The USDA just started a massive food fight

We here at D.C. Diagnosis love a good lobbying fight, and this newsletter's former author has found a doozy.

School cooks, parents, and even elementary school students have been busy in the last few weeks flooding bureaucrats at the USDA with vitriol. Their gripe? The USDA's recent proposal to effectively ban chocolate milk in school meals. Chocolate milk is a major source of added sugar for kids – and one that public health officials have tried to tackle for years – but children and adults alike don't seem to care. As one teacher put it: "Leave the chocolate milk out of this."

The spat might seem comical, but as my colleague Nicholas Florko writes, it underscores the challenge the Biden administration is facing in its effort to improve America's nutrition, and it's spotlighted major structural weaknesses in the federal program that helps provide billions of meals to school children each year. Read more here.

BIOTECH

Vets covered for new Alzehimer's drug

The Veterans Health Administration in a surprise move Monday announced that it would widely cover a new Alzheimer's treatment, Eisai's Leqembi, even as Medicare has decided to wait for additional data about the medicine before taking the same step, STAT's Ed Silverman reports.

It's unclear just yet how many vets could be eligible for the drug, which the FDA approved two months ago under a cloud of controversy about an earlier Alzheimer's drug approval, for Biogen's Adulehm, that critics say has insufficient data. Like Aduhelm, Leqembi got the green light through the accelerated approval pipeline, so Eisai is required to follow up with more clinical data that – hopefully – shows a solid benefit. And also like Aduhelm, CMS has declined to cover the drug until there are more data. Read more from Ed here.

WALL STREET

Biotech industry reels from SVB failure

President Joe Biden sought to reassure Americans Monday that the financial system — and their deposits — are secure after Silicon Valley Bank folded late last week, launching a weekend of biotech industry chaos, STAT's Allison DeAngelis reports. While Biden officials insist the damage is contained, the bank's failure is likely to ripple within the biotech and tech industries, roughly half of which have done business with SVB.

What does this mean for biotech? SVB's deposits soared in 2020 when the industry was booming, but then interest rates rose, straining its books, my colleagues Adam Feurstein, Damian Garde and Allison explained Friday. Federal regulators have guaranteed deposits, which seems to have helped biotech stock indices slightly on Monday after a Friday slump of 3.5% on XBI and more than 4% on the S&P 500.

Not everyone agrees with the administration's strategy to shore up the industry though. "Now is not the time for U.S. taxpayers to bail out Silicon Valley Bank. If there is a bailout of Silicon Valley Bank, it must be 100 percent financed by Wall Street and large financial institutions," Sen. Bernie Sanders, chairman of the HELP committee, said in a statement that blamed a "disastrous" 2018 bank deregulation law.

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

Planned Parenthood CEO talks court cases and abortion landscape

Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, sat down with STAT's Eric Boodman ahead of today's 2023 STATUS List launch to discuss the "chaos and confusion" that abortion restrictions have introduced into peoples' lives since Roe's overturn, what it means for health care broadly and how Planned Parenthood is fighting.

"We are seeing politicians using the same playbook that they used to dismantle abortion to attack gender-affirming care," she told Eric about the emanating effects of the court decision. But Johnson also sees a path forward in engaging Republicans on a divisive issue for the party, because while many Americans feel strongly about abortions, they don't want to see broader restrictions to others' care.

"The Republican Party has been captured by an anti-abortion-rights minority, and that is pushing them to very extreme positions that are impacting the health and life of many people who could become pregnant," Johnson said. Read the full interview here.

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