Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Medical Debt Now Banned From Credit Reports, But New Rule Faces Hurdles
KFF Health News: Biden Administration Bars Medical Debt From Credit Scores
The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday issued new regulations barring medical debts from American credit reports, enacting a major new consumer protection just days before President Joe Biden is set to leave office. The rules ban credit agencies from including medical debts on consumers’ credit reports and prohibit lenders from considering medical information in assessing borrowers. (Levey, 1/7)
More health industry updates —
Fierce Healthcare: CVS Officially Rolls Out CostVantage Model For Commercial Plans
All of the commercial prescriptions dispensed at CVS pharmacies will be processed through its CostVantage reimbursement model beginning this year, the healthcare giant announced Monday. Under the model, prescriptions are priced based on the underlying cost with a delineated markup and dispensing fee to cover the services provided by CVS in the transaction. The company says this model makes it less necessary to raise the cost for certain prescriptions to cover losses on other drugs. (Minemyer, 1/6)
Military Times: VA To Waive Co-Pays For Whole Health Medical Services
Veterans Affairs officials plan to waive co-pays for certain “well-being” health care appointments in an effort to encourage more veterans to look into services like yoga, meditation and wellness counseling. The move could potentially save patients several hundred dollars a year in medical fees, but is less focused on financial relief than emphasizing “the overall well-being of the veteran,” according to a department release. (Shane III, 1/6)
New Hampshire Public Radio: State Approves Catholic Medical Center Sale To HCA Healthcare
State officials have cleared the way for HCA Healthcare to buy Catholic Medical Center, the latest in a series of hospital mergers and acquisitions reshaping New Hampshire’s medical landscape. The Manchester hospital says it’s struggling financially, and the sale to HCA – the country’s largest for-profit hospital company – will ensure its survival. (Cuno-Booth, 1/6)
MedPage Today: Journal Editors Sound Alarm On Predatory Medical Journals
Action by all stakeholders is required to protect authors and the public from predatory medical journals, an international group of prominent medical journal editors said Monday. "Predatory journals have developed strategies to profit by taking advantage of a climate that nurtures the growth of open access, author-pays publication models," wrote Christina Wee, MD, MPH, secretary of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, and colleagues in an editorial published simultaneously in JAMA and the Annals of Internal Medicine. "It is worrisome that despite the awareness of these entities for many years, academicians still fall prey to them." Predatory journals are those which "misrepresent themselves as scholarly journals for financial gain despite not meeting scholarly publishing standards," the editors said in their introduction. "The number of predatory journals is difficult to accurately determine but was estimated at more than 15,000 in 2021." (Frieden, 1/6)
KFF Health News: 'An Arm And A Leg': A Listener Fighting The Good Fight
Joey Ballard is an internal medicine resident at the University of Illinois-Chicago. He wrote to “An Arm and a Leg” about a resolution the American Medical Association recently adopted calling on hospitals to do more to make sure patients who qualify for charity care get it. And that legislators and regulators make sure that’s happening. Ballard helped write that resolution. He told “An Arm and a Leg” host Dan Weissmann that he first heard about charity care after listening to an episode of the podcast. (1/7)
