The following is the latest health policy news from the federal government as of 2:30 p.m. on Monday, June 28.  Some of the language used below is taken directly from government documents.

Supreme Court Decision in Affordable Care Act Case

• The Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal of a case in which insurers unsuccessfully sued to recover reductions in their Affordable Care Act federal cost-sharing reduction payments.

White House

• The White House has posted a transcript of the June 22 press briefing given by its COVID-19 response team and public health officials.

Department of Health and Human Services

COVID-19

• HHS and the FDA have paused all distribution of bamlanivimab and etesevimab together and etesevimab alone, to pair with existing supply of bamlanivimab, on a national basis until further notice.  In addition, the FDA has recommended that health care providers nation-wide use alternative authorized monoclonal antibody therapies and not use bamlanivimab and etesevimab administered together at this time.  Learn more about why the agencies have taken this action and what they propose as alternatives from this message distributed by HHS’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response,
• HHS’s Office of the Inspector General has published a report on the impact of COVID-19 on Medicare beneficiaries residing in nursing homes during 2020.  Learn more from the OIG’s announcement and summary of the report and from the OIG report “COVID-19 Had a Devastating Impact on Medicare Beneficiaries in Nursing Homes During 2020.”

Health Policy News

• HHS and the CDC have awarded 59 jurisdictions with $200 million to bolster support for and enhance the disease intervention specialists workforce.  These awards represent the initial funding of a $1.13 billion investment being made over the next five years under the American Rescue Plan and will provide these jurisdictions, public health programs, and the CDC with support to expand and leverage the work of disease intervention specialists.  Learn more from the CDC’s announcement and find a list of the funding recipients here.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

COVID-19

• CMS has provided guidance to state Medicaid programs about the circumstances under which health care facilities still operating under their emergency preparedness plans because of COVID-19 will temporarily remain exempt from participating in required full-scale emergency preparedness exercises and testing.  See the CMS guidance letter here.

Health Policy News

• CMS has announced the appointment of Daniel Tsai as deputy administrator and director of its Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services.  Tsai comes from Massachusetts, where he served as the assistant secretary for MassHealth and state Medicaid director.  Learn more about Tsai and the agency he will help lead in this CMS news release.
• CMS has released a Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services bulletin to introduce a series of tools and toolkits for states and CMS to use to improve the monitoring and oversight of managed care in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that will help improve beneficiaries’ access to care.  This bulletin also provides guidance setting the content and format of the Annual Managed Care Program Report required by CMS regulations and introduces additional resources and technical assistance toolkits that states can use to improve compliance with managed care standards and requirements.  Learn more from the new CMS bulletin.
• CMS has published the latest edition of MLN Connects, its online publication.  For articles about updates of the hospital outpatient prospective payment system and the clinical laboratory fee schedule and more, go here.
• CMS has updated its FAQ on its final rule on interoperability and patient access.  Find the information here.
• CMS announced that it will provide $20 million in American Rescue Plan money to support state-based marketplaces to improve access to affordable, comprehensive health insurance coverage for consumers in their states.  States can apply for funding to help modernize or update their systems, programs, or technology to comply with federal marketplace requirements.  Learn more about the new funding from this CMS announcement.
• CMS’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation has announced an anti-kickback safe harbor for CMS-sponsored model patient incentives under the agency’s Maternal Opioid Misuse Model.  Learn more here.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

COVID-19

• The CDC has updated its information about people experiencing symptoms of myocarditis and pericarditis after receiving the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

• The CDC has updated its guide for helping evaluators, program implementers, and policy-makers monitor and evaluate wearing masks as a community mitigation strategy.  This update is not meant for health care settings.  Find the update here.
• The CDC has updated its vaccine toolkit for pediatric health care professionals.
• The CDC has updated its information and advice about COVID-19 for people with developmental disabilities.
• The CDC has updated its COVID-19 toolkit for people with disabilities.

Food and Drug Administration

COVID-19

• The FDA has issued emergency use authorization for the drug Actemra (tocilizumab) for the treatment of hospitalized adults and pediatric patients (two years of age and older) who are receiving systemic corticosteroids and require supplemental oxygen, non-invasive or invasive mechanical ventilation, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for the treatment of COVID-19.  Actemra is not authorized for use in outpatients with COVID-19.  Learn more from the following resources:
  • the FDA’s announcement of the drug’s approval for emergency use
  • Actemra EUA letter of authorization
  • an FAQ on the emergency use authorization for Actemra
  • a fact sheet for health care providers
  • a fact sheet for patients, parents, and caregivers
• The FDA announced that it has revised the patient and provider fact sheets for the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines to explain the increased risk of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart) following vaccination.  For each vaccine, the fact sheets have been revised to include warnings about myocarditis and pericarditis.  The following are the updated documents:
  • Pfizer fact sheet for health care providers administering vaccines
  • Pfizer fact sheet for recipients and caregivers
  • Moderna fact sheet for health care providers administering vaccines
  • Moderna fact sheet for recipients and caregivers
• The FDA has published a notice in the Federal Register reaffirming its withdrawal of emergency use authorization for the drug bamlanivimab when used alone to treat COVID-19 and reaffirming its issuance of emergency use authorization for the injectable emulsion Lipuro 1%.

