Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
Administration Pursues New COVID Aid Request
The Biden administration plans to ask Congress for another $30 billion in COVID-19 aid. Its wish list reportedly includes: $4.9 billion for testing $3 billion to pay for care for the uninsured $17.9 billion for vaccines and treatments $3.7 billion to pay for new vaccine development $500 million for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID surveillance and operations The wish list reportedly does not include additional money for the Provider Relief Fund. Learn more about what the administration seeks and what happens next in this Washington Post report.
Congress May Tackle Hospital Staffing Challenges
Members of Congress are talking about looking into the staffing challenges hospitals currently face. Those challenges include staff – especially but not exclusively nurses – leaving their jobs, citing burnout or difficult working conditions; staff shortages caused by illnesses, often COVID-related; and the fast-rising costs of temporary or travel nurses needed to replace missing staff and the financial burden that is placing on some hospitals. Some members of Congress are considering acting on these challenges; others want the administration to do so. Learn more about the staffing challenges facing hospitals [...]
CMS Will Eliminate Medicaid Premiums
The federal government intends to eliminate the premiums it has permitted some states to charge Medicaid beneficiaries in recent years. While the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services originally permitted states to charge Medicaid premiums as an inducement to persuade those states to expand their Medicaid programs, studies have found that the premiums mostly discouraged people from enrolling or reenrolling in Medicaid. CMS will compel Arkansas and Montana to phase out their Medicaid premiums by the end of the year and reportedly intends to impose similar requirements on the six [...]
Provider Groups Seek Delay in Surprise Billing Arbitration Rule
Health care provider groups are continuing their push to urge a federal court to suspend the portion of the recently implemented No Surprises Act regulation that governs the arbitration process when providers and payers cannot agree on payments. According to the providers, regulators make a policy argument in defense of their implementation of the 2020 surprise billing law, but they argue that policy is established by Congress, not regulators, and that the approach regulators have introduced is contrary to congressional intent as articulated in the law. Specifically, they maintain that [...]
Telehealth Utilization Tracks Pandemic Decline
The frequency with which Americans are using telehealth to receive some of their health care, which rose considerably during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, has declined since doctors returned to their offices and fear of contagion lessened. Even so, the use of telehealth is far more common than it was before the COVID-19 public health emergency. A new analysis of telehealth utilization produced the following findings: Telehealth outpatient visits have declined since the early months of the pandemic. Even amid the general decline in telehealth visits, they remain [...]