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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 |  | | | 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 Alice Miranda Ollstein, Susannah Luthi and Daniel Lippman | | | — President Joe Biden’s global vaccination effort faces its first test: Now that India has gotten American aid, Ukraine wants some, too. — The House Energy and Commerce Committee holds a hearing today on several bills aimed at tackling high drug prices, and Democrats fear they could run out of time to act on them. — Five House Democrats are set to hold a press conference this afternoon on whether the U.S. government should waive patent rights for coronavirus vaccines. WELCOME TO TUESDAY PULSE — We’re brainstorming pharmaceutical name variations of “Molly” as you read this. (Your host’s editor is rooting for “Mollify.”) Send 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. | | | | | | VACCINE DIPLOMACY CHALLENGES BEGIN WITH UKRAINE — The Biden administration recently announced it would send roughly 60 million coronavirus vaccines abroad, shortly after Biden took a call from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about that country’s devastating surge. That offer of help, in turn, has encouraged key U.S. ally Ukraine to ramp up its own requests for vaccines ahead of a visit this week from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, our Erin Banco and David M. Herszenhorn report. The Biden administration wants to ramp up vaccine aid overseas to counter China and Russia; both nations have increased exports of their own vaccine formulas to boost their global influence. But U.S. officials have yet to commit specific assistance to Kyiv because they have not figured out how to prioritize the overwhelming number of requests they have received from other governments, Erin and David write. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration has been pressing Washington for help obtaining vaccines since December, before Donald Trump left office, according to multiple U.S. and Ukrainian officials. The U.S.-Ukraine dialogue highlights the tension between the Biden administration’s desire to become the world’s largest vaccine donor and its decision to delay most of those donations until the majority of Americans are vaccinated. And part of the problem, U.S. officials say, is that while countries around the world need vaccines, they don’t all need shots with the same urgency. "They just don't need the doses as badly as India does right now," one person involved in the U.S.-Ukraine diplomatic dialogue said. "Out of the things that the U.S. is worried about with Kyiv at the moment, this isn't No. 1 on the list."
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HOUSE HEARING ON DRUG PRICES SPOTLIGHTS NEGOTIATION — One of the bills on today’s agenda before the House Energy and Commerce Committee will be H.R. 3 (117), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s sweeping measure to empower Medicare to bargain down the cost of hundreds of drugs, Alice Miranda Ollstein writes.
The hearing will be followed Wednesday by another in the House Education and Labor committee. Keenly aware that the American Family Plan may be the last big bill Congress is able to pass this year, Democrats in the House and Senate are warning the White House that skipping drug pricing reform could drag the party down in the 2022 midterms. DEMOCRATS PUSH FOR VACCINE PATENT WAIVERS — Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, Lloyd Doggett of Texas, Earl Blumenauer or Oregon, Chuy García of Illinois and Adriano Espaillat of New York plan to speak this afternoon on global vaccine access, Schakowsky spokesperson Miguel Ayala told PULSE. Key among their takeaways from the administration so far, he said, “is still more work to do to have the Administration hear from more segments of the community who support this push, like business and faith leaders.” The members spoke last week with Covid-19 czar Jeff Zients and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai about waiving pharmaceutical companies’ patent rights under TRIPS, the global intellectual property agreement. | | | MEET BECERRA’s NEW OBAMACARE ADVISER — Melanie Fontes Rainer is joining HHS as a counselor to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, where she’ll focus largely on issues affecting Obamacare and its insurance markets, multiple sources tell PULSE. Rainer spent the last four years as Becerra’s top health care adviser while Becerra was California attorney general. As AG, Becerra led many lawsuits against Trump-era health policies and secured a $575 million settlement with hospital giant Sutter Health over antitrust allegations. — Becerra has also installed his top spokesperson. Sarah Lovenheim was sworn in as assistant secretary of public affairs on Monday, adding another longtime aide to his senior ranks. POLITICO first reported Lovenheim’s planned appointment in March. | | | |   | | | | | | FIRST IN PULSE: CASSIDY, HASSAN JUMP INTO ‘SURPRISE’ BILLING WATCH — Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H) — whose alliance helped drive a more provider-friendly version of Congress’ recent ban on “surprise” medical bill — last week formally outlined their vision for the law’s implementation. Lobbying around the policy is heating up as officials work to finalize rules by the end of the year. — Top of mind for the senators is the arbitration process by which doctors, hospitals and insurers can resolve disagreements over payment for out-of-network care. Cassidy and Hassan want to make sure the arbiter looks at an array of factors — like median in-network rates and the patient’s condition — equally. — This is the bipartisan duo’s first active lobbying for their vision of the “surprise” billing ban, although questions have percolated in various Hill hearings — including the Senate confirmation hearing for Biden’s CMS pick, Chiquita Brooks-LaSure. Last month, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) also asked Becerra to give ample time for industry feedback on any proposed regulations. | | | ANTI-DRUG BILL CAMPAIGN LAUNCHES — Conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity on Monday launched a new ad campaign aimed squarely at swing-state Democrats thinking of backing Pelosi’s H.R. 3. The new ad argues that Pelosi’s bill will curb innovation and trigger drug shortages, an early sign of midterm campaign rhetoric trained on drug price reforms. AFP is releasing digital ads in the districts of moderate Democratic Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick of Arizona, David Price of North Carolina, Chris Pappas of New Hampshire, Tom Malinowski of New Jersey and Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia.
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| | | EU TAKES ASTRAZENCA TO COURT FOR MORE DOSES — The European Commission is dragging British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca into court to demand that the embattled company send vaccine substance from two U.K. sites to the regional bloc, POLITICO Europe’s Jillian Deutsch reports. It’s a remarkable move, considering AstraZeneca could try to have the case thrown out on the grounds that its contract explicitly says the EU won’t sue over delivery delays. That the Commission has pressed ahead shows just how enraged EU officials are over the company's failure to deliver millions of doses — and how negotiations have deteriorated to the point they seem irreparable, Jillian writes. The EU says AstraZeneca is now set to deliver just 70 million of 180 million doses promised in the second quarter of the year, on top of supplying only 30 million out of 120 million scheduled by the end of March. (The U.S. meanwhile has stockpiled more than 60 million doses, which it promised last week to send to countries in need). | | | Ben Steinhafel is now the director of policy and external affairs at the Center for Telehealth and E-Health Law, CTeL. He previously was a legislative analyst on OPM’s congressional affairs team and is an alum of the offices of former Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and former House Speaker Paul Ryan alum. Adrianna McIntyre is starting this summer as an assistant professor of health policy and politics in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. A #HealthPolicyTwitter mainstay who’s also written for a variety of outlets, McIntyre spent the last several years as a PhD candidate in Harvard’s health policy program and was a Winston fellow from 2015 to 2016. Kristen Smith is now SVP for health policy and public affairs at Edelman. She most recently was global policy senior communicator at Caterpillar and is also an Aetna and Bush 43 administration alum. | | | | 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. | | | | | | Strokes are a deadlier threat to Americans in rural Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta than elsewhere in the U.S. due to disparate health resources, faraway providers and persistent poverty rates, Kaiser Health News and InvestigateTV report. The FDA is expected to clear Pfizer’s vaccine for children aged 12 to 15 within a week, The Associated Press’ Zeke Miller and Jonathan Lemire report. The demand to strip patent protections from coronavirus vaccines “is more slogan than solution,” the Washington Post editorial board writes, in an op-ed calling for U.S. leadership on lockdowns and increased vaccine production.
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