The Federal Times, Govexec, and Federal News Network all reported on the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing yesterday on the Administration’s plan to dismantle OPM. The FEHBlog heard the acting Director Margaret Weichert, who was not combative, explain that she was hoping for a bipartisan legislative solution, but she received no support from the subcommittee members or the other witnesses at the hearing. Unfortunately watching the hearing was not entertaining.
The Office of Management and Budget posted its Spring 2019 regulatory agenda today. The FEHBlog regrettably has not seen much deregulation, if any, in the FEHBP. In any event, here’s a link to OPM’s regulatory agenda.
Health Payer Intelligence reports that “At Health Partners Plans [which is based in Philadelphia], a medically-tailored meal delivery program is improving outcomes and reducing costs for members with chronic disease.” It’s certainly worth reading.
As price transparency is referenced in OPM’s 2020 call letter for benefit and rate proposals, it is worth noting this Modern Healthcare article which explains that ]
The [HHS] Health Information Technology Advisory Committee on Wednesday voted to remove price-transparency requirements from the proposed interoperability rule. In its second meeting this month hashing out recommendations on how the federal government should address concerns related to information blocking and patient privacy, HITAC cautioned that tying price transparency to the information-blocking proposals would have an “unintended consequence of slowing down the finalization of the current ONC rule.” Instead, it recommended ONC create a separate price-transparency task force within HITAC to produce recommendations for future rulemaking.
In other words, slow down. The proposed interoperability rule is open for public comment until June 3. So far 926 comments have been submitted.