Policy and Legislation
Even with their own health improvement strategies in place, some states, such as Vermont and Minnesota, are already harnessing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to establish health insurance exchanges and to drive healthcare delivery and payment reforms to the extent that their legislatures enable them.
BALTIMORE – While legislators and judges in Washington D.C. work to either eviscerate or preserve the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, two men in Maryland – one a serial entrepreneur and the other a physician and respected public health official – work diligently to create a new model for healthcare delivery and insurance, a self-described “audacious attempt to create systemic change.”
By now, the nine justices of the Supreme Court know the fate of the Affordable Care Act and the individual mandate and are actively writing drafts of the decision, which most expect will be handed down in late June.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced late last week a delay to the implementation of the Physician Payments Sunshine Act. CMS will not require data collection from manufacturers and group purchasing organizations until Jan. 1, 2013.
In the latest salvo against the Affordable Care Act, Ways and Means Committee Republicans published a report this week that contends employers would save money by dropping coverage for employees and shifting them to the state health insurance exchanges and paying the $2,000 per employee penalty for doing so.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on Wednesday $10.4 million in grants will be dispersed to rural health providers over three years.
A new report released by the Institute of Medicine this week urges the Food and Drug Administration to adopt a full life cycle approach to drug safety oversight that would include strengthening data collection and the monitoring of drugs after they have received FDA approval.
A coordinated takedown by Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations in seven cities resulted in fraud charges against 107 people announced the Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Wednesday.
With the future of the health reform law in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, a majority of hospitals and health systems are anticipating a drop in revenue as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
Not satisfied with having cut nearly half of the $6 billion allotted under the Affordable Care Act to help create health CO-OPs, the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week voted to defund the remaining $3.4 billion in the program.