Bulletin Board
Bulletin Board
Federal Health Policy Update for December 12
The following is the latest health policy news from the federal government for December 6-12. Some of the language used below is taken directly from government documents. Congress Funding the Federal Government With funding for the federal government set to expire in eight days, Congress is still negotiating the details of the next continuing resolution. Speaker Johnson has indicated that the next continuing resolution will extend until an unspecified date in March. Last week, the House majority and House minority exchanged proposals for additional items to include in the next [...]
182 House Members Ask for Halt to Medicaid DSH Cut
182 members of the House of Representatives have written to House Speaker Mike Johnson and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries to ask them to prevent a major cut in Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments (Medicaid DSH) that is scheduled to take effect on January 1. As members of Congress negotiate how to fund the federal government when the current continuing resolution ends on December 20, the bipartisan group of legislators as urges its leaders to prevent the $8 billion cut in Medicaid DSH allocations to the states. Their letter states [...]
Federal Health Policy Update for December 5
The following is the latest health policy news from the federal government for November 22 – December 5. Some of the language used below is taken directly from government documents. Congress The House has posted its session calendar for 2025. Find that calendar here. Yesterday, House Republicans made an offer to House Democrats regarding health care provisions to be included in the continuing resolution (CR) that must pass before December 20. The offer is a conversation-opener and very few details are available. Although most of the proposed policies have bipartisan [...]
Providers Winning Big on No Surprises Act Disputes
Health care providers are winning more than 86 percent of the emergency care payment disputes they take to adjudication through the Independent Dispute Resolution process established under the 2020 No Surprises Act. The abstract of the article “No Surprises Act independent dispute resolution outcomes for emergency services,” published by the journal Health Affairs Scholar, explains that The No Surprises Act banned surprise billing and established a final-offer arbitration system, independent dispute resolution (IDR), to resolve disagreements between health plans and providers. One factor that arbiters must consider in the IDR [...]
Hospital Compliance With Price Transparency Rules Erodes
Hospitals’ compliance with federal price transparency regulations declined during 2024. According to the organization PatientRightsAdvocate.org, hospital compliance with the federal standard fell from 34.5 percent in February of this year to 21.1 percent in November. Under federal guidelines, hospitals are required to post payer-specific rates for their 300 most common procedures and those postings must be made in a consumer-friendly format. PatientRightsAdvocate.org reviewed the postings of 2000 hospitals and found that while all of them posted data in the appropriate format, the quality of that data varied greatly. While the [...]