'Senate Finance Committee introduces legislation aimed at fixing drug shortages'

The Senate Finance Committee on Friday introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at preventing and reducing generic drug shortages by leveraging Medicare and Medicaid programs.

The draft legislation proposes the creation of a “Medicare Drug Shortage Prevention and Mitigation Program” that would encourage improved contracting and purchasing practices in the drug supply chain. The program would begin in 2027, according to the committee.

The provisions would include requiring Medicare participants to adopt “new standards for supply chain resiliency, reliability, and transparency” for generic drug purchasing in order to receive Medicare payment incentives.

Among these standards would be minimum three-year contracts with manufacturers, purchase volume commitments, requirements for contingency contracts with alternate manufacturers and transparency around manufacturer quality control issues.

Providers who meet core standards would be eligible for “quarterly, lump-sum incentive payments.”

Last month, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists recorded the highest number of domestic drug shortages since it began tracking this metric in 2001, with 323 active shortages. Commonly prescribed drugs like Adderall and Albuterol have been in shortage since 2022.

Generic drug manufacturers work with extremely thin margins, putting pressure on them to oftentimes operate at capacity. This practice, however, leaves generic drugs particularly vulnerable to shortages when disruptions occur.

Committee chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) blamed “monopolistic middlemen” for putting “market power and profit over families’ health care.”

“Our bipartisan proposal uses the power of Medicare and Medicaid to ensure the entire American health care system has adequate supply for key medicines across the country,” said Wyden. “Middlemen like GPOs should not be able to do business with Medicare if their contracting practices are actively worsening the drug shortage challenge in America.”

“Prescription drug shortages are fueling high prices and limiting access to life-saving treatments and cures,” Ranking Member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said. “We look forward to working with other members, experts and stakeholders on addressing these life-threatening challenges and promoting consistent, cost-effective health care for Americans nationwide.”

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4639712-senate-finance-committee-legislation-fix-drug-shortages/

Florida outlines medical exemptions to 6-week abortion ban

 Florida health officials on Thursday outlined a series of limited medical exemptions to the state’s six-week abortion ban. 

The state’s Agency for Health Care Administration issued the rule a day after the ban took effect, which effectively cut off abortion access across the South.  

According to the rule, “preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM), ectopic pregnancy, and molar pregnancy … can present an immediate danger to the health, safety, and welfare of women and unborn children in hospitals and abortion clinics if immediate and proper care and treatment is not rendered.”

The measure specifies that if a physician attempts to induce delivery to treat the premature rupture of membranes and the fetus does not survive, it is not considered an abortion. 

It states that treatments for a trophoblastic tumor, a rare tumor that forms where the placenta attaches to the uterus, are also not considered abortions.  

The agency said it needed emergency rulemaking because pregnant people and babies were at risk “due to a deeply dishonest scare campaign and disinformation being perpetuated by the media, the Biden Administration, and advocacy groups” to misrepresent the abortion law. 

Florida’s six-week ban was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last year. Its implementation was tied to a state Supreme Court case regarding a separate measure prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Once the court upheld that measure in early April, the six-week ban was triggered to take effect 30 days later.

The six-week ban includes exceptions in cases of rape, incest and human trafficking up to 15 weeks of pregnancy. It also allows physicians to terminate a pregnancy if necessary to save the life of the mother or prevent “a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment.” 

But doctors in states with abortion bans across the country have said they struggle to navigate unclear and sometimes contradictory exceptions to the laws.  

Health care providers say state abortion laws contain too much uncertainty and don’t protect them if they need to perform an abortion. As a result, stories about pregnant patients in medical distress being turned away from hospitals or being told to wait in a parking lot until their life is in danger are becoming common.

The Supreme Court last week heard arguments in a case challenging Idaho’s near-total ban on abortions on the grounds that it violated a federal law requiring physicians to provide stabilizing treatment to a patient in an emergency, even if that treatment is an abortion.   

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4639891-florida-outlines-medical-exemptions-abortion-ban/

Sarah Huckabee Sanders orders state to ignore new Title IX rules

 Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) ordered the state on Thursday to defy new changes to Title IX that add protections for transgender students.

