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Doubts swirl around effort to revive Obamacare repeal. A nascent effort to resurrect Obamacare repeal this year in the Senate is running into the same roadblock that stymied efforts last year: not enough GOP support. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he is working on a new repeal bill that could come out in “hopefully the coming weeks, not months.” Republicans could be blamed for premium increases on Obamacare’s exchanges in 2019 if they don’t act to repeal the law, he said. New rates are likely to draw headlines this fall, ahead of the midterm elections in which Democrats are threatening to take over Congress. But other Republicans doubt that the votes to repeal Obamacare exist. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that repealing Obamacare’s individual mandate in tax reform last year would cause premiums to spike 15 percent next year. “All I can tell my colleagues is that we have done just enough on Obamacare to own the rate increases in October,” Graham said. “We haven’t fulfilled our promise to replace it with something better, and I think something better would be a block grant.” Graham was referring to an earlier bill that he co-sponsored with Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., that would take Obamacare funding and send it to the states through block grants. But Cassidy conceded that while he still supports repealing Obamacare and the Graham-Cassidy bill, he bowed to a stark problem Republicans face. “We don’t have the votes,” he said. “Yes, we are talking about this, but there is a lot that has to happen for it to be more than just talking.”

To pass any Obamacare bill, Republicans would have to pass a budget resolution that includes reconciliation language allowing them to pass legislation with a simple majority. Then they’d have to get at least 50 senators to agree on a healthcare bill that could also pass through the House. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said Republicans are exploring if they have any legislation that could win enough support to pass via reconciliation, floating a plan to give block grants to the states. “Whether or not we have enough colleagues, that would be the $64 [thousand] question,” he said. None of the senators who opposed last year’s Obamacare overhaul push have indicated that they’ve changed their minds, and now they have one less vote to work with due to the loss of the Alabama Senate seat. Sen. Rand Paul told the Washington Examiner that he remains completely opposed to Graham-Cassidy, adding that it doesn’t actually repeal Obamacare but shifts money around to states. Paul even went so far as to say that what Graham is doing is wrong. More generally, Republican senators who felt burned last year by healthcare are unlikely to want to revisit the contentious issue a few months ahead of the election.

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​Planned Parenthood open to lawsuit against Trump’s abortion ‘gag rule.’ ​Planned Parenthood and other reproductive rights organizations are leaving the door open to suing the Trump administration if it moves forward with implementing its policy blocking certain doctors from discussing abortions with patients. “We will absolutely consider all of our options and that does include litigation,” ​said ​Dr. Gillian Dean, senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The proposed policy, which opponents are referring to as a “gag rule,” also would block doctors and nurses from telling women where they can obtain an abortion for family planning purposes, and would cut off federal funds from organizations housed within the same building as a clinic that provides abortions.

Senate HELP to hold hearing on Trump’s drug price plan. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will meet June 12 to discuss the Trump administration’s blueprint for combating high drug prices. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is expected to testify on the plan that President Trump announced this month. The blueprint doesn’t require a heavy lift from Congress for multiple items, including changes to Medicare reimbursements for drugs. But Congress is considering several pieces of legislation to clamp down on drivers of drug prices, including cracking down on drug makers that “game” the drug approval system to extend monopolies.

Trump-backed VA bill sails through Senate, with signature ahead. The Senate overwhelmingly approved legislation to send to Trump on Wednesday that would allow more veterans to see doctors outside the Veterans Affairs system. The president has openly backed the bill, the VA Mission Act, and is expected to sign it into law. It passed the Senate 92-5, marking a bipartisan legislative victory for the president.

CBO lowers estimate of number of uninsured due to Republican tax law. The government’s scorekeeping agencies revised their controversial estimate for how many more people would be uninsured as a result of changes Republicans and the Trump administration made to Obamacare. The latest estimates project that zeroing out Obamacare’s fine for going uninsured alone will result in roughly 8.6 million more people becoming uninsured by 2027 than if the fine had been kept in place, compared to the 13 million figure the agencies had released several months ago. The study, which comes from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, makes various projections about different ways that people are expected get health insurance, using different baselines than in previous iterations and taking into account other consumer and health insurance behavior observed during the past year.  The agency arrives at an even lower number of projected uninsured, 5 million, by taking into account other changes that the Trump administration plans to make, including by offering plans outside of Obamacare.

The CBO projections show 8 million people will use short-term or association health plans. The projections estimate that 2 million people will enroll in short-term plans and that 6 million more will enroll in association health plans, the majority of which CBO considers to be adequate health insurance, categorizing this group of people as having health insurance rather than being uninsured. It did determine that 500,000 of this group, however, would be considered to have flimsy coverage that would put them at risk should they have a costly medical condition or accident, and designated that portion as uninsured.

FDA warns parents to stay away from teething gels with dangerous chemicals. The Food and Drug Administration is warning parents not to give their babies a popular teething product that numbs sore gums. Regulators say the products, which contain a chemical known as benzocaine, poses a “serious risk” to infants and children, causing breathing problems in a small number of cases. The FDA has asked companies to stop selling the products or face legal repercussions.  

​Groups to rally against antibiotics in McDonald’s hamburgers. The​ U.S. PIRG Education Fund, Consumers Union, Food Animal Concerns Trust, and CREDO Action are holding a rally Thursday outside McDonald’s new headquarters to pressure the company to keep antibiotics out of its beef supply. The groups are concerned about antibiotic resistance and say that McDonald’s can play a large role in the change because it is the largest purchaser of beef in the U.S. “McDonald’s was a leader in reducing antibiotics in its chicken supply and helped lead the chicken industry overall to change,” said Steve Roach, food safety program director for Food Animal Concerns Trust. “Now McDonald’s is looking at pork and beef. Done right this could be a turning point in reducing antibiotic overuse for the meat industry as a whole.” The groups are delivering petitions with 160,000 signatures.

RUNDOWN

Reuters Johnson & Johnson hit with $21.7 million verdict in another talc asbestos cancer case

Washington Post Is it a gag rule after all? A closer look at changes to Title X funding regarding abortion

Axios Subtle but consequential changes to Medicare’s handbook

STAT News The head of the National Cancer Institute on hopes for AI, the future of precision medicine and big data

Baltimore Sun Democrats running for Maryland governor pledging to support a state individual mandate for healthcare

Politico Planned Parenthood’s GOP advisers blast Trump over ‘gag rule’

Los Angeles Times Researchers tally the physical and financial costs of opioid painkillers’ side effects