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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 Adam Cancryn | Presented by |  | | | With Susannah Luthi and Dan Goldberg 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 Biden administration is redoubling efforts to reach localities with lagging vaccination rates, even as vaccinated people start returning to something like pre-pandemic life. — The nation's three main drug distributors head to trial today in what could be a test case for the sprawling litigation effort against the pharmaceutical industry over the opioid crisis. — Global vaccination plans are incoming, Biden adviser Jake Sullivan said on Sunday. WELCOME TO MONDAY PULSE — Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb here to remind you it’s almost barbecue season — though be sure to grill your burgers to the federally-recommended temperature. Send cooking and health tips to sowermohle@politico.com and Adam at acancryn@politico.com. | | | | A message from PhRMA: Americans don’t need another barrier to their medicines. We have to lower what patients pay for their medicines. We also have to make sure they are getting the medicines they need. H.R.3 forces a choice between one or the other, but there’s a way to do both. Get the facts at phrma.org/betterway. | | | | | | SLOWING VACCINE DEMAND EXPOSES STARK DIVIDES — To fight the decline in coronavirus vaccine demand, federal health officials are pivoting away from mass vaccination sites to vans, community health clinics and even door-to-door campaigns in predominantly rural communities with the most holdouts, our Dan Goldberg and Adam report. “The ground game really matters now,” a senior administration official said. “We don’t have to do these major FEMA sites.” Where it’s happening: There are stark divides between and even within states. Michigan and Colorado lead the country in most cases per capita, while Oregon is struggling with surges in certain low-vaccinated counties. These inequities could mean that in some communities, businesses and schools can broadly reopen, while in others just a few counties over, the coronavirus continues to rage, Dan and Adam write. U.S. focus pivots from supply to demand. Fewer than 1.1 million Americans are receiving their first vaccine dose each day, the lowest average since the end of February, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As recently as three weeks ago, nearly 2 million Americans were getting their first dose each day. DRUG DISTRIBUTORS FACE OPIOID TRIAL — AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson are set to appear in a West Virginia court in what could be a national bellwether for opioid litigation as negotiations drag out over a contentious settlement between drug companies, state attorneys general and lawyers for thousands of municipalities for more than a year. In 2019, defendants, including the distributors, avoided what was supposed to be the first opioid trial in Ohio by brokering a $260 million settlement at the last minute. These high-profile lawsuits have taken a back seat to the pandemic over the last year, even as public health officials watched drug overdose cases spike. The plaintiffs’ efforts were complicated by an appeals court decision last fall rejecting a plan to grant thousands of communities across the country a piece of any global opioid settlement. | | | | SUBSCRIBE TO "THE RECAST" TODAY: Power is shifting in Washington and in communities across the country. More people are demanding a seat at the table, insisting that politics is personal and not all policy is equitable. The Recast is a twice-weekly newsletter that explores the changing power dynamics in Washington and breaks down how race and identity are recasting politics and policy in America. Get fresh insights, scoops and dispatches on this crucial intersection from across the country and hear critical new voices that challenge business as usual. Don't miss out, SUBSCRIBE . Thank you to our sponsor, Intel. | | | | | BIDEN SECURITY ADVISER TALKS VACCINE PATENTS, INDIA AID — The U.S. “should have a way forward in the coming days” on how to provide vaccines affordably around the world, Sullivan told ABC’s Martha Raddatz on “This Week” Sunday morning. Raddatz asked him about the issue of pharmaceutical patents and whether the White House should temporarily waive patents for Covid vaccines, as 10 Democrats, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), recently urged. “The pharmaceutical companies should be supplying at-scale and at-cost to the entire world so that there is no barrier to everyone getting vaccinated,” Sullivan said, adding that U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai “is engaged in intensive consultations at the WTO to work through this issue.” Tai recently received a briefing from chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci on the possibility of waiving patents, which he supports, the Washington Post’s Dan Diamond and Jeff Stein reported Friday. Sullivan also discussed the ongoing Covid surge in India, the country now leading the world in new coronavirus cases and reporting thousands of deaths a day. The U.S. has sent “multiple plane loads” so far of oxygen, therapeutics and raw materials to the country, and officials are “proud of what we’ve done so far,” Sullivan said. DEMOCRATS HIT INSURERS OVER ROLLING