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Health

U.S. increasing Covid vaccine manufacturing to donate extra doses to world

U.S. expanding Covid vaccine manufacturing to donate more doses to world

The United States is expanding manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccines to donate more doses to countries that don’t have as much access to the lifesaving shots.

“We are now working on greatly expanding the capacity to allow us to donate hundreds and hundreds of millions of doses to the low- and middle-income countries,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, medical advisor to President Joe Biden, said in an interview Thursday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell.”

Scientists around the world, including officials at the World Health Organization, have condemned wealthy nations for administering booster shots to fully vaccinated people while millions in other countries cannot get the vaccine.

Dr. Mike Ryan, director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said wealthy nations that decide to give booster doses are “handing out extra life jackets” to those who already have one while letting other people drown.

Fauci said the U.S. has given more than 120 million doses to 80 countries and has donated $4 billion in resources to the COVAX vaccine-sharing initiative, which is coordinated by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the WHO.

“We are doing both,” Fauci said of distributing booster shots and helping other countries. “We’re very sensitive to the needs of the developing world who need vaccine doses, but we believe we can do both.”

Worries about the delta variant continue to be on the minds of many Americans as health systems in states with high infection rates struggle to keep up with the demand for hospital beds. A continued acceleration of cases could be avoided in the U.S. if more people get vaccinated, Fauci said.

“There’s a lot we can do about it,” Fauci said, noting that 90 million people in the U.S. are eligible for vaccines but still haven’t gotten the shots. “We want to vaccinate the unvaccinated to the highest extent that we possibly can.”

He said it’s hard to know when the current delta outbreak will peak.

“It’s very difficult to predict. We’ve seen in the U.K. that after several weeks of a high acceleration, it’s turned around,” Fauci said.

Once delta infections begin to slow down, Covid could become an endemic disease that remains in the population at low levels, like the flu, though Covid is much deadlier. Fauci said he doubts that Covid — unlike the flu, which requires annual shots — will need recurrent boosters to maintain high levels of protection.

“I don’t think that’s going to be the case. I think this third shot will take us a long way,” Fauci said.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that the COVAX vaccine-sharing initiative is coordinated by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the WHO.

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Politics

How Republican States Are Increasing Their Energy Over Elections

How Republican States Are Expanding Their Power Over Elections

LaGRANGE, Georgia – Lonnie Hollis has served on the Troup County’s Electoral Committee in western Georgia since 2013. As a Democrat and one of two black women on the board, she spoke out in favor of the Sunday election, helped voters on election days and moved to a new district in a black church in a nearby town.

But this year, Ms. Hollis will be removed from the board, the result of a local electoral law signed by Governor Brian Kemp, a Republican. Previously, the members of the electoral board were elected by both political parties, the district commissioner and the three largest municipalities in the Troup district. Now the GOP-controlled district commission has sole power to restructure the board and appoint all new members.

“I speak out and know the laws,” said Ms. Hollis in an interview. “The bottom line is that they don’t like people who have any kind of intelligence and know what they’re doing because they know they can’t influence them.”

Mrs. Hollis is not alone. Across Georgia, at least 10 district electoral committees have been dismissed, removed from office, or are likely to be dismissed by local ordinances or new laws passed by the state legislature. At least five are colored and most are Democrats – although some are Republicans – and they will most likely all be replaced by Republicans.

Ms. Hollis, and local officials like her, were some of the earliest victims when Republican-led parliaments took on a massive takeover of the electoral administration in a series of new voting bills this year.

GOP lawmakers have also stripped secretaries of state of their power, exercised more control over state electoral boards, facilitated the overturning of election results, and conducted several partisan reviews and inspections of 2020 results.

Republican lawmakers in 41 states have tabled at least 216 bills to give lawmakers more power over election officials, according to the United States’ United Democracy Center, a new bipartisan organization dedicated to protecting democratic norms. Of these, 24 were enacted in 14 states.

GOP lawmakers in Georgia say the new measures are designed to improve the performance of local bodies and reduce the influence of political parties. But the laws allow Republicans to remove local officials they dislike, and since some of them were Black Democrats, franchise groups fear these are further attempts to disenfranchise colored voters.

