Presented by
With Susannah Luthi, Rachel Roubein and Alice Miranda Ollstein
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Quick Fix
— The Biden administration has reopened HealthCare.gov for Americans who lost their coverage during the pandemic.
— Vaccine advocates across the globe are banding together to fight coronavirus anti-vaxxers on social media.
— President Joe Biden's HHS has added dozens of staffers across the department. PULSE has the details.
WELCOME TO TUESDAY PULSE — where we think writer Susan Orlean has the pandemic questions that demand answers. Send tips and hot takes to [email protected].
Driving the Day
OBAMACARE IS OPEN AGAIN — The Biden administration has launched its three-month special enrollment period, boosting the sign-up push with a $50 million outreach campaign. Biden touted it in a Monday statement as a key tool to combat Covid’s economic impact, POLITICO's Joanne Kenen reports. That's a marked shift from the Trump administration, which refused to reopen the exchanges for a similar special enrollment period last year.
AN ESTIMATED 9 MILLION people could be eligible for free or subsidized coverage through the Obamacare markets. It remains to be seen how many will actually seek out coverage; the record surge some had predicted during November's regular enrollment period largely failed to materialize.
Still, the move earned praise from Democrats and across much of the health care landscape. That includes fundraising platform GoFundMe — where one-third of fundraisers are medically related — which told HHS in a letter Monday that it will promote the sign-up period on its own site, according to a copy shared with PULSE.
— Biden’s administration has also begun unraveling Medicaid work requirements. The work rules do "not promote the objectives of the Medicaid program," CMS wrote in letters quietly sent to states on Friday.
The agency pointed to the pandemic as the reason for dismantling the policy, saying it risked causing a "substantial" loss of health coverage. That's sparked backlash from at least one GOP-led state: Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge on Friday called the move "an overreach of executive power."
CMS must now decide whether to officially withdraw the work requirements, in which case states would have 30 days to make an argument for keeping them in place.
THE DOCTOR ARMY FIGHTING ANTI-VAXXERS — Health organizations like Shots Heard Round the World have recruited volunteers to monitor anti-vaccination messages and reach out to communities of color, which may be more hesitant to get the shots, POLITICO’s Mohana Ravindranath reports.
— The groups say they’re filling a void left by social media platforms, which have failed to protect doctors and nurses against anti-vaccine activists’ manipulation and harassment. They're using monitoring software to flag online anti-vaccine activity and quickly mount a response.
— Facebook and Twitter have sought to crack down on anti-vax messages in the meantime, with Facebook saying it will expand the types of false claims it removes. Instagram also recently removed the account of prominent anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
FIRST IN PULSE: INSIDE BIDEN’s HHS — The health department is filling out its agencies with a range of former Obama administration health officials, Hill policy aides and campaign alumni. Among the previously unreported announcements, per a list shared with PULSE:
— In the HHS secretary’s immediate office, Perrie Briskin and Clare Pierce-Wrobel are the senior advisers to chief of staff Sean McCluskie, and Shannon Myricks is the new deputy White House liaison.
— The press office includes Kirsten Allen, who will help run HHS’ Covid response comms, and press secretaries Sean Higgins and Luisana Pérez Fernández.
— In the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Max Lesko is the chief of staff to the surgeon general, and Jessica Scruggs is a senior advisor and director of scheduling and advance for the surgeon general.
Kimberly Espinosa is deputy assistant secretary in HHS' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Legislation, while Sonia Chessen is chief of staff at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
— A big hire at CMS: Arielle Woronoff, who was senior health counsel for the Senate Finance Committee Democrats, will head the agency’s legislative office.
— At the Administration for Children and Families, which houses the refugee resettlement office, Larry Handerhan is chief of staff and senior adviser and Lanikque Howard is director of its office of community service and senior advisor on asset building. Jenifer Smyers is the refugee office’s chief of staff and Jose Garibay-Medrano is its special assistant.
