Medicare

President Donald Trump on Thursday (Oct. 3) is expected to sign an executive order on protecting and improving Medicare during a trip to The Villages, FL, according to the White House.

Consumer advocates are urging CMS to extend for at least another year a policy that provides penalty relief for Medicare beneficiaries who did not enroll in part B due to misinformation about Affordable Care Act plans.

CMS significantly revised its proposals for discharge planning requirements for hospitals, critical access hospitals and home health agencies in a final rule released Wednesday (Sept. 25) after providers had raised concerns about what they viewed as the overly prescriptive nature of some aspects of the planning and the burdens of others.

The House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry all but kills the chances of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) striking a deal on drug pricing with President Donald Trump, lobbyists and analysts say, though they had always said there was little prospect in government drug price negotiation becoming law.

CMS Administrator Seema Verma said a recent court ruling that found CMS didn’t have the authority to implement site-neutral pay cuts for certain clinic visits was a setback to agency efforts to correct market distortions, and she pushed back on what she called “[e]ndless litigation from entrenched special interests.”

Former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is ramping up his health care message and will spend the week highlighting the Trump administration’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act and alleging a second Trump term would result in millions of people without coverage.

Home health providers, Medicare advocates and hospitals again expressed concerns that CMS’ proposed 8% cut within the home health system based on behavioral assumptions is too harsh in its proposed 2020 home health pay rule.

The House on Thursday (Sept. 19) passed a short-term continuing resolution to fund the government through Nov. 21 and avert a government shutdown Oct. 1, and the Senate reportedly will take up the CR next week.

Providers are asking CMS why the first bonus payments for those in alternative payments models through the Quality Payment Program have yet to be paid, even though providers in the Merit-based Incentive Payment System started seeing their pay adjustments at the start of the year.