Policy and Legislation
Since the start of the year, a number of bills or amendments to bills targeting men's reproductive health have been submitted to state legislatures by mostly female Democratic state legislators.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week gave tentative approval to provide $1.9 billion in initial funding to help Oregon overhaul its Medicaid system, which the state says has the potential to save $11 billion over 10 years.
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.
The term “unelected bureaucrats” has been bandied about in Congress when referring to a particularly loathsome provision - to some - of the Affordable Care Act: the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The reference is to the 15 people who will serve on IPAB, all of whom are subject to Senate confirmation.
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.