HEALTH CARE ON THE FLOOR — A major health care package focusing on transparency could get a full House vote next week, Ben reports. House leadership is eyeing a potential vote under suspension of the rules, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday, meaning it would need a two-thirds vote to pass. Meeting that threshold became more likely when the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Sen. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), signed onto the legislation Friday alongside Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), and Education and the Workforce Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.). Pallone had asked for changes related to hospital price transparency and secured them in the package. However, ranking members of the Ways and Means and Education and the Workforce committees, Reps. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.), didn’t sign on. What’s in the bill: The legislation draws substantially from the PATIENT ACT, a bipartisan bill from Rodgers and Pallone that their committee approved unanimously in May. Many provisions would codify and expand price transparency rules for hospitals established during the Trump administration. The bill also focuses on transparency requirements for insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, which manage prescription drugs for health insurers. The package would boost funding for community health centers and graduate medical education programs and contains provisions on site-neutral payments, generic drugs and industry consolidation. DEA PROPOSAL SLAMMED — Top senators, including Mark Warner (D-Va.), who chairs the Intelligence Committee, and GOP whip John Thune (R-S.D.), wrote to the Drug Enforcement Administration Wednesday urging the agency to ease access to care in its telemedicine prescribing proposal. They’re also calling for the agency to extend pandemic rules allowing prescribing controlled substances virtually for new patients beyond Nov. 2023, as it currently stands. The lawmakers, alongside Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), called for the DEA to extend the 30-day supply permitted for prescribing many controlled substances before patients must see a doctor in person. The drugs include buprenorphine for opioid use disorder and testosterone for gender-affirming care under a DEA-proposed rule. “We have concerns about our constituents’ ability to obtain in-person appointments within 30 days of starting a new medication, and the potential consequences to their health of starting a new medication and abruptly ending it should they not be able to obtain such an appointment,” the lawmakers wrote. They also called for the DEA to establish a special registration process to allow providers to prescribe such substances without an in-person visit, as Congress deemed in a 2008 law. The background: In February, the agency proposed rolling back those eased rules ahead of the emergency expiration in May. But it reversed course after a record 38,000 comments — many negative — and extended pandemic rules through Nov. 11 for new patients and a year further for established ones. The DEA held listening sessions Tuesday and Wednesday on a potential special registration process and said it will hold an additional written-comment period, signaling another extension may be needed.
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