The milk is about to expire. And that’s fine because we are about to go to Las Vegas for #HLTH2023 [shameless marketing note: come see us at meeting pod 2372 and hear about our fab new resource “MyMaverick”]. Back to the milk: we can just throw it out now instead of coming back to milk that expired while we are away. Normally, we would make some connection between the expiring milk and the nightmarish situation that Congress finds itself in — but that’s more like a dumpster fire than an expired milk situation. In the One Thoughtful Paragraph, we explain how federal rules about health plan data are evolving just like expired milk.
Other news that is somewhere between expired milk and a dumpster fire:
- Can Mark Cuban just calm down? First, he bothers Taylor Swift about her dating choices, and then he complains about not being able to figure out the price of his colonoscopy. If you’re Mark Cuban, that means that you launch a full-blown study with the University of Texas to find out more about hospital prices. Turns out, very few of the 60 hospitals they called provided the same price through an online price estimator as they did when someone spoke to a member of the billing department.
- It is like Senator Cassidy never heard of Google. Instead of just searching for the answer like the rest of us, he keeps asking stakeholders to explain things to him. First, it was how to regulate AI in health care, then it was whether HIPAA privacy rules should be expanded, and now he released an RFI on the CDC – requesting input on how the agency can modernize public health data and improve core public health activities. Responses are due October 20, 2023.
- You know things are bad when they call in the military. The Department of Defense’s National Security Agency launched the AI Security Center to protect information systems, including those in hospitals and health systems.
When something old (like expired milk) evolves into something else (crumbly cheese), it can be a good thing. The band U2, for instance, features artists who are 61 or 62 — not old in general, but pretty old to be in a worldwide traveling rock band. This week, at Sphere, the $2.3 billion futuristic entertainment venue in Las Vegas, U2 re-made themselves into the artists that showed the world a new way of enjoying live music. Just like U2, the U.S. Departments of Labor, HHS and Treasury decided to dust off the old Transparency in Coverage rule — which requires health plans to publicize their negotiated rates with hospitals and doctors — and give it a fresh spin. The federal agencies released new FAQs that explained that health plans’ must publish machine-readable files of prescription drug prices and list in-network rates as dollar amounts for alternative reimbursement arrangements (e.g., payment of a percentage of billed charges or other rates that are usually determined retrospectively). Up until this announcement, health plans were enjoying delayed enforcement of these things. When these prices become obvious to patients (that may take a while), these additional transparency rules could make a significant difference in where people decide to get their health care. We are guessing, though, that — despite the eventual upside — health plans think these FAQs taste as sour as expired milk. Sour milk alternative: a cool new concert.
