| | | |   | Good morning, D.C. Diagnosis readers. This is Lev Facher, subbing for Nick again even though none of you helped me find an NBA Finals ticket last week. Whatever. For questions, tips, or congratulations you’d like me to pass on to Stephen Curry, I’m at lev.facher@statnews.com. | | | A Covid-communication conundrum If you, like me, spend a lot of time listening to White House officials discuss the state of the Covid-19 pandemic, you’ve probably noticed that their tone can vary dramatically. Sometimes it’s sunshine and roses; at other times it’s doom and gloom.
In a new story, I explain why. It’s because President Biden is communicating with two audiences at once: An indifferent Congress and an indifferent general public. But he wants very different things from them. The federal government’s Covid response is running out of money, and the White House needs lawmakers to take the threat seriously. But with Biden’s popularity tanking, he also needs the public to view his Covid response as a sweeping success — and that requires some salesmanship.
“They’re in a tough position,” Nicole Lurie, the Obama administration’s top pandemic-preparedness official, told me in an interview. “You don’t want to cry wolf, but you need to be prepared.” You can read the full story here. | All eyes on SCOTUS It’s getting down to the wire for the Supreme Court to announce its final opinions of this term, and there are two opinion days expected this week: today and Thursday. Obviously, everyone is waiting to see the court’s big abortion decision, but there are other, lower-profile health care cases that STAT reporters are tracking, too. Here are three to watch for.
Marietta Memorial Hospital Employee Health Benefit Plan v. DaVita Inc.: This case pits dialysis chain DaVita against an employee health plan run by a hospital in Ohio, which made all outpatient dialysis providers out-of-network, my colleague Bob Herman reports. DaVita contends the plan violates Medicare’s rules because it pushes patients with kidney failure onto Medicare sooner, but the hospital argues the plan is legal because it treats all employees the same.
Becerra v. Empire Health Foundation: The Supreme Court will also be considering a case related to safety net hospitals’ payment formulas, Rachel Cohrs writes. Legally, hospitals that serve more low-income patients are supposed to get more so-called disproportionate-share hospital payments. Empire Health Foundation challenged the methodology that HHS used to determine hospitals’ share of the payments.
Ruan v. United States: What threshold do doctors' prescribing patterns have to cross for them to be considered criminal? That question is at the heart of the case tied to two doctors who were sentenced to decades in prison for unlawfully dispensing opioid painkillers, STAT’s Drew Joseph reports. Advocates are concerned that aggressive prosecutions could put a chill on prescribers' willingness to treat patients who rely on pain medication. | Healthcare distributors help increase patient access to 100 million+ medicines Healthcare distributors provide logistics expertise, administrative services, and support to approximately 22,000 community pharmacies across the country. Research found that this has helped increase patient access to more than 100 million vital medicines, particularly in rural areas where fewer pharmacy options exist. Learn more about the ways distributors support pharmacists, so they can focus on what matters most – the patient. | On fentanyl, Congress is grasping at straws Reps. Tim Ryan and Lauren Boebert don’t have much in common: He’s a veteran Democrat, while she’s a newly elected, QAnon-sympathetic Republican. But when it comes to the addiction crisis, they’re on the same page. Last week, both lawmakers put forth proposals to classify fentanyl, the ultra-potent synthetic opioid, as a weapon of mass destruction, arguing the designation would help the government stop fentanyl shipments from crossing our borders.
Experts say the designation doesn’t make much sense, arguing there’s little evidence it would reduce overdose deaths, and it risks curbing legitimate medical uses. Even the Congressional Research Service says the designation “does not appear necessary.” The Trump administration also considered it in 2019 — but never moved forward.
The proposals strike me more as panicked election-year stunts than serious policymaking: Boebert is facing several challengers in her Colorado district, and Ryan is the Democratic nominee for Ohio’s open Senate seat. But I doubt they’ll amount to much. The U.S. never makes sweeping policy decisions based on panicked warnings about WMDs, right? | A new vision for a national public health system The Commonwealth Fund is out today with a new report on the future of American health infrastructure, and the steps policymakers should take to improve our response to future pandemics. It has some heavy-hitter authors: Former FDA commissioner Peggy Hamburg, former North Carolina health secretary Mandy Cohen, and former CDC director Julie Gerberding, to name a few.
The biggest takeaway is hardly a surprise: Public health systems at the federal, state, and local levels require more funding. The report proposes that Congress spend $8 billion to build out a public health workforce and create better information-sharing systems — and only hand out funds to local health departments once they’ve cleared a new accreditation system.
But it includes some newer recommendations, too, like the creation of a new position at HHS: undersecretary of public health. It also suggests the creation of a new federal genomic pathogen database and a new cross-government effort to advance health equity. You can read the full report here. | What we’re reading - HCA, Steward abandon hospital deal in another win for FTC, STAT
- Covid test manufacturers anticipate scaling back production after U.S. reallocates funds, STAT
- DeSantis says Florida is “affirmatively against” Covid vaccines for young children, Politico
- Upended: How medical debt changed their lives, Kaiser Health News
| Thanks for reading! More Thursday,  | | | |
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