Hearts Health Tech Congress – POLITICO
PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be free next week for vacation, but we’ll be back in your inboxes on Tuesday, January 3.
Congressional fiscal year 2023 expense project offers certainty to the health care industry that there is bipartisan support to uphold the rules adopted during the Covid-19 pandemic that allow for easier access to home and virtual care.
The bill, which lawmakers plan to pass this week, will run through 2024:
– simplified Medicare rules enabling expanded access to telehealth. Those rules were previously scheduled to expire five months after the end of the Covid public health emergency, which could come as early as next year. The Department of Health and Human Services allowed Medicare patients easier access to telehealth at the start of the pandemic and Congress reinforced that decision. in a March 2020 Covid relief bill.
– a rule that allows high-deductible health plans to offer subscribers telehealth appointments before they meet their deductibles. Previously, the rule would have expired at the end of the year. Congress first allowed high-deductible plans to pay for virtual visits in the March 2020 law. Lawmakers allowed the provision to expire at the end of 2021 before passing another extension in March.
– exemptions that allow hospitals to to treat some emergency department and hospitalized patients from their homes. The movement, adopted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in November 2020, it aimed to expand hospital capacity as healthcare organizations were impacted by Covid-19 patients. The waivers would have expired with the end of the public health emergency.
Yes, but: Those are all big wins for groups in the health care industry. But some also suffered losses. The bill maintains a ban against creating a national patient ID that providers and health technology companies say is necessary to ensure a smooth and secure transition to electronic medical records.
This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping healthcare.
Now we can get our medical records and results on cool mobile apps, cool right? But if they are written in medicalese, the average person will not be able to understand them. So whose job is it to translate our medical records into something intelligible? Warn Ruth.
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today in our pulse check podcast, Ben talks with Mark Cuban, famous for his ABC reality show “Shark Tank” and one of America’s most prominent investors, about the Cost Plus Drug Company he founded with Alex Oshmyansky to take over the pharmaceutical market and drive down drug prices. medicines.
America will stay on top the list of donors for global health causes if Congress, as expected, passes the fiscal year 2023 spending bill this week.
But the 7 percent increase in funding to be overseen by the State Department and the Agency for International Development comes amid enormous needs stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic, during which the fight against infectious diseases has been disrupted. such as measles, polio and HIV.
Of the $10.5 billion for the State and USAID in the end of year expenses package:
– The biggest push, $445 million, it will go to HIV/AIDS programs, for a total of $6.7 billion. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria had the largest percentage increase with $440 million, bringing the US contribution to $2 billion for next year.
– Global health security will get $200 million more, for a total of $900 million. The money will go towards programs that seek to build the capacity of other countries to prevent, detect and respond to infectious disease outbreaks. at least some of that It is expected that go to the World Bank Pandemic Fund.
– Tuberculosis programs it will get an increase of $23.5 million to nearly $395 million.
– Malaria programs will receive $795 million, an increase of $20 million. Polio programs will get $85 million, an increase of $10 million.
– Financing for family planning and reproductive health programs remained stable at $575 million. The United States will also contribute $32.5 million to the United Nations Population Fund.
The Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will also get nearly $700 million in global health funding.
California could be the third state to decriminalize “magic mushrooms” if Democratic State Sen. Scott Wiener’s New Bill it becomes law.
Wiener, who represents San Francisco and the surrounding area, wants to legalize possession of plant-based psychedelics, such as psilocybin, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), ibogaine and mescaline, for personal use by adults 21 and older.
Psychedelics are on the borderline of drug legalization:
– Oregon, in 2020, and Colorado, earlier this year, decriminalized psychedelics. Both changes were the result of electoral initiatives.
– Oakland, Santa Cruz and San Francisco in California; Ann Arbor, Detroit, and Hazel Park in Michigan; Somerville, Cambridge, Easthampton and Northampton in Massachusetts, and Washington, DC, no longer treat possession of psychedelic plants as a crime.
Wiener’s bill excludes LSD and MDMA, or ecstasy, two synthetic, perception-altering drugs currently being tested for use in treating anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, respectively.
The bill includes penalties for transporting the substances it decriminalizes onto school grounds or giving them to anyone under the age of 21.
Health Information Technology The advisory committee that Congress created to advise HHS on how to improve the flow of medical data is about to get more diverse.
Comptroller General Gene Dodaro named seven new members to the committee Monday, five of them women.
Last year, the GAO announced an all-male group of nominees, which sent some in the world of healthcare IT in an uproar. The new group will push the panel toward more balance, as it currently has 19 men and eight women appointed.
The new members will serve three-year terms on the committee. Is it so:
— Deven McGraw, data management and sharing leader at Invitae, a genetic testing company, and former high-ranking official in the privacy division of the HHS Office for Civil Rights
— Kikelomo Belizaire, medical director of Pegasystems, a software company, and former medical director of the Anthem insurance business unit
— shila Mix, director of health information technology for the North Dakota Health Information Network and former deputy chief of staff for the state’s response to COVID-19
— Hanna Galvin, chief medical information officer for Cambridge Health Alliance, the Massachusetts healthcare provider and former senior manager of clinical effectiveness at athenahealth
— Anna McCollister, a patient advocate and former principal advocate for participatory research at the Scripps Institute for Translational Sciences
— Bryant Karras, Director of Medical Informatics at the Washington State Department of Health and former Assistant Professor at the University of Washington
— Naresh Sundar Rajan, data officer at CyncHealth, who assists in the sharing of information between providers in Nebraska and neighboring states
Why it matters: Congress established the advisory committee through the Law of cures of the 21st century six years ago.
The panel advises the HHS National Coordinator for Health Information Technology on policies, standards, and certification criteria related to the implementation of health information technology with the goal of improving electronic access, sharing, and use of health data. .
