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Trump’s new HHS secretary says he will enforce Obamacare if Idaho violates law. President Trump’s new Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, asked about Idaho’s proposal to allow insurers to sidestep Obamacare’s regulations, assured Congress on Wednesday that he is committed to enforcing Obamacare if a state violates the law. “There is a rule of law that we need to enforce,” Azar said during a hearing before the House Ways and Means Committee. Azar didn’t specifically say that HHS would go after Idaho, where the state’s Republican Gov. Butch Otter, in an effort to counteract high premiums, issued an executive order earlier this year that lets insurers sell plans in the state that do not meet the law’s requirements. On Wednesday, Blue Cross offered up five insurance plans to Idaho’s insurance regulators that do not meet Obamacare’s regulations.

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Kevin Brady targets Obamacare’s employer mandate. The head of the House Ways and Means Committee hopes to delay or repeal Obamacare’s employer mandate, which requires large employers to provide health insurance. The move comes after Republicans effectively killed the individual mandate that everyone have insurance by including a repeal of the mandate’s penalties in tax legislation passed in December. Efforts to fully repeal Obamacare have stalled for 2018. However, lawmakers want to take on the employer mandate this year. “I would like to see us make progress there,” Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said Tuesday. “We want to make sure our businesses are not caught up in fines or punitive efforts.” Brady said ideally, Congress would repeal or delay the mandate from going into effect instead of pursuing changes. The employer mandate requires any company with 100 or more full-time employees to provide health insurance. The Internal Revenue Service notified thousands of businesses last year that they retroactively owe penalties for not abiding by the mandate as far back as 2015, the year it went into effect.

Rubio bashes Obamacare payments in Trump budget. Sen. Marco Rubio on Tuesday criticized President Trump’s budget proposal for including about $800 million in payments to Obamacare insurers. The Florida Republican tweeted that programs such as the Coast Guard and Border Patrol were slated for automatic cuts under sequestration, while the budget would spend $812 million in fiscal 2019 on risk corridor payments for insurers. “It’s unacceptable that programs that matter to #Florida could see cuts while the gov’t continues to bail out private insurers to protect them from consequences of Obamacare,” he tweeted Tuesday. Rubio added he has been fighting to “ensure we do not bail out Obamacare, but @POTUS budget includes $ for the Obamacare risk corridors.” Under risk corridors, insurers that profited pay into a program that in turn pays insurers with heavy losses. However, the program ran up massive losses because too many insurers requested payments and not enough insurers paid into the program.

So do conservative groups. Several outside conservative groups also are blasting the recommendation in the budget to fund Obamacare insurer payments. “It is disappointing to see this administration proposing to restart the misguided practice of using taxpayer dollars to subsidize big insurers,” said Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips. Freedom Partners Executive Vice President Nathan Nascimento said the Trump administration was right when it called the payments a “payoff to insurance companies.” Both groups are backed by the Koch brothers. The opposition doesn’t seem likely to derail senators’ hopes to add two Obamacare stabilization bills to the two-year spending bill that Congress is expected to vote on in March.

West Virginia first state to get federal waiver to treat opioid-addicted babies. The Trump administration approved a waiver Tuesday to allow West Virginia to offer treatment for newborns suffering from opioid withdrawal. West Virginia is the first state to get a waiver from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to treat Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome through Medicaid. The state has been hit hard by the opioid epidemic, which federal data show killed more than 42,000 Americans in 2016. In 2016, 884 West Virginia residents died from an opioid overdose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “No state has felt the effects of this epidemic like West Virginia has, and I am so happy that our state is now able to provide [Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome] services through the Medicaid program,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.

Democrats slam Trump administration for conservative group input on Planned Parenthood defunding. Democrats are accusing the Trump administration of coordinating with an “extremist” and “far-right” legal group in creating new guidance for states on defunding Planned Parenthood. The guidance, released by the Department of Health and Human Services in January, said states don’t have to comply with an Obama administration policy from April 2016 that warned restricting Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood could violate federal law. The repeal would give states more flexibility on how they manage the program, agency officials said. But House Oversight Committee ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings obtained documents from a whistleblower suggesting that HHS received a draft legal analysis from the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom a week before the announcement. Sen. Patty Murray, a top-ranking Democrat from Washington, said it was “concerning that President Trump continues to listen to extremists.” “This is another clear and alarming sign that President Trump is more concerned with following a far-right ideological agenda than with protecting women’s healthcare needs,” she said.

Democratic super PAC urges Dems to talk about healthcare. Priorities USA, a top Democratic super PAC, cautioned Democrats Tuesday to stay focused on economic messaging leading up to the midterm elections because diverting attention elsewhere could cost them the election. Spending time on unorganized criticisms of Trump or other policy issues, the Democratic group warned in a memo, could jeopardize Democrats’ chances of success in a rich political environment that currently skews in their favor. Polling conducted by the super PAC shows Trump’s approval rating ticked up to 44 percent in the first week of February from 40 percent approval in November. And Democrats’ advantage on the generic ballot fell, narrowing the the gap to 46 percent preferring Democrats to 42 percent for Republicans, according to the survey. The group doesn’t mince words, blaming the Democrats’ shrinking lead on their inability to focus the public on Trump’s economic policies, taxes and healthcare. “The extent of Democratic gains will be blunted if Democrats do not re-engage more aggressively in speaking to the economic and healthcare priorities of voters,” the memo states.

FDA pushes for animal drug user fee reauthorization. A top Food and Drug Administration official said Tuesday the reauthorization of the agency’s animal drug user fee agreements would help speed up its process of approving generic animal drugs, decreasing the cost of caring for food-producing and companion animals. “The current reauthorization significantly reduces timeframes for getting these products to the market, so that was something the generic drug industry and FDA sat down negotiated, reduced this timeframe so we can get more generic animal drugs to the market,” Steven Solomon, director of the FDA’s Center For Veterinary Medicine, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee as the panel considers renewing the program. The FDA program, introduced in 2004, allows for the collection of fees for certain generic and pioneer animal drug applications from their developers, according to the agency’s website.

White, powdery substance found in envelope at Obama’s D.C. office triggers emergency response. Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and District of Columbia Fire and EMS responded to a call of a white, powdery substance at former President Barack Obama’s Washington office Tuesday, a spokesman for DC Fire and EMS said. Law enforcement received the call at 11:05 a.m., and DC Fire and EMS arrived three minutes later. According to DC Fire and EMS, a letter containing the substance had been sent to the headquarters of the World Wildlife Fund, which is where Obama’s office is located. The substance ended up being baby powder. A hazmat team and the U.S. Secret Service were also on the scene, which was cleared by 1:15 p.m., the Metro Police Department said.

RUNDOWN

Axios The effects of Maryland’s unique healthcare system

The Hill Sessions makes a remark about opioids, starts a discussion about pain

Wall Street Journal Businesses challenge IRS bid to start enforcing insurance mandate

Washington Post Two visions for the future of healthcare are at war in Pittsburgh

New York Times Meth, the forgotten killer, is back and it’s everywhere

STAT News With a pharma exec running, New Jersey’s Senate race becomes referendum on drug prices

Associated Press Oregon House OKs healthcare as a right, but funding questioned