Sanders, the onetime press secretary to former President Trump, is the latest in a growing coalition of Republican governors to explicitly reject the Biden administration’s update to the federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in schools and education programs that receive federal funding.

Sanders in an executive order signed Thursday said Title IX rules finalized last month by the Education Department that expand the meaning of sex discrimination to include sexual orientation and gender identity are “plainly ridiculous” and “will lead to males unfairly competing in women’s sports; receiving access to women’s and girls’ locker rooms, bathrooms, and private spaces; and competing for women’s scholarships.”

The order instructs schools to continue enforcing state laws that prevent transgender students from using restrooms and locker rooms and competing on sports teams that match their gender identity. Schools should also continue to comply with a 2023 Arkansas law that prevents public school and state employees from addressing minors by a name or pronoun that does not align with their sex assigned at birth without permission from their parents.

“If Biden gets his way, female college students will shower and change next to male college students, referring to someone using biologically correct pronouns will get you all in front of a disciplinary board for harassment and scholarships previously reserved for women will now be open to anyone claiming to be a woman,” Sanders said Thursday at the Arkansas Capitol in Little Rock.

“My message to Joe Biden and the federal government is that we will not comply,” she said.

More than a dozen Republican-led states have sued the Education Department over the new Title IX regulations, arguing that the expanded definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity is unlawful. It is not clear how Sanders will enforce the executive order, which is the first to challenge the federal government’s rule.

State education officials in GOP-controlled states have also instructed schools to ignore the new Title IX rule.

The Education Department did not immediately return a request for comment, though a department spokesperson previously told The Hill that schools “are obligated to comply with these final regulations” as a condition of receiving federal education funding.

Sanders’s executive order pledges to take legal action against the administration “for any financial loss, including loss of funding, incurred by the state due to the passage of the Biden administration’s unscientific agendas.”

“Only one of these is a law,” Sanders said Thursday. “We are not the group that has tried to circumvent the system, like the Biden administration is doing through the new guidance that they are issuing on Title IX. We are enforcing and upholding state law and we’re asking that our institutions follow Arkansas law.”

The Biden administration has yet to finalize a separate rule governing athletics eligibility.

The proposal unveiled by the Education Department last April would prohibit schools from adopting policies that categorically exclude transgender student-athletes, though high schools and colleges would still be able to limit how and when trans students are able to compete in accordance with their gender identity.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4640220-huckabee-sanders-orders-state-to-ignore-new-title-ix-rules/

Democrats knock Johnson for suggesting George Soros behind campus protests

 Jewish Democrats are admonishing Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) this week after the Republican leader suggested George Soros is behind the pro-Palestinian protests roiling colleges campuses across the country.

The Democrats — many of them highly critical of the anti-Israel demonstrations, which they say cross a line into antisemitism — are accusing Johnson of that same offense for elevating unfounded theories that Soros, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, is funding the student protesters to foment social unrest.

That baseless argument fits a larger narrative long promoted in some conservative circles: that Soros has used his prodigious wealth to manipulate global events for the sole purpose of advancing personal interests.

The irony, the Democrats note, is that the Soros portrayal is, itself, a patent antisemitic trope. By suggesting Soros is fueling the university clashes, the Democrats contend, Johnson and other Republicans are promoting hostility against Jews in the name of fighting it.

“You can’t fight antisemitism with antisemitism,” Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) said.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), another prominent Jewish lawmaker, offered a similar denouncement.  

“Not even 24 hours after passing a do-nothing bill under the guise of ‘fighting antisemitism,’ @SpeakerJohnson drags out one of the oldest antisemitic tropes in world,” Nadler wrote on the social platform X.

The pushback arrives after Johnson, in an interview with NewsNation’s “The Hill” program, floated the notion that the university protests against Israel’s war in Gaza are not grassroots demonstrations launched by students and professors upset with mounting civilian deaths, but rather are part of a larger global scheme to undermine Israeli influence. He suggested Soros might be involved, and the FBI should investigate.

“I think [FBI officials] need to look at the root causes and find out if some of this was funded by, I don’t know, George Soros or overseas entities,” Johnson said. “There’s a sort of a common theme and a common strategy that seems to be pursued on many of these campuses.”

