Social media companies under the microscope

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Jan 26, 2023 View in browser   By Daniel Payne and Krista Mahr Presented by Driving the Day Meta is among the social media companies in the hot seat over health care issues. | Tony Avelar/AP Photo LOOKING FOR ACCOUNTABILITY — A new lawsuit could blaze the trail to hold social media companies accountable for an increase in eating disorders, anxiety and depression, POLITICO's Ruth Reader reports. The suit is expected to be filed in California's Northern District Court next month — and could decide whether the companies need to pay up and change their ways, if it's allowed to proceed. The plaintiffs' lawyers, led by Motley Rice, Seeger Weiss, and Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, will be testing a novel legal theory: that social media algorithms are defective products that encourage addictive behavior and are governed by existing product liability law. That could have far-reaching consequences for developing and regulating software. It could also upstage potential actions from Congress and the Biden administration, both of which have called for regulations. Those calls were intensified after former Facebook Product Manager Frances Haugen released documents revealing that Meta — Facebook and Instagram's parent company — knew users of Instagram were suffering ill health effects, but Washington failed to act in the 15 months since. Meta hasn't responded to the lawsuit's claims, but the company has added new tools to its social media sites to help users curate their feeds, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said the company is open to new regulation from Congress. Experts debate whether product liability law can be applied to an algorithm, even as a growing number of lawsuits are putting it to the test. And social media companies are facing mounting criticism for another health crisis: fentanyl overdoses. GOP lawmakers are widening their assault on the firms — beyond posts and to algorithms — for their alleged roles in the opioid epidemic, POLITICO's Ben Leonard and Ruth report. Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans accused social media and technology firms of facilitating the deadly trafficking of fentanyl during a roundtable on Wednesday. The roundtable is a sign of what's to come for the committee under Republican control. Led by Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the committee plans to continue examining the tech firms' role in allegedly contributing to the opioid crisis, which took 80,000 lives in the U.S. in 2021, according to the most recent CDC data. WELCOME TO THURSDAY PULSE. Have an extra $2 million to spend in 2023? You could hire a team of doctors to try to reverse your body's aging, we recently learned. Have tips to stay young? What about tipping us off to the next big story in health care? Drop us a line at dpayne@politico.com and kmahr@politico.com. TODAY ON OUR PULSE CHECK PODCAST, Ruth talks with Carmen Paun, diving deeper into the legal argument being used in the suit against social media companies. Plus, Krista breaks down what we know about the newly named members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.   A message from PhRMA: In 2021, Insurers and their pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) subjected patients to six times the out-of-pocket costs for brand medicines through the use of deductibles or coinsurance compared to patients with only copays — even when these middlemen received a discounted price. That's not fair. Learn more.   On the Hill Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) will chair the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee. | Francis Chung/E&E News GUTHRIE TO FOCUS ON PRICE TRANSPARENCY, FENTANYL CRISIS, TELEHEALTH — Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) will chair the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, the full panel's chair, Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), announced Wednesday. And he plans to use the position to do more on price transparency in health care, hoping to slow down price growth across the sector, Ben reports. Guthrie also said he hoped to address fentanyl, noting the committee deals with drug scheduling and mental health issues. Telehealth was another issue he mentioned, saying he looked to expand access to it in a "sustainable" way. FROM CONGRESS TO CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION — Former Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), fresh out of Congress, has joined the Children's Hospital Association as a strategic adviser, POLITICO's Megan R. Wilson and Caitlin Oprysko report. Herrera Beutler departed Congress earlier this month following a GOP primary defeat and will now "offer strategic insight on key issues for children's hospitals and health systems and the children and families they serve," the association said in its statement.   JOIN POLITICO ON 2/9 TO HEAR FROM AMERICA'S GOVERNORS: In a divided Congress, more legislative and policy enforcement will shift to the states, meaning governors will take a leading role in setting the agenda for the nation. Join POLITICO on Thursday, Feb. 9 at World Wide Technology's D.C. Innovation Center for The Fifty: America's Governors, where we will examine where innovations are taking shape and new regulatory red lines, the future of reproductive health, and how climate change is being addressed across a series of one-on-one interviews. REGISTER HERE.     