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What to expect from the White House opioid summit. The summit will kick off at 1 p.m. today and is intended to highlight the actions that the Trump administration has taken to combat the crisis. Following an opening speech by first lady Melania Trump, Kellyanne Conway, senior counselor to the president who has been put in charge of overseeing efforts against the crisis, will moderate several discussions with administration officials.

•  The first panel will be on treatment and recovery, during which attendees will hear from Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin, and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson.

•  The second panel will be a question and answer session with Jim Carroll, acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

•  The third panel will explore the law enforcement angle, and will be made up of Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Other than roughly 200 audience members, top health officials are expected to attend, including Surgeon General Jerome Adams, who has shared with Stat News the story about his brother’s struggles with addiction, and regularly speaks about it on social media. Other attendees will include Seema Verma, administrator at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Elinore McCance-Katz, assistant secretary for Mental Health and Substance Use, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Scott Gottlieb, commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration. President Trump will not be attending the summit.

A White House official shared several actions the Trump administration has taken on opioids, including a national “Take Back Day,” which resulted in a collection of 456 expired and unneeded prescription drugs, the most on record. The VA has started to release opioid prescribing rates, the FDA has approved a new treatment for people suffering from opioid withdrawal, and CMS has added flexibility to Medicaid so that the program can cover treatment for more people.

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.

Obamacare popularity reaches highest level ever: poll. Obamacare has the support of 54 percent of the public, the highest percentage ever reported from the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll has been conducted more than 80 times since 2010, when Obamacare formally went into effect. It measures public attitudes toward the law and last month found support was at 50 percent. The highest unfavorable rating was of 53 percent, a measure reported in July 2014, shortly after the healthcare.gov site faced a troubled rollout. The current unfavorable view of the law has remained unchanged since last month, holding at 42 percent. The change in favorability is largely driven by people who identify as politically independent, 55 percent of whom now say they have a favorable opinion of the law, compared to 48 percent favorability measured last month.

How Wyoming slashed its Medicaid rolls. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a report Wednesday detailing the increases in Medicaid coverage since before Obamacare’s expansion, looking at enrollment from to July 2013 to December 2017. Enrollment by the end of last year reached more than 74 million, for both Medicaid and CHIP, up from its 2013 total of just under 57 million. For the most part, Medicaid enrollment rose in every state during that time, whether a state had expanded the program under Obamacare or not. Kentucky saw the highest rate of increase, at 109.78 percent, while Oklahoma and Nebraska saw a slight decline of about 1 percent. One state that stood in contrast to the others was Wyoming, which had a Medicaid enrollment decline of 11 percent. Robin Rudowitz, associate director for the Program on Medicaid and the Uninsured at the Kaiser Family Foundation, has been involved in comprehensive state studies on Medicaid enrollment, and explained the drop to the Washington Examiner. Wyoming was highly affected by energy issues, such as the drop in oil prices and the fall in coal use. But wouldn’t a bad economy result in more people enrolling in Medicaid? Not if they leave the state, which is what Wyoming officials have told the Kaiser Family Foundation is happened. “Individuals were migrating out of the state to look for better employment opportunities,” Rudowitz said.

A third of Obamacare customers fear losing their coverage: Survey. Of people who have coverage through Obamacare’s exchanges, 36 percent report that they are pessimistic they will be able to keep their coverage in the future, and another 27 percent of people enrolled in Medicaid share that sentiment, according to a survey out today from the Commonwealth Fund. Of those, roughly half point to the federal government as the main source of their concern, with 32 percent believing that the Trump administration won’t continue implementing Obamacare and 15 percent believing Congress will repeal it. The survey was conducted between Nov. 2 and Dec. 27.

House panel targets illicit opioids fueling spike in deaths. The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said Wednesday he is trying to get a series of bills aimed at clamping down on opioids to the House floor for votes by Memorial Day. The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a legislative hearing on eight bills aimed at tackling the opioid epidemic. Some of the legislation would give the Drug Enforcement Administration new powers to stem the tide of fentanyl. Democrats on the panel urged more funding to go along with the new legislation. “This conversation must be paired with significant resources to provide for patient funding,” said Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif. A piece of legislation she sponsored aims to boost access to substance abuse treatment via telemedicine. Another piece of legislation the committee is considering would give DEA the ability to regulate pill press manufacturing machines.

