Following up on yesterday’s Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, “Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) today introduced S.1895, the Lower Health Care Costs Act of 2019 — bipartisan legislation to deliver better health care at lower cost.” The Committee leadership has scheduled a markup and vote on the submitted bill for June 26 at 10:30 am. Here’s a link to a Workshare Comparison of the discussion draft of S. 1895 vs. the submitted version of S. 1895.

Also today the Federal Trade Commission sought public comment on a proposed consent decree approving United Healthcare’s acquisition of Davita’s medical group for $4.3 billion. The settlement principally involves divestiture of the Davita medical group in the Las Vegas area. The consent decree will be open to public comment for 30 days after the decree is published in the Federal Register.

Yesterday, the FEHBlog pointed out a recent American Healthcare Quality and Research report on hospital readmission. Becker’s Hospital Review explains AHRQ focused on readmissions for 18 of the 21 principal diagnosis categories listed in ICD-10’s diagnosis coding system. Three categories were excluded for lack of data, or because they involved planned aftercare. The average readmission cost for any diagnosis in 2016 was $14,400.” The Review then listed the average readmission cost in 2016 for those 18 evaluated diagnoses.