HEALTH CARE HIGHLIGHTS—NCCS submitted a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on the proposed update to the hospital outpatient prospective payment system, known as OPPS, for calendar year 2019. In the letter, NCCS addressed the proposed “site neutral” payments, which would reduce patient cost-sharing but could ...

NCCS submitted a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on the proposed update to the hospital outpatient prospective payment system, known as OPPS, for calendar year 2019. In the letter, NCCS outlines support for a change in payment for clinical services that are provided at off-campus ...

NCCS submitted comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on the Medicare physician fee schedule revisions proposed for calendar year 2019 and proposed revisions in the Quality Payment Program. In our comments, NCCS addressed proposed changes to evaluation and management services, which are provided in the office ...

In order to bring you the latest cancer-related health care policy and news, we at NCCS combined our ACA Updates and What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) content into a weekly email and blog post. We aim to make this a concise, one-stop summary of what you need to know as we continue working together ...

CMS Resumes ACA Risk Adjustment Payments — The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced it will continue payments—amounting to $10.4 billion—to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) risk-adjustment program. The program was established to ensure that risk is spread across insurance companies. Recently, in one of the many efforts ...

Comment Period Closed for Trump Drug Pricing Plan — Comments for the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) drug pricing proposal were due this week. The plan, introduced by the Trump administration, outlined proposals seeking to increase competition, reduce out-of-pocket costs and incentivize better negotiations for lower drug prices ...

The National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship (NCCS) joined with other organizations of the Cancer Leadership Council (CLC) to provide comments regarding the Trump administration’s drug pricing blueprint, “American Patients First.” Sent to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, the letter outlines the groups’ concerns and asks questions ...

HEALTH CARE HIGHLIGHTS – Annual Cancer Status Report Released – On Tuesday, the Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer was released. This report is a collaborative effort of NCI, CDC, ACS, and NAACCR. The report includes mortality data through 2015. It shows that, from 1999 to ...

Trump Administration Promotes a Drug Pricing Plan - On Friday, May 11, 2018, President Trump announced a drug pricing blueprint to address prescription drug prices. Initial media coverage of the plan suggested that the blueprint failed to honor the President’s campaign commitment to negotiation of drug prices. Overall, the press ...

What Caught Our Eye (WCOE) is our week-in-review blog series. “Making Heath Insurance Enrollment As Automatic As Possible” — Via Health Affairs Blog — In December 2017, the Republican Congress, working with the Trump administration, repealed the tax penalties enforcing the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate, effective in 2019 ...