Weekend Update

David Ermer–CDC, Congress, COVID-19, Medicare, NIH, U.S. Healthcare–

From Washington, DC,

  • Last Thursday, June 13, the House Appropriations Committee met to consider “Fiscal Year 2025 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act.” The measure was approved by the Committee with a vote of 33 to 24. The Committee adopted an amendment that “Requires the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to submit a report on the coverage options currently available to federal employees that include assisted reproductive technology services and procedures.” 
  • Healthcare Dive tells us,
    • “Members of Congress are questioning the CMS Innovation Center’s progress in moving the nation’s health system to value-based care after a report found the center has increased federal spending instead of lowering it.”
    • “The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, or CMMI, was created by the Affordable Care Act more than a decade ago. The center is tasked with testing new healthcare payment and delivery models to lower costs and improve quality in government health programs.
    • “However, during at House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on Thursday, some lawmakers — particularly Republicans — stressed that CMMI has failed to save money during its first 10 years and could continue to increase spending over the next decade. * * *
    • “Some legislators raised concerns about a lack of provider input into CMMI models. But a new strategic direction for CMMI, announced in 2021, should improve transparency and lay out the center’s priorities, Fowler said.
    • “Many stakeholders, including healthcare providers and various industry stakeholders, have expressed concern about the complexity, administrative burden and perceived lack of transparency involved when participating in the CMMI models,” said Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio.”
  • The American Medical Association lets us know,
    • “Just months after Congress again failed to stop in its entirety a pay cut that threatens Medicare patients’ access to high-quality physician care, the AMA House of Delegates made crystal clear the imperative to step up the pressure on the nation’s lawmakers and boost patient awareness about the dire need for Medicare payment reform.
    • “In a federal budget deal struck to continue operating the government, Congress in March reduced to less than 2% the 3.37% across-the-board physician pay cut that took effect in January.
    • “The House of Delegates (HOD) directed the AMA to:
      • “Increase media awareness around the 2024 AMA Annual Meeting about the need for Medicare payment reform, eliminating budget-neutrality reductions, and instituting annual cost-of-living increases.
      • ‘Step up its public relations campaign to get more buy-in from the general public about the need for Medicare payment reform.
      • “Increase awareness to all physicians about the efforts of our AMA on Medicare payment reform.
      • “Advocate for abolition of all Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) penalties in light of the current inadequacies of Medicare payments.
    • “This direction from the HOD bolsters the AMA’s aggressive efforts in leading the charge to reform the Medicare payment system.

From the public health and medical research front,

  • The Hill takes a look at the CDC’s current Covid statistics. Here’s the sentence that grabbed the FEHBlog’s attention: “[H]ospitalizations for COVID-19 remain very low nationwide. Only 0.6% of all emergency department visits were diagnosed as COVID cases last week.
  • A Buffalo, NY, television station WGRZ offers tips on how to reduce the risk of falling as you age, which is useful information for FEHB plans to share given the FEHB’s older demographics.
  • The National Institutes of Health announced today,
    • A data-driven intervention that engaged communities to rapidly deploy evidence-based practices to reduce opioid-related overdose deaths – such as increasing naloxone distribution and enhancing access to medication for opioid use disorder – did not result in a statistically significant reduction in opioid-related overdose death rates during the evaluation period, according to results(link is external) from the National Institutes of Health’s HEALing (Helping to End Addiction Long-Term) Communities Study. Researchers identified the COVID-19 pandemic and increased prevalence of fentanyl in the illicit drug market – including in mixtures with cocaine and methamphetamine – as factors that likely weakened the impact of the intervention on reducing opioid-related overdose deaths.
    • The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD) meeting on Sunday, June 16, 2024. Launched in 2019, the HEALing Communities Study is the largest addiction prevention and treatment implementation study ever conducted and took place in 67 communities in Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, and Ohio – four states that have been hard hit by the opioid crisis.
  • STAT News promptly followed up with an article about this NIH announcement.
    • “In statements, federal health officials cast the study as at least a partial victory. While the interventions did not meaningfully reduce overdose deaths, the officials argued, they set the stage for future action and created a framework to help hard-hit communities choose new policy approaches and begin to implement them, with the hope that with more time and without Covid-19, deaths would fall.  “In statements, federal health officials cast the study as at least a partial victory. While the interventions did not meaningfully reduce overdose deaths, the officials argued, they set the stage for future action and created a framework to help hard-hit communities choose new policy approaches and begin to implement them, with the hope that with more time and without Covid-19, deaths would fall.  
    • “[Nora] Volkow, the NIDA director, said that increasing use of stimulants like methamphetamine and cocaine, and the proliferation of fentanyl, mean society must “continue developing new tools and approaches” for preventing overdose deaths. Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, the administrator of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, said the study “recognizes there is no quick fix.” 
    • “And in an interview, [Redonna] Chandler, the director of the study, stressed that the results should not challenge what research has long demonstrated: There is a “mountain of evidence,” she said, supporting the belief that tools like naloxone, medications for opioid use disorder, and safer prescribing techniques, save lives. The challenge, Chandler said, lies in implementation — not the strategies themselves. 
    • “The study released Sunday, she said, “doesn’t negate, in any way, the evidence that suggests the strengths of those interventions.”