The great American singer Wilson Pickett probably was not thinking of the SUNSET rule when he wrote his soul anthem, “In the Midnight Hour.” But Secretary Azar waited ‘til the midnight hour, and there it is, in the January 19, 2021 Federal Register: “Securing Updated and Necessary Statutory Evaluations Timely,” a final rule issued by […]
So far 2021 has been a really wild and difficult ride for me and millions of others in the U.S. with COVID-19 ravaging the nation, an armed insurrection here in DC, and an ongoing economic crisis leaving so many families in need. My mind has been struggling to absorb all that is happening so quickly. […]
After more than the usual end-of-session drama, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (CAA) became law on December 27, 2020 (P.L. 116-260). The sprawling, 2,124-page opus includes not just badly needed COVID relief for millions of unemployed Americans but also funding for the entire federal government and protections against surprise medical bills for consumers with private […]
This week—two weeks before the inauguration of a new President—the self-proclaimed “Good Guidance Practices” regulation issued by the outgoing Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) takes effect. As proposed in August, the regulation was not so good for Medicaid and CHIP. In its final form, published on December 7, the regulation […]
$100 billion—with a “b”—is a large number. So when the headline on the op-ed in the New York Post screams “Medicaid hemorrhaging $100B on Americans ineligible for the program” most readers will understandably frown and think: “This doesn’t sound good, even in a pandemic. What’s going on here?” The author, Brian Blase, is not a […]
On November 4, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed to require itself to review almost every regulation it has ever issued, including those affecting Medicaid and CHIP. It did so by proposing a new regulation, which has the misleading acronym “SUNSET” (Securing Updated and Necessary Statutory Evaluations Timely). A more appropriate acronym would […]
