FIRST IN PULSE: DEMS PUSH FOR CROSS-BORDER ABORTION ACCESS — As post-Roe chaos continues to grip the country, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the chair of Democrats’ Senate campaign arm, is asking the Biden administration to allow U.S. residents to bring abortion pills across the border or travel to Mexico or Canada for the procedure. While federal law does not generally allow the importation of drugs from other countries for personal use, heads of agencies have broad discretion to make exemptions, Alice reports. Peters is demanding updated guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security, citing “the urgency of the current moment.” Northern border concerns: Peters represents a state that could ban all abortions with no exemptions for rape or incest later this year, depending on the outcome of pending lawsuits and a constitutional referendum. If that happens, millions of his constituents may seek the procedure in nearby Canada. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also pushed President Joe Biden for the same clarification around importing abortion pills. In his letter, Peters also demanded the administration make sure Customs and Border Patrol officers are properly trained so that they don’t criminalize people who bring abortion pills into the country for personal use. HHS BREAKS OUT PANDEMIC DIVISION — The Biden administration is elevating the Health and Human Services Department’s pandemic and disaster response division after months of discussion about fixing gaps and shortcomings exposed during the coronavirus pandemic, three people familiar with the internal deliberations said. The decision, shared in an internal HHS memo , would make the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response its own operating division, putting the assistant secretary, Dawn O’Connell, on par with directors of other sweeping departments, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. “This change allows ASPR to mobilize a coordinated national response more quickly and stably during future disasters and emergencies while equipping us with greater hiring and contracting capabilities,” O’Connell wrote in the memo. “This change is an important next step for our organization which has continued to grow and evolve since its creation in 2006 – the pace of which has quickened over the past year.” The move, first reported by The Washington Post , comes more than two years after the CDC’s early stumbles in Covid-19 testing and as challenges tracking case and treatment data remain. The reaction: “Even early in the pandemic, there were issues around CDC’s coordination across the [Health and Human Services] Department,” said the office’s former director, Robert Kadlec. “They felt like they were the guys in charge.” But others criticized the reorganization as a misguided effort that would undercut the CDC and its efforts to strengthen its response network. “This is unfortunate. It presupposes ASPR performed well through the pandemic, and it has not,” Trump-era FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb wrote on Twitter. “The right — but harder approach — is reform CDC; which has to be [the] tip of the spear in pandemic response.”
VA GRILLED OVER E-RECORDS — A Senate Committee hearing took the VA to task for its dysfunctional electronic health records modernization program.
Much of the discussion was on a new report from the Office of the Inspector General, which called out alarming safety issues at the VA’s Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, Wash., Ruth writes. There is also concern over ballooning costs. A July report from the VA’s inspector general found 60 safety issues at that center. One of the most concerning, which led to the harm of 149 patients, was a technical glitch that sent prescription orders and requests for exams or other services through the new records system to an unknown queue and they were never filled. When the VA signed a contract with EHR giant Cerner for the system in 2018, it was supposed to cost $10 billion over 10 years. A new estimate from The Institute for Defense Analyses says it will cost $50.8 billion over 28 years. So far, it’s been implemented in just five of the VA’s 171 medical centers. Oracle, which just acquired Cerner last month, promised senators it would upgrade the EHR system by moving it into the cloud for free. Significant improvements are coming in the next six months, the company said.
| 