Health Policy News

• The FDA has approved the drug Pradaxa (dabigatran etexilate), the first oral blood thinning medication for children.  Learn more from this FDA news release.
• The FDA has issued draft guidance encouraging industry to include patients with incurable cancers (when there is no potential for cure or for prolonged/near normal survival) in cancer clinical trials regardless of whether they have received existing alternative treatment options.  See the FDA announcement of this new policy and the draft guidance itself, which was published in the Federal Register.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration

• OSHA has issued an emergency temporary standard to protect health care and health care support service workers from occupational exposure to COVID-19 in settings where people with COVID-19 are reasonably expected to be present.  Compliance with some of the new requirements is mandatory as of July 6 and compliance with the rest of the requirements is mandatory as of July 21.  Learn more from OSHA’s notice in the Federal Register.

National Institutes of Health

• NIH director Francis S. Collins and other leaders have outlined their vision for a new science entity, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, that was included in the president’s fiscal year 2022 budget with requested funding of $6.5 billion.  The purpose of the agency is to accelerate biomedical innovation and adoption of technologies and approaches to revolutionize health care and medicine.  Find the NIH announcement and a link to additional information about the agency here.
• An NIH study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine concludes that “…there were 4.8 undiagnosed SARS-CoV-2 infections for every diagnosed case of COVID-19, and an estimated 16.8 million infections were undiagnosed by mid-July 2020 in the United States.”  Find the study here.

Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC)

• MedPAC has submitted formal comments to CMS about that agency’s proposed regulation describing how it plans to pay for acute-care hospital and long-term-care hospital inpatient care in FY 2022.  The MedPAC letter addresses limited parts of the proposed regulation.  Go here to see MedPAC’s letter to CMS.

Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC)

• MACPAC has published a fact sheet with an updated analysis of physician acceptance of new Medicaid patients, including at the state level.  The analysis found that physicians were significantly less likely to accept new patients covered by Medicaid than patients with Medicare or private insurance, although acceptance varied by specialty and by state.  Learn more from the new MACPAC fact sheet “Physician Acceptance of New Medicaid Patients:  Findings from the National Electronic Health Records Survey.”
• MACPAC has published an issue brief that describes how Medicaid programs can pay for certain housing-related services.  Learn more from the MACPAC issue brief “Medicaid’s Role in Housing.”

Government Accountability Office

• The GAO has published a new report, Physician Workforce:  Caps on Medicare-Funded Graduate Medical Education at Teaching Hospitals, that reviews the ability of the current level of graduate medical education funding to meet the country’s future needs for new physicians.  Among other things, the report found that most hospitals train more residents than Medicare pays them to train, absorbing the cost of doing so themselves.

Stakeholder Events

CMS – Coronavirus (COVID-19) Stakeholder Calls 

HHS’s “We Can Do This” campaign is a national initiative to build confidence in COVID-19 vaccines and get more people vaccinated.  This campaign offers tailored resources and toolkits for stakeholders to use to provide COVID-19 vaccine information to at-risk populations.  CMS is partnering with the campaign to offer several webinars to walk through each toolkit and its resources and train community organizations, local voices, and trusted leaders to use the campaign tools for vaccine outreach efforts to diverse communities.  Webinar dates and registration links are below:

• Tuesday, June 29, 1:00-1:30 pm ET:  Faith-Based Toolkit – Register here
• Thursday,  July 1, 1:00-2:00 pm ET:  Toolkits for Racial and Ethnic Minority Communities – Register here
• Thursday, July 8, 1:00-1:30 pm ET:  Older Adults Toolkit – Register here

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, July 7, July 8, and July 9 – CMS

CMS – Revisions to the Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) Code Set

CMS will hold virtual meetings on July 7, 8, and 9, to discuss its preliminary coding recommendations for revisions of the HCPCS Level II code set.  For information about times, registration, submission of materials, signing up to speak, and submitting comments, click here.

Tuesday, July 13 – Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
ONC Workshop: Advancing SDOH Data Use and Interoperability for Achieving Health Equity
Tuesday, July 13 at 10:00 am – 4:00 pm ET  Click here for connection information
This workshop will explore existing and emerging data standards, tools, approaches, policies, models, and interventions for advancing the use and interoperability of non-clinical health data for individual and community health improvement.  It will share varying perspectives of health policy-makers and health improvement implementers to highlight inventive solutions, share challenges, and offer ideas on data modernization to advance health equity.  The workshop offers introductory content as well as deep exploration of key topics as part of social determinants of health IT data use and interoperability including facilitated, expert stakeholder engagement.