Planned Parenthood announces first 2020 endorsements Presented by

With help from Alice Miranda Ollstein and Victoria Colliver

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Quick Fix

— Planned Parenthood endorsed its first slate of 2020 candidates, with a overriding focus on Democrats in battleground states and swing districts.

— A top White House official said a new coverage mandate on visa-seekers has nothing to do with the president's health agenda.

— Washington state passed an emergency ban on flavored vaping products.

A message from PhRMA: Today, there are several promising vaccine candidates in stage three clinical trials. These trials have tens of thousands of participants, from every walk of life. From development to robust clinical trials, and throughout manufacturing, these vaccine candidates follow the same rigorous process of other vaccines that have saved millions of lives. More.

IT'S PULSE: DISPATCH FROM MINNEAPOLIS — Where your author, who happened to be in town, dropped by yesterday's hastily organized Trump administration event to tout regulatory rollbacks. (More on that below.)

Minneapolis is hosting another event today that might get a tad more attention. Meanwhile, be Minnesota nice and send tips to [email protected]. PS Go Nats.

Driving the Day

FIRST IN PULSE: PLANNED PARENTHOOD UNVEILS 2020 ENDORSEMENTS — Planned Parenthood Action Fund endorsed nearly 90 House and Senate candidates Thursday morning, one day after the affiliated Planned Parenthood Votes announced plans to invest $45 million to boost turnout next year.

— Who got the nod: The endorsements, shared with POLITICO’s Alice Miranda Ollstein, are concentrated in battleground states and swing districts the organization is calling “red to pink” (the latter being the color of its logo). Not one Republican made the cut.

In Senate races, four Democrats got nods — Arizona challenger Mark Kelly, who is running to unseat Sen. Martha McSally, and purple state incumbents Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Gary Peters of Michigan and Tina Smith of Minnesota.

In the House, Planned Parenthood is endorsing Democratic challengers aiming to flip GOP-held seats and build on the “blue wave” of 2018, including Hiral Tipirneni in Arizona, Ammar Campa-Najjar in California, Betsy Dirksen Londrigan in Illinois, and Wendy Davis and Gina Ortiz Jones in Texas.

The group also endorsed dozens of incumbents who have championed abortion rights legislation, including members in safe seats like Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Cal.) and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).

— Planned Parenthood's support will vary on the competitiveness of each race, ranging from donations of funds to canvassing, phone-banking and more. More endorsements of federal candidates are yet to come.

“We took back the House with a mandate to fight for sexual and reproductive health care,” said Planned Parenthood’s acting president Alexis McGill Johnson. “In 2020, we have the opportunity to flip the Senate and strengthen our House majority, ensuring we have a Congress that will protect people’s health and rights.”

JOE GROGAN: TRUMP’s HEALTH CARE REQUIREMENT FOR IMMIGRANTS NOT ABOUT HEALTH CARE — The director of the White House domestic policy council said the president’s Friday-night proclamation, requiring legal immigrants to purchase health insurance or prove they can pay for health care, only has an “implicit” connection to Trump’s health strategy.

“It’s not part of the health care agenda. It’s clearly part of the immigration agenda,” Grogan said at a press briefing in Minneapolis yesterday. He added that the focus is on protecting taxpayers by not admitting immigrants who immediately need public benefits.

— Grogan’s comments came in response to PULSE’s question about whether the administration had analyzed the proclamation’s effect on enrollment in Medicaid, short-term health plans or association health plans. CMS Administrator Seema Verma declined to answer whether there was an enrollment analysis and said she’d defer to the State Department.

— Trump's proclamation cited limited health benefits as its justification. Its title: “Suspension of entry of immigrants who will financially burden the United States health care system, in order to protect the availability of health care benefits for Americans.”

TODAY: ALEX AZAR, IVANKA TRUMP IN MISSOURI FOR CHILD-CARE ROUNDTABLE — The HHS secretary and presidential adviser will be at Metropolitan Community College in Kansas City for the administration’s latest meeting about improving access to high-quality child care.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo), Gov. Mike Parson and Lynn Johnson, the HHS assistant secretary for children and families, will also be in attendance.

Public Health

Washington state health board passes emergency ban on flavored vapes. The rule takes effect today and will last for 120 days. The move come days after Gov. Jay Inslee directed the health department to take actions to address the outbreak of vaping-linked lung disease, which has sickened more than 1,000 people across the nation.

“While we don’t yet know the exact cause of the lung injury, we know these products are not safe and we must act quickly to protect young people," Secretary of Health John Wiesman, who is also a member of the board, said in a statement.

