Tuesday’s Tidbits

David Ermer–Congress, COVID-19 testing, Federal employment benefits, OPM, U.S. Healthcare–
Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

The Senate Press Gallery informs us from today’s proceedings

12:22 p.m. Majority Leader Schumer announced that due to Senators Booker and Peters having family illnesses the cloture vote on the Ahuja nomination [to be OPM director] is delayed; and moved the Senate to a period of morning business.

It looks like the Majority Leader is concerned about a close vote. The FEHBlog will continue tracking and best wishes to the Booker and Peters families for speedy recoveries.

Federal Times reports that “Federal employees can enroll, re-enroll or change their flexible spending account coverage during the month of June, as the Office of Personnel Management announced June 14 that it authorized a special enrollment period as part of provisions outlined in the Consolidated Appropriations Act and the American Rescue Plan.”

The Federal Times adds

Because the Consolidated Appropriations Act authorized unlimited carryover of FSA funds for 2020 and 2021, feds that didn’t re-enroll in an FSA plan for 2021 but had remaining money left in their accounts in 2020 may wish to use the special enrollment period to reopen their accounts and gain access to those carried over funds.

The new flexibilities for the 2020 and 2021 plan years also allow enrollees with dependents who would have normally aged out of the program to continue to use those funds until the child is 14, rather than 13, and the government approved hand sanitizer and masks as FSA medical expenses.

In the tidbits department

  • STAT News informs us that “Amazon has made its FDA-cleared Covid-19 test available to consumers online, alongside a consumer diagnostics website where people can view their results. The consumer diagnostics website, AmazonDx.com, was previously only available to Amazon employees. As of Tuesday, however, it appears any customer can sign into the site using the same login information they use to access the shopping portion of the tech giant’s website.  Amazon received FDA authorization for the at-home test kit in May.”
  • Fierce Healthcare tells us that “A JAMA Internal Medicine study is the latest in a string of analyses revealing hospitals’ frequent noncompliance with a new federal mandate requiring them to post prices for medical services. Published Monday, the study found that, as of early March, 83 out of 100 randomly sampled hospitals were noncompliant with at least one of the major requirements of a new rule from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). This decreased slightly to 75 in a parallel review of the country’s 100 highest-revenue hospitals.
  • Healthcare Dive reports that “Humana is acquiring home-based services provider One Homecare Solutions from a private equity firm to beef up its at-home care offerings, as a growing number of payers foray into direct medical delivery. The acquisition of Miramar, Florida-based One Homecare, which does business as Onehome, follows Humana’s decision to snap up home health giant Kindred at Home for $5.7 billion and is meant to boost the insurer’s value-based home health strategy. Financial terms of the deal, expected to close in the second quarter of this year, were not disclosed.”
  • Healthcare Dive also reports that About half of physicians and even more patients said the U.S. healthcare system discriminates against people a great deal, a good amount or somewhat, according to a survey out Tuesday from the nonpartisan research group NORC at the University of Chicago. Patients’ trust in their primary doctor rises with age and income, though 12% of respondents said they have been discriminated against by a healthcare facility, and Black patients were twice as likely to report being discriminated against than White patients, the report found. But 81% of physicians gave their employers either an A or B grade for their efforts to address health equity, and said they’re optimistic their system will improve diversity and equity in the next five years.
  • Health Payer Intelligence discusses “six expectations employers have for provider care coordination Employers are looking for greater price transparency, reduced overtreatment, and improved patient experience, and overall better care coordination from their provider partners.”
  • The Wall Street Journal reports that “A national charity will for the first time buy medical debt, totaling $278 million, directly from hospitals, a push to speed financial relief to patients, many of whom shouldn’t have been billed at all under the hospitals’ financial-aid policies. RIP Medical Debt, which uses donations to wipe out unpaid medical bills, has reached a deal with nonprofit Ballad Health, a dominant hospital system in Tennessee and Virginia, to buy debt owed by 82,000 low-income patients. Many likely qualified for free care under Ballad’s policy but didn’t get it, executives at Ballad involved in the agreement said. The patients lacked applications, they said. RIP Medical Debt will abolish the total amount and is expected to notify households of the debt relief this month. Some bills are 10 years old.” Bravo.

In the OPM rule making agenda department, here are three more found in last Friday’s semi-annual regulatory agenda.

  • OPM is engaged in joint rule making with HHS to implement a provision of Consolidated Appropriations Act Division BB that Congress did not apply to the FEHB. “This joint rule with HHS would implement the prescription drug reporting requirements that apply to group health plans and health insurance issuers offering coverage in the group and individual markets under section 204 of the No Surprises Act.” OPM already has created aggregated pharmacy data reporting requirements for FEHB carriers.
  • OPM is engaged in joint rule making with HHS on the provider non-discrimination provision of the ACA Section 2706. While this law does apply to the FEHB, it’s unusual that OPM is teaming up with HHS to craft the rule.
  • OPM is engaged in a joint rule making with HHS on reporting requirements related to air ambulance and agent and broker services and HHS enforcement provisions under Division BB of the CAA 2021. OPM does need to create rules on air ambulance reporting related to the No Surprises Act.