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House Democrats tee up vote to put Republicans on record on Obamacare lawsuit.  House Democrats are preparing to force votes that would have the chamber’s legal counsel defend Obamacare against a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the healthcare law. The House will vote today, as part of a larger rules package, to allow the House counsel to intervene in the case, known as Texas v. Azar. The formal vote on the resolution will happen next week, according to the office of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the likely incoming House Speaker. The plan marks one of the first orders of business for Democrats in the House as they take over under the new Congress Thursday. Democrats hope to put the spotlight on Republicans who ran campaigns telling voters they were devoted to keeping in place Obamacare’s protections on pre-existing illnesses. They plan to argue that votes rejecting the resolution demonstrate Republicans aren’t really committed to the protections. “After two years of brutal attacks on health care and desperate GOP misrepresentations on the campaign trail, we’re not giving Republicans anywhere to hide,” Pelosi spokesman Henry Connelly said in an email. “Republicans who survived the election on their tardy promises to protect pre-existing conditions will have to explain why they have once again been complicit in trying to strike down those life-saving protections.”

Opinion: Yes, “Medicare for all” is socialized healthcare. During the 2020 campaign, many Democratic presidential candidates will be eager to describe their healthcare proposals as “Medicare for all.” But it would be perfectly fair to characterize such a vision with another term: socialized healthcare.

Welcome to Philip Klein’s Daily on Healthcare, compiled by Washington Examiner Executive Editor Philip Klein (@philipaklein) and Senior Healthcare Writer Kimberly Leonard (@LeonardKL).  Email [email protected] for tips, suggestions, calendar items, and anything else. If a friend sent this to you and you’d like to sign up, click here. If signing up doesn’t work, shoot us an email and we’ll add you to our list.

Trump predicts Supreme Court will rule Obamacare unconstitutional. Trump said he believes the Supreme Court will uphold the federal judge’s decision declaring Obamacare unconstitutional and Democrats and Republicans will work together on a new healthcare plan for the country. “We should win at the Supreme Court, where this case will go,” Trump said of last month’s ruling in Texas during a televised Cabinet meeting Wednesday afternoon. “When we do, we will sit down with the Democrats and we will come up with great healthcare.” Trump said that a potential new healthcare plan would be “far better” than the existing one, in which “the deductible is so high, unless you get hit by a tractor, you can’t even use it. … Obamacare is a tremendous failure.”

House Democrats slip abortion language into bill to end partial shutdown. House Democrats have inserted language to expand abortion access into a bill to end the partial government shutdown set for a vote Thursday. The spending bill would repeal a provision instituted by President Trump that requires foreign nongovernmental organizations to certify that they will not “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning.” The provision, formally known as the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy, was once called the Mexico City Policy, known by critics as the “global gag rule.” The bill also would increase funding by $5 million for the United Nations Population Fund, to $37.5 million. Anti-abortion organizations oppose the program because they say it participates in coercive abortions and involuntary sterilizations. The anti-abortion organization March for Life said it would score against the final package if the provisions are included in the version that receives a vote Thursday. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement Democrats were “already trying to foist a radical pro-abortion agenda on the nation.” “A strong majority of Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion,” she said, adding that repealing Trump’s policy on nongovernmental organizations would make “taxpayers complicit in the exportation of abortion and destruction of countless unborn children around the world. This is unconscionable and we oppose the bill in the strongest terms.” The Senate has vowed to block the spending bill because it doesn’t include money for the wall demanded by Trump.

But the spending bill maintains the Hyde Amendment. The amendment, which bans federal funding for abortion except in the cases of rape, incest, or if a woman’s pregnancy threatens her life, has been included in spending bills for several decades and the latest was no exception. During the 2016 election, Democrats called for repealing the Hyde Amendment as part of their platform on abortion policy, but a senior Democratic aide said the latest inclusion “does not reflect a policy judgment” on the amendment. “In the interest of re-opening the government, we aren’t making any changes to the Senate bills on anything,” the aide said.

Senate confirms science adviser, ‘drug czar.’ The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Kelvin Droegemeier to serve as the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and James Carroll Jr. to be director of National Drug Control Policy. The science adviser is a first for the White House, and Droegemeier will help to weigh in on a variety of scientific and medical issues. Carroll has been acting director at ONDCP for several months and before that was a deputy chief of staff at the White House. The confirmations were among dozens by the Senate and just hours before the close of the 115th Congress. The list excluded federal judges despite an effort by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to secure a deal for those nominees with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. In total, the Senate cleared 77 nominees by voice vote.

PhRMA pushes back on drug pricing analysis. PhRMA is pushing back on an analysis by Rx Savings Solutions that found more than three dozen drugmakers raised the prices on hundreds of medicines in the U.S. on Tuesday, for an average increase of 6.3 percent. Calling the analysis “flawed and inaccurate,” saying that it failed to take rebates and discounts into account, but that it also believed patients weren’t receiving the savings borne by other entities, including private insurers and government payers. “The data focus on a selective sample of companies and medicines and ignores how the competitive market works to control costs,” the group said. Due to negotiations in the market, retail medicine costs grew just 0.4 percent in 2017, the slowest rate since 2012, and net prices for brand medicines grew just 1.9 percent. That is because, on average, 40 percent of the list price of medicines is given as rebates or discounts to insurance companies, the government, PBMs and other entities in the supply chain that often require large rebates in order for a medicine to be covered.”

Bristol Myers buys Celgene for $74 billion amid growing drug-price scrutiny. Bristol-Myers Squibb agreed to buy rival Celgene for $74 billion, gaining access to a pipeline of new treatments for diseases including multiple sclerosis, amid growing scrutiny of prescription drug prices. Celgene investors will receive a share of Bristol-Myers and $50 cash for each share of the Summit, N.J.-based company along with the right to a payment of $9 per share if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves three drugs currently in development, the companies said Thursday. Executives expect the deal to be finalized before the end of September. “We are impressed by what Celgene has accomplished for patients,” said Giovanni Caforio, chief executive officer of Bristol-Myers. “As a combined entity, we will enhance our leadership positions across our portfolio, including in cancer and immunology and inflammation. We will also benefit from an expanded early- and late-stage pipeline that includes six expected near-term product launches.” The two companies, along with pharmaceutical industry rivals, are simultaneously grappling with growing pressure from Washington to lower prescription-drug costs. Along with proposals from the Trump administration, re-energized congressional Democrats are seeking to target the patents that allow brand-name drugmakers to profit from blockbuster medications for a decade or longer.

RUNDOWN

Kaiser Health News How the government shutdown affects health programs  

CBS News Another blood pressure medication recalled over trace amounts of cancer-causing chemical

NPR Activists brace for 2019 abortion-rights battles in the states
CNN ERs ‘flooded’ with mentally ill patients with no place else to turn

FierceHealthcare Older Americans worried about insurance coverage, health costs as they approach retirement