Good morning. I’m Stephanie Armour, a D.C.-based senior correspondent for KFF Health News covering health policy and the people behind it. Send tips to sarmour@kff.org.
Key voting bloc focuses on Harris’s work on health-care issues
Vice President Kamala Harris, now on the presidential campaign trail, is making inroads with a key voting bloc: Black women, who are rallying behind her because of her work on issues such as preserving abortion access, curbing gun violence and reducing maternal deaths.
What has become clear is not just that this voting group supports her — but the intensity of that support. Eighty-two percent of Black women voters had a favorable view of Harris in August, according to the Pew Research Center, up from 67 percent who said the same in May.
Almost 70 percent of this demographic in August also said they were extremely or very motivated to vote, according to Pew, up from 51 percent before she announced her candidacy in July.
Jotaka Eaddy, a political strategist and founder of Win With Black Women, a network of Black women leaders, said the support is leading more younger Black women to register to vote. That could drive turnout and help Democrats. Some 16 million Black women are eligible to vote and 67 percent of them are registered, based on data from Higher Heights, a group focused on mobilizing and electing Black women.
Abortion, IVF: Harris has made abortion access a centerpiece of her presidential campaign. She recently said she would support changing Senate filibuster rules, lowering the threshold to advance a bill from 60 votes to a simple majority, for legislation to protect abortion access.
A number of issues Harris has worked on resonate with Black women voters, as well as women voters overall, Eaddy said, “particularly the issue of reproductive freedom, like IVF, and making decisions about our health care.”
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, as well as Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump have vowed to protect in vitro fertilization. In August, Trump said he wants the federal government or insurers to pay for the treatments.
But Trump has struggled with his messaging on abortion, saying decisions about restrictions on the procedure should be left to the states.
Maternal mortality: Harris in 2021 issued a call to action to reduce high U.S. maternal mortality rates, building on her previous work. As a senator from California from 2017 to 2021, she co-sponsored a package of bills to boost maternal health, with a focus on Black women.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says Black women are three times as likely to die of pregnancy-related complications as White women.
Trump in 2018 signed legislation to reduce the maternal mortality rate.
Guns: Harris’s work on reducing gun violence has also found traction with Black women. She is a gun owner but has said she wants to reinstate an assault weapons ban and supports safe storage laws and universal background checks.
Trump is a vocal supporter of gun rights. As president in 2017, he reversed a controversial Obama administration regulation making it harder for people with mental health issues to purchase guns.
Eighty-four percent of Black women favor Harris on gun reform over Trump, according to a 2024 poll conducted for the Highland Project, a women-led coalition focused on creating multigenerational wealth in Black communities.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism.
Election watch
Harris’s doctor says she’s in ‘excellent health’ as campaign seeks contrast with Trump
Harris’s campaign released a letter from her doctor on Saturday stating that the 59-year-old “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency,” The Post’s Yasmeen Abutaleb and Fenit Nirappil report.
The letter, from Joshua R. Simmons, Harris’s physician for the past 3½ years, described her April physical as “unremarkable.” The vice president has seasonal allergies, mild nearsightedness and urticaria, a common skin condition that can cause itchy, raised bumps or welts on the skin, he noted.
The bigger picture: Harris released the medical letter as her campaign seeks to draw more attention to the health and age of her opponent, 78-year-old Trump, framing them as liabilities to his ability to serve as commander in chief, according to a senior Harris aide.
Trump, who is the oldest person to become a presidential nominee after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race this summer, has long guarded even basic health information. Following the release of Harris’s letter, Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung pointed to the former president’s busy schedule as proof of his vitality and rigor, but offered no specifics about his health.
“It’s obvious that his team, at least, does not want the American people to see everything about who he is,” Harris told the media on Saturday.
In other news from the campaign trail …
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) is defending the GOP’s oft-criticized health-care record by talking about his own family’s experience with the Affordable Care Act, our colleagues Dan Diamond and Isaac Stanley-Becker report.
