Budget

Days before the House Appropriations Committee is set to mark up an FDA funding bill, an expert on the agency’s budget process said there are plenty of challenges looming ahead that could sink the $184 million increase that House lawmakers propose in the bill.

The House Appropriations agriculture subcommittee on Thursday (May 23) voted to send a fiscal 2020 funding bill that would give FDA a $184 million increase over its fiscal 2019 levels to the full committee.

FDA will kick off the start of a conversation with stakeholders on reforming dietary supplement law with a public meeting May 16, agency chief Scott Gottlieb tweeted Tuesday (March 19).

CMS’ fiscal 2020 budget includes no funding authority for exchange operations, but does request a legislative proposal that would allow the agency to use exchange “user fees” collected from issuers participating in exchanges that use the federal platform for all exchange-related operations.

President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget includes a wide-ranging collection of Medicare proposals that the administration says would add eight years to the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund, including reducing bad debt and uncompensated care payments to hospitals, moving closer to site-neutral payments among providers and creating a primary care pay bump by cutting reimbursement for other physician services.

The Trump administration is doubling down on some of its most controversial Medicaid policies by proposing in its 2020 budget to impose mandatory work requirements, make it easier for states to eliminate non-emergency medical transportation, and allow higher copayments when beneficiaries seek non-emergency care at the emergency room.

President Donald Trump’s 2020 budget, released Monday (March 11), would cut $1.5 trillion from Medicaid over the next decade by proposing mandatory work requirements nationwide, repealing Medicaid expansion and proposing block grants or per-capita caps for states.

President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget again calls for giving the Health Resources and Services Administration more authority over the 340B program, creating a user-fee program and tying Medicare reimbursement for 340B drugs to hospitals’ uncompensated care percentages.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar will testify about drug prices Tuesday (March 12) at a House Energy & Commerce health subcommittee hearing on the president’s 2020 budget, which the administration will unveil Monday, according to an E&C release.