Welcome to a day where — dare I say it — the temperature should finally stay below 100 degrees in D.C. I’m Dan Diamond, a national health reporter for The Post here in our nation’s heat-stroked capital. Send cool tips and other shade to dan.diamond@washpost.com.
Today’s edition: President Biden has tested positive for the coronavirus and is reportedly experiencing mild symptoms. The Department of Health and Human Services is heading to court to defend its decision to strip Tennessee of federal family planning funding. But first …
The Comstock question
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, some antiabortion advocates have adopted a new goal: getting the government to invoke the Comstock Act.
The 151-year-old law, which bans the mailing of abortion-related materials, had been long forgotten. The Biden administration maintains that it doesn’t apply today.
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But a future Republican administration could theoretically say Comstock remains relevant — and use it to crack down on abortion pills, for instance.
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) — just tapped as the Republican vice-presidential nominee — appeared to share that view, my colleague Meryl Kornfield and I reported Wednesday night.
What Vance wrote last year: “We demand that you act swiftly and in accordance with the law, shut down all mail-order abortion operations,” the Ohio senator and about 40 fellow Republican lawmakers wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2023.
The Republicans also urged the Justice Department to potentially prosecute physicians, pharmacists and others “who break the Federal mail-order abortion laws,” citing additional federal laws that apply to criminal conspiracy and money laundering.
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Vance’s team didn’t respond to questions Wednesday about whether he still believes the Comstock Act should be invoked for an abortion-pill crackdown or whether he’d discussed the law with former president Donald Trump.
The campaign backdrop
Abortion politics have been Democrats’ strongest issue and Republicans’ biggest weakness since the fall of Roe, with the GOP repeatedly losing on statewide referendums related to abortion access.
It’s also been a tricky issue for Trump, who relied on antiabortion supporters to help win the White House in 2016 — and delivered for those supporters by repeatedly cracking down on abortion access. (Prominent antiabortion activists even cheered Trump as the most antiabortion president in history.)
But in a post-Roe world, Trump is trying to ease his stance to win over moderates and some Republicans. The GOP presidential nominee has repeatedly dodged questions on the issue, including on whether he’d invoke Comstock as president.
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Trump told Time Magazine in April that he’d have a statement on Comstock in “two weeks.” That was more than 10 weeks ago.
Biden officials, meanwhile, have been eager to focus attention on the law — even as they decry it.
“Republican elected officials’ dangerous interpretation of the Comstock Act is part of their extreme agenda to ban abortion nationwide,” Jen Klein, the director of the White House’s gender policy council, said in a statement.
The key question: Does Vance’s 2023 embrace of Comstock signal what he and Trump would do in 2025, if elected?
Democrats certainly think so.
“The threat that a future Trump-Vance administration will misuse Comstock to ban abortion nationwide is now a five-alarm fire,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who is leading an effort to repeal the Comstock Act’s abortion provisions in Congress.
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It’s also worth noting that as vice president, Mike Pence shaped much of the Trump administration’s policy initiatives, including in health care, with the president largely disinterested in many policy details.
Would Vance be similarly hands-on? In his primetime remarks at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, the VP nominee spoke about several issues that have marked his short political career, such as the drug addiction that affected his family. But the Ohio senator — who campaigned two years ago on being “100 percent pro-life” — didn’t touch abortion.
White House prescriptions
Biden tests positive for coronavirus while campaigning in Las Vegas
President Biden has tested positive for the coronavirus and is experiencing mild symptoms, including a cough, runny nose and “general malaise,” The Post’s Toluse Olorunnipa and Fenit Nirappil report.
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The president’s symptoms began yesterday afternoon, according to Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, who added that the 81-year-old’s vitals appeared normal. Biden, who previously tested positive for the coronavirus in July 2022 and experienced mild symptoms, has taken his first dose of Paxlovid.
Following the positive test, Biden canceled his planned events in Las Vegas and returned to Delaware, where he will continue working in isolation, according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
- “I feel good,” Biden told reporters before boarding Air Force One. He was not wearing a mask.
