Three things about health policy this week by Gregg Margolis

Quoting Gregg Margolis, Director of Health Policy Fellowships and Leadership Programs at the National Academy of Medicine, on LinkedIn:

“If you can only read three things about health policy this week, I suggest…

The Wall Street Journal: The Key Takeaways From The 2023 Election Results—And What They Mean For 2024. They were disparate elections in different states—for governor, state Senate, a supreme court seat and on a constitutional amendment. But the results of off-year races on Tuesday pointed in one direction: Voters will come to the polls to defend abortion rights. In the Republican strongholds of Ohio and Kentucky, as well as politically purple Virginia and Pennsylvania, abortion-rights supporters spent millions of dollars to tell voters that Republican Party lawmakers couldn’t be trusted to set state abortion policy after the Supreme Court last year eliminated a right to the procedure under the U.S. Constitution. (Zitner and Kusisto, 11/8)

USA Today: Biden Tackles Medicare Advantage Plans: These Are The Proposed Changes. ‘We want to ensure that taxpayer dollars actually provide meaningful benefits to enrollees,’ said Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. If finalized, the proposed rules rolled out Monday could also give seniors faster access to some lower-cost drugs. Administration officials said the changes, which are subject to a 60-day comment period, build on recent steps taken to address what they called confusing or misleading advertisements for Medicare Advantage plans. (Groppe, 11/6)

Modern Healthcare: Senate Moves To Delay $16B Hospital Cut, Trim Doctor Pay Hit The Senate Finance Committee approved the Better Mental Health Care, Lower-Cost Drugs, and Extenders Act of 2023, which would delay pending reductions in Medicaid disproportionate share hospital funding for safety-net facilities, scale back a Medicare pay cut for physicians that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finalized last week, extend expiring healthcare programs, expand Medicare coverage of mental healthcare and impose new limits on pharmacy benefit managers. (McAuliff, 11/8)

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Source: Gregg Margolis/LinkedIn