19 vaccines or are allergic to components of the others’ ingredients. What’s different: The vaccine, two doses administered three weeks apart, is manufactured using a lab-made spike protein produced in insect cells, offering a different and older vaccine technology than is used in the messenger RNA vaccines and Johnson & Johnson shot. The vaccine received strong backing from the Trump-era Operation Warp Speed effort but faced difficulties with manufacturing throughout its lengthy vaccine-development process. What’s next: The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is scheduled to convene on July 19, where it could discuss recommending the shot. The Biden administration announced earlier this week that it had purchased 3.2 million doses of the Novavax vaccine.
| | | HHS WARNS PHARMACIES TO COMPLY ON ABORTION PILLS — Senior Biden administration officials on Wednesday reminded pharmacies nationwide that they risk violating civil rights laws if they refuse to fill orders for contraception or abortion medication or discriminate based on a person’s pregnancy status. The latest action in the wake of Roe’s overturn responds to a wave of reports that pharmacies in restrictive states are refusing to fill prescriptions for not only abortion and contraception pills but also for other drugs they speculate could be used off-label to terminate a pregnancy. The next steps: A senior HHS official told reporters on a call Wednesday that patients who believe a pharmacy has discriminated against them can file a complaint on the website of the agency’s Office of Civil Rights, which will investigate and work with the pharmacy in question on a “corrective action.” Pharmacists respond. The guidance puts pharmacists in abortion-restrictive states in the crossfire of a nationwide legal battle, the National Community Pharmacists Association said in a statement. “States have provided very little clarity on how pharmacists should proceed in light of conflicting state and federal laws and regulations,” NCPA CEO Douglas Hoey said in a statement. “It is highly unfair for state and federal governments to threaten aggressive action against pharmacists who are just trying to serve their patients within new legal boundaries that are still taking shape.”
| | | | INTRODUCING POWER SWITCH: The energy landscape is profoundly transforming. Power Switch is a daily newsletter that unlocks the most important stories driving the energy sector and the political forces shaping critical decisions about your energy future, from production to storage, distribution to consumption. Don’t miss out on Power Switch, your guide to the politics of energy transformation in America and around the world. SUBSCRIBE TODAY. | | | | | | | | QUEST BEGINS MONKEYPOX TESTING — The company began testing Wednesday, three weeks after HHS announced that five commercial lab companies, including Quest, would begin testing amid a surge in cases. In the weeks since, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shipped tests to Quest and others and trained employees on how to administer them. The agency expects others to launch testing abilities in the coming days.
| | | Kansas voters are registering in droves ahead of an August vote on abortion rights; meanwhile, both sides are pouring money into ad campaigns, POLITICO’s Marissa Martinez reports. Nearly 200,000 disabled Texans are waiting for state assistance, some sitting for a decade on the state’s waiting list as budget cuts and staff shortages decimate capacity, The Houston Chronicle’s Alex Stuckey reports. Nearly 800,000 more doses of monkeypox vaccine could be ready for distribution by the end of the month now that the FDA has inspected a Danish plant ready to make shots, The Washington Post’s Lena Sun and Laurie McGinley report.
| | | | A message from PhRMA: What’s fueling inflation? Not prescription drugs. The administration’s own economic data proves it.
Even though medicines aren’t fueling inflation, there are still patients who struggle to afford their treatments. But their challenges largely stem from a broken insurance system that too often forces patients to pay more for medicines than insurance companies pay.
The current system isn’t fair for patients, but government price setting won’t help. There is a better way to help lower drug costs for patients, while preserving choice, access and future innovation. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
