“I’ll have what she’s having.” This may be what envious New Year’s Eve party-goers said at Mar-a-Lago when they saw the First Lady’s sparkly dress, but I wasn’t there to hear it. Instead, this is a line spoken by Rob Reiner’s mother in the 1989 iconic film When Harry Met Sally, as suggested by Billy Crystal after Meg Ryan loudly faked the big O. What does this have to do with health policy? Oh, nothing. But, you have to admit, it is a great scene.
And that’s how things are going to go in 2026. You should just plan to retreat into things that make you laugh. Because in real life, there are a lot of things we will be dealing with in 2026:
- Texas v. Epic: A new lawsuit filed by the Texas Attorney General against the market-dominating electronic medical records company, alleging that Epic is engaged in deceptive trade practices by blocking data in a way that violates antitrust statutes and privacy laws. As always, Brendan Keeler makes it seem like he went to law school by explaining it here.
- CMS awarded funding to state governments to implement their Rural Health Transformation Plans. A new CMS office will help distribute the $50 billion fund, which is designed in no small part to pay for the modernization of rural health care through innovative technologies.
- CMMI released a laundry list of new models, including BALANCE, MAHA ELEVATE, GLOBE (Global Benchmarking for Efficient Drug Pricing), GUARD (Guarding U.S. Medicare Against Rising Drug Costs), LEAD (Long-term Enhanced ACO Design), and the much anticipated request for applications (RFA) for its new ACCESS Model. The RFA offers a few details on how CMMI intends to operationalize its new experiment to create a predictable payment pathway for health technology that improves outcomes. Applications are due by April 1, 2026, to be considered for the first cohort beginning on July 5, 2026.
- The “tri-agencies” (HHS, Department of Labor, Treasury) released a proposed rule to update health plans about their obligations under the Transparency in Coverage rule, mostly about how to handle challenges with payers’ price transparency machine-readable files. Comments are due February 21, 2025; the requirements go into effect on January 1, 2027.
- HHS issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking public feedback on what it can do to incentivize AI adoption in clinical care through regulation, reimbursement, and research engagement. Comments are due February 23, 2026.
- The Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ASTP/ONC) released the Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: ASTP/ONC Deregulatory Actions to Unleash Prosperity (HTI-5) Proposed Rule on December 22, 2025. The comment period closes on February 27, 2026.
Maverick Health Policy is on top of all of this and more. Unlike Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, we are not faking it – as our MyMaverick subscribers already know. If you’re having trouble keeping up, reach out to us here. We offer regular updates because the rest of your life is going to start soon. It is like what Billy Crystal says in When Harry Met Sally during the New Year’s Eve party scene: I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. Why can’t you spend it with us, starting with our free webinar on January 21, 2026, to catch up on what all of this means?
