Border fight pits Texas against HHS — Biden rushes to repair infrastructure deal — Vaccine gaps grow more noticeable as Delta variant spreads

From: POLITICO Pulse - Monday Jun 28,2021 02:09 pm

Jun 28, 2021

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With Dan Goldberg and Rachel Roubein

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Quick Fix

— Texas and the federal government are at odds over how to house thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children.

— President Joe Biden spent the weekend salvaging his bipartisan infrastructure deal and backtracking on comments he made last week suggesting he might veto it over, among other things, its lack of health care cash.

— Federal health officials are scrambling to vaccinate as many people against Covid-19 as possible, as a dangerous new coronavirus variant becomes more dominant stateside.

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Driving the day

BORDER FIGHT PITS TEXAS AGAINST WHITE HOUSE — HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra is slated to visit an emergency shelter for children in El Paso, Texas, today, while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott plans to accompany former President Donald Trump on a trip to the border Wednesday.

The Republican governor pledged this month to effectively close 52 shelters across the state that collectively house roughly 4,500 unaccompanied immigrant children. Abbott's plan to yank the facilities’ licenses would go into effect at the end of August. It’d upend the administration’s refugee resettlement efforts, and federal health officials have threatened to sue, Adam writes.

A series of tense letters between Becerra and a defiant Abbott this month obtained by Adam shed light on the GOP’s broader campaign to hammer Biden over immigration and border security.

Abbott’s order is the most drastic attempt yet by a state to decouple itself from a long-running federal program that relies on state-licensed organizations to shelter migrant children until they can be placed with guardians. That would leave more than a quarter of the nation’s entire population of migrant kids without anywhere to stay. Texas hasn’t offered any housing alternatives, with Abbott insisting that it’s HHS’ responsibility.

HHS has accused Abbott of launching a “direct attack” on the administration’s effort to care for record numbers of unaccompanied children crossing the southern border and said it’s consulting with the Justice Department on necessary legal action.

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BIDEN RUSHES TO REHAB INFRASTRUCTURE BILL — The bipartisan group of Senate negotiators “did not want to go along with any of my Family Plan issues, the human infrastructure that I talk about," Biden said Thursday , in comments that set off a weekend firestorm. The president had to dial up members of Congress himself to patch things up, two people with knowledge of the calls told our Natasha Korecki and Christopher Cadelago, and on Saturday he issued a formal reversal of what Republicans had taken as a veto threat. That seems to have been good enough for GOP senators, who have since signaled their support, Burgess Everett reports.

The White House strategy this week, rather, will be to highlight the benefits of the infrastructure compromise (rather than what it’s missing, like Biden’s wished-for $400 billion for home care).

CLOSING THE LATINO VACCINE GAP — Troves of misinformation, language barriers and fears around immigration enforcement are hampering efforts to vaccinate Hispanic communities against Covid-19, Rachel Roubein and Dan Goldberg write.

Polls show Hispanic people are more eager to get vaccinated than members of other racial or ethnic groups. But fears over missing work or getting saddled with an unexpected medical bill may still discourage people from seeking out a shot, and in some more rural communities, transportation remains a barrier.

Missteps earlier in the vaccine drive have made things worse. Mass vaccination sites, staffed by law enforcement and uniformed National Guard members, asked vaccine recipients for identification, which made some undocumented immigrants wary of visiting those locations.

Misinformation around immigration enforcement, has also kept some from getting vaccinated. One-third of unvaccinated Hispanic people surveyed by the African American Research Collaborative and the Commonwealth Fund this month said they believed receiving a Covid vaccine could complicate immigration status for themselves or their family, despite the Biden administration’s assurances to the contrary.

OFFICIALS RACE AGAINST LOOMING DELTA VARIANT — Top Biden administration health officials have largely given up on the possibility of reinstating mask and social-distancing rules in f avor of a grassroots coronavirus vaccine education campaign, Erin Banco and David Lim write.

Why? Many people who are refusing vaccination are also those who resisted wearing masks, so renewed social distancing and other containment measures wouldn’t necessarily reach the right audiences.

Instead, the federal government will try to convince hesitant Americans to get vaccinated by working with state officials and trusted community members to communicate the benefits of the shots, three senior officials told Erin and David. The president’s team is not confident that the new campaign will change hearts and minds, two officials said, but it is falling back on old messaging in part because top administration officials are unsure what other tactics will work.

