| | | |   | Happy Tuesday, Thanksgiving weekend, and World Cup kickoff, DCD readers! Send your favorite Thanksgiving recipes, World Cup predictions, and of course, news and tips, to sarah.owermohle@statnews.com. | | | As midterms shake out, lawmakers lock in chairs Democrats are holding the Senate but there will still be shakeups in committee leadership as senior lawmakers shuffle assignments and vie for top posts. We can expect a more fiery – though maybe not the most fiery – HELP Committee makeup after Vermont independent Bernie Sanders announced his interest in taking the chairmanship. Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy is expected to be named ranking member after Sen. Richard Burr’s retirement opened the vacancy. Current Chair Patty Murry (D-Wash.) plans to lead the Appropriations Committee, where she’s already served as subcommittee chair on health. As chair, Sanders “will focus on universal health care, lowering the cost of prescription drugs, increasing access to higher education, and protecting workers’ rights on the job,” a spokesperson said in an email. Sen. Rand Paul, meanwhile, opted out of the ranking HELP seat in favor of becoming ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, where he’s already made clear he wants to investigate coronavirus questions he’s hammered as a HELP member. “Given the committee’s duty to conduct oversight over the entire government, I remain hopeful that we will pursue a robust and bipartisan investigation into the origins of COVID,” he said in a statement. Over in the House, Republicans are nailing down who will lead their new majority. Washington Republican Cathy McMorris-Rodgers is expected to be the first woman chairing the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, where staffers have signaled she’s open to probes of Covid-19 spending and hearings about CMS efforts to implement drug pricing reforms. Elsewhere, the race to chair the Ways and Means Committee is far from settled, with Florida’s Vern Buchanan, Missouri’s Jason Smith, and Nebraska’s Adrian Smith angling for the role, aides and lobbyists tell DCD. On the Oversight and Reform Committee, which could launch incisive health care probes, next-in-line Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) is most interested in investigating the Biden family, his state’s Louisville Courier-Journal reports. | E&C Republicans primed for probes House Republicans led by E&C chair-in-waiting Rodgers dispatched a letter to NIH late Monday that questioned the agency’s grant funding, especially small dispatches of $3,000, $1,000 or less.
The letter may seem hyper-focused, but speaks to Rodgers’ broader accountability priorities, which she plans to unleash on NIH, CMS and others.
For instance, Rodgers asked NIH to answer how many times its Office of Management Assessment conducted audits of the mini-grants, and interrogated whether the grants led to results. “These low dollar awards have the effect of establishing a relationship between an entity and NIH but with no apparent research value associated with the award itself,” Rodgers wrote in the letter, which was also signed by other Republican E&C and Oversight committee leaders. | Flu season's here. Why aren’t there at-home tests? No at-home flu tests are available for purchase in the U.S. — and that’s not for lack of technology, writes our Brittany Trang.
The rapid antigen flu tests at the doctor’s office are “virtually identical” to the Covid tests already in people’s homes, according to Zoë McLaren, associate professor of public policy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, who studies health policies for infectious disease epidemics. At-home coronavirus testing changed the game, removing the need for physicians and in-office check-ups to get a key piece of medical information; but that hasn’t yet extended to other virus areas even as a worse-than-usual season for flu and RSV shapes up. “It's really rare, and it's really new, that people are allowed to know about what's happening inside their body without a physician in the middle,” said Michael Mina, a former assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard. For instance, Mina says the FDA has been historically slow to approve over-the-counter products from pregnancy to HIV tests. A 2016 FDA advisory panel, meanwhile, was split on over-the-counter influenza tests, debating whether they would actually help keep people at home. That, of course, was before coronavirus testing became a norm ahead of social events and travel. Read more. | Covid experts balance precautions and holidays As we approach the third anniversary of Covid-19’s initial spread, masks are an increasingly rare sight, events are back, and many people have all but given up efforts to avoid contracting the virus, STAT’s Helen Branswell writes. But with Thanksgiving and winter holidays ahead, are we setting up for another surge?
Helen polled 34 epidemiologists, virologists, immunologists, and related experts, about what, if anything, they are still doing to avoid the coronavirus this season. She found that while many people are still taking precautions, the young kids or grandchildren in their lives have largely returned to pre-pandemic life. Others admit to attending big concerts – some masked and some not – eating indoors, and scheduling playdates as long as they weren’t scheduled to see elderly or immunocompromised people.
That’s a notable shift from August 2021, when two-thirds of poll respondents said they wouldn’t eat indoors at a restaurant. It’s a reflection of the virus’ lessening effect on many Americans’ health but also the fatigue that’s set in broadly as businesses and schools roll back precautions.
Some experts, however, are wary about weighing in considering how charged the discussion has become. “Between the militant zero-Covid crowd on one side and the ‘it’s just a cold’ crowd on the other, there is a lot of vitriol waiting to be fired,” said one who declined to answer the poll.
Dive into Helen’s findings here. | How do we make the pharmaceutical supply chain more resilient? A more resilient supply chain requires greater collaboration across the public and private sector. As logistics experts responsible for the safe and reliable delivery of 11 million medicines, healthcare products, vaccines and other supplies each day, healthcare distributors have been working with public and private supply chain partners to identify ways to enhance resilience and build on collective strengths. Read more about our guiding principles.
| House report finds contraceptive access limited Insurers and pharmacy benefit managers limited access to more than 30 contraceptives and denied roughly 40% of exception requests, according to a report released Monday by the House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.). Under the ACA, health plans are required to cover FDA-approved contraception without cost-sharing. The little-known mandate has taken on fresh urgency in the wake of the overturning of Roe. The committee said there are disparity issues embedded in the findings: For instance, four of 17 products with cost-sharing requirements are non-pill options disproportionately used by lower-income and non-white patients. Maloney’s staff ultimately recommended that HHS, along with the Labor and Treasury Departments, issue guidance clarifying the ACA coverage requirements. Read the report here. | What to read around the web today - mRNA revolutionized the race for a Covid-19 vaccine. Could cancer be next? STAT
- Conservative group sues FDA in bid to overturn decades-old approval for abortion pill, Fierce Pharma
- This small-town pharmacy may be a model for more affordable drugs, STAT
- Opinion: Scientists don’t agree on what causes obesity, but they know what doesn’t, The New York Times
| | | Thanks for reading! More on Thursday,  | |
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