The maneuvers risk undermining some of the core controls that served as a bulwark against former President Donald J. Trump as he tried to undermine the 2020 election results. If these bills had come into effect after the election, Democrats say, they would have greatly increased the turmoil Trump and his allies created by attempting to overturn the outcome. They fear that proponents of Trump’s conspiracy theories will soon have much greater control over the levers of the American electoral system.

“It is a barely veiled attempt to wrest control from the officials who led one of the safest elections in our history and to place them in the hands of bad actors,” said Jena Griswold, chairwoman of the Association of Democratic State Secretaries and the current one Colorado Secretary of State. “The risk is the destruction of democracy.”

Officials like Ms. Hollis are responsible for making decisions such as choosing mailbox and district locations, sending out election notices, setting early polling times, and certifying elections. But the new laws also target senior state officials, particularly foreign ministers – both Republican and Democratic – who have stood up against Trump and his allies over the past year.

The Republicans in Arizona have tabled a bill that would largely deprive Katie Hobbs, the Democratic Secretary of State, of her powers on election lawsuits and then expire when she leaves office. And they have tabled another bill that would give the legislature more power in setting guidelines for election administration, an important task currently being carried out by the Foreign Minister.

Under Georgia’s new electoral law, Republicans have severely weakened the office of Secretary of State after Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who is the current secretary, rejected Trump’s demands to “find” votes. You have dismissed the State Secretary as chairman of the state election committee and relieved his voting rights on the board.

The Kansas Republicans in May vetoed Democrat Laura Kelly to pass laws that would deprive the governor of changing electoral law and the Secretary of State, a Republican who repeatedly vouched for the security of postal votes, from the settlement election-related actions without the consent of the legislature.

And more Republicans who hold on to Mr. Trump’s election lies are running for secretary of state, bringing conspiracy theorists to a critical position within reach. In Georgia, MP Jody Hice, a Republican who voted against confirming President Biden’s victory, is running against Raffensperger. Republican candidates with similar views are running for secretary of state in Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan.

“In virtually every state, every polling officer will feel like they’re under the microscope,” said Victoria Bassetti, a senior adviser with the United Democracy Center in the United States.

In the short term, it is local election officials at district and community level who are either deposed or robbed of their power.

In Arkansas, Republicans were stabbed last year when Jim Sorvillo, a three-time state official from Little Rock, lost re-election by 24 votes to Ashley Hudson, a Democrat and local lawyer. It was later found that election officials in Pulaski County, which includes Little Rock, inadvertently tabulated 327 postal ballot papers, 27 of which were from the district, during the vote count.

Mr. Sorvillo filed several lawsuits to prevent Ms. Hudson from being seated, and all of them were denied. The Republican faction considered refusing to seat Ms. Hudson and then eventually voted to accept her.

But last month the Arkansas Republicans passed a new bill that would allow a state committee of electoral officers – made up of six Republicans and one Democrat – to investigate a variety of issues at every stage of the electoral process, from registration onwards, and Initiate corrective action “. for the submission and counting of ballot papers to confirm elections. The law applies to all counties, but it is widely believed to be directed against Pulaski, one of the few in the state who favor Democrats.

The draftsman, State Representative Mark Lowery, a Republican from a suburb of Little Rock, said it was necessary to remove voting power from local authorities, who are Democrats in Pulaski County, because otherwise Republicans could not be shaken fairly .

“Without this legislation, you would have been the only authority to turn to the prosecutor for inappropriateness, who is a Democrat and may have done nothing,” Lowery said in an interview. “This gives another level of investigative power to a state-mandated body to oversee the elections.”

When asked about last year’s election, Mr. Lowery said, “I think Donald Trump was elected President.”

A separate new Arkansas law allows a state board to “vote and conduct” elections in a county when a legislative committee determines that there are questions about the “appearance of an equal, free, and impartial election.”

In Georgia, lawmakers passed a unique law for some counties. For Troup County, State Representative Randy Nix, a Republican, said he only tabled the county electoral board reorganization bill – and which will remove Ms. Hollis – after a motion was requested by county commissioners. He said he was not worried that the commission, a party body made up of four Republicans and one Democrat, could influence the elections.

“The commissioners are all elected officials and will face the electorate to answer for their actions,” Nix said in an email.

Eric Mosley, the county manager for Troup County, which Trump scored 22 points, said the decision to ask Mr. Nix for the bill was intended to make the board more bipartisan. It was unanimously supported by the Commission.

