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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 Rachel Roubein and Susannah Luthi 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. | | | — G-7 leaders doubled their global vaccine pledge this past week, but not everyone is satisfied. — The countries also promised to have the WHO probe Covid-19’s origins, as a theory suggesting the virus escaped from a Chinese lab remains unlikely but tough to disprove. — An exorbitantly expensive Alzheimer’s medicine was just approved by the FDA, but lawmakers have been conspicuously silent. WELCOME TO MONDAY PULSE — where your host’s editor sends his heartfelt congratulations to Wasabi. Send tips and dog breed opinions (like the injustice for dachshunds) to sowermohle@politico.com and Adam at acancryn@politico.com. | | | | A message from PhRMA: The way insurance covers your medicine is too complicated. See how we can make the system work for patients. Not the other way around. | | | | | | G-7 LEADERS TOUT VACCINE PLEDGES AS OTHER COUNTRIES PRESS FOR MORE — The G-7 summit wrapped Sunday with the seven nations boasting that they collectively have promised 2.3 billion Covid-19 shots to the world. That donation total includes 1 billion pledged this weekend, of which roughly half is the U.S. government’s 500 million-dose order from Pfizer. The countries are also factoring in funding for the global vaccine equity effort COVAX and production partnerships with other countries. The problem: Detractors say donations of the vaccines themselves still keep power and access in the hands of a select few nations — but that sharing the technology and information needed to make vaccines will level the field. India and South Africa are pressing the World Trade Organization for an intellectual property waiver that would let factories in other countries produce the shots themselves. (For its part, the U.S. has already pledged to temporarily waive those rights) “Inequity of access to vaccines is unacceptable,” WTO chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told reporters at the summit. She called on G-7 nations to endorse the patent waiver plan by July, adding, “It’s clear that going forward as part of preparing for the next pandemic, we must decentralize production.” But European nations are trying to delay those talks, POLITICO Europe’s Jakob Hanke Vela reports. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has been one of the most vocal opponents of a waiver, arguing it would undermine incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop new technologies. This weekend was still a good first step, International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva said at the summit. While the donations are a great start, too many hurdles remain, she told reporters at a virtual press conference. While almost half of the combined population of the G-7 nations has received at least one dose of vaccine, the worldwide figure is less than 13 percent, The Associated Press reported. In Africa, it’s just 2.2 percent. ALSO: G-7 SETS SIGHTS ON ORIGIN PROBE — Biden and other G-7 leaders on Sunday called for a “timely, transparent, expert-led, and science-based WHO-convened” investigation into the origins of the coronavirus after renewed interest in a theory that the virus leaked from an infectious disease lab in Wuhan, China. President Joe Biden has ordered the intelligence community to redouble efforts to look into the situation and has asked for another report in 90 days, our Myah Ward reports. Many scientists still say it’s more likely that the virus was passed from an animal host — such as a bat — to humans. And a WHO report earlier this year that called a lab leak theory “highly unlikely” riled those who say it cannot be ruled out. But that WHO study was “highly deficient,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on "Fox News Sunday,” as he stressed the U.S. intelligence services’ own probe. "It's important to know the answer” to the question of the virus’s origins. | | | | DON'T MISS THE MILKEN INSTITUTE FUTURE OF HEALTH SUMMIT: POLITICO will feature a special edition of our Future Pulse newsletter at the 2021 Milken Institute Future of Health Summit. The newsletter takes readers inside one of the most influential gatherings of global health industry leaders and innovators who are turning lessons learned from the past year into a healthier, more resilient and more equitable future. Covid-19 threatened our health and well-being, while simultaneously leading to extraordinary coordination to improve pandemic preparedness, disease prevention, diversity in clinical trials, mental health resources, food access and more. SUBSCRIBE TODAY to receive exclusive coverage from June 22-24. | | | | | | | | WHY CAPITOL HILL IS SILENT ON A PRICEY NEW ALZHEIMER’S DRUG — The FDA’s approval of aducanumab would seem like the perfect candidate for inflaming Washington’s long-running debate over sky-high prescription drug prices. But lawmakers are wary of dashing desperate patients’ hope for treatment — even one that may provide little or no benefit. — The drug was approved broadly despite scant evidence that it works. It costs $56,000 annually — far more than many Wall Street analysts had expected, and expensive enough to drive up health insurance costs for the 56 million older adults on Medicare. The weak evidence for aducanumab’s efficacy makes it harder for Republicans to tout the treatment as an example of the breakthroughs that, they argue, would be stifled by Democratic drug pricing proposals. The few Democratic lawmakers who have criticized the drug’s price are those who are already the most outspoken advocates for lower drug costs. And when acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock testified before a Senate subcommittee last week, no lawmakers questioned her agency’s decision. Yet a backlash may still build in the coming weeks, as more experts raise concern over the financial stress the drug’s approval could put on the health care system, patients and taxpayers. Meanwhile, patient advocates rebel: The Alzheimer’s Association blasted aducanumab developer Biogen over the drug’s price tag this weekend, calling it “simply unacceptable” and saying it “complicates and jeopardizes sustainable access to this treatment, and may further deepen issues of health equity.” | | | |   | | | | | | ANTI-VAXXERS GAIN STEAM AGAINST COVID SHOTS — The partisan divide over the country's pandemic response has reinvigorated the anti-vaccine movement nationwide , with lawmakers in nearly 40 states, mostly Republicans, backing bills to restrict Covid-19 vaccine mandates or vaccine passports, our Lauren Gardner reports. At least six states — Arkansas, Florida, Montana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah — have limited Covid shot mandates. At least 11 states have banned the use of vaccine passports, according to the National Council of State Legislatures, and another 31 states at minimum are considering similar legislation. The anti-vaccine movement saw an opportunity with the pandemic to bring more people into the fold. It started by shifting its message from the shots themselves to governments’ often unpopular promotion of masks and social distancing, said Erica DeWald, director of strategic communications and partnerships at vaccine education group Vaccinate Your Family. “This is the first time that they’ve been able to attach themselves to an issue that has successfully passed,” she said. CHIPPING AWAY AT ROE V. WADE — Anti-abortion advocates have pursued a long-term strategy that stretches far outside the courts, relying on grassroots political change and the tidal push-and-pull between politics and the law, write law professors Mary Ziegler and Robert L. Tsai in POLITICO Magazine. The Supreme Court last month agreed to a keystone abortion case next year, Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which hinges on a 2018 Mississippi law banning abortion at 15 weeks. To uphold that state law — which the court’s conservative majority is expected to do — the court will have to undo all or part of Roe v. Wade. At stake is the definition of “viability,” Ziegler and Tsai write — a standard that, if removed, would open the door to laws banning abortion far earlier in pregnancy. | | | Debbie Curtis is joining McDermott+Consulting as a vice president focused on health policy after three decades divided between work on the Hill and health insurance groups. Curtis was a key Democratic congressional staffer during development of the Affordable Care Act and most recently served as chief of staff to Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) and as staffer for the House Ways & Means subcommittee on health. (h/t to McDermott’s Rodney Whitlock, a longtime Hill staffer on the GOP side of health care reform). Stephanie Dyson and Lucia Lodato are joining Bristol Myers Squibb. Dyson will be VP of U.S. policy and government affairs; she previously was in the same post at Biogen. Lodato will be director of U.S. policy communications after working as an SVP at Powell Tate. Anjali Chhatre is now a health care consultant at Avalere Health. She previously was associate health policy counsel for former Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.). | | | | A message from PhRMA: Getting to what you pay for medicines shouldn’t be a maze. Let’s make out-of-pocket costs transparent, predictable and affordable. And let’s do it without sacrificing access to medicines and innovation. See how we can make the system work for patients. Not the other way around. | | | | | | A federal judge dismissed a Texas case brought by more than 100 hospital workers arguing they should not be required to receive a Covid-19 vaccine, reports Reuters’ Karen Freifeld. Virtually all hospitalized Covid-19 patients have one thing in common — they haven’t been vaccinated, NBC News’ Erika Edwards writes. Fresh graduates from medical programs quickly joined the Covid-19 fight — sometimes months before their graduation date — and were thrown into an unprecedented crisis, writes Emma Goldberg for Literary Hub. | | | | 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. | | | | | Correction: Friday’s issue of Pulse incorrectly identified Rep. Mike Doyle as a Republican. He is a Democrat. | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |  |
