Tag Archives : Build House

Congress should seize opportunity to cut medication costs for consumers

Prices are on the rise on just about every category of goods and services: food, housing, and healthcare. Consumers could use a break. And while we rarely see simple, bipartisan solutions move forward, at this very moment, Washington has a vehicle that would provide immediate relief to American patients who rely on copay assistance when they get to the pharmacy counter. Congress can do something meaningful to ease the financial burdens of everyday Americans who are trying to pay for their life- saving medications.

Over the past decade, health insurance middlemen have been finding new ways to push the cost of medications onto patients by increasing deductibles and co-insurance, saving themselves billions while costs pile up for patients struggling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, insurers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) pocket the savings on brand medicines with an insider’s game of negotiated discounts, rebates, and other payments from manufacturers that they fail to pass onto patients.

Increasingly, insurers and PBMs are also refusing to count the value of copay assistance toward a patient’s deductible or out-of-pocket requirement for the plan year. Many of these patients, especially those with rare diseases where there is no generic alternative to the brand drug, depend on these medications to keep them alive. They cannot afford the drugs without copay assistance. But when insurers refuse to count this assistance toward a patient’s out-of-pocket responsibilities, these patients run into double trouble.

The process of blocking patient access to copay assistance, referred to as “copay accumulator adjustment programs,” means that patients simply cannot afford to pay for often lifesaving drugs. Too often, once a patient sees this higher price tag, they end up abandoning the medication at the counter, disrupting their treatment and getting sicker as a result.

PBMs claim that copay assistance steers patients toward pricier brand-name drugs and increases overall spending. But the data show that this argument is simply untrue. To begin with, copay assistance is not readily available to anyone who wants it. An insured patient has to meet certain criteria before they even have the opportunity to apply for copay assistance. A patient must be privately insured on a program without any federal or state funding, and they must meet with their provider to determine the proper treatment and get a written prescription. In some cases, patients must complete utilization management procedures — such as step therapy — before they can receive any assistance. In other words, there are many checks and balances to ensure copay assistance isn’t abused.

Even after patients jump through all these hoops, the data show they are not using copay assistance on pricier brand-name medications by choice. The vast majority of copay assistance is used in cases where there is no generic alternative. In fact, the use of copay assistance on brand name medications when there is a cheaper generic option make up only 0.4 percent of the entire commercial market.

There is a remedy to this untenable and dangerous situation for patients: H.R. 5801, the Help Ensure Lower Patient (HELP) Copays Act, would require health insurers to count the value of copay assistance towards patients’ annual deductible or out-of-pocket responsibility. More than 40 members of Congress across both aisles have signed on to cosponsor the legislation, which mirrors policy that more than a dozen states have already passed.

While everyday Americans are struggling to pay for gas, groceries, and a roof over their heads, Congress can help prevent insurers from exploiting their patients. Copay assistance is a vital resource for consumers who are struggling to make ends meet and manage a serious, often life-threatening disease. Congress should move quickly to provide this relief by protecting copay assistance at the pharmacy.

Sally Greenberg is the Executive Director of the National Consumers League (NCL), a leading consumer advocacy organization representing consumers and workers on marketplace and workplace issues. NCL provides transparent, annual reporting on contributions from donors — including those in the pharmaceutical industry.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden to announce steps on wildfires, extreme heat this week

The Biden administration this week will announce actions aimed at reducing wildfire risk and protecting people from extreme heat, according to a White House official.

The official said the actions Biden will announce include new resources for communities that deal with extreme heat and new initiatives that expand access to “more affordable sources of clean energy” in an email to The Hill. 

The administration will also announce investments through the bipartisan infrastructure law to help “eliminate the backlog of reforestation needs” and help communities plan for and mitigate wildfire risk. 

The Agriculture Department on Monday said that it would use resources from that law to try to eliminate the backlog during the next 10 years. The White House official said the administration will announce additional steps related to wildfires this week. 

The upcoming actions were previously reported by E&E News.

The steps come after the spotlight shifted to the Biden administration on climate action after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) backed away from climate talks in the Senate. 

