We dive into the health policy records of House speaker hopefuls Scalise and Jordan
The race for House speaker is on with two staunch conservatives — Reps. Steve Scalise (La.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio) — officially vying for the post. House Republicans are scheduled to hold a candidate forum later today after the chamber was thrust into unprecedented chaos last week.
The health policy angle: The ousting of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as speaker won’t have a major impact on how the party approaches health care. In general, health policy hasn’t been a top issue for House Republican leadership this year, and neither candidate has made the issue a particular focus of theirs recently.
Yet both contenders have been fiercely critical of the Biden administration’s coronavirus response, have a long history of opposing abortion and were active in the GOP’s failed bid to repeal Obamacare.
It’s still an open question whether Scalise or Jordan can become speaker, with some Republican lawmakers and aides expressing doubt that either can muster up the necessary votes, our colleagues Marianna Sotomayor and Maegan Vazquez report. McCarthy said yesterday he’s willing to return to the role if enough Republicans who voted to oust him are open to it.
But no matter who becomes the next speaker, they’ll soon face high-stakes decisions with implications for the nation’s health policy. The Nov. 17 government funding deadline is quickly approaching while Congress is yet to address the fate of several health programs that expired last month, such as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
This morning, we’re digging into what we know about Scalise and Jordan’s health policy records. (Neither office returned a request for comment.)
Jake Sherman, Punchbowl News:
Keep in mind: Neither Jim Jordan nor Steve Scalise are even close to 217/218. Not close. The number of undecideds is amazingly high.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 9, 2023
Scalise, who first entered Congress in 2008, is a veteran of GOP leadership and is the House’s second-highest-ranking Republican.
He served on the House Energy and Commerce Committee — which has jurisdiction over health care among an array of other issues — from 2009 until assuming the majority leader post this year. As majority whip, he helped shepherd through the House’s bill to repeal Obamacare in 2017, and he previously helped roll out a conservative repeal plan in 2013 as head of the Republican Study Committee.
During the last Congress, Scalise was the ranking Republican on the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis, where he was critical of Democratic governors’ pandemic-era nursing home policies and accused top federal officials of suppressing the lab leak theory.
On abortion, Scalise has an A rating from prominent antiabortion group SBA Pro-Life America. He spoke at this year’s March for Life — the first antiabortion rally since Roe v. Wade was overturned — where he referred to the Supreme Court’s ruling as “only the end of the first phase of this battle.”
- But Scalise hasn’t accomplished all he’s set out to do. He pledged to bring three abortion bills to the House floor during the first two weeks of this year’s legislative session, but a vote was never called on a bill codifying a long-standing amendment restricting federal funds from being used to pay for most abortions.
Meanwhile, Scalise has had much personal experience with the health-care system. In August, he announced he’d begun receiving treatment for blood cancer. And in 2017, Scalise was shot in the hip and nearly killed when a gunman opened fire on lawmakers practicing for the annual congressional baseball game; he underwent several surgeries and procedures.
The Ohio Republican was first elected to Congress in 2006 and is a founder of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. He has a reputation as a conservative firebrand and has steadily risen through the ranks of the GOP conference — and has the backing of former president Donald Trump.
Amid the effort to repeal Obamacare, Jordan was critical of initial versions of the bill, dismissing it as “Obamacare Lite” before voting to support an amended version of the legislation.
Jordan serves as the chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, where he has demanded information from pharmaceutical companies as part of a probe into alleged censorship and sent a subpoena to Rochelle Walensky, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
During the pandemic, Jordan clashed with Anthony Fauci — the nation’s former top infectious-disease expert — in made-for-TV moments, and he slammed vaccine mandates as “un-American” during the 2021 delta surge.
On abortion, Jordan has received an A-plus rating from SBA Pro-Life America. As our colleague Aaron Blake notes, Jordan last year called a report that a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim had become pregnant a “lie” before an arrest in the case was made; Jordan deleted the tweet.
First in The Health 202: Bernie Sanders takes aim at nonprofit hospitals
Senate HELP Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) plans to hold a hearing probing the business practices of nonprofit hospitals in the coming months following the release of a report by his staff later today accusing the facilities of abusing their tax-exempt status.
