Both chambers are in town for a jam-packed week before the Senate leaves for the July 4 recess. The main healthcare action this week remains focused on program integrity. The House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee will hold a hearing on Thursday on Medicaid program integrity. Medicaid directors from New York, Ohio, California, and Minnesota are expected to be the witnesses. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) requested information from New York, California, and Minnesota on their program integrity efforts, and have withheld federal funding from some of those states due to fraud concerns. The subcommittee previously sent similar information requests to Minnesota, New York, and California. Meanwhile, CMS has used Ohio as an example when discussing successful efforts to address fraud and collaborative federal-state partnerships.
During the hearing, Republicans will likely grill directors from New York, Minnesota, and California on what program integrity actions they have taken to date, while praising actions from Ohio to address fraud. Democrats will likely continue stating that while oversight is important, withholding federal funding from states because of program integrity concerns will harm beneficiaries and providers.
On Wednesday, the Joint Economic Committee will discuss healthcare fraud and hear from witnesses from the Paragon Health Institute, the Manhattan Institute, Brown University, and George Washington University.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is also expected to mark up healthcare transparency bills, some of which were discussed during a recent legislative hearing. However, that markup hasn’t been noticed as of the time of this publication, so details are not yet available and it could slip to a future date. The Senate Appropriations Committee will hold its first markup of fiscal year (FY) 2027 bills on Thursday. The committee will consider four bills, including the Agriculture-US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bill. The Senate has yet to release the text for that bill, but the House approved its version earlier this month by a 213 – 210 vote, largely along party lines. The House version would provide $7.1 billion to the FDA for FY 2027, a slight decrease from the $7.2 billion request in the president’s budget.
On the regulatory front, we await the US Department of Homeland Security public charge final rule, which could be released as early as today.
In this week’s Healthcare Preview, Rodney Whitlock and Debbie Curtis join Erin Fuller to discuss what to watch for during and after this week’s Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight Subcommittee hearing on Medicaid fraud, waste, and abuse featuring state Medicaid directors as witnesses.
