| | | | |  | | By Chelsea Cirruzzo and Ben Leonard | Presented by the Coalition to Strengthen America’s Healthcare | | | |  As the Supreme Court hears arguments on Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors, the GOP is embracing European restrictions. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images | EUROPE’S GENDER-AFFIRMING EXAMPLE — The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments today in a major fight over Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein reports. And conservative lawyers and lawmakers, despite their typical resistance to foreign influence on the U.S. legal system, point to Europe as a model for restricting some types of care for transgender minors. “Systematic reviews by national health authorities in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Norway have all concluded that the harms associated with these interventions are significant, and the long-term benefits are unproven,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti wrote in defense of the state’s ban on transition-related medical care for minors. Context: The law, passed last year, bans hormone treatments or surgeries for minors that would allow them “to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.” The Biden administration and challengers to the law asked the high court to declare the measure unconstitutional after a federal appeals court upheld it. The challengers say the law discriminates on the basis of gender in violation of the 14th Amendment. A brief from Tennessee state officials defending the law quotes a passage from the appeals court ruling that upheld the law, which says that “some of the same European countries that pioneered these treatments now express caution about them and have pulled back on their use.” The conservatives’ sudden affection for European medical standards and judgments rankles some transgender advocates, who say it’s a hypocritical about-face. “I think it’s rich that folks that don’t look to Europe for anything, especially socialized medicine, for the guideposts on how to move forward with public policy, are citing any kind of medical policy” from Europe, said Sasha Buchert of Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ+ rights advocacy group. This argument hasn’t been convincing in the past: U.S. District Judge Eli Richardson, who blocked Tennessee’s law last June, found similar flaws in the state’s arguments about new limits on transition-related medical care abroad. He said the recalibration of treatment in various countries isn’t akin to the flat prohibition on hormone treatment for transgender minors that Tennessee and other states have imposed. Federal judges in Indiana and Florida rejected similar arguments as they blocked gender-affirming care bans in those states. A spokesperson for Skrmetti declined to comment, but in a recent op-ed, the Tennessee AG repeatedly and prominently invoked Europe’s moves on transition-related medical care. “Medical research and practices in Europe support a cautious approach,” Skrmetti wrote. WELCOME TO WEDNESDAY PULSE. If you were the one with the aux cord at the Bloomberg American Health Summit yesterday, please let me know because I was a huge fan of your musical taste, especially the Chappell Roan songs. 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 Strengthen America’s Healthcare: NEW REPORT: More than 60% of all Emergency Department visits occur after regular business hours or on weekends when other providers and care facilities are typically closed. Hospitals and health systems are indispensable, crucial access points for critical care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. ACCESS THE REPORT. | | | | | | | 
Florida Sheriff Chad Chronister has withdrawn from consideration as President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the DEA. | Chris O'Meara/AP | DEA PICK BOUNCES — Just days after President-elect Donald Trump chose him to lead the DEA, Hillsborough County, Florida, Sheriff Chad Chronister withdrew from consideration. Chronister said Tuesday that he made the decision “as the gravity of this very important responsibility set in” but didn’t cite a reason for his withdrawal other than concluding he wanted to continue in his current role as a sheriff. Asked for comment about Chronister’s withdrawal, Trump transition spokesperson Brian Hughes said the sheriff’s statement spoke for itself. Chronister drew criticism from some conservatives, including Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), over his actions during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, his office arrested a Tampa pastor for violating quarantine orders to hold services. Charges against the pastor were ultimately dropped. Chronister, who has been a part of the sheriff's office for more than three decades, backed programs that offer substance use care and mental health treatment to incarcerated individuals, including veterans. He said in 2021 that “we could not arrest our way out of problems like drug addiction.” If he had been confirmed, Chronister would have overseen the DEA while it considers whether to permanently extend eased Covid-era telehealth rules for certain drugs and works to curb the fentanyl seeping into the U.S. across the Southern border. Chronister invested in a private equity health care business, HealthEdge Investment Partners, LLC, with an interest in telehealth, according to a financial disclosure filed this year.
