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TOP TRUMP OFFICIAL LOOKS TO ENSHRINE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY: The Trump administration official who enforces civil rights protections in healthcare sees his work on religious liberty as his biggest legacy for the Department of Health and Human Services.
“There is a real problem out there of lack of respect for conscience and religious freedom that needs to be addressed and we are taking the concrete steps to finally address it,” said Roger Severino, director of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS. “And I think this is an awakening of sorts that has opened up people’s eyes, both in the healthcare industry and beyond, that this is a right that had been under-enforced, that people were being discriminated against and felt they had nowhere to turn, and now they have somewhere to turn. And it would be a shame if that door ever closed on them again.”
Severino, who is Catholic, enshrined the administration’s commitment to religious liberty last year by creating a Conscience and Religious Freedom Division at the agency. Most recently, his office sent a notice to the University of Vermont Medical Center accusing the hospital of forcing a Catholic nurse to assist with an abortion despite her objections to the procedure. The hospital has until Friday to respond.
The University of Vermont Medical Center has denied the nurse’s account of what happened. Spokesman Michael Carrese said in an email that “an internal investigation found that the facts did not support the allegations in the claim” but didn’t specify which parts were inaccurate.
Since Trump took office, hundreds more conscience complaints have poured in, Severino said, reaching 343 complaints last year. During the Obama administration, there was only about one such complaint a year.
“That’s tremendous growth in part because in the previous administration there was insufficient attention paid to these issues, and we’ve signaled a new openness and we’ve been informing and educating the public that these rights have existed for decades,” Severino said.
Besides religious liberty, OCR enforces federal anti-discrimination laws relating to race, color, national origin, disability, age, and sex in healthcare facilities that get HHS funding, including from Medicare and Medicaid. It takes complaints from patients who can’t get access to their medical records and whose personal data is breached. In all, it got 33,194 complaints in 2018.
Read more from Kimberly’s interview with Severino.
Good morning and welcome to the Washington Examiner’s Daily on Healthcare! This newsletter is written by senior healthcare reporter Kimberly Leonard (@LeonardKL) and healthcare reporter Cassidy Morrison (@CassMorrison94). You can reach us with tips, calendar items, or suggestions at [email protected]. If someone forwarded you this email and you’d like to receive it regularly, you can subscribe here.
GOP SENATORS INTRODUCE FETAL BURIAL LAW: Republican senators have introduced a bill to mandate the burial or cremation of fetal tissue after an abortion in response to the discovery of 2,246 fetal remains in the garage of a deceased abortion doctor.
The bill, the Dignity for Aborted Children Act, is similar to a measure signed into law in Indiana by Vice President Mike Pence when he governor, that became enforceable this month. The Supreme Court upheld the law this year, though it hasn’t ruled on its merits.
Under the Senate legislation, abortion providers would be required to arrage for burial or cremation or otherwise face a fine and up to five years in prison. The woman who has the abortion would be given a consent form that would allow her to choose to retain the tissue or to let the abortion clinic handle it.
DEMOCRATS BAIT TRUMP ON DRUG PRICING: Democrats played a video compilation of President Trump blasting pharmaceutical companies over high prices, including a clip in which he promised to let the government negotiate if elected president, during the Education and Labor Committee’s Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee hearing Thursday.
Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson, who chairs the subcommittee, was challenging Trump to follow through on his statements, such as decrying the fact that people in America pay significantly more for drugs than people in other countries. The bill reviewed in the hearing is from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and would allow the government to set prices for between 25 and 250 drugs and would tie prices to what other countries pay.
“My Republican colleagues have responded to this proposal with the same tired rhetoric labeling it a socialist takeover in our healthcare system. But the central provisions in this proposal have been endorsed by President Trump himself,” Wilson said. Trump, she pointed out, even gave a shout-out to the legislation on Twitter.
Rep. Tim Walberg, the top Republican on the subcommittee, shot back that Trump “hasn’t yet called on us to support it… he did not say that he supports this bill as written.” He noted that the president wanted to see a bipartisan bill, but that the Pelosi plan had been crafted only among Democrats. “There has been no togetherness on putting this bill together,” he said.
AN OUTBREAK OF LUNG INJURIES WON’T STOP THC VAPERS WHO KNOW HOW TO SHOP: Seasoned vapers of THC, the chemical in marijuana that induces a high, are willing to carry on vaping even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating 805 lung injuries and 12 deaths possibly due to vaping. They’re confident that they won’t be duped into buying a potentially fatal vaping cartridge because they know what to look for. “I’m not really worried,” a THC vape user in New York told the Washington Examiner. “I do a fair amount of research on sites like [online marijuana database] Leafly to learn more about the effects and characteristics of each strain and cartridge producer before I purchase them.”
REPUBLICANS URGE FDA NOT TO LOOSEN ABORTION PILL RESTRICTIONS: A group of 52 Republican congressmen wrote the Food and Drug Administration this week to ask the agency not to make any alterations to the requirement that mifepristone, the first of two pills women take for an abortion, be dispensed by a medical prescriber. They also argued that the pill isn’t safe for women and that it should have even more restrictions, including the requirement that patients visit a doctor three times before receiving it. The members pointed to FDA data showing that mifepristone has been associated with 24 deaths since 2000. The letter comes after a former FDA chief has asked whether the restrictions are still necessary.
FLU VACCINE TAKE-UP IS LOOKING LOW: Only about 52% of U.S. adults are planning on getting a flu shot this year, according to Thursday data from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, even though the CDC recommends that everyone six months and older to get vaccinated against the flu annually. Overall, flu vaccine rates have increased over the past decade, but the rates also vary by state. For example, vaccination coverage in adults ranged from 34% in Nevada to 56% in Rhode Island, and coverage in children ranged from 46% in Wyoming to 81% in Massachusetts. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said, “We are making important gains in flu vaccination coverage in some groups of people, especially children, but in adults we see a disappointing plateau. We are under-utilizing this potentially life-saving resource.”
CMS LAUNCHES ITS LATEST ‘PATIENTS OVER PAPERWORK’ MEASURE: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced the Omnibus Burden Reduction final rule on Thursday with the aim of reducing regulations and administrative work for doctors so they can spend more time with patients. The new rule is meant to prevent kidney transplant centers from wasting organs that would otherwise be used for life-saving transplant procedures because of paperwork burdens, allow Medicare-certified hospitals in a single system to streamline quality assessment regulations rather than each medical center developing and maintaining individual programs that can hinder rural hospitals with few resources, and permit certain medical orders to be submitted in written or digital formats so doctors can spend more time on direct patient care.
NIH WILL GIVE $945 MILLION TO FUND OPIOID EPIDEMIC RESEARCH: The National Institutes of Health has awarded grants and contracts to 41 states totally $945 million to help tackle the opioid crisis as part of the agency’s Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative. The money will help fund prevention and treatment efforts for opioid use disorder, as well as research alternative pain management and therapies.
The Rundown
U.S. News & World Report The C-section capital of America
Stat FDA slams drug maker for not telling docs its sleeping pill is a controlled substance
The Associated Press Johnson & Johnson appeals Oklahoma’s $572M opioid ruling
The Wall Street Journal Comptroller blasts New York City over lead-inspection failures
The Economist Why Elizabeth Warren remains vague on health care
Calendar
FRIDAY | Sept. 27
Noon. Hart 216. Alliance for Health Policy event on “Unpacking Policy Options to Promote Prescription Drug Affordability.” Details.