“We believed that the ultimate intent of the board of directors was to choose the removal of both Republican and Democratic representation and the real selection of members of the community who invest heavily to serve those members of the community,” Mosley said. “Our goal is to create both political and racial diversity on the board.”

In Morgan County, east of Atlanta, Helen Butler was one of the most prominent Democratic voices in the state on suffrage and electoral administration. As a member of the county electoral committee in a rural Republican district, she also leads the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, a group dedicated to protecting the voting rights of black Americans and strengthening their civic engagement.

But Ms. Butler will be removed from the county board at the end of the month after Mr. Kemp signed a local law ending the ability of political parties to appoint members.

“I think this is all part of the local electoral board takeover trick that state lawmakers put in place,” Ms. Butler said. “They say they have a right to say whether an election officer is doing it right, even though they don’t work on a day-to-day basis and don’t understand the process itself.”

It’s not just Democrats who are being removed. In DeKalb County, the fourth largest in the state, Republicans decided not to nominate Baoky Vu to the electoral board again after more than 12 years in office. Mr. Vu, a Republican, had written with the Democrats in a letter that opposed an election-related bill that was ultimately not passed.

To replace Mr. Vu, Republicans nominated Paul Maner, a prominent local conservative with a history of false testimony, including the allusion that the son of a Georgia congressman was killed in “a drug deal gone wrong”.

Back in LaGrange, Ms. Hollis tries to do as much as possible in the remaining time on the board. The additional precinct in nearby Hogansville, where the population is roughly 50 percent black, is a top priority. Although the city only has about 3,000 residents, the city is divided by a railroad, and Ms. Hollis said it can sometimes take a long time to clear a freight car line, which is problematic on election days.

“We worked on it for over a year,” Ms. Hollis said, saying the Republicans had put procedural hurdles in place to block the process. But she was not deterred.

“I’m not going to sit there and wait for you to tell me what to do for the voters there,” she said. “I’ll do the right thing.”

Rachel Shorey contributed to the research.

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Health

For Small Gyms, Dealing with the Pandemic Meant Increasing

For Small Gyms, Handling the Pandemic Meant Expanding

This article is part of Owning the Future, a series on how small businesses across the country have been affected by the pandemic.

On the evening of March 14, 2020, Kari Saitowitz, owner of the Fhitting Room, a small or “boutique” fitness studio with three locations in Manhattan, returned from a dinner out, to find a disturbing message. A college friend who was a pulmonologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital had sent a text about the alarming number of cases of the new, contagious respiratory disease they were seeing.

“The message said, ‘Please take this seriously,’” Ms. Saitowitz recalled. “And he specifically said, ‘Kari, you will probably have to close the gym for a while.’”

The next morning, she received emails from two of her senior trainers, who had taught classes the previous day. They, too, were concerned, not only about their own safety, but also about their clients, some of whom were older.

“That was the tipping point,” she said. After convening a group of full- and part-time employees, including trainers and members of the cleaning staff, she decided to close the studio. That afternoon, she sent an email blast to the membership, saying that “for the health of our community,” she was temporarily closing the Fhitting Room.

The following day, March 16, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced the closure of all gyms, restaurants, bars, theaters and casinos.

Now Ms. Saitowitz, like so many other small-business owners, faced another urgent decision: “‘How do I keep my business alive?’”

The key, she decided, was to figure out ways to continue delivering what her customers wanted — what they really wanted. “It’s more than just a workout,” she said. “People come here because of the conversation, the socialization, for the fun and motivation of a class.”

How could she replicate that when the gym was closed?

The answer, for Ms. Saitowitz and other boutique fitness gyms — a broad designation that includes Pilates and yoga studios, and facilities that focus on indoor cycling or, as is the case with the Fhitting Room (the name is a play on H.I.T., the acronym for high-intensity training), group fitness classes — was to quickly expand the way that their services could be provided; an approach that some in the industry are now calling “omnichannel.”

For Ms. Saitowitz, it meant ramping up the creation of an on-demand video library of workouts, switching live classes to Zoom and, in September, striking a partnership with the retailer Showfields to use a rooftop event space on its Bond Street building to hold socially distanced outdoor classes.

All of that has had an effect on its members. “Before the pandemic I was going maybe three times a week,” said Suzanne Bruderman of Manhattan, a Fhitting Room member since it opened six years ago. “Once the pandemic hit, all of my behaviors shifted and it basically became a five-day-a-week habit.”

