Last week the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission met in Washington, D.C. to discuss a number of Medicare payment issues.

The issues on MedPAC’s January agenda were:

• The Medicare prescription drug program (Part D):  status report and options for restructuring
• Redesigning the Medicare Advantage quality program:  initial modeling of a value incentive program
• Hospital inpatient and outpatient payments
• Physician payments
• Outpatient dialysis payments
• Skilled nursing facility, home health, inpatient rehabilitation facility, and long-term-care hospital payments
• Hospice and ambulatory surgery center payments
• The 340B program
• ACO beneficiary assignment

MedPAC is an independent congressional agency that advises Congress on issues involving the Medicare program.  While its recommendations are not binding on either Congress or the administration, MedPAC is highly influential in governing circles and its recommendations often find their way into legislation, regulations, and new public policy.

Go here for links to the policy briefs and presentations that supported MedPAC’s discussion of these issues.…

Last week the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission met in Washington, D.C.  The Medicare payment issues on its agenda were:

• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Physician and other health professional services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Ambulatory surgical center services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Hospital inpatient and outpatient services;
• Mandated report: Expanding the post-acute care transfer policy to hospice
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Skilled nursing facility services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Home health care services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Inpatient rehabilitation facility services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Long-term care hospital services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Outpatient dialysis services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Hospice services
• The Medicare Advantage program: Status report

A transcript of that MedPAC meeting is now available.  Find it here.…

Last week the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission met in Washington, D.C. to discuss a number of Medicare payment issues.

The issues on MedPAC’s December agenda were:

• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Physician and other health professional services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Ambulatory surgical center services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Hospital inpatient and outpatient services;
• Mandated report: Expanding the post-acute care transfer policy to hospice
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Skilled nursing facility services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Home health care services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Inpatient rehabilitation facility services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Long-term care hospital services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Outpatient dialysis services
• Assessing payment adequacy and updating payments: Hospice services
• The Medicare Advantage program: Status report

MedPAC is an independent congressional agency that advises Congress on issues involving the Medicare program.  While its recommendations are not binding on either Congress or the administration, MedPAC is highly influential in governing circles and its recommendations often find their way into legislation, regulations, and new public policy.

Go here for links to the policy briefs and presentations that supported MedPAC’s discussion of these issues.…

The federal government should be prohibited from implementing its new price transparency requirement for hospitals, a group of hospital trade groups and health systems has declared in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The requirement exceeds the federal government’s authority, the suit maintains, and its implementation would create an undue burden on hospitals, cost a great deal of money, require hospitals to divulge proprietary information, inhibit competition, and overwhelm their information systems.  Even after all of that, the suit claims, consumers would still not have useful information because insurers, not hospitals, are the key in determining what consumers pay for the care they receive.

In response to the suit, an HHS spokesman, according to the online publication Healthcare Dive, said that

Hospitals should be ashamed that they aren’t willing to provide American patients the cost of a service before they purchase it.

The requirement will take effect on January 1, 2021.  The hospital groups and systems that filed the suit have asked the court for a prompt ruling.

Learn more in the Healthcare Dive article “Hospitals sue HHS, warning price transparency rule would chill competition, crash computers.”

 …

The Trump administration’s health care regulatory priorities for 2020 have been outlined by the Office of Management and Budget in a newly released “Statement of Regulatory Priorities for Fiscal Year 2020.”

The statement, an annual OMB document, organizes the priorities as follows:

• Facilitating patient-centered markets
• Fixing health care financing through protecting private insurance and Medicare
• Fixing health care financing through reforming the individual market
• Fixing health care financing through making the ACA and Medicaid fiscally sustainable
• Bringing value to health care through price and quality transparency
• Bringing value to health care through patient-centered health IT
• Bringing value to health care through deregulation, especially for coordinated care
• Bringing value to health care through tackling the high cost of prescription drugs
• Bringing value to health care through accelerated drug and device approval and reimbursement

2. Promoting health and protecting life

• Addressing impactable health challenges: kidney health
• Addressing impactable health challenges: combatting the opioid crisis
• Protecting conscience and life at all stages
• Reducing the disease and death associated with tobacco use

3. Promoting independence

• Returning TANF to promoting work, marriage and family
• Supporting adoption
• Empowering Americans to improve their nutrition
• Promoting flexibility for states, grantees, and regulated entities

Learn more about the regulatory directions the …