Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Republicans Nervous That Decade-Long 'Repeal And Replace' Push Will Come Back To Bite Them During Pandemic
Republicans are increasingly worried that their decade-long push to repeal the Affordable Care Act will hurt them in the November elections, as coronavirus cases spike around the country and millions of Americans who have lost jobs during the pandemic lose their health coverage as well. The issue will come into sharp focus this week, when the White House is expected to file legal briefs asking the Supreme Court to put an end to the program, popularly known as Obamacare. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, seizing on the moment, will unveil a Democratic bill to lower the cost of health care, with a vote scheduled for next week in the House. (Stolberg, 6/22)
House Democrats on Monday unveiled legislation that would tweak the Affordable Care Act to expand premium subsidies and incentivize states to expand Medicaid, among other changes. The bill was originally intended to be a messaging bill in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the ACA in March, but the plans were derailed by the crush of COVID-19 relief legislation. A House vote is expected before July 4 but the Republican-led Senate won't take it up. (Cohrs, 6/22)
More than 100 members of Congress are calling on the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve to help struggling businesses pause debt payments in a key real-estate financing market. Many of the hotels, shopping malls and office buildings that borrow money in the roughly $550 billion market for commercial-mortgage-backed securities said they have been unable to negotiate debt reprieves during the coronavirus pandemic. Some are worried they could lose their properties to foreclosure, The Wall Street Journal reported this month. (Eisen, 6/23)
The Trump administration has been sitting on nearly $14 billion in funding that Congress passed for coronavirus testing and contact tracing, according to Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Patty Murray of Washington. The top Democrats said in a letter Sunday to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar that the Trump administration has "still failed" to distribute more than $8 billion out of $25 billion appropriated by Congress to expand testing and contact tracing. The letter indicated that Congress passed these funds as part of a coronavirus relief bill in April. (Shabad, 6/22)
Amid ongoing concern that Covid-19 therapies and vaccines may be unaffordable, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced a pair of bills Monday that would prohibit drug makers from price gouging and also require all taxpayer-funded Covid-19 research to be recorded in a federal database. The move comes as access to Covid-19 medical products emerges as a hot-button issue in the U.S. and elsewhere, with worries mounting over the extent to which a therapy or vaccine will be available in sufficient quantities at affordable prices. (Silverman, 6/22)
Elsewhere on Capitol Hill —
Senate Democrats are strongly signaling they will filibuster Republicans’ police reform bill later this week absent more concessions from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Kentucky Republican set the Senate on a path to consider the legislation on Wednesday and must lure at least seven Democrats to support even opening debate on a GOP bill written without any Democratic input. So far, few Democrats have expressed any interest. (Everett and Levine, 6/22)