Biden last week announced steps related to expanding offshore wind energy and heat funding, adding his administration would announce additional executive actions aimed at climate change “in the coming days.”

But many climate advocates described last week’s steps as insufficient and are likely to view the latest steps in a similar light. 

Several progressives have called on Biden to declare a climate change emergency. Last week, Biden said that the issue was an “emergency” but stopped short of a formal declaration that would unlock additional climate powers.

The official did not respond to The Hill’s question about whether a decision had been made on whether to declare a climate emergency.

The news also comes as communities in the U.S. and around the world deal with extreme heat and raging wildfires.

Source: TEST FEED1

Fauci holds up BA.5 booster as best approach to handling COVID this fall

Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said on Monday that a COVID-19 vaccine booster specific to the BA.5 omicron subvariant — which is currently dominant in the U.S. — is the “best guess” for dealing with the virus this fall amid the ever-evolving coronavirus pandemic.

Appearing on Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Fauci reiterated that it is difficult to predict how SARS-CoV-2 will mutate and noted that the U.S. is currently in a “BA.5 mode,” with roughly 80 percent of cases caused by the subvariant.

The BA.5 subvariant is able to better evade the immune protections offered by vaccines and prior infections than other strains. Its rise has led health experts to call for the development of next-generation COVID-19 vaccines that would be “variant proof.”

Both Pfizer and Moderna have said they are working on BA.5 specific boosters that should be ready by teh fall.

Fauci said the FDA will likely authorize these updated boosters heading into the fall, adding that they would be bivalent vaccines, meaning that they would target both BA.5 along with the ancestral strain of COVID-19.

“That’s a pretty good estimation of what we will be seeing in the fall,” said Fauci. “There’s always the possibility that you’re going to have the evolution of another variant and hopefully if that occurs it will vary off from the BA.5 only slightly in the sense of being a sub-sub-lineage of it and not something entirely different.”

When dealing with what he described a “moving target,” Fauci said this approach was the “best guess” as the U.S. heads into the fall, a time when some experts have predicted the U.S. will see another surge in cases.

The most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that cases have begun to rise in recent weeks.

Fauci also reflected on other aspects of the pandemic while on Hill.TV:

• At this point in the pandemic, he said the data was clear that “high quality” and “well fitted” masks were effective at preventing the transmission and acquisition of viruses. He specifically pointed to N96 an KN95 masks as examples of effective protection.
• He still keeps an open mind to criticisms and comments after more than 40 years in government work, saying, “I always take criticism seriously, analyze it and see if there’s anything I can learn and do better from the criticism. Sometimes it’s outlandish but sometimes there’s a kernel of truth in that.”
• Fauci also pushed back again on speculation that the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) might have funded gain-of-function research that could be liked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• “Any card-carrying virologist who knows about viral evolution will tell you that it would be molecularly impossible for those viruses that were worked on to be turned into SARS-CoV-2 by accident or by intent,” said Fauci. “They are evolutionarily so far from SARS-CoV-2 that that would be impossible. Yet when you talk about research that was funded by the NIH people make an inappropriate conflation of those experiments with SARS-CoV-2.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Quit governing by gang

Too many bills these days are crafted without any committee process or refining amendments. Some legislation clocks in at upwards of hundreds or even thousands of pages, negotiated by the select few, and released a few hours before votes with an urgent message of “this must pass now.” Ironically, they often bypass the committee and amendment process altogether and rank-and-file members sit around for days while Senate leadership negotiates a time agreement rather than simply starting the floor process.

This governance by gang flies in the face of what constituents expect and what our Founding Fathers envisioned when they established Congress. There’s a reason we learn about the Great Compromise — a bicameral legislature — in civics classes. Our Founding Fathers intentionally divided Congress into two distinct institutions with representation based on each state’s population in the House of Representatives and equal representation in the Senate. All members are also assigned to specific committees to carry out the duties assigned to them. This gang version of legislating completely neuters the committee process, silencing in the process the voice of the elected representatives in entire states and legislative districts. To be clear, I have actively participated in many of these discussions. I have appreciated the dialogue — supporting some of the work product and passing on others — but I have consistently opposed letting those discussions be an end run around committees. 

