White House Aims To Shore Up Stockpile, Get Covid Supplies Where Still Needed

Stat: Biden Officials Met With 3M, PhRMA, Others On Shoring Up The Stockpile
The Biden administration met privately this month with some of the nation’s biggest health care companies and lobbying organizations to discuss how to rework the health care supply chain. Some 30 companies, including 3M, AmerisourceBergen, and Dupont were invited to a private “workshop” held via WebEx on April 5, along with lobbying groups representing drug makers, hospitals, pharmacists and drug distributors, according to an invite obtained by STAT. (Florko, 4/20)

CNN: Biden Administration To Provide $150 Million To Boost Covid Response In Underserved And Vulnerable Areas
The Biden administration on Monday will allocate $150 million from the American Rescue Plan to community-based health care providers across the nation to help boost their coronavirus response for underserved communities and vulnerable populations, senior White House Covid-19 response adviser Andy Slavitt said Monday. "To get resources to health care providers serving at-risk populations and to promote equitable distribution of vaccines, today (the Department of Health and Human Services) is making $150 million available to community-based health care providers to strengthen their efforts to get shots in arms and care for patients with Covid-19," Slavitt said at a White House Covid-19 briefing. (Collins and Sullivan, 4/19)

KHN: Public Health Experts Worry About Boom-Bust Cycle Of Support
Congress has poured tens of billions of dollars into state and local public health departments in response to the covid-19 pandemic, paying for masks, contact tracers and education campaigns to persuade people to get vaccinated. Public health officials who have juggled bare-bones budgets for years are happy to have the additional money. Yet they worry it will soon dry up as the pandemic recedes, continuing a boom-bust funding cycle that has plagued the U.S. public health system for decades. If budgets are slashed again, they warn, that could leave the nation where it was before covid: unprepared for a health crisis. (Smith, Weber and Recht, 4/19)

In other news from the federal government —

The Washington Post: White House Closes In On $1 Trillion Plan Centered On Child Care, Pre-K, Paid Family Leave 
White House officials are closing in on a large spending plan centered on child care, paid family leave and other domestic priorities, according to two people aware of internal discussions. The package could amount to at least $1 trillion of new spending and tax credits, though details remain fluid. The American Families Plan, the second part of the administration’s Build Back Better agenda, is expected to be unveiled ahead of President Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress on April 28, the people said. (Stein and Pager, 4/19)

NPR: Not 'Illegal Alien," But 'Undocumented Noncitizen' Under New Immigration Policy
The Biden administration is ordering U.S. immigration enforcement agencies to change how they talk about immigrants. The terms "illegal alien" and "assimilation" are out — replaced by "undocumented noncitizen" and "integration." The new guidance is laid out in a pair of detailed memos sent Monday by the heads of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, part of a broader effort by the Biden administration to roll back the previous administration's hard-line policies and build what they call a more "humane" immigration system. (Rose, 4/19)

AP: Groups Push For Easier Student Loan Relief For The Disabled
Advocates for the disabled are pressing the Biden administration to cancel student debt for hundreds of thousands of Americans who have disabilities that make them eligible for federal debt forgiveness but who have not applied for the benefit. Using a rarely pursued federal petition process, three federal advocacy groups on Monday asked the U.S. Education Department to consider erasing debt for nearly 400,000 people with severe disabilities and to overhaul a debt forgiveness program that critics say is overly burdensome. (Binkley, 4/19)

And news from the Trump administration-era —

Washington Post: Federal Turf Wars Over Coronavirus Rescues Created ‘Health And Safety Risks,’ Watchdog Concludes
A chaotic effort to return hundreds of Americans to the United States in the earliest days of the coronavirus outbreak — including bureaucratic infighting over whether flights out of Wuhan, China, were an “evacuation” or “repatriation” — put the evacuees, federal officials, and even US communities at risk, a government watchdog concluded. The US government-led missions, which included an operation to evacuate Americans from a virus-stricken cruise ship off the coast of Japan in February 2020, were plagued by “serious fundamental coordination challenges,” the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report requested by Congress and released Monday. (Diamond, 4/19)

Georgia Health News: Trump Officials Thwarted EPA Action On Cancer-Causing Gas, Report Says 
On August 22, 2018, the citizens of Willowbrook, Ill., had just one hour to learn that local EPA officials were investigating high levels of a toxic gas in the neighborhoods near their homes. Then those officials, who were staffers in the EPA’s Region 5 office, got a call from their bosses in D.C. with an order: Take down the webpage on the investigation. When the page was eventually reposted, key parts had been removed, including important context about a facility run by the company Sterigenics that used the chemical ethylene oxide to sterilize disposable medical equipment and other goods. (Goodman and Miller, 4/19)

The New York Times: Officer Attacked In Capitol Riot Died Of Strokes, Medical Examiner Rules
Officer Brian D. Sicknick of the U.S. Capitol Police had multiple strokes hours after sparring with a pro-Trump mob during the Jan. 6 riot and died of natural causes, Washington’s medical examiner said on Monday. The determination is likely to complicate the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute anyone in the death of Officer Sicknick, 42; two men have been charged with assaulting him by spraying an unknown chemical on him outside the Capitol. (Goldman, 4/19)