Health

Axios - The Trump administration is shaking up how health systems are paid for outpatient care with a plan that could reduce Medicare hospital spending by nearly $11 billion over the next decade.

It's a big step forward for "site-neutral" payment policies that have been touted as a way to save taxpayers and patients money, but that hospitals say will lead to service cuts, especially in rural areas.

Medicare administrators last week finalized a proposal to reduce what the government pays hospitals to administer outpatient drugs, including chemotherapy, at off-campus sites.

• The move would equalize payment rates to hospitals and physician practices for the same services — an idea that Congress debated last year but didn't act on in the face of aggressive hospital lobbying.
• Medicare now pays about $341 for chemotherapy administration in hospital outpatient facilities, compared with $119 for the same service delivered in a doctor's office.
• Medicare next year will also start to phase out a list of more than 1,700 procedures and services only covered when they're delivered in an inpatient setting.

Hospitals indicated before the plan was finalized that they'd challenge the policy in court if CMS moved forward.  Read more

NY Times -  Dr. Ralph Lee Abraham, who as Louisiana’s surgeon general ordered the state health department to stop promoting vaccinations and who has called Covid vaccines “dangerous,” has been named the second in command at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Department of Health and Human Services did not announce the appointment, and many C.D.C. employees seemed unaware of it. But the C.D.C.’s internal database lists Dr. Abraham as the agency’s principal deputy director, with a start date of Nov. 23. The appointment was first reported by the Substack column Inside Medicine.

A spokesman for H.H.S. confirmed Dr. Abraham’s new position but declined to comment further. Dr. Abraham did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dr. Abraham’s views on some issues align with those of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He has endorsed avoiding Tylenol in pregnancy except “when absolutely necessary” because of a possible link to autism. He has also backed ending routine immunization for hepatitis B at birth and removing from vaccines ingredients like aluminum salts, which are added to enhance the immune response.