Recycle Intelligence reports that House of Representatives members are returning to Capitol Hill to vote on the fourth (3.5?) COVID-19 relief bill (H.R. 266) tomorrow morning.

Today, the Health and Human Services Department (“HHS”)announced how it plans to divvy up the remaining $70 billion in funding allocated to hospitals and other healthcare providers in the third relief law known as the CARES Act. The last paragraph of the announcement states that

as a condition to receiving general funds, providers must agree not to seek collection of out-of-pocket payments from a presumptive or actual COVID-19 patient that are greater than what the patient would have otherwise been required to pay if the care had been provided by an in-network provider.

If the FEHBlog’s recollection serves him correctly, the earlier version of this statement flatly prohibited surprise billing. This version permits the provider to collect in-network cost sharing from the patient. How will the provider know the amount of in-network cost sharing?, and how will the member and the patient be made aware that the provider is subject to this obligation? In any event, the government has to provide much more guidance on this well meaning initiative.

Speaking of guidance, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did provide guidance to health plans yesterday concerning limits on medical management of COVID-19 testing coverage mandated by the Families First Coronavirus Response Act as amended by the CARES Act. Check it out.

In an interesting development, the day after HHS delayed enforcement of its new electronic health record interoperability rule, the HHS Office of Inspector General proposed a rule to apply civil monetary penalties to electronic health information blocking violations.