Congress
House Republicans drafted a budget resolution that calls for $880 billion in federal spending cuts over 10 years to Medicaid. This would be about a 11% cut in federal Medicaid Spending and would likely require something like per capita caps to achieve. Several steps (vote to agree to the resolution, drafting legislation, ultimately passing the legislation) are still needed before a law would go into effect. Ultimately what is included in a bill and what (if anything) gets passed is still very much unclear.
HHS
- Robert F Kennedy Jr. was officially confirmed as the next HHS Secretary this week. Confirmation hearings for CMS Administrator (Oz) are likely to occur in the near term.
- A new proposed regulation was submitted to OMB this week. The regulation titled “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Individual Health Insurance Market and Exchange Program Integrity” is expected to rescind a number of changes made by the Biden Administration although exact details are unknown at this time as well as when the proposed regulation will be released.
- Funding freezes continue to affect several community health centers, which may result in these providers cutting back services or closing.
- President Trump signed an executive order earlier this week that restricts any new regulations to have a total impact cost of less than zero as well as repeal 10 existing regulations. The exact implications of this are uncertain but generally the intent is to reduce regulatory burden on industry.
Flu
For the first time since the Covid pandemic started, more people died and more people were hospitalized due to the flu than Covid. In fact, according to CDC data, flu hospitalization rates are three times higher than Covid hospitalization rates at the moment. This year’s flu season is generally considered the worst in at least 15 years.