“Members of my family actually got private health insurance, at least, for the first time … under Donald Trump’s leadership,” Vance said at this month’s vice-presidential debate, repeating a line he’s used on the stump.
Vance was referring to his mother, who relied on Medicaid while battling substance abuse and later purchased private coverage through the ACA’s insurance marketplace after becoming financially stable, a campaign spokesman told The Post. He was also invoking a cousin in Florida who obtained private insurance for the first time through the state’s marketplace.
A closer look at the messaging: Vance frames his family’s experience as evidence of Trump’s stewardship of the nation’s health-care markets, a view shared by some conservatives who credit the former president with stabilizing the ACA after GOP repeal efforts failed in 2017.
But to many health policy experts, Vance’s story highlights something different: the benefits of Obamacare, even for its critics, and Trump’s audacity in trying to take credit for a system crafted and defended by President Barack Obama and Democrats at great political cost.
In the courts
Texas man abandons suit against women he claimed helped ex-wife get abortion
A Texas man has dropped his wrongful death lawsuit against three women accused of helping his ex-wife obtain abortion pills after multiple state courts refused to compel the defendants to provide additional information, The Post’s Caroline Kitchener reports.
The lawsuit, filed in Galveston County in March 2023, claimed that helping someone obtain an abortion qualifies as murder under the state’s homicide law and the abortion ban that took effect shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The man, Marcus Silva, was seeking at least $1 million in damages from each of the defendants.
Why it matters: Abortion rights groups are declaring victory in the case, which is the first to target those who help facilitate a medication abortion in a state where the procedure is illegal.
“This was a very high-profile attempt to use the civil justice system to go after abortion pill distribution … and it failed,” said David Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University who specializes in abortion issues. If the case had gone forward, he added, “it could have sent a message to people obtaining pills … that they are at risk.”
Agency alert
FDA to reconsider restrictions on compounded Eli Lilly weight-loss drugs
The FDA will reconsider its decision to remove tirzepatide, the active ingredient in Eli Lilly’s blockbuster weight-loss and diabetes drugs, from its shortage list.
In court filings Friday, the agency said it won’t take action against compounding pharmacies that sell cheaper, off-brand versions of Mounjaro and Zepbound until its review is complete.
Key context: The decision follows a lawsuit filed last week by the Outsourcing Facilities Association, a compounding industry group. The complaint accuses the FDA of prematurely lifting tirzepatide’s shortage designation, citing warnings from both Eli Lilly and the agency that consumers may still face local supply disruptions. The lawsuit claims the federal regulator’s action was “arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law.”
After the FDA’s announcement, U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman in Fort Worth put the trade group’s lawsuit on hold.
In other news from the agencies …
- The FDA has declared shortages of three intravenous products manufactured at Baxter International’s North Carolina plant, which is temporarily closed due to damage from Hurricane Helene. The designation allows hospitals and compounding pharmacies to mix up their own versions of the drugs.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is testing samples of the bird flu to ensure the nation’s vaccine stockpile remains effective against recent viral mutations. Since April, the agency has confirmed 20 human cases of the virus.
- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized a rule establishing a new appeals process for Medicare beneficiaries whose status is changed from inpatient to outpatient observation during a hospital stay.
Health reads
Sugar rush
@washingtonpost Amazon to EXPAND prescription delivery. The move would see the largest online retailer in the United States compete more directly with pharmacy retailers like CVS and Walgreens. Next year, Amazon customers in 20 cities — including Dallas, Minneapolis and Philadelphia — will be able to get Amazon Pharmacy medications delivered by the company, Amazon Pharmacy VP Hannah McClellan Richards said Wednesday. And a growing number of those deliveries will be completed within less than 24 hours, the company said.Richards said Amazon will double the number of cities with same-day delivery of medications next year, in part by building pharmacies in existing same-day delivery facilities that are “integrated directly into Amazon’s core logistics network.”
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