News: Anti-abortion groups adopt the left’s tactics

Monday, July 8, 2024

Anti-abortion groups adopt the left’s tactics

Jul 08, 2024

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Driving the Day

A group of anti-abortion protestors hold signs.

Anti-abortion groups are taking a page from the pro-choice playbook by focusing on personal stories to deliver their broader message. | Jeff Roberson/AP

STRATEGY SHIFTS GEARS — Anti-abortion advocates have for two years watched how the left has used first-person stories of women affected by state abortion bans to mobilize voters.

Now, they’re taking a page out of the abortion-rights playbook by creating videos, publishing written accounts and sharing on social media first-person stories of their own, POLITICO’s Megan Messerly and Alice Miranda Ollstein report.

The anti-abortion movement’s new campaign features women speaking directly to the camera, talking about their decisions to carry their pregnancies to term after being raped, receiving a diagnosis of a fetal anomaly or learning they were too far along to legally receive an abortion in their state.

It’s part of an effort to change the narrative on abortion after two years of bruising electoral defeats and growing support among voters for access to the procedure heading into November’s contests. Anti-abortion groups hope the first-person stories will help people understand the perspective of mothers who decided not to have abortions and support state abortion bans.

“Democrats do this well,” said Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which plans to spend $92 million this cycle in battleground states. “Republicans need to match them on this and do even better. That’s how they can get ahead in 2024.”

But a Republican strategist who consults with anti-abortion groups, granted anonymity to talk candidly about electoral strategy, said internal campaign research showed that the first-person stories from women who chose not to receive abortions were most compelling for voters.

“There’s been a ton of polling and focus groups and so forth done by various groups that I’ve seen, and I think that there’s a more intensive desire to get the messaging right this time than I’ve ever seen before, in part because we’re in a post-Dobbs period where there’s been a change in the way people see the issue,” said the strategist.

The pushback: Abortion-rights groups counter that the effort to highlight women who “chose life” proves their point — that terminating a pregnancy should be a choice. They also argue that the anti-abortion movement’s problem is their policy, not their messaging.

“It’s absolutely enraging that they think that there’s anything that makes sense about those ads when our side wants to protect those women, too,” said Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All.

WELCOME TO MONDAY PULSE. Yesterday was World Chocolate Day, which your host definitely did not celebrate due to his aversion to chocolate. Reach us and send us your tips, news and scoops at bleonard@politico.com or ccirruzzo@politico.com. Follow along @_BenLeonard_ and @ChelseaCirruzzo.

A message from the PBM Accountability Project:

Patients, providers, and employers deserve to pay transparent, fair prices for prescription drugs, but pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are gaming the system while eating up profits and driving up costs. The Wall Street Journal recently uncovered that PBM middleman “mark up prices of generics for cancer, multiple sclerosis and other complicated diseases,” particularly medications from mail-order pharmacies that PBMs own. Congress must act now and protect patients from big PBMs pigging out on patient savings. Learn more at pbmaccountability.org.

AROUND THE AGENCIES

President Joe Biden speaks during an event.

The Biden administration has released its timeline for finalizing health care regulations, which includes planned payment rules for doctors under Medicare. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

REGULATORY AGENDA — The Biden administration has targeted action on a suite of health care regulations in the months to come.

The administration released its spring 2024 Unified Agenda late Friday — well past its April deadline as required by law. Though many major regulations were finalized this spring to safeguard them from challenges under the Congressional Review Act — which allows lawmakers to block executive branch policies with a simple majority — other significant ones remain.

The agenda doesn’t include a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes that the administration delayed in the spring.

While the executive branch doesn’t always follow the timelines, here is when the administration says it aims to propose or finalize several major health care regulations:

July: Expanded final regulations requiring insurers to treat mental health care on the same terms as other care, planned payment rules for doctors under Medicare, a key proposed health IT rule, final modifications to the Medicaid drug rebate program and a final notice on transitional coverage for emerging medical devices are slated for this month.

September: Rules for prescribing controlled substances via telemedicine in two months are expected. The name of the regulation in the agenda has changed since a previous iteration, suggesting it could address virtual care across state lines.

October: Proposed major food allergen labeling regulations for alcohol are due a month ahead of the election.

December: Bolstered cybersecurity requirements for health care organizations are planned for what could be the administration's final full month.

