regulations

Late last year, the House of Representatives passed a small step toward site-neutral payment policies in Medicare. But the Senate did not pass the bill due to opposition from the hospital industry. Since then, healthcare advocate groups have made a full court press to pass something in 2024. The hospital lobby is strong and has resisted these types of reforms for years. But advocates, health plans, and other parties have made the case that the reform is critical to lowering overall costs in the system as well as rising out-of-pocket costs for everyday Americans. Of course they are right. I have it as a key reform within one of my healthcare reform tenets – price reform. What are site-neutral payment policies? Quite simply, it means paying the same amount for the same service regardless of the place of service or location. Traditionally, outpatient hospital settings have gotten paid far more

In an expected move, the Supreme Court ruled that the so-called 1984 Chevron deference under the nations’ regulatory system is no more. It has now thrown the Supreme Court precedent out. It is a technically complex ruling that has major implications for policymaking throughout government. Chevron was not a precedent just for healthcare agencies but applied to every executive department and agency out there – defense, environment, health, commerce, consumer protection and more. The decision split along rather pure ideological grounds, with six more conservative justices lining up against three more liberal ones. The Chevron doctrine said that courts must give deference to reasonable interpretations of regulations issued by regulatory agencies that may be in part based on laws that are ambiguous. In essence, regulators had reasonably wide discretion to interpret what these ambiguous parts of a law meant and if so, how a law might be implemented. Proponents think that Chevron