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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 |  | | | 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 Senate is still no closer to agreement on President Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, as his Memorial Day deadline approaches. — Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, confirmed Tuesday after a monthslong wait, is now the first Black woman to lead the government’s Medicaid agency. — Morehouse College is launching a Covid-19 inequity tracker that maps state-by-state disparities, as part of a partnership with Google and Gilead. WELCOME TO WEDNESDAY PULSE — where books may be knowledge, but it's long past time we realize they're not super spreaders. Tips to acancryn@politico.com and sowermohle@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. | | | | | | BIDEN’s BIG BILL STALLS IN SENATE — Hopes of a bipartisan deal on Biden’s next trillion-dollar spending bill are fading fast , POLITICO’s Marianne LeVine reports, meaning the White House’s legislative agenda — not to mention the president’s major health priorities — could be delayed until well into summer or beyond. Democratic leaders expect to take until at least July 4 to advance an infrastructure package, whether what they settle on has bipartisan buy-in or not. And moderate swing vote Sen. Joe Manchin signaled Tuesday he’d be willing to go even slower. “This is the long game,” the West Virginian Democrat said, adding that he wants to keep bipartisan negotiations going beyond this weekend. Apart from infrastructure, the White House already has its next big priority lined up: Biden’s American Families Plan, which would make major changes to child care and education — while steering mostly clear of health care. House Democrats are still working to get a drug pricing measure or public option included. But barring a sudden consensus on just how to pull that off, the calendar is looking increasingly full – and the odds of tackling any of Biden’s most ambitious health priorities before 2022 increasingly unlikely. BIDEN GETS HIS CMS CHIEF — At last confirmed, longtime health policy expert Brooks-LaSure is the first Black woman to run CMS. And she's likely to play a central role in Biden’s regulatory efforts to expand Obamacare and reverse a host of Trump-era policies, POLITICO’s Rachel Roubein reports. What took so long? After CMS revoked a Trump-era extension of Texas’ Medicaid waiver, infuriated Senate Finance Committee Republicans retaliated by refusing to back Brooks-LaSure as the agency’s next leader and forcing her to clear additional procedural hurdles. MEANWHILE: HHS ADDS TO ITS SENIOR RANKS — Newly confirmed Deputy Secretary Andrea Palm has tapped Angela Botticella as her chief of staff, HHS said Tuesday. Botticella was previously chief of staff at the Catholic Health Association, but prior to that spent almost four years in the Obama-era HHS’ intergovernmental and external affairs office. — HHS also added two more Hill alums: Leslie Zelenko, a former aide to Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), will be a senior adviser and congressional liaison in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Legislation. Kamara Jones will be deputy assistant secretary for strategic planning in HHS’ press operation. Jones was previously communications director for the Joint Economic Committee Democrats. PULSE previously reported HHS’ appointment of four counselors to Secretary Xavier Becerra and a new head of the population affairs office, all of whom were officially announced on Tuesday.
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| | | FIRST IN PULSE: MOREHOUSE LAUNCHES GOOGLE BACKED EQUITY TRACKER — The historically Black college is launching its Health Equity Tracker , starting with a compilation of Covid-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations nationwide by race, ethnicity, sex and age across states and counties. That's a significant effort, considering the metrics used to track those variables can vary across the country. Morehouse’s School of Medicine said it hopes to build the platform so it can eventually track a range of issues that have been exacerbated by the pandemic or are disproportionately impacting vulnerable communities such as persons with disabilities, the LGBTQ community and low-income people. The numbers: Google’s philanthropy arm put $1.5 million toward the effort, while Gilead, which manufactures the coronavirus treatment remdesivir, provided $1 million. The CDC Foundation also supported the project. | | | |   | | | | | | ACLU SUES ARKANSAS OVER TRANSGENDER CARE BAN — Arkansas’ first-in-the-nation law barring doctors from providing gender-affirming care to children violates parents’ and physicians’ constitutional rights, according to a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed in federal court Tuesday. Arkansas’ law would penalize doctors for providing minors with treatments such as hormone therapies, puberty blockers and transition-related surgeries, or for referring them for those treatments, Dan Goldberg reports. The lawsuit asks the court to block the ban from taking effect at the end of July. — The complaint — brought on behalf of four transgender children, their families and two doctors — claims that allowing the law to stand “will have devastating consequences for transgender youth in Arkansas.” At least six transgender adolescents in Arkansas have attempted suicide since the law was enacted in early April, according to the complaint. ACLU said in a statement that this is the first of many lawsuits it plans to file against recent anti-transgender laws across the country, which include measures strengthening health providers’ right to refuse to provide care for patients. SENATE REJECTS BID TO BLOCK BIDEN’S VACCINE IP MOVE — Lawmakers on Tuesday rejected a Republican amendment that would have limited Biden’s ability to waive intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines, Doug Palmer reports. Republicans argue that the Biden agreement with the World Trade Organization would give away valuable U.S. technology to strategic competitors such as China and Russia. The amendment, offered by Senate Finance ranking member Mike Crapo of Idaho, asserted that the administration needs congressional approval to hand over these types of patent rights for worldwide production — but it fell short of the 60 votes needed for approval. Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said Crapo's amendment would make it too hard for the White House to reach a waiver agreement at the WTO or update any agreement once it has been approved by Congress. He offered a more limited version of Crapo's amendment, but it also failed. | | | U.S. DRIVES EFFORT TO DELAY PANDEMIC TREATY — The United States and other allies succeed in staving off discussion of a global pandemic preparedness treaty until November, POLITICO Europe’s Ashleigh Furlong reports. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization published a draft to text that will be discussed during this week’s ongoing World Health Assembly. WHO said that it will convene a working group to assess the benefits of a possible treaty and the group will present its findings this fall. The fact that, at least for now, there is only a draft treaty signals that the U.S. and other countries ultimately won out against those that were pressing for a global pandemic agreement immediately. Vice President Kamala Harris had expressed some hesitation about such an agreement last week, saying the administration “believes that we need to first strengthen our foundation.”
| | | | 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. | | |
| | | Francisco Carrillo has joined Pfizer as a senior director of federal government relations, aimed at lobbying House Democrats. He was previously district director for Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.). Meredith Good-Cohn is the new director of business development at Rey. Prior to joining the mental health company, Good-Cohn was a senior adviser to Trump administration CMS chief Seema Verma. | | | | SUBSCRIBE TO WEST WING PLAYBOOK: Add West Wing Playbook to keep up with the power players, latest policy developments and intriguing whispers percolating inside the West Wing and across the highest levels of the Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | | Black people account for 8 in 10 coronavirus cases in Washington, D.C., in recent days, a surge since late April even as overall cases, and especially those among white residents, fall, The Washington Post’s Lola Fadulu and Dan Keating write. A fake London-based communications agency is approaching French influencers and social media sites to push false narratives about the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, Reuters reported. CDC isn’t planning to investigate mild Covid-19 cases in vaccinated Americans, but critics say that the agency is missing important opportunities to better understand how different vaccines work in the real world, Roni Caryn Rabin writes in the New York Times. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
