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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 Adam Cancryn and Sarah Owermohle | Presented by |  | | | With Susannah Luthi and Carmen Paun 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.
| | | — The U.S. doesn’t yet have the capacity to manufacture modified vaccines targeting Covid variants, and that could threaten the global fight against the virus. — Planned Parenthood is pouring $2 million into a vaccination campaign, and will help distribute the shots across five states. — President Joe Biden is unveiling a slate of actions to combat what he's characterizing as a gun violence "public health epidemic." WELCOME TO THURSDAY PULSE — and big congrats to all the AHCJ award winners during a historic (and historically competitive) year. Get us started on the next big investigation; send tips to acancryn@politico.com and sowermohle@politico.com. | | | | A message from PhRMA: Americans have access to more medicines than people in other countries because the United States has a system that values innovation and supports broad access to medicines. Cross-country price comparisons paint a misleading picture and ignore the consequences of government setting the price of medicines. Learn more. | | | | | | THE BIG HOLE IN VACCINE PLANS — The global scramble to produce enough Covid-19 vaccine for 7 billion people is about to get even tougher, as drug makers and countries race to ready a second round of shots to combat novel variants of the virus, Sarah reports. Revising vaccines is only half the battle. Vaccine makers are studying potential boosters and variant-specific vaccines. But the United States has virtually no capacity left to manufacture revised vaccines or booster shots, according to a half-dozen vaccine experts and Biden administration health officials. Manufacturers are still desperately trying to fill existing orders, and setting up additional facilities could take months or even years. The U.S. government is encouraging AstraZeneca, Sanofi and other companies that have struggled to bring Covid vaccines to the U.S. market to instead concentrate on shots to tackle variants, two senior administration officials told Sarah. But it’s looking unlikely that those two will catch up, even if AstraZeneca moves past its production setbacks and safety concerns; federal officials and outside vaccine experts have pointed instead to the existing Pfizer and Moderna shots, which are easy-to-modify and mass manufacture. This is also a vaccine diplomacy test. The vaccines available in the U.S. still do a good job of protecting against Covid here, and so U.S. health authorities may never need variant-specific shots. But the rest of the world could, and soon, because of fast variant spread and more limited access to shots. Already, South Africa has rejected the AstraZeneca vaccine for not working against the dominant strain there. All this means Biden will need to strike a careful balance between racing to make sure all Americans are protected in a matter of weeks and pitching in to the global effort to defeat the virus before variants become the world’s biggest problem. “Until this vaccine is available to the world … we’re not really completely safe,” Biden said in a speech this week. | | | | CHECK OUT FDA TODAY: Daily regulatory developments, sent directly to your inbox. AgencyIQ's daily newsletter, FDA Today, provides readers with actionable and insightful explanations of the latest FDA developments impacting the life sciences industry. Sign up for free today. | | | | | EXCLUSIVE: PLANNED PARENTHOOD LAUNCHES $2M VACCINATION CAMPAIGN — The health organization is rolling out bilingual pro-vaccine ads in addition to having Planned Parenthood clinics in five states distribute thousands of Covid shots, President Alexis McGill Johnson told POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein. The “Protect Every Body” campaign aims to reach 1.5 million people by the fall, with the effort particularly targeting low-income populations of color that may have a hard time getting vaccinated. In Minnesota, Montana, New York, California, and Washington, Planned Parenthood affiliates plan to distribute the vaccine in their own health centers and through mobile clinics and pop-up sites in restaurants and parking lots. State and local health departments will supply Planned Parenthood with those doses, not the federal government. And Planned Parenthood’s partnership with the Biden administration as part of a broader vaccine awareness program will involve no federal funding. Yet this effort is still likely to prompt objections from conservative groups. They’ve long opposed Planned Parenthood’s involvement in the Covid response because of its abortion work, and argue now the organization shouldn’t get taxpayer funds, even to aid the vaccination campaign. BIDEN READIES ACTIONS AGAINST GUN VIOLENCE ‘EPIDEMIC’ — Biden is preparing a series of executive actions to tighten gun regulations and redirect funding to prevent community violence, calling mass shootings, suicide by firearm and other violence a “public health epidemic.” To that