As evidence, Johnson said he and a handful of Republicans, during a recent visit to Columbia University, the site of one of the country’s fiercest protest rallies, noticed that many of the tents in the demonstrators’ encampment were identical.

“They were the same color, make and model,” he said. “Hmm, did somebody purchase that and send it in? It looks pretty orchestrated to me.”

Johnson’s visit to Columbia was part of a broader campaign to condemn the pro-Palestinian demonstrations and the universities’ handling of the situation. In Manhattan, he called on the school’s president to resign, and in Washington, he launched a House-wide investigation into antisemitism in the U.S.

Democrats have dismissed the suggestion that the school protests are part of a broader international conspiracy to hobble Israel’s political power. And, even if that were the case, they’re perplexed by the accusation that a prominent Jewish figure would be leading that charge.

“Starting a conspiracy theory about George Soros is a very suss way to be against antisemitism,” said Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), another Jewish lawmaker.

Johnson’s office did not respond Thursday to several requests for comment. 

Unfounded Republican attacks on Soros are hardly new. Conservatives have, for years, gone after the billionaire philanthropist and his Open Society Foundations — which promotes democracy and human rights around the globe — because the tens of billions of dollars he’s donated over decades have gone largely to left-leaning groups.

That track record — and the sheer amount of money involved — has made Soros a frequent target of voices on the right, who have accused him of everything from funding the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 to being “the anti-Christ.”  

And Johnson is not the only Republican who has invoked Soros when theorizing who is behind the college campus protests.

“Obviously, I think Soros is part of this,” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) said Wednesday on Fox Business. “The FBI should be investigating that too. They should have been investigating Soros. He’s inciting, you know, violence, you know, and inciting, like, hate crimes. … I mean, those things need to be looked at.”

“I think a lot of it’s being funded by outside forces, including George Soros, those who are determined to disrupt and bring chaos into our country and divide our great nation,” Rep. Mark Alford (R-Mo.) said Monday on the same network.

The theory appears to hearken back to tenuous money trails between Soros-backed organizations and Palestinian groups that conservative media — Fox News and the New York Post, for example — have highlighted.

Last month, for example, Fox News pointed out that National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been vocal amid the pro-Palestinian campus protests, is overseen by Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation (WESPAC), which has received money from a Soros-backed nonprofit.

Fox News previously reported that, according to a watchdog group, WESPAC was given $132,000 from the Tides Foundation, a group that, according to the Washington Post, has taken in millions of dollars from Soros’s Open Society Foundations.

The Washington Post, however, reported that Students for Justice in Palestine has denied receiving any money from WESPAC, and noted that there is no public indication of the contribution.

A representative for the group told the newspaper that the company “neither funds nor influences our organization’s political activity but instead extends its legal tax-exempt status to us in order to support our mission.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4640096-johnson-george-soros-campus-protests/

'Young Democrats warn Biden he must quickly change course'

 Young Democratic voters are sounding the alarm and warning President Biden that his reelection bid could be in jeopardy if he doesn’t change course on the issues that matter most to them, including the war in Gaza.

While they have soured on Biden on a range of issues from cost of living to climate issues, the rash of protests at college campuses around the country has been the latest point of contention with the president.

“He will lose the election if he decides to roll the dice and assumes that Gaza isn’t at the top of minds right now,” said Elise Joshi, the executive director of Gen-Z for Change —which was once run under the name TikTok for Biden.

Joshi added that the last six months have seen “an increasing pace of concern” about the president.

The crisis in Gaza has been a tipping point for many young voters, and some polls have shown support dissolving for Biden.

Last month, a Harvard Youth Poll showed Biden’s support from voters ages 18-29 had slipped from about 60 percent in 2020 down to 45 percent.

A CNN poll last weekend also revealed that Biden was 11 percentage points behind Trump in a head-to-head match-up among young voters.

Some say Biden isn’t addressing some of the issues that matter most to young voters. 

“I don’t think the president is currently meeting young voters enough,” said Kidus Girma, campaign director at the Sunrise Movement, a political action organization that advocates for action on climate change. “We’re paying attention.” 

