Overnight Health Care — Presented by Purdue Pharma — White House pressed on pre-existing conditions | Doctors group seeks scrutiny into insulin prices | FDA could require labeling for sesame allergy

Welcome to Monday’s edition of Overnight Health Care, where Peter and Nate are celebrating the Red Sox winning the World Series (again).

Sanders asked how Trump is protecting pre-existing conditions

The Hill’s White House reporter Jordan Fabian asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders today about how to square President Trump’s claims that Republicans are protecting people with pre-existing conditions with the lawsuit backed by the Trump administration to overturn those protections. 

Her response: “The president’s health care plan that he’s laid out covers pre-existing conditions,” Sanders said. “The president wants to lower premiums to make healthcare more affordable. Nobody will be charged higher premiums if they keep their coverage and nobody will be denied coverage under the president.”

A couple notes:  

1. Sanders did not address part of the question on the lawsuit the administration is supporting.

2. “Nobody will be charged higher premiums if they keep their coverage,” is an accurate description of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), the House Republican ObamaCare repeal bill from last year. But what Sanders did not mention is that if people do have gaps in coverage for more than 63 days, they can have their premiums raised for a pre-existing condition if they live in a state that chooses to allow that.

And that’s the provision that has put Republicans on the defensive in the midterm elections.

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Physician group urges FTC to monitor insulin pricing

The American Medical Association wants the Federal Trade Commission to take action against drug companies they say are contributing to high prices for insulin.

In a letter to FTC Chairman Joseph Simons, the AMA said physicians are concerned that the rapid rise in the price of insulin for patients is unrelated to the actual costs of research, development, commercialization, or production.

“While a variety of complicated factors contribute to increases in insulin prices, we remain concerned that anticompetitive behavior by manufacturers and pharmaceutical benefit managers (PBMs) could be one of them,” AMA wrote.

Rising insulin costs have drawn outrage from diabetes advocates and physicians, leading to calls for greater transparency and federal oversight of the market for a drug that helps more than 7 million Americans.

High insulin prices impact stakeholders throughout the health care system, but the consequences fall most heavily on patients, AMA wrote.

Read more here.

FDA takes step toward requiring allergy labels for sesame

More disclosure could be on the way to help people with sesame allergies.

The request for information from the FDA on Monday came in response to growing concerns about the prevalence of allergies to sesame seeds, which are currently not among the major allergens that are required to be disclosed on food ingredient lists.

Unfortunately, we’re beginning to see evidence that sesame allergies may be a growing concern in the U.S.,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.

“Fear of not knowing whether a food contains sesame may lead some people to unnecessarily limit their diets to avoid possible exposure,” he continued.

Currently, allergy labeling is only required for milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soybeans.

But the FDA could move to add sesame to that list.

Read more here.

What we’re reading

Show us the drug prices, the Campaign for Sustainable Rx Pricing writes (Washington Examiner)

These Republicans are misleading voters about our ObamaCare fact checks (Washington Post)

Republicans abandon strategy of highlighting ObamaCare’s losers (Washington Examiner)

State by state

Arizona Rep. Martha McSally: ‘I’m getting my ass kicked’ on vote to repeal ‘Obamacare’ (Arizona Republic)

Anti-abortion conservative running for Texas Legislature shares story of her three abortions (Dallas News)

Ninth child dies in New Jersey facility suffering adenovirus outbreak (ABC News)

From The Hill’s opinion page:

Open enrollment 2018: Getting better, but needs improvement