Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
With Affordability At The Fore, Congress Moves To Bring Down Housing Costs
The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a landmark housing bill, notching a rare bipartisan accomplishment ahead of the midterm elections and clearing the way for President Trump to sign the most significant piece of housing legislation in 36 years. The bill’s passage, by a lopsided 358-to-32 vote, ended months of sparring between the House and the Senate over a sprawling measure that aims to tackle the housing crisis by boosting supply in a country facing an acute shortage of new homes. The Senate passed its version of the same bill Monday, by a vote of 85 to 5. (Kaysen, 6/23)
Dr. Anthony Fauci is facing a subpoena from Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to appear before his panel in July. In a post online late Monday, Paul said Fauci backed out of a voluntary agreement to testify in front of the committee this month. “Last week, Anthony Fauci notified us he will NOT voluntarily testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, even though he had previously agreed to do so,” Paul wrote on social platform X. (Weixel, 6/23)
States are charting the future of artificial intelligence in healthcare as Congress idles and President Donald Trump shows reluctance to interfere with a burgeoning industry. Federal lawmakers have talked a lot about AI and sometimes threatened to usurp state powers to regulate the technology. But Congress has not acted in a meaningful way and national regulators are busier using AI than defining or limiting how others use it. (McAuliff, 6/23)
In other news about the Trump administration —
The Department of Justice unveiled charges against 455 people, including 90 doctors and other licensed medical professionals, for their alleged participation in healthcare schemes that involved more than $6.5 billion in false claims and other patient harm. The charges were part of a two-week coordinated fraud takedown headed by the DOJ Criminal Division’s Health Care Strike Force program, but reflects “a whole-of-government approach” that involved the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as well as international partners, law enforcement said in a press release issued Tuesday. (Muoio, 6/23)
Germany signaled it will move ahead with plans to impose lower drug prices on pharmaceutical companies, calling a US accusation of unfair trade practices “unfounded.” Responding to a US probe into German drug pricing announced last week, which could lead to new tariffs, the health ministry in Berlin said deeper discounts on medicines are necessary to rein in unsustainable spending on Germany’s public healthcare system. (Kresge, 6/24)
The White House aggressively denied a report that implied President Trump may have received the investigational obesity medication retatrutide. STAT on Tuesday reported that Eli Lilly and the FDA granted one request for compassionate use of the triple hormone receptor agonist in April to a 79-year-old man (Trump turned 80 on June 14). A senior NIH clinician requested it for a patient with "refractory" obesity, obstructive sleep apnea, and pulmonary hypertension, according to the story. (Fiore, 6/23)
