Dear FEHBlog readers — The FEHBlog wrote a quick blog post for Thursday but overlooked hitting the publish button, so here are the two items from Thursday and the remainder from Friday.

Wednesday afternoon, the Affordable Care Act regulators issued ACA FAQ 59 about the Braidwood Management decision. The FAQs expressly endorsed OPM’s informal administration action last Friday using FEHB Act Section 8902(d) to endorse the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendations that the decision rejected because they had no federal government endorsement. The FEHBlog wonders why HHS hasn’t pulled this page out of OPM’s playbook.

Wednesday night, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (2-1 decision) stayed a portion of the abortion pill injunction on statute of limitations grounds in a 42-page opinion. The Fifth Circuit opinion allows the abortion pill to stay on the market with reinstated in-person medical visit prerequisites and without delivery by mail. The Attorney General has stated that he will ask the Supreme Court to weigh in. Axios reports that the Supreme Court would decide quickly.

Axios was correct because the Wall Street Journal reported that today

• The Supreme Court temporarily blocked lower court orders that would have limited access to the abortion drug mifepristone beginning Saturday, preserving the pill’s availability while the justices weigh the Biden administration’s emergency request to leave current Food and Drug Administration approvals in place during a continuing legal battle with antiabortion groups.
• In a pair of orders Friday, Justice Samuel Alito, who oversees emergency matters for the lower courts that limited or suspended approval of the widely used abortion pill, gave the antiabortion groups until noon Tuesday to file briefs in response to appeals by the FDA and Danco Laboratories LLC, which makes the branded version Mifeprex.
• The temporary orders expire at 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, suggesting a high court decision on whether and to what extent mifepristone will remain available during litigation may come by then.

In other judicial news, the American Hospital Association informs us

• The U.S. Supreme Court today unanimously reversed a 9th Circuit decision that impliedly stripped federal district courts of jurisdiction over constitutional challenges to the Federal Trade Commission structure, procedures and existence. Ruling in the FTC case and another case involving the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Supreme Court said, “The statutory review schemes set out in the Securities Exchange Act and Federal Trade Commission Act do not displace a district court’s federal-question jurisdiction over claims challenging as unconstitutional the structure or existence of the SEC or FTC.”
• As a result of this decision, parties may bring claims in federal court alleging that “the structure, or even existence, of an agency violates the Constitution” without having to first go through costly and time-consuming administrative proceedings before the SEC or FTC.

Turning now to the federal employment front –

• Govexec tells us
  • Office of Management and Budget guidance released Thursday tasks agencies with developing a new system to monitor their “organizational health and organizational performance” on an ongoing basis. With the new system comes an expectation that federal agencies will rely less on telework and remote work, although that must be balanced with the need to compete for talent with private sector employers who continue to offer similar workplace flexibilities, wrote OMB Deputy Director for Management Jason Miller in a blog post accompanying the memo.

• Federal News Network reports OPM’s implementation of the Postal Service Health Benefits Program.

From the public health front

• The Centers for Disease Control begins to bring down the curtain on its now bi-weekly review of its Covid statistics and updates us on the bird flu situation.

• The Food and Drug Administration announced granting emergency use authorization to an improved Covid test.

• The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation offers various perspectives on achieving joyful, healthy births for all, a worthy goal.

• Medscape identifies troubling trends in colorectal cancer data recently released by the American Cancer Society.

From the regulatory front —

• Mercer Consulting offers advice on the recent instructions concerning RxDC reporting for the 2022 reference year due June 1.

• Healthcare Finance tells us
  • The Office of Civil Rights is providing a 90-day transition period for healthcare providers to come into compliance with the HIPAA Rules regarding telehealth, according to the Department of Health and Human Services OCR. 
  • The transition period will be in effect beginning on May 12 and will expire at 11:59 p.m. on August 9.
  • OCR said it would continue to exercise its enforcement discretion and not impose penalties on covered providers for noncompliance during the 90- day transition period. 
  • During the public health emergency, providers did not have to be licensed in the state where the patient was located. They were allowed to treat patients in other states. 
  • Also, under the PHE, non-HIPAA-compliant platforms were allowed as long as they were not public facing.
  • Both of these flexibilities are coming to an end with the PHE on May 11, with providers now getting a 90-day grace period.
  • Other telehealth provisions expire at the end of 2023 and 2024

From the Rx coverage front —

• Fierce Healthcare informs us that Cigna’s Express Scripts unveiled two new programs on Thursday, Copay Assurance and ClearCare Rx, which reminds the FEHBlog of OPM’s transparent pharmacy pricing program.

• The Institute for Clinical and Economic Research (ICER) published an
  • Evidence Report on Treatments for Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis [liver inflammation]
    • — Evidence suggests that both resmetirom and obeticholic acid improve liver histology without evidence yet demonstrating improved long-term outcomes; obeticholic acid has more concerning side effects —
    • — Current evidence suggests that resmetirom would achieve common thresholds for cost-effectiveness if priced between $39,600 – $50,100 per year, while obeticholic acid would achieve these thresholds if priced between $32,800-$40,700 per year —
    • — At the April 28 virtual public meeting, ICER’s independent appraisal committee will review the evidence, hear further testimony from stakeholders, and deliberate on the treatments’ comparative clinical effectiveness, other potential benefits, and long-term value for money —

From the U.S. healthcare business front

• Beckers Payer Issues reports, “UnitedHealth Group posted revenues of $91.9 billion in the first quarter of 2023, up 15 percent from $80.1 billion over the same period last year, according to the company’s earnings report released April 14.”

• Beckers Hospital Review ranks 29 physician specialties by annual compensation.