| | | | REGISTER NOW: As the 118th Congress ends, major decisions loom, including healthcare appropriations. Key focus: site neutrality. Can aligning hospital and clinic costs cut federal spending, reflect physician costs, and lower patient expenses? Join policymakers and providers to discuss. | | | | | | | | NIH FUNDING FIGHT — Republican plans to downsize the health bureaucracy face a big hurdle: convincing Democrats to support the health agencies’ annual funding bills. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said she will fight back on cuts that threaten public health, Chelsea reports. Speaking at Tuesday’s Bloomberg American Health Summit in Washington, DeLauro said she didn’t respect President-elect Donald Trump’s intended nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead HHS and expressed concern about his plans to cut hundreds of staff from the National Institutes of Health and his shifting focus from infectious disease to chronic disease. “We must protect vital funding and research that helps us to collect data to modernize our systems and to retain qualified personnel in key positions,” she said. “As we approach the appropriations process for 2025, we need all be mindful where [Republicans are] placing the cuts and stand up and fight back against those cuts to public health.” Context: The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee passed an HHS 2025 fiscal budget earlier this year that cut HHS funding by 7 percent and streamlined the number of NIH centers. That bill hasn’t made it to the House floor yet nor does it seem likely any time soon as Congress gears up for another funding punt ahead of the December holidays. DeLauro said Tuesday that she and committee Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) had recently taken an international trip, where both affirmed support for the NIH’s work. “Public health has the advantage of occupying the most common possible ground,” she said. HOUSE COVID PANEL’S FINAL ACT — The House will wrap up a scathing two-year investigation into the Covid-19 pandemic today, and its last act will likely follow a similar acrimonious path, POLITICO’s Robert King reports. Republicans and Democrats on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will vote today on a majority-led report released Monday that claims Covid-19 emerged from a lab. Democrats put out a report Tuesday countering the claim and slamming the investigation as a partisan attack. Republicans contend that the virus has biological characteristics not found in nature. Democrats respond that, while a lab leak is possible, neither that theory nor natural transmission from an animal to a human is conclusive. Democrats also pointed out that it would be difficult, “if not impossible,” to know Covid’s origins without more transparency from China. The committee would also likely battle over the role that Dr. Anthony Fauci, former director of the NIH’s infectious disease agency and President Joe Biden’s Covid czar, had in the pandemic. Republicans charge that Fauci worked to suppress research into a possible lab leak and likely lied to the panel during his testimony earlier this year. Democrats defended Fauci and said there’s no evidence he lied. “Dr. Fauci did not organize a lab leak suppression campaign,” the Democrats wrote.
| | | | A message from the Coalition to Strengthen America’s Healthcare:   | | | | | EU LOOKS TO IMPROVE ORGAN TRANSPLANTS — BRUSSELS — The Council of the EU adopted calls to improve organ donation and transplantation Tuesday, POLITICO’s Claudia Chiappa reports. “Every year, over 30,000 people receive organ transplants in the EU. That is 30,000 lives restored and often saved,” Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi said. “The Council conclusions stress the need for continued cooperation between member states and the need for EU support. They highlight the importance of health promotion in bringing down the demand for organ transplantation,” he added. The bigger picture: The U.S. is overhauling its own 40-year-old organ transplant system — considered the best system in the world. That modernization effort has included breaking up the network, which has long been managed by a single nonprofit entity, into smaller, individual parts. This fall, federal officials awarded the first contracts to organizations that will be responsible for easing the transition from the old system to the new. The EU Council also adopted nonbinding measures to raise awareness about cardiovascular health and tackle heart disease’s leading risk factors and preventable causes.
| | | | Billions in spending. Critical foreign aid. Immigration reform. The final weeks of 2024 could bring major policy changes. Inside Congress provides daily insights into how Congressional leaders are navigating these high-stakes issues. Subscribe today. | | | | | | | | | Christian LoBue has been named president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health and its Action Fund. She most recently was EVP of campaign strategy at M+R Win and is a NARAL and Planned Parenthood alum.
| | The Associated Press reports on a study showing that 30 percent of drugstores that were open in the previous decade had closed. POLITICO’s Ursula Perano reports on incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune’s budget plans for early next year. Chelsea reports on calls from former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg to Senate Republicans to reject Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for HHS Secretary.
| | | | A message from the Coalition to Strengthen America’s Healthcare: NEW REPORT: In 2021 alone, Americans visited Emergency Departments more than 83 million times after hours or on weekends when other providers and care facilities are typically closed. With more than 60% of ED visits occurring on weekends or after regular business hours, when many other providers are closed, hospitals play an essential role in their communities, providing crucial access points for care 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to all patients.
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