| | | | |  | | By Chelsea Cirruzzo and Ben Leonard | With Megan Messerly, Alice Miranda Ollstein and Carmen Paun
| | |  The avian flu has seemingly jumped from a bird to cattle to a person. | Nathan Howard/Getty Images | PRESSING QUESTIONS — Federal officials confirmed a human case of avian flu in the U.S. on Monday, the first time the illness has been found in a human since it began sickening cattle over the past few weeks, POLITICO’s Adam Cancryn and David Lim report. While federal health officials say the risk to the public remains low, some public health experts are concerned that the virus’ spread to mammals could make it easier to infect humans. Here’s what we still don’t know about avian flu in the U.S.: Is the virus spreading among cows? The disease was first reported in cattle in Texas and Kansas in late March, according to the CDC. A few days later, cases were found among a herd in Michigan, which had recently received cows from Texas. “Spread of symptoms among the Michigan herd also indicates that [avian flu] transmission between cattle cannot be ruled out,” federal officials said in March. Andrew Pekosz, a Johns Hopkins professor of microbiology and immunology, told Pulse that H5N1 — the strain of influenza that infects birds — rarely transmits from one mammal to another, adding that answering this question is critical to understanding the risk to humans. “If [the virus] can acquire that ability to transfer from mammal to mammal, that brings it closer to transfer from human to human,” he said. Is the virus changing? The USDA, the FDA and the CDC said in a news release that initial testing “has not found changes to the virus that would make it more transmissible to humans.” But this is the first time bird flu has been seen in cattle, meaning additional information is needed, public health experts said. Caitlin Rivers, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, said it’s crucial to understand whether the virus is mutating to more easily spread to humans. Is the virus infecting cattle differently than in birds? Pekosz said he was surprised that the virus was detected in milk from sickened cows, prompting public health officials to warn people to avoid drinking unpasteurized milk. However, officials said they’re not concerned about commercial milk because of pasteurization. WELCOME TO TUESDAY PULSE. Bill Nye the Science Guy answered all of your burning solar eclipse questions for Time Out New York. Send your tips, scoops and feedback to ccirruzzo@politico.com and bleonard@politico.com and follow along @ChelseaCirruzzo and @_BenLeonard_.
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An anti-abortion group, above, demonstrated at the Florida state Capitol in 2022. On Monday, the Florida Supreme Court upheld a state law restricting abortion access. | Phil Sears/AP | STRICT ABORTION BAN UPHELD — Florida’s abortion access faces significant restrictions after Monday’s state Supreme Court ruling that there’s no constitutional right to the procedure — setting the stage for a high-stakes ballot measure showdown in November, Megan and Alice report. The Florida Supreme Court, dominated by justices appointed by GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, reversed itself by upholding a state law restricting abortion access after 15 weeks of pregnancy, ruling that the privacy clause in the state constitution doesn’t protect the right to abortion, reversing a former decision. The new ruling triggers a 2023 law restricting abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, set to take effect May 1. In its majority opinion, the court said the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which its prior ruling was partly based on, required it to take a fresh look at the state constitution. A majority of the court also ruled Monday to allow a proposed constitutional amendment restoring abortion access until viability — rejecting arguments by the state’s Republican attorney general and anti-abortion groups that the referendum’s summary text voters would read at the ballot box is confusing and misleading. “There is no lack of candor or accuracy,” the justices wrote, adding that the challengers’ claim that voters wouldn’t understand an issue debated for half a century and has dominated the news for the last few years isn’t valid. The new restrictions are likely to further energize the abortion-rights movement in their campaign to enact constitutional protections for the procedure. Read more about the decision from POLITICO’s Arek Sarkissian.
