PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 27.
EARLY OPEN ENROLLMENT OVERVIEW — About 4.6 million people have selected Affordable Care Act marketplace plans in the first few weeks of open enrollment, HHS said Tuesday, Chelsea reports.
Why it matters: Open enrollment, which started Nov. 1, comes after Medicaid unwinding this year knocked an estimated 10,868,000 off the program as of Tuesday, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
HHS, which has been tracking where people have re-enrolled in coverage, said 1.5 million more people, including those who lost Medicaid, enrolled in health insurance marketplace coverage from March to September this year than during the same period last year.
What the data says: The first open enrollment snapshot is from the initial three weeks of open enrollment for 32 states that use the federal marketplace and the first two weeks for the 17 states and D.C. that use state-based marketplaces.
According to HHS, 20 percent, or 920,000 people, who chose plans were new to the marketplace.
“This year’s Marketplace enrollment season is off to a strong start,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Four out of five people can find a plan for $10 or less a month after subsidies on HealthCare.gov. Nearly 96 percent of HealthCare.gov consumers will be able to choose plans from at least three health insurers.”
Last year, nearly 5.5 million people had enrolled for a marketplace plan in the first month of open enrollment, according to HHS. Twenty-two percent were new to the marketplace.
WELCOME TO WEDNESDAY PULSE. We wish you and your families a wonderful Thanksgiving! You may, however, want to keep this Yoga with Adriene: Yoga for Digestion video in your back pocket. Send your tips, scoops and feedback to [email protected] and [email protected] and follow along @ChelseaCirruzzo and @_BenLeonard_.
TODAY ON OUR PULSE CHECK PODCAST, host Katherine Ellen Foley talks with POLITICO health care reporter David Lim about the dim prospects for passing health policies before year’s end in light of the recent short-term government funding agreement and what that means for 2024.
PHARMA GIVES BIG TO GOP — The pharmaceutical industry’s leading lobbying organization contributed $7.5 million to the American Action Network last year, a group linked to House Republicans, according to an analysis of 2022 tax forms, POLITICO’s Megan Wilson and Caitlin Oprysko report.
Why it matters: It’s the most PhRMA has ever given to the group in a year, though the network has received $34.5 million in PhRMA cash since 2010, according to Issue One, a campaign finance reform advocacy group.
American Action Network spent millions on advertising in 2022 opposing Democrats’ drug pricing reform effort as part of a yearslong campaign against the proposals, which eventually became law as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.
The law ultimately ordered Medicare to negotiate prices for 10 drugs, less ambitious than a Democratic proposal that passed the House in 2019.
A POLITICO analysis of the industry group’s most recent tax forms shows that the contribution was among the top five grants or donations PhRMA made in 2022. In total, PhRMA gave nearly $52 million to political campaigns and nonprofits, patient groups, universities and other organizations, according to the recently filed disclosures.
PhRMA’s top five recipients in 2022:
— We Work for Health, a business coalition that advocates for medical innovation: $13.6 million
— American Action Network: $7.5 million
— Yale University, which recently started a PhRMA-backed research initiative: $5 million
— Rx Abuse Leadership Initiative, an opioid-crisis advocacy group: $2 million
— Center Forward, a political action committee: $1.6 million
PhRMA did not reply to a request for comment on the contributions.
CDC GOES TO CONGRESS — CDC Director Mandy Cohen will make her first appearance before Congress next week to testify on the agency’s efforts to rebuild public trust, Chelsea reports.
The House Energy and Commerce Oversight Subcommittee will hold a hearing on Thursday, Nov. 30, that’s focused on trust in the CDC amid the respiratory illness season.
“The CDC’s public trust has been damaged as a result of its confusing messaging and other failures during the COVID-19 Pandemic. This lack of trust could lead to complications as America heads into respiratory illness season,” Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), full committee chair, and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), subcommittee chair, said in a statement.
Why it matters: Since taking the agency’s helm this summer, Cohen has made it a mission to restore public perception of the CDC as trustworthy headed into the respiratory illness season. She’s traveled the country to promote vaccination and made inroads on Capitol Hill, including among Republicans.
In October, she met with the GOP Doctors Caucus, a meeting that the caucus’s leadership, in a statement, called informative.
Cohen has told POLITICO she wants to turn a new leaf with Congress and the public.
“I think that there’s a lot of folks who want to look backwards. I want to look forward,” she said in October. “I think the first part of building trust is showing up and listening.”
— Also on the Hill next week: A House E&C Health Subcommittee hearing on artificial intelligence on Nov. 29.
ESHOO ESCHEWS ANOTHER RUN — Longtime California Rep. Anna Eshoo, the top Democrat on the House E&C Health Subcommittee, on Tuesday announced plans to retire after this term in Congress, POLITICO’s Anthony Adragna reports.
“I’m very proud of the body of bipartisan work I’ve been able to achieve on your behalf in the Congress,” she said in an announcement video. “As my last year in Congress approaches, I will continue my work with vigor and unswerving commitment to you.”
Eshoo’s retirement opens a spot to represent her safe blue district — which includes Silicon Valley — for the first time in 30 years.
Over her three-decade congressional career, Eschoo has been a key player in health care policy, helping lead efforts to lower prescription drug prices, advance biomedical research and expand health insurance access.
FDA REGULATES DRUG ADS — The FDA finalized a rule Tuesday requiring radio and TV ads selling prescription drugs to provide information on side effects and contraindications in a more consumer-friendly manner, Chelsea reports.
The rule builds upon previous regulations requiring the ads to include information on a drug’s risks by creating standards for what qualifies as “clear, conspicuous and neutral” presentation of risks.
The standards include displaying information, such as side effects, on a TV ad so it can be read easily and gives consumers sufficient time to read it. Drugs face having the FDA put limits on how they can be sold if they fail to follow these rules, the agency says.
Kaysie Brown is now global policy director and strategist at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. She previously was deputy lead negotiator on pandemics and senior adviser at the State Department’s Office of Global Covid Response and Health Security.
POLITICO’s Vincent Manancourt reports on a U.S.-based company that won a contract to run a data platform for Britain’s National Health Service.
POLITICO’s Maya Kaufman reports on New York delaying its rollout of a low-income health plan expansion.
STAT reports on the broad definition of “Asian Americans” within health studies that can obscure disparities among a diverse population.
