Summary
The House left town last week for holiday recess without any further action on the President’s emergency foreign aid supplemental request. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has kept the Senate in town this week filling the floor schedule with nominations in hopes that a deal can be reached to provide additional funds to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, and our own Southern border. As of this morning, though progress was made over the weekend, a deal has not yet been reached and Republicans are positioning that it will be January before they will be ready to vote.
January is shaping up to be a very busy month. The House is scheduled to be in recess until January 9th, while the Senate is scheduled to come back on January 8th. Government funding runs out for agencies included in Military Construction-VA, Agriculture, Energy-Water and Transportation-HUD bills on January 19, as well as several health authorization extenders. Funding for the rest of the federal government runs out on February 2.
Prior to recessing, the House did pass the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act (HR 5378), the PREEMIE Reauthorization Act (HR 3226), and the SUPPORT Act (HR 4531) on suspension votes. The Lower Costs, More Transparency Act will, among other things, increase transparency of hospital prices, clinical diagnostic laboratory test prices, imaging prices, ambulatory surgical center prices, health coverage prices, and pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) practices; create parity in Medicare payments for hospital outpatient department services furnished off-campus; prohibit spread pricing in Medicaid; reauthorize Community Health Centers, the Teaching Health Center GME program, National Health Service Corps; and the Special Diabetes Program; delay the Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) reductions under Medicaid; and increasing plan fiduciary access to health data and requiring hidden fee disclosures.
Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Mike Braun (R-IN) are expected to introduce their own health transparency legislation today, which will include many of the hospital transparency provisions that were included in the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act, but will impose stricter requirements on hospitals and insurance companies. While it is unclear what the next steps are for this legislation, it will likely all be part of a broader health care package early next year.