Advocacy & Public Policy

Drug companies gave at least $116 million to patient advocacy groups in 2015, according to a database launched Friday by Kaiser Health News. “Patient advocacy groups campaign to raise awareness of diseases, to fund research and to promote policies favorable to their causes on Capitol Hill and at…

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission should not finalize its draft recommendation to reduce payments for off-campus stand-alone emergency departments located within six miles of an on-campus hospital ED, which is not based on any analysis of Medicare beneficiaries, Medicare costs or Medicare…

A federal judge has asked the AHA to provide detailed suggestions on behalf of hospitals and health systems for how the Department of Health and Human Services can reduce the backlog of Medicare billing appeals awaiting adjudication at the Administrative Law Judge level and prevent another huge…

Rick Pollack AHA President and CEO American Hospital Association   March 16, 2018   We applaud the announcement of the Health Care Innovation Caucus led by Representatives Kelly (R-PA), Kind (D-WI), Mullin (R-OK), and Bera, M.D. (D-CA) to encourage innovative policy ideas to improve…

AHA supports efforts to expand the types of educational degrees that would be eligible under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments so as to increase the number of qualified laboratory testing personnel serving the nation’s hospitals and health systems, AHA told the Centers for Medicare…

A recent Idaho bulletin on requirements for state-based health plans in the individual market “may not be substantially enforcing provisions” of the Affordable Care Act, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told Gov. Butch Otter yesterday. “If a state fails to substantially enforce…

Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) this week asked Health and Human Secretary Alex Azar and Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta to review whether Anthem or any other health plan’s emergency department coverage policies violate the prudent layperson standard. “As you know, patients…

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia this week voided a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rule regarding how third-party payments, such as private insurance or Medicare, are treated for purposes of calculating the hospital-specific limitation on Medicaid disproportionate…

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee today held the sixth in a series of hearings on the opioid crisis, which focused on state strategies to address the crisis. Witnesses included Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown. Among other strategies, Maryland has…

WASHINGTON, DC (March 1, 2018) – Hospitals of all kinds provide a full range of benefits to their communities.  In a new analysis released today, the American Hospital Association (AHA) spotlights how 340B tax-exempt hospitals provided more than $50 billion in total benefits to their…