FIRST IN PULSE: REGULATORS ARE BREAKING FAT JOE’S HEART — “What’s Luv?” rapper Fat Joe appears in a six-figure ad buy that launches this morning across the U.S. from advocacy group Power to the Patients. The campaign is aimed at getting hospitals to comply with price-transparency rules. “When we can’t see or compare prices, hospitals can charge us whatever they want. They’re robbing us,” he says in the ad. “It’s not even legal, but nobody’s enforcing that law. We love our nurses. We need our doctors. But the big business behind them is breaking our backs. So to all you politicians letting them crush us — you’re breaking my heart.” A spokesperson for the group declined to detail the specific dollar amount of the buy — which runs through the rest of this month, Megan writes. The ad refers to two Trump-era regulations intended to require hospitals and insurers to disclose their privately negotiated rates and patients’ out-of-pocket costs. The hospital rules went into effect in January 2021, and the rules for insurers kick in this summer. Patientadvocate.org, run by former health care entrepreneur Cynthia Fisher, issued a report earlier this year that estimates roughly 14 percent of hospitals are in compliance. The American Hospital Association said that studies on compliance examined different metrics than regulators do and the industry is “working to help patients access useful information about their costs.” “Patients deserve the best possible information about what they should expect to pay for a scheduled service,” said Ariel Levin, AHA’s director of coverage policy. “The field is embracing new technologies that make accessing such estimates easier than ever.” CMS, which enforces the rules, did not comment. PROPOSED HOSPITAL RULE LAYS OUT NEW COVID PLANS — The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Monday issued its annual draft rule for inpatient prospective payment systems, laying out a slew of proposals to track infectious disease data and public health challenges but also bump hospital payments by $1.6 billion the next year. Some highlights from the massive proposal, rounded up with help from our Rachael Levy and David Lim: Hospitals would have to keep reporting Covid. The rule would require providers to continue reporting Covid-19 data even after the public health emergency ends, much like reporting seasonal flu data. CMS would also “establish new reporting requirements for future declared public health emergencies related to a specific infectious disease or pathogen." But they’d get more money for high-quality masks. The agency proposed increasing payments to hospitals for the costs of domestically made N95 respirators, which are more expensive than Chinese-made versions. CMS said paying hospitals more for U.S.-made N95s could help support a domestic supply chain in the long term, which would prepare them for future pandemics. The U.S. faced an acute shortage of N95s at the pandemic’s start partly because the country didn’t have the capacity to manufacture them. Toward the end of the Omicron wave, the Biden administration started distributing free N95s through pharmacies around the country. The distribution marked the largest deployment of protective equipment to the public in U.S. history, according to an Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response spokesperson. And limit wage declines. CMS is proposing a 5 percent cap on decreases to hospitals’ wages. But the agency acknowledged that other costs — like domestic mask purchases — could put pressure on hospital budgets. CMS “is considering the appropriateness of payment adjustments accounting for additional costs of purchasing surgical N95 respirators made in the U.S.” Equity initiatives are also on the table. In the proposed rule, the agency asked for feedback on hospital codes related to social determinants of health, starting with codes describing homelessness. Living without a home “can be reasonably expected to have an impact on hospital utilization,” officials wrote. What’s next: CMS is likely to receive hundreds of comments but generally finalizes its rule for the next year in August. BIDEN TO RESCIND TRUMP-ERA ‘CONSCIENCE’ RULE — The Biden administration is preparing to scrap a Trump-era rule that allows medical workers to refuse to provide services that conflict with their religious or moral beliefs, three people familiar with the deliberations told our Alice and Adam Cancryn. A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed that the policy change is underway, saying: “HHS has made clear through the unified regulatory agenda that we are in the rulemaking process.” The change could come by the end of this month. Meanwhile, many GOP-led states are moving to limit access to abortions and transgender care as progressive advocacy groups call on the federal government to do more to protect the patients’ rights. The so-called conscience rule, unveiled in 2018 and finalized in 2019, was blocked by federal courts after dozens of states, cities and advocacy groups sued and has never been implemented.
| 
