Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Trump's Drug Discount Cards Might Soon Be In The Mail
Bloomberg: Trump’s $200 Medicare Drug Cards Expected To Be Mailed Jan. 1
The Trump administration expects to begin sending $200 prescription drug discount cards to seniors by Jan. 1, a campaign promise to seniors that President Donald Trump was unable to fulfill before losing re-election, a person familiar with the matter said. A White House official described the time line for distributing the cards to Medicare beneficiaries, asking not to be identified discussing internal planning. Politico reported late Monday that an obscure industry panel that advises the Internal Revenue Service on administering benefit cards abruptly dropped its opposition to the drug cards. (Sink, 12/15)
Modern Healthcare: HHS Wants To Boost Interoperability For Medicaid And CHIP
HHS wants to make it easier for beneficiaries covered by Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program or individual market plans to access and share their health information and speed up prior authorization for such plans, according to a proposed rule on Monday. The proposal would require covered payers to follow specific implementation guidelines for application programming interfaces that increase access to patient health information and provider directories. It would also mandate that impacted payers force third-party app developers to agree to specific privacy requirements to access patient data and notify CMS about patient data requests every quarter. The proposal would apply to state Medicaid and CHIP fee-for-service programs, Medicaid managed care plans, CHIP managed care entities and qualified health plans available through federal marketplaces. (Brady, 12/15)
Georgia Health News: Georgia Reports Much Less Medicaid Data To The Feds Than It Used To
Nine years ago, Georgia reported ample data to the feds on the health care quality of its Medicaid and PeachCare programs. In fact, a federal report at that time praised Georgia’s “proactive role in designing its data systems to support quality measurement.” (Grapevine, 12/15)
In other news about aging —
Stateline: US Population Grew Larger, Older, More Diverse In Past Decades
The U.S. population grew to about 332.6 million people in 2020, a 7.7% increase from 2010, and trended older and more diverse, the U.S. Census Bureau said today. The estimates, based on data such as birth and Medicare records, come in advance of actual counts from the 2020 census, which will be released at a still-unspecified time after pandemic-related delays. The numbers released today barely reflect the effects of the pandemic because they are based on data from April 1, 2020. (Henderson, 12/15)
