Spiegel Stuff: Overnight Health Care — Sponsored by Philip Morris International — Key conservative justices express openness to preserving ObamaCare's protections | Fauci says he trusts Pfizer, will take vaccine if FDA approves it | Distribution of Eli Lilly antibody drug to begin this week

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Overnight Health Care — Sponsored by Philip Morris International — Key conservative justices express openness to preserving ObamaCare's protections | Fauci says he trusts Pfizer, will take vaccine if FDA approves it | Distribution of Eli Lilly antibody drug to begin this week

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Presented by Philip Morris International

Welcome to Tuesday’s Overnight Health Care. The long-awaited oral arguments in the Texas-Affordable Care Act lawsuit happened today, and comments from two key Republican-appointed justices could give ObamaCare supporters some reason for relief. Meanwhile, officials started laying out more of the timeline for a coming vaccine from Pfizer and antibody treatments from Eli Lilly.

We’ll start at the Court:

Key conservative justices express openness to preserving ObamaCare's protections

After months of buildup and concern about the ObamaCare case before the Supreme Court, things looked pretty positive for the health care law at arguments on Tuesday.

The keys were comments from Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both Republican appointees who seemed to express the view that if the court were to strike down the provision of the law mandating the purchase of health insurance, the rest of it should be allowed to survive.

"Looking at our severability precedents, it does seem fairly clear that the proper remedy would be to sever the mandate provision and leave the rest of the act in place, the provisions regarding preexisting conditions and the rest," Kavanaugh said.

Roberts was somewhat more equivocal but pushed back forcefully against an argument by the solicitor general of Texas, which is among 18 Republican-led states that urged the court to strike down the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in its entirety.

Takeaway: The questions from Kavanaugh and Roberts made it appear unlikely that the Court would strike down more than the remainder of the individual mandate, leaving the key parts of the law in tact.

Read more here.

Fauci says he trusts Pfizer, will take vaccine if FDA approves it

After yesterday’s big Pfizer vaccine news, Anthony Fauci gave it a vote of confidence.

Fauci said Tuesday that he has confidence in Pfizer's work on a coronavirus vaccine and would not hesitate to take it if it is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Fauci hailed as “impressive” Pfizer’s results announced Monday that its vaccine is over 90 percent effective.

Asked by MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell whether he would take the vaccine, Fauci replied, "Well, I'm going to look at the data, but I trust Pfizer, I trust the FDA. These are colleagues of mine for decades, the career scientists."

"If they look at this data and they say 'this data is solid, let's go ahead and approve it,' I promise you, Andrea, I will take the vaccine and I will recommend that my family take the vaccine," he added.

Experts are concerned that many people will not trust a coronavirus vaccine when it is first rolled out, and public health officials have been mounting a campaign to reassure the public that the FDA will ensure any vaccine is safe and effective before it is authorized.

Read more here.

And when could the vaccine be available? Azar says the spring

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar said early Tuesday that a COVID-19 vaccine could be widely available to the general public by the spring of 2021.

In an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, Azar said that Pfizer will be delivering 20 million doses each month starting at the end of November.

“We have anticipated that we will have enough vaccine by the end of December to have vaccinated our most vulnerable citizens in nursing homes and otherwise,” Azar added. “And by the end of January, enough for all health care workers and first responders, and enough for all Americans by the end of March to early April to have general vaccination programs.”

Read more here.

And on the treatment front: Health officials to begin distribution of Eli Lilly antibody drug this week

The federal government will begin distributing Eli Lilly's coronavirus antibody treatment this week, but supplies will be limited and getting the drug into infected patients will be a challenge, officials said.

The drug itself is administered through an IV infusion that takes more than an hour and requires another hour of observation afterward, they said.

Janet Woodcock, director of the Food and Drug Administration's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, told reporters during a conference call that they don't want infectious COVID-19 patients mingling with cancer patients at traditional infusion centers.

“There are probably going to be multiple different solutions depending on the setting, [such as] community health centers, home IV, health infusion companies, nursing homes,” she said.

The U.S. already committed last month to 300,000 doses of the experimental drug, paying Eli Lilly $375 million.

The government has an option to buy an additional 650,000 doses next year, but Woodcock said she hopes the initial doses will "kick-start" the health care system into saving patients from being hospitalized with COVID-19.

Read more here.

Senate panel recommends $96 billion for health department

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would get $96 billion under a draft funding bill released Tuesday by the Senate Appropriations Committee, an increase of $2 billion from last year.

Key points:

The bill is unlikely to be the one signed by the president but kicks off negotiations between the Republican-controlled Senate and Democratic House majority over end-of-year spending package to fund the government.
Overall, HHS’s public health preparedness and response programs would receive $4.2 billion, an increase of $161 million from last year, according to the committee.
In total, the CDC, one of the agencies leading the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, would receive nearly $8 billion.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the federal government’s health research organization, would get a 5 percent funding boost — an increase of $2 billion from last year.