Govexec.com offers an interesting interview with the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee on Government Operations, Rep. Mark Meadows, a Republican from North Carolina. The Committee evidently jostled around its subcommittee structure. Government Operations now has a wide ranging portfolio that includes the federal civil service / FEHB and the Postal Service. The Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R Utah) also created Health Care, Benefits, and Administrative Rules subcommittee which is chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan, a Republican from Ohio. That subcommittee will focus on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security / HHS.

The FEHBlog also ran across a couple of upbeat stories —

• For the past forty years, health care providers in Franklin County, Maine, a rural area, have undertaken a proactive effort to encourage better heart health, e.g., smoking cessation, weight control, blood pressure control, exercise, etc., and by golly a study indicates that the effort paid off in materially lower levels of heart disease and longer lives according to the Medpage report. 
• Fierce Healthcare reports that Massachusetts hospitals, doctors, and health plans are successfully collaborating to lower administrative costs. This is similar to the work that CAQH does on a nationwide basis. Cooperation is good.