BACK COVID CARE WAIVERS — Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) and House Democratic colleagues are warning health insurance executives that it’s too soon to quit waiving costs for Covid-19 treatment, Susannah writes. The background: Early in the health crisis, major health plans didn’t charge copays for coronavirus care, but more and more insurers have been quietly rolling back those benefits since the beginning of the year. In a Friday letter sent to Anthem, CVS/Aetna and UnitedHealth, Porter outlined the staggering Covd-19 costs patients have had to pay. She also argued that congressional Democrats just assigned billions of dollars in new subsidies to Obamacare insurers to cover people — and that Obamacare plans often come with high deductibles, something subsidies won’t help with. | | | |   | | | | | | FORMER HHS OFFICIAL OUT OF TEXAS RACE — State voters sent two Republicans to a runoff vote in a special House election, in the process knocking another Republican, Trump-era health official Brian Harrison, out of the race. Susan Wright — whose late husband last held the House seat, and who Donald Trump endorsed last month — and fellow Republican Jake Ellzey secured the first and second runoff slots late Saturday, our Ally Mutnick reports. Harrison, who served as HHS chief of staff, trailed in fourth with 10.8 percent of the vote, behind Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez. He campaigned on a promise to “get Washington out of our lives” and boasted about anti-abortion efforts, moves to weaken Obamacare and deregulatory actions like exempting some medical devices permanently from review. But his bid for the House seat also riled other former officials, who urged Trump not to boost Harrison, Adam reported last month. Oh, and: The FDA on Friday withdrew a last-minute HHS policy championed by Harrison that would have required the agency to publish annual reports on how quickly it approved drugs. The policy is unnecessary because “such information is already publicly available," it stated. | | | | TUNE IN TO GLOBAL TRANSLATIONS: Our Global Translations podcast, presented by Citi, examines the long-term costs of the short-term thinking that drives many political and business decisions. The world has long been beset by big problems that defy political boundaries, and these issues have exploded over the past year amid a global pandemic. This podcast helps to identify and understand the impediments to smart policymaking. Subscribe and start listening today. | | | | | HOW STRONG SHOULD WEED BE? As more and more states legalize marijuana, companies are facing new pressure from lawmakers across the country — and Capitol Hill — to limit how much of the psychoactive chemical THC makes it into their products. It’s a level of scrutiny that comes with being allowed to operate in the open after decades in the shadows, write Paul Demko and Natalie Fertig. Normally the FDA would regulate these standards, but as marijuana is still federally barred, the agency’s hands are tied. Lawmakers of both parties have taken the issue into their own hands, introducing potency caps across state legislatures and Congress. But it has been slow going; Vermont is the only state with such caps in place. Washington and Colorado, two states that pioneered legal marijuana, are debating the move, but the cannabis industry has already squashed an earlier Washington state proposal. In March, the co-chairs of the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas), argued that federal agencies should consider recommending potency caps and ramping up research on the drug. But federal law classifying marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug — the most restrictive class — has made it more difficult to gather credible scientific data about the impact of potent products, Colorado House Speaker Alec Garnett, a Democrat, told POLITICO. | | | | A message from PhRMA: Americans don’t need yet another barrier to their medicines. Especially now. Now is the time for us to rethink how we get the medicines we need. But there are right ways and wrong ways. While it may sound good on paper, H.R.3 would threaten patients’ access to treatments, put nearly a million American jobs at risk and jeopardize current and future medical innovation – all while failing to address the broader challenges facing America’s health care system.
We have to lower what patients pay for their medicines. We also have to make sure patients are getting the medicines they need. There’s a way to do both, but H.R.3 isn’t it. Get the facts at phrma.org/betterway. | | | | | | It may be impossible to eliminate the coronavirus, but countries and private companies can effectively minimize risk by incentivizing vaccination, former Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem writes in The Atlantic. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is readying for a second-term run, setting up for a referendum on WHO’s pandemic response under his leadership, Stat News’ Helen Branswell reports. Warren Buffett reflected on Berkshire Morgan’s failed venture to disrupt health care with JPMorgan Chase and Amazon during an annual shareholder meeting, Bloomberg’s Katherine Chiglinksy reports : “We were fighting a tapeworm in the American economy and the tapeworm won.” | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
