Time to refresh, revitalize, and rejuvenate. You know, happy words to describe “this is the same old thing but we are going to shine it up so we can feel better about it.” So maybe put an old, favorite photo in a new frame and put it in a more prominent place. See? That wasn’t hard, and it distracts from that part of the wall that needs patching. It is why the 30-year-old Nightmare Before Christmas re-release is doing better at the box office than new movies because of that little actor/writer strike trouble. The federal government has the same idea — shining up old things and putting them out where everyone can see them to distract from the icky things happening. In the One Thoughtful Paragraph, we explain how the third time may be the charm for one old policy proposal.
We have seen this movie before, but maybe this refreshing news will make us take a second look:
- The White House is hosting an event on Monday, October 30, 2023, to rejuvenate its ideas about how to regulate artificial intelligence. Building on the administration’s October 2022 Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and voluntary commitments from the leading AI companies, we hear there will be an executive order to make sure nobody gets hurt while generative AI is changing the world as we know it.
- MedPAC has been making recommendations about Medicare spending for decades. In its announcement about its plans for next year, the independent agency that reports to Congress was careful to emphasize its increased scrutiny of Medicare Advantage plans — and not just coding intensity. MedPAC plans to update its work on encounter data and introduce an analysis comparing those data with what MA plans submit as part of their bids.
- CMS is in the middle of Medicare open enrollment so rather than release something new, it published a report about how the Medicare Advantage Value-Based Insurance Design Model (VBID) model allowed the use of new and existing technologies as part of the flexible supplemental benefits and announced that it will be extended for calendar years 2025-2030.
Madonna (the musical pop legend) used to be the one you could count on to reinvent herself. (Pause here to recognize a 64-year-old rock star who doesn’t need a Sphere to launch her final tour this year). Now it is Taylor Swift’s turn – last night, at midnight, she re-released her iconic album 1989 (which was actually released in 2014 because Taylor wasn’t even born until 1989). The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid, so named only 22 years ago, is also dusting off its greatest ideas. Coming to an inbox near you soon: the electronic prior authorization rule. Currently undergoing review by the White House Office of Management & Budget, the last stop before the rule is published in its final form, this proposal to make health plans’ coverage decisions faster and more consistent is not new. In fact, it was in June 2018 that the major health plan and provider associations agreed on the basic tenets of the rule (more details came in the FAST Path initiative in 2020) to automate these decisions so as not to slow down access to patient care. Both the Trump and Biden Administrations embraced this proposal and now it may finally be coming to fruition after the first interoperability rule hinted that it would be a good idea. Healthcare rules may not be exactly like Madonna, but CMS seems interested in expressing itself all the same.
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