Take the bipartisan infrastructure bill as a recent example. Thanks to the leadership and cooperation of Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), we debated and unanimously passed the largest highway bill reauthorization in history and substantial clean water infrastructure legislation in the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee. Committee leadership was running point on negotiations. Then out of left field, a bipartisan gang of senators appeared and completely undercut the process. In the end, they virtually copy and pasted EPW’s work, supplemented their other priorities, and then handed the product back to Carper and Capito to navigate on the floor. I worked with them to make the final product a win for North Dakota, but the model follows poor precedent that unfortunately continues to be replicated today. 

Not all gangs succeed. In fact, they often fail. Remember the 2013 Gang of 8? They famously passed immigration reform in the Senate only to see it blow up in the House of Representatives.   

Earlier this month, five members of the Senate Finance Committee raised concerns over a recent privately negotiated bill on insulin prices. They’re not asking for much, merely requesting the proposed bill be refined by committee before it is brought to the Senate floor.

Following regular order should not need an appeal to committee leadership. Committee hearings and markups are the protocol Congress has been following for the past 245 years of our representative republic. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is a rare bright spot. Although it’s sometimes used as a pawn and floor time is neglected for months at a time, each year it is crafted and amended in committee and successfully passed through regular order on the floor. 

We are over halfway through Fiscal Year 2022 and not one of the dozen appropriations bills has been called up in the Senate Appropriations Committee. The last time Congress passed all 12 appropriations bills was in 1996. Today, we resort to rushed continuing resolution and omnibus monstrosities to avoid government shutdowns.

At an event celebrating the publications of the great North Dakotan and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s (R-Texas) recent memoir, Armey spoke exactly to the situation we find ourselves in time and again these days:

“Now I look at the Congress today and I feel bad… I’ve seen Republican Speakers who have fallen by the wayside and I can say I believe it is for one simple reason only – they left the structure behind. They got ahead of the body. They failed to respect each and every Member and their right to participate. And then they would come to the floor with a product that had not been seen or worked on by members at large and try to bully it into passage. It’s a heartbreaking thing to watch.”

This is not an enigma. There’s a recipe, roadmap, cheat sheet — whatever you want to call it — readily available.

Following regular order by writing bills, holding hearings, marking up in committee, amending on the Senate floor, and reconciling in a conference committee inherently leads to better products. These products have buy-in from elected members of Congress who are accountable to their voters.

In a recent Supreme Court decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch said, “Admittedly, lawmaking under our Constitution can be difficult. But that is nothing particular to our time nor any accident.” He is right, but too often Congress resorts to expediency instead of excellence.

Legislating can be messy and it can be hard, but it is by design, and I for one did not ask North Dakotans for this job to shirk the work they hired me to do. It’s time for Congress to return to regular order and quit governing by gang. 

Cramer is the junior senator from North Dakota. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Vegan egg product sold in 5 states recalled due to listeria risk

ALAMEDA, Calif. (WXIN) — A vegan egg product is being recalled due to a possible listeria health risk.

The Food and Drug Administration said the recall involves JUST Egg Chopped Spring Greens. While the recalled lots tested negative for listeria, another lot that shares ingredients has tested positive.

While the lot that tested positive has not been released to the public, the company is recalling the other lots as a precaution. So far, no illnesses have been reported in connection with the products.

The product was distributed to a select number of retail stores in Arizona, California, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas.

Products subject to the voluntary recall are identified by Use By Dates and Lot numbers:

What is Listeria?

Listeria monocytogenes is a bacterium that can cause the serious infection listeriosis. It can also cause common food poisoning symptoms.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says around 1,600 people get listeriosis every year, resulting in about 260 deaths. It is most likely to sicken pregnant women and their newborns, adults 65 and older, and people with weakened immune systems.

What are the symptoms of invasive listeriosis?

Invasive listeriosis happens when the bacteria spread beyond the gut to other parts of the body. Symptoms usually start within two weeks after eating food contaminated with listeria.

Symptoms in pregnant people are usually mild, with some never showing symptoms. However, the CDC says, infection during pregnancy commonly results in miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery, or life-threatening infection in the newborn.

