Tag: Congress

U.S. Capitol Building at Night

Advantages of Using the Congressional Review Act to Revoke Health Care Waivers

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By Matthew B. Lawrence

The Trump Administration has granted health care waivers that the Biden Administration will surely look to end, including work requirement waivers that the Supreme Court is going to consider in Azar v. Gresham. How the Biden Administration approaches this task may set precedents that last far into the future, which is one argument in favor of considering the Congressional Review Act as a potential path forward.

Waivers are a huge part of health policy. They entail a state seeking approval from the federal government to make various changes to ACA or Medicaid programs. Waivers are normally approved for several years at a time, and routinely renewed. They foster experimentation, and are also (or especially) a tool the federal government uses to steer national health policy by pushing states to adopt some reforms and not others, as I explain in a forthcoming article.

Over at the Yale Journal of Regulation blog, I describe how the Congressional Review Act (CRA) could potentially be used to revoke health care waivers (like community engagement, aka work requirement, waivers).

In brief, the CRA is a way Congress can change the law to revoke agency actions without the votes necessary to override a filibuster. The CRA might be a cleaner alternative for revoking health care waivers than administrative revocation by the Biden Administration. One big policy advantage of this route is that it wouldn’t come back to haunt health policy. Revocations through the administrative process would set a precedent that could undermine the stability of all waivers, but revocations through the CRA would not.

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Waitress wears face mask and face shield, cleans table with alcohol and wet wipe at restaurant.

The Problem with Individual-Level Interventions to Curb the COVID-19 Pandemic

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By Daniel Goldberg

The failure to control the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States rests, in part, on the individualist nature of our public health responses.

Public health simply does not work well when we base our interventions on the individual level. This is known as “methodological individualism,” and the evidence suggests it is both ineffective and can expand existing health inequalities. It is problematic in any public health context, but especially in pandemic response and control.

Take, for example, the ongoing debate over mask mandates. Multiple governors have refused to issue mask mandates, instead simply requesting that people don masks. The objection, interestingly, is not to the idea of masking as a public health intervention, but to the existence of a mandate itself.

Yet a model of public health which consists of nothing more than pleading with individuals to avoid behaving in ways injurious to public health would be an abject failure. Imagine if, instead of imposing minimum requirements for clean water, we simply asked regulated industries to avoid polluting watersheds. Or perhaps instead of passing laws discouraging or even criminalizing obviously harmful behavior, we simply asked people to avoid driving drunk.

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Highway alert: Covid-19 checkpoint ahead, overhead sign in Florida on state border.

Amending the Public Health Service Act to Encourage CDC Action to Stop COVID-19

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By Jennifer S. Bard

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) already has all the power it needs to limit the movement of people in order to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Yet, throughout this pandemic, they have taken no steps beyond issuing stark warnings, which have been only marginally effective. For example, this Thanksgiving, estimates indicate that almost 5 million flew and up to 50 million drove to join others. Dr. Deborah Birx is warning that everyone who did so should consider themselves infected.

The CDC’s historic reluctance to institute the politically unpopular measure of restricting travel could be countered by adding a self-executing amendment to 42 U.S. Code 264 requiring that the option be assessed at the beginning of an outbreak and periodically reviewed. More specifically, this amendment should create a review committee and set metrics for travel restrictions.

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A stethoscope tied around a pile of cash, with a pill bottle nearby. The pill bottle has cash and pills inside.

Can We Expect Legislation on Surprise Medical Billing? I’d Be Surprised

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By Abe Sutton

Surprise medical billing has emerged as a top political priority amid a torrent of complaints about expensive balance billing.

Despite leaders such as President Trump, former Vice President Biden, and members of the 116th Congress pledging to address surprise medical billing, federal legislation is unlikely, due to powerful health associations’ divergent interests. To shake legislation loose, the President would need to publicly take a side and expend political capital on a creative solution.

In this piece, I walk through why federal legislative action has been stymied to date, and what it would take to get surprise medical billing legislation over the line.

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Is FDA’s 2013 Budget At Risk?

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By Patrick O’Leary

Back in February, President Obama’s FY 2013 budget authorized $4.5 billion for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), about $2 billion of which was to come from user fees, the fees paid by regulated industry under a variety of schemes including the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA), the Medical Device User Fee Act (MDUFA) and newly-created programs for generic drugs and biosimilars. As of today, FDA’s ability to collect and use these fees is in question, endangering vital agency activities including drug and device premarket review.

The threat to FDA user fees crystallized on September 14, when the Office of Management and Budget released its Report Pursuant to the Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012, explaining what may happen if Congress fails to reach an accord on the federal budget as required by the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA). Such a failure would trigger sequestration resulting in an 8.2% reduction in non-exempt, non-defense discretionary funding. On pages 79-80, the report indicates that $3.873 billion of FDA’s budget for 2013 is considered eligible for sequestration. According to analysis by the Alliance For a Stronger FDA, this indicates that major user fee programs have been included as sequestration-eligible funds. According to the OMB report, the FDA budget would be reduced under sequestration by around $318 million.

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