Happy Groundhog Day! USA Today reports that “On Groundhog Day 2020, Punxsutawney Phil could not find his shadow. And as the legend goes, this means we’re in for an early spring.” Oh, there’s also a big pro football game this evening in Miami. Go Chiefs.

Congress is in session this week on Capitol Hill. Federal News Network reports

The House will vote [this coming] week on a bill to repeal the Postal Service’s mandate to pre-fund health benefits for future retirees. The USPS Fairness Act (HR 2382) if passed, would undo one of the central provisions in the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. The bill, introduced by Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), now has more than 300 co-sponsors and the support of the postal unions.

If Congress could get together to kill the three highly controversial Affordable Care Act taxes, Congress should be able to repeal this misguided mandate too.

Kaiser Health News reports on the Affordable Care Act penalties on Medicare payments that the Centers for Medicare and Medical has imposed on hospitals for certain adverse events affecting patients.

Now in their sixth year, the punishments, known as HAC penalties, remain awash in criticism from all sides. Hospitals say they are arbitrary and unfair, and some patient advocates believe they are too small to make a difference. Research has shown that while hospital infections are decreasing overall, it is hard to attribute that trend to the penalties.

This HAC penalty is in addition to the readmission penalty on Medicare payments that the ACA also created.

Fierce Healthcare warns

Payers better be prepared for orphan drugs.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will evaluate more than 150 new approvals this year, OptumRx officials said in their latest quarterly report on the drug pipeline.

Already, there are 64 applications submitted to the agency with likely approval in 2020, the pharmacy benefit manager said. At least 11 of those drugs are set to be “blockbuster” products with over $1 billion in U.S. sales, Optum said in the report.

Optum has seen similar development activities over the past several years.

“It’s a little more than just an aberration—seeing three years in a row of high outputs is a trend, and something we think is going to continue at least for the foreseeable future,” Bill Dreitlein, senior director of pipeline and drug surveillance at OptumRx, told FierceHealthcare.