Creator: JJ Rabinowich
SNF Digest #187
From the White House to Congress to the regulatory agencies, JJ gives you the inside word on what is what for this week.
If you’re at the Zimmet conference this week, come say hi!
WHITE HOUSE:
This past week, the White House focused on a new Executive Order that aims, yet again, to limit birthright citizenship (following the recent Supreme Court decision that blocked the original Executive Order), the establishment of a Military Spouse Commission to help military families, and highlighting the efforts by private sector retailers to lower the costs of goods. One item of interest for us:
As part of the efforts by the White House Task Force to eliminate fraud, they launched a new website at www.fraud.gov to showcase the efforts. The site covers the different efforts, broken down by agency and type of fraud prevention, of areas where they’ve made inroads in fraud prevention.
CONGRESS:
And that’s a wrap! As expected, the Senate finalized their own continuing resolution that would fund the government through mid-December, thereby avoiding a government shutdown. If you’re keeping score at home, this is different from what the House passed before they left, which means that the House will have to sign off on this version when they get back in September, which isn’t assured. Still, we’re light-years ahead of last year in terms of avoiding a government shutdown. While the funding bill made it through, Reconciliation 3.0 did not, potentially setting up a messy fight with the White House later this year. For now, with Congress out of town till September, it’s going to be relatively quiet on the DC front for the next few weeks. Elsewhere in the political world:
The Senate Budget committee held a hearing on “Medicaid: The Reality”. The focal point of the hearing was spending growth within Medicaid, as well as the fraud concerns that have been such a priority for the Administration.
Looks like the redistricting wars aren’t quite done yet… Maryland decided to put it up to the voters in November.
Quite the read on just what political campaigns are doing with all those political dollars sitting in campaign coffers…
It looks like the White House has finalized a “voluntary framework” for AI companies to follow, but they aren’t telling anyone other than those companies involved.
Albeit far more closely than expected, the progressive challenger won the Michigan Democratic primary. Meanwhile, the establishment Dems held off challengers in Missouri and Hawaii. It all sets the stage for this week’s Democratic gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin and Senate primary in Minnesota.
On the Republican side, two separate Trump-backed candidates, an incumbent in Tennessee and a challenger in Michigan, lost their races.
One relevant CRS report from the week: a guide for Congressional offices on the recent federal efforts related to hospice fraud.
AGENCIES:
CMS issued a new proposed rule for manufacturers to get faster approval of new devices. The program, called the RAPID (Regulatory Alignment for Predictable and Immediate Device) gateway, is designed to speed up FDA approval of life-saving devices for Medicare beneficiaries. The proposed rule will be published to the Federal Register on August 11th, but you can access pre-publication copy of the rule here (PDF).
One year in, CMS celebrated the launch of the Health Tech Ecosystem initiative.
CMS released a new “state toolkit” (PDF) to help states better address concerns about increased expenses in ABA programs.
The GAO looked at several different aspects of DOGE’s efforts last year to clean up fraud. They found that DOGE’s “wall of receipts” was inaccurate, as well as several troubling ethical conflicts of interest among those doing double-duty with DOGE and private companies.
CMS continued to expand their oversight of all federal healthcare programs, as they decertified an organ procurement organization.
HHS released a new set of proposed rules for the Head Start program as they look to deregulate the program. The proposed rule can be found at the Federal Register.
The OIG at HHS reviewed HHS’ compliance with the “Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019,” which requires an audit of the agency’s improper payment reporting. The full report is here (PDF).
FROM THE NOTEBOOK:
Pennsylvania is making available, through their portion of the Rural Health Transformation Plan, nearly $27 million for rural health providers to invest in technology to improve patient care. More details can be found here.
A federal court last week once again vacated (PDF) a Biden-era rule that changed the calculations for DSH payments. It could result in heftier federal payments to hospitals.
Modern Healthcare reports that nurse unions are pushing for more control over how AI is deployed in hospitals.
Health insurers are using AI to assist members with renewals.
The Kaiser Family Foundation released an updated look at Medicare spending.
Health Affairs published a new study that looked at the effect that shifting state employee benefits to MA had on employees in five states. The full study is behind a paywall. Skilled Nursing News has a summary.
