“Why don’t you make like a tree and get outta here?” This is not what President Trump said to Pam Bondi when he fired her from the Attorney General position this week. It is what the bully says to our hero, Marty McFly, in the movie Back to the Future. There are a number of announcements this week that are about moving forward while reflecting on the past. This is also the theme of the One Thoughtful Paragraph below.
Other news this week that reflect “back to the future” moments:
- Going back to a rule CMS released in 2024, this week, payers had to post information on their websites about how fast they responded to doctors’ requests for prior authorization of coverage in 2025. Health plans were also supposed to publicize how often they would deny these requests and what happened if a denial was appealed. See UnitedHealthcare, Aetna.
- Going back to 2019, CMS warned Elevance Health six times over the years to submit its Medicare Advantage risk adjustment data directly to the agency instead of using USB flash drives. Finally, in 2026, CMS gave Elevance Health one more chance to respond in the near future before it will prevent the company from enrolling new members.
- Going back to 2022-2023, Maverick Health Policy employed an intern named Quincy Martin, who quickly rose through our ranks to become a policy analyst. Now at Harvard Law School, he co-authored a Health Affairs Forefront article this week with Michael Chernew, to help guide future regulation of health care prices.
“Hello? Hello? Anybody home?” If you said this when you knocked on the door of the HHS Assistant Secretary of Technology Policy this week, they may have said “Yes! It is the O-N-C, you know me!” This “anybody home?” quote is from the movie Back to the Future, and the HHS agency in charge of health IT policy is back to the future too. If you missed it, HHS announced this week that it would retract a Biden administration expansion of the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). The ONC Fan Club (there were over 1,000 people at their annual meeting) welcomes the flashback to simper times. Honestly, that team has enough on its plate without worrying about whether to say seven letters (ASTP/ONC) instead of three (ONC): they’re fielding a letter from Health Gorilla‘s CEO, preparing for the IT developers’ attestation deadline, advancing a Behavioral Health IT initiative with SAMHSA, working through significant pushback from commenters to finalize HTI-5 and gearing up to propose HTI-6 by this summer – all while still having to remind everyone what “HTI” stands for. It is a lot to do in the immediate future and no one knows how all of this is going to play out. It is like what “Doc” says to “Marty” in Back to the Future: We’ve already agreed that having information about the future can be extremely dangerous. Even if your intentions are good, it can backfire drastically!
Don’t forget to register for Maverick Health Policy’s Quarterly Webinar on April 8th HERE!
