S-891 : Still Just a Bill

The Bipartisan Health Care Act (S. 891) addresses a wide range of healthcare issues with the goals of extending expiring health provisions and improving health care delivery. Key provisions include:

• Medicaid and CHIP: It aims to streamline enrollment for out-of-state providers, enhance transparency in home and community-based services, remove age restrictions for working adults with disabilities, and improve address accuracy for enrollees.
• Medicare: The Act extends payment adjustments for low-volume hospitals and Medicare-dependent hospitals, continues add-on payments for ambulance services, extends incentive payments for alternative payment models, provides a temporary increase to the physician fee schedule, extends funding for quality measure endorsement, low-income outreach programs, and the work geographic index floor. Furthermore, it extends certain telehealth flexibilities, requiring a modifier for telehealth hospice encounters, and expands acute hospital care at home waivers. It also addresses program integrity, medication-induced movement disorder outreach, wearable medical device reports, temporary inclusion of oral antiviral drugs as covered part D drugs, and adjustments to the hospice cap amount. It also calls for multiyear contracting authority for MedPAC and MACPAC, and contracting parity for those organizations.
• Human Services: Extends sexual risk avoidance education and personal responsibility education programs as well as funding for family-to-family health information centers.
• Public Health: It extends funding for community health centers, the National Health Service Corps, special diabetes programs, makes corrections to 9/11 responder and survivor health funding, and reauthorizes public health programs.
• SUPPORT Act Reauthorization: This portion reauthorizes and modifies programs related to substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery, opioid drug and actions assessment, and reviews the scheduling of buprenorphine and naloxone.
• Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness: The act addresses reauthorization of state and local readiness and response programs, federal planning and coordination, and public health programs.
• FDA Measures: It promotes research into pediatric uses of drugs, establishes an Abraham Accords Office within the FDA, and limits exclusive approval or licensure of orphan drugs.
• Prescription Drug Costs: The Act seeks to lower prescription drug costs through pharmacy benefit management oversight and increasing transparency in generic drug applications and requires full rebate pass through to plan, exception for innocent plan fiduciaries.

In short, the Bipartisan Health Care Act aims to bolster various aspects of the US healthcare system, particularly focusing on extending existing programs and addressing emerging challenges in healthcare delivery.