In non-pregnant people, the CDC says, symptoms can be severe, with almost 1 in 20 people with invasive listeriosis dying.

Source: TEST FEED1

More baked goods recalled due to potential presence of hard plastic pieces

CHICAGO (WXIN) – More baked goods are being recalled after an investigation into a previous recall uncovered more impacted products.

The Food and Drug Administration said the recall involves baked goods from Enjoy Life Natural Brands, LLC. In June, the company recalled several of its baked goods due to the potential presence of hard plastic pieces.

The company said an internal investigation made them aware of another product and additional best-by dates for four other products that are being recalled.

Anyone with the recalled products should throw them away, but keep the packaging. They can contact the company at 1-855-543-5335 to get more information about the recall and how to get a refund. Consumer Relations specialists are available Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST.

The following products are subject to recall:

The products were sold in retail stores and online in the United States.

Source: TEST FEED1

'Hidden' COVID fatalities show US death investigations need reform

Official COVID-19 death counts reveal that more than 1 million deaths have occurred as a result of the pandemic. This number, however, is an undercount. Analyses of excess mortality — a tool used to assess the true mortality impact of the pandemic — have found that more than 170,000 deaths were hidden from official COVID-19 death statistics between 2020 and 2021.  

These hidden deaths reflect a mixture of uncounted COVID-19 deaths and deaths that were indirectly related to the pandemic. COVID-19 deaths go uncounted when the coronavirus contributes to a death, but the death is assigned to a cause such as heart disease, respiratory disease, dementia or diabetes without any mention of COVID on the death certificate. This absence is contrary to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, which state that death certificates should list COVID-19 whenever the coronavirus was a factor in the death.  

Not all hidden deaths are directly related to the SARS-Cov-2 virus. Increases in external causes of death — like drug poisonings, homicides and unintentional injuries — reflect the devastating effects of the pandemic on social and economic wellbeing. And some of the increases in deaths from natural causes like heart disease and diabetes also stem from the pandemic indirectly, such as when patients avoided hospitals because they feared infection or when health care was delayed in overcrowded hospitals. Nonetheless, evidence is mounting that many of the hidden deaths across the U.S. represent uncounted COVID-19 deaths that the coronavirus directly caused or contributed to. 

For example, investigative reporting has found significant irregularities in death certification practices across the U.S., especially in rural areas and across the South, where a higher proportion of COVID-19 deaths go uncounted. There is also concern that COVID-19 deaths have been hidden in communities with more Black residents, indicating a potential pattern of structural racism in the death investigation system. 

Multiple systemic failures have contributed to the current undercounting of COVID-19 deaths. Like other aspects of the U.S. public health system, death reporting processes are decentralized. Who bears responsibility for a death certificate depends on where the death occurs — whether in a hospital or at home, as well as whether it occurs in counties that employ medical examiners or counties that rely on coroners. Once initial causes are recorded, the National Center for Health Statistics attempts to impose uniform standards in constructing a final set of causes, but all they have to work from is whatever was recorded by the death certifier. Due to this patchwork approach, inaccuracies occur in different ways in different settings. 

Physicians, who typically fill out death certificates in the hospital setting, can sometimes lack the appropriate knowledge of their patients to accurately assign cause-of-death. Outside of the medical setting, death certifiers, most often coroners, lack access to patient history or post-mortem COVID-19 tests, making it difficult to certify deaths. Most coroners have no medical training, and unlike medical examiners, they are not forensic pathologists. Coroners’ offices also lack resources to investigate potential COVID-19 deaths in-person and often rely on information that families communicate to them. Some families, who have partisan views about COVID-19, may be unlikely to have pursued COVID-19 testing or to report a COVID-19 diagnosis.  

And coroners, because they are elected, can have their own partisan bias. For example, a Missouri coroner is on record saying that he “doesn’t do COVID deaths.” In California, many coroners are also sheriffs, which presents a conflict of interest.  