Understand 2024’s big impacts with Pro’s extensive Campaign Races Dashboard, exclusive insights, and key coverage of federal- and state-level debates. Focus on policy. Learn more.

BIRD FLU

RAW MILK BELIEFS — Less than half of U.S. adults say they are aware that drinking raw milk isn't as safe as pasteurized milk, a new survey from the University of Pennsylvania found.

The SSRS-conducted survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults from the Annenberg Public Policy Center also showed that about a quarter didn’t know whether pasteurization was effective at killing bacteria or didn't think it was effective.

1 in 5 people believe raw milk is just as safe or safer than pasteurized

The bigger picture: The findings come as health officials confirmed the fourth U.S. case of avian flu in the current outbreak tied to dairy cows last week. The results suggest there might be an appetite for the pro-raw milk message some conservative influencers have been pushing.

Commonly used pasteurization techniques inactivate the avian flu virus in dairy products, recent studies have shown.

A message from the PBM Accountability Project:

Telehealth

HOME ADDRESS CONCERNS — Under extended pandemic-era CMS rules — due to expire at the end of this year — providers are allowed to report the location where they offer in-person care when they offer telehealth services, even if providers deliver care from their home.

Provider and telehealth groups are pushing the agency to make them permanent in the upcoming physician fee schedule or another upcoming regulation. The American Hospital Association has pushed the agency to do so to protect provider safety, saying patients might be able to access providers’ addresses.

Telehealth lobbying group the Alliance for Connected Care is doing the same, saying it could save significant time for already overworked providers. The group says several health systems have told it that switching to reporting home addresses could result in $1 million in labor costs.

Dr. Helen Hughes, medical director of the office of telemedicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine, told Pulse that if the eased address rules expire, her organization’s operations team estimated it would take six hours per provider annually to comply. Providers often provide care in many different locations, whether via electronic health record, telehealth or in person.

“This idea that they have one location from which they're practicing is a false idea, even for in-person care,” Hughes said.

CMS’ take: In a statement to Pulse, CMS emphasized that the agency aims to balance program integrity by averting fraud and abuse and ensuring patients have access to care.

Although Medicare pays differently for different geographic regions, Hughes says there’s no evidence that providers have been gaming the system with addresses to get paid more.

CMS said that if providers fill out forms properly, their home addresses won’t be disclosed and that the agency has allowed providers to list a P.O. Box. The agency didn’t take a stance on the overall issue, saying it asked interested parties for further information to inform policymaking.

Understand 2024’s big impacts with Pro’s extensive Campaign Races Dashboard, exclusive insights, and key coverage of federal- and state-level debates. Focus on policy. Learn more.

Names in the News

The Congressional Budget Office announced a slate of health care advisers for the coming year.

Warren Kibbe has been named deputy director for data science and strategy at the National Cancer Institute. He was previously chief data officer for the Duke Cancer Institute.

Jennifer Mueller is joining the American Health Information Management Association as senior vice president of health information career advancement. She was previously vice president and privacy officer at the Wisconsin Hospital Association Information Center.

Marc Adelson has been named general counsel at Curai Health. He’s on the board of the American Telemedicine Association and was previously deputy chief legal officer at Teladoc Health.

WHAT WE'RE READING

The Washington Post reports that three former members of the White House medical unit who have previously treated President Joe Biden say they think he needs a cognitive test.

Chelsea and POLITICO's Sophie Gardner interviewed CDC Director Mandy Cohen, who said she'll "let folks decide" whether she'd need to be confirmed in 2025.

A message from the PBM Accountability Project:

PBMs are pigging out on employer and patient savings while Americans struggle to afford the medicines they need.

A groundbreaking new study in Washington state uncovered several ways that big PBMs are reaping record amounts of prescription drug profits, hurting local pharmacies, employers and ultimately the patients at the pharmacy counter:

· For a subset of matched claims between the plan sponsors and the pharmacies, the average plan sponsor (employer) costs were approximately $165,000 higher (roughly 80% more) than the reimbursement provided to pharmacies (approximately $8 more per prescription).
· Plan sponsor (employer) costs increased by 30% while pharmacy reimbursement decreased by 3% between 2020-2023.
· PBM-owned mail-order pharmacies had drug markups that were more than three times higher than the markups at retail pharmacies.
· In one example, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, PBMs charged more than $6,000 for a cancer drug that costs $55.

We need Congress to put an end to the great PBM pig-out. Learn more at pbmaccountability.org.