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...

The Wall Street Journal: House Passes Democrats’ Gun Measures As Senate Talks Continue The House gun bill, called the Protecting Our Kids Act, would raise the age for purchasing semiautomatic rifles and shotguns to 21 from 18. It also would require gun owners to store their guns so that minors can’t access them without permission, imposing as many as five years in prison if a child accesses an unsecured gun and kills or hurts someone. The bill would make it a federal crime to engage in straw purchases—the buying of a gun for someone else—or gun trafficking, which is the illegal trading of guns. It also would ban licensed dealers from selling guns with magazines that can hold more than 15 rounds of ammunition. And it would ban devices known as bump stocks, which make semiautomatic rifles shoot like rapid-fire machine guns, putting into law a regulatory ban. (Hughes, 6/8)

Stat: Study Suggests A New Harm From Hospital Mergers: Less Price Transparency Health care economists argue hospital mergers can raise costs and lower quality. And now, a new study adds another downside: Hospitals in concentrated markets are also less likely to be transparent about their prices. Researchers pored over the websites of more than 5,200 hospitals to check on their adherence to the federal Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule, which took effect in January 2021. Their research letter, published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, shows compliance is dismally low — less than 6% — adding to previous research and media reports that found the same. (Bannow, 6/7)

USA Today: Medicare Seeks To Hide Reports Of Medical Complications At Hospitals Consumer groups and employers are pushing back against a Medicare proposal to limit public reports of medical complications such as bedsores and falls that occur during hospital stays. The proposed rule from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, now open for public comment through June 17, would suppress reporting next year for 10 types of medical harm at hospitals that are often preventable. The agency also would halt a program to dock the pay of the worst performers on a list of safety measures, pausing a years-long effort that links hospitals' skill in preventing such complications to reimbursement. (Alltucker, 6/6)

For a Deeper Dive...

The New York Times: Social Security And Medicare Funds Improved, But The Long Term Is Dire The forecast for Medicare’s hospital trust fund improved. It is now expected to encounter a shortfall in 2028, two years later than forecast in last year’s report. That change is due mostly to the improved economic forecast, since the program is funded through payroll taxes. The actuaries do not expect the pandemic to have any substantial long-term impact on the trajectory of Medicare spending, according to the report. Spending on many elective services declined during the pandemic, while spending on vaccines and treatment for Covid-19 increased. The actuaries said they expected medical spending to return to its normal trend in a few years. But they noted that there was “a large degree of uncertainty” about the future of spending related to the virus. (Bernard and Sanger-Katz, 6/2)

CNN: Despite Moves To Increase Supply, Families Are Still Feeling The Pain Of The Baby Formula Shortage Parents and caregivers continue to feel the pain of store shelves that are cleaned out of baby formula, and many are turning to hospitals and community organizations for help. "There is a lot of panic," said Jamie Lackey, founder and CEO of the nonprofit organization Helping Mamas in Norcross, Georgia, which helps low-income families find baby supplies. "We had a mom come through the distribution site the other day -- she had gone on to 15 different stores with her child in the car and could not find a single can of formula," Lackey told CNN's Christi Paul on "New Day Weekend." (Goodman, 6/6)

HealthCare Dive:  FTC launches investigation into PBMs; CVS, UnitedHealth, Cigna and more hit with requests for data The Federal Trade Commission is launching an investigation into the pharmacy benefit management industry following rising criticism of the middlemen and their role in increasing the price of prescription drugs in the U.S. Regulators on Tuesday announced they are requiring the six largest PBMs in the U.S. — CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, OptumRx, Humana, Prime Therapeutics and MedImpact Healthcare Systems — to turn over extensive information and records regarding their business practices, dating back five years. (6/6, Pifer)

Bloomberg: Pandemic Rift Seen Widening Mortality Gap Between US Parties Attitudes on health-related issues such as abortion and HIV prevention have long tracked along political lines. The study doesn’t include mortality data from the pandemic, which took hold in the US in March 2020. However, the authors say that divisive posturing around virus countermeasures such as vaccines and mask-wearing could mean that the rift will continue to widen. The pandemic was the first time that politics has become such a salient, identifiable public health issue, Haider Warraich, a physician at Brigham and Women’s and the study’s lead author, said in an interview. “The main implication of our study is that what party environment you live in, or what party ideology you are affiliated with, will have a significant outcome on your health,” he said. (Muller, 6/7)

CNN: Conservative Wyoming Senator Rethinking Gun Legislation After Constituents Flood Her Office With Calls Urging Action In the immediate aftermath of the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting, which left 19 children and two teachers dead, Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming said she doubted that ideas being weighed in Congress to curb gun violence would be welcomed in her very pro-gun state. ... But two weeks later, Lummis signaled a fresh openness Tuesday to find legislative solutions to gun violence after she was "surprised" that her office was flooded with calls from constituents expressing a deep desire to do something to stop the spate of mass shootings across the country. (Barrett, 6/7)

NBC News: Hospitals Are Required To Post Prices For Common Procedures. Few Do. Few hospitals are posting the prices of their common procedures online, despite a federal law that went into effect more than a year ago. The Hospital Price Transparency Law is intended to make the hidden costs of services such as X-rays, medical tests or colonoscopies clear to patients before they enter the hospital. But a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association added to mounting evidence that hospitals are largely ignoring the law. (Sullivan and Dunn, 6/8)

PBS NewsHour: Support For Gun Rights Has Eroded After Nearly A Decade Of Mass Shootings, Poll Shows Six out of 10 Americans think it is more important to control gun violence than protect gun rights, a significant rise over the last decade evident in the latest PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll, as mass shootings continue to erupt across the U.S. And as midterm elections approach, seven of 10 people say they’re more likely to vote in November after last month’s mass shootings at a school in Uvalde, Texas, and a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. Nearly a decade ago, four months after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, 49 percent of Americans said they prioritized controlling gun violence. In the latest poll, conducted in the wake of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that number rose to 59 percent, including 92 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents. Support for prioritizing gun rights dropped to 35 percent, but remained high among Republicans — 70 percent — and 56 percent of gun owners. (Santhanham, 6/9)

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