Medicare

Providers, beneficiary advocates and Democratic lawmakers quickly slammed as partisan politics the Trump administration’s Thursday (Jan. 30) decision to let states receive block grants for optional Medicaid populations, coming as the Republican governor of Oklahoma said he plans to take advantage of the opportunity.

Advocates for non-opioid pain management alternatives are calling on policymakers to increase access to non-opioid pain management alternatives, including unbundling certain drugs in outpatient settings and increasing provider training.

Epic Systems, a major medical records vendor, hit back following remarks from HHS Secretary Alex Azar that slammed critics of the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT’s proposed interoperability rule, as the health IT developer called on HHS to create patient privacy protections before finishing the rule.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar took aim at critics of the interoperability rules proposed by the HHS Office of the National Coordinator on Health IT and CMS, warning them that “defending the status quo is a pretty unpopular place to be,” and asserting that the rules, once finalized, will preserve patient privacy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) top health aide Wendell Primus told lobbyists in closed-door meetings that he’s open to negotiating with Republicans on whether to let Medicare bargain with drug companies over prices, sources who recently met with Primus told Inside Health Policy.

Beneficiary advocates say they anticipated Republicans would try to make up $1.5 trillion or so spent on the 2017 tax cuts in 2017 by reducing spending on entitlement programs, and so they were not surprised the president seemingly broke from his earlier pledges to protect Medicare and suggested during a Wednesday interview that changes to entitlement programs would come out toward the end of the year if he wins another term.

CMS will cover acupuncture for chronic low back pain as part of its efforts to increase access to alternatives to prescription opioids, the agency announced Tuesday (Jan. 21).

The debate over the future of the health care system will continue to be a key issue on the presidential trail in 2020, but as Tuesday’s winnowed-down Democratic debate highlighted, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is now the lone top-tier presidential candidate still calling for a quick transition to Medicare for All, while the other Democratic candidates argue that their policy ideas are just as bold.

Hospitals sued CMS Monday (Jan. 13) over the 2020 Medicare site-neutral cuts, reiterating arguments from their lawsuit over the 2019 cuts -- where the federal district court found in hospitals’ favor -- and reminding the court that it already ruled the agency doesn’t have authority for such a policy.