SIGN UP! If you’d like to continue receiving Washington Examiner’s Daily on Healthcare newsletter, SUBSCRIBE HERE: http://newsletters.washingtonexaminer.com/newsletter/daily-on-healthcare/

House panel advances health bills to expand health savings accounts, catastrophic plans. The House Ways and Means Committee advanced seven healthcare bills on Thursday after defeating amendments from Democrats on immigration and enshrining protections for pre-existing conditions. The bills seek to boost health savings accounts and roll back some of Obamacare’s taxes and mandates, including the employer mandate. The bills, which were agreed to largely along party lines, now head to the full House. One of the bills seeks to expand the contribution limit for health savings accounts. Another bill would let Obamacare customers buy a catastrophic care plan. Currently, people who are 30 years or older cannot buy such a plan, which still requires an insurer to cover essential health benefits but has an extremely high deductible. Ways & Means Chairman Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, said that the bill retains Obamacare’s benefits, but just expands choice for Americans. “This bill doesn’t weaken or change the benefits required by Obamacare,” he said.

Panel erupts over several amendments on pre-existing conditions, immigration. Democrats sought to add multiple amendments to the bills that chided the Trump administration for the border crisis and not defending Obamacare in court. The committee also advanced another four healthcare bills on Wednesday to the full House. During debate over a bill to expand the contribution limit of HSAs, Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., issued an amendment that focused on unaccompanied minors at the border. Her amendment would have allowed individuals to temporarily designate an unaccompanied child or child being held in family detention as a dependent to pay their healthcare needs through an HSA. The committee defeated Chu’s amendment by a 22-16 vote. Another amendment that ignited a fierce debate was from Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, on protections for pre-existing conditions. Doggett’s amendment was also to the bill that raises contributions for HSAs, a bill sponsored by Rep. Erik Paulson, R-Minn. Democrats said that the bill, which passed the committee by a 23-16 vote, would take away premium tax credits for plans that cover women’s health, including abortion services.

Welcome to Philip Klein’s Daily on Healthcare, compiled by Washington Examiner Managing Editor Philip Klein (@philipaklein), Senior Healthcare Writer Kimberly Leonard (@LeonardKL) and Healthcare Reporter Robert King (@rking_19).  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.

FDA creates drug shortage task force. Keagan Lenihan, the Food and Drug Administration’s associate commissioner for strategic initiatives, will be leading the task force, Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced Thursday. The group will also include officials from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid and the Department of Veterans Affairs. Gottlieb is asking the task force to “delve more deeply into the reasons why some shortages remain a persistent challenge” and to find solutions. Various workgroups will seek to determine whether the FDA needs additional authorities and whether reimbursement policies in CMS need to change. Gottlieb suggested that it might be difficult for some drug companies to make certain drugs profitably. “We’ll be looking at whether it makes sense to develop a critical drugs list, or a list of essential drugs,” he said. “These are medicines where it would be especially important, from a clinical perspective, to ensure an uninterrupted drug supply. For these medicines, we may want to consider more significant interventions than we currently employ to avert shortages.”

64 percent of US adults don’t want Roe v. Wade overturned. Nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults do not want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 abortion decision, according to a new poll released Thursday. The Gallup poll found there is strong support for upholding Roe v. Wade, which has emerged as a flashpoint in the fight over the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

Anti-abortion group pressures red-state Democrats to support Kavanaugh. The anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List rolled out digital ads on Thursday aimed at pressuring six red-state Democrats to support Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. All but one of those Democrats are up for re-election this fall in states that President Trump carried in the 2016 election. The group hopes to shore up support for Kavanaugh, who would replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Doug Jones of Alabama, and Bill Nelson of Florida are the subject of the six ads that will be distributed this week. All but Jones are up for re-election this fall, but Jones is up in 2020 in a state that Trump carried by double digits.