Early in the pandemic, the clinical manifestations of COVID-19 were unclear, and unfamiliar complications may have confused death certifiers. COVID-19 testing has also remained limited in many parts of the country. Rural residents in particular often live far away from the hospital, and their hospitals tend to have reduced capacity, resulting in lower testing rates. Testing rates are also lower in areas that have more people living with comorbidities such as hypertension, obesity and diabetes. This suggests that COVID-19 deaths in these areas may have gone unrecognized and instead been assigned to causes related to the comorbidities.  

Undercounts of COVID-19 deaths changed how we responded and will continue to change how we respond to the pandemic. 

Local and national government agencies use COVID-19 death statistics to inform the allocation of resources for prevention and mitigation efforts. Incomplete data can lead to incorrect policy decisions. Simply put, you can’t fix what you don’t count. Also, people make behavioral decisions based on their perception of COVID-19 risk. When deaths are undercounted, people may think their community is safer than it is and be less likely to get a vaccine or booster shot, wear a mask, or physically distance. Additionally, families whose loved ones’ deaths go unrecognized can lose out financially. FEMA has a funeral assistance program for families who have lost loved ones to COVID-19. One of the eligibility criteria, however, is that COVID-19 is listed on the deceased’s death certificate. Death certifiers who are undercounting COVID-19 deaths are excluding families from this program.

Reforms to the death investigation system are urgently needed. In 2009, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine produced detailed recommendations about how to modernize this system. These proposals include federal funding to convert coroner systems to medical examiners and for training forensic pathologists, the establishment of a national working group to promote best practices in death certification, and accreditation requirements for all death certifiers. But these ideas will simply remain proposals on paper unless they are raised to the attention of federal policymakers and significant resources are devoted to implementing them. 

The death investigation system’s inaccuracies have hindered our response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Modernizing this system is one of the most important steps we can take to improve our public health infrastructure and prepare for the next pandemic.

Andrew C. Stokes, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Global Health at the Boston University School of Public Health. Dielle J. Lundberg is a research fellow in the Boston University School of Public Health. Elizabeth Wrigley-Field is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Former Google executive to join White House cyber office: report

The White House has hired a former Google executive to focus on workforce programs and supply chain security issues at the Office of the National Cyber Director, Axios reported on Monday.

Camille Stewart Gloster, who starts on Aug. 1, will serve as the deputy national cyber director for technology and ecosystem security, according to the news outlet.

“It is truly an honor to return to public service under Director [Chris] Inglis’s leadership,” Gloster said in a statement acquired by Axios. 

“And I know, as an organization, we will work tirelessly to bring to bear our greatest resource — the diversity of the American people — to better understand and secure the socio-technical environment and make cyberspace reflect the values and ambitions we hold for it,” she added. 

Gloster previously led Google’s global product security strategy.

She also served under the Obama administration as a senior cyber policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security. 

Gloster is the latest hire to join the cyber office. In May, the White House announced that it was expanding the bureau with three new hires, including a former Microsoft executive and a former CIA official.

Her appointment also follows the White House Cyber Workforce and Education Summit held last week during which participants, including Inglis, pledged to improve diversity in the cyber field and build a national cyber workforce and education strategy.

The push for more diversity in the cyber workforce spreads beyond the White House. Federal agencies such as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have also been pushing for those efforts. 

CISA Director Jen Easterly told FedScoop last year that her agency needed to prioritize closing its own diversity gap.

“I believe we need to do everything we can to ensure our cyber workforce reflects the diversity of America because diversity of gender, ethnicity, education, sexual orientation, neurodiversity – all of that translates into diversity of thought and enables better problem-solving,” Easterly said at the time. 

The Hill has reached out to the Office of the National Cyber Director for a comment.

Source: TEST FEED1

Another Republican senator announces opposition to same-sex marriage bill

Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) on Monday announced he is opposed to federal legislation that would protect the right to same-sex marriage, joining Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in speaking out against a bill passed by the House last week.

Daines, the junior senator for Montana, said in a statement that he believes “marriage is between a man and a woman” and that the push to pass the Respect for Marriage Act is a ploy from Democrats and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

“I’m opposed to this bill and believe it’s another attempt by Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats to distract the American people from the inflation crisis, energy crisis and the southern border crisis they’ve created,” Daines said.

