From Capitol Hill, the Wall Street Journal reports

House Republicans passed a rules package Monday dictating the terms of the next session of Congress, the first test for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) in keeping his raucous conference united.  

The rules package, a required step before moving on to legislation, is typically passed on the first day of a new Congress. But it was delayed by the GOP fight to elect a new speaker. Mr. McCarthy prevailed early Saturday morning on the 15th ballot over four days, after making a series of concessions to holdouts. 

The package passed 220 to 213, with all Democrats and one Republican, Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, opposing the measure. It is customary for the minority party to oppose the legislation. 

The package, which includes standard rules on decorum, also restores what is known as the motion to vacate the chair, a procedure that would allow one Republican member to ask for a vote to remove the speaker. It also outlines several Republican priorities around spending, such as banning consideration of any bill that has the net effect of increasing mandatory spending. 

The Journal adds

House Republican leaders chose Rep. Jason Smith (R., Mo.) to run the House Ways and Means Committee, giving him a prime perch to shape the party’s approach to tax, trade and health policy. 

As chairman, Mr. Smith will lead a committee with broad power over economic policy and healthcare that is poised to receive an influx of new Republican members.

From the other side of Capitol Hill, Healthcare Dive informs us

Longtime Congressman Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is expected next month to take the helm of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, bringing the Medicare-for-All proponent center stage in one of the nation’s most broadly influential health policy forums.

The anticipated appointment comes after the current committee chair Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., announced that she was stepping down to head the Senate Committee on Appropriations. Sanders has been on the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, or HELP, since 2007, but the chance to lead the committee will give Sanders sway on some of his most prominent healthcare policy positions.

High healthcare costs — including prescription drugs like insulin —nursing education and elder care are issues Sanders anticipates focusing on, calling the national healthcare system dysfunctional, unsustainable and disgraceful in a Jan. 1 video.

From the FEHB front —

OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) posted the federal government’s fall 2022 regulatory agenda on January 4. Here are the three FEHB rulemakings:

• OPM proposes to modify its FEHB enrollment regulations regarding the effective date of coverage. The regulatory changes would allow, at an employing agency’s discretion, FEHB Coverage to become effective upon a new employee’s start date if their election is received before that date. The regulatory changes would promote the recruitment of new Federal employees and align with the best practices of the private sector. Publication of the proposed rule is scheduled for March 2023.

• OPM and the three other No Surprises Act regulators plan to release a proposed rule on the law’s complicated good faith estimate and advance explanation of benefits provisions in August 2023.

• As previously noted in the FEHBlog, OPM has passed along its interim final rule to implement the Postal Service Health Benefits Program to OIRA for final regulatory review. The statutory deadline for promulgating the rule is April 6, 2023. OPM clearly will meet that deadline.

• Here is the complete list of OPM rule-makings in process or recently completed.

The Government Accountability Office released a report titled “Federal Employees Health Benefits Program: Additional Monitoring Mechanisms and Fraud Risk Assessment Needed to Better Ensure Member Eligibility.” The report summary tells us

More than 8 million federal employees and their families receive health insurance benefits under the Federal Employees Health Benefits program.

In 2021, the Office of Personnel Management began requiring some new program enrollees to verify that their family members are eligible. But OPM doesn’t have a process to identify and remove ineligible family members who are already enrolled in the program. As a result, the program may be spending almost $1 billion per year on payments for ineligible members.

We recommended that OPM take steps to remove ineligible family members and assess fraud risks associated with ineligible program members.

In the middle of the last decade, OPM added an FEHB contract provision requiring carriers to share OPM’s expenses to arrange for a family member eligibility audit, which is a common practice among employers. This struck the FEHBlog as a proven approach to identifying ineligible family members. Why not give it a go?

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released updated guidance for its Section 111 reporting program, which applies to FEHB carriers and other employer-sponsored health plans.

From the public health front —

Medpage Today tells us

In contrast to previous recommendations, pediatricians and other pediatric healthcare providers are advised to provide “immediate, intensive obesity treatment to each patient” as soon as they receive a diagnosis, according to new guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

The guidance, published in Pediatrics, marks the AAP’s first clinical practice guideline outlining evidence-based evaluation and treatment for children and adolescents with overweight (defined as a body mass index [BMI] at or above the 85th percentile and below the 95th percentile) or obesity (defined as a BMI at or above the 95th percentile), though the organization previously published recommendations on prevention and treatment in 2007.

“This is one of the most important messages that differentiates our current clinical practice guidelines from the prior recommendations, and that is to say 15 years of data have taught us that ‘watchful waiting’ only leads to greater increase in child BMI, accumulation of comorbidities, and more challenges in trying to reverse some of this,” author Sarah Armstrong, MD, co-director of the Duke Center for Childhood Obesity Research in Durham, North Carolina, told MedPage Today.

In a number of key action statements, the guideline authors state that pediatricians and other providers should refer children ages 6 years and older — and potentially those ages 2 to 5 years — with overweight or obesity to intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment.

Additionally, healthcare providers should offer weight-loss pharmacotherapy, according to medication indications, risks, and benefits, as an adjunct to health behavior and lifestyle treatment to adolescents ages 12 and older, Armstrong and colleagues noted. They should also offer referrals for evaluation for metabolic and bariatric surgery to adolescents ages 13 and older with severe obesity (BMI ≥35 or 120% of the 95th percentile for age and sex, whichever is lower).

The Wall Street Journal reports

This flu season hit earlier and harder than those of the past couple of years, doctors say. The reason is likely because of the cyclical nature of the flu and the lifting of Covid precautions such as working from home, wearing masks and having smaller social gatherings, says Robert Frenck, a pediatrician in the division of infectious diseases at Cincinnati Children’s hospital in Ohio. 

We asked doctors what to expect this year if the influenza virus causes illness in your household.

Check out the Q&A.

Politico Pulse calls attention to the fact that

Doctors are frustrated that patients are getting test results before they can explain them, POLITICO’s Ben Leonard reports.

A recently implemented federal [information blocking] rule requires HHS to ensure that patients receive test results as soon as they become available, but doctors argue that they often need to add context and support to results before patients view them — even as technology has made the results easier to share.

The disagreement, with doctors on one side and HHS and patient advocates on the other, has raised a key question: How should patients get bad news, especially in the rapidly evolving world of telehealth?

Before this rule was in effect, a member of the FEHBlog’s family received an email on a Sunday morning suggesting that she log into the patient portal. She promptly did so and was faced with confusing test results. See Seinfeld. Can’t doctors give patients a choice at the time of portal registration to get the log on email or wait to hear the results from a medical professional in non-emergency circumstances?

From the U.S. healthcare business front —

STAT News tells us

Moderna disclosed Monday that it plans to price its Covid-19 vaccine at anywhere from $110 to $130 per dose when the company pivots from a focus on government contracts to commercial distribution efforts.

The timing was not offered, but the company is holding talks with hospitals, pharmacy chains and pharmacy benefit managers. In setting such a price, Moderna will pursue the same path as Pfizer, which last year also announced plans to charge $110 to $130 a dose this year for its own Covid-19 shot. The Moderna pricing was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by a company spokesperson.

The 41st JP Morgan healthcare conference is being held this week in San Francisco. “Fierce Healthcare will be covering the day’s biggest news as it happens. Check back here for updates, and catch Fierce Biotech’s reporting here and Fierce Pharma’s reporting here.”