RISE summarizes recent regulatory-related headlines.
Senate panel hearing on HHS reorg may be delayed
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s planned hearing on April 10 with Heath and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may be delayed for weeks, according to STAT.
U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy, M.D., (R-La.), chair of the Senate HELP committee and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), ranking member, asked Kennedy to appear before the panel to discuss his plans to cut thousands of jobs at HHS and consolidate several agencies.
RELATED: Senate panel schedules hearing with RFK Jr. for details on HHS reorganization
As of Tuesday, April 8, the Senate HELP Committee website didn’t have details about the April 10 hearing. A representative at the HELP office, as well as a staff member at Cassidy’s Washington D.C. office, told RISE Tuesday morning that they didn’t have information about the hearing or a rescheduled date.
STAT reports that Kennedy’s team is in receipt of the hearing request but did not confirm attendance. The Senate will be taking a two-week break beginning April 14 and will return April 28. Kennedy is currently on a “Make America Healthy Again” tour in the Southwest to promote his initiatives, including a push for states to ban fluoride in drinking water supplies.
More layoffs expected at NIH due to HHS overhaul
Meanwhile, officials at the National Institute of Health (NIH) expect there will be a second wave of layoffs within the agency in the coming weeks, CBS News reports. NIH was due to lose 1,200 staff as part of a massive restructuring at HHS earlier this month. An unnamed HHS official told CBS News that HHS is doing the reorganization and consolidation of agencies in phases following the layoffs of 10,000 employees. NIH officials were told they may lose additional staff due to layoffs at HHS that had to be reversed. It’s unclear how many employes were reinstated but Politico reports that there are no plans to reinstate 20 percent of the employees who were terminated, despite HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claims last Thursday. Kennedy hasn’t released an accounting of the firings, Politico noted in a second article, and workers who seemingly survived the initial layoffs are trying to determine what remains of their agencies in shared Google documents, spreadsheets, and notes. The layoffs and reorganizations are part of Kennedy’s plan to reduce redundancy and bureaucracy within the department and refocus its efforts to prevent chronic disease.
CBO: Medicare Trust Fund may last until 2052
A new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that provides a long-term budget outlook for the next 30 years offers a hopeful look for the Medicare Part A Trust Fund, which covers inpatient hospital services, care provided in skilled nursing facilities, home health care, and hospice care. Despite last year’s projections that the trust fund would be depleted by 2035, the CBO now believes the funds can last an additional 17 years.
The reasons for the revised long-term forecast: CBO projects expenditures from the trust fund to be smaller and income to the trust fund to be greater than last year’s outlook. Expenditures will be smaller because spending for Medicare Part A in 2024 was less than expected. Payments to hospitals will grow more slowly than they did last year. In addition, the agency updated its modeling of federal payments to insurers in the Medicare Advantage (MA) program. Because Medicare fee-for-service spending determines MA benchmarks, CBO lowered its projections of Medicare Advantage spending.
Income will be higher this year because the CBO increased its projections of revenues from payroll taxes because it now expects faster growth in wages and to account for updated historical data from the Department of the Treasury. Revenue from the taxation of benefits is also greater in the current projections because of changes in the distribution of income and an upward revision to CBO’s projections of pension income and Social Security benefits. And finally interest income to the trust fund is greater than estimated last year because of the larger trust fund balances in this year’s projections.
UnitedHealth shareholders withdraw call for a report about denied, delayed coverage
Shareholders of UnitedHealth Group have withdrawn their proposal for the 2025 proxy asking the board of directors to prepare a report on the public health-related costs and macroeconomic risks created by company practices that limit or delay access to health care.
The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, an association made up of a cross-section of faith-based investors, announced the withdrawal due to a series of challenges from the company at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Shareholders argued that the company’s policy and practices aimed at delaying and denying coverage to policyholders create longer-term economic burdens that adversely affect both the company and investors’ total portfolios by increasing consumer debt, deteriorating public health, and reducing workforce productivity, which strains government resources.
Shareholders were set to go forward when UnitedHealth submitted a “no-action” request to the SEC, which would allow it to omit the proposal from its proxy. The SEC then issued new guidance that created a loophole permitting the company to file a second and additional no-action request. To avoid jeopardizing the chance to re-file the proposal next year, shareholders decided to withdraw the proposal this year.