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/

Imagining how overturning Roe v. Wade would transform U.S. politics. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement from the Supreme Court immediately triggered speculation that a more conservative replacement could be the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Whether this would happen immediately, or over time in a series of incremental decisions, or not at all, is a matter of debate. But one thing is for sure — if Roe did get overturned, it would have a transformative effect on U.S. politics. The Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe decision was one of the most politically consequential events in American history. Modern politics could very easily be divided into the pre-Roe and post-Roe era. The backlash against Roe became a major rallying point for religious conservatives, who have been central to every Republican victory since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 landslide. It played an important role in the shift of Catholics to the GOP. It made judicial nominations into a major issue, forced conservatives into focusing on grooming potential justices and getting them nominated and confirmed, leading to decades of bitter political fights. Here’s an early attempt to game out how overturning the ruling could dramatically change American politics.

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.

House, Senate to battle over food stamp work requirements. The Senate passed a farm bill Thursday that will set up a fight with the House over whether to tighten work requirements for food stamp recipients. The Senate bill, which authorizes farm policy and programs until 2023, includes the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, also known as the federal food stamp program. The Senate bill, which passed 86-11, makes minor changes to SNAP and does not mirror House language that significantly bolsters work requirements for many able-bodied adults who use food stamps. The House approved a five-year farm bill last week with a party-line vote. Every Democrat voted against it, citing the food stamp changes. In the Senate, however, Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and the panel’s top Democrat, Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., wrote the bill together. Democratic support is needed in the Senate to avert a filibuster, and Roberts said he left out the food stamp changes because they could never pass the upper chamber. House Republican lawmakers are not interested in forfeiting the work requirement in a final bill, while President Trump this year warned Roberts at a White House meeting that he, too, is seeking changes to the SNAP program that would enforce the work requirement.

Two-thirds of voters don’t want to see Roe v. Wade overturned: Poll. Two-thirds of the public do not want to see the Supreme Court overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion legal in the U.S., according to a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Researchers asked questions about abortion rights to voters as part of its June tracking poll just ahead of Justice Anthony Kennedy announcing his retirement from the Supreme Court. Anti-abortion groups are hailing the retirement as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to overturn major abortion rights rulings and possibly even Roe. The poll found that 29 percent of respondents support the repeal of Roe, which would leave the legalization of abortion up to states. Fifty-three percent of Republicans support overturning the ruling, while 81 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of independents would not. The support for Roe v. Wade was slightly higher among women, at 68 percent, than among men, at 65 percent.

Justice Department charges 601 people in massive $2 billion healthcare scam. The Justice Department charged 601 people, including 165 medical professionals, for making false medical claims worth $2 billion, a quarter of which was related to opioids. “This is the most fraud, the most defendants, and the most doctors ever charged in a single operation — and we have evidence that our ongoing work has stopped or prevented billions of dollars’ worth of fraud,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said about the Medicare Fraud Strike Force’s work over the past year. His agency charged the 601 defendants with submitting bogus claims to Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, and private insurance companies, more than one-quarter were for prescribing or distributing opioids and other narcotics. A total of 13 million illegal doses of opioids were issued, the Justice Department said. All defendants are accused of billing patients for treatments that either weren’t necessary or were never rendered.

Up to 4 million people could lose Medicaid under work rules, report finds. Between 1.4 million to 4 million people could lose their healthcare benefits if all states implemented Medicaid work requirements, according to an estimate from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The analysis looked at several scenarios if all states installed work requirements and found that most people who would lose coverage would do so because they wouldn’t fill out the paperwork. In January, the Trump administration allowed for states to apply for waivers to impose work requirements for able-bodied Medicaid beneficiaries. Kaiser estimates that about 23 million people enrolled in Medicaid could be affected by the work rules because they are not elderly or disabled. Most of those people already have jobs, Kaiser said. Kaiser looked at how work requirements would affect three groups: people already working, people likely exempt, and those subjected to new work rules. “In all scenarios, most people losing coverage are disenrolled due to lack of reporting rather than not complying with the work requirement,” Kaiser said.

