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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 | Presented by |  | | | 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. With Rachel Roubein, Alice Miranda Ollstein and Susannah Luthi | | | — Most Americans don’t think Democrats' sweeping Covid aid package will significantly help them, a new POLITICO-Harvard poll has found. — House progressives are readying a series of big health care demands as they try to shape the details of President Joe Biden's infrastructure bill. — Racism is a "serious public health threat," the CDC declared Thursday, amid a pandemic that's disproportionately affected communities of color. WELCOME TO FRIDAY PULSE. One in four Americans are now fully vaccinated, a group that — courtesy Johnson & Johnson — PULSE will proudly join by the end of the day. Tips to acancryn@politico.com and sowermohle@politico.com. | | | | A message from PhRMA: Did you know more than 90% of all medicines dispensed in the United States are lower-cost generic medicines, compared to 69% in other OECD countries? Or that prices for generics here are lower, on average, than in other countries? Cross-country comparisons create confusion about medicine prices in the United States and abroad. Learn more. | | | | | | BIDEN’s BIG STIMULUS IS COMING UP SMALL — There are brighter post-pandemic days ahead, most Americans say — but not because of any benefits coming their way from Democrats’ nearly $2 trillion Covid relief package, POLITICO’s Dan Goldberg reports. Only about one-third of Americans surveyed in a new POLITICO-Harvard poll believe the rescue plan will end up significantly helping them, including less than half of Democrats. It’s a baffling disconnect for an aid package that generally polled well prior to its enactment — and it signals that Biden will face a considerable challenge in convincing voters that their lives will be much improved by its provisions. The package, after all, paid for much more than a single round of direct checks — and expanded jobless benefits, health subsidies and the public health resources that will be key to ending the pandemic. “If I were a Democrat, I’d say we have to explain more of what’s in it and how it will help the average person,” said Robert Blendon, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who designed the poll. There is some better news for Biden, though, in Americans’ growing anticipation of life after Covid — assuming vaccination rates keep rising. Nearly three-quarters of parents and guardians of school-age children want kids in the classroom during the next school year, and a slight majority of working adults said they’re eager to return to their workplaces. As for the ongoing debate over so-called vaccine passports, just more than half of the survey’s respondents backed employers mandating vaccination. But the partisan divide for that question was stark: Nearly 70 percent of Democrats favored a vaccine requirement, compared to just 43 percent of Republicans.
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FIRST IN PULSE: PROGRESSIVES’ HEALTH CARE WISH LIST — House progressives’ list of demands heading into negotiations over the makeup of Biden’s infrastructure bill includes several measures that are further to the left than even the sweeping drug price overhaul House Democrats passed in 2019, POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein reports. Among them:
— Mandating that Medicare-negotiated drug prices, as well as restrictions on hiking prices faster than the rate of inflation, apply to medicines regardless of who purchases them, including uninsured patients and those enrolled in private plans; — Making a vast selection of drugs eligible for government negotiation and other price restrictions; — Capping drug prices at the average price charged in other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development member countries; and — Requiring that the government use savings generated by the drug provisions to pay for lowering the Medicare eligibility age and expanding dental, vision and hearing benefits. The House Progressive Caucus will also push for $450 billion for Medicaid home- and community-based services, slightly more than the sum Biden has proposed. Those demands, of course, will face extremely slim odds in the Senate, much less the narrowly divided House. Though top progressives plan to argue many of their priorities are drawn from the unity task force Biden convened last year, Democratic leaders may instead seek more moderate gains — such as using the drug provision savings to make permanent the Obamacare enhancements passed as part of the last Covid aid package. | | | CDC: RACISM IS A ‘PUBLIC HEALTH THREAT’ — The CDC committed Thursday to putting Covid funding toward communities of color and other groups that have been most affected by the pandemic, and it has also added a section to its website dedicated to racism and health, POLITICO’s Benjamin Din writes. It’s a move that brings the government in line with several outside public health groups that have long decried racism as a public health crisis or emergency. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky also blamed racism for the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on minorities, pointing to the structural barriers that have developed over generations. HOW TO HEAD OFF THE NEXT PANDEMIC, IN PICTURES — If there’s one big lesson to be learned from the pandemic, scientists say, it’s that we should focus on heading off the next one before it has a chance to get started. And doing that means putting more money and attention toward the source of most emerging diseases: animals. In an illustrated report, POLITICO’s Beatrice Jin lays out what it will take to construct robust defenses against the next public health crisis — including reducing deforestation, regulating the wildlife trade and, critically, securing buy-in from policymakers around the globe. | | | |   | | | | | | MICHIGAN LAWMAKERS PRESS FOR MORE VACCINES — A bipartisan pair of Michigan House members are directly urging the administration to boost its vaccine allocation to their state in response to a surge of cases. Republican Rep. Fred Upton and Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell warned of a “growing stress” on Michigan’s public health system in a Thursday letter to Biden, pointing to Covid hospitalizations and deaths that are approaching levels not seen since December. “Surging additional vaccines into Michigan and other hard-hit areas is consistent with guidance from public health experts,” they wrote. But the Biden administration has so far refused to break from its allocation formula, insisting that there are other ways of combating Covid hot spots. CMS WANTS NURSING HOMES TO LOG STAFF VACCINATION RATES — Nursing homes would be required to tell the CDC how many of their health care workers are vaccinated against Covid under a proposed rule released Thursday, POLITICO’s Rachel Roubein reports. If it goes into effect, the mandate would help the government collect data crucial to assessing the Covid threat within facilities. CMS’ proposal comes as the CDC's existing data has shown a significant gap in vaccination rates among nursing homes' staff versus their residents. — The rule would also strengthen infection control oversight, using Medicare claims data to identify facilities that report higher-than-average numbers of infections that can be caused by neglect, such as sepsis or urinary tract infections. A government watchdog last year found the vast majority of nursing homes had been cited for infection control deficiencies prior to the pandemic.
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| | | RED STATES BARRED FROM ‘PUBLIC CHARGE’ CASE — The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is blocking GOP-led states from defending a Trump administration policy that sought to crack down on immigrants who used or were thought likely to use public benefits, POLITICO’s Susannah Luthi writes. The states had sought to jump into the legal battle over the so-called public charge rule after the Biden administration decided it would not defend the policy. But in a 3-1 ruling, the court ruled the states could not take the federal government’s place in trying to uphold the rule. | | | ADAM BOEHLER launches health investment firm. The former Trump CMS Innovation Center director is starting Rubicon Founders, in partnership with private equity firms Oak HC/FT and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe. AMY ABERNETHY and ERIC HARGAN will be fellows with the Health Evolution Forum. Abernethy, who recently resigned as the FDA’s No. 2 official, and Hargan, the former Trump HHS deputy secretary, will sit on its roundtable on next-generation IT in health care. DAVID SCHWARTZ will head public policy and government affairs for CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield. He was previously head of global policy for Cigna, and was once the chief health counsel for the Senate Finance Committee under then-Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.). | | | | 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. | | | | | | Hundreds of online vendors are selling false or stolen vaccine cards, complicating debates over how and whether to require proof of vaccination for travel and other activities, The New York Times’ Sheera Frenkel reports. Once a progressive champion, onetime presidential candidate Howard Dean is now backing the drug industry in opposing a waiver that could speed production of low-cost Covid vaccines abroad, The Intercept’s Lee Fang reports. “People are definitely fibbing to get the vaccine early,” The Atlantic’s Olga Khazan writes about the seemingly amorphous vaccination line.
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