SAN DIEGO—The 2017 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting, Nov. 3–8, presented opportunities to highlight its 2017 legislative advocacy victories, some of which were resolved just weeks before the conference began, as well as issues that are still outstanding. In the session, Legislative & Regulatory Update 2017, Angus Worthing, MD, chair of the ACR’s Government Advocacy Committee and…
On Dec. 8, 2017, members of the Cognitive Care Alliance (CCA)—of which the ACR is a leading member—met with members of Congress on the Hill and representatives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to discuss ongoing concerns about the inadequacy of existing evaluation and management (E/M) codes to properly remunerate cognitive services…
Greetings, advocates! Your government is back to work after ending a brief government shutdown by passing a short-term continuing resolution (CR), which will keep the government running at current funding levels into February. At some point, it would be great for Congress to pass a budget (instead of a CR) and to enact bipartisan plans…
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—A U.S. Senate committee on Wednesday voted to move forward the nomination of Alex Azar, a former drug industry executive and lobbyist whom President Donald Trump has tapped to be the next secretary of Health and Human Services. The Senate Finance Committee voted 15-12 to advance Azar’s nomination, with all but one Democrat opposing….
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—The number of Americans without health insurance rose by 3.2 million people between 2016 and 2017, or 1.3% points to 12.2%, according to a Gallup poll released on Tuesday, the biggest jump in the uninsured rate in nearly a decade.1 Several factors likely contributed to the jump, Gallup said, including attempts by Republicans, who…
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—Alex Azar, a former drug industry executive and lobbyist nominated to run the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, indicated on Tuesday he supported a Republican bid to overhaul Medicaid and again vowed to tackle high drug prices. Azar appeared before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday, which will ultimately decide whether to…
A recent Politico article outlined the looming agenda facing Congress as 2018 begins: Fund the government, raise the debt ceiling, modify spending caps, address healthcare subsidies, allocate additional funds for disaster relief, and address the status of millions of undocumented young immigrants.1 Amid all that activity, the ACR, through its Government Affairs Committee (GAC) and…
What initially strikes people about Christopher Adams, MD, FACP, FACR, is his passion for fairness. In 2015, he told readers of The Rheumatologist, “Patients often feel powerless to fight the system and advocate for themselves, and many of my patients felt they lacked a mechanism for addressing their concerns. That’s where we come in.” Dr….
WASHINGTON (Reuters)—The Trump administration proposed a rule on Thursday to allow Americans who are self-employed or work for small businesses to buy health insurance that does not comply with all Obamacare requirements in an effort to unwind the 2010 healthcare law. The rule, put forward by the Department of Labor, would allow individuals and small…
(Reuters)—About 8.7 million people enrolled in healthcare plans for 2018 using the federal Obamacare marketplace, according to updated government figures released on Thursday. The number represented a slight decline from the 2017 enrollment figure when about 9.2 million people signed up for health insurance policies from private insurers on the HealthCare.gov platform. It was slightly…