|
Presented by PhRMA: Delivered daily by 10 a.m., Pulse examines the latest news in health care politics and policy. | | | | |  | | By Daniel Payne and Krista Mahr | | | With Daniel Lippman Welcome to Thursday Pulse. Is rapper Fat Joe right about hospital pricing rules? Well, at least partly, Politifact declares . Do you have thoughts on provider pricing transparency? Are you Fat Joe? Drop us a line at dpayne@politico.com and kmahr@politico.com .
| | | | A message from PhRMA: Why won’t government price setting work for most patients? Over 50% of what you pay for medicines goes to middlemen like PBMs, insurers, government, and others. Insurers and PBMs determine which medicines will be covered and how much patients will pay OOP. And 80% of the pharmacy market is controlled by just three PBMs. Congress should address the real drivers of health care costs, not threaten future treatments and cures. Fix abusive insurance practices and end the PBM shell game. Stand up for patients. | | | | | | | 
The Biden administration is talking with several companies about filling and finishing an existing supply of monkeypox vaccine. | Rick Bowmer/AP Photo | MONKEYPOX VACCINE BOTTLING COULD TAKE MONTHS — The Biden administration is in talks with several companies to bottle new doses of Jynneos, the vaccine used to prevent monkeypox in the U.S. But that process could take three to six months , people with knowledge of the matter told POLITICO’s Erin Banco and Adam Cancryn. Getting doses ready for distribution could stretch into 2023, with the administration discussing with several companies, including Grand River Aseptic Manufacturing in Michigan, their abilities to fill and finish doses. Bavarian Nordic, the vaccine’s maker, currently stores those doses in Denmark. As many as 12 million doses are in that stockpile, and the U.S. has ordered millions to be delivered between now and spring 2023. After bottling, doses will likely need to be inspected before distribution. But with growing case counts, there’s an increased urgency among government officials and health experts to get transmission under control by vaccinating high-risk populations. State of play: So far, the administration has secured just over 1 million vaccine doses. The administration said Tuesday it would administer smaller doses to try to stretch the current supply of vaccines — splitting one dose into five. The measure, called dose-sparing, is the latest effort to make more vaccines available amid weeks of shortages in some jurisdictions. Officials have also worked to rush future shipments so they arrive sooner, trying to quickly take control of the outbreak. Late Wednesday night, however, The Washington Post reported that Bavarian Nordic had concerns about the Biden administration's dose-sparing plan. Nearly 9,500 monkeypox cases have been reported in the U.S., but the true transmission level is still relatively uncertain, even as testing has expanded significantly. Nearly all cases have been reported in men, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has urged men who have sex with men, including those who are vaccinated, to avoid skin-to-skin contact with infected people. Health experts have emphasized that there are still many unknowns about the virus and vaccine, with researchers studying transmission rates, immune responses and therapeutic effectiveness.
| | | | 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 . | | | | | | | | HEALTH CARE INFLATION IS LOW … FOR NOW — As inflation remains a concern across the entire economy, the health industry has remained relatively subdued , POLITICO’s Tucker Doherty writes. Because insurers and Medicare set their rates months ahead of time, the health industry can lag behind more rapid changes in the larger market. But that’s meant some hospitals and health providers have been squeezed by inflation more than other industries that can adjust prices more freely. Measures to combat that — such as higher prices — are likely to come eventually, though. Medicare’s forecast for the current fiscal year assumed hospital costs would increase by approximately 2.7 percent, while in reality those costs are on track to rise by more than 5 percent. The latest monthly update to the Consumer Price Index released Wednesday continues to show overall inflation near 40-year highs, with prices rising by 8.5 percent over the past 12 months.
| | | | A message from PhRMA:   | | | | | | | 
President Biden offers a pen used to sign bills intended to improve veterans' lives to Matthew Hendricks, whose mother, a former Marine Corps officer, died in April after earlier exposure to burn pits in Iraq. | Win McNamee/Getty Images | BIDEN SIGNS BURN PIT BILL INTO LAW — President Joe Biden signed a bill on Wednesday that will expand benefits for veterans affected by toxic burn pits during their service. The PACT Act is aimed to increase health coverage for veterans who served in the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and post-9/11 conflicts, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The bill will substantially increase the number of veterans who can receive care from the VA as well as require research to better understand the toxic exposure’s effects. “You could actually see some of it in the air,” Biden said of smoke from the burn pits he saw on his trips to Iraq, adding that his son, Beau, was affected by it. BAYER TO LOBBY ON BIRTH CONTROL — Pharma giant Bayer has expanded its team of lobbyists, who will work on access to contraceptives for the first time, POLITICO’s Caitlin Oprysko, Megan Wilson and Daniel Lippman report. Bayer, the parent company behind birth control pills like Yaz and IUDs like Mirena, has been a proponent of expanded access in the past, investing hundreds of millions of dollars to provide access worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries. In the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned, the issue of birth control access is now a new flashpoint in reproductive health care.
| | | | A message from PhRMA: Why won’t government price setting work for most patients? Over 50% of what you pay for medicines goes to middlemen like PBMs, insurers, government, and others. Insurers and PBMs determine which medicines will be covered and how much patients will pay OOP. And 80% of the pharmacy market is controlled by just three PBMs. Congress should address the real drivers of health care costs, not threaten future treatments and cures. Fix abusive insurance practices and end the PBM shell game. Stand up for patients. | | | | | | POLIO BOOSTERS IN LONDON — The U.K. is offering polio vaccine boosters to children ages 1 to 9 after more poliovirus samples were found in the wastewater, POLITICO’s Ashleigh Furlong reports. The booster doses, offered to children in London boroughs, will “ensure a high level of protection from paralysis and help reduce further spread of the virus,” according to the U.K. Health Security Agency. In recent months, similar samples have been detected in Israel and the U.S., with multiple samples found in New York State. The CDC recently dispatched a team to further investigate the case of vaccine-derived poliovirus found in one New York county, ABC News reports. That team will also administer vaccines while there. “Today’s announcement from the UK underscores the seriousness of polio, and we continue to monitor the situation in New York and respond urgently and aggressively,” a spokesperson for the New York State Department of Health told Pulse in an email. “Our current focus is to ensure unvaccinated New Yorkers and children get immunized against polio and that they are up to date with their polio immunization schedule.” LIFE-SAVING VACCINES RUN LOW IN AFRICA — The vaccines to prevent rotavirus, which causes an estimated 200,000 deaths in children each year, are running low in some African countries, Reuters’ Jennifer Rigby reports. GSK shipped around 4 million fewer doses than expected, citing “manufacturing challenges” for the disruptions.
| | | Monica Bertagnolli will be the next director of the National Cancer Institute, Biden announced Wednesday. She currently is a Harvard Medical School professor in surgical oncology, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a member of the Gastrointestinal Cancer and Sarcoma Disease Centers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Georgeanne Usova was announced as the national director of legislative affairs for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She most recently was senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. Anali Alegria has been promoted to communications director for the Senate HELP Committee. Tom Britt was appointed chief information officer for Magellan Health. Timothy Hunt was announced as CEO of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine.
| | | VantageScore, a major credit-score provider, will stop factoring medical debt into its scores , The Wall Street Journal’s AnnaMaria Andriotis writes. As monkeypox cases keep rising around the country, experts see the outbreak as increasingly difficult to control , the Los Angeles Times’ Rong-Gong Lin II, Luke Money and Melody Gutierrez report. Stat’s Megan Molteni writes a deep dive on how monkeypox does — and doesn’t — spread .
| | | | 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 . | | | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
