| | | | |  | | By Chelsea Cirruzzo and Ben Leonard | | | With Erin Schumaker and Daniel Payne
| | |  Author and activist Maria Shriver, left, sits next to Kate Cox, who was denied emergency abortion care in Texas and attended the State of the Union address as a guest of the president. | Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images | ‘GUARANTEE THE RIGHT TO IVF’ — Lowering the cost of prescription drugs and restoring abortion rights were centerpieces of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address — though he didn’t mention “abortion” by name. Reproductive rights: On Thursday night, Biden called on Congress to pass legislation to protect in vitro fertilization, warning of further fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, POLITICO’s Megan Messerly and Jennifer Haberkorn report. “Don’t keep this waiting any longer,” Biden said. “Guarantee the right to IVF. Guarantee it nationwide.” The president didn’t introduce new policy on reproductive health care but gave considerable mention to the issue, particularly for someone whose view on abortion isn’t entirely aligned with his party’s. Biden tied the Alabama court’s ruling that frozen embryos are children directly to fallout from the Dobbs decision, casting blame on Republicans. He reiterated his interest in codifying the Roe decision and said his administration would fight to preserve access to abortion, contraception and IVF. “Many of you in this chamber and my predecessor are promising to pass a national ban on reproductive freedom,” Biden said. “My God, what freedoms would you take away?” Kate Cox: He spotlighted Kate Cox, the Texas woman at the center of a high-profile abortion case, as part of an effort by Democrats to call attention to the broader ripple effects of the Dobbs decision. “What her family got through should have never happened as well, but it’s happening to too many others,” Biden said, condemning state laws restricting abortion access. A first: He also called on Congress to agree to $12 billion in the budget for women’s health research, touting the first White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research, spearheaded by First Lady Jill Biden. ‘Power to negotiate’: Biden took a victory lap on Medicare drug price negotiation as an economic win and pitched a plan to expand on the Inflation Reduction Act, including extending the insulin price cap to private insurance and expanding the number of drugs open to negotiation. “It’s now time to go further and give Medicare the power to negotiate the prices of 500 drugs over the next decade,” Biden said. WELCOME TO FRIDAY PULSE. Researchers observed an increased risk of heart attack, stroke and death in patients found to have microplastics in their arteries during surgery to treat carotid artery disease. Send your tips, scoops and feedback to ccirruzzo@politico.com and bleonard@politico.com and follow along @ChelseaCirruzzo and @_BenLeonard_.
| | | | A message from the Coalition to Protect America's Health Care: Congress: Support and strengthen hospitals and health systems that care for America’s most vulnerable patients. Learn more. | | | | | DON’T MISS POLITICO’S HEALTH CARE SUMMIT: The stakes are high as America's health care community strives to meet the evolving needs of patients and practitioners, adopt new technologies and navigate skeptical public attitudes toward science. Join POLITICO’s annual Health Care Summit on March 13 where we will discuss the future of medicine, including the latest in health tech, new drugs and brain treatments, diagnostics, health equity, workforce strains and more. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | 
President Joe Biden omitted or only briefly mentioned some noteworthy health policy issues in his State of the Union address. | Francis Chung/POLITICO | WHAT BIDEN DIDN’T SAY — During the address, Biden didn’t dive into all the health issues his administration has focused on, giving some only a brief mention, like cancer research, and sidestepping others altogether. What was left out: — New nursing home policies weren’t mentioned this year — as they were in earlier years. But CMS is finalizing a rule that would set minimum staffing standards for health workers in long-term care facilities. — Biden nodded to “the mental health crisis of isolation and loneliness” but didn’t dive into the policies he has pursued to address that crisis in recent years. The administration has pledged to finalize a mental health parity rule it proposed last summer. — Unlike last year, Biden didn't mention the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which faces a lack of political support from Republicans for the first time in the 20 years since former President George W. Bush created it. Congress didn’t reauthorize PEPFAR last year despite the program being credited with saving 25 million lives. — Although Biden referenced ending cancer as we know it — one of his cancer moonshot goals — he didn’t mention the initiative by name or call for reauthorization to fund it. — Perhaps responding to concerns that social media negatively impacts youth mental health, Biden told Congress to pass bipartisan privacy legislation to protect kids online. But he didn’t dive into the policies he has pursued to address that crisis in recent years.
