As nearly half of the states pursue greater access to Medicare claims data as part of ongoing efforts to improve their care for dually eligible beneficiaries, state Medicaid directors issued a new white paper Tuesday calling on CMS to also give access to Medicare Advantage data and let states use Medicare claims data for efforts beyond care coordination purposes.

CMS and the nursing home industry in several weeks will unveil an initiative to reduce hospital readmissions, an industry source says.

Home care providers are expecting CMS to increase the industry's pay cut in 2013 to make up for what the agency believes are Medicare overpayments to providers due to coding creep, an industry lobbyist says.

State insurance commissioners are hoping that HHS will at least look to states for guidance in cases where the state doesn't select its own essential health benefits benchmark plan and therefore defaults to its largest small group market product as the benchmark, Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger tells Inside Health Policy.

A National Association of Medicaid Directors official said the new review and approval process for Medicaid 1115 waivers that became effective Friday (April 27) is overly prescriptive for states, contains some redundancies and fails to include a pathway allowing states to permanently integrate demonstration programs that are deemed successful.

FDA has not taken any steps internally to address industry concerns over difficulty in leveraging outside experts to serve on advisory committees, according to a Government Accountability Office report, despite assertions by FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg earlier this year that a legislative fix is not needed to address conflict-of-interest policies that may be contributing to problems with filling vacant positions on advisory committees.

Political analyst Norm Ornstein says a decision by the Supreme Court to throw out all or pieces of the health reform law would throw Medicare into chaos, but he adds that if politics were set aside the parties could quickly find a solution as there is a striking resemblance between the GOP Medicare reform plan and key elements of the Affordable Care Act.

Democratic Rep. Ron Kind (WI) and Brookings Institute scholar Henry Aaron say that the health insurance exchanges and delivery system reforms in the Affordable Care Act need to be up, running and proven to be successful before Congress can consider moving the Medicare population into a premium support system that operates under a similar design.

House Republicans' latest argument in favor of shifting Medicaid to a block grant program is that doing so would help stem fraud, but state officials tells Inside Health Policy that capping federal funds hasn't had that effect in Rhode Island, and a Democratic lawmaker and other health care experts also are skeptical of the GOP line of thinking.

Economic incentives to spur manufacturing of drugs in shortage -- including federal reimbursement and exclusivity provisions being pushed by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) -- are not likely to be included in final legislation reauthorizing user fees, although the idea could still be explored outside the user fee bill, congressional sources and stakeholders said.

The Internal Revenue Service has outlined three potential ways that employer-sponsored plans can determine whether a plan provides minimum value as defined by the health reform law, but an employer source is raising red flags about the option that would use a “minimum value calculator” because it would rely on claims data reflecting typical self-insured employer plans.

FDA issued 10 warning letters earlier this week to dietary supplement companies, with the agency saying their products containing dimethylamylamine -- known as DMAA -- are adulterated because the companies did not submit a new dietary ingredient notification, signaling the FDA's first enforcement move since issuing a controversial guidance on new dietary ingredient submissions.

Maryland is poised to become the first state to allow stand-alone vision plans to compete within a state-based health insurance exchange, a move that will institute a policy opposed the national optometrists' lobby but hailed by vision plans that were unable to garner enough support to tuck it into the health reform law.

A bipartisan duo of senators are working toward a drug tracking compromise, which they hope to attach to FDA user fee legislation when it reaches the floor, with a proposal that draws heavily from an industry coalition's lot-level plan but adds some unit-level tracking requirements, including wholesale distributor verification, in a bid to assuage FDA and safety advocates' concerns with the lot-level approach.

Community pharmacists say CMS' decision against creating separate bidding programs for diabetic supplies that are sold retail and through the mail indicates that the agency is trying to push those supplies into mail-order because retail pharmacies would lose money selling them at Medicare's mail-order pay rate.

CMS says if a state has a minimum medical loss ratio requirement for rebate or rate filing purposes that goes beyond the standard in the health reform law it does not necessarily mean the state's stricter standard would automatically apply to insurers in that state, according to recent guidance the agency issued.

A coalition of mostly rural hospitals is pointing to CMS' recently released hospital IPPS rule's revelation that Massachusetts hospitals will receive a 5.5 percent wage index increase -- while rural hospitals will see a 0.3 percent reduction -- to again call on Congress to reverse the ACA-driven policy.

CMS on Thursday (April 26) took several steps aimed at boosting home and community-based health services.

Safety advocates' press to limit the use of recalled devices as predicates for new device clearances hit a snag after a proposed amendment was shot down by Senate health committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) at a user fee markup Wednesday (April 25), but the advocates still hope to get the measure attached to the user fee package when it hits the Senate floor.

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday (April 26) cleared the FDA fiscal 2013 funding bill, providing an increase of $22 million over last year's funding level and a $12.5 million increase over the president's budget request to go toward implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act.