From Capitol Hill, Federal News Network discusses two bipartisan bills affecting federal hiring practices and federal retirement annuities that are under active consideration.

From the Postal Service Health Benefits Program front, it appears to the FEHBlog that OPM has been adding to its PSHBP FAQs without giving the public an online heads-up when an addition occurs, e.g., last updated xx/xx/xxxx.

From the public health front

• The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force released for public comment a draft inconclusive (“I”) recommendation “that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening for lipid disorders in children and adolescents age 20 years or younger.” This proposed action would confirm the ongoing vitality of a 2016 recommendation. The public comment deadline is February 21.

• The National Institutes of Health discusses its approach to “shouldering the burden of rare diseases.” NIH notes “While individually each disease is rare, collectively rare diseases are common: More than 10,000 rare diseases affect nearly 400 million people worldwide. In the United States, the prevalence of rare diseases (over 30 million people) rivals or exceeds that of common diseases such as diabetes (37.3 million people), Alzheimer’s disease (6.5 million people), and heart failure (6.2 million people).”

• STAT News discusses legal developments in the FDA’s practices of approving “orphan drugs” to treat rare diseases. “In an unexpected move, the Food and Drug Administration will continue to apply exclusive marketing rights for so-called orphan drugs under its existing regulations, rather than take a broader approach suggested by a federal court in a highly controversial case involving one such medicine.”

• Fierce Healthcare reports “The White House, federal agencies and lawmakers today marked the elimination of the DATA-Waiver Program, better known as the X-Waiver requirement, with calls for providers to begin incorporating opioid use disorder treatment buprenorphine in everyday patient care. The X-Waiver requirement only permitted doctors who had received specialized training and federal permissions to prescribe the opioid partial agonist, which is a controlled substance.”

From the Rx coverage front —

• Segal Consulting offers plan sponsors its analysis of weight loss drugs to treat diabetes and obesity.

• Fierce Healthcare tells us about Amazon’s new RxPass program and adds that Optum Rx “launched a new tool that aims to make it easier to compare the direct-to-consumer price for generic drugs to the price with insurance.” RxPass is not available to Medicare or Medicaid beneficiaries and “is not currently available to send medications to California, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington.”