Alan P. Spielman, who retired from the position of OPM’s Healthcare and Insurance Director, this past Spring has been named a Meritorious Executive Presidential Rank Award Winner for 2019. Congratulations, Alan.

This morning, the Trump Administration announced the issuance of a final price transparency rule applicable to hospitals, effective January 1, 2021,and a proposed price transparency rule applicable to health plans and insurers excluding grandfathered plans and account base plans.  The proposed rule would be applicable to the FEHBP. The comment deadline for the proposed rule will be 60 days from the rule’s publication in the Federal Register. Healthcare Dive reports on various constiuency reaction to the final and proposed rules.

Healthcare Dive also reports  “Doctors give their EHR systems an F for usability, according to a study conducted by Stanford and the Mayo Clinic in collaboration with the American Medical Association.” This is hardly surprising as the Obama Administration rushed out the free electronic health record program (which cost taxpayers over $30 billion) nearly ten years ago without fully understanding physician needs (or interoperablity).  It will take some time to straighten out this mess.

The Centers for Disease Control, which has been busy this month, released their current report on tobacco use in the U.S. Cigarettes down (“an all-time low of 13.7% in 2018”) but vaping up (“During 2017–2018, e-cigarette use among adults increased from 2.8% to
3.2%, a reversal from the decline observed among adults during
2014-2017.”)  

The Federal Times discusses the Postal Service’s latest annual financial statements. The FEHBlog has read that the Postal Service did present a ten year business plan to Congress over the summer. Congress needs to get on the ball and help the Postal Service out.