Pres. Trump ordered on Friday that federal funding be withheld from schools and universities that require students to be vaccinated against COVID, White House officials said, as another step in the administration’s campaign against coronavirus vaccine requirements. Read more.

States are absorbing substantial increases in healthcare costs for the poor, as they realize that the people remaining on Medicaid rolls after the COVID-19 pandemic are sicker than anticipated and costlier to care for. In Pennsylvania, state budget makers recently unveiled the scale of that miscalculation, with Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro proposing an increase of $2.5 billion in Medicaid spending in the next fiscal year. That amounts to a roughly 5% increase in overall state spending, mostly driven by the cost-to-care for unexpectedly sick people remaining on the state’s Medicaid rolls. Costs went up partly because some people put off medical treatment during the pandemic, Shapiro’s administration said. As a result, their conditions worsened and became costlier to treat. The Alliance of Community Health Plans last fall asked the federal government to review Medicaid reimbursement rates in Pennsylvania and a handful of other states that it said were unrealistically low and relying on outdated claims data that showed a relatively healthier population of Medicaid enrollees. In Pennsylvania, the $2.5 billion projected Medicaid cost increase will be a big pill to swallow in a state with a slow-growing economy and a shrinking workforce that is delivering relatively meager gains in tax collections. Tax collections are projected to rise by less than $800 million in the 2025-26 fiscal year, and Republican lawmakers are wary about spending down the state’s roughly $10.5 billion surplus for fear of depleting it within a few years.

– Comment by July 23. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) issued a direct final rule removing temporary TRICARE regulations established in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency. TRICARE is the health insurance program for active-duty service members and their families. Examples of expiring flexibilities include the removal of the temporary waiver requirement for a three-day prior hospital stay before admission to a skilled nursing facility, the removal of the temporary reimbursement of all long-term care hospitals (LTCHs) at the LTCH prospective payment system standard Federal rate and the removal of the temporary waiver of cost-shares and copayments associated with telehealth services. A disproportionate share of veterans live in rural America. According to the National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Rural Health (ORH), of the nearly 20 million veterans in the United States, 4.4 million live in rural America. 2.7 million, or 61%, of these rural veterans are enrolled in the Veteran Affairs (VA) healthcare system, with 54% of rural enrolled veterans 65 years and older, and 60% affected by a service-related condition.

The Vaccine Resource Hub is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to improve vaccine confidence and access.  The talking points are available in English and Spanish and describe long COVID symptoms and populations that are at greater risk.

Read the full article here.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to share weekly COVID-19 vaccination data using a variety of data sources. A new resource, COVIDVaxView Interactive, goes deeper with a look at variations in vaccine confidence by demographics and geography.

Although it’s spotty and inconsistent in many places, wastewater testing is pointing to a new wave of COVID-19 infections, with as many as one-third of Americans expected to contract the disease by late February, Pennsylvania Capital-Star reports.

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) announced that the onboarding deadline for COVID-19 Therapeutics and Testing Supply Programs is Friday, January 26. Enrolling in these programs allows access to non-cost supplies in case of emergent COVID-19 needs, to enroll submit a request through the BPHC Contact Form. Learn more about the Testing Supply Program and the Therapeutics Program.

The Home Test to Treat program launched as a new national COVID-19 and flu telehealth service that launched for uninsured individuals and those receiving Medicare, Medicaid, and VA insurance. This program is full service in that it provides free access to COVID-19 and flu tests, telehealth consultations, and medications (if prescribed) all from the comfort of peoples’ homes. Home Test to Treat is a program of the NIH Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics. Please spread the word to your networks using the linked communications toolkit.

Click here to learn more.
Click here to access the communications toolkit.

Last week, drug maker Pfizer released that the commercial list price for its COVID-19 treatment Paxlovid will be $1,390 per treatment course. For comparison, earlier this year experts at Harvard University calculated the cost of producing a five-day treatment course of Paxlovid tablets to be only $13.38. Public health advocates are urging the Biden administration to force Pfizer to lower the price, noting that the Department of Health and Human Services has the legal authority to do so because Paxlovid was developed in part with federal funds. To date, the federal government has never used this authority, even though it has existed in law for more than 40 years.

On Oct. 13, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that HHS and Pfizer have reached an agreement that extends patient access to Paxlovid, maximizes taxpayer investment, and begins Paxlovid’s transition to the commercial market in November 2023. The agreement builds on HHS and Pfizer’s strong partnership over the last three years that enabled the development, manufacture, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics at a record pace.