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House to vote today on opioids package. The House is expected to vote before noon today on the passage of the SUPPORT for Patients and Communities Act, a wide-ranging bill intended to combat addictions and deaths tied to opioids such as heroin and prescription painkillers. The bill, which has the support of more than 100 medical groups will head to the Senate and is likely to be sent to President Trump for his signature. The bill address several different areas of the opioid epidemic, but a majority of the policies focus on expanding access to treatment. It codifies an increase in the number of prescriptions a doctor can make for the drug buprenorphine from 100 to 275. It also reauthorizes key grants to areas hit hardest by the epidemic, but doesn’t appropriate new money for those grants. Instead, Congress is turning to appropriations bills to boost funding for the epidemic. The House recently passed an appropriations bill that includes $6.7 billion for fighting abuse. But another part of the legislation targets a growing problem: the widespread use of illicit fentanyl. The STOP Act, included in the package, gives the U.S. Postal Service more tools to identify shipments of illicit fentanyl from overseas. The information could then be sent to customs agents to seize the shipments. Congress found earlier this year that it is incredibly easy to buy fentanyl online, with a majority of the shipments of the powerful painkiller coming from China.

Flake backs Kavanaugh, allowing him to clear Judiciary Committee. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Friday morning he will vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a decision that greatly increases the chances the Senate will be able to confirm him in the coming days. Flake’s support also means the Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to support Kavanaugh’s nomination when it votes at 1:30 p.m. on Friday. Flake sits on that committee, so his opposition would have made it impossible for the committee to support Kavanaugh, as it is made up of 11 Republicans and 10 Democrats. Flake was one of the handful of Republican senators who could have tipped the 51-49 Senate against Kavanaugh, along with Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. His decision to support Kavanaugh now means only Collins or Murkowski is need to confirm the nominee, unless Republicans are able to pick off a vulnerable Democrat to be the tie-breaking vote.

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Alex Azar says Trump doing a better job managing Obamacare than Obama. Premiums for the most popular plan on Obamacare’s exchanges are expected to fall by 2 percent in 2019, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Thursday in a speech pushing back on criticism that his agency is sabotaging the law. “The president trying to sabotage the [Affordable Care Act] is proving better at managing it than the president who wrote the law,” Azar said Thursday during a speech in Nashville. Azar added that insurers are starting to return to Obamacare’s insurance exchanges after leaving in recent years. He did not elaborate on how many insurers have joined on the exchanges. Azar said that the premium decline is for Obamacare’s benchmark plan, which is the second-cheapest silver plan. Azar referenced the Trump administration’s approvals of reinsurance program for several states. A handful of states have also adopted reinsurance programs to help blunt potential premium hikes, which has contributed to lower rates in those states. Reinsurance works by having the state cover the highest claims from an Obamacare insurer, allowing the insurer to lower premiums overall. Another key driver of high premium rates for 2018 was major uncertainty from the Trump administration, argued Larry Levitt, senior vice president for the research firm Kaiser Family Foundation. “Premiums would be going down a lot if not for repeal of the individual mandate penalty and expansion of short-term plans,” Levitt tweeted on Thursday.

Appeals court upholds Louisiana law imposing restrictions on abortion doctors. A federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a Louisiana state law that requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The ruling handed down Wednesday is the latest victory for states seeking to impose strict requirements on the practice of abortion. A federal appeals court ruled this month that Missouri can enforce a state law that requires abortion clinics to meet the same safety and quality requirements as an ambulatory surgical center. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the Louisiana law should be upheld because it did not create an undue burden on abortion access.

Legal challenge to Virginia abortion restrictions allowed to move forward. A federal court has allowed a lawsuit to move forward that challenges a range of abortion restrictions in Virginia. The lawsuit aims to undo dozens of abortion restrictions in the commonwealth, some of which go back decades. They include requirements for clinic licensing, requirements for undergoing an ultrasound, and a ban on allowing certain healthcare workers to provide abortions. U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, ruled on Wednesday that the state could not shut down the lawsuit, which was brought on behalf of a group of abortion providers, including the Virginia League for Planned Parenthood and Whole Woman’s Health of Charlottesville. He also dismissed the allegation that the laws together impose an undue burden on access to abortion, but allowed the suit to continue over the question of how the laws are applied, not over their constitutionality.

With CVS merger under review, Aetna sells Medicare prescription unit. Aetna will sell its Medicare Part D prescription-drug business to WellCare Health Plans, a move expected to pave the way for federal approval of its $69 billion merger with CVS Health. The Department of Justice had raised competitive concerns over Aetna’s Medicare drug business, which covered roughly 2.2 million people at the end of June, according to a federal filing from the insurer. The price of the deal with WellCare, expected to conclude by year’s end if the government signs off the CVS transaction, wasn’t disclosed. The sale is “a significant step toward completing” the federal review of the Aetna-CVS transaction, the insurer said in the filing. The companies still expect to complete their merger by the end of 2018. Alongside the Justice Department’s antitrust review, Aetna and CVS Health are facing pressure from a top doctors’ group and some states over the combination. The two companies are prepared for a “seamless integration” with a goal of transforming the consumer healthcare experience, CVS Chief Executive Officer Larry Merlo said previously. The federal government earlier this month approved a merger between Cigna and Express Scripts, another transaction involving a health insurer and a middleman pharmacy benefit manager.

Health officials looking to avoid last year’s deadly flu season. Health officials and advocates are hoping for better use of the flu vaccine this year following last year’s particularly dire season and reductions in the percentage of people getting the shot. “I hope we have a mild flu season, and I hope we have one with maximum prevention,” Dr. William Schaffner, medical director at the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, said at a press conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday. The government sets a goal of 80 percent of the public getting a flu vaccine, but last year, the rate was 57.9 percent, a slight drop from the 59 percent seen the year before that. Health officials are hoping to avoid the scenario seen last year. The season was particularly dire, driven by a flu strain that tends to send people to the hospital with grave illness. Federal data show that more than 80,000 people died from the flu and its complications, and an additional 900,000 were hospitalized. The flu’s symptoms include fever, chills, cough, runny nose, and vomiting, but they can worsen to pneumonia or a sinus infection.

Of the deaths from last year’s flu season, a record 180 were children and the majority of them were not vaccinated.

FDA begins collecting feedback on dairy labeling. The Food and Drug Administration is beginning to collect information from outside stakeholders about how to use the terms “milk,” “yogurt,” and “cheese” when labeling plant-based foods. “The FDA has concerns that the labeling of some plant-based products may lead consumers to believe that those products have the same key nutritional attributes as dairy products, even though these products can vary widely in their nutritional content,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement. “It is important that we better understand consumers’ expectations of these plant-based products compared to dairy products.” The dairy industry says that plant-based foods should use their own terminology. “Not only do plant-based alternatives fall short in nutritional equivalency, but they lack the outstanding performance properties of milk when made into dairy products like cheese, butter, and ice cream,” said the FarmFirst Dairy Cooperative in a statement.

RUNDOWN

Axios Healthcare industry winners and losers in opioid bill

The Hill GOP lawmaker touts move to lift limits on telehealth for opioid treatment

NPR Is the world finally ready to end the deadliest infectious disease?

Bloomberg UnitedHealthcare purchases pharmacy Genoa Healthcare from Advent

Associated Press New England Journal of Medicine’s longtime editor to retire

Kaiser Health News ‘Contraception deserts’ likely to widen under new Trump administration policy

CNBC With life-threatening food allergies on the rise, drug companies ramp up new approaches