“I don’t want to say anything negative about that Kennedy boy. I’m sure he’s a real nice fellow.” We don’t expect this is what Dr. Oz will say today about the HHS Secretary during his Senate confirmation hearing to be the next CMS Administrator. It is what John Cusack said, playing President Richard Nixon, about John F. Kennedy in the movie The Butler, which starred Oprah Winfrey. Oprah first catapulted Dr. Oz into a celebrity doctor by featuring him on her show. If confirmed, Dr. Oz will head a $1.5 trillion agency that oversees health insurance for more than 160 million Americans. I explain why this is interesting to me in the One Thoughtful Paragraph.
There are other interesting items in the news this week:
- The U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass a federal budget through Sept. 30, 2025, that extends some expiring Medicare telehealth flexibilities until the same date. With Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s acquiescence, it seems likely the Senate will vote for the budget bill too.
- In a huge win for data analytics companies seeking access to patient records, a federal appeals court held that PointClickCare (“PCC”), a large electronic healthcare records company, cannot prevent Real Time Medical Systems, a small data analytics firm that helps skilled nursing facilities, from accessing patient records on PCC’s electronic healthcare records platform. In a 58-page ruling, the court agreed with Real Time’s allegation that PCC was illegally blocking access to its platform. This case is a lesson in how the information blocking rule works.
- Following a record-breaking number of health data breaches in 2024, HHS proposed updates to HIPAA in January 2025 to enhance patient information security, but health systems and providers submitted thousands of public comments explaining why the proposed rule will not work well. In related news, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on delays in federal IT modernization, identifying several projects that are years behind schedule, over budget, and vulnerable to cybersecurity threats.
Is it a wedding party over there? Madame Mallory: A funeral. The death of good taste. This is a quote from The Hundred Foot Journey, a film co-produced by Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg. It is a good story about how strangers come to town and do things entirely differently but eventually win the locals over. When I read this morning’s Wall Street Journal article about the Dr. Oz hearing entitled “Dr. Oz Is About To Take Over Medicare. Expect a Show” – I thought of this movie. It is, in fact, unusual for a showman like Dr. Oz to take over a serious, snoozefest agency with 6,000 employees managing the health insurance for half of America. I am curious about what will be different under his leadership. One item that already happened (notably before Dr. Oz’s confirmation) is the CMS Innovation Center’s rollback of four payment models (e.g., one was focused on improving primary care) and ending several others (e.g., the Medicare $2 Drug List Model to cap out-of-pocket generic drugs at $2 a month). But what about ASTP/ONC, the HHS office that oversees electronic medical records and interoperability rules? Will CMS absorb it as rumored? If so, will all the rules coming out of that office to streamline electronic prior authorization, improve national health data exchange, and oversee some AI-supported tools, keep moving? When I contemplate these questions, I am reminded of what our hero says to his skeptical brother in film The Hundred Foot Journey: “To survive here, we’re going to need to adapt. We have to make use of what is close to us. Then, we pray to God that it works.”