Girma said it’s “in the interest of the president to run on a progressive mandate” to speak to those voters. 

On the issue of Gaza, he said, it will come down to Biden’s approach in the coming months. 

“It’s critical that President Biden recognize the voices of young people calling for peace in Gaza,” Girma said. “The Americans are calling for the end of unconditional military aid and a permanent cease-fire. The quickest way to end the unrest on college campuses is to listen to the majority of Americans and young students fighting for what is right.” 

Biden was critical of the recent protests on college campuses Thursday, condemning vandalism and trespassing, adding that protesters at Columbia University and other campuses had the right to demonstrate peacefully.

“In moments like this, there are always those who rush in to score political points,” the president said in a speech at the White House. “But this isn’t a moment for politics. It’s a moment for clarity. So let me be clear … violent protest is not protected. Peaceful protest is.” 

“Destroying property is not a peaceful protest; it’s against the law,” Biden added. “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation, none of this is a peaceful protest. Threatening people, intimidating people. 

“Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder,” he added. 

Joshi blasted Biden’s comments, calling them “shameful.”

“To paint us as violent when police are the ones tear-gassing, shooting, and beating students, especially knowing he was elected in large part due to Black Lives Matter, is utterly shameful,” Joshi said.

An aide who worked on Biden’s 2020 campaign said the president’s remarks reflect the public’s overwhelming view on the protests.

Biden campaign aides say they have a “robust” operation to engage young voters and lure them to their column. Campaign aides say they have launched a youth outreach effort earlier than in previous cycles.

Since launching the campaign, they have also run digital ads targeting younger voters, including a current $30 million ad campaign.

The campaign has also leaned on surrogates including social media influencers to continue to highlight the administration’s policy wins, and separately in March it launched “Students for Biden-Harris,” a national organizing program that will help reach students across campuses.

Santiago Mayer, the executive director of Voters of Tomorrow, said the Biden administration actively engaged with the demographic.

“This is the first administration that has not only invited young people to the White House but has actively listened to us,” said Mayer, who has met with administration officials a number of times to discuss issues including gun violence prevention and climate issues. “They’re looking at young people as governing partners.”

Speaking of the protests at colleges, he said they’re directed not so much at the administration but at the leadership of their universities.

Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, who also served as a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said the Biden administration has been “the most progressive administration of my lifetime,” bolstering issues that are important to young voters including student debt relief.

Still, he said of the administration’s handling of the crisis in Gaza, “I don’t want to say it cancels it out, but it resonates in a serious way that does tend to overshadow in some young people’s minds — and some older people’s minds — all the good things he’s done.”

Given the choice between Biden and former President Trump, Duss predicted that many of the young voters who are protesting the administration’s inaction in Gaza will come home to Biden during the election.

But he cautioned that Biden’s handling of the situation in Gaza “is going to be a drag” on the reelection bid.

“It’s impossible to say how big of a drag, but it’s going to be a close election that even something that hurts him at the margins could make a difference,” Duss said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4640280-young-democrats-warn-biden-he-must-quickly-change-course/

'Sanders: Protests ‘may be Biden’s Vietnam’'

 Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said that the protests on college campuses over Israel’s war against Hamas could be President Biden’s Vietnam War, making the comparison to the anti-war protests in the 1960s while also offering support for the president’s statement this week.

“I am thinking back and other people are making this reference that this may be Biden’s Vietnam,” Sanders told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, who asked the senator what could happen to Biden and his reelection campaign.

“[Former President] Lyndon Johnson in many respects was a very, very good president. Domestically he brought forth some major pieces of legislation. He chose not to run in ’68 because of opposition to his views on Vietnam and I worry very much that President Biden is putting himself in a position where he has alienated, not just young people, but a lot of the Democratic base, in terms of his views on Israel and this war,” Sanders said.

Biden on Thursday, in his first public remarks since the anti-war demonstrations on college campuses broke out, was sharply critical of many aspects to the protests. And, he said the protests have not caused him to rethink his policy in the Middle East.

Sanders suggested Biden change course.

“I would hope very much that from certainly a policy point of view, from a moral point of view, the president stops giving a blank check to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and I would hope that they understand that from a political point of view, this has not been helpful. Quite the contrary,” the senator told CNN.

