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

Uninsured rate unchanged in 2017. The uninsured rate held steady in President Trump’s first year in office at 8.8 percent in 2017, according to new data from the Census Bureau released Wednesday. In absolute numbers, 28.5 million people were uninsured in 2017, compared to 2016, when 28.1 million people lacked insurance, the bureau said, but that can be chalked up to population growth.

Data undermines Democratic attack of Trump ‘sabotage’ of Obamacare. Democrats have made the charge that President Trump and Republicans have engaged in “sabotage” of Obamacare a central part of their argument in the upcoming midterm elections, but the new Census data undermines their case. Various actions of the Trump administration, such as slashing the ad and outreach budget for Obamacare and ending certain payments to insurers, have been used by Democrats to charge that the Trump administration has launched a concerted effort to sabotage the law. But that is not visible in the numbers, even when breaking them down further. For instance, the percentage of insured Americans on Medicare ticked up to 17.2 percent from 16.7 percent, but that can easily be explained by another wave of Baby Boomers retiring. Economic growth meant more people with jobs, which could easily explain why Medicaid and directly-purchased insurance coverage went down slightly and employment based coverage ticked up. This news gives Republicans a more straight-forward counterargument against Democratic attacks of “sabotage.” Had there been a significant dip, it would have bolstered Democrats’ case. Now Republicans can argue that despite all of the apocalyptic warnings, the uninsured rate is the same under Trump as it was under Obama.

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 threatens to pull e-cigarettes from shelves, following ‘epidemic’ of use by minors. The Food and Drug administration threatened to ban e-cigarettes Wednesday, after previously issuing 1,300 warning letters and fines to retailers who illegally sold e-cigarettes to minors without getting a satisfactory response. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb demanded that the industry provide plans to “immediately and substantially” reverse the trends seen among minors, and said he would otherwise consider whether to ban e-cigarettes.  “We see clear signs that youth use of electronic cigarettes has reached an epidemic proportion, and we must adjust certain aspects of our comprehensive strategy to stem this clear and present danger … We cannot allow a whole new generation to become addicted to nicotine,” Gottlieb said. The FDA asked for proposals within 60 days from five e-cigarette companies, including Vuse, Blu, JUUL, MarkTen XL, and Logic. If officials aren’t satisfied with the responses, the FDA has several routes it could take, including banning flavored e-cigarettes or moving up the date that companies would be required to submit their products to the agency for review.

Nebraska voters to weigh in on Medicaid expansion. Nebraska will become the fourth state that will turn the question over whether to expand Medicaid to voters during a ballot measure on Election Day. Activists had gathered the necessary signatures required to put the ballot measure before voters, but Republicans in the state legislature pushed back on the provision in a lawsuit. The Nebraska Supreme Court this morning ruled that the ballot measure could move forward. Roughly 90,000 people in the state would be covered by Medicaid through expansion. Utah and Idaho will have similar ballot measures, and Maine’s was approved by voters last year.

Hillary Clinton spreads ‘abortion-inducing drugs’ talking point deemed false by fact-checkers. Hillary Clinton spread a Democratic talking point about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh on Wednesday that had been deemed false by the Washington Post fact-checker and PolitiFact in the days prior. Clinton accused Kavanaugh of personally referring to birth control pills as “abortion-inducing drugs” during his confirmation hearing last week.  “Kavanaugh didn’t use that term because he misunderstands the basic science of birth control—the fact that birth control prevents fertilization of eggs in the first place. He used that term because it’s a dog whistle to the extreme right,” she wrote in a series of tweets. The Washington Post gave Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., its worst rating — “four Pinocchios” — on Tuesday for claiming Kavanaugh used the term to refer to contraception. Instead, Kavanaugh had used the phrase during his confirmation hearing when paraphrasing the argument made by an anti-abortion religious group in a lawsuit challenging Obamacare rules mandating coverage for contraception. The Washington Post fact-checker said that Kavanaugh was “merely reflecting the plaintiffs’ argument.”

