Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest...

The Top Three...

Fierce Healthcare: Trump Signs $1.2T Spending Package That Funds HHS, Enacts PBM Reforms, Telehealth And Hospital-At-Home Measures President Donald Trump on Tuesday afternoon signed a massive funding package that ends a brief government shutdown and provides full-year funding for the federal government through the end of the year. The House voted earlier in the day to pass the package by a vote of 217-214. (Landi and Muoio, 2/3)

The Wall Street Journal: Negotiators Say Talks To Restore ACA Subsidies Likely Dead Top Senate negotiators said an effort to renew expired healthcare subsidies had effectively collapsed, likely ending the hopes of 20 million Americans that the tax-credit expansion could be revived and lower their monthly insurance premiums. Talks had centered on a proposal from Sens. Bernie Moreno (R., Ohio) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) to extend a version of the enlarged Affordable Care Act subsidies for at least two years, while cutting off higher-income people from participating and eventually giving enrollees the option of putting money into health savings accounts. It also would eliminate zero-dollar premium plans. But lawmakers from both parties now say the chances of a deal have all but evaporated. “It’s effectively over,” Moreno said Wednesday. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R., La.)—the architect of an adjacent plan—agreed. While Collins declined to be as definitive, she did say that it was “certainly difficult.” (Hughes and Bhutani, 2/4)

The Hill: Trump Cuts $1.5B In Health, Transport From Blue States The Trump administration is rescinding a total of $1.5 billion in health and transportation funds from multiple blue states, a spokesperson for the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) confirmed Thursday. The OMB directed the Transportation Department to rescind $943 million from Colorado, Illinois, California and Minnesota, and it directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to rescind $602 million from those states. (Frazin, 2/5)

For a Deeper Dive...

KFF Health News: With ICE Using Medicaid Data, Hospitals And States Are In A Bind Over Warning Immigrant Patients The Trump administration’s move to give deportation officials access to Medicaid data is putting hospitals and states in a bind as they weigh whether to alert immigrant patients that their personal information, including home addresses, could be used in efforts to remove them from the country. Warning patients could deter them from signing up for a program called Emergency Medicaid, through which the government reimburses hospitals for the cost of emergency treatment for immigrants who are ineligible for standard Medicaid coverage. (Galewitz and Seitz, 2/6)

Modern Healthcare: ICHRA Market Growth May Hit Headwinds As ACA Premiums Spike The next big thing in health insurance might be stymied by the last big thing in health insurance. Insurers such as Centene and Oscar Health and venture capital-backed startups have been aggressively promoting individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements, or ICHRAs, as a solution to rising employer health benefit costs over the past several years. But while companies like those are outwardly confident about the market’s prospects, there’s reason to believe they should be more worried. (Tong, 2/4)

Politico: Democrats Just Handed RFK Jr. Billions More Than He Asked For. It Was A Big Risk Democrats counted it as a win Tuesday when President Donald Trump signed a law providing $20 billion more for the agency that is the world’s largest health research funder than Trump requested. Democrats’ victory could prove pyrrhic. Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and his National Institutes of Health director, Jay Bhattacharya, have promised to spend the money, but not necessarily on projects Democrats will like. (Hooper, 2/3)

MedPage Today: NIH Chief Details Plans for Modernization at Senate Hearing The NIH must be structurally overhauled to deliver more cures, spend taxpayer dollars more wisely, and regain public trust, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, said Tuesday during a Senate hearing on modernizing the agency. In the wide-ranging Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing, Bhattacharya outlined his plan to make NIH more accountable, better coordinated, and more focused on measurable impact for patients. (McCreary, 2/3)

For the Visual Among Us...

A few years ago I started a weekly e-mail for friends and colleagues who want to keep up on major federal health policy developments but did not have time to plod through all the minutiae--they were busy doing important things like running organizations and taking care of patients! Much to my surprise, it became pretty popular. I have now converted to a weekly newsletter format so you can manage your own subscription preferences and forward to others that might be interested.

These summaries represent my judgement on health policy issues that may not on the front pages, but are relevant to clinicians, administrators, and educators. I monitor many news sources and clipping services to identify content for this newsletter and I try hard to be as factual, balanced, and non-partisan as possible. While the articles are written by others (with credit attributed), the choice of what to include is entirely mine. If you are interested in receiving a daily summary of health policy news, you might consider signing up for the KHN Morning Briefing. If you enjoy podcasts, I suggest What the Health? and Tradeoffs.

-Gregg S. Margolis, PhD