Overnight Health Care: House votes to repeal medical device tax | Fierce ObamaCare critic joins administration | GOP senators target DC individual mandate
Welcome to Tuesday’s Overnight Health Care. It’s a rainy, humid day in D.C., but that didn’t stop reproductive rights groups and congressional Democrats from marching on the Department of Health and Human Services to protest proposed changes to the Title X family planning program.
If you’re noticing that more people are talking about Title X, it’s because the comment period for the proposed changes ends July 31.
The proposal would ban clinics that receive the funds from referring women for abortions and removes a requirement that Title X recipients present abortion as an option.
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The planned rule has been praised by anti-abortion groups as a way to block Planned Parenthood from receiving Title X funds.
Here’s the rest of the day’s stories…
The House voted to repeal ObamaCare’s medical device tax.
It was a rare moment of (at least some) bipartisanship on health care. Repeal of the device tax passed 283 to 132, with 57 Democrats voting in favor.
Political context: The vote comes during a week of health-care measures put forward by the GOP as they try to blunt Democratic attacks over rising premiums, a key midterm message.
The vote could help Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.), the sponsor of the bill, who faces a tough reelection fight this year.
“This bill reverses a harmful tax that is hurting job growth and innovation across the country,” Paulsen said.
However: There is no clear path forward for the measure in the Senate this year.
CMS made some new staffing announcements Tuesday, including the hiring of a fierce ObamaCare critic. Former Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Paul Mango will join the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as chief principal deputy administrator and chief of staff to Seema Verma.
Mango, who has been critical of ObamaCare and called it a “disaster,” also worked as a health care consultant for McKinsey & Company.
Read more here.
Other moves:
- Chris Trayor joins CMS as the deputy administrator for strategic initiatives. He was most recently the executive commissioner of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
- Brady Brookes, Verma’s deputy chief of staff, has been promoted to deputy administrator.
Six GOP senators target D.C.’s individual mandate.
Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Mike Lee (Utah), Ron Johnson (Wis.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (Miss.), and Marco Rubio (Fla.) introduced an amendment to a spending bill to block D.C. from using federal funds to re-implement ObamaCare’s individual mandate.
“Under Obamacare, millions of Americans have lost their doctors, seen their premiums skyrocket, and have been forced into part time work,” Cruz said. “Those Americans living in our nation’s capital have not been exempt from those hardships.
Republicans passed a repeal of ObamaCare’s mandate last year, but D.C. and three other states (Massachusetts, New Jersey and Vermont) have sought to implement statewide mandates, arguing they keep premiums low by encouraging healthy people to stay in the marketplaces.
The House last week passed an identical amendment, offered by Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.).
The reaction from D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D):
“Senator Cruz needs to do more for Texas. Instead, he is stealing precious time and effort from his Texas constituents to abuse congressional power by interfering with the affairs of another Member’s district. As the main proponent of repealing the Affordable Care Act and stripping health insurance from millions of Americans, he cannot bear to see health care be offered even at the local level.”
Chance of passage?: Not good. Republicans can’t pass the spending bill alone, so it’s not likely that leadership will let the amendment get included in the final version.
The Food and Drug Administration is working with several companies to initiate voluntary recalls of some snack foods.
The FDA says there is no evidence that anyone was sickened by the products, or that they are contaminated, but recalls are being initiated “out of an abundance of caution.” The products potentially affected include:
- Mondelez’s Ritz cheese sandwiches and Ritz Bitz cheese products
- Certain Pepperidge Farm’s Goldfish
- Flowers Foods’ Swiss Rolls, which are sold under various brand names
Specific information about which items should be thrown out or returned to the store can be found here.
Cynthia Nixon endorses single-payer health care in New York
Another Democratic gubernatorial candidate is backing single payer on a state level.
New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon on Tuesday endorsed a statewide single-payer health-care system amid her challenge to Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) from the left.
“Health care should be a human right, not a privilege for those who can afford it,” Nixon says in a new video. “When I’m governor, we’ll pass the New York Health Act and create a single-payer, Medicare-for-all-system that covers every New Yorker.”
It’s not just New York: Other Democratic gubernatorial candidates who support state-level single payer include Gavin Newsom in California and Ben Jealous in Maryland.
Words of caution: Single payer on the state level is difficult to pull off. Vermont, the home state of one of the most prominent champions of the idea, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I), previously tried to set up a state-run single payer system but called it off in 2014 amid funding challenges.
Eli Lilly doesn’t want HHS to explore drug importation. In some not-very-surprising news Tuesday, David Ricks, the CEO of Eli Lilly, denounced the Trump administration’s proposal to consider ways to import prescription drugs from other countries.
Main quotes: “We think that’s the wrong road to go down. This is really a regulatory failure from our perspective,” Ricks said. “We agree it should be solved, [it’s] the method we disagree with.”
The idea: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced last week it is forming a working group to examine how the U.S. could import pharmaceuticals from abroad as a way to combat massive price hikes for drugs that are produced by a single manufacturer and aren’t protected by patents or exclusivities.
The kicker: HHS Secretary Alex Azar used to run Lilly’s U.S. division.
Read more about Ricks’s comments here.
Ebola outbreak in Congo formally ends
Some good news in health care: An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in the heart of Congo has formally ended about four months after it began spreading through several remote villages and towns.
The central African nation’s Ministry of Health on Tuesday said that Congo is now free of the disease, 42 days after the last case was diagnosed in early June. There were 53 confirmed and probable cases identified and 29 people died from the virus.
Several groups administered a new experimental vaccine to front-line health workers and to those who had come into contact with Ebola patients, a practice known as ring vaccination. About 3,300 people received the vaccine, and though researchers will have to continue to monitor their progress, none of those who received the vaccine got sick.
What we’re reading
Red-state Senate Democrats are redoubling their efforts to protect ObamaCare (Vox.com)
Purdue Pharma edits public service ad in Washington Post (Kaiser Health News)
Health insurer Centene ‘very enthusiastic’ about Obamacare (Washington Examiner)
State by state
A vote expanded Medicaid in Maine. The governor is ignoring it. (New York Times)
Richard Cordray wants to build on the Medicaid expansion in Ohio for his gubernatorial health care plan (Cleveland.com)
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