Maverick's Update

It is never too late to start over. If you accidentally put Coffee mate in your cereal, for example, you can try again. Al Pacino is starting over with a new baby with his 29-year-old girlfriend. Al was a baby 83 years ago, which was right about the time nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer was building the atomic bomb. A new movie is coming out in July, Oppenheimer, about how the genius physicist wished he could start over after giving humans the power to destroy themselves. Somewhere along the spectrum of Coffee mate in your cereal and the atomic bomb, health information policymaking is starting over, as we explain below in the One Thoughtful Paragraph.

Other news showing that health information policymaking starts over again and again:

• Almost six years after he announced new digital health policies at the FDA, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb wants the agency to start over on its attempt to regulate modern medical tools. Specifically, Dr. Gottlieb drafted an article in JAMA Health Forum urging the FDA to develop regulations for AI in health care like they do for over-the-counter drugs, rather than using existing frameworks for approving medical products through prospective trials.
• The GAO (Government Accountability Office) is trying to get Congress to start over with its consideration of a comprehensive federal data privacy law. Until then, the health care industry and patients will be subject to a confusing set of rights and responsibilities. Privacy rights are different depending on where you live; there are three state health data privacy laws now — Washington State’s My Health My Data, Connecticut’s Data Privacy Act, and Nevada’s Governor is expected to sign one as soon as he is finished with the more important business of bringing Billy Beane’s baseball team to Vegas. [Maybe we will watch the always-inspiring Moneyball movie again.]
• To wade through the tricky data and math, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) announced that it is starting over with a new Executive Director, Paul Masi, a current Congressional Budget Office economist and former MedPAC Assistant Director. Hats off to Jim Mathews, the current staff director, who is leaving at the end of August after devoting more than 16 years to the Commission.

One Thoughtful Paragraph