DOJ, CDC fight back on travel mask mandate injunction

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Apr 21, 2022 View in browser   By Krista Mahr and Sarah Owermohle Presented by With help from Rachael Levy and Daniel Lippman Editor's Note: POLITICO Pulse is a free version of POLITICO Pro Health Care's morning newsletter, which is delivered to our subscribers each morning at 6 a.m. The POLITICO Pro platform combines the news you need with tools you can use to take action on the day's biggest stories.  Act on the news with POLITICO Pro. QUICK FIX — The DOJ and CDC push back to reinstate masks for travel, appealing a Florida court ruling. — The Biden Administration rolls out a new multibillion-dollar drug-control strategy, with a focus on border control. — Millions of Americans could soon lose access to telehealth care, and no one can agree what to do about it. WELCOME TO THURSDAY PULSE — Major League Baseball scout Bernard "Benny" Gallo is suing the Washington Nationals for firing him over his refusal to get a Covid-19 vaccine. Send news and tips to kmahr@politico.comand sowermohle@politico.com.   A message from PhRMA: Nearly half of insured Americans who take prescription medicines encounter barriers that delay or limit their access to medicines. In a new report , learn more about the abusive insurance practices that can stand between patients and the care they need.   Driving The Day The CDC says mask mandates for public transport should stay in place. | Getty Images DOJ, CDC FIGHT BACK AGAINST LIFTING MASK MANDATE — The Department of Justice said it was appealing a Florida court ruling that ended the travel mask mandate. This comes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the mandate was still necessary to protect Americans' health and the agency's authority. The decision follows two fraught days of debate in the White House as officials weighed the political risks of continuing a popular but controversial travel mask mandate against rising Covid-19 cases and the potential threat the ruling posed to the CDC's ability to issue future mandates. In the end, the CDC evidently decided that the risk of the sweeping ruling was too high for both Americans' health and the precedent it might set in questioning the agency's authority, such as mandating masks, during public health emergencies. "It is essential that CDC ensures its authority to protect the public's health," Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told POLITICO. "The judge's decision is so poorly reasoned and just plain wrong. It needs a more experienced juridical review." What's next: The court's injunction against the mandate remains in place for now. The DOJ filed a notice of appeal to the Florida court on Wednesday, according to a department spokesperson, and could ask the court to stay the judge's injunction while the case proceeds. BIDEN'S NEW DRUG STRATEGY AMPS UP BORDER CONTROL — The president's inaugural drug control strategy being rolled out Thursday will boost efforts to provide addiction care while giving an additional $300 million each to Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Administration to crack down on illicit drug trafficking. The Office of National Drug Control Policy aims to double treatment center admissions for the most at-risk users and ensure "universal access to medications for opioid use disorder by 2025," ONDCP Director Rahul Gupta told reporters Wednesday. At the same time, the strategy "is unveiling a renewed focus on disrupting national criminal organizations and their illicit financial networks and supply chains." The new plan lands amid a record high of 106,854 drug overdose deaths in the 12-month period ending in November. That follows a 26.8 percent increase in deaths measured from April 2020 to April 2021. Public health and addiction care advocates point to pandemic isolation and the persistent spread of lethal, powerful fentanyl mixes. A carrot-and-big-stick approach: But many of those same advocates argue that aggressive enforcement can exacerbate black-market activity and fuel a turn to more dangerous drugs like fentanyl. Senior administration officials said increased law enforcement would be balanced with a multipronged effort to increase access to care, syringe-exchange programs and addiction treatments such as naloxone. "It is easier to get illicit drugs than it is to get treatment in this country. We're not going to be able to bend the curve on overdoses until that improves," a senior administration official told reporters. Meanwhile … House Republicans on the Energy and Commerce Committee have asked HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra to examine the reasons for the rise in overdose deaths, saying the government's response to the Covid-19 pandemic is "undoubtedly a large factor." Here's the letter. LOOMING LOSS OF TELEHEALTH ACCESS — Millions of patients are losing expanded access to telehealth across state lines as states' pandemic emergency declarations wind down, POLITICO's Ben Leonard writes. The lifting of state waivers will usher in a return to a pre-pandemic system characterized by more restricted access to telehealth and will exacerbate long-existing provider shortages. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has called on Congress to expand telehealth access across state lines, but the industry is divided over how to fix the issue. Powerful interests, including the American Medical Association and state medical boards, have clashed with the telehealth industry. The Federation of State Medical Boards and the AMA have pushed alternatives to national proposals that would let patients get care in other states if a provider is licensed in one state, arguing a national solution could compromise state boards' ability to oversee providers and ensure patient safety.   