Meanwhile: Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), who has not been vaccinated against the virus, is hosting an event today aimed at publicizing concerns about Covid-19 vaccines.

In Congress

HOUSE INVESTIGATORS PROBE APPROVAL OF NEW ALZHEIMER’S DRUG — Two congressional committees on Friday launched a joint investigation into FDA's recent controversial approval of Biogen’s Aduhelm.

Apart from questions about the drug’s efficacy, members fear that Aduhelm’s cost could substantially increase health care spending, our Katherine Foley writes. The $56,000-a-year medicine could lead to an additional $57 billion in annual Medicare costs, dwarfing the federal insurer’s total current spending on all drugs admitted in a health care facility, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates.

Around the Nation

GEORGIA SENATORS RALLY FOR MEDICAID EXPANSION — Georgia’s Democratic senators are urging lawmakers to use upcoming infrastructure package to provide health coverage to low-income adults in the dozen states that have refused Medicaid expansion, according to a letter provided to Rachel. And the White House and leading Democratic lawmakers have been quietly mulling whether to do just that.

Biden’s last coronavirus relief bill, passed in March, offered new incentives for the holdout states to expand. But none were interested in taking those extra dollars to cover an estimated 2.2 million people who now lack an affordable health insurance option.

“We can no longer wait for states to find a sense of morality and must step in to close the coverage gap and finally ensure that all low- and middle-income Americans have access to quality, affordable health care,” Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff wrote in a letter sent to Senate leaders.

MISSOURI SENATE DROPS PLAN TO PROHIBIT MEDICAID FROM COVERING CERTAIN CONTRACEPTIVES — Some conservative members of the Missouri state Senate and anti-abortion groups were pushing for language in a tax bill that would have prohibited Medicaid from paying for Plan B and IUDs, which they consider to be abortifacients — substances that induce (and are thus equivalent to) abortions. They also wanted to prohibit state funding from going to any facility that offered abortion or is affiliated with abortion provider.

But other Republicans feared these moves would leave the state out of compliance with the federal Medicaid program, putting billions of dollars in jeopardy. They joined with Democrats to defeat the proposal early Saturday morning, though the bill still must clear the House, which takes up the debate this week.

“The state Senate chose to pass [legislation] that removed dangerous language equating birth control to abortion and limiting safety-net providers,” said Michelle Trupiano, executive director of Missouri Family Health Council, Inc. “This is a win for science.”

J&J ENDS NEW YORK OPIOID SALES — The company will pay up to $230 million to New York state in a settlement over accusations that Johnson & Johnson’s opioids fueled the state’s ongoing opioid use disorder epidemic, state Attorney General Tish James announced this weekend.

The company and its subsidiaries are also barred from selling opioids in New York, James said in a statement. J&J could pay an additional $30 million if the state government signs into law new legislation that creates an opioid settlement fund.

ARKANSAS GOVERNOR WARY OF RISING COVID HOSPITALIZATIONS — The state, which has some of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, has seen hospitalization rates rise, driving the need for more vaccine outreach, Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Reimplementing pandemic restrictions is “theoretically” on the table, he said. Citizens “started feeling comfortable” after vaccines were first doled out, Hutchinson said. “People saw the cases of hospitalizations go down. And so, the urgency of getting the vaccine slowed down.”

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What We're Reading

Russia’s fake vaccine certificate market is booming as the country institutes stringent coronavirus vaccine rules, the Washington Post’s Isabelle Khurshudyan writes.

Add this to the lists of Everest risks: Climbers say they contracted Covid-19 on their journeys. Nepalese authorities deny it, Bhadra Sharma and Emily Schmall report for the New York Times.

Honduras received 1.5 million doses of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine from the U.S. this weekend, White House officials told Reuters’ Jeff Mason.

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UnitedHealth Group believes that all individuals should have access to high-quality, affordable health care that meets their unique needs. We are committed to advancing health equity by delivering personalized care, building a diverse health workforce, improving the health of underserved communities and providing insights and analyses to address disparities in care. Learn more about our commitment to sustainability in our recently released 2020 Sustainability Report.