Today in Business

Updated 

June 3, 2021, 8:18 p.m. ET

But all of these changes required more than a tutorial in Zoom; they necessitated a radical change in thinking in an industry that has been providing its product in essentially the same way since Vic Tanny’s first “health clubs” opened in the 1930s.

“Prior to the pandemic, clients had to visit a brick-and-mortar business to consume the product,” said Julian Barnes, chief executive of Boutique Fitness Solutions, an advisory firm to small gyms and fitness studios. The new multiple-channel approach “means meeting your client wherever he or she is,” he said. “If she wants to work out live, give her that ability to take a class live. If she wants to work out at 2 a.m., and pull up a video of her favorite class, give her the ability to do that. If she wants to work out outdoors, give her the ability for that.”

Mr. Barnes estimated that, before the pandemic, the United States had about 70,000 of these small gym and studios. “A lot of them were uprooted from their original business model,” said Tricia Murphy Madden, who is based in Seattle and is national education director for Savvier Fitness, a fitness product and education company. “What I’m seeing now is that if you’re still operating the way you did 16 months ago, you’re not going to survive.”

When gyms in Texas were ordered closed, Jess Hughes, founder and president of Citizen Pilates, was determined to keep her three Houston studios open. Using little more than an iPhone and a ring light, Ms. Hughes and some of her instructors began producing video workouts in the studio. The on-demand Citizen Virtual catalog now has over 100 at-home workouts accessible from any device with a paid subscription ($19 per month). She later expanded the offerings through a partnership with JetSweat, a fitness on-demand library with 28,000 monthly subscribers.

Going online allowed them to expand beyond individual customers. “We also started doing virtual private corporate classes through Zoom,” Ms. Hughes said. These once-a-week classes allowed employees of a number of midsize Houston companies to stay in shape — and have shared experiences — while they worked remotely.

She also began offering branded apparel with slogans like “Citizen Strong,” which proved particularly popular when the studio reopened, with restrictions, in May. Moving all equipment six feet apart reduced her total capacity by 30 percent. (“We received zero rent relief from any of our landlords,” she added.) Yet Ms. Hughes has managed to increase her membership by 22 percent, mostly locally. “What I like to say is that we were brand consistent but socially distant,” she said.

Social distancing wasn’t enough for Matt Espeut, who was twice forced to close down his Fit Body Boot Camp gym in Providence when Rhode Island’s Covid cases surged. Like Ms. Saitowitz and Ms. Hughes, Mr. Espeut was determined to stay in business, and he felt offering new services was the way to do it. Because weight loss is a major part of his gym’s mission, he invested his Small Business Administration loan into the cost of a medical-grade body scan machine that measures body composition. “Now we can home in on people losing fat, and gaining muscle,” he said.

The $6,000 machine, the addition of nutritional counseling — including supplements sold in the gym and online — and offering many new, socially distanced classes enabled Mr. Espeut to achieve something he wouldn’t have thought possible a year ago: He has increased his gym membership by 15 percent, to 196 from 170.

He added one more thing after reopening in January: a new décor, including a fresh coat of paint and new floor mats. “I think people would like to forget 2020,” he said. “I wanted people to see right away that things are different.”

For many small gyms, they are — although the expansion into different channels is still a means to an end: Getting everyone back in the spaces that workout enthusiasts love to share.

“We didn’t panic at first,” recalled Lisa O’Rourke, an owner of Spin City, an indoor cycling studio in Massapequa Park, N.Y. “We had a healthy business going, and we thought it was going to be temporary.” As the lockdown extended into April, though, “the panic set in.” Ms. O’Rourke began offering members-only YouTube workouts featuring her instructors. Over the summer, that expanded to include outdoor classes in the parking lot.

Early in the lockdown, another thought occurred to Ms. O’Rourke as she surveyed her empty studio. “We had all these bikes sitting there doing nothing,” she said. “So, we decided to loan them to our members.” While some studios leased out their equipment — bikes, kettlebells and other equipment — Spin City offered the loaners for free.

“I had members offer us money,” she said. “But we turned them down. You know, they helped create our success, and during the pandemic, you felt bad for everybody. They didn’t need another expense.”

A year after the pandemic began, Spin City has gained a total of 50 members, on top of 275 to 300 members prepandemic. All the bikes are now back in the studio — albeit six feet farther apart. Ms. O’Rourke has speculated on what would have happened if she hadn’t opened these new channels.