A message from PhRMA:   Around the Agencies FIRST IN PULSE: HRSA INVESTS TO REDUCE HEALTH DISPARITIES — The Health Resources and Services Administration will make nearly $90 million in American Rescue Plan funding available to help health centers collect better data to identify and reduce health disparities. The data modernization initiative will collect more and improved information on social determinants of health and streamline and improve data quality reporting for health centers. "Health centers are vital to increasing equitable access to primary health care," Becerra said in a statement. "This funding from President Biden's American Rescue Plan will further enable health centers to utilize data to meet the needs of their community and help reduce gaps in care." More than 90 percent of HRSA-funded health center patients are individuals or families living at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. Nearly 63 percent of them are racial or ethnic minorities. The Biden administration wants to improve nursing home safety. | AP Photo/Steven Senne MORE TRANSPARENCY IN NURSING HOME OWNERSHIP — For the first time, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is publishing data on ownership changes of nursing homes and hospitals, part of the Biden administration's focus on improving safety, Rachael writes. CMS says the data, which spans 2016 through this year, will allow policy researchers and the public to "better understand the impacts of consolidation on health care prices and quality of care." The figures are available on data.cms.gov. President Joe Biden has said that he wants to improve nursing home safety, especially after the facilities became hotbeds for Covid-19 infections that led to a dire number of deaths among vulnerable Americans. In a data analysis, CMS found that ownership changes were much more common in nursing homes than in hospitals and that South Carolina was an outlier, with almost 20 percent of hospitals in the state changing hands over the past six years.   SUBSCRIBE TO NATIONAL SECURITY DAILY : Keep up with the latest critical developments from Ukraine and across Europe in our daily newsletter, National Security Daily. The Russian invasion of Ukraine could disrupt the established world order and result in a refugee crisis, increased cyberattacks, rising energy costs and additional disruption to global supply chains. Go inside the top national security and foreign-policymaking shops for insight on the global threats faced by the U.S. and its allies and what actions world leaders are taking to address them. Subscribe today.     Public Health THE STARK DISADVANTAGES OF DISABILITY — Disabled Americans are far more likely to live in poverty and face food insecurity than people who aren't disabled, a timely finding as many Americans become disabled following Covid-19 infections and face difficulties claiming government benefits, according to a new report by the think tank The Century Foundation. The findings "tell a very compelling story about why we must address this crisis now," said Kim Knackstedt, a senior fellow at the foundation. The pandemic has "already been one of the largest mass disabling events in modern history," she told Rachael in an email. Among the report's findings: — Widespread poverty. Eighteen percent of disabled adults lived in poverty in 2020, compared with 8 percent of non-disabled adults. — Hunger. One in five disabled adults experience food insecurity. — A racial gap. In 2019, more than 28 percent of disabled Black adults lived in poverty, compared with 18 percent of white disabled adults. — A wide earnings gap. Disabled workers earned, on average, 74 cents on the dollar compared with non-disabled workers.   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today.     Names in the News Nahid Bhadelia has joined the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as a consultant to work on addressing pandemic threats. She is an infectious diseases doctor, an associate professor at Boston University School of Medicine and founding director of the BU Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research. Sydney Gart is joining the finance team of Sen. Maggie Hassan's (D-N.H.) reelection campaign. She most recently has been a brand and marketing associate at Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. Lauren Cross is now deputy comms director for media relations at Media Matters for America, which focuses on combating emerging mis- and disinformation. She most recently ran U.S. press operations and comms strategy for the Guttmacher Institute and is a Planned Parenthood alum. Graphite Health has hired Ted Gaubert, former Dun & Bradstreet chief technology officer of global product engineering, as its new chief technology officer. He'll oversee the firm's software engineering, product and innovation business functions. What We're Reading Sandy West at Kaiser Health News reports on how state legislators are pushing for exemptions for routine immunizations in kids. Turns out most Americans don't think masking up on public transport is the worst idea, The Associated Press reports. An Ohio doctor accused of allegedly killing 14 patients with excessive fentanyl doses was acquitted on all murder counts today, The Washington Post reports.   A message from PhRMA: According to data just released, insurance isn't working for too many patients. Despite paying premiums each month, Americans continue to face insurmountable affordability and access issues: Roughly half (49%) of insured patients who take prescription medicines report facing insurance barriers like prior authorization and "fail first" when trying to access their medicines. More than a third (35%) of insured Americans report spending more in out-of-pocket costs in the last 30 days than they could afford. Americans need better coverage that puts patients first. Read more in PhRMA's latest Patient Experience Survey.     Follow us on Twitter Tucker Doherty @tucker_doherty Dan Goldberg @dancgoldberg Erin Banco @ErinBanco Katherine Ellen Foley @katherineefoley Lauren Gardner @Gardner_LM Ben Leonard @_BenLeonard_ Rachael Levy @rachael_levy David Lim @davidalim Megan Messerly @meganmesserly Alice Miranda Ollstein @aliceollstein Sarah Owermohle @owermohle Carmen Paun @carmenpaun Megan R. Wilson @misswilson   Follow us

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