| | | | JOIN US ON 3/21 FOR A TALK ON FINANCIAL LITERACY: Americans from all communities should be able to save, build wealth, and escape generational poverty, but doing so requires financial literacy. How can government and industry ensure access to digital financial tools to help all Americans achieve this? Join POLITICO on March 21 as we explore how Congress, regulators, financial institutions and nonprofits are working to improve financial literacy education for all. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | | | 
Sen. Bernie Sanders is pushing to double the amount of funding for programs authorized under the Older Americans Act. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images | HELP TAKES ON OLDER AMERICANS ACT — The Senate HELP Committee on Thursday weighed the future of the Older Americans Act, which is up for reauthorization at the end of fiscal 2024, Ben reports. The act, initially passed in 1965 under former President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society programs, aims to bolster health care and long-term care for older Americans. A significant portion of the funding is used for nutrition and food programs for older adults. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, called for the program’s funding to be doubled to more than $4.6 billion. Last year, most Senate Democrats joined Sanders in such a call. “I understand that $4.6 billion sounds like a lot of money, and it is a lot of money,” Sanders said. “But it is even more expensive for Medicare and Medicaid to pay tens of billions of dollars in healthcare bills every year because of senior malnutrition and senior falls.” View from the GOP: Ranking member Bill Cassidy (R-La.) struck a different tone but said he’s seeking a “thoughtful and bipartisan reauthorization” through a working group with Sanders and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), Bob Casey (D-Pa.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.). Cassidy stressed the importance of public-private partnerships and said he wanted to ensure “taxpayer dollars are being used effectively” while learning lessons from the pandemic.
| | | | A message from the Coalition to Protect America's Health Care:   | | | | | RSV SHOT HIGHLY EFFECTIVE — A shot to protect infants against respiratory syncytial virus was found to be 90 percent effective against hospitalization in a new study out Thursday — but shortages of the injection limit the study’s application. Nirsevimab, a long-acting monoclonal antibody made by Sanofi and AstraZeneca, was recommended by the CDC in August to protect babies under 8 months from RSV, which hospitalizes thousands of young children each year. According to a report by the CDC on Thursday, among 699 infants hospitalized with acute respiratory illness between Oct. 1, 2023, and Feb. 29, 8 percent had received the shot more than a week before their symptoms started. Researchers also found that babies with high-risk medical conditions were more likely to have received the injection, Chelsea reports. However, the shots’ rollout, which began after the RSV season started, the low number of infants who received the injection and shortages throughout the fall that left parents scrambling to find shots may limit generalizing these results to all babies that got the shot, researchers said. Additionally, the study didn’t measure the drug’s effectiveness based on dosage — a 50-milligram dose for smaller infants, a 100-mg dose for larger infants — nor did it compare outcomes for outpatient visits with emergency room visits for RSV.
| | HELIUM RESERVE BID ACCEPTED — The Bureau of Land Management has accepted a more than $423 million bid from a gas company to buy its federally owned supply of helium stored at a facility in Texas. The impending sale to Messer, LLC, which BLM said has operated the site on a federal contract for two years, has prompted worries from some in the health care industry that the sale will slow down the chemical’s production. A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior previously told Pulse that privatizing the helium supply — used with ventilators and MRI magnets — won’t “meaningfully change” availability. Messer, an industrial gas supplier, made two bids for the land in January. After the DOJ reviews the bids, Messer will have about four months to complete the sale. “Accepting these bids is the next step in fulfilling our obligation under the Helium Stewardship Act and protects the interest of the taxpayers and the government,” Melanie Barnes, state director of New Mexico, said in a statement.
| | | | DON’T MISS POLITICO’S HEALTH CARE SUMMIT: The stakes are high as America's health care community strives to meet the evolving needs of patients and practitioners, adopt new technologies and navigate skeptical public attitudes toward science. Join POLITICO’s annual Health Care Summit on March 13 where we will discuss the future of medicine, including the latest in health tech, new drugs and brain treatments, diagnostics, health equity, workforce strains and more. REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | | | Clarke Humphrey will join the Biden campaign as senior adviser for digital persuasion. She was most recently principal at Chong and Koster and previously served in the White House as digital director for the Covid-19 response team. Eugene Livar has been named the Arizona Department of Health Services’ first-ever chief heat officer. He’s been with the department since 2012.
| | POLITICO’s Carmen Paun reports on legislation that would bar federally funded firms from working with Chinese biotech firms. NPR reports on how common ageism is in health care settings — and how it can cause both over- and undertreatment. POLITICO’s John Sakellariadis reports that UnitedHealth hopes to restore its systems after a massive hack by mid-March.
| | | | A message from the Coalition to Protect America's Health Care: Hospitals and health systems care for the most vulnerable patients who could otherwise fall through the cracks. They treat sicker patients, lower-income patients, and patients with more complex conditions than other types of care providers.
While hospitals and health systems work to provide patients the around-the-clock care they need, our current trajectory is putting their progress at risk. Medicare reimbursement rates have not kept pace. Washington D.C. has kept asking our nation’s hospitals to do more and more with less and less.
Congress: It’s time to protect America’s most vulnerable patients. Learn more. | | | | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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