Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

The Top Three...

With so much going on, if you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest...

AP: Senate OKs Enhanced Benefits For Vets Exposed To Burn Pits The bill is projected to increase federal spending by about $283 billion over 10 years and does not include offsetting spending cuts or tax increases to help pay for it. The House in March approved similar legislation that would have cost more than $320 billion over 10 years. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said after Senate passage that the House would “move swiftly” to take up the legislation and send it to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. Biden has encouraged the effort. In a statement after the vote, Biden said the bill “makes good on our sacred obligation to care for veterans, their families, caregivers, and survivors.” He urged the House to act quickly “so I can sign it into law right away.” (Freking, 6/16)

The Washington Post: Congressional Covid Funding Deal Appears ‘Dead’ After GOP Criticism A congressional deal for billions of dollars in additional coronavirus funding appeared all but dead Thursday after Senate Republicans accused the White House of being dishonest about the nation’s pandemic funding needs. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who brought the Senate close to a bipartisan $10 billion covid funding deal in March, said the Biden administration had provided “patently false” information about its inability to buy additional vaccines, treatments and supplies. He cited a newly announced White House plan to repurpose some existing funds to cover the country’s most pressing vaccine and treatment needs. (Diamond, 6/16)

NBC News: Senate Gun Group Eyes Finish Line As 'Boyfriend Loophole' Remains A Big Hurdle The four U.S. senators leading negotiations on a gun deal met for hours in a Senate basement Thursday in pursuit of a final agreement, but emerged with one major unresolved issue. The meeting among Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., did not yield a resolution on how to close the "boyfriend loophole" involving gun rights for abusive partners. (Kapur, Tsirkin and Thorp V, 6/16)

For a Deeper Dive...

The Hill: White House Faces Uphill Challenge Getting Kids Under 5 Vaccinated The Biden administration faces an uphill battle to convince parents to give COVID-19 shots to children under 5 years old. ... Officials have outlined a plan that includes partnering with the online What to Expect community, as well as a range of national organizations, including a “speaker’s bureau” of pediatricians and family physicians who will be able to answer questions about the shots at community events. Vaccines will be distributed across thousands of different sites, but the administration will focus on front-line providers including pediatricians and primary care doctors, as that is where they expect many families will want to go. (Weixel, 6/12)

Modern Healthcare: AMA To Fight Legislation Expanding Scope Of Practice The American Medical Association pledged to fight legislation that expands mid-level providers' autonomy. Under a new policy proposal adopted Tuesday by the AMA House of Delegates, the trade group will support research on the cost and quality of nurse practitioners, physician assistants and other advanced practice practitioners caring for patients without a doctor's supervision. The association will help craft state legislation to oppose laws that expand the scope of practice for non-physicians and to reverse such laws that already exist. (Kim Cohen, 6/14)

KHN: 100 Million People In America Are Saddled With Health Care Debt Elizabeth Woodruff drained her retirement account and took on three jobs after she and her husband were sued for nearly $10,000 by the New York hospital where his infected leg was amputated. Ariane Buck, a young father in Arizona who sells health insurance, couldn’t make an appointment with his doctor for a dangerous intestinal infection because the office said he had outstanding bills. (Levey, 6/16)

Fortune: Hospitals Have Become Less Safe During The Pandemic. So Why Does The Government Want To Suppress Hospital Safety Data? There’s little question that U.S. hospitals—up against COVID, patient surges, and labor and supply shortages—have become less safe for patients during the pandemic, as preventable events and complications have become more common. Leaders with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said as much, earlier this year, in an article for the New England Journal of Medicine: “Many indicators make it clear that health care safety has declined,” they wrote, noting, “the fact that the pandemic degraded patient safety so quickly and severely suggests that our health care system lacks a sufficiently resilient safety culture and infrastructure.” Despite such frank assessments, CMS is now at odds with public safety advocates about whether to make some of the hospital-specific data behind those trends publicly available. (Fry, 6/14)

KHN: Buy And Bust: When Private Equity Comes For Rural Hospitals When the new corporate owners of two rural hospitals suddenly announced they would stop admitting patients one Friday in March, Kayla Schudel, a nurse, stood resolute in the nearly empty lobby of Audrain Community Hospital: “You’ll be seen; the ER is open.” The hospital — with 40 beds and five clinics — typically saw 24 to 50 emergency room cases a day, treating patients from the surrounding 1,000-plus acre farms and tiny no-stoplight towns, she said. She wouldn’t abandon them. A week later Noble Health had the final word: It locked the doors. (Tribble, 6/15)

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