Maverick's Update

Is ignorance really bliss? It is if you are determined to see the latest Guardians of the Galaxy movie. We suggest you watch the King’s coronation instead of this heart-wrenching film so you don’t accidentally subject yourself to a so-called comedy based on animal cruelty. (We wish we were kidding.) As we explain in the One Thoughtful Paragraph, one federal agency is trying so hard to avoid being blissfully ignorant — but its refusal to continue collecting public health information will make us all a lot dumber.

If you want to be blissfully ignorant, don’t read this health information policy news:

• Assorted high-ranking federal government officials, the non-blissfully-ignorant kind, gathered at the White House this week with Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic — the leading developers of generative artificial intelligence. They wanted to ask one burning question to help them figure out how to regulate machines that can think for themselves: “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?” (Nod to everyone who got the Sound of Music reference). We have not confirmed, but are guessing that government officials just played a YouTube clip of that classic musical number about controlling the uncontrollable. We are told the most specific question they asked was, “how do you catch a wave upon the sand?”
• The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) never had many smart friends before, so it was impressive that 38,000 people thoughtfully responded to its controversial proposed rule that would reinstate strict limits on prescribing certain drugs like Adderall and opioid use disorder treatments via telehealth. As we all know, wearing a flak jacket makes it tough to read for long periods, so the agency asked for a bit more time to finalize its rules.
• This is not boring if you’re smart enough to understand why it is so important: CMS proposed two new rules that would standardize data and monitoring of Medicaid managed care plans to increase the transparency of Medicaid payment rates. We refer you to smart lawyers for more information.

One Thoughtful Paragraph