Summary
The House and Senate are both in session this week starting tomorrow. The House is scheduled to take up a handful of bills on suspension tomorrow before potentially bringing up two bills later in week: the FY 2025 National Defense Authorization Act and a resolution could come up recommending that the House of Representatives find United States Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena to turn over the recordings of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. The NDAA bill will start in the Rules Committee on Tuesday where over 1,300 amendments will be sifted through, including some that will seek to limit service members access to abortion.
The Senate is scheduled to take up another women’s reproductive health bill on Thursday, this week voting on legislation to preserve access to IVF treatments. This week’s vote comes after Senate Republicans blocked passage last week of a bill to protect Americans’ access to birth control.
On a Committee level the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health will hold a hearing on Wednesday titled “Checking-In on CMMI: Assessing the Transition to Value-Based Care.” The hearing will have a panel of one with CMMI Director Liz Fowler testifying. Republicans have been critical that CMMI has demonstrated few successful outcomes over the past 10 years. The Senate Finance Committee will hold a hearing on Wednesday focused on youth residential treatment facilities. Finally, the Senate Judiciary Committee will have a couple hearings on Wednesday. The full Committee will have a hearing focused on the vaping epidemic among youth, while the Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights will hold a hearing to examine abortion bans and interstate travel for care after Dobbs.
Regulatory Update
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is currently reviewing the following rules:
Medicare
- Calendar Year (CY) Payment Updates: The CY 2025 revisions to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule proposed rule, the CY 2025 Hospital Outpatient PPS Policy Changes and Payment Rates and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment System Policy Changes and Payment Rates proposed rule, the CY 2025 Changes to the End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) Prospective Payment System and Quality Incentive Program proposed rule (June 2024), and the CY 2025 Home Health PPS Rate Update proposed rule (June 2024).
- Medicare Shared Savings Program: A proposed rule titled, “Mitigating the Impact of Anomalous Increases in Billing on Medicare Shared Savings Program Financial Calculations.” The proposal is likely intended to address concerns about fraudulent billing for catheters. It was not included in the latest Unified Agenda.
Medicaid
- Drug Rebate Program – The final rule would establishes requirements related to manufacturers’ misclassification of covered outpatient drug products under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program (MDRP). In addition, it finalizes beneficiary protections, as well as MDRP program integrity and administration changes (June 2024).
Other Topics:
- Healthcare System Resiliency and Modernization – The proposed rule would revise and update national emergency preparedness requirements for Medicare- and Medicaid-participating providers and suppliers (was set for December 2023).
- Health IT – The proposed rule would advance interoperability through proposals for: standards adoption; public health IT certification; expanded uses of certified application programming interfaces (APIs), such as for electronic prior authorization, patient engagement, care management, and care coordination; and information sharing under the information blocking regulations (was set for November 2023).