Nursing homes to Biden: not so fast

The nursing home industry is suing to stop the Biden administration's new nursing home staffing rule, my colleague Tara Bannow reports.

The suit was filed by the industry's largest trade group, the American Health Care Association, a Texas-based counterpart, and three Texas nursing homes. It's not the first health care group to file a lawsuit in Texas to try to get a favorable ruling against the Biden administration — PhRMA tried the same tactic recently, but a judge tossed out the suit in February.

The industry argues in the lawsuit that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services doesn't have authority to change staffing standards that Congress set. The rule is scheduled to be implemented within three years, or May 2027, so the rule has some time to play out in court before it fully takes effect.

influence

Dark money runs ads on China biotech bill

A new dark money group called "Defend our DNA" has started to run some social media ads supporting the BIOSECURE Act, which would restrict U.S. biotechnology companies from doing business with certain Chinese companies.

The group is structured as a nonprofit organization that doesn't have to disclose its donors, and says it's backed by the "Committee for Accountability." The group is registered in Delaware in the same office building as hundreds of thousands of other businesses.

The ads specifically mention the company BGI Group, and accuse it of "helping the Chinese Communist Party harvest genetic data of millions of people around the world." Have any clues who might be behind it? Reach out at rachel.cohrs@statnews.com.

covid-19

Advocates press for renewed long Covid support

Last week's Senate hearing on the National Institutes of Health's proposed 2025 budget ran the gamut from questions about the H5N1 avian flu outbreak to calls for more psychedelic drug research. But senators also repeatedly pressed for answers about the agency's progress in understanding long Covid, to noticeable applause from attendees, my co-author Sarah Owermohle writes.

Advocates showed up in droves on Thursday to mount pressure for answers from NIH's more than $1 billion RECOVER project, which has delivered few results thus far. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) called the program "controversial," while others questioned why the plan for next year's budget included no new funding for studying the disease.

It was a rare moment for NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli to acknowledge the criticisms. "We [the NIH] fully admit we're not where we want to be in terms of a rapid, nimble clinical trial enterprise that is testing promising treatments very quickly," she told the Senate Appropriations Committee's health subcommittee. "That is our focus right now."

It's a good start, according to advocates. "We hope the NIH will take this opportunity to work with patients and Congress to course-correct RECOVER's missteps," Meighan Stone, executive director of the Long Covid Campaign, said after the hearing.

lobbying

Health care's heir apparent

After Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) in February announced her decision not to run for re-election, Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), the health subcommittee chair, threw his hat in the ring quickly to replace her.

That paid off, as health care companies flocked to flood Guthrie's campaign coffers last quarter. He's always gotten money from health care, but the possibility of a more powerful position on the horizon raises the stakes.

Guthrie attracted campaign cash from pharmaceutical companies including Otsuka, Boehringer Ingelheim, Amgen, Gilead, GSK, Eli Lilly, Genentech, AstraZeneca, Sanofi, Novartis, Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb, J&J, and Pfizer; insurers including Humana, Elevance, CVS Health, Cigna, and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association; provider groups representing radiologists, neurologists, dentists, radiation oncologists, surgeons, pathologists, cardiologists, family physicians, rheumatologists, and psychiatrists; medical device companies; safety-net hospitals; and more.

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