The FEHBlog was curious about what’s going on with the Justice Department’s lawsuit seeking judicial approval of its settlement of the CVS Health / Aetna merger. Here’s the most recent procedural order from the federal court in the District of Columbia, thanks to the government’s PACER service:
MINUTE ORDER. On the Court’s own motion, it is hereby ORDERED that the hearing scheduled for July 17, 2019, on the United States’ Motion for Entry of Final Judgment, is rescheduled to July 19, 2019, at 3:00 pm in Courtroom 18. The Court will hear oral argument from the parties and amici on that date. The United States, CVS Health Corporation, the American Medical Association, and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation will each be permitted fifteen minutes to present their respective arguments. Consumer Action and U.S. PIRG, which have filed briefs jointly and which proffered their hearing witness jointly, will collectively have ten minutes to present argument. Plaintiffs California, Florida, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Washington have filed a request to collectively address the Court for ten minutes at the hearing, and that request is hereby GRANTED. SO ORDERED. Signed by Judge Richard J. Leon on 7/8/2019.
Federal News Network reports on how the Trump Administration is using an OPM information system outage last week to support its proposal to merger OPM’s operations (other than policy) into GSA.
The incident occurred within the data center at the agency’s headquarters, an OPM spokeswoman said. The incident triggered OPM’s automated disaster recovery systems, which shut down “multiple OPM capabilities” and began the process of transferring those capabilities to a backup location, the agency said.
“Unfortunately, some of the backup systems failed to operate as designed. There is no indication of malicious activity that led to this outage,” the OPM spokeswoman said. “The backup system just failed to respond when called into action.”
Acting OPM Director Margaret Weichert is expected to brief senators on this incident, the agency’s broader IT challenges and the status of the OPM-GSA merger on Wednesday, a person close to the meeting told Federal News Network.
Some sources said Weichert is using this IT problem as yet another example of the “poor” state of OPM’s systems. But sources say the administration is exaggerating both this problem and the overall state of OPM’s technology.
Fierce Healthcare reports that the Congressional Budget Office gave the green light to the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee’s bipartisan bill to lower healthcare costs (S. 1895). Next stop Senate floor.
The Washington Post released an exhaustive story tonight on sales of opioid based prescription drugs over the period 2006 through 2012 when the dispensing pendulum was reaching its peak. The data was released by the federal court hearing a massive opioid related action against prescription drug manufacturers and wholesale distributers.
In the Cleveland case, [consolidating over 2,000 individual lawsuits, U.S. District Judge Dan] Polster has been pressing the drug companies and the plaintiffs to reach a global settlement so communities can start receiving financial assistance to mitigate the damage that has been done by the opioid epidemic.
Wow.