The details: The report points to instances documented in several media outlets of nonprofit health systems allegedly denying treatment to patients with unpaid hospital bills and using aggressive debt collection tactics to recover such payments, such as by garnishing wages. The report alleges that those practices flout federal requirements stipulating that nonprofit hospitals are “organized and operated” for charitable purposes — a designation that comes with hefty tax benefits.
The view from hospitals: The American Hospital Association slammed the report as “totally off base” and is out with its own report today contending tax-exempt hospitals provide tens of billions of dollars in benefits to their communities. Three hospitals named in the report, Tennessee’s Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, New Jersey’s Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Health and Minnesota’s Allina Health, defended their financial assistance programs in statements emailed to The Health 202. The other hospitals mentioned didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Next steps: In an interview, Sanders said legislation is likely to follow, although the details of what such a bill would contain aren’t yet clear. He said he has yet to discuss his plans with the Senate health committee’s top Republican, Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.), who urged federal regulators to evaluate nonprofit hospitals’ compliance with their tax-exempt requirements over similar concerns earlier this year.
What we also learned from Sanders …
The HELP panel chairman met with Monica Bertagnolli, President Biden’s nominee to run the nation’s medical research agency, last Wednesday and still plans to hold a hearing this month on her nomination.
Sanders said he and Bertagnolli had a “nice discussion.” This comes after Sanders initially refused to hold a hearing on the nomination for months in a quest to push the administration to release a “comprehensive” plan to lower drug prices.
But last month, Sanders announced he’d hold a hearing in October, citing a new contract between the federal health department and Regeneron that appeared to appease some concerns, as well as a pledge from the White House to keep working on ways to lower the cost of medicine. The contract stated that coronavirus therapies the company creates would be sold at the same list price or lower than the price of the product in other major countries. The delay has frustrated some advocates who have decried the lack of a permanent director to lead the National Institutes of Health.
Walgreens pharmacists walking off job
Thousands of Walgreens pharmacy staff are walking off the job this week in protest of working conditions they allege put employees and patients at risk, The Post’s Jaclyn Peiser reports.
The protest kicked off yesterday and could impact hundreds of stores through Wednesday, according to an organizer of the effort. CNN, which first reported the walkout, has confirmed that pharmacies have stopped operations at some Walgreens locations in Arizona, Massachusetts, Oregon and Washington state, with customers posting to social media about other closures happening throughout the country.
A closer look: Pharmacists, technicians and support staff claim that increased demands on understaffed teams — like administering vaccines while battling hundreds of backlogged prescriptions — has become so unmanageable that it is impeding their ability to do their jobs responsibly.
- Employees are pushing Walgreens to hire more pharmacy staff, establish mandatory training hours, offer transparency in how payroll hours are assigned to stores and give employees advance notice when they will be cut or if there’s an open position.
The view from Walgreens: In a statement to The Post, Walgreens spokesman Fraser Engerman said the company recognizes that the last few years have been “a very challenging time” and that it is “engaged and listening to the concerns raised by some of our team members.”
Contract negotiations between a coalition of unions representing Kaiser Permanente workers and the company are scheduled to resume Thursday following a three-day strike that ended Saturday morning. Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su is slated to attend the bargaining session to “assist the parties in advancing talks,” Steve Gorman and Ahmed Aboulenein report for Reuters.
- The Florida Department of Health has agreed to publish detailed coronavirus data on its website as part of a settlement agreement capping a two-year court battle sparked by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration’s refusal to produce public records during the height of the pandemic, Jeffrey Schweers reports for the Orlando Sentinel.
- Republicans blasted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. yesterday after the longtime vaccine skeptic announced that he will abandon his Democratic presidential bid in favor of an independent run at the White House, a shift they say threatens to cannibalize the GOP’s vote share next year, The Post’s Michael Scherer reports.
- The Drug Enforcement Administration will allow providers to continue using telemedicine to prescribe certain controlled substances through the end of 2024, extending the pandemic-era flexibility for a second time as the agency drafts permanent regulations.
Thanks for reading! See y’all tomorrow.