Abortion TWO LAWSUITS START BATTLE OVER ABORTION PILLS — Lawsuits in North Carolina and West Virginia are setting off widely anticipated challenges to state laws that restrict access to abortion pills, POLITICO's Alice Miranda Ollstein and Lauren Gardner report. The cases will likely have national implications, as more than a dozen states have imposed laws limiting how, when and where patients can obtain abortion pills — and they both make the argument that federal policies should determine access to the medications. Anti-abortion advocates and their allies in state and federal office are pushing more states to adopt laws like North Carolina's — including states that have near-total bans — hoping to prevent patients from ordering the pills online.   A message from PhRMA:   At the Agencies FDA OFFICIAL RESIGNS AFTER BABY FORMULA CRISIS — Frank Yiannas, who was deputy commissioner for food policy and response at the FDA, resigned Tuesday, following a number of breakdowns — including the baby formula shortage — at the agency tasked with overseeing food safety. POLITICO's Meredith Lee Hill reports that Yiannas was among the officials who acknowledged a string of failures in lawmakers' reviews of the shortages. He held the position since 2018. NIH OVERSIGHT OF ECOHEALTH ALLIANCE WAS LACKING, WATCHDOG SAYS — The HHS inspector general said in an audit report Wednesday that the National Institutes of Health did not effectively monitor or enforce the terms of its grants to the research group EcoHealth Alliance — which oversaw funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, POLITICO's Erin Schumaker reports. The audit examined three NIH grants, together worth approximately $8 million, including $1.8 million that went to subrecipients, including the Wuhan Institute in the Chinese city where the coronavirus emerged. "Despite identifying potential risks associated with research being performed under the EcoHealth awards, we found that NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address EcoHealth's compliance with some requirements," the report said. BIDEN ADMIN TOUTS RECORD ACA COVERAGE — More than 16 million people signed up for Affordable Care Act Marketplace health plans during the open enrollment period, POLITICO's Megan Messerly reports. Enrollment numbers, which were buoyed by the continuation of federal subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act this summer, eclipsed last year's by roughly 1.8 million people — though the totals will increase when six state-based exchanges that remain open report their final numbers in the coming weeks.   JOIN TUESDAY TO HEAR FROM MAYORS AROUND AMERICA: 2022 brought in a new class of mayors leading "majority minority" cities, reshaping who is at the nation's power tables and what their priorities are. Join POLITICO to hear from local leaders on how they're responding to being tested by unequal Covid-19 outcomes, upticks in hate crimes, homelessness, lack of affordable housing, inflation and a potential recession. REGISTER HERE.     Public Health FIFTY-FIFTY — A CDC study released Wednesday found the Covid-19 bivalent booster reduces the risk of symptomatic infection from the dominant Covid strain circulating in the U.S. — XBB.1.5 — by about half. The highly transmissible Omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 — nicknamed "the Kraken" — is now the dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain in the U.S., projected by the CDC to make up just over 49 percent of cases in the country as of last week. The new vaccine efficacy study, which used data from the national pharmacy program for Covid testing, found that the bivalent booster provided 48 percent greater protection against symptomatic infection from the XBB and XBB.1.5 subvariants among people who had the booster in the previous two to three months, compared with people who had only previously received two to four monovalent doses. I'll take those odds: Additional new data published Wednesday on the CDC's Covid data tracker site also shows that individuals who received an updated vaccine reduced their risk of death by nearly 13 fold, when compared to the unvaccinated, and by two fold when compared to those with at least one monovalent vaccine but no updated booster. But — it's a big one — only a fraction of the American public will benefit from this available protection at present. Only 15.3 percent of eligible Americans have received the updated booster. Names in the News Karyn Polito, most recent lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, is joining the advisory council of Firefly Health. Marnie Hall has been promoted to chief marketing and strategy officer at New Ocean Health Solutions. Robin Rooks McQueen and Shilpa Phadke have joined the Contraceptive Access Initiative, as project director and advisory committee member, respectively. Katie Berge will be joining Waxman Strategies as senior director of health policy. Amaia Stecker is now senior director of development at Millennial Action Project. She was most recently a senior director of the Walk to End Alzheimer's campaign at the Alzheimer's Association National Capital Area Chapter. What We're Reading Ketamine is being sold as a depression wonder drug — but that's not everyone's experience, Insider reports. This pandemic winter seems to be … not as bad as feared, The Atlantic reports.   A message from PhRMA: Every day, patients at the pharmacy counter discover their commercial insurance coverage does not provide the level of access and affordability they need. New data from a study by IQVIA reveal the harmful practices of insurers and their pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) can lead to significantly higher out-of-pocket costs for medicines — causing some patients to abandon their medicines completely. Learn more.     Follow us on Twitter Dan Goldberg @dancgoldberg Katherine Ellen Foley @katherineefoley Lauren Gardner @Gardner_LM Ben Leonard @_BenLeonard_ David Lim @davidalim Krista Mahr @kristamahr Megan Messerly @meganmesserly Alice Miranda Ollstein @aliceollstein Carmen Paun @carmenpaun Daniel Payne @_daniel_payne Ruth Reader @RuthReader Erin Schumaker @erinlschumaker Megan R. Wilson @misswilson   Follow us

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