Judiciary Democrats poised to delay Kavanaugh vote until next week. Democrats are poised to block a vote scheduled Thursday to advance the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, placed Kavanaugh’s nomination on Thursday’s panel schedule. But Democrats will likely use a committee rule that allows them to keep the nomination on hold for at least another week. That means a Judiciary Committee vote on Kavanaugh isn’t likely to happen until Sept. 20 at the earliest.

Susan Collins brawls with progressive groups over what she calls $1.3 million ‘bribe’ on Kavanaugh vote. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has been drawn into a skirmish with progressive groups that she accuses of attempting to “bribe” her to vote against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. The dust-up began when a campaign called Be A Hero, started last month by activist Ady Barkan, pledged to make a $1.3 million donation to Collins’ eventual 2020 opponent if the centrist GOP senator supports Kavanaugh. The effort reflects pressure that left-wing groups and abortion rights advocates are heaping on Collins ahead of Kavanaugh’s confirmation vote, likely to come in early October. Collins, who hasn’t announced how she will vote on Kavanaugh, vehemently pushed back on the donation, telling the site NewsMax on late Monday that she believes it is akin to a bribe.

Collins’ office also says she is getting nasty voicemails. Collins’ office said that they have gotten several nasty voicemails from people calling for the senator to oppose Kavanaugh. In one voicemail, a man threatens to rape a 25-year-old state office employee. Collins told NBC News that she is considering turning over some of the voicemails to the police. “Don’t be a dumb, stupid, fucking hypocrite,” one voicemail forwarded to the Washington Examiner from Collins’ office said.

Watchdog: VA underestimates backlog for benefit claims. The Department of Veterans Affairs has been understating its benefit claim backlog, according to a watchdog report released this week. The backlog — defined as claims awaiting decisions for more than 125 days — has sat between 70,000 and 100,000 cases each week for the past three years, with 70,537 by the end of May. The reported numbers cover only about 79 percent of cases that should be considered part of the backlog. Many claims have been ignored, omitted, or misclassified, the VA inspector general said, and some cases were only marked as overdue months after they had already been processed. The average wait time for a pending claim hovers at 90 days, but more complex cases can take almost 150 days.

Rules committee prepares to meet on Obamacare bill. The bill would lift fines on businesses that violated the employer mandate, change the definition of “full time” work to 40 hours a week, delay the “Cadillac tax,” and repeal the tax on tanning salons. It would cost the federal government $51.6 billion over a decade, according to a CBO analysis released Tuesday. The Rules Committee is meeting on the bill, the Save American Workers Act, at 5 p.m.

FDA frustrated with retailers over bogus kratom claims. The Food and Drug Administration chastised two companies for marketing the herb kratom as a treatment for opioid withdrawal and other ailments, as frustration mounts that a broader crackdown isn’t doing enough. The FDA on Tuesday warned vendors Chillin Mix Kratom and Mita Distributing for claiming the herbal supplement kratom can help with opioid withdrawal and treat other ailments like diabetes and obesity. The warnings are the latest targeting retailers making false claims about the supplement that people primarily use for pain relief.

Azar praises FDA’s crackdown on e-cigarette sales to minors. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar praised what he called the largest enforcement effort in the FDA’s history to tackle e-cigarette use among minors. “We commend the FDA for the critical, immediate and historic action to address the sale and marketing of these products to kids, while it examines additional aggressive steps to stem the troubling trend of their use among youth,” he said on Wednesday. The agency has warned more than 40 retailers for e-cigarette sales and warned 17 companies for marketing e-liquids used in e-cigarettes with kid-friendly flavors that resemble candy or cookies.

RUNDOWN

Associated Press Republicans lack vote, and appetite, to end Obamacare

Wall Street Journal Nearly 6,000 Russian accounts tweeted about healthcare law

Argus Leader Former VA secretary fired by Trump to join Sanford Health

Bloomberg Oxycontin maker offers free opioid therapy in legal talks

Morning Consult ACA’s pre-existing condition protections find bipartisan support

CNBC Inside JUUL Labs: How the vaping giant hooked its users and became a $15 billion company