“They would have all bought Pelotons,” she said with a laugh.

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Politics

11 Years On, the Reasonably priced Care Act Defies Opponents and Retains Increasing

11 Years On, the Affordable Care Act Defies Opponents and Keeps Expanding

WASHINGTON — More than 200,000 Americans flocked to the Affordable Care Act’s online marketplace to sign up for health insurance during the first two weeks of an open enrollment period created by President Biden — a sign that those who lost insurance during the pandemic remain in desperate need of coverage.

At the same time, a provision in the president’s $1.9 trillion stimulus law to make Medicaid expansion more fiscally appealing has prompted deeply conservative Alabama and Wyoming to consider expanding the government health program to residents who are too rich to qualify now but too poor to afford private health plans.

Eleven years after President Barack Obama signed his signature domestic achievement, and after several near-death experiences, the health law is again expanding.

The Biden White House will celebrate Tuesday’s anniversary in a big way. The president will visit Ohio as part of his “Help Is Here” tour to talk up the stimulus law, which greatly expanded subsidies to make insurance affordable for tens of millions of people. And Mr. Biden’s newly installed health secretary, Xavier Becerra, whom the Senate confirmed just last week, will travel to Carson City, Nev., to help mark the moment.

The provision in the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” is the first major change to the health law since its passage. The new subsidies last for only two years, and it will take some time for the full emergency aid to reach people. Even so, nearly everyone who buys insurance will be eligible to do so at a discount.

But Mr. Biden has a new challenge: living up to his campaign promise to expand the law, including making the new subsidies permanent, creating a “public option” for consumers who wish to buy into a government-run insurance plan, and tackling not only the rising cost of health insurance premiums, but also the soaring price of prescription drugs.

“The Affordable Care Act was about trying to create the ground rules so that health insurance was real — it provided real financial security and was affordable — but we’re at this point where we’ve got to address the other side of the equation,” said Frederick Isasi, the executive director of Families USA, a consumer advocacy group that has supported the law.

“We’ve got to address the sector’s pricing abuses, and that’s fundamentally the big question the administration and Congress are facing,” Mr. Isasi added. “Are they going to have the political will to do that?”

On Capitol Hill, Mr. Biden is facing pressure from the left. Last week, progressives introduced legislation to create what they call “Medicare for all,” a single-payer, government-run insurance program that has been embraced by Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York.

Interest among Democrats appears to be growing; a majority of the caucus now backs the bill, and several moderates have recently signed on as sponsors, including Representative Frank Pallone Jr., Democrat of New Jersey and the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over the measure. He has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday to consider legislation to expand health coverage and lower costs.

“The energy around it is largely stoked by the horrible things we’ve seen over the last year,” said Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington, the lead sponsor of the Medicare for All Act. She added, “Even if we do the things we are doing right now, we are still leaving out too many people, and we are still not addressing the cost issues of this unsustainable for-profit system.”

Mr. Biden, however, rejected Medicare for all during his campaign, and a senior administration official said Wednesday that the president did not intend to embrace the plan.

About 30 million Americans remain uninsured, and the Kaiser Family Foundation recently estimated that the number of people with employer-based insurance dropped by two million to three million from March to September last year. But the foundation has also estimated that 85 percent of those who lost coverage were eligible for either Medicaid or for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act — an option that did not exist during the last major recession.

“This is really the first true test of the A.C.A.,” said Cynthia Cox, who directs a Kaiser Family Foundation program on the law. “In past recessions, you usually see the uninsured rate increase significantly. We don’t know for sure yet, but all indications are that the uninsured rate has not gone up by much, likely in large part thanks to the A.C.A.”

Expanding access to health care has been a core issue for Mr. Biden, both when he was vice president and during his campaign for the White House. When the act was signed into law, he memorably used an expletive to whisper in Mr. Obama’s ear that it was a big deal.

A week after he took office, Mr. Biden ordered the law’s federally run insurance marketplace to reopen for three months, from February to May 15, to help people struggling to find coverage.

In previous years, Americans in the 36 states that rely on the federal marketplace were eligible to sign up outside the fall enrollment period only if they had “qualifying life events,” including job losses. The current surge in enrollment is more than double the number of people who signed up during the same two-week periods in 2019 and 2020.

Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus Package

How big are the stimulus payments in the bill, and who is eligible?

The stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more.

What would the relief bill do about health insurance?

Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read more

What would the bill change about the child and dependent care tax credit?

This credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more.

What student loan changes are included in the bill?

There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more.

What would the bill do to help people with housing?

The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more.

During the last open enrollment period, 340,000 new users of the marketplace signed up during the first two weeks. That period ended on Dec. 15.

That an additional 200,000 people signed up so soon “is not surprising,” given the pandemic-driven need, said Mr. Isasi, of Families USA.

What is surprising, said Ms. Cox, of the Kaiser Family Foundation, is that Republicans in Alabama and Wyoming — states among those that have doggedly rejected the Medicaid expansion that the law encouraged — have raised the prospect of doing so under generous incentives included in the stimulus law.

In Alabama, a spokeswoman for Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, has said that the governor is “open to the discussion” about expanding Medicaid, but that state leaders needed more information about the cost. In Wyoming, a bill to authorize Medicaid expansion, sponsored by a Republican lawmaker, gained committee approval last week in the State Legislature and passed the Wyoming House on Monday night, according to The Casper Star-Tribune, though the State Senate had killed a similar bill earlier that evening.

“I don’t think anyone was necessarily expecting any states to take this money,” Ms. Cox said. “It’s a significant financial incentive that states have to expand Medicaid, but the thought was that there would be so much political opposition in these states that they might not want to expand the program.”

The Affordable Care Act has been under attack from Republicans since its passage, both in the courts and on Capitol Hill, where Republicans tried but repeatedly failed to repeal the measure. The push in the courts did scale back the initial law, when the Supreme Court invalidated its provision requiring states to expand Medicaid.

The legal campaign to undo the law continues. The Supreme Court is currently considering whether Congress’s elimination of financial penalties for most Americans who fail to obtain insurance rendered the whole law unconstitutional. But during oral arguments, at least five justices indicated they were likely to keep the law intact.

The Trump administration, which pushed the lawsuit, worked aggressively to gut the health law. President Donald J. Trump used his executive authority to make it easier for small businesses to band together and offer plans that escape some of the requirements of the Affordable Care Act, like mental health coverage and maternity care.

He also sharply cut funding for “health care navigators” to help consumers, who were left to sift through insurance options largely on their own. A survey last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that about half of those who looked for coverage during the 2020 open enrollment period encountered difficulties, and nearly five million consumers sought in-person help but were unable to get it. The Biden administration is now running television commercials promoting the open enrollment period and is spending $2.3 million to support navigator programs.

Democrats, including Mr. Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was also speaker in 2010 and was crucial to the law’s passage, were hoping to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act with much fanfare last year, but the emerging coronavirus pandemic scuttled their plans.

Instead, Mr. Obama posted a slickly produced video on his Facebook page that opened with an image of him surrounded by White House staff members rising in applause as Congress approved the legislation — a night, he said in the video, that “meant more to me than the night I was elected.” To his right, rising up beside him, was the future president, Mr. Biden.

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Business

Amazon is increasing Amazon Care telehealth service nationally for workers

Amazon is expanding Amazon Care telehealth service nationally for employees

An employee assembles a box for delivery at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 30, 2019

Clodagh Kilcoyne | Reuters

Amazon is rolling out its telehealth service known as Amazon Care for its employees in all 50 states this summer and plans to roll it out to other employers later this year.

“Amazon Benefits has been the corporate customer we’ve served so far. Now, when we look at other companies and understand their needs, we think many of the needs are similar.” Kristen Helton, director of Amazon Care, said.

Amazon Care was launched as a pilot two years ago to provide convenient, urgent care visits to Washington state employees, with free telemedicine consultations and home visits for a fee from nurses for tests and vaccinations. The program has since evolved into more of a basic service.

“We have developed the ability to treat chronic diseases. You can go to the same provider and have a nursing team so this group of clinicians really get to know you, and I would say we learn on the clinical side too, we really need the clinicians give the tools to ensure excellent care, “said Helton.

Amazon will roll out the portion of the virtual care program for its employees and other businesses nationwide this year. However, the additional personal services will initially only be offered in Washington State and near its new second headquarters in the greater Washington, DC area.

The move comes two months after Amazon announced it was closing down Haven, its joint venture with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan. Haven was touted as an incubator three years ago to improve employers’ health programs.

