Congress

House Ways & Means Chair Richard Neal (D-MA) on Tuesday (June 4) said Congress should be anxious about the fate of rural hospitals, after lawmakers on both sides of the aisle raised concerns with rural hospitals and their closures.

The Congressional Budget Office’s scoring of the Senate’s options to curb surprise medical bills found the health committee’s proposal to set a benchmark payment rate would save the most money at $25 billion in health savings to the federal government over 10 years, sources familiar with the preliminary scores told Inside Health Policy.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) plans to introduce next week a package of five drug pricing bills that includes measures to help insurers finance expensive drugs, reward insurers that encourage biosimilar adoption, discourage price concessions that pharmacies call unfair, pay pharmacists for managing complicated regimens and stop authorized generics from lowering Medicaid drug rebates.

Senate health committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and two other members of the committee are raising concerns that FDA’s proposed sunscreen rule, which would require sunscreen makers submit data for 12 ingredients, would lead American consumers to question the safety of sunscreens.

As a House Energy & Commerce geared up for a Tuesday (June 4) hearing on legislation to repeal the Medicaid Disproportionate Share Hospital cuts that are set to kick in Oct. 1, Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) office said repealing the cuts would be a giveaway to hospitals and is not grounded in reality.

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.

A new proposal to curb surprise billing by implementing “network-matching,” floated by Senate health committee Chair Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and ranking Democrat Patty Murray (WA), could save the federal government $7 billion over 10 years, according to a new analysis by the Council for Affordable Health Coverage.

Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (IL) again took FDA Acting Commissioner Ned Sharpless to task in a letter on Wednesday (May 29), saying their May 14 meeting in which they discussed youth e-cigarette use was “one of the most disappointing and alarming meetings” in his time in public service.

A group of more than 30 House lawmakers, most of whom are Republicans and who are led by Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX), asked CMS earlier this month to consider using the innovation center to run a demonstration expanding the use of physician-owned hospitals.