HHS couldn’t reunite 12 immigrant children because their deported parents left them behind in US. Health and Human Services was unable to reunite 12 of the 46 young immigrant children who were separated from their parents because the adults were deported and chose to leave their child in U.S. federal custody, an official confirmed Thursday. The dozen adults “had the opportunity to bring the child with them” when they were given removal orders, but opted against it, Matthew Albence, executive associate director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, told reporters during a call Thursday.

The ICE official said adults left the kids in U.S. federal custody because they knew they would eventually be placed with sponsors and wanted the kids to grow up in America. “Their goal when they paid the smuggler and these cartels $5-6,000 … was to get their children here. So if they have to go back on their own, that’s fine because that was their goal in the first place,” Albence added in a different call Wednesday.

Bipartisan senators ask GAO to look at how substance abuse is affecting work rates. The Government Accountability Office has received a request to examine how substance abuse, particularly in the wake of the opioid crisis, is affecting people’s ability to work. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Joe Donnelly filed the request, asking the agency to detail various state and federal policies are affecting the trend. A December 2017 report from the Aging Committee, which Collins chairs, found that labor force participation rates have increased among older Americans, but declined among prime-age workers.

CDC: Do not eat any Honey Smacks cereal because of salmonella outbreak. Consumers and retailers shouldn’t eat, sell, or serve Honey Smacks cereal because it has been linked to an outbreak of salmonella, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kellogg’s, which makes Honey Smacks, issued a recall last month for boxes of the cereal, which is made of sweetened puffed wheat. The CDC said that consumers shouldn’t eat any of the cereal no matter the “best if used by” date. The agency said Thursday that the outbreak had sickened 100 people from 33 states as of July 12. The outbreak has led to 30 hospitalizations, although no deaths have been reported.  Since the last update on June 14, salmonella cases linked to the cereal had sickened 27 people.

HHS violated federal rules and wasted funds for chartered jets under Tom Price. Health and Human Services improperly used federal funds for former Secretary Tom Price’s travel, an agency watchdog said Friday. HHS’ Office of Inspector General said in a report on Friday that the agency violated federal rules for travel for Price, who resigned last year after a scandal surrounding his private jet use. Overall, the watchdog found that HHS wasted at least $341,000 related to travel. The report looked at 21 trips and found that only one of those trips followed federal requirements for government travel. “The remaining 20 trips did not comply with federal requirements, including all 12 chartered aircraft trips,” the OIG said. “Examples of noncompliance related to the use of chartered aircraft included not completing a cost comparison to commercial airline service, not adhering to contract requirements and not properly authorizing the use of chartered aircraft.” The report charges HHS to find ways to recoup the lost federal funding. It also wants HHS to install new processes to comply with federal rules for chartered aircraft.

CMS to cut payments under Medicare Part B. The Trump administration announced cutting drug payments for doctor-administered drugs by three percent, according to a new rule released Thursday. The cuts are for payments for new drugs administered under Medicare Part B, which reimburses doctors for products administered in a physician’s office like a vaccine or chemotherapy. The cut goes into effect on Jan. 1 2019. CMS said that the change would “more closely match the actual cost of the drug.” The agency added it would help ease out-of-pocket costs for seniors. The change only affects new drugs and is a way to help deal with drugs that have “high launch prices,” CMS added.

RUNDOWN

Bloomberg J&J ordered to pay $4.14 billion in punitive damages

Reuters Iowa, Illinois investigating infections linked to McDonald’s salad

STAT News Novartis, Michael Cohen contacts were more extensive than previously disclosed

NPR Cities planning supervised drug injection sites fear Justice Department reaction

Kaiser Health News Retooled vaccine raises hopes as a lower cost treatment for Type 1 diabetes

Associated Press States brace for abortion fights after Kavanaugh nomination

Politico ‘Kiss my you know what’: Schumer hamstrung in SCOTUS fight

Washington Post Democrats say Kavanaugh could help end Obamacare, but court likely to deal with narrower issues