In the meantime, after taking over PillPack in 2018, Amazon has developed and launched its own online pharmacy. Last year, the company partnered with employer healthcare provider Crossover Health to set up personal health clinics for employees who now serve Amazon employees in 17 locations across the UK in Texas, Arizona, Kentucky, California and Michigan.

The pharmacy, employee clinics and Amazon Care are operated as independent health initiatives within Amazon. When asked if she envisions the company putting some of the services together for other employers, Helton said she “won’t speculate on how this will play out”.

Telemedicine market for employers

Amazon is targeting the employer market after telehealth increased enormously during the Covid pandemic and fueled a number of businesses in the sector over the past six months.

In October, Teladoc reached an agreement for $ 18 billion to acquire diabetes management company Livongo. Last month, Cigna’s Evernorth division announced that it would acquire the MDLive virtual care platform for an undisclosed amount. This week, privately owned telemedicine provider Dr. announced on Demand that it is merging with Grand Rounds, which provides navigation services to the healthcare sector.

“What we hear from employers is that … they are looking for platforms that can provide a range of services,” explained analyst Charles Rhyee, chief executive of Cowen & Co., adding that most telehealth professionals focus on have concentrated emergency care. “Not really tied to your overall health care. Virtual primary care is the next step.”

All three contracts focused on delivering more integrated digital health services to employers as large companies increasingly seek to make medical and mental health services more accessible, both virtually and in person.

“I think we learned that a hybrid model is probably what we’re going to end up with. Sometimes we go to the doctor’s office if there’s a procedure to do, if an imaging needs to be done, when we’re ‘I’m not sure what’s the matter with you, “said Dr. Bob Kocher, partner of the venture company Venrock, who works as a board observer at Dr. acts on demand and grand rounds. “In between, many visits are carried out virtually.”

Health insurers are also relying on the expansion of telehealth. CVS Health is piloting virtual primary care with a major employer using the Minute Clinic service, while the UnitedHealthcare division of UnitedHealth Group launched its own virtual primary care service for employers in January.

Amazon is the new kid in the employer market, but virtual basic services is also a developing business for its more established competitors who may even be a little on the field.

“Healthcare is an incredibly big space and there are many options. We see that there is room for more than one winner in this space,” said Helton.

Given Amazon’s track record of great success in retail, web services, and entertainment, investors and its healthcare competitors will be watching its moves closely.

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Clorox increasing manufacturing of disinfectant wipes amid Covid: CEO Linda Rendle

Clorox expanding production of disinfectant wipes amid Covid: CEO Linda Rendle

Linda Rendle, CEO of Clorox, told CNBC on Friday that the company had further increased the production of its disinfectant wipes to meet the increased demand from the global Covid crisis as early as the second year.

“We made about 1 million canisters of wipes in the last quarter and brought them to stores every day,” said Rendle at Closing Bell. “This quarter we have up to 1.5 million canisters per day and will continue to expand these when we bring new capacities online in the next few months.”

Consumers stocked up on various cleaning products during the pandemic, which, despite efforts to ramp up production, led to supply bottlenecks for items such as Clorox wipes. In December, Clorox chief operating officer Eric Reynolds told NBC News that the limited availability may last until “mid-2021”.

Clorox has raised its full-year revenue forecast following its quarterly report earlier this month. The company now expects revenue to grow between 10% and 13% in fiscal 2021, up from previous projections of 5% to 9% growth.

The number of coronavirus cases has been falling recently and Covid vaccines are becoming more and more accessible, leading to optimism that the acute phase of the pandemic will soon be over. For Clorox, Rendle said the rosier sales picture was partly due to a shift in people’s view of sanitation as a result of the health crisis.

“This is true here in the US, but really all over the world. People focus on cleaning and more on safety and well-being, not just on work,” said Rendle, who took over the management of the household products manufacturer in September. She had served as President of Clorox.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, a trend in the detergent industry was a quest for more sustainability and transparency. To this end, Clorox launched compostable cleaning wipes in January 2020. However, according to Rendle, production had to be halted due to Covid, as products that could be manufactured faster were given a higher priority.

“We will be bringing these compostable wipes back and we expect them to be a large part of our portfolio as we move forward,” she said.

Clorox shares fell 1.37% to $ 187.05 apiece on Friday. Based in Oakland, Calif., Its shares rose 13.5% over the past 12 months.