Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

Health policy impacts everyone, but it can be hard to know what is important. If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest...

The Top Three...

AP: Court Seeks Compromise That Might Preserve Preventive Health Insurance Mandates As Appeals Play Out Federal appeals court judges are seeking compromise on whether government requirements that health insurance include coverage for HIV prevention, cancer screenings and some other types of preventive care can be maintained while a legal battle over the mandates plays out. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Wednesday told attorneys on both sides of the issue to report by Friday on the possibility of a temporary compromise in the case. (McGill, 6/7)

Indianapolis Star: SCOTUS Denies Health & Hospital's Effort To Block Civil Rights Lawsuits In a 7-2 decision published Thursday, the court's justices found that the family of late Gorgi Talevski, a former patient with dementia at Valparaiso Care and Rehabilitation, can move forward with their lawsuit against the facility, its owner Health & Hospital Corp. of Marion County and facility manager American Senior Communities LLC because federal law and court precedent give nursing home residents a path to sue to enforce their rights. (6/8)

Axios: CMS Announces New Decade-Long Primary Care Payment Experiment The Biden administration on Thursday announced a 10-year experiment aimed at improving the way Medicare and Medicaid pay for primary care. The effort, dubbed the Making Care Primary Model, will ease safety-net and independent primary care providers — including federally qualified health centers — into getting paid for the value of services they provide, rather than the volume. (Goldman, 6/9)

For a Deeper Dive...

KFF Health News: Debt Deal Leaves Health Programs (Mostly) Intact The bipartisan deal to extend the U.S. government’s borrowing authority includes future cuts to federal health agencies, but they are smaller than many expected and do not touch Medicare and Medicaid. Meanwhile, Merck & Co. becomes the first drugmaker to sue Medicare officials over the federal health insurance program’s new authority to negotiate drug prices. Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico, Lauren Weber of The Washington Post, and Jessie Hellmann of CQ Roll Call join KFF Health News’ chief Washington correspondent, Julie Rovner, to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews KFF Health News senior correspondent Sarah Jane Tribble, who reported the latest KFF Health News-NPR “Bill of the Month” feature, about the perils of visiting the U.S. with European health insurance. (6/7)

KFF Health News: Burnout Threatens Primary Care Workforce And Doctors’ Mental Health Melanie Gray Miller, a 30-year-old physician, wiped away tears as she described the isolation she felt after losing a beloved patient. “It was at the end of a night shift, when it seems like bad things always happen,” said Miller, who is training to become a pediatrician. (Sausser, 6/7)

Modern Healthcare: Leapfrog Group: Health Disparities Persist In Highly Rated Hospitals Hospitals that receive high safety grades and score well on external safety measures do not provide better care to patients of color than lower-rated facilities, according to a study of more than 10 million patient records. The research from Leapfrog Group and Urban Institute, which used 2019 discharge data from across 15 states, found that Black and Latino patients are more at risk of experiencing adverse safety events than white patients, regardless of a hospital’s Leapfrog Group ranking. (Devereaux, 6/7)

Axios: More States Embrace Drug Price Boards To Curb Health Costs More states are pushing their own plans to lower drug costs, viewing it as an extension of efforts to set payment rates for utilities, transportation and other essential services. Colorado, among the states to create a state prescription drug affordability board, is rolling out a dashboard this week that will show which drugs are the likeliest to have price caps. (Reed, 6/6)

KFF Health News: Will A ‘National Patient Safety Board,’ Modeled After The NTSB, Actually Fly? People concerned about the safety of patients often compare health care to aviation. Why, they ask, can’t hospitals learn from medical errors the way airlines learn from plane crashes? That’s the rationale behind calls to create a “National Patient Safety Board,” an independent federal agency that would be loosely modeled after the National Transportation Safety Board, which is credited with increasing the safety of skies, railways, and highways by investigating why accidents occur and recommending steps to avoid future mishaps. (Jaklevic, 6/5)

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.