But, Sanders was supportive of Biden’s overall statement on Thursday, during which the president condemned vandalism and trespassing but defended the right to peacefully demonstrate.

“He’s exactly right is that we don’t want protests that are violent and we absolutely will not tolerate antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, or any form of bigotry,” Sanders said.

He sought though to explain the reason why students are protesting and warned against equating all the protests with antisemitism. He said that “as a young man,” he was involved in civil rights demonstrations and he was arrested for taking over the administration office at the University of Chicago.

“I think its important to understand why these young people are out there, and they’re out there for the right reasons, to protest U.S. continued military aid and money to a right wing extremist Netanyahu government, which is in a destructive war against the Palestinian people,” the senator said.

He added the he believes “the war policies of the Netanyahu government are a disaster” and “are in violation of international law and absolutely in violation of American law.”

“But I think…the idea that people who are critical of what Netanyahu is doing are antisemitic, that is nonsense — and that is a very, very dangerous line to cross in terms of freedom of expression in this country,” Sanders said.

The senator has been repeatedly critical of Netanyahu throughout the war, most recently accusing him of “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza. He has also opposed more U.S. funding to Israel and called for the Biden administration to end support.

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4641061-bernie-sanders-joe-biden-protest-gaza-vietnam/

These illegal immigrants are eligible for Obamacare after Biden rule change

 Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors and were protected from deportation under an Obama-era executive order will be able to obtain health care through Obamacare under a new rule being published Friday by the Biden administration.

Those who are protected via the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, along with other illegal immigrants, are currently prohibited from accessing healthcare through the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. A rule announced Friday will end that prohibition.

The administration says it predicts that the rule, which will go into effect just days before the 2024 presidential election, will result in over 100,000 uninsured illegal immigrants accessing health insurance. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) rule would allow DACA recipients to apply for coverage through HealthCare.gov and state-based marketplaces as soon as November 1. The rule does so by making what HHS calls "technical modifications" to the definition of "lawfully present" used to determine eligibility.

Former President Barack Obama protected illegal immigrants with the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (AP Photo/John Locher)

In a statement on the rule, President Biden renewed his calls for those he called "Dreamers" -- an activist-preferred term to refer to illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors -- to be granted a pathway to citizenship along with others of millions of illegal immigrants.

"I’m proud of the contributions of Dreamers to our country and committed to providing Dreamers the support they need to succeed. That’s why I’ve previously directed the Department of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to ‘preserve and fortify’ DACA. And that’s why today we are taking this historic step to ensure that DACA recipients have the same access to health care through the Affordable Care Act as their neighbors," he said.

"On Day One of my administration, I sent a comprehensive immigration reform plan to Congress to protect Dreamers and their families. Only Congress can provide Dreamers permanent status and a pathway to citizenship. Congress must act."

Vice President Harris, in a separate statement, made a similar appeal.

President Biden wants to see an amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo)

"President Biden and I will continue to do everything in our power to protect DACA, but it is only a temporary solution. Congress must act to ensure Dreamers have the permanent protections they deserve," she said.

The push for health care and citizenship for illegal immigrants has regularly met with fierce opposition from Republicans. When Obamacare was unveiled by President Barack Obama, he faced accusations that the legislation would give health care to illegal immigrants -- with one GOP congressman yelling, "You lie" at the president during a joint session of Congress.

Video

The Trump administration attempted to end DACA but was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2020. A separate lawsuit, filed in 2021, is still ongoing and blocked further enrollments in the program are blocked after a federal appeals court found that the Obama administration did not have the authority to institute the program. 

Democrats and the Biden administration have made repeated pushes for broader amnesties of illegal immigrants already in the U.S., but those efforts have failed amid unified opposition from Republicans who have rejected granting a pathway to citizenship to illegal immigrants amid an ongoing crisis at the southern border.

The Biden administration has claimed that it needs additional funding and reforms to fix a "broken" system that enables the crisis. Republicans have said that the administration needs instead to restore Trump-era policies that they believe can end the crisis.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/these-illegal-immigrants-eligible-for-obamacare-after-biden-rule-change