Daily flow of immigrant children to HHS cut nearly in half over the last week. The Department of Health and Human Services over the last week took in an average of 130 children per day who were referred by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a drop of almost 50 percent from the weeks prior to President Trump’s executive order aimed keeping immigrant families together, an HHS official confirmed to the Washington Examiner Thursday. The official said 914 children were handed over to HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement from June 21, the day after Trump’s order, through June 27, for an average of about 130.

Source of contaminated romaine lettuce found. Tainted canal water is responsible for an E. coli outbreak that sickened more than 200 people and killed five, health officials have announced. The food poisoning had been traced to lettuce that was grown in Yuma, Ariz., and officials have now matched the E. coli strain with the same one in canal water that was in the area. They are still determining how the bacteria got there.

California governor signs soda tax ban into law. California cities and counties are banned from taxing sodas and other sugary drinks for the next 12 years under a bill signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown. The deal was rushed through the legislature and to the governor’s desk on Thursday. In exchange for the law, the nonalcoholic beverage industry is withdrawing a ballot measure that had been slated for November. It would have raised the voter threshold to approve local sales tax increases on any item, not just soda taxes, from a majority vote to a supermajority vote. Signatures were gathered for the ballot through a campaign funded by the beverage industry.

Federal watchdog bashes controversial drug discount program. The Government Accountability Office found major oversight problems with a controversial drug discount program for safety net hospitals. The federal watchdog report requested by the House Energy and Commerce Committee comes amid increasing scrutiny of the program that requires drug makers to provide discounts to safety net hospitals that provide care to low-income patients. The pharmaceutical industry has argued that the discount program, which goes by the name 340B, has run rampant because of rapid expansion, while hospital groups charge that efforts to cut it will imperil care for low-income patients. The GAO found several problems with how the Department of Health and Human Services oversees contract pharmacies under the program.

CMS to let more doctors opt out of payment system. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is advancing an experiment that allows certain clinicians to opt out of participating in a program that rewards better quality healthcare. The agency said the experiment would waive requirements of the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) for doctors who participate in certain Medicare Advantage plans. MIPS is one of two tracks that reward doctors for better value and clinical outcomes. MIPS requires clinicians to submit data on the quality of care provided, such as care coordination or the rate of surgical complications. The other track is called Advanced Alternative Payment Models, which require clinicians to take on risk for their patients’ healthcare spending. “Some Medicare Advantage plans are developing innovative arrangements that resemble Advanced APMs,” CMS said. Those arrangements are similar to MIPS, so CMS will allow doctors participating in those plans to not follow MIPS requirements.

Elijah Cummings calls House opioid bill haul inadequate due to lack of funding. Rep. Elijah Cummings said the House’s effort to pass more than 70 bills combating the opioid crisis is inadequate because it doesn’t fully fund the epidemic. The Maryland Democrat said Thursday that members of House Democratic leadership have signed on to the CARE Act, which provides $100 billion over 10 years to fight the epidemic. “The Republican ‘Opioid Week’ was an exercise in strong rhetoric and weak legislation,” Cummings said. “I commend the bipartisan bills we passed last week, but while they will do some good things, they are simply inadequate to address the opioid crisis.” Republicans have said that they are looking to add more funding to fight opioid abuse through the appropriations process and that the deluge of bills is an effort to install good policy first.

RUNDOWN

Associated Press Judge temporarily blocks abortion reporting rule in Indiana

Axios Juul’s value skyrockets despite investor trepidation

NPR ‘Fundamental shift’ needed to protect miners from deadly black lung

Reuters U.S. fines CVS for failing to report opioid theft in New York

Bloomberg Why the FDA is high on a marijuana drug

Washington Post Abortion foes downplay possibility of immediately overturning Roe v. Wade

Los Angeles Times If a reshaped Supreme Court tosses abortion decisions back to states, several would move fast to outlaw procedures