Zooming out: Biden’s illness comes as a summer wave of covid cases washes over much of the United States. Coronavirus levels in wastewater were considered high or very high in 26 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last week.
President Biden is vaccinated, boosted, and he is experiencing mild symptoms following a positive COVID-19 test.
He will be returning to Delaware where he will self-isolate and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time.
A note from @POTUS' Doctor:…
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) July 17, 2024In the courts
Chevron rollback looms over Title X dispute
On tap today: A panel of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit will hear oral arguments in one of the first cases to test how the Supreme Court’s recent Chevron ruling will affect health policy challenged in court.
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The case centers on whether HHS can withhold millions of dollars in family planning funding from Tennessee after the state refused to comply with federal rules requiring Title X grant recipients to provide patients with information about abortions on request. A lower court previously denied Tennessee’s motion for a preliminary injunction to reinstate its funding. The state is appealing that decision.
Tennessee contends that Title X rules on abortion have flip-flopped in recent years and that HHS’s counseling requirement violates its residents’ First and 10th amendment rights. The state is expected to argue that the Supreme Court’s decision overturning the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine requires the appeals court to scrutinize the law itself rather than deferring to the agency’s interpretation.
Meanwhile, in Vermont …
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Attorney General Charity Clark (D) is suing two of the nation’s leading pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) for allegedly driving up drug prices in her state through unlawful business practices.
The lawsuit accuses CVS Caremark and Evernorth, the owner of Express Scripts, of violating Vermont’s Consumer Protection Act by manipulating the marketplace and reducing residents’ access to certain prescription drugs.
- Spokespeople for both CVS Caremark and Express Scripts defended their companies’ business practices and blamed pharmaceutical companies for the high price of drugs. “Allegations that we play any role in determining the prices charged by manufacturers for their products are false, and we intend to vigorously defend against this baseless suit,” the CVS spokesperson said in a statement.
The bigger picture: California, Hawaii and Kentucky are among the other states that have filed similar lawsuits targeting PBMs, which face little regulation despite influencing drug prices and choices for 80 percent of Americans and their doctors.
This week, a judge dismissed Hawaii’s lawsuit against three of the country’s largest drug industry middlemen, siding with the companies’ motion that the state failed to specifically identify deceptive or unfair behavior, according to Bloomberg Law.
Today, I sued pharmacy benefit managers Evernorth (owners of Express Scripts) & CVS for illegally driving up prescription drug costs in #Vermont.
These PBMs claim to work toward lowering prescription drug prices & promoting patient health — but that's just not true. pic.twitter.com/izCMgniiRI
Agency alert
Syphilis relief on the way amid ongoing treatment shortages
The Food and Drug Administration gave Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drug Company the green light to temporarily import a syphilis treatment that has been in short supply for more than a year.
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The online pharmacy will immediately begin importing and distributing 1.2 million units of penicillin manufactured by Portugal-based Laboratórios Atral. The company said it will sell the drug to health-care providers for less than $15.
Key context: Pfizer has been grappling with a shortage of its Bicillin L-A since last June, attributing the issue to “significant increases in demand” partly due to a spike in syphilis infections. Federal data shows that syphilis cases in the United States surged by about 80 percent from 2018 to 2022, reaching levels not seen since the 1950s, according to The Post’s Kelly Kasulis Cho.
In other news from the agencies …
The FDA’s drugs and biologics centers are planning to launch a joint innovation hub to streamline the development and approval of rare disease treatments. The agency is also creating a new senior leadership role to coordinate communications and engagements with rare disease stakeholders.
In other health news
- On the move: Amy Nabozny is the new health policy adviser for Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee. Nabozny most recently worked for the Senate health committee’s top Republican, Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.), focusing on public health-care issues.
- On the move: AHIP has tapped Tina Stow as its next executive vice president of public affairs. Stow has served as head of communications for Optum Health since 2023, after leading enterprise public affairs efforts for UnitedHealth Group.
- Doctors reluctant to treat addiction most commonly cite “lack of institutional support” as a barrier, including factors such as insufficient resources and competing demands, according to a new study by the National Institutes of Health.
Health reads
Sugar rush
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