Lawmakers seek to add measure on drug prices to massive spending deal. Lawmakers are trying to add a provision to a long-term budget bill that would ban a way that drug makers keep monopolies on their brand-name products. The lawmakers want to add the CREATES Act to the omnibus two-year spending bill that Congress is set to vote on next month. The goal of the bill is to enhance generic competition by stripping an anti-competitive tactic used by drug makers. “I am very disappointed it wasn’t done by now, but it is going to be done and it is going to be done this year,” said Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., on a call with reporters Wednesday. “I am hoping it is going to be done in the omnibus.” The maker of a brand name drug sometimes can thwart generic competition by refusing to send a sample of the drug to the company making a generic copy. Without the sample, the generic company cannot win approval from the Food and Drug Administration to offer a cheaper alternative. The legislation would require the manufacturer to turn over the sample to the generic company and would allow the generic manufacturer to sue if that doesn’t happen.

Hatch sees opening for his bill after Trump gun meeting. The bill from Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, called the STOP School Violence Act, would provide federal grants to train teachers, administrators and law enforcement officers to intervene when they see students struggling mentally. Hatch called it a “common sense, noncontroversial proposal,” saying that a similar plan in Utah had stopped 86 attacks in schools since 2016. One way it did this was through a confidential text and tip line allowing people to chat with specialists in crisis and suicide prevention, and to receive referral services.

House lawmakers urge funding to allow CDC to research gun violence. Lawmakers have spoken to the White House about repealing the Dickey Amendment, which has been included in spending bills for more than two decades and prohibits government funding from advocating or promoting gun control. Proponents of undoing the law say that it has been interpreted to mean that gun violence shouldn’t be studied by public health researchers, and has resulted in little data on gun violence prevention. A trio of House lawmakers, in a phone call with reporters Wednesday, brought attention to a bill that would undo it. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., the lead author of the Gun Violence Research Act, said she believed the research was important so that lawmakers could draw conclusions from the data and be able to legislate better. “I’m hoping that these facts can help break through the polarization that has resulted in the inaction that we’ve seen,” she said. Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., who was also on the call, said the amendment was important no only to better understand mass shootings but regular gun violence often seen in her district, which includes parts of Chicago. She noted that mental health research would be a part of the findings, which is something that the White House has said should receive attention and exploration.

Senators want more transparency on healthcare prices. A bipartisan group of senators wants patients to know more about the prices for healthcare services in an effort to lower staggering costs. The six senators started a healthcare price transparency initiative Thursday. The senators are seeking responses from dozens of healthcare groups to a dozen questions on how patients can find out what medical care costs. “In virtually every other industry, consumers are able to price shop, compare quality and then decide what product best fits their needs,” reads a letter from the senators to the groups. “In healthcare, the lack of information and the inability to access it hurts patients and prevents normal market forces from driving competition, lowering prices and improving quality.” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., is leading the initiative. He has said that more transparency is needed for all types of healthcare services, including costs for imaging services such as MRIs or CT scans.

Democrats want answers on denied health claims from Aetna. A pair of top Democrats want to learn why one of Aetna’s medical directors never looked at patient records when denying coverage for care. Sens. Patty Murray of Washington and Ron Wyden of Oregon questioned if the action violates federal consumer protections. “Using medical records is a fundamental responsibility of health insurers when they review health claims,” Wyden said in a statement. “Something is gravely wrong if a leading insurance company is failing to use this basic information at the expense of families’ health and peace of mind.” The letter follows up on a CNN report this month that a former medical director admitted in a deposition that he never looked at patients’ records when deciding on care approvals. The senators wrote to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini on Thursday and demanded answers on the insurer’s claims review process.

Bill would fund creation of universal flu vaccine. Federal officials are working to create a flu vaccine that people would have to take only once or twice in their lifetimes, rather than a new one every flu season. To help that effort along, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., has introduced legislation called the Flu Vaccine Act that would include $1 billion in funding. According to her spokesman, the federal government in fiscal 2017 spent roughly $100 million on the effort. DeLauro’s bill would double that amount, providing $200 million per year for five years. “Currently, health officials are forced to predict what strains the annual flu vaccine should try to combat in any given flu season,” DeLauro said. “The Flu Vaccine Act would fix this problem by investing in the creation of a universal flu vaccine — saving lives by taking the guesswork out of the equation. The flu vaccine is our most critical line of defense against this epidemic, and the federal government should reinforce that by making flu shots as effective as possible.”

