Medicare

CMS announced Thursday (Oct. 3) that it is exploring releasing program data on social determinants of health from its Accountable Health Communities model and asked stakeholders what type of data from the model would be the most useful.

President Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday (Oct. 2) that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is “incapable” of working on legislation to lower drug prices and is using the issue to distract from House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry.

Hospitals asked CMS which version of its hospital wage index changes the agency plans to apply to the hospital outpatient pay system and suggest that if it plans to institute changes in a budget-neutral way, doing so would hurt some hospitals.

HHS reduced the backlog of Medicare appeals by about 25% as of June 30, according to a status report submitted to the federal D.C. district court, and the American Hospital Association said that reduction was the result of its lawsuit.

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.”