| | CMS SETS 2025 MEDICARE ADVANTAGE RATES — CMS has proposed raising Medicare Advantage rates by 3.7 percent in 2025, a blow to insurers who had wanted a greater increase to reflect rising costs, POLITICO’s Robert King reports. The percentage, announced by the agency late Monday, is the same as the one proposed in January. Insurers have lobbied hard since then to change the rate, which, by their calculations, amounts to a 0.16 percent base pay cut. CMS countered that the figure includes an overall increase in payments that accounts for the health of all insurers’ populations. CMS said earlier this year that omitting those additional increases would be “cherry-picking numbers and underestimating what the government is expected to pay in 2025.” The finalized rates come as insurers have posted higher-than-expected health costs at the end of last year. Michael Tuffin, CEO of the insurer group AHIP, said Monday that the final notice will put “more pressure on the benefits and premiums of 33 million Medicare Advantage beneficiaries who will be renewing their coverage this fall.”
| | THE END OF DRUG DECRIMINALIZATION — Oregon’s Democratic Governor Tina Kotek signed a bill Monday recriminalizing drug possession for personal use, ending a three-year experiment where people found with small amounts of hard drugs wouldn’t face potential arrest or jail time, Carmen reports. Decriminalization advocates, who have lamented that the measure wasn’t given enough time to see results, vowed to continue fighting for addiction to be treated as a public health problem and not a crime. State Sen. Tim Knopp, Oregon’s Senate Republican leader, welcomed the bill becoming law, noting that it sets a standard for how Oregon should approach drug addiction “by empowering law enforcement and our behavioral health systems to work together to help Oregonians struggling with chronic addiction seek life-saving treatment,” he said in a statement. NO BUMP FOR OPIOID Rx — Easing prescription requirements for the drug buprenorphine, used to treat opioid use disorder, hasn’t led to more people getting the treatment they need, a federal official said Monday. “We all anticipated that the [Mainstreaming Addiction Treatment Act] is going to be a game-changer, a whole slew of new prescribers,” Thomas Prevoznik, deputy assistant administrator for the Drug Enforcement Agency, said Monday at the Rx and Illicit Drug Summit in Atlanta, Carmen reports. How we got here: A 2022 law eliminated the so-called X waiver, which required practitioners to undergo training to prescribe the drug. The change increased the number of people eligible to prescribe it from approximately 130,000 to about 1.7 million, Prevoznik said. Yet the total volume of buprenorphine prescriptions dispensed since the law took effect has remained around 1.4 million, according to Prevoznik. The biggest uptick in prescribing has been among nurse practitioners and physician assistants, he added. Why it matters: Prevoznik’s lament shows that a law Congress and the White House hoped would increase access to treatment has failed to produce significant results, even as a record 110,000 people died last year of drug overdoses. Why it happens: Stigma among practitioners, low reimbursement rates for the drug and fears of attracting DEA scrutiny are among the reasons for the number of buprenorphine prescriptions not changing much, Prevoznik suggested.
| | MEASLES ‘CANARY IN THE COAL MINE’ — CDC Director Mandy Cohen will point to an uptick in measles cases in the U.S. and globally to advocate for vaccine uptake at the World Vaccine Congress’ meeting in Washington today, Chelsea reports. Since the start of 2024, 97 measles cases have been reported in the U.S., compared with 58 in all of 2023. Cohen is expected to call measles “the canary in the coal mine for all vaccine-preventable diseases” in her remarks, which the CDC shared with Pulse. During her keynote address, Cohen will also tout progress toward vaccinating people from preventive diseases, including common childhood illnesses and Covid-19, while urging global and U.S. leaders to work with the CDC to increase vaccine uptake overall.
| | Veronica Ingham is now senior director of abortion campaigns at the Hub Project. She’s an alum of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, former Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) and EMILYs List. Scott Kobayashi is now senior vice president of sales at BioPhy, an AI drug development platform. He previously co-founded Delta Project Management, a life sciences consulting group.
| | The Associated Press reports on how a change to a biased test can help more Black people get organ transplants. POLITICO’s Joseph Gedeon reports on cybersecurity concerns at HHS’ Administration for Children and Families.
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