Earlier today, the House Education and Labor Committee advanced its bipartisan surprise billing proposal (H.R. 5800) today by a 32-13 vote. As the FEHBlog mentioned last Friday, the House Ways and Means Committee has released the legislative text of its bipartisan surprise billing proposal (H.R. 5826). While these proposals seek to protect consumers, which is a good thing, they also will impose new administrative burdens on the health system but won’t encourage out-of-network providers to go in-network. The FEHBlog anticipates that if bipartisanship on this issue continues in the House, then it’s likely that the House bill will wind up in the Senate’s bill to lower healthcare costs (S. 1895) and eventually become law.

The Association of Community Health Plans has proposed

a certification framework for digital health care pricing tools that makes quality and pricing information accessible, understandable and actionable for consumers. Outlined in a new issue brief, ACHP offers a core set of standards for meaningful price transparency and lays out a roadmap for independent certification of these tools.

Smart move given the federal government’s push for price transparency tools.

The Wuhan or novel coronavirus has an official name. Forbes reports that

Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the official new name of nCoV2019 (2019 novel coronavirus), the strain of coronavirus that has infected over 43,000 people worldwide, resulting in 1017 deaths.

COVID-19, as the virus will now be known, was decided on by the WHO, with the organization giving a number of reasons as to why it was chosen.

Evidently the FEHBlog was violating WHO guidelines by referring to this disease as the Wuhan virus. Lo siento.

Healthcare Dive reports on Change Healthcare survey of healthcare provider and payer executives. The article describes differences of opinion between payer and provider executives. Here’s one —

Their positions on social determinants of health seem to reflect one of the widest splits. Providers appear to have the edge in terms of gathering information on substance abuse among patients (71.4% of provider executives versus 52.5% of payers). However, payers are much more effective at pinning down the income data of their enrollees (45.9% versus 26.5%). They also had a 10-point advantage in focusing on health literacy (39.3% vs. 29.6%), although the numbers suggest both factions did not consider it a major issue.