With Daniel Lippman
NEW THIS MORNING — President Joe Biden plans to sign an executive order asking HHS to explore latest ways to lower drug costs, based on the White House.
HHS will use its Innovation Center, created under the Inexpensive Care Act, to work toward lower drug prices. The White House highlighted the middle’s authority to try latest ways of paying for Medicare services.
The agency may have 90 days to report its plans to make use of the middle for lowering drug prices.
The president will travel to Irvine, California, today and Portland, Oregon, Saturday to discuss plans to strengthen Medicare and Social Security — in addition to to tout the Inflation Reduction Act, based on the White House.
The manager motion will come as Democrats look to tout their drug pricing programs just before the midterms, including those from the Inflation Reduction Act, like Medicare drug price negotiations and an insulin price cap.
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TODAY ON OUR PULSE CHECK PODCAST, Erin Banco talks with Megan Wilson about why Japan’s smallpox doses may very well be crucial for low- and middle-income countries. Plus, Rep. Elissa Slotkin told Alice Miranda Ollstein why she’s still frustrated with Democratic leadership over lack of preparation on abortion access.
NOT GOOD ODDS — A latest study out of Scotland found that about 48 percent of people that had Covid still hadn’t fully recovered from the virus after 18 months, considered to have long Covid.
About 6 percent reported not recovering in any respect since getting sick, the researchers found in analyzing 30,000 patients with confirmed Covid infections. The study also took under consideration people without confirmed Covid-19 cases to raised understand which symptoms were related to Covid alone.
Symptomatic infection was related to symptoms like breathlessness, palpitations, chest pain and confusion. Symptomless infection wasn’t related to any adversarial effects throughout the study.
The study also supported the good thing about vaccines: They were related to a reduced risk of several symptoms.
It’s the most recent in a growing body of research trying to know the causes of and possible cures for long Covid, though several studies are focused on properly defining long Covid.
The true extent to which the syndrome has affected populations is unknown. The U.S. Government Accountability Office said the variety of Americans affected “may very well be within the range of seven.7–23 million.” Some earlier studies estimated around 30 percent of those infected with Covid-19 would develop long Covid.
With studies still trickling in, patients proceed to lobby their governments all over the world for help, doctors are attempting to work out treatments in real time, the implications of long Covid are still being fully realized — and Congress stays reluctant to take major motion.
The Biden administration has acknowledged the necessity for the federal government to support long Covid patients and research, laying out plans to accomplish that.
“It’s an actual phenomenon, and we actually must cope with it, and we recognized that very early on,” Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, said earlier this month. “That’s something we absolutely must get our arms around, discover what the pathogenic mechanism of it’s after which hopefully do something about it.”
GROWING OBAMACARE’S REACH — South Dakota may very well be the subsequent red state to expand Medicaid, depending on a closely watched referendum, POLITICO’s Megan Messerly reports.
If voters approve the measure, which might bring Medicaid to greater than 40,000 people within the state, it will be the seventh Republican-controlled state to expand this system within the last five years.
It’s part of a bigger, yearslong battle to grow access for low-income Americans across the U.S. through the American Care Act’s provisions. Some Democrats hoped Medicaid expansion can be one other step toward universal healthcare access.
And while that push has resulted in 17 million more people on the insurance rolls, it hasn’t spread through every state. Besides South Dakota, eleven other states haven’t expanded this system. Only three of them (Florida, Mississippi and Wyoming) allow voters to gather signatures for ballot measures — and so they don’t seem like doing that to try Medicaid expansion.
Meaning using ballot initiatives to expand this system is probably going a method coming to an end, no less than for now, based on Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families and a research professor on the Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy.
As advocates enter right into a latest era of working for — or against — expansion, about 4 million people remain in a coverage gap, based on the Kaiser Family Foundation. Around half of those are in Florida and Texas.
As for South Dakota? Proponents of expansion say they’re “working hard, but … feeling confident.” Opponents acknowledge that working against the measure “seems like an uphill climb.”
YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH EMERGENCY? — A bunch of greater than 130 national and state youth health groups asked the White House to issue a national emergency declaration over the poor mental health of youngsters and teenagers throughout the country.
The groups, including the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association, said an emergency declaration would protect current access and help expand access in the long run.
“Suicide is increasing for kids and teenagers at alarming rates — especially for Black girls and boys under age 12 — and is now the leading reason for death for Asian American youth and the second leading reason for death for young people nationally,” the groups said, noting they were thankful the administration and Congress had taken some motion. “Emergency department visits for suspected youth suicide attempts have increased dramatically and people for eating disorders have doubled throughout the pandemic.”
The letter comes just days after the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force beneficial screening children and teenagers ages 8–18 for anxiety.
It also comes as the priority for mental health is on the rise and as Congress mulls several actions to combat the crisis.
And speaking of health emergencies …
COVID PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY RENEWED — HHS officially renewed the Covid-19 Public Health Emergency Thursday, a move that surprised nobody.
Still, the policy can be necessary in continuing the regulatory exceptions and resources for care while the pandemic stays.
But the tip of those exceptions could also be nearing, with some government agencies advising the private sector to start considering exit strategies to return to compliance as usual.
ADMIN EXAMINES CYBERSECURITY IN HEALTH — The Biden administration is trying to improve cybersecurity within the healthcare industry — and in other critical sectors, like water and communications.
The White House announced the concentrate on securing key infrastructure Thursday, POLITICO’s Maggie Miller reports.
HHS plans to work with health care groups to “put in place cybersecurity guidelines,” in addition to look to secure “devices and broader health care” through the hassle.
It comes as hospitals have faced tens of millions of dollars in losses from cyberattacks, which also can involve stealing confidential health information.
ANOTHER PROMISING VACCINE — But not for Covid-19. This candidate, from pharmaceutical maker GSK, is targeted to guard against respiratory syncytial virus in adults.
RSV, a standard virus, will be threatening to vulnerable populations like older people, particularly because the disease may cause pneumonia.
The vaccine candidate showed a virtually 94 percent reduction in severe RSV and an overall efficacy of just about 83 percent, based on the Phase III trial released by GSK.
Bruce Alexander is now director of the office of communications for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. He most recently was senior public affairs adviser at Whitney, Bradley & Brown.
Robert Grant is now director of international government affairs/global policy for Asia Pacific and multilateral at Merck. He most recently was executive director and head of international affairs on the Global Innovation Policy Center of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and can also be an alum of Mitsubishi, the Obama State Department and the British Embassy.
Priti Krishtel was named a MacArthur Fellow for her work on the patent system’s involvement in stopping access to medications globally.
STAT’s Lev Facher, Ed Silverman and Kate Sheridan write that among the biggest pharmacy chains “willfully turned a blind eye” to the opioid epidemic.
The Washington Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker reports on a nonprofit’s plan to downplay abortion within the midterms.
The Recent York Times’ Christina Jewett reports on the nationwide shortage of Adderall.