Gregg's Top Three Health Policy Articles

For the week of May 3-10, 2024

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: Medicare And Social Security Go-Broke Dates Pushed Back The go-broke dates for Medicare and Social Security have been pushed back as an improving economy has contributed to changed projected depletion dates, according to the annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report Monday. Still, officials warn that policy changes are needed lest the programs become unable to pay full benefits to retiring Americans. Medicare’s go-broke date for its hospital insurance trust fund was pushed back five years to 2036 in the latest report, thanks in part to higher payroll tax income and lower-than-projected expenses from last year. (Hussein and Murphy, 5/6) Gregg’s Note: Check out the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget Analysis of the 2024 Medicare Trustees’ Report.

U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services: Biden-Harris Administration Announces $46.8 Million In Behavioral Health Funding Opportunities Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), announced $46.8 million in notices of funding opportunities to promote youth mental health, grow the behavioral health workforce, improve access to culturally competent behavioral care across the country, and strengthen peer recovery and recovery support. President Biden made tackling the mental health crisis and beating the opioid epidemic key pillars in his Unity Agenda for the nation. Today’s announcement will help communities transform how they address behavioral health. (5/8)

Modern Healthcare: Ascension Outage Still Causing Disruptions For Patients, Doctors Ascension continues to experience disruptions in patient care as the health system investigates a potential data breach it reported Wednesday. Local news reports have surfaced about patients waiting hours for medical procedures, ambulances diverting patients to other facilities and physicians losing access to medical records. Ascension acknowledged "clinical disruptions" in a Wednesday statement but has not provided additional details. (Hudson, 5/9)

For a Deeper Dive...

Bloomberg: US Justice Department Calls For More Antitrust Enforcement In Health Care The US hasn’t enforced its antitrust laws enough in the health care industry, top Justice Department officials said, voicing particular concern about consolidation among groups of doctors and nurses. “We are becoming more lucid to under-enforcement in healthcare,” Doha Mekki, the No. 2 official in the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said during a Bloomberg roundtable on Wednesday. The US has roughly 2,000 fewer hospitals today than existed in 1998, she said. (Nylen and Willmer, 5/8)

The Hill: Biden Races Clock On Health Regulations With Eye On Potential Trump Return President Biden’s administration is working overtime to ensure his health care priorities are protected from a potential second Trump White House. In recent weeks, regulatory agencies have been racing against the clock to finalize some of their most consequential policies, such as abortion data privacy, antidiscrimination protections for transgender patients and nursing home minimum staffing. (Weixel, 5/5)

KFF Health News: Medical Residents Are Increasingly Avoiding States With Abortion Restrictions Isabella Rosario Blum was wrapping up medical school and considering residency programs to become a family practice physician when she got some frank advice: If she wanted to be trained to provide abortions, she shouldn’t stay in Arizona. Blum turned to programs mostly in states where abortion access — and, by extension, abortion training — is likely to remain protected, like California, Colorado, and New Mexico. Arizona has enacted a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks. (Rovner and Pradhan, 5/9)

Politico: The Reckoning Facing The NIH The National Institutes of Health will face an overhaul if Republicans gain control of the Senate next year. Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy — the Republican in line to lead the Senate committee that oversees the agency — said Thursday that reform was long overdue. “Congress has not thoroughly reviewed NIH operations and practices since the 21st Century Cures Act passed in 2016,” he said in a release. (Schumaker, Reader, Paun and Payne, 5/9)

Modern Healthcare: Joint Commission Launches Rural Health Clinic Accreditation The Joint Commission is launching a new accreditation program to standardize patient care practices and staff training at rural health clinics nationwide. The Rural Health Clinic Accreditation Program, which will open to applicants sometime this summer, is intended to help clinics in medically underserved, rural communities improve the safety and quality of primary care and personal health services, The Joint Commission announced Tuesday. (Devereaux, 5/7)

The Washington Post: Social Security And Medicare Finances Look Grim As Overall Debt Piles Up Neither President Joe Biden nor former president Donald Trump have released proposals to right Social Security’s finances. Biden has signaled a desire to raise taxes on individuals earning more than $400,000 and devote that new revenue to the Social Security Trust Fund. In his past two State of the Union addresses, the president declared absolute opposition to cutting social safety net benefits. Trump has floated cuts to the programs, but quickly backpedaled from that position and insisted he wouldn’t support reducing benefits. (Bogage and Weil, 5/6)

USA Today: Nursing Home Staffing And Spending Questioned By Democratic Lawmakers Three U.S. senators and two U.S. representatives have called out the corporate spending of three large nursing home companies amid the industry's opposition to the Biden administration's rule to set minimum staffing levels. In letters sent Sunday to executives of three large chains, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Richard Blumenthal and Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Lloyd Doggett questioned the nursing homes' spending on executive compensation, stock buybacks and dividends as the industry protests a new staffing rule for nursing homes. (Alltucker, 5/6)

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Analysis of the 2024 Medicare Trustees’ Report Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget

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