5 takeaways from POLITICO’s Health Care Summit

Top Biden administration officials went on the offensive at POLITICO’s 2024 Health Care Summit Wednesday in Washington, laying out the health care issues President Joe Biden will emphasize in his rematch with Donald Trump.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and Domestic Policy Adviser Neera Tanden said Biden would push to restore abortion rights, lower drug prices and bolster the Affordable Care Act.

Trump’s former counselor, Kellyanne Conway, said Republicans need to find a message that works on abortion, melding “concession and consensus.”

But perhaps the strongest broadside against Biden came from a fellow Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who said the president’s reelection was in jeopardy because of his shift to the left and failure to control the border and fentanyl crisis.

Here are POLITICO’s top takeaways from the summit:

Democrats are confident on abortion. Republicans are looking for their own points of attack.

Tanden highlighted the federal abortion restrictions some Republicans are mulling.

“We know the moderate position on the other side is a nationwide ban,” she said.

Her portrayal of Democrats defending the rights of Americans from Republicans looking to take them is a hint of what’s to come in the months leading up to the 2024 election.

But influential Republicans are forming their own strategy to address the issue.

Conway, former counselor to then-President Donald Trump, said Republicans should look to appeal to the majority of Americans.

She suggested they propose banning abortion after 15 weeks with exemptions for rape, incest and threats to the life of the mother.

More than just offering a moderate view, Conway said Republicans shouldn’t be afraid to go on offense by asking their opponents where they draw the lines for government restrictions on reproductive health.

Record drug overdoses have politicians pointing fingers and embracing tougher policies.

Manchin put the blame for his state’s — and the country’s — opioid overdose epidemic partly on the Food and Drug Administration.

“The FDA started it. They keep bringing more products,” Manchin said of the agency that approved the prescription opioids that started the opioid addiction crisis. He also criticized the FDA for failing to remove older opioid drugs from the market when newer, safer ones come online.

Becerra said he saw nothing wrong with tougher policies, such as San Francisco’s recent decision to screen welfare recipients for drugs.

“We should be willing to consider anything that helps us tackle this drug addiction crisis because so many people are dying today,” he said. “We need to get a grip on this.”

The FDA has historically approved opioids as they do any other drug — by evaluating the safety and efficacy of the proposed medication. But lawmakers and others have pushed them to more expansively consider public health concerns, and FDA Commissioner Robert Califf has suggested the agency needs greater authority from Congress.

In a panel discussion directly after Manchin’s at the summit, FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Namandjé Bumpus defended the agency.

“We make science-based decisions,” said Bumpus. “We leverage our science in our decision-making to make the best decisions we can.”

A tightening of access to prescription opioids has led many people with opioid use disorder to switch to illicit fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that can kill in small amounts and has driven record overdose deaths.

Biden’s failure to secure the border is partly to blame, Manchin said.

“We know that the precursors are coming from China. We know that they go into Mexico. You can’t stand by and let it continue to kill Americans,” he said.

U.S. lawmakers should also do a better job holding China accountable for the fentanyl that ends up in the U.S., said Conway.

“We’re not telling them to get the fentanyl out of our country and [from] our kids’ veins,” she said.

The U.S. needs to lead in providing humanitarian aid to the world

Samantha Power, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said she was pushing Israel to ensure its actions won’t worsen the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

She said she conveyed the message directly to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to improve compliance with international humanitarian law” during her visit to Israel late last month.

“Even if Hamas doesn’t care about civilian life, and it’s proven that again and again, that doesn’t relieve the obligation of a combatant to observe those principles,” she said. “Clearly, more needs to be done.”

But it goes well beyond the war between Israel and Gaza.

USAID has started initiatives to get lead out of drinking water, which harms kids across the globe. She’s also directing funds to helping control dengue outbreaks, as climate change threatens to make spread of that disease less predictable.

Power also said she was concerned about the political brawl in Congress over abortion that has prevented reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the two-decade-old program started by then-President George W. Bush to combat HIV and AIDS in Africa.

Republicans want to bar program funding from going to any groups that promote or provide abortions.

The administration still has money to keep the program going, Power said, while adding that the failure to pass a new bill to reauthorize the program tells other countries that U.S. commitment is in doubt.

“We’re going to have a harder and harder time mobilizing our resources,” she said.

Medicare coverage of weight-loss drugs has bipartisan support.

Medicare is prohibited by law from covering weight-loss medications, but lawmakers from both parties argued that should change.

Focusing only on the high price tags of weight-loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound misses the broader goal of making America “the healthiest nation on the planet,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who has a seat on the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee and co-chairs the GOP Doctors Caucus.

“You're preventing strokes, you're preventing cardiac disease, you're preventing orthopedic problems, you're preventing hypertension, we're preventing diabetes,” said Wenstrup, who’s a podiatrist.

Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), a member of the Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee, said “obesity is a disease” and drugs treating it should be covered by Medicare.

Medicare reimbursement reform could be on the horizon.

Kelly and Larry Bucshon (R-Ind.) said they believed changes to how doctors are paid could be on the way sooner rather than later.

Portions of legislation addressing the Medicare payment schedule for physicians “will be baked into” an appropriations package expected to advance this month, Kelly said.

“We don’t want doctors to cut back on their Medicare patients or to stop doing some of the charity care they do,” Kelly said.

Bucshon emphasized the importance of a broader fix for a government formula that has repeatedly proposed lower pay for doctors serving Medicare patients. Bucshon said he thought reforms could be included in a larger health package to be passed before the end of the year. That package could also include transparency and other cost-saving measures, he said.