HHS released a national kidney care plan that targets dialysis market concentration, doctors and hospitals told FDA that developers should answer for generative AI device safety, and Senate Democrats warned that Medicaid eligibility systems are not ready for January work requirements.
CMS proposed new guardrails for pharmacy benefit managers and Medicare Advantage directories, the administration tightened Affordable Care Act subsidies, and a bipartisan House bill would delay the 340B rebate pilot for two years.
More than 40,000 comments were filed on this year’s physician fee schedule, and almost none will be read by the people they matter to most. Half the arguments sit in attachments, form letters can fill a quarter of a docket, and 1,280 hospital outpatient comments named no organization at all, MedPAC’s among them. SHP Comment Intelligence reads the whole rule and the whole record. Every letter and attachment is coded against a taxonomy we build together, each position cited with a direct quote and page, then checked by someone who has written those letters. Send me the rule and the issues you care about, and I’ll tell you what the record holds, in days.
Medicare’s fee schedule is named for relativity. Nothing in it ever checks whether relativity holds. Here is an idea about how it could.
Trump narrowed the childhood vaccine schedule and ordered an MMR split, the Fifth Circuit voided the No Surprises payment benchmark, and new data showed insurers denying up to 18% of prior authorization requests.
Two agencies moved on 340B in the same week, CMS ended the subsidy holding Medicare drug premiums down, and FDA loaded its fiscal 2027 device fee increase entirely onto establishment registration.
The administration told a court how it cancelled research grants and told the country what it wants funded instead, while CMS moved to squeeze the provider taxes that finance Medicaid.
The week belonged to CMS: the CY2027 Physician Fee Schedule lands with a pay cut, an ACO overhaul, and a surprise remote-monitoring vendor ban, while the Medicaid work-requirement fight moves to court and the Senate grills Trump’s CDC and ASPR nominees over vaccines.
A light news week defined by new HHS activity under RFK Jr., fresh Medicare ACO data, and a Senate rattled by the death of Sen. Lindsey Graham and Sen. Mitch McConnell’s month-long absence.
This week: CMS’s draft 2027 outpatient rule takes aim at 340B and site-neutral pay, Medicare’s GLP-1 coverage era begins, and the Medicaid work-requirement fight lands in court.
Savage Health Policy
csavage@shpconsulting.llc
(276) 221-8300
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