Public health funding cut by more than a third in recent years. Federal funding for public health initiatives declined by nearly 30 percent from 2002 to 2017, a new analysis found. The Public Health Emergency Preparedness Cooperative Agreement Program, a federal initiative that supports state and local health departments to prepare for emergencies, has seen its funding cut from $940 million in 2002 to $667 million in 2017. There was a short-term funding boost to combat the Ebola and Zika virus outbreaks, but that funding was only a one-time increase, according to the analysis released Thursday by the nonprofit group Trust for America’s Health. State spending on public health also has declined. The group found that 31 states made cuts to public health budgets from fiscal years 2015-2016 to 2016-2017. “Only 19 states and Washington, D.C., maintained or increased their budgets, making it harder for states to compensate for reduced federal funding,” the analysis said. John Auerbach, president and CEO of the group, said persistent underfunding of public health has left the national vulnerable. “The country needs a long-term commitment to rebuild the nation’s public health capabilities – not just to plug some of the more dangerous gaps but to make sure each community will be prepared, responsive and resilient when the unexpected occurs,” he said.

FDA presses forward on nutrition labels. The FDA announced Thursday that it will start an educational campaign that will help consumers understand the new nutrition labels slated to debut Jan. 1, 2020, for larger manufacturers and Jan. 1, 2021, for smaller manufacturers. The campaign will include educational videos and social media posts to help people understand how the food they eat affects their risks for obesity, heart disease and cancer. It’s also going to work with food manufacturers on how to put together the labels for their products. The labels will make changes to serving sizes to reflect the way people eat, and will specify what kinds of sugars and fibers have been added to foods, distinguishing those that are naturally occurring, such as in fruits and vegetables. FDA also issued draft guidance about how to label added sugars for products such as honey, maple syrup and certain cranberry products, as manufacturers had raised concerns that consumers would think there was added sugar rather than naturally occurring sugar.

Claire McCaskill takes on tax breaks for drug advertising. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., wants to kill the tax break drug companies get on money they spend on TV and magazine advertising. The senator introduced a bill Thursday that would eliminate the ability of drug manufacturers to fully deduct the cost of advertising their products from taxes. “Drug companies have too much influence in Washington,” McCaskill said. “So it figures we are one of the only nations in the world that allows both advertising of prescription drugs to consumers and allows those ads to be subsidized by taxpayers.” The U.S. and New Zealand are the only two nations that allow drug companies to advertise directly to consumers.

Planned Parenthood to invest $20 million in elections: Planned Parenthood is launching a $20 million fund that will go toward candidates who support abortion and other reproductive rights. ​The program, called “March. Vote. Win,” will focus on gubernatorial, Senate, House, attorneys general, and state legislature elections. The focus will be on Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The $20 million, which is an initial investment, will fund grassroots programs as well as ad and mail programs to inform the public about where different candidates stand on issues such as abortion and birth control. Planned Parenthood said the Trump​ administration had launched “an unprecedented assault” on their organization. “Today we have a clear message for politicians who are undermining our freedoms and making it harder to get healthcare: We’re voting you out in 2018,” said Deirdre Schifeling, executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes.

From Robert Weaver: ‘How my nomination to be Trump’s Indian Health Service director was derailed.’ “Until a few days ago, I was President Trump’s nominee to be the director of the Indian Health Service. He tapped me to lead and fix that sadly dysfunctional agency because I’ve spent the last decade of my life starting and operating successful businesses and creating jobs in Indian country that improve native peoples’ access to healthcare. I’m not a politician. Native American health and wellness are my passion and mission. That may in part explain how I was completely blindsided during the nomination process by someone’s malicious actions. Unfortunately, my nomination was derailed after the public release, by someone in the government, of an unauthorized, ‘work-in-process’ personal background draft document to one of our tribal health organizations. They then sent this out to their entire list of members. Predictably, it made its way to the press, culminating in a savage but error-laden attack on my honesty, character, and good name by various news outlets.” Read more in our opinion section.

RUNDOWN

Washington Post Many don’t buy Trump administration’s anti-poverty Medicaid argument

CNN People with pre-existing conditions could face tough times ahead

Axios Uber wants to get you to your doctor appointment

Reuters Big pharma, big data: Why drug companies want your health records

The Hill GOP eyes budget maneuver to pay for Obamacare funds

Kaiser Health News Tens of thousands of Medicaid recipients skip paying new premiums

Bloomberg NRA reduces gun injuries for these three days every year, research shows

Associated Press ‘Pharma bro’ asks judge for leniency, saying he was a fool

Los Angeles Times In a deadly season, a mother who lost a child to the flu fights back