Inside the Humphrey Building

Senior officials tout regulatory changes in Minneapolis. Verma, Grogan and Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan spoke at Mayo Clinic's sports medicine facility yesterday, meeting with local industry leaders and discussing their proposal to overhaul fraud and abuse rules.

Officials said the regulatory rollback was two years in the making, and they expect hospitals, post-acute care facilities and other providers to take advantage of the changes to better coordinate care. Multiple health organizations like the American Hospital Association, NAACOS and AdvaMed applauded the administration's move; MGMA was one of the notable critics.

— Why hold the event in Minnesota? "Medical Alley is a great place to do it," Grogan said, referencing the nickname for Minnesota's health industry. Grogan added there are "over 1,000 companies focused on innovation in Medical Alley, employing over a half-million people," and that Minnesota's seen a broader jobs boom under Trump.

"This is the hub of innovation," added Verma, who tied Wednesday’s announcement back to Trump’s Medicare executive order last week. "I want to stress how important this is to the president."

The event came together quickly; clinic staff said they learned about it yesterday morning, and state health officials told PULSE they didn't realize that federal health officials were even in town.

HHS says online directory will return. PULSE on Wednesday flagged that the popular public directory of department staff had disappeared, replaced by a message that the webpage would be soon "taken down." After publication, HHS clarified that the page was under maintenance and updated the message on the site.

“This was a system check and it will be online soon after updates,” said spokesperson. “Probably around 7 days.”

Immigration

The cost of coverage for immigrants. The Center for Immigration Studies, which has advocated for restricting immigration, is holding an event this morning that addresses Democrats' push to cover undocumented immigrants. In one report released today, CIS projects that the cost of providing ACA subsidies to undocumented immigrants would be between $10 billion and $23 billion per year.

Around the Nation

Blue Cross North Carolina says it's overhauling corporate governance. The health insurer told the state's top insurance regulator that it's working on "new, enhanced procedures to improve transparency in the reporting of significant events" in the wake of former CEO Patrick Conway's arrest for drunk driving. Conway resigned last month after the news became public, three months after Conway first informed the board of his arrest.

"Please know that throughout this process our Board’s actions were based on the information known to us at that time, and our actions were always made in good faith," the board said in an accompanying public statement. “While we cannot undo the events that have unfolded over recent weeks, we can act to restore your trust."

Conway was found guilty this week of driving while impaired and misdemeanor child abuse; his lawyer said he would appeal.

RWJF: 15 percent of Americans age 10 to 17 remain obese, and there are dramatic disparities along socioeconomic, racial and ethnic lines, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s first report on the state of childhood obesity.

Nearly 22 percent of youth in homes making less than the federal poverty level were obese, compared to an obesity rate of 9.4 percent for young people in households making at least 400 percent of FPL, researchers found. Meanwhile, African-American and Hispanic youth had obesity rates at 22.2 percent and 19 percent respectively – significantly higher than white youth at 11.8 percent, or young Asians at 7.3 percent.

Among states, Mississippi had the highest overall youth obesity rate at 25.4 percent, with Utah at the bottom of the list at 8.7 percent.

— The report offers policy suggestions, such as rescinding the Trump administration’s proposed changes to the way states determine who qualifies for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, known as SNAP or food stamps, and for the USDA to resume using nutrition standards for school meals that were in effect before December 2018.

A message from PhRMA: America’s biopharmaceutical companies are making great progress against a common enemy – COVID-19. They’re learning from successful vaccines for other diseases, developing new treatments and collaborating like never before. Today, there are several promising vaccine candidates in stage three clinical trials. These trials have tens of thousands of participants, from every walk of life. From development to robust clinical trials, and throughout manufacturing, these vaccine candidates follow the same rigorous process of other vaccines that have saved millions of lives. America’s biopharmaceutical companies are working day and night until they defeat COVID-19. Because science is how we get back to normal.

What We're Reading

With Adriel Bettelheim

Colorado could become the first state to mandate hospital participation in a public insurance option, John Ingold writes for the Colorado Sun.

Can Vioxx, the pain drug that’s become a symbol of pharmaceutical danger, be resurrected to treat a rare disease? Stat's Damian Garde looks closer.

More fetal remains were discovered in the car of a former abortion doctor, already under investigation for hoarding thousands of fetal remains, Kimberly Leonard writes for the Washington Examiner.

How a father spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on addiction care for his daughters at facilities he didn’t realize rejected evidence-based treatments and practices, by Vox's German Lopez.

A Virginia medical system that includes the state’s largest teaching hospital will stop filing lawsuits against its patients, ending a practice that has affected tens of thousands of people, Jay Hancock and Elizabeth Lucas write for Kaiser Health News.

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