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Hurricane Florence delays Senate vote on opioid bill. A Senate vote on a bill to address addiction and overdose from opioids planned for this week has been postponed due to the impending hurricane. McConnell praised the legislation from the Senate floor and said a vote would be “very soon.”  The Senate is scheduled to be in session next week. “My hope is that the five Senate committees will work quickly with our House colleagues to reach an agreement by September 21, so the House can pass a final opioids package, the Senate can pass it, and we can send it to the president’s desk as quickly as possible,” Sen. Lamar Alexander, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said on the floor.

In the House, timing of vote on Obamacare bill still up in the air. The legislation, which repeals and delays taxes in Obamacare, was sent to the House Rules Committee late Wednesday, but the hurricane has made a quick floor vote less likely. Republicans had hoped to vote by the end of the week but that will likely be pushed back by Hurricane Florence. The legislation, authored by Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., has 77 co-sponsors, including five Democrats.

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Pressure growing on swing senators as Brett Kavanaugh vote nears. Activists and advocacy groups are ramping up the pressure on undecided senators with hopes of tanking Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, with less than three weeks to go before Republicans hope to confirm him.  On Wednesday, Planned Parenthood Action Fund rolled out a new anti-Kavanaugh ad that will air on TV and online in Maine to target centrist Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. Demand Justice, a liberal judicial advocacy group, also released an ad Monday centered on Collins. The 30-second spot warns that the Maine Republican would be breaking her word to constituents if she supported Kavanaugh’s nomination. NARAL Pro-Choice America is targeting Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., with an ad charging Kavanaugh would “criminalize abortion.”

Azar decries ‘more government control’ in drug pricing, touts Trump’s ‘competition’ approach. “It’s this way, or a long way downhill in terms of patient choice and private-sector innovation,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said this morning at the Financial Times Pharma Pricing and Value Summit. Azar has been staying on message about the Trump administration’s drug pricing proposal, and has said the administration will deliver on its promises. He bashed drug pricing policies that would give more control to the government, and said that the Trump administration’s approach instead offered “real competition, tougher negotiation that protects patient choice, rational incentives for pricing, and more reasonable out-of-pocket costs for patients.”

Administration seeks to make it easier to avoid Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty. Taxpayers will be able to apply for exemptions to Obamacare’s individual mandate on their tax returns for the 2018 coverage year, the Trump administration announced Wednesday. The move is meant to make it easier for Americans to avoid the penalty for lacking health insurance. The tax law zeroed out the fine for the individual mandate starting in 2019, but people who don’t have insurance coverage this year would still have to pay it. “The penalty is still in effect,” Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “What we tried to do was make it easier for people to apply for a hardship exemption.” Before the change, taxpayers had to submit documentation to the administration to claim an exemption, whether because of losing a job or suffering from a natural disaster. The fine is $695 per person or 2.5 percent of income, whichever is higher.

Trump administration won’t increase ad funding for Obamacare. Verma said Wednesday that the federal government will not devote more funding to Obamacare ads for the 2019 coverage year, after slashing outreach funding for 2018 by 90 percent. Verma told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview that she was pleased with the effort the administration made last year. She also defended the decision to not set a sign-up target for the 2019 open enrollment, set to start in November. “We will be continuing with our approach that we had last year with the same level and same approach,” Verma said in response to a question on whether the administration will devote more funding for 2019 open enrollment. “We had very high rates of customer satisfaction.” The Trump administration devoted $10 million last year for advertising and marketing for Obamacare for the 2018 coverage year, well below the $100 million spent at the tail end of the Obama administration for the 2017 coverage year.

Number of Obamacare ‘navigators’ receiving funding drops by more than half. The Trump administration has distributed $10 million in grants to 39 organizations that help people enroll in Obamacare, a drop from the 90 organizations that received the awards last year when funding was nearly three times as high. The Trump administration slashed the budget for navigators from $100 million during the final open enrollment of former President Barack Obama’s term to $36 million, and slashed it even further to $10 million this year. Democrats have called the move another instance of “sabotage” against the healthcare law, but the Trump administration said navigators accounted for only 1 percent of enrollment. The navigators are groups of nonprofit organizations that help people enroll in health insurance coverage through the exchanges. The grantees announced Wednesday include a Planned Parenthood and a United Way affiliate, and a few universities.

Planned Parenthood announces Baltimore Health Commissioner Leana Wen as new president. Planned Parenthood has appointed Baltimore Health Commissioner Leana Wen as its next president. Wen, who will be the first physician to helm the organization in five decades, will replace Cecile Richards, who stepped down earlier this year. She will join Planned Parenthood at a time in which it has been a major target of the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress, who have called for the organization to be cut off from federal funding. “As a doctor, I will ensure we continue to provide high-quality healthcare, including the full range of reproductive care, and will fight with everything I have to protect the access of millions of patients who rely on Planned Parenthood,” Wen said in a statement Wednesday. Her first day as president will begin Nov. 12.

Arkansas drops 4,343 people from Medicaid who failed to follow work rules. This month state officials found that 4,343 people in Arkansas did not follow rules requiring them to record that they worked or train for worked as a condition of staying enrolled in Medicaid. Arkansas officials said they tried to reach out to people but that many of them have moved, or took on a job that offered private health insurance. “Some simply chose not to comply,” Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a statement. “Those are the ones who will lose their Arkansas Works coverage for the remainder of 2018.” Critics of the plan are concerned that the reporting requirements are burdensome and say that people with chronic health conditions will be left without coverage.