Coronavirus
BIDEN CAUGHT BETWEEN SCIENCE AND POLITICS ON SCHOOLS — Biden’s school reopening push has turned into the first major test of his “follow the science” mantra, as he tries to balance getting kids back in the classroom with rising political resistance, your host reports with POLITICO’s Tyler Pager.
Biden has already backtracked on his initial pledge to reopen the majority of schools within his first 100 days in office, despite growing evidence Covid has not spread in schools as easily as initially feared. Now he’s trying to convince skeptical teachers to return to in-class learning, even as the administration warns against emerging variants that could be more contagious.
— Pandemics, pizza and the peril of promises: In today’s POLITICO Dispatch, your PULSE correspondent talks to Jeremy Siegel about the challenges facing Biden’s school reopening effort. Listen here.
GOVERNORS TO BIDEN: YOUR DATA IS MAKING US LOOK BAD — Governors facing scrutiny over the vaccine rollouts in their states are urging the Biden administration to alter the way it displays vaccination data, arguing it’s contributing to confusion about the nation’s distribution process.
In a letter to Biden, the National Governors Association criticized the CDC‘s vaccine tracker, which shows a wide gap between the total shots the federal government has distributed and the proportion that states have actually administered.
“Due to the anxiety created by the demand and supply of the vaccine, it is imperative that the American people fully understand the process,” the NGA wrote, adding that it “would ask that the CDC reporting accurately reflects the reality.”
— Biden officials have said the reporting discrepancy is mainly a state-level issue. But the administration is now distributing vaccines through its own channels too, the NGA wrote, a factor that it wants the CDC to acknowledge — calling the success of those programs “beyond the states’ control.”
— A White House spokesperson told PULSE it had received the letter and is discussing the data reporting issues with governors. "Our goal is to get more shots in the arms of Americans as equitably and efficiently as possible, and addressing these issues are critical to doing just that," the spokesperson said.
OXFORD/ASTRAZENECA COVID SHOT GAINS WHO AUTHORIZATION — The World Health Organization granted the vaccine an emergency use listing, allowing it to be distributed to countries across the globe, POLITICO Europe’s Ashleigh Furlong writes.
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is the second to receive the WHO’s emergency use listing, after the Pfizer-BioNTech shot was OK’d late last year.
On the Hill
FIRST IN PULSE: COVID PANEL PLANS VACCINE EQUITY HEARING — The House’s coronavirus subcommittee will hold a hearing Friday on how the government should address racial and economic disparities in vaccination rates, POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein reports. The virtual session will feature testimony from health experts on improving vaccine access and to combat hesitancy in Black, Latino and Native American communities, as well as other communities of color.
PHARMA FIGHTS DEMOCRATS’ DRUG REFORM BID — The pharmaceutical industry is waging in an uphill battle to convince Democrats to jettison one of the key money-saving provisions in the House’s Covid aid package, POLITICO’s Susannah Luthi reports.
The measure would effectively let state Medicaid programs charge companies that raise the average sales price of their medicines beyond the rate of inflation — an idea that’s won bipartisan support in the past, but is vehemently opposed by drug companies.
Pharmaceutical firms in recent days have argued the provision would skew the rebate structure that plays a central role in determining drug prices, and that it should be debated alongside other reforms. Yet so far, senior Democratic aides say the politics are on lawmakers’ side and that the provision alone would save $14 billion over a decade.
What We're Reading
Democrats are quietly cutting ties with a megadonor tied to McKinsey's consulting work on opioids made by Purdue Pharma, Business Insider's Dave Levinthal reports.
A digital journal has compiled the pandemic-era thoughts of hundreds of people around the country over the past year, The New York Times’ Benedict Carey reports.
Health tech firm Epic is now aiding 100 community vaccination sites across the nation, with plans to add up to another over the next month.
Health officials in Harris County, Texas, had to scramble to distribute 8,400 vaccine doses after its freezer facility failed, the Houston Chronicle's Zach Despart and St. John Barned-Smith report.
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