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WHITE HOUSE:

The White House focused this week on a new planned $5 billion investment in semiconductor R & D via the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), a new partnership with sports leagues and player unions to promote physical activity & nutrition, and acknowledging six months since the Maui wildfires. One indirect item for us:

• As we’ve discussed many times, the Administration has made a strong push to grow the Affordable Connectivity Program, the federal program to provide affordable internet to eligible families. As of February 7^th, new applications to the program are closed and funding is expected to run out in May, barring Congressional Action. To that end, the White House called on Congress this week to include new funding in any discussions related to a budget agreement. As this is a program that many of your residents and families qualify for, it’s an important development to monitor.

CONGRESS:

It was quite the week in Congress where the full dysfunction of the broken chamber was on display. First a Senate bipartisan border bill, negotiated over several months with GOP support, failed nearly immediately. With the normally stable Senate starting to resemble the chaotic House, GOP Leader McConnell came under fire from his own party for his efforts. Then House GOP Speaker Johnson failed to get enough votes in two high-profile bills: impeaching Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas and passing a stand-alone Israel funding aid bill. With Congress’ inability to actually govern becoming more blatant, recriminations against the new Speaker have begun in earnest as internal GOP dissension rises. In the background of all the infighting is the ongoing negotiation to find an actual government funding plan, which the two sides remain (of course) far apart. Despite all this, the Senate did move forward a revised foreign aid bill on Sunday, with all border provisions removed, although final passage in the Senate, and then the House, is far from certain. With the Senate scheduled to head out of town later this week, the disarray will be our companion for a while. Elsewhere in the political world:

• The Congressional retirements continue as House Energy & Commerce Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (a reasonable Congressional voice) announced that she would not seek reelection. Also joining the retirement rush is Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, one of the youngest Members on the Hill. The ongoing loss of Congressional members has serious implications for healthcare policy.

• The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing on the high United States prescription drug prices. As expected, Senator Bernie Sanders took the pharmaceutical companies to task, while ranking Republican Member, Senator Bill Cassidy pointed out that no real legislative solutions are being offered.

• This Tuesday is the special election in New York to replace expelled Congressman George Santos, with a tight race expected. The think pieces on “What It Means” for November are already being written.

• Another read on the political troubles facing the eight Republicans who voted to oust former Speaker McCarthy.

• Axios has a good summary of the political stumbling of the past week for the President, Senate GOP Leader McConnell and House GOP Speaker Mike Johnson.

• Pew ran a five part series of articles on issues that are likely to crop up at the state level for public finances. This is important information to know about as state budgets are worked upon. This is their focus on the seven states expecting budget deficits this year.

• A California legislator has proposed a new bill that would heavily regulate the deployment of AI including a requirement that there be a built-in way to shut the tech down should something go wrong.

AGENCIES:

HHS’ Administration for Community Living (ACL) released the final rule update to the regulations governing the Older Americans Act (OAA) programs. The formal press release is here. The full overview can be found here while the summary is here (both PDF). The final rule is scheduled to be published to the federal register on February 14^th. In the meantime, if you’d like some light reading, the 458 page unpublished rule can be accessed here (PDF).

CMS released a proposed rule that would strengthen oversight on accrediting organizations. This mostly affects hospital oversight and organizations. The rule is scheduled to be published to the Federal Register on February 15^th, at which time a 60-day comment period opens. In the meantime, you can download an unpublished copy of the rule here (PDF).

CMS published an FAQ related to their final rule on MA that was released back in April. You can download a copy of the FAQ here (PDF).

Following last month’s release of a rule requiring more transparency in AI, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT released a fix (PDF) last week that would prevent a significant delay in the rule’s enactment. Politico Pro has a summary.

Continuing the recent trend of using Medicaid programs to address more social issues, HHS, together with HUD, announced the eight states partnering in a new federal initiative known as the Housing & Services Partnership Accelerator to help the state build more robust housing supports for homeless individuals.

Colorado became the latest state subject to an OIG at HHS audit on if SNF’s complied with federal requirements for life safety and emergency preparedness prep. You can find the report in brief here and the full report here (both PDF).

Mainly relevant to Mississippi, but a state court ruled that an attorney has to pay the facility legal fees for a frivolous lawsuit that was filed against the facility. Always nice to see a case like this.

The FCC made illegal robocalls that contain AI-generated voices. The press release is here and the ruling is here (both PDF). Politico has a summary.

CMS updated their telehealth toolkit that they provide to help states build more robust telehealth policies. It’s available here (PDF).

FROM THE NOTEBOOK:

• The Kaiser Family Foundation released a new analysis highlighting the benefits of the new $2,000 Medicare Part D cap. The full analysis can be found here. They also released an updated guide to their “10 things to know about” D-SNP’s brief.

• Ars Technica has a new report about a huge heist that relied on AI to generate deepfakes that convinced a company to release $25 million to scammers. It’s a worthy read.

• HealthAffairs has a new study that suggests disenrollment from Medicaid as a result of the unwinding led to a surge in evictions.

• Axios has a good read on how one company cut their health insurance costs in half, relying heavily on self-insuring and doing a deep dive into their claims data.

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