Roll Call has laid its hands on the Senate’s version of the House’s American Rescue Plan bill and it reports on the differences between the two bills. In the healthcare realm
Another key health care change would fully subsidize health insurance premiums under the federal law known as COBRA for workers who leave their jobs. The House-passed bill and earlier Senate drafts would have required workers to chip in 15 percent of their premiums, while subsidizing the remainder.
Healthcare Dive reports that
The Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines Wednesday morning to send California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s nomination as HHS secretary to the Senate for a full vote. After a 14-14 tie vote, the nomination will move forward but now requires debate and two floor votes. All Republicans on the committee voted against the nominee, citing his lack of healthcare-specific experience and support for abortion rights. The date for a full vote is not yet set, but Becerra is still likely to be confirmed.
Fierce Healthcare informs us that at yesterday’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the future of telehealth:
House [Energy and Commerce] health subcommittee chair Rep. Anna Eshoo said it’s time to make telehealth flexibilities enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic permanent to help close gaps in care.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) waived many telehealth payment policies during the public health emergency, which helped open up access to virtual care. It drove 10.6 million Medicare beneficiaries to use telehealth visits by the end of July, Eshoo said during a Committee on Energy and Commerce health subcommittee hearing.
“The wide adoption of telehealth has been a bright spot during a very dark time in our country,” she said. “For the first time, we’ve had substantiative data on the quality and the use of telehealth at scale.”
America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association announced today the creation of the Vaccine Community Connectors pilot initiative. Participation in the initiation is open to all health insurers.
[The initiative] aims to enable the vaccination of 2 million seniors age 65+ in America’s most at-risk, vulnerable and underserved communities – such as African American and Hispanic communities. Insurance providers will focus on their members and the communities they serve. They are working to reach this important goal quickly, depending upon the increasing availability of vaccine supply.
Bravo.
On the federal employment front —
- Govexec reports on the latest Postal Service reorganization. “The Postal Service now has about 500,000 career employees, down nearly 300,000 from its peak near the turn of the century. USPS has grown its non-career workforce dramatically in that time, which now numbers more than 100,000.”
- Federal News Network reports that “Far fewer federal employees retired in 2020 compared to previous years, and for some, the pandemic and new telework arrangements have played a prominent role in their decisions to delay and their views about their jobs. A total of 92,008 federal employees retired in 2020, the fewest in nearly 10 years, according to a Federal News Network analysis of monthly data from the Office of Personnel Management. By contrast, OPM processed 101,580 retirements in 2019 and 107,612 in 2018.”