Budget

FDA is seeking $70 million to create a Center of Excellence on Digital Health, which would be tasked with crafting a new regulatory approach toward these products, akin to what FDA is already piloting with its software pre-cert program, according to budget material sent to congressional appropriators.

The Department of Justice is arguing that the proposal to fully fund the Affordable Care Act's risk corridor program included in HHS' budget was the result of an accounting error, and the language has been scrubbed from an updated HHS budget dated Feb. 19.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and conservative groups have been quick to criticize the Trump administration for putting risk corridor payments in the president’s 2019 budget request.

The president’s budget proposes $16 million in user fees to help the Health Resources and Services Administration administer the 340B drug discount program, a proposal one lobbyist said could end up serving as an offset if lawmakers look to make changes to the program.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar said the president's 2019 budget request would improve Medicare by pushing the health system to pay for value rather than volume, and it includes proposals such as reworking medical liability and graduate medical education funding, reducing hospitals' uncompensated care and bad debt pay, applying tweaked competitive bidding for durable medical education to all areas of the country and changing both aspects of the new physician pay system.

President Donald Trump's 2019 budget proposal would cut $1.4 trillion from Medicaid over 10 years, give states more flexibility to eliminate some benefits, and impose stricter eligibility and documentation requirements on new beneficiaries.

The Trump administration's newly released fiscal 2019 budget allocates $10 billion across HHS to address the opioid epidemic, $10 million of which would be dedicated to FDA investment in regulatory science and tools for stemming opioid abuse and misuse.

The White House is taking on what it views as anticompetitive behavior by some generic drug companies that stave off additional generic entrants by being first to file and then “parking” exclusivity by failing to market their product.

Less than two weeks after the Republican Party announced it was putting an indefinite pause on its efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the White House on Monday (Feb. 12) unveiled a 2019 budget request that lists replacing the health law “as soon as possible,” via a plan similar to the Graham-Cassidy bill, as a top priority.