Democratic lawmaker unveils Medicare for All PAC ahead of 2018 midterms. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., unveiled a new “Medicare for All” PAC Wednesday that would back candidates who support a “Medicare for All” program to insure all Americans through Medicare. Jayapal described the PAC as a “grass-roots movement committed to supporting candidates and initiatives around the country” in a video released from NowThis News.  

Jimmy Carter warns Democrats about moving too far to the left, including on healthcare. Former President Jimmy Carter is warning his fellow party members not to move too far to the left, even after he voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary. “Independents need to know they can invest their vote in the Democratic Party,” Carter said Tuesday at his post-presidential center and library in Atlanta, according to the Associated Press. Democrats may not be able to make gains in the November midterm elections and 2020 elections if they “move to a very liberal program, like universal healthcare,” he said, urging the party to “appeal to independents” who are growing tired of the Trump administration.

Drug prices group attacks one Senate Democrat while helping another one. The drug price group Patients for Affordable Drugs Action announced a new campaign touting one Senate Democrat up for re-election this fall and bashing another over their moves on drug prices. The group revealed on Wednesday a $700,000 campaign to support vulnerable Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who is up for re-election this fall in a state President Trump carried by double digits in 2016. “She has led bipartisan investigations and hearings into price gouging by drug companies,” the group said in a statement. But it also targeted Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., who last week beat back progressive challenger Kerri Harris who bashed Carper’s ties to pharma companies during the campaign. Patients for Affordable Drugs Now released a $1.4 million campaign that will include direct mail, TV and digital ads. The group said Carper has taken more than $550,000 from drug and health products industry over his career. Carper is widely expected to win in the blue state.

Washington state approves nearly 14 percent Obamacare rate hike. Washington state’s insurance regulator approved an average 13.8 percent increase for Obamacare plans for 2019, bashing the Trump administration for the hike. The state approved seven Obamacare insurers on Wednesday to sell plans on the law’s exchanges for 2019, with an average rate increase of 13.8 percent. The final rate is below the proposed rate request from the insurers earlier this year of 19.8 percent. The state’s insurance commissioner said that the individual market, which is used by people who don’t get insurance through their jobs and includes Obamacare’s insurance exchanges, is still very vulnerable. “We’re doing what we can to hold down costs, but it’s a struggle,” said commissioner Mike Kriedler in a statement. “Insurers need stability and we’re still facing inaction at the federal level as well as targeted hits on the Affordable Care Act that increase the uncertainty.”

Lawmakers petition VA secretary to allow funding gender reassignment surgery. Eighty-two House Democratic congressmen and one Republican have petitioned Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie to reverse the agency’s ban on sex reassignment surgery after a two-month public comment period. In a letter to Wilkie last week, the representatives wrote that “it is unconscionable to deny veterans the same access to healthcare services that civilians receive in the private sector, and that is available to Medicare beneficiaries and federal workers, simply because of outdated and unscientific prejudice against their gender identity.” Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., is leading the effort to have the policy changed. She said in a statement that it was “unacceptable that we would ask our veterans to risk their lives to protect our rights but we would refuse to defend theirs in return.”

House votes to ban slaughter of dogs and cats for food. The House voted unanimously on Wednesday to ban people from slaughtering dogs or cats for food, or from being involved in any transaction related to dog or cat meat. The House approved the Dog and Cat Meat Trade Prohibition Act, which was sponsored by Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla. Under the bill, people could be fined up to $5,000 for each violation. Supporters of the bill say a federal law is needed because only a few states have laws in place preventing the sale of dog and cat meat. Buchanan said when he introduced his bill that dogs and cats “provide important companionship to millions of people and should not be slaughtered and sold as food,” and his House colleagues agreed that they shouldn’t be eaten.

Patient groups urge CVS Health to drop program targeting costly drugs. Nearly 100 patient groups urged CVS Caremark on Wednesday to reverse a decision allowing clients to drop coverage for expensive drugs that don’t meet a cost-effectiveness threshold. The new policy from CVS Health’s pharmacy benefit arm comes as the Trump administration undertakes a broader effort to lower drug costs. The company plans to focus its new evaluations on treatments with price tags over $100,000 that do not result in better quantity and quality of life. It will base coverage decisions on analysis from the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a nonprofit routinely blasted by the pharmaceutical lobby. Ninety-five patient groups, including the Vietnam Veterans of America, the Alliance for Aging Research, and the National Alliance on Mental Illness joined in the criticism, claiming the reports “ignore important differences among patients” while relying on a one-size-fits-all assessment. “Cost-effectiveness analysis discriminates against the chronically ill, the elderly and people with disabilities, using algorithms that calculate  their lives as ‘worth less’ than people who are younger or non-disabled,” the groups wrote.

RUNDOWN

USA Today ‘A lot of anxiety’: Nursing homes evacuate, hospitals hunker down as Hurricane Florence nears

The Hill Kavanaugh explains ‘abortion-inducing drugs’ remark amid backlash

The Associated Press Schuette says Medicaid law not going anywhere

STAT News The new Apple Watch, with FDA’s blessing, comes with an EKG app

Bloomberg Trump eyeing ‘disruptive’ changes to drug pricing, health secretary says

FierceHealthcare How the VA health system is reaching out to LGBT patients

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