end, he’ll also be directing HHS to teach states how they can use Medicaid money for gun violence prevention. But in the face of growing frustration from advocates and in the wake of several mass shootings, those steps may seem too small, POLITICO’s Anita Kumar reports. A recent poll found a majority of Americans disapproved of Biden’s handling of gun violence, with opposition coming from both Republicans and Democrats. In response, the president is expected today to call for more aggressive legislation, pointing to bills to expand background checks and restrict assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines. | | | COMING FRIDAY: BIDEN’s FIRST BUDGET — The president will soon send his first budget request to Congress, signaling his funding priorities for the upcoming fiscal year, POLITICO’s Jennifer Scholtes reports. The document will detail the spending levels the White House is seeking for each federal agency in fiscal 2022, which begins Oct. 1. It’ll also include specifics on investment priorities for programs across a range of issues, including public health — an area that advocates say contend has been chronically underfunded, and one that has come under particular scrutiny after more than a year of battling the coronavirus. Congressional appropriators are expected to hold hearings soon after and could begin marking up spending bills as early as next month. | | | |   | | | | | | FIRST IN PULSE: MAYORS STAR IN NEW VACCINE PROMOS — Yet another campaign to combat Covid vaccine hesitancy and boost vaccination rates features mayors from around the country encouraging Americans to get the shot. The 60-second PSAs are backed by the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, the National Forum for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention and the African American Mayors Association, which had previously teamed up on a similar flu vaccine awareness push. Ten mayors are participating so far. BRAZILIAN FOOTBALL STAR LEADS CAMPAIGN TO BUY OXYGEN FOR COVID PATIENTS — The World Health Organization Foundation is heading a campaign to fund the purchase of oxygen supplies in the Americas, amid rising demand in Brazil and other countries, POLITICO’s Carmen Paun writes. Brazilian goalkeeper Alisson Becker made the first donation to the fund, which will be used to buy non-invasive ventilation masks and equipment to fill oxygen cylinders. The WHO has not said how much it hopes to raise, but projected in February that $90 million would be needed to meet urgent oxygen needs across 20 poor countries, with $1.6 billion necessary by the end of the year. | | | CBO: PUBLIC OPTION COULD CURB HIGH ACA PROVIDER RATES — Creating a public insurance option could help contain the Obamacare market’s provider pay rates and lower administrative costs, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report. The actual impact of adding a public option would depend on how it’s designed, but the report noted both Obamacare and employer health plans pay roughly twice as much as Medicare for hospital care, and a quarter more to doctors. The high cost of U.S. health care is a key driver of support for a public option, POLITICO’s Susannah Luthi writes, as well as the idea that only the government can bring the price down. — But there’s always a trade-off: “Adding a public option could be “disruptive” to the market, the CBO said. “It would probably reduce health care providers’ and prescription drug manufacturers’ revenues. It would probably also cause some private insurers to exit the market entirely, thereby reducing coverage options.”
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| | | TEVI TROY joins the Bipartisan Policy Center as a senior fellow. He was HHS deputy secretary during the George W. Bush administration and is a presidential historian. | | | | A message from PhRMA: Looking at differences in medicine prices between the United States and other countries can be misleading, often ignoring complexities in the U.S. system and the repercussions of other countries’ reliance on government price setting policies. As the discussion unfolds, here are a few often overlooked facts:
• Americans have the most robust access to lifesaving medicines in the world.
• Americans benefit from robust generic competition.
• The world benefits from U.S. global leadership in biomedical innovation.
• Negotiations between pharmaceutical companies and payers drive down prices, but patients don’t always pay less.
• We need smart, patient-centered solutions for lowering drug costs.
Learn more. | | | | | | In the final entry of Lost on the Frontline, Kaiser Health News and Guardian reporters reflect on their findings from a year spent documenting more than 3,600 health workers lost to Covid-19. The American Board of Emergency Medicine spent more than a half-million dollars on two board meetings in sunny locales, MedPage Today’s Kristina Fiore, Jennifer Henderson and Ryan Basen report. For The New Yorker, Mallory Pickett writes about how Swedish citizens have fared over a year of their government’s anti-lockdown Covid response.
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