His announcement follows a highly publicized spat between Rubio, who last week said the Respect for Marriage Act was a “stupid waste of time,” and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Buttigieg, the first openly LGBTQ+ Cabinet secretary to be approved by the Senate, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that he wasn’t sure why Republicans would be against codifying same-sex marriage into federal law.

“I don’t understand, because such a majority of House Republicans voted no on our marriage on as recently as Tuesday, hours after I was in a room with a lot of them talking about transportation policy,” the Transportation secretary said, “having what I thought were perfectly normal conversations with many of them on that subject, only for them to go around the corner and say that my marriage doesn’t deserve to continue.”

The House passed the Respect for Marriage Act last week after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade and the nearly 50-year constitutional right to abortion in June.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas said he wanted to reconsider the right to same-sex marriage, which the court established as a constitutional right in 2015. Thomas’s opinion alarmed Democrats and human rights activists.

The Respect for Marriage Act — which would repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that federally defined marriage as between a man and a woman — earned the support of 47 House Republicans last week, but chances of similar legislation clearing the evenly divided senate are a toss-up.

The Senate would need at least 10 Republicans to support the legislation in order for it to pass the chamber.

While polls show a broad majority of Americans support the right to same-sex marriage, more hard-line social conservatives view marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

Multiple Republican senators told The Hill they had not made their minds up on how they would vote on legislation codifying the right to same-sex marriage.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), however, has spoken out against giving Americans the broad right to same-sex marriage, arguing on his podcast “Verdict with Ted Cruz” earlier this month that the issue should be left to the states.

Source: TEST FEED1

Hulu won't run Democrats' ads on abortion, guns

Democratic campaign groups are slamming the Disney-owned streaming service Hulu for what they say is its refusal to run ads on the crucial midterm election issues of abortion and gun safety.

The streaming service did not run ads submitted last week by the Democratic campaign groups and has failed to give the groups a clear reason why, according to a national Democratic Party official. 

The platform’s rejection of the ads was first reported by The Washington Post.

In a joint statement, the executive directors of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and the Democratic Governors’ Association (DGA) said Hulu’s “censorship of truth is outrageous, offensive, and another step down a dangerous path for our country.” 

“Voters have the right to know the facts about MAGA Republicans’ agenda on issues like abortion – and Hulu is doing a huge disservice to the American people by blocking voters from learning the truth about the GOP record or denying these issues from even being discussed,” they said. 

The DSCC, DCCC, an DGA on July 15 submitted ads about the GOP’s record on abortion and gun safety laws to Hulu, as well as a Disney-owned ABC affiliate in Philadelphia and the company’s sports channel ESPN. Placement for the ads was also on Facebook, YouTube, Roku and NBC/Universal, according to the national Democratic Party official. 

A few days later, the ads went live across Facebook, YouTube, Roku, NBC and broadcast and cable TV but not on Hulu, without any additional information from the service about whether the ad had been approved or not. When asked for clarification, the Democrats’ vendors were told it was “content related,” according to the party official. 

The committees say they did not get an answer from Hulu throughout the last and calls and emails from a lawyer for the committees to Hulu went unanswered. On Thursday, Hulu said it would accept the ad, but followed up to say the message had been sent in error, according to the National Democratic party official. 

A spokesperson for Hulu did not respond to a request for comment from The Hill. 

The company also declined to comment to the Post through a spokesperson. A person familiar with Hulu’s policy who requested anonymity told the Post the company does not publicly disclose its advertising guidelines, but it prohibits advertising that takes a position on a controversial issue regardless of whether it is a political ad. 

The person told the Post that the ads are reviewed on a case-by-case basis. 

This is not the first time Democrats have run into the issue of Hulu for rejecting ads about abortion. 

Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.) slammed the platform in May for rejecting her ad about the issue. 

Hulu also rejected an ad from New York Democratic Congressional candidate Suraj Patel that mentioned abortion rights, Jezebel reported. The platform reportedly asked the campaign to remove at least one of three “sensitive” issues mentioned, including abortion, climate change and gun laws.

Source: TEST FEED1