Medicaid

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) on Tuesday (Jan. 20) pegged as high priorities ACA changes, Medicare physician payment reform, CHIP extension and a handful of cost-saving changes to entitlement programs, while also saying he hopes Republicans will unite behind his ACA replacement bill as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on a pivotal ACA case.

CMS chief Marilyn Tavenner's announcement to her staff Friday that she will leave the agency next month and HHS' plan to hand the reins over to Deputy Administrator Andy Slavitt puts the former UnitedHealth Group official at the helm of the powerful agency just as the Supreme Court is poised to rule on a case that could unravel the ACA, and as the new GOP Congress gears up to aggressively revamp and oversee Obamacare -- the troubled launch of which occurred under Tavenner's watch.

HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell said at the New America Foundation Thursday (Jan. 15) that she believes Congress and the administration can find bipartisan agreement on the Children's Health Insurance Program and Medicare's sustainable growth rate formula used to pay physicians, signaling an effort to move on to priorities other than the Affordable Care Act.

The White House's Office of Management and Review is reviewing a proposed rule to require parity of medical and behavioral benefits in Medicaid managed care plans, CHIP plans and plans that cover Medicaid-expansion populations.

Despite losing a similar battle last year, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) intends to reintroduce a bill that would extend for two years the ACA's Medicaid primary care pay bump that expired Jan. 1.

Medicare-Medicaid Coordination Office chief Melanie Bella will leave CMS at the end of January, marking the second high-level departure from the agency in early 2015 alongside CMS Medicaid chief Cindy Mann.

Express Scripts will only include AbbVie's hepatitis C drug Viekira Pak on its National Preferred Pharmacy formulary in exchange for a “significant” discount on the drug, an Express Scripts spokesman said, and there will be no restrictions to access for the 25 million people on that formulary.

CMS added about 68,000 payment records to the Sunshine Act and Affordable Care Act's Open Payments database on Friday (Dec. 19).

FDA approved the second hepatitis C drug for use without interferon, called Viekira Pak, and AbbVie is charging $83,319 for a 12-week course of the drug, a company spokesperson said, compared to the $94,500 12-week price of Gilead Science's Harvoni